Hi, mom. Hi, everyone. Guys, this is so weird. Literally. My mom's right there. I've heard a lot about you, mom. We'll be having drinks later. hello, and welcome to the tonight's
Commonwealth Club world affairs program. my name is Griffin Gaffney. I'm the CEO and co-founder
of the San Francisco Standard. It's my pleasure to introduce to you
tonight's guest, Nellie Bowles. Nellie is a writer for the Free Press, a new media company
that she founded with her wife. if you aren't subscribed,
I highly recommend her weekly TGIF column. I might add that I believe the Free
Press is one of the most the most widely subscribed
to publications built on Substack, which is a monumental achievement
given how young the publication is. So congratulations, Jeff. prior to that, she is an award
winning journalist journalist. She spent four years covering
tech for The New York Times. And I think you also had a brief stint
here. I did indeed. I started the Chronicle. At the Chronicle. I won't say much more about that one. I started at the best paper in America,
the San Francisco Chronicle. But also, guys, you should read Griff's new publication,
The San Francisco Standard, which is an amazing new publication
covering San Francisco tech. All of it. Thank you. From a. Smart perspective. Thank you, thank you. Well, we have a lot of shared ground
to cover, certainly. and we are delighted to welcome
you back here to talk about your new book, morning after the Revolution Dispatches
from the Wrong Side of History. so in preparation tonight, I have for tonight,
I've seen that you've been quite busy. I've been watching your, interviews. Bill Marr, Fox News, MSNBC, DC. my favorite is you and your backyard
with Barry. With what I have to say,
as someone who loves to garden, beautiful
looking bougainvillea behind you. Thank you. Thank you. So I will say, I'm not planning
to be quite as feisty tonight. but we're certainly thrilled to welcome
you back here to San Francisco. And I wanted to just start by asking you
what his life in like since the book launched. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. And, I life
since the book launched has been a very exciting, very fun. I don't know, I'm super pregnant,
so I'm, like, really tired. Eight months, I. Yeah, I'm like really. Pregnant
to be doing. This. It's not. Right. and so I have been a little tired,
but it's been really good. I mean, like, I had never done the TV stuff,
so that was good to try. And then, the reception has been kind of wild at times,
but also really positive. I've gotten a lot of really nice notes
from people, who are implicated in
any of the different chapters because all the each chapter
is sort of reporting. And so it's different scenes
of cities and places and groups, and I've gotten nice notes from people
who've. Felt touched by it or seen by that. One of the things we were just talking
about, in the green room, was that in some of the televised interviews
you've done, you said you've been a little surprised that your co-panelists
in these discussions weren't surprised. They weren't really coming at you. The kind of were nodding in agreement,
like, yeah, we we know. Well, it. Was very fun being on MSNBC because you would think that
that might be a combative interview. but it wasn't, it was actually like Al
Sharpton was selling my book for me. It was so it was surreal. Yeah. And he was like, this is why we need this. And like, this is why this is so important
right now. And I was just like,
this is amazing. Yeah. And I think what's happened is it took me
four years to write the book over. You know, I kind of was chipping away at the reporting,
chipping away at the writing. well, we were also building company and, I think that in those four years
we've seen the arc of this movement and so now we're at a point where actually
a lot of the stuff in the book is seen by a lot of people, or a lot of the sort
of semi arguments made through anecdotes is seen by people as often common sense. which and three years
ago or two years ago, it was not seen
as out, it was seen as more shocking. Whereas now I think people are at the stage
where they're pretending they never said abolish the police. Right. Like they just never said that. Everyone's like you're totally right. We're all on the same page. And I'm like were we always. Like. And I think that's been really interesting
and kind of cool. But also then like the the dig at the book,
not to focus on critics, but the dig at the book has been what some of these arguments
we already knew or we already knew. This was silly. We already knew these
things were funny. And, I don't know I don't
I don't think that's necessarily true. Yeah I think but I think now
people are all kind of rushing to pretend. So where do you think that comes from. The I think we've seen a lot of these policies
play out. So the book I mean, the book is a book of a little bit my journey and a little bit, I mean, mostly it's reported scenes
from around the country over the last four years. And, it's scenes like the abolish
the Police movement. it seems like it
there's a long chapter about San Francisco and about the streets of San Francisco,
which I know we're going to talk about. But I think basically what's happening
now comes from people looking and seeing with their eyes
and seeing the reality versus the rhetoric of a lot of
what's been said over the last few years. And they're seeing that maybe drug legalization doesn't work out
as well as you might think. It works like that's
something that I used to be really for. And then you look at Oregon, Oregon's
walking that back Oregon saying, yeah,
actually overdoses got out of control. and so I think just
we've sort of seen things play out now. Yeah. And for we'll use that as a launching
point to get to where we are tonight in San Francisco, there is a chapter
called The Failure of San Francisco, which probably is not
what the contents of that chapter are. Probably not news to anyone in this,
in this room tonight. but it kind of ends with what I'm reading. Between the lines is a glimmer of hope
from you. And also, I think it's at this point of people
who have seen these policies play out. We saw the school board recall the recall
of Chesa Boudin, the district attorney. there were some elections in March for those who paid attention
to really small local elections on the, d triple C in San Francisco
that indicated a shift in the electorate. How do you square that
with the actual people in this city, how they feel about some of these issues,
not just the commentators, your audience, what do you think
is happening in in the electorate? I think I mean, to me, in part
because I grew up here, but in part because I just I really believe that
San Francisco is such an important story and is such an important story to understand America,
but to understand a lot of these policies and a lot of the funniness
and the absurdity and the complexity, because San Francisco has everything,
it has all the money, it has all the smarts. I mean, the smartest people do like an eno and it has all
the beauty, like it's a beautiful city. It has everything. And so when things fall apart or when things get screwed
up, there's no one. You can't point a finger and blame
at anything but at ourselves, at sort of liberal policies
or progressive policies. And you have to say. Why, Why is this not working? And, and, and so it's a really rich city
to write about because there's not anything
outside of kind of our community to blame. and I think that let's say Chesa Boudin. People were very excited
about his election. I was really excited when that
when that happened, I kind of believed in, the reform movement. But then in each of these situations,
you have someone then take it to such an extreme
that it becomes irrational. So, like, everyone wants police
reform, everyone wants this and that. But Chesa was saying things
like drug dealers shouldn't be prosecuted because they're victims too, or
they're supporting a family in Honduras. I keep really said this and and it's true. They are probably victims too,
in a million ways. And they are probably supporting
a family in Honduras. But also, you have to arrest
drug dealers like, that's just it doesn't work to not. and I think that, I mean, the school board,
we all saw that play out. It was very fun
also because it's all on zoom. So you could really see, like,
you didn't even have to go to school board meetings and where the whole city
was participating. In school board meeting. Watching. In our case, it was great because we could
just clip it and then put it online. Do I know? I mean, like everyone was like galvanized
into seating all of a sudden really the fringy,
wackiest things that were going on. and why
I feel a lot of hope about San Francisco's because you saw the fringes
wackiest stuff going on for sure. and then you saw a huge groundswell
of normal San Franciscans of, like, people who just want good schools
and relatively safer streets. You saw them say, this is enough
and you saw them do two recalls. I mean, and and the origin of the recalls
especially was so cool because it started with Asian families who hadn't been super
political beforehand. And they heard on one of these school
board panels, they heard, the, the school board
saying basically, that that the Asian parents
who want to keep low SATs and all of this are, the test to get into law
that these guys are white supremacists. And the school board
was saying these things like, really toxic things about these parents. And the Chinese American community of San
Francisco got really pissed off. and so a lot of the revolution
was driven by them, which was so cool to watch anyway. So, why I feel inspired about the city
or optimistic is because I think that once people get aware
of a lot of the sort of fringe funniness, they don't want that,
they don't like that. And once they stop being scared of
being bullied about it, they say enough. And if even San Francisco
could do it, then, then everyone, every and every sort of like liberalism
can make a comeback against whatever we want to call the
the movement to the left of it. do you think, I mean, you've articulated some of the ways in which San Francisco's
incredibly different from other cities you spent time in reporting this Seattle,
Los Angeles, Portland? sometimes I wonder,
is it all that different? And especially on the West Coast, you travel up and down,
it kind of feels the same. Some of the fundamentals
about the economy, the type of people who are here, the
institutions we have are quite different. Is it that exceptional here? Is it
is it a problem across the United States? I think a lot of the issues San
Francisco has been grappling with are ones that every city in the American West
has been grappling with. And. you see it in LA, you see it in Portland. Each is different, of course. Yeah. But yeah, this is a universal
sort of American West story. A lot of that movement. Yeah. yeah. So getting back to I mean, you said it
in the book, you said it tonight. You even kind of
were on inside of this movement. Not when before you were covering it. You kind of believed in getting rid of some of these drug policies
that some of these politicians stand for. Can you walk us through that transition
from inside to outside? And now being one of the main critics
of it, what has that journey been like? Yeah, I, was was a very sort of happy reporter
flowing in my normal flow of life from the local paper to, I mean, it's the New York
Times, the features reporter there. And as 2020, 2021
started to get really hot, there were stories
that were the most interesting stories that I was basically being told,
you can't cover and you can't pitch. And from editors specifically, kind of. But I think in the book, you also kind of
articulate the whole culture of, I'm not a culture of you shouldn't
even bring that pitch forward. Yeah, I would say at the times it's not the top editors, and the top editors
actually didn't like the movement so much. The top editors, were pretty good to me, and they sort of
wanted to try to keep things. Keep things. More. Journalistic. But there was a movement from the ground up, really not top down. There was a movement from the ground up to
say journalism should be more beautiful. Journalism should be about justice
and about improving the world and about specifically helping
elect democratic leaders. And these, you know, the specific topics
and helping specific politicians. It should be more practical, and it's not helpful to cover
a lot of the most interesting things that were happening
in 2020 and 2021 and now. And so you had not just at the times,
but all across sort of mainstream,
especially East Coast media institutions. You had a closed of the journalist's mind. You had NPR coming out and saying, we're
not going to cover Hunter Biden's laptop. That's just not a story. They came out and said that proudly,
that we're not covering that. And that's a really crazy thing to say. Like, you can say it's not important
or it's a this or this, but just but to say we're just not going to
cover it at all is is pretty wild. And that was happening more and more. So basically I was trying to do features
and have fun and like I wanted to go up to Chaz,
which is the autonomous zone in Seattle where a bunch of Antifa
taking over a gay neighborhood. And I was like, that's like, come on. Yeah, like, I got. To get. There.
You're there. And, the the, basically there was a groundswell
within the newspaper that said anyone who was trying to do stuff
like that was going to get in big trouble. And, and, and it got kooky. I mean, it got really weird. I ended up managing to do that story. When I came back, I had colleagues
tweeting out that I was like, I know it's all done
because it's all on Twitter, but at the time, it's
not very meaningful to me. It's okay. but. What? Tweeting out that I was like a fascist
and that like, this was, you know, crazy, crazy stuff. And I realized, oh my God, like,
there's a movement happening and I'm not able to join it. Like,
I just my personality just couldn't do it. And so I ended up quitting. And for a little while,
I didn't know what to do. And then, my wife and I started this Substack. Really? I, I set up the blog, but she. Was the. Main writer of it. And then once I saw that it was starting to get successful,
then I joined in writing. But I kind of I waited a six. But it's okay to do that. Every good entrepreneur is. Yeah, exactly. I waited until I saw a successful, and then I was like, okay, no, I'm ready. Yeah, hand me my readers. I can do this. Yeah. and so and you spend quite, quite a bit of time
chronicling what I think is an incredible amount of work
that you put into reporting this. You spent time in Seattle,
you spent time on these zooms with these, anti-racists. Or challenging white supremacy, I think was one of the groups
that that we read about in the book. that was all happening
after you left the times. And so how how did that
how long did that take you? You just jump on a plane one day,
you just decided, I'm out of the times and I'm just going to go, I'm
going to do this. I basically only had one skill set that I'd been doing
since I was 22 at the Chronicle, and it was just features reporting, and it was just getting on planes
and going places and seeing things and writing about it. That was it.
I I'm very bad at anything else. Like I got fired from my first
job was at UCSF doing like study doing. I was a study coordinator at UN like
a science thing and it was a disaster. You don't give a coordinator if I don't. I was that I messed up every database
I touched. And so when I left the times,
I just figured I'll keep doing the stories I couldn't do there or that kind of struck
me as interesting. And, I got this book deal pretty
soon after I left, and I was sort of like, let me just go do a bunch of features,
a bunch of like essays, funny essays. So the the
what we are reading here was not you didn't know that this is where
it would take, you know, you just jumped. I was like, actually, I just have
I know how to do these features. Let me just go and do them like and can I
expense it to you thing one random house. And they were like okay, fine,
I know, but and so I, went to a bunch place. I went to George
Floyd Square in Minneapolis. I spent time in Seattle,
I spent time in Portland. I spent time at various
sort of large scale homeless encampments that we saw that were my favorite one
was this one in Echo Park. And LA, which was like a gentrifying
neighborhood of LA, where a group of socialist activists had taken over a park
and turned it into kind of a revolutionary space,
where was a mix of like, you're like fentanyl addicts and actual
homeless people who have mental illness. And then all of these DSA members. And the one ringleader who we have read about in the book
that comes in his BMW every day. My obsession became, yeah, Jed. Yeah. And Jed would show up in his Beemer. Yeah. And join in any camp. Not a cheap one, but and. Yeah, know and and, I just became obsessed
with this encampment, and it became kind of fetishized
by everyone as, like, a very important symbol
of revolution. And, and it was left open for a long time. a young woman overdosed in a tent and was found dead in that tent. Like, several days later, and everything
had been hidden around her to hide what might have happened to her. there was a person found floating in the middle of the lake in Echo
Park Lake. I mean, it was, a really interesting scene,
and the only coverage of it had really been. This, like, strange fetish fetishization of it
from from of an East Coast media who, who would, write about any attempts to close it or to clear it or to clean it up
as like fascist police doing that thing. Anyways, so the book is all of these
different scenes of reporting and, yeah, it took it took a while. Yeah. It's I think it's, you know, we'll get to this in a minute, but some,
some of the current critics of the book sort of claim that you didn't do the work,
and it struck me as the exact opposite. I was like, I cannot imagine
being in that encampment doing that level of reporting or in Seattle
or all these different vignettes. You take us through.
It's it's a serious amount of work. Even though you may not present. It's fun. It's fun to report
like it's the best job in the world. Yeah. Well, it's the best. It's the most amazing job in the world
to be able to go to places and talk to people and have that be a job. Totally like,
I feel so lucky to be able to do it. Totally. Yeah. Although towards the end, it sounds like some of these people
started catching on to you
and like noticing and then. Oh yeah, trying to get you out of that. Yeah. So that was challenging.
one of. The. Things I thought was really interesting
about the book is you don't employ the term work. You have a new term, new progressive. Where did that come from? Why? I'm assuming that was a very active choice on your part, given
how hot of a topic that is right now. I didn't use the word woke and don't like the term woke
in the modern debate because when when woke first was being rolled out,
I really liked it. And I really like a lot of the principles
of it, of the idea of being aware of how race plays into situations
or being aware of privilege and like that. Those are good concepts. And so I think
now there's a sort of a movement to say, oh, woke is bad and anti-woke and all this
and it's a little bit like lazy to me. I think that it's tricky because the movement
that we're talking about, like the movement that was the school
board and Chesa, what was that? How do we define that? How do we label that? Like the movement that thinks London
Breed is a this is right wing. How do we articulate that then? It has always resisted a name. and so it's really hard as a writer
to like figure out what to call it. And so people just rely on woke because
that seems like it works like that. Yeah, but I like New Progressive
because I thought it's really so much of the battle described in the book,
and so much of the battle in San Francisco is it's between liberals
and a sort of new model of progressivism. And so it's not left or right. It's not it's not any of the old fissures. It's kind of a new friction
that's playing out. so yeah, I, I avoided the term woke. Yeah. I mean, I think you would have had a much
harder time had you heavily in the book. I just breathed really heavily
into the mic. It's okay. But if there is a doctor in the house, So you're kind of I mean, again, throughout the book,
in this conversation, you seem to show, I think, much more sympathy, really, for where these arguments come from. Where does where do you draw the line? Where do you see it
sort of becoming unproductive, tilting into this new progressive
or woke or whatever you want to call it,
being not what it was intended to be, I think. I think when it becomes blind to reality and when it refuses to compromise, it becomes, first of all,
it becomes funnier. Like it becomes really absurdist. Almost. Yeah. but like, I think, I mean, to to give the kind of the quick
actual description, it's like, okay, a liberal would believe
that we should have police reform, that we should maybe even pay cops more
so that it attracts a better type of person, to spend more on police training,
like we'd would see the problem of police being bad sometimes and would say, let's,
let's improve that. And then the new progressive would say the structure of policing is itself violent and impossible to reform,
and it needs to be thrown out, and it needs to be either seriously
defunded or completely abolished. And that that's the only answer. And so that's kind of that plays out
in like time and again. So like if you look at, something like inequity in public schools like to bring it back to San Francisco,
eighth grade algebra. Instead of saying let's try to make math education a lot
better, let's put a lot more money into it or let's whatever
figure out ways to work with our schools to make more kids capable at math. The new progressive would
say, let's stop measuring it. Let's or just get rid of it. Yeah, well, because the the thing
that's upsetting about eighth grade algebra is that it required
it sort of was a screening test at seventh grade and people were like,
that's not fair to to measure it then. And it's like
because that then creates difference. And it and it's, it's instead of trying to
fix the, the inequity in education, it's just trying to sort of paper
it over and say, like, if we don't have eighth grade algebra,
then maybe the difference disappears. And well, I guess theoretically,
if you can't see it anymore. I mean, I it is gone. Yeah. And and we all know how that played out. Like we all know how eighth grade algebra
played out. It plays out where we kids from wealthy families
go to private schools that teach it, or kids were starting to, parents were paying for private tutors
and things like that for their kids. They were basically taking you through it. I mean, basically all these other ways
that people with means can skirt around this thing. but yeah, that's the difference between,
like, the liberal and the new progressive. I would say, and it's funny to some extent,
I mean, it's some of this stuff goes into like, let's say the most hot button
topic of the day, the issue of like pediatric gender
transitions. The liberal would say something to the effect of like, we should work on making national laws that, make it
so that discrimination against trans people is illegal,
which it's really not in a lot of places. We should make it like do this
in that whereas the New Progressive took the most extremist stance,
that to me was like, not helpful to the broader
as a gay person, not helpful to the broader cause of the LGBTQ
plus plus plus. and it was the stance of like
toddlers know their gender. Like, like prepubescent children
can make decisions that last a lifetime
because they know who they are. And. Like we'll, we'll find out just. Soon to be like yeah. Oh. Yeah. and where how did that become I guess the challenge
and the reason you need 200 plus pages to articulate it is
how did that get legs. And did. This, the new progressive movement,
how did it become something that, in my view, is probably discussed
in the dark corners of Twitter into something that's influencing
policing strategy and funding of of police and nonprofit organizations and policies
and, and and how did that how did win? Yeah. How did it win
and how did it do it quickly? I think it won for two reasons. I think one is that it
notices a very true issue or very true problem,
like George Floyd was murdered on camera. That's a very true thing that happened. And so the response like it's it's not making up tragedy or making up problems in the world,
like even the 1619 project. There's truth that 1619 was part of our original American story. Now, the 1619 project
then went and says that, then went and said that, 1619 is our true founding,
that that's the actual founding. So it takes it to the extreme. But the reason it resonates is because
there is truth and there has been erasure. and then the other reason I think it won so fully is because of the new tools
that are available to the social movement. So Twitter and the role of social media and the quickness with which movements can grow and, and, and like take over a conversation. We'd never lived there before. the quickness with which a small group of people can become a very loud bullying mob feeling. That cancel culture. Yeah. That we hadn't, we didn't have like a the we weren't used to that at first. And so small groups of activists
could say, if you're going to question
the pediatric transition doctrine that we're presenting,
we're going to call you transphobic. And guess what? A hundred of us
are going to call you transphobic. And then you go online,
you go on Facebook, you go on Twitter, and 100 people are calling you something
that's really mean. And so I think that that worked very well to kind of scare people into, conformity with something that was like
more radical than they actually felt. And that was like a little bit. And now I think there's a little bit
more of an immune response to that where it's like, okay,
if a group of activists are yelling at me, it's okay. Yeah. Like it's going to be fine. Like the the, I remember reading something
about how the Democratic Party didn't believe in Twitter as a place
to spread their message to the American people,
but they believed in Twitter as a place to do message
discipline among journalists and things. So you can kind of use it as a place
and stoke outrage to keep journalists, to keep writers,
to keep public intellectuals. in line
with whatever the message of the day is. And so it was used that way. But now I think it's
becoming less effective. I think people are becoming
a little less scared of that. But I think that's why it won,
because partly it was true and seeing a true problem, and partly
because there were new tools. Yeah. And and sort of, in my view of,
especially this, challenging white supremacy workshop
that you describe going to like it's
sort of became professionalized as well. You could, yeah, sign up
and pay for a training and attendant or have them come to your office
or whatever in order to sort of pay into
and become part of this movement. Well, part of the genius of what
the movement did also is and there's like two chapters
on this basically. So, there the anti-racism of like 1990s Berkeley was really hard. It was really hard work. It was a lot of like trying to get legislation into thank you. It was a lot of like trying
to get legislation changed. It was it was working in campaigns to, help causes for the Third World. It was hard work. And a group of very clever anti-racist educators, almost all of them
white women, came up with a new concept of it. And, this is yeah,
it's two chapters in the book about it, basically
a therapeutic model of anti-racism. So it became about working on yourself instead of making the world better,
instead of worrying about why more kids aren't good at math,
it became about saying, why do you care so much about math? And there was a woman who came out with
a list called The Characteristics of White Supremacy,
The Traits of White Supremacy. And, they included things
like individualism, right to comfort, objectivity,
a sense of urgency. Yeah. I'm glad. and this is
a white woman who came out with this list. And this list, which to me reads as, like, shockingly racist, was embraced
as a new progressive mantra. It was so embraced that the Smithsonian
Museum made a beautiful poster of the list of white supremacy, traits
that included individualism. Like, that's a crazy idea
that that's a white trait. But anyway,
so then the the the fallout from that list and from the embrace of that mentality
was that the work of anti-racism and improving society was about excavating
your urgency, excavating your perfectionism. And it turns out
that the people who love doing that are a bunch of white women that we. Love to feel bad about our perfectionism. And so it became this
whole kind of ecosystem. For years, you had Robyn D'Angelo
as the most famous example of this. You had this whole ecosystem
of the new anti-racism that didn't involve anything practical
in the world. And actually, if you tried to talk about the practical stuff,
you were called racist for doing that because you're imposing your idea
of how things should be. If you try to say, we need to. I mean, one of the anti-racist
educator's favorite lines is to say, we don't
want to expand the boardroom table. We want to dismantle the boardroom
altogether. So it's like none of the Lean in Sheryl Sandberg type activism. It's not about improving Coca-Cola. It's about trying to dismantle Coca-Cola,
whatever that means. Which really in practice
means basically nothing. Yeah. so yeah, that's another reason
why one actually is because if you guys
if became really kind of fun. And easy to. Do, a lot of this activism became
sort of like, a silly. Well, my impression too,
from that workshop specifically, I'm not going to go in
and read the whole passage. but my interpretation,
especially the first few pages of you describing being in that workshop,
is that it's sort of, I read it as a religious,
the sort of you describe, kind of like convulsing and crying,
and I couldn't, could not, not read that as this transforming into something
much larger than just a workshop. Yeah. Did you see that in other, like in
Echo Park and all these other groups that. Yeah. I mean. Blind idolatry,
I guess, is what I would describe it as. Other people have made this point
really well, there's like I think, John McWhorter has said this like, but this idea of without organized religion,
there's a whole in humans that want that and need that and without with falling
Christianity falling, the religious attendance that some of this
stuff has come in to replace it and that some of it it's okay
if it's irrational because, because the leap of faith is sometimes
necessary and humans have a religious impulse that says
a leap of faith is sometimes necessary. but yeah, the the trainings I went to and read about the book. These were over zoom, right? This is. Yeah. The main one I went to is over. It's because there's the heat
of the pandemic. Yeah. which. Is I bring it up
because it's even more shocking to me that anyone could have any meaningful
experience over zoom. No way. But you can. If you're in it for. Six days. Yeah, you get it. I guess you just so you get to eat. Yeah. You're like,
I am going to start crying. You feel it. You feel kind of captured within it. And there was a lot of physical stuff. Like it was like, everyone sits and takes off their shoes
and then taps the bottom of their feet rhythmically together.
And then you tap your chest. You're supposed
to, like, activate your skin. And then Robin D'Angelo,
that comes on screen and you're like, it's very religious. Yeah, yeah. And emotional and physical. And I felt very touched, like very. Activated by it, like I cried. it. Was hard not to you really. And then you had this sort of mesmerizing white women on screen
speaking to you about how to unleash yourself from your internal whiteness. And, I don't know, it was, You're still white, so. Well, so, I mean, like, I guess, you know, got. They got to like crazy places, though. I mean, because they would basically argue, I mean, there was one woman
in one of the classes who was in an interracial marriage,
and she was talking about how she's scared about, like,
how she's going to hurt her son and, and, and the moderator was like, you should be. And that's dangerous. And it was like, Holy. Yeah, this is where we are. And, yeah, it got really weird. It got really weird. Do you think that the Robin D'Angelo
chapter is really weird? I think it's like
a psychological situation. I was reading it on a plane. I was kind of. Like, oh, no, you're not. but. What's funny is, like, I don't know, I fact checked the book
and I sent her all of her segments, and I sent the
I sent everyone their portion of the book. Like in journalism,
you sometimes sort of do that, and you sometimes don't like for fact
checking in for the book. I figured, you know, it's
gonna be in a book. Let them read the whole thing. Yeah. And they were really proud of it. They weren't. They didn't. They liked the I mean, I don't know
if they liked the representation, but they were like,
this is fair, accurate. And they wanted like a tiny
tweak or a tiny, you know, they were like. We did that. She cried more than that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it was really interesting. So do you think that these leaders know
what they're doing in that sense, that they're transcending
just bullet points of a workshop? Yeah, I think
they see themselves on a spiritual quest. I think for this, for this portion
of the book, for the kind of white lady anti-racist leaders
who emerged, Robin being the most famous. But there's a bunch of them. yeah. I think they see themselves
as like spiritual guides for people. Yeah. And I think they've become
spiritual guides for people also. Like, not just I don't think
that's a false perception that they have. I think a lot of
for a lot of people for a few years, I think a little less now. But for a few years these,
these were American gurus and. Okay. Yeah. I will start
getting into some audience questions. But I do want to get to,
I think we were talking about this backstage
that I feel is a little maybe lost. And some of the harder critics
speaking about your work or writing about your work. Now, as I read most of your writing
as like you have these zingers that are just funny
and I thought so clearly sarcastic, and it seems to me
that some of the critics are taking that in the exact way that you would expect them to,
which is extremely seriously, and therefore
you need to be canceled or whatever. And so I'm curious. Like,
I can't be canceled anymore. Yeah, exactly.
I guess. My own. Company now. Yeah. That is true. Can I. Yeah. Do you think that it's like, exactly what you expected
some of these people to say? I think one thing that's been lost in
the last few years is a little bit of humor
at some of the stuff and just and. I think it's. Just like at the human condition, like it's okay if not everything
is the most serious moment. Not every political belief you have
is the most serious thing in the world. Like, but yeah, I think people got mad
that I had made a little thought. I have a I have. What are you gonna read? Are you. I have a few.
I have a few of my my favorites. I was describing to my husband that even I was learning stuff
about demi sexual and asexual. I was like, I guess we're demi sexual. I'm not really sure. but it describes a lot.
There's a lot of it. We do like each. Other most of the time. in describing sort of that splintering,
I guess you might say, of the gay rights movement,
you say all over the country, people are having less sex, fewer
children and fewer marriages. We're all asexuals now.
But that's how I read it. We're all asexual is now humorous,
funny, it's sarcastic, but I can imagine some of these critics reading
you we're all asexual now, and it. Just it made me feel like. How deep are. And I had I again on the airplane,
I had this internal dialog like which way did she mean it? But I know, like. I know you well enough. I mean, you're banned from having sex.
Yeah. It's just I think it's sort of case
in point, the reason I bring it up is the the critics,
the way you write the reception to that. Right, and the lack of ability
to grasp the humor proves the point. Well, you said it better than I did. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, it's I think there are
serious things in the world, but I think it's also
okay to make a little fun and to have a little fun with some of the
absurdities of the last few years. Yeah. And, yeah, I don't know, I honestly haven't, I, I know they would very politely. There were some bad reviews guys. Yeah. and now, weirdly, they're good reviews. The Guardian give me a good one. But it takes longer to write it. It is a cycle. Yes. But, Yeah, basically you actually have to read it,
but the humor that the humor is, too much and that these are serious times
and that it's not appropriate to be funny. Yeah. And I just don't
I, I'm just fundamentally against that. I reject that. Yeah. And I think it's okay to have a little fun and to it and to think that the guy with the BMW
at the homeless encampment is funny. And it doesn't. You hate. Homeless people.
Yeah, literally. They're writing that I like
I hate homeless people, and it's like, it's like,
that's insane, right? but whatever. I don't, you know. It is funny. I was laughing the whole time, and honestly, I just thought
it was really solid writing. It was enjoyable. I emailed you as I was reading it, and the
subject line was, wow, it just was fun. Very fun. He's a real journalist, I promise. Yeah, it's like a friend. We're not. It's like local gays who hang out. well, we've been canceled, so, Oh, I'm not gay enough, you know? That's serious. I've been told that. No. Yeah. Real doesn't count anymore
as what I've been told, which I like to remind people.
I grew up in a small town in Oregon. It really counted back then. It's like, let me tell you that. Yeah. anyway, not anymore. gay. Men are the Trumpers of our. Community, so I, I so I'm told, Okay, so some audience questions. First up is, is new progressivism
a uniquely American phenomenon? And this actually also
we were talking about one of the critics in The Guardian in the UK
who was one of the positive ones. I was like,
this is hilarious, both because Brits have a better sense of humor
and I think because they're not here. But do we see this in other countries? I think a lot of what we saw is, to me, uniquely American because like the, the, the idea of like whittling away
public services. So like one thing that to me is really American, let's say, about the
the police reform movement was one of the responses
was the violence interrupter programs and the violence interrupter program
sound kind of nice. And the idea is that, guys from a community will be sort of tasked and paid to go out and get in a violent situation,
get involved with if there's a violence situation about to transpire
and to try to de-escalate. They're trained in de-escalation
and sent out and taught to do that all day, day after day. And that being presented
as like the alternative to policing. These guys have no pensions. They have no body armor, No training. Often they do very little training. They are not obviously armed. they have no body cameras and they report enormous amounts,
more violence done unto them than the average cop, enormous amount
more of them has survived. Shootings are shot at like eight. And so the to me it's a very American response to say it's almost because it's almost like
a libertarian response a little bit to say, like instead of our unionized,
pensioned, trained, imperfect cops, we're going to do this
sort of like Wild West version. Yeah. Like we're going to do this version
where there's there's none of that. They don't get a union. They just go into the violent stuff, and they're just going to be better
because they're local. And it's just a little like,
I don't think that that you don't see a similar attitude in Europe,
let's say, around that. You don't see it kind of like the same with homelessness and drugs,
a lot of places drugs in. Then everyone points to Portugal. It's like a country where, you don't get
put in prison for doing drugs, but you can't set up a tent city right? And refuse treatment. You get offered treatment and then you have to go and get treatment,
and you have to go and do things. But like, it's it's
not the sort of libertarian free for all that actually happens in America
that I do think is really American. Yeah. it's a. Uniquely American thing
to just kind of look away. Yeah. And to advocate that,
like any intervention from the state is violence in a way. And to me, that seems like the normal Democrat,
normal liberal response is like, you want the state to be involved
and well-funded and and like, well trained, like in terms of policing
or in terms of helping drug addicts. Like, I don't think that it's like
a normal liberal response to walk past someone dying on the sidewalk
and to think that that's like the zenith of progressivism,
that's that's crazy, right? Like that's not. And you wouldn't
that wouldn't really happen in other like in like a socialist utopia,
like I imagine it's Sweden or something. Yeah. Well. I mean, you'd sort of address this in the San Francisco chapter as well,
because we have such a large city budget. It's ballooned over the last decade. And I think some in America would say,
well, the solution to that is, well, we just need more money. And I think it's really hard for folks to acknowledge
that it's just a bad idea, actually. And then it's not
that more money is needed. It's at a different approach is needed. And it's not that we should fund the violence interrupters more, it's
that that doesn't work and that I write about that they're getting shot
and they're getting killed right away. Right. And, yeah, I think it's really hard for people
to admit that they that the fundamental idea is bad. It's not just the execution. Right. so shifting
gears, another audience question, thoughts on NPR
and other public media perspectives. That's a deep cut free press are there? Yeah. NPR. I think, well, we recently published an NPR whistleblower
who is basically a long time editor there who put out an essay about his experience
at NPR saying a lot of similar stuff that that a lot of people have said
now about The New York Times, about all of mainstream American media,
which is that any voices outside of this little faction have been suppressed. And, that's an NPR. I think in response to that essay
we published, they announced a new editing layer
that's going into effect immediately. That's called the backstop or something. And I think that there is a scramble internally to reform now
and that's pretty interesting. yeah. So. It's kind of cool. To these whistleblowers. Just reach out to you now that the free
press is kind of known for this. Yeah. That just dropped in your inbox. Yeah. That's good for you. That's great. This thing. Yeah. No. Yeah. They just they just they just show up. It's not all media whistleblowers. It's also like all types.
Yeah. It's all types. Whistle whistleblowers. Are. But even in the journal like the operation and how you, set principles
around the ethics of journalism, even that there are some news institutions
that wouldn't even entertain those types of pitches or anonymous
whistleblowers or whatever, because they may have policies against
what we don't publish or not anonymously. We don't publish, work
with anonymous sources or, I think what's so remarkable about or not remarkable, there are these little ways in which how you operate your newsroom,
these small rules can have a massive impact
on what you end up publishing, and it's totally unseen
to the rest of the world. Yeah,
because it's just happening day to day. You can see it in the product, but you don't realize that
it's just one tiny rule change. I think what we're trying
to do at the Free Press is to be in the new world of new media, right? Like B. What does that mean to you? The new. World. It means. Being unstuck from the boring
political binary of the old like that. There's a big world between NPR
and The Daily Wire. Yeah,
and there's a lot of folks in the middle who think, you know, NPR
is kind of fun, but, sometimes. And I like this not,
but it's a little ideological and I think. And Daily Wire,
I can't I'm not interested in that. It's too rageful or it's too, politicized. And we're in the middle there. And that's not being served
by traditional media. It's not being served by our mainstream
institutions that kind of see Americans as these simplistic political binaries. so I think the New World is saying there's a market in the middle,
and it turns out there is. Yeah. and, but but with we try to serve our, we want to kind of bring the values
and the quality of the old world, though, because the trouble
is, in the wild West of the new media, you know, it's like you're. Just in total crap. Yeah, there's crap
and there's there's gamers and scammers and people who are being paid by sources
you don't know about. Like there's not the same sort of world
of ethics that the old media has tried to cultivate over the years. And so, we're trying to bring that in while staying in the free form world. It's it's tough. Yeah. It's a delicate balance. And the thing is, I kind of thought for a while
I was really nervous about, like, as the business was growing
and we were hiring people, I was like, our whole business could shut down. If the mainstream world
becomes a little less crazy, right? Like just a little less. Yeah. Not even that much. Yeah. And and it just hasn't happened. Yeah. So, yeah. We so we kind of have this like, this is
like the beauty of America and capitalism. Like where there's a hole in the market,
things will rise to fill it. And so that's what we've been doing. As I said that at the top of the chat quite successfully. So, back to the new progressivism movement. do you have the opinion
that the root of the problem this is an audience question is, due to a lack of critical thinking or a lack of teaching
of critical thinking, what does it really if you go way back,
where does it start? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that's a comfort with debate. Comfort with like. Like I think comfort with things being complicated
isn't really taught in our system. I'm not an expert on our education system,
so I don't. But I think, Yeah, people my sense of the kids on campus these days. Is that, like many. You like like. Many generations of young people,
they're very sure of their politics. Like, I was very sure of my politics. and I think teaching a little more like humility and comfort with complexity. is lacking. Yeah. Claps for that. It's so cheesy, guys. It's a cheesy, Why has radicalism on the both the left and the right surged in the past
two decades. But perhaps a similar root cause. Yeah. I mean,
this book is about my world, right? This book is about liberalism versus progressivism. It's about the sort of like
American cities that are all very liberal. Right? This is about that movement. But there's a mere movement
in many ways happening on the right, a mere sort of purity politics,
a mere kind of canceling of people who, you know, they call them
rhinos, Republicans in name only. Yeah. There's kind of a Trump purification
movement within the right that you see. a lot of any kind of dissident
figure is pushed out, right? I mean, Trump is famous for this
at this point. His Twitter feed now is truth. Social is like a constant purification
ritual of right, of canceling any relatively sane Republican. so yeah,
I think it's happening on both sides in really different ways
and in different venues. Like, it's not how elite education institutions aren't being racked by that kind of purification process
that's happening there. I should have a better word than that. Whatever you want to call the Trump
ification process. Yeah. let's winnowing out the nonbelievers. Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of it is social media
for both. And the power of that to,
to organize a group to oust a bad offender
or a bad a dissident. and to only hear your people. Exactly. You can literally mute
everyone else. Exactly. which is the opposite
of critical thinking. maybe a few more questions on free press media. Marianne Williamson again. Audience question
Marianne Williamson talks about the political media establishment
as antithetical to to to democracy. Do you agree? And where does the free press fit in? Who are you establishment? When do you become a star? Oh, how many subscribers does it take? A lot more. Yeah, yeah. Marianne
Williamson, she is such a great character. She came on the podcast. she's she's amazing political character. Oh. When what was it? Is, is is it mainstream institutions? Are they the end of democracy? I don't know. We're sort of stuck
with these two parties and we have mainstream media
that just represents each party. I, I think mostly Partizan media. It's just really boring. And, like, people
don't like reading propaganda, so it's I don't think it's the end of democracy
because we have two parties. So it kind of makes sense.
We'd have like two sides of media. Yeah. But like I think it's the end
of a good American writing and good, good American journalism. If people are just out to, to be
propagandistic for their various party. Right.
I mean, you see this in San Francisco. It's like with the tech, the tech world, tech leaders are always saying
things like, the media is against us. We need to start our own media company. Yeah, right. And so they'll start ones
that are non journalistic that are like, I think Andreessen Horowitz started this
with the future on the future and it basically internal media companies
within a venture capital firm that is going to finally
tell the truth about tech products. Right. And people don't. Really like reading it. Because it's boring.
Yeah. It's propaganda. Well, they know it. Yeah. Don't hire a journalist
from the old world. Yeah. And they'll put them there and they'll say, write some propaganda
about our new company we just invested in. Yeah. I don't think that's like
says anything broadly about like, the tech world or something, but you're just not going to get
really great journalism in that situation. So I think if you have all of our mainstream media
institutions on the left and the right just beholden to a political candidate
and just obsessed with like pleasing a political faction, it's just going to be
really boring as a consumer. Yeah. Well, speaking of boring as a consumer,
there's another related, question is. Do does a writer. Yeah, totally. Do you think there's a point
where and I take issue with this one? Because I can tell you,
the people in this room do not read this type of article. Do you think there is a point where news
will go back to reporting the facts? And yes, there should be facts,
but I think that there's sort of this like idolatry of a time when the newspaper
was just like bullet points of facts and excellent news outlets were never that. They were built on incredible
writing and storytelling, which were supported by facts but weren't
what I think people are grasping for. This will just give me the
the plot sheet of what happened, and I don't think that's the answer
either. Is it? I think when people say that,
that they want the news report facts, what they're trying to say is
they want reporters to be open minded and curious
and to not be given stuff that's been like pre chewed by ideology,
where all of the all of the messiness of a scene
has been kind of like shorn of it. So you just get the message
that the reporter wanted to send. And I, I think that it's fair to say
you're missing that. It's not that no one actually wants like
a digest of here are the facts of the day. Here's where the market is today. Here's
where the. Yeah, it's it's the,
there's nostalgia for a time when things were. More open minded to. See them as a reality. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of messy realities, I'm going
to take you home on our last question, which is about your future family member. How have your feelings around motherhood
changed throughout your journey? Oh, motherhood. I have no feelings on motherhood changed. Well, I think one thing that I do in the book is go from being very sure of myself
to basically less sure of myself, and just the maturation process that happens from 30 to 36. And I. I mean, there's nothing
that makes you question all of the things, you know, or more feel
more unsure than having a child. And our daughter and. God willing, it. This little boy, I don't know, all the parents,
you know, it's like opening a chaos window and you just have no idea,
and you're just totally humbled by it. You have no idea who's going to meet you. and and, like, humility is the thing you have to have going into it
or you pick up really quick. Yeah, yeah, chaos is life. We will be fact checking
all of that with other later. well, let's give a round of. Applause for Nelly. Thank you for joining us tonight is. Thank you so thank you guys. I think fully
half of this room is my family members. I, I heard you have a lot of siblings,
siblings and siblings. I got cousins, yeah. I got, Well, thank you for joining us. If you want to continue to support the Commonwealth Club's efforts
in making virtual and in-person programing like this possible,
you can go to Commonwealth club.org. I'm Griffin, thank you for joining
us and have a lovely evening.
