Siena Iwasaki Milbauer: You’re listening to the series finale of New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd. To start, let’s take a journey through the series, episode by episode, voice by voice. Here we go!
Episode 1:
Siena: Welcome to New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd.
[MUSIC]
Anya Steingberg: This mini-series of episodes will all center around the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin– the man who knelt on the neck of George Floyd for over 8 minutes while three other officers, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane stood by. Siena and I are going to be continuing conversations that began months ago when I first started this podcast and cries for justice were engulfing my hometown and the world.
Siena: On March 8, 2021, the jury selection for the trial of former Officer Derek Chauvin began, starting the trial process for Chauvin, Thao, Kueng, and Lane. This process is likely to last for months, and our communities will be witnessing and reacting to every step. Anya and I want to document and support that journey. We want to digest and unpack what we are about to experience with all of you. Throughout this series, Anya and I will be exploring this trial from an Asian American lens. We’ll be thinking about how faith intersects with organizing, what it means to have Black/Asian solidarity, and how we’ll rebuild our communities after the trial, no matter the outcome.
Episode 2:
Vayong: To me, it was so disturbing to see a Hmong officer as physically and symbolically as an accomplice in the murder of George Floyd. And the signals that gives to obviously the Black community, to the broader community, and also to the Hmong community too.”
Episode 3:
Chee: There was a response after the lynching of brother George Floyd. Response from Hmong community, at least the youngsters that I noticed, on Facebook. And they came together and started Hmong 4 Black Lives. To me, the way the policing is an extension of white supremacy. So this is the modern take of lynching. The impact is still very real. I think if we were to call it police brutality, or something else, it’s not. It is what it is. This individual’s life was taken based on their race, very explicitly. And in a police state.”
Episode 4:
Pa: I just realized that this issue of being anti-Black has been going on for a really long time in the Asian community. So I took the opportunity as a youth leader last year to talk about it, and trying to spread knowledge to the other youths there were there.
Episode 5:
Jackie: I remember I heard the news– So on social media I follow a couple alumni students and they were posting live feeds of the gathering that happened after the murder. I think at that point, Daunte’s body was removed from the area. But for a while, for my understanding, the body remained on the sidewalk if I’m remembering this correctly. A lot of students were either at the live ceremony that was happening of people gathering and protesting, or they were reposting it. And at the moment I heard of it, I didn’t know who the person was, so I remember feeling this deep panic, not sure if it’s one of our students that we know and love. Just earlier that week, I had a conversation with a Black student who was saying that the speedometer on their car was broken. So at that point just trying to quickly figure out who it was. I remember going to my husband who is politically involved, can you look on twitter, help me figure this out, and we were able to figure out it was Daunte.
Lonkee: One of the things I remember individuals when they were first pulling up and dropping off supplies those first few days, people telling me that we are thankful or want to help as much as we can and unfortunately we are in a routine of just oh, a tragic event occurs and this is how we respond. That really struck me, oh for the past year this has been our thing now. And not that it’s bad, but it is bad. Our gut reaction is this is how we respond to tragedies, a tragic event in the community occurs. Obviously we want to support and help our community, but we’ve gotten into this routine of something bad is going to happen. Coming out at the end of the community mutual aid distribution, now we’ve been able to build relationships not just with community members or community organizations and really working in a collaborative effort to support our young people in in Brooklyn Center but also the wider community as well too. I think for me at least there is optimism.
Episode 6:
Tori: I’m also noticing as I grow up that we must live, abolish, and create within these imperfect systems. And the only answers that we have are imperfect answers. And so, instead of waiting for the perfect idea or perfect opportunity, or criticizing myself or other people for not having those perfect solutions, I’ve found that abolition is actually an accumulation of practices and beliefs over time and it means so much more when people are just doing the work and not letting themselves get distracted from that work.
Episode 7:
Jessie: I think that people with wealth and power and privilege, like corporate land lords, are very comfortable with the status quo because it works for them. It protects their power and it protects their privilege. And they have the resources to spread all of the disinformation and lies that we’ve been seeing recently so widely because they want to keep the things the way they are with no regard to the status quo harming so many people in our city right now. Also I ultimately think collectively we have the power and momentum to make real change this fall. And I think that really scares those powerful people and I don’t think they’d be trying so hard to stop this movement if we didn’t have a real chance of winning and investing in the health and well being of everyone in this city with no expceptions.
Siena: Hi, I’m your host, Siena Iwasaki Milbauer. I use she/her pronouns and I’m the Content Creator Intern at Asian American Organizing Project also known as AAOP, a Twin Cities based nonprofit run by youth, for youth. Welcome to a very special episode of New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd: the final episode. You’ve just heard a timeline of snippets of what this series has covered in its nearly year-long run, a small handful of the stories told and voices we’ve been lucky enough to uplift. Today’s episode is simply a swan song, a time to reflect on what this series was, and what comes next.
First, I want to reassure listeners that the final bow of this series isn’t the final bow for AAOP’s transformative justice work, or our podcasting about topics such as Black/Asian solidarity, police brutality, and mutual aid. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We’re closing the curtain on New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd because this special series is no longer the right-sized container for these issues. These issues belong in our flagship podcast “New Narratives” and in every corner of our youth engagement and community organizing work, and that’s exactly where they will be going forward.
New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd was launched on the eve of the trial of Derek Chauvin, a time of incredibly raw pain for our Minnesota communities, something that was only magnified by the subsequent murder of 20 year-old Daunte Wright by police in Brooklyn Center, even as Chauvin was held to a sort of accountability in his trial. New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd was the audio space we at AAOP needed to focus in on issues of solidarity, guilt, trauma, history, our communities’ dreams and our nightmares, to bring our Asian American voices and experiences to the table in meaningful ways.
New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd is closing in a time of nerve-wracking yet hopeful ambiguity. I had hoped really desperately that I’d be bringing you this final episode on the heels of the passage of ballot measure 2 in Minneapolis, that we’d be barreling to the public safety change we all so desperately want. Alas, that journey is still a crawl, and the sting of this year’s election results hasn’t entirely faded.
The first day I felt ashamed to be from Minneapolis was the day George Floyd was murdered in our streets by the very people charged with protecting him and all of us. Nothing will ever lessen the agony of that crime. But the Minneapolis folks who everyday choose to face reality head on, the organizers and especially the youth that stand up for a better future with unbelievable creativity, resilience, and collaboration, they make me proud to be from Minneapolis again. And they make me hopeful for the future. No political defeat, no matter how temporarily disheartening, can change the energy, momentum, passion, and commitment I see in our Minnesota communities, especially in Minneapolis. This November, 62,000 Minneapolis residents were ready for, voted for change. And we have changed the conversation, moved the needle away from militaristic policing and towards holistic public safety. I truly believe that the future is full of positive possibility.
On a personal level, this podcast series has been deeply meaningful to me. New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd wasn’t my idea, it came from the brilliant Anya Steingberg and I came onto the project as a collaborator, co-host, and supporter. But when Anya’s journey took her from AAOP to NPR, New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd became my responsibility. It’s been an honor, sometimes a really scary privilege, and the experience of a lifetime. I think like so many others, I felt enraged yet lost in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. I wanted so desperately to do something, but I had no idea what that something was. I seemed so small in the face of a horror so big. New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd gave me an answer, however small of one. I am a storyteller, and what I can do, what I love to do, what I am uniquely suited to do, is to help create spaces that uplift the voices of community members leading the way. This podcast allowed me to discover that and to do it in a way that felt genuinely meaningful, and for that I am forever grateful.
What I really want to emphasize, as this series takes its final bow, is something related to that: that each of us has a role to play in this journey towards a brighter future, but that role might not always be immediately obvious. But if you keep an open mind and keep putting yourself out there, you’ll find your way, or your way will find you! In organizing, we talk a lot about community. It sounds like a fancy word, but community just means people. It’s about a few individuals, and then a few more, choosing to plug in, to care about each other, to show up for each other. Working on New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd has helped me recognize the simplicity and power of community more than ever before. We’re still a long way from making our city and our state a safe home for all. But together, as one collective community, brilliantly diverse yet united in solidarity, I truly believe we can and we will make this dream a reality.
In episode seven of this series, guest Tori Hong said: My hopes for public safety is that the generations that come after us have the tools, resources, ingenuity, and courage to create new systems and structures. And maybe that starts out on a small scale. I see that happening even now. But ultimately, I’m learning more and more each day how I don’t have the answers and how it’s not on any of us to prescribe what anyone in the future is going to need. So I think as long as I as a person in the river of time can share my resources, my knowledge, my skills, my love, my talent, my laughter; if I can just bring that all to this river, this garden, and to allow myself to notice and share the world as I see it, those are my gifts that I have to offer. And I want to bring space and opportunities for other people to also have those opportunities of noticing, offering suggestions, and creating more.
I think if anything is the main message of this series, it’s that. Each of us is but one individual, but our choices matter, and if we choose to be part of the solution, that matters. It’s a million tiny actions, a million stories, a million commitments, that will allow us to come together to build a world where nothing like what was done to George Floyd in our Minneapolis streets will ever, ever be done again.
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Siena: Thank you so, so much for listening to New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd. This special series is brought to you by Asian American Organizing Project, and with support from the Minneapolis Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College.
Thank you to Anya Steinberg for coming up with the seed idea for New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd and for being my podcast partner, and frankly podcast mentor, for the first three episodes of the series. Thank you to Buddhist Justice Reporter for also being there in the beginning, helping get this whole thing off the ground, and especially thank you to the wonderful Karin Aguilar-San Juan. Thank you to Asian American Organizing Project for making this series possible, and for the endless support and enthusiasm. A special thanks goes to Communications and Digital Director leyen trang whose feedback improved every episode.
This series would be nothing without the incredible guests who shared their stories each episode. Thank you to Vayong Moua, Sokyo Chee Xiong, Pa Yao, Jackie Hayden, Ngan Nguyen, Longkee Vang, Abinaya Ilavarasan, Tori Hong, Tri Vo, and Jessie Lee-Bauder for your brilliance, candor, and courage. And thank you to all the other people who in ways big and small contributed their voices, opinions, ideas, inspiration, and excitement to this podcast. Last but certainly not least, thank you for listening. Whether you tuned in for one minute or all 8 episodes, thank you for taking a seat at this table and committing to engaging with these concepts that are so crucial to the future of our communities. This podcast would mean nothing without you. Keep an eye on this feed for new episodes of New Narratives, coming early 2022! But for now, this is Siena Iwasaki Milbauer, signing off with profound gratitude. Thank you.
