HPR: What kind of activism do you do?
Brittany Packnett: I am very fundamentally committed to the idea that America owes all of its citizens a just and equitable life. So the issue that I am working on, on any particular day might vary, the way that I’m working on it may vary, but it all comes back to that singular idea. I work on issues of racial justice, gender justice, and social justice broadly in a lot of different formats. I have a lot of experience in trying to end police violence in America. So I am a proud member of the Ferguson Uprising, a co-founder of an organization called Campaign Zero, which is a policy platform to end police violence. Because we believe we can live in a world where the police don’t kill people. I co-host a podcast called Pod Save The People where we talk about issues of inequity and injustice every single Tuesday. Everything from wage inequality, and how that affects women of color and white women differently to technology and all of the ways in which human bias bleeds into technology bias, and how that can mean really detrimental things for people of color, to how we understand American activism as connected to international activism and all of the things that we should be standing up in solidarity with from folks from Hong Kong to Brazil.
HPR: How do you feel that the Ferguson Uprising has made an impact in the course of police reform nationally?
BP: I think the Ferguson Uprising had a tremendous effect on a number of things. I like to remind people that this movement is not new. It is the latest chapter in civil rights struggle that has been in existence in America since its founding. Because it was indeed founded on the genocide of indigenous people and on the stolen labor of enslaved African people. And so the freedom struggle is as old as the American story is. So in this chapter, I believe that the advent of the Ferguson Uprising has done a lot to bring a clear awareness on police violence to everyday people. People who did not realize that the police killed over a thousand people of all races every single year, did not realize that those people were disproportionately black and indigenous, did not realize that there were practices and biases that were being protected in the system of policing across this country. That allowed not only for these killings to happen but for most of these officers to face little to no punishment in doing so. And I think it helped clarify the conversation for people that this is not about us chasing after bad actors or bad apples. This is about us challenging the status quo of a system that is supposed to serve and protect us all but does not do so equally. And then that fundamentally is a crisis of democracy. That is not a war on police. That is a decision to force America to ensure that the systems that govern us are legitimate and that the public servants that derive their power from “we the people” do so with a level of intention that honors the dignity of all of us.
So I think that that’s important. What I also think that was important about the Ferguson Uprising is that it reawakened to America to our collective civic responsibility. I think that we’ve seen protests all over the country in the last five years that are a result of the spirit of protest being reawakened by the Ferguson uprising. In the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner was actually killed before Michael Brown Jr. was killed, but we saw a spike in protest in New York City after the Ferguson Uprising. And that is not to claim any credit. It is to say that we can connect the dots very clearly between not just protest, rising up around issues of police violence, but protest rising up around issues of racial justice, gender justice. The Women’s March came thereafter, March for our Lives, the climate strike. I think that there are areas in American history where a wave of disciplined civil disobedience and direct action comes to pass. And often you can trace it back to a particular genesis.
If you think about the mid-century civil rights movement, a lot of people will tell you that it was seeing the open casket of Emmett Till — that was the first time that they decided to be outraged about something. That it was the killing of activists, and the bombing of freedom riders’ buses that helped spur them to activism. So for a lot of people, what helps spur them to activism that they’ve engaged in, in particular over the last five years, was what happened during the Ferguson Uprising.
HPR: How do you feel that our country’s making progress with reforming these systems that target marginalized communities?
BP: I think that we are making some progress, but we have to remember that it took us literal centuries to get in the position that we’re in now. And so it’s going to take us intentional, longterm, strategic, disciplined work to get to the place we want. It is fallacious to expect everything to be fixed in policing in the last five years. We have a system of policing in this country that is rooted literally in slavery. So when you look at strategies around policing in this country, even when you look at the design of some of the police badges, they come directly from plantation policing. Where the police were not serving and protecting black people — they were serving and protecting white slave owners by controlling their property. And their property was black people, so until we divorce our current system of policing from those roots, we’re not going to see a full turnaround in this system.
The police are still not killing demonstrably fewer people now than they were in 2014. Police are not being held any more accountable. Now I know we saw the trial of Amber Guyger, who killed Botham Jean in Dallas and that she was convicted, but she is part of the less than 1 percent of the officers who are ever convicted for killing a black person. So we still have a long way to go, and we’ve been able to turn awareness certainly into some policy changes. We’ve seen over 60 laws that included these two Campaign Zero policy areas be passed at the local, state and federal level. But we are continuing to take on this work because there is a great deal more progress to make.
HPR: How do you feel that Trump’s presidency has impacted activist efforts either related to police reform or just in general?
BP: You know, in some ways, we have to recognize that this has been a very real blow to progress. So I was on President Obama’s 21st century policing task force, and we created an entire report of really thorough and thoughtful recommendations for everyone from the Department of Justice to the FBI to local police departments to state troopers to international policing — and many of them started to implement our recommendations. And these recommendations were formed not just by people like me who are activists and people like Brian Stevenson, but also former police chiefs and sheriffs.
So this was a diverse collection of people that came up with these recommendations. One day someone looked up the report on the Department of Justice website. And as you can guess, the report was removed once this administration started. The policies of this administration have been deeply damaging to people of color, to marginalized people, to LGBTQ folks, to immigrants, and to disabled people. The rhetoric has also been deeply damaging.
So the violent under and overtones of Mr. Trump and many of his supporters and colleagues have made the world a much more dangerous place for many of us who possess marginalized identities. Not because bigotry started with him — and it won’t end when his administration is over — but because there has been an emboldening of those kinds of attitudes.
And I think that when we look at the research that tells us that hate crimes were in decline and then began to rise again in 2016 and then rose every year of this administration, we have proof that it is true. On the other hand, what I know for sure is that I come from a triumphant people. I belong to a bloodline of formerly enslaved people who were not supposed to exist. They were supposed to be used for their labor and then whatever happened to them happened to them.
But we survived. And generations later we’re thriving. And, as Public Enemy said, it would take a nation of millions to hold us back.
You know, if you’re a black person, you’re in jeopardy. If you’re an immigrant, you’re in jeopardy. If you are a woman, you and your reproductive rights are in jeopardy. If you are LGBTQ, folks are trying to justify your being able to be fired at work, or trying to tell you which bathroom you can use. If you were a child and during persecution, right across the border, you got put in a camp. Suddenly we realize the atrocities that are facing all of us, and it is forced not only a level of action, but a level of intention around creating intersectional movements that can cover all of our needs and not just some of our needs. And I don’t thank Trump for that necessarily, but I do recognize that his election called for all of us to step up in bigger ways, and I’m proud of so many people for deciding to do exactly that.
HPR: What kind of personal growth have you experienced since taking this more prominent role in the activist world?
BP: You know, I have to be ever more thoughtful about the responsibility of having a platform. When I had 800 followers on Twitter and a hundred followers on Instagram and no podcasts and no TV appearances and no articles that people were reading, I could speak with relative anonymity, which meant that if I said or did something harmful, the effect would be minimal.
It doesn’t mean that I’m not still responsible — I should be responsible — but the effect is still relatively minimal. But when you’ve got hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and almost a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and 3 million people who watched my Ted Talk and half a million people who listen to your podcasts every week, there is a responsibility that you have to take very seriously, which means that I have had to become much more intentional about the language that I use.
For a long time, I used the phrase “differently abled” because my dad was in a wheelchair for the last few years of his life, and in the 90s that was the phrase I was taught to use. And time marches on, and there is far more inclusive language and people with disabilities want to be identified as “people with disabilities.” And I remember saying differently-abled on Twitter one day and people really ate into me, and they were upset, justifiably so. And I had two tracks in that moment. I could be defensive or I could recognize this as an opportunity to learn and then to do better. And I appreciate people being honest with me. I appreciate people being transparent. I don’t get to dictate how angry they are with me over an issue that they’ve been living their entire lives. I just had to take it and reflect, and I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last year trying to gain a level of understanding and knowledge around the disability rights movement. But there is a thin line between unintended ignorance and willful ignorance, and we’re all responsible not to cross the line. So once somebody pointed out to me all the things that I was doing that were harmful, it’s my job to make sure that I learn so that I can go and do better. And so I’ve had plenty of moments of public and private correction, and I’m grateful for those. I want to be the best possible teacher, activist, educator, writer, that I can be. And I wanna make sure that whatever people hear from me is truthful and responsible. I’m not perfect at it every day for sure, but I definitely spend much more time than I used to trying to be deliberate about that.
HPR: What are some of the values that you think about every day?
BP: I think about truth every single day. You know, people keep saying that we’re in a post-truth world, that we’re in a post-truth society, and I’m like, we should be the blockade that prevents that from happening. We should be so vigilant about ensuring that the full truth is told. That we never allow a post-truth society to exist. We should never live in a world that comes after truth.
HPR: Where do you see yourself in the future, and do you have any idea of where your career might be leading?
BP: I mean, who knows. I didn’t know that my career would lead me to where I am now, so I try to remain open to my creator’s plan.
You know, for me, and I spent a lot of time praying about this and thinking about this, and reflecting on this, and reading about this, and talking to my friends about it. I really feel like my purpose is to speak and teach truth and move people to action. So whether I’m doing that at [Harvard’s Institute of Politics] or on the podcast or with the book that I’m writing, I just want to make sure that people are equipped to make the world more just because they’ve interacted with me in some kind of way.
If I’ve done that, I’ve done my job. I’m constantly thinking about how to do that more creatively, how to do that in a way that touches more people — how to do that in a way that engages more people. So I’m finishing my book now. I think about the way in which Oprah made books popular again. She used the medium of television to get people to have conversations with themselves and their neighbors and people that they would never know through reading books and talking about them.
I’m constantly thinking about how we use creative platforms to empower and motivate and inspire people to do justice work.
I’m also really obsessed with the idea of collective ownership. The killing of Nipsey Hussle, who was a rapper in Los Angeles, was striking to me because he was killed by community violence. And the outpouring of love and support for him and his family had everything to do with the fact that Nipsey was somebody who is deeply invested in his community.
He bought back a section of Crenshaw and turned it into businesses that employed people from the neighborhood and gave people opportunities from the neighborhood. And that replenished the sense of pride and ownership in one’s community. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about my hometown in St. Louis and how we can create a sense of ownership for everybody. Like how do we buy our blocks back, buy our homes back, and create community centers that we manage together? Instead of somebody coming in from outside and doing a top-down thing, how do we set the course for our own communities in a way that we all feel a level of ownership around?
So my husband and I have been talking about that and imagining what the world could be if everybody on the block owned all the buildings around the block and owned the future of that block. And was equipped to leverage their power with everyone from the police to the court system to the school system, right? And really make their demands known because they have power. So yeah, so who knows what the future holds, but at the very least, I want to make sure that I am creatively attacking the problem of injustice so that we can get more and more people on the team.
Image Credit: Flickr /Jay Godwinwin