Jodi Shaw and I talked with anti-racism activist Bev Barnum. Nobody screamed OR cried!

I wanted to see if a conversation could be had with "the other side." Watch it on YouTube and judge for yourselves.

I turn 46 years old today! 🥳

And as a birthday gift to myself, I am finally releasing a recording made by Jodi Shaw and me back in the summer, of a long conversation we had with BLM-supporter, Ibram Kendi fan, and Wall of Moms founder Bev Barnum. And as your birthday gift to me, you guys can watch it! [Insert wink emoji here.]

Bev had come onto my radar last year after I came across stories about her group, which she formed in response to the police tactics used on BLM protestors in Portland, Ore., during the summer of rage in 2020. Her aim was to stand in solidarity with the protestors — who were there because of the shooting by police of a local black woman Shai’India Harris — and join the fight for social justice. She saw it as them bringing their moral authority, as a group of concerned moms from the suburbs. She organised mothers to physically stand between the protestors and police — hence the name wall of moms.

She soon ran into trouble, however, the ins-and-outs of which can be found here. Basically, for “centering whiteness.” For trying to help while white. For taking space and attention away from black leadership. It didn’t seem to matter that her intentions were to help, or that she is not actually white. (She’s the daughter of Mexican immigrants.) She was dragged heavily on social media, to the point where even though I don’t agree with her politics or her actions, I felt for her.

So I reached out to her and asked if she would be willing to talk to me and Jodi — and to her credit she said yes.

We recorded the conversation in July and then for a variety of reasons did not get around to posting it. But here it is, still relevant, I feel, as the Western world is more and more socially divided with every passing day.

The three of us manage to hold fast to our beliefs (no one was trying to convince anyone else) whilst also having a civil, even warm, discussion. Check out this screengrab, where we are all laughing and chatting like normal human beings! Incredible.

Bev was very brave and open minded to even agree to talk to us. Jodi, after all, is well known for her opposition to everything Bev believes in. In the two hour convo, we discussed what it’s like to face down riot police, raising an autistic child, what I thought about Ibram Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist (spoiler: I hated it), and of course what went down with WOM. What it felt like to go from normal mom to being the target of very real hostility by all sides.

What we don’t do is attack or even argue. If anyone is looking for a replay of Candace Owen’s savaging of Blair White then they will be sorely disappointed. To be honest, I don’t really have it in me to attack someone who is presenting themselves genuinely and openly. Even if I think everything they say is wrong, that’s their right, and their personal belief system is not mine to change.

This is not two hours of catchy put-downs and rhetorical swordsmanship. No frothing at the mouth. Nobody gets upset. Nobody ‘owns the libs’. It’s three moms from the same country and similar backgrounds calmly and rationally explaining how their worldviews got to be so very divergent. That may sound boring in our deranged media environment — although Bev’s description of being tear-gassed is really gripping, it starts around the 15 minute mark and I highly recommend listening to it. But the fact that we did this at all, in our current political climate of total polarisation and insulated ideological bubbles is actually quite radical.

Judge for yourselves!