Detroit’s Activist Roots and the Fight for Justice: At Liberty Live with W. Kamau Bell

At Liberty

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4.8 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a longtime supporter of the ACLU, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. This episode is a conversation taped live earlier this month on a stop of ACLU’s Know Your Rights Bus Tour. On our tour, we hit the road with artists, influencers, advocates, and community members to host events in six cities to ensure voters know their rights and have a plan to vote. At our stop in Detroit, host W. Kamau Bell sat down with two prominent voices from Michigan's activist community: Loren Khogali, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, and filmmaker Razi Jafri. Together, they explore the complexities of activism, democracy, and representation in Michigan — a state at the crossroads of pivotal social and political change. This episode delves into the power of coalition building among Black, Arab, and Muslim American communities. Loren and Razi share their insights on being in a battleground state, how communities can leverage grassroots activism to impact national conversations, and the unique challenges and opportunities of engaging underrepresented voters.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Debbie Kamal Bell. Thank you for being here, yes.
0:04.6	I've been working with the ACLU for 11 years now as their artist ambassador for racial justice.
0:11.0	So anytime racism is better, you're welcome.
0:14.7	Anytime racism is bad, I did my best.
0:18.0	So yes, and I'm happy to be here.
0:20.1	You may know me from my New York Times bestselling book, Do the Work,
0:23.1	or my Doggy Series, we need to talk about Cosby,
0:24.9	or as most people know me, the guy in the ACLU commercials on cable news.
0:29.5	So my first guest is the executive director of the ACLU of Michigan,
0:33.6	who has fought to protect the rights of Michigan just for nearly two decades.
0:37.4	Please get up for Lauren Hojali.
0:43.8	You did it.
0:44.9	So how did I do?
0:45.6	It was awesome.
0:46.6	Pretty good.
0:47.5	Yeah, sir.
0:48.4	That was amazing, right?
0:49.9	Oh, thank you.
0:51.6	Can we just, well, I'll get to your intro in a second, Ron.
0:53.9	But talk about, we had this whole conversation about your last name and how I heard you tell people to pronounce it and then how he really pronounced it. I was like, I got to try to go with you. Yeah, I am very impressed. Yeah, so we, somebody asked me how to pronounce it. I said, we say Kogali.
1:32.7	There's an Arabic pronunciation. I won't require you to say it. And Kamau said, no, I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. What do you say? I said, you got to get the ch. No, I know. I didn't go full chuh, but I'm working on. You were half chuh. Half, yeah, it's my steps. The next director, the next director, my next guest is a ham-traum-based filmmaker and producer whose work focuses on democracy and human rights.
1:36.2	Some of his films include Hamtramac USA, three chaplains, and Rouge.
	...

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