It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. My team and I are taking a holiday season break today, and we're re-airing some segments from 2025 that we think you'll enjoy or enjoy again,

lightly edited for clarity and time. So we can't take your calls today, but you can listen to these

conversations on things like a proposal to pay grandparents for child care. A new documentary

on some of the New Yorkers cartoonists who happen to be

women. You will learn and you will laugh with that one. And we start with Jelani Cobb and his reflections

on this tumultuous decade. Here we go. Back with us now is Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff

writer and dean of the Columbia University Graduate School

of Journalism. He's got a new book that's a collection of some of his writings called Three or More

is a Riot, notes on how he got here, 2012 to 2025. So let's say from Barack Obama's re-election

and how he used it to Donald Trump's reelection and how he is using that today.

Or we could say from the killing of Trayvon Martin in February 2012 to what Jolani calls the volatile white nationalism and reactionary concern with demographics that defines the

moment we're in now. But the book also gets personal and granular down to the fate of Jolani's

alma mater, Jamaica High School in Queens. Delani, always good to have you on with us. Welcome

back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. Always good to talk with you. Can I start with some context about you?

You note in your article in the book from last year about the re-election of Trump that

your life, like those of many black people of your generation, was shaped not by the brutality

of segregation as your parents' lives had been, but by the success of the

battles of the 1950s and 60s to uproot it. Can you talk a little about you coming of age

at the exact time that you did in the arc of black history, of American history, and what

mindset you started out as a journalist with in that context?

Sure.

You know, my parents were part of the great migration.

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