Editing The Pen Addict 413/transcript (section)

== Black Lives Matter Discussion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, before we get started today, I want to talk about a post I wrote on Monday. And it's really a tough time that we're all living in right now. And I'd be remiss if we didn't take a minute to discuss Black Lives Matter and the problems that our country is seeing. And it's not exclusively our country in the U.S., but worldwide problems. And I had a really tough weekend coming to grips with everything I was seeing online.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And also just feeling guilt because this is not a new thing, right? This is an escalation that we've rarely seen before. But this is not a new. This goes back for pretty much the existence of history where Black people were not treated with equity in our world. And this weekend, we're seeing some of the worst actions by people against Blacks that we've all ever seen. And I just felt that Monday was appropriate for me to speak up, use my platform to express how I'm feeling, to say that I'm going to do better. I'm going to work harder. I'm going to make this a better country and a better situation for Blacks. Because it's really challenging to see people go through this. And I've always said that how proud I am of the diversity in our community, in the stationary community. I've felt really good about being part of a community that believes in diversity of all forms.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And this is a worldwide community, right? We have listeners from all over the world. We have readers from all over the world. I know all of us in our individual blogs and podcasts and other areas have worldwide listeners. And we're all unified by paper and pen. That's what we're here for today, generally. But I don't think today's the day and today's not the time to just take that gold star from our teacher and pat ourselves on the back to say that we've done a good job. I think it's a time to shine a light on the inequality that's still happening and try to figure out what we're going to do. And I think the fountain pen community as a whole is uniquely positioned because of how we exist right now in a very humane way, in a very equal way. But I think the individually people in these groups, in our fountain pen communities, in our stationary communities, and collectively, we can change. So, like, for example, I wrote about this post. We'll put a link in the show notes about some of the actions I've taken. And I've taken more actions since then. And that's what it's going to take to help solve these problems. You know, I'm adding more diverse voices to my media consumption, right? I've always been a champion of women and of LGBTQ causes, and I've been super supportive. But I've noticed just somehow there's a lack of black voices in my social media feeds and my Instagram feeds, on my Twitch streams that I follow, on my podcasts that I follow. So I've actually made a change to listen to these voices more.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's started to change. I've also learned over these past few days that it's not enough for me to say that I'm not racist, right? I live my life that way, that I'm not racist. But saying you're not racist is a passive statement. It's ticking a checkbox on a form next to your race and gender.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Also, it doesn't mean anything. That just means you as human beings should be. Right. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the statement should be is I'm anti-racist. Yes. That means I'm actively working on changing policies and procedures and laws and regulations that force inequality into people's lives. You know, we should all be living equal lives. And to say I'm not racist is not enough. I have to be anti-racist to progress and move the world forward and build these, change these rules and regulations that are in affecting, that are affecting people to support disproportionately. So it's more of a statement of action. So these are the things I'm learning. And I just want to talk about this out loud because it's not going to get said enough. We're going to continue to talk about pens and paper and stationery. We're going to have a heck of a show today. I'm excited about talking to Anna about, you know, 10 years of the desk. It's like really important to me to discuss Anna and have her on. But I just want to say that it's not the time to ask us to be quiet about what's going on in the world. And I don't think we're having much of an issue. Myke more so than some of us because he's a little bit more exposed in different areas than like myself, you know, in a wider range of things. And I'm proud to be part of Relay FM, a network that lives its diversity and works to maintain diverse voices in the podcast network. And I have Myke to thank for that. And, you know, to see people, you know, our famous stay in your lane comments that I love to use. It's like, I'm just I'm not I'm not going to. And it's that's going to be the way it is. So, you know, it's it's hard to discuss this thing eloquently in, you know, a few minutes of a podcast. And I tried to say how I was feeling in the post I made Monday. But just know that it shouldn't have taken things to get this far for me to make more active changes than just saying that I'm not racist and let not be good enough. That's not good enough anymore. So it's it's time for change. And I'm starting with myself and I I hope you all are along for the ride because you're going to see it a lot more for me, especially like on my my social media feeds and my activism being more public. And then as I normally keep my activism in the background because, hey, stay in your lane. Right. Let's talk about pens on Twitter. Well, you know what? That time has passed. We're in a dangerous time in in all of our lives. And I don't want to see it go downhill from here. So I'm going to do my part.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I echo basically everything you're saying just to underscore a couple of points. One, it's why you're hearing it here and why you will see me also talking about and retweeting things in my social media feeds. And I usually try and stay away from political current events issues. It's just a thing that I've done in my life. But there I have lines and this is past the line that I'm willing to stay quiet about because it's something that I believe in and I'm believing in more and more as the days go on. Right. About just how ridiculous and wrong all of this stuff is because I'm seeing more of it. And also, I'm working on some stuff myself as to what can I do to actively change things in my community. And that's something I have some ideas and I'm working through some things right now and hope to share some stuff pretty soon about what actions can I take with what I have, which is my voice and my influence. So that's the thing that I encourage everybody to do. Like, what do you have that you can give to others? And so, you know, that's where I'm working right now.

'''Ana Reinert:''' One of the things that I've heard a lot of people say, which is being the privileged white people that we are, one of the best things that we can do is listen and ask what we can do to help, what we can do to support.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And one of the best pieces that I've heard written or read written from our community was what Myke Madison wrote on his blog this week about a situation that occurred in his past, which he found shameful and that he wished he could have done differently. And addresses situations that I think at some point in our lives we've all faced where being white, we were in a situation that someone looked at us and assumed that because we were white, we shared their racist views. And rather than challenge someone making a racist comment, we stayed quiet instead of saying, no, dude, that is not cool. I do not agree with you. We let it pass. We let it go instead of challenging someone's comment. And that is the thing that we have to stop. We cannot let other people say those things anymore. They're not right. They can't be, they can't, we can't let it go on. And that was probably one of the strongest pieces I've read from somebody. I mean, it took a lot of guts and a lot of honesty for him to write that and to, you know, sort of come clean about it. Mm-hmm. And those are the moments where we have an opportunity to come forth and say, these are the shameful moments in our past. And it's not outward racism. It's the moments where we stayed quiet when we shouldn't have. You know, because I know that most of the people that I know are not racist, but we also, you know, in a situation where we put our own physical bodies at risk in situations where someone might be bigger or seerier than us. We don't challenge them when they say things like that. And being a woman, that can also be, you know, even more fearful. You know, when a guy says something like that, we don't challenge them. We try to get out of that situation. Mm-hmm. So now it's our chance to stand up and take those chances and say, no, we won't accept that anymore.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. I agree completely. Now's the time to put in the work. And Myke's post was great. We'll put a link in the show notes to that for anyone who has missed it. I know that had to be tough for him to write, and I appreciate him immensely doing that. All right. So now the task is going to fall to me, Myke and Anna, to transition us into a stationary podcast.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like we said what we say, and now we move on, right? Like the point has been made, people have heard it, and now we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.