The Daily: ‘Hope is Really Important in This Work’

August 7, 2020

By Sydney Harper

Sharhonda Bossier, center left, with her grandparents and two of her siblings at Easter in 1991, roughly a year before the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles.Sharhonda Bossier

Producer Sydney Harper on Wednesday’s episode:

In our June episode “Why They’re Protesting,” we highlighted the voices of those who were taking to the streets to call for racial justice in the days immediately following George Floyd’s death — many compelled to protest for the very first time.

These protests against anti-Blackness and police brutality, and the conversations about race that they ignited nationally, might have felt unique to this moment. But while some demonstrators were feeling a newfound urgency of the chants “Black Lives Matter,” these words, and the movement they represented, have been a rallying cry since 2014.

Hearing stories about why people were drawn into the streets for the first time made us wonder: What was it like to hear “Black Lives Matter” echo around the world if you were someone shouting the phrase years before, with a much smaller chorus?

We wanted to hear from a seasoned protester. Someone who could walk us through what brings them out to the streets time and time again, and what that person thinks the new wave of protests means for bringing lasting change.

As Neena Pathak, Lynsea Garrison and I set off to find someone to answer those questions, the frequent Daily guest and sometimes host Caitlin Dickerson had a source: the longtime activist Sharhonda Bossier, whom she had spoken to for her story on the protests in Minneapolis.

I only needed to hear a few minutes of Sharhonda’s initial phone call with Caitlin to know that Sharhonda could help us understand the frustration longtime activists had with the status quo — and the desire for change that drives them to the front lines of protests.

Sharhonda is the deputy director at Education Leaders of Color (EdLoc).Beverlie Lord/Satsun Photography

Sharhonda at her First Communion at age 7.Sharhonda Bossier

We interviewed Sharhonda for four hours, covering everything from growing up as a little Black girl in Watts to the evolution of the Black Lives Matters movement to her perspective on change. Sharhonda’s patience during the interview is a testament to the greater patience she feels toward that change. As she said in the episode, “If I was not hopeful that change was coming, I would not be in the streets.” She continued, “Hope is really important in this work. And you have to hope that tomorrow can be better than today.”

Talk to Sydney on Twitter: @_ItsSharper.

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Is the U.S. ready for mail-in voting?

As states grapple with how to safely carry out elections during the pandemic, President Trump has made an escalating series of fantastical — and false — accusations about the risks of embracing mail-in voting. So in our episode on Tuesday, we asked Reid Epstein, our elections reporter, whether the United States was ready to vote by mail in the approaching presidential election. Many of you had follow-up questions, so we posed some of them to Reid:

Q. How can I be sure my vote will be counted?

A. This is a great question, since most Americans have never voted by mail.

Different states have different safeguards in place to ensure that the mail voting system isn’t abused. Part of what led to the long lines you saw in Georgia was that poll workers had to take time voiding the absentee ballots for voters who had requested but not received them when they showed up at polling places on Primary Day.

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As it turns out my in-laws live in Washington State, one of the five states that votes entirely by mail. My father-in-law’s ballot came with a receipt with a unique QR code that he used to check that his ballot was received and counted. He then logged on to his local county elections’ website and could track the progress of his ballot, from when it was sent to his home to when it was opened and counted. This is what that process looked like:

A screenshot of Reid’s father-in-law’s ballot tracking.Reid Epstein

Q. In addition to Georgia, another state that experienced a messy primary was New York; it took six weeks to count ballots for a pair of congressional races. What can we learn from the New York primary?

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A. We can learn that it’s never a good idea to bet on the New York City Board of Elections moving quickly. Many states have seen days-long delays in counting mailed-in votes, but no place has been as bad as New York. Don’t be surprised if some states take a week or even two before they count all their votes in November. But the New York example is an extreme one – especially since there were relatively few votes cast in those congressional primaries.

On The Daily this week

Monday: Can algorithms harbor racial bias? Kashmir Hill spoke with one man who was arrested after being wrongfully accused of a burglary by an algorithm.

Tuesday: Ahead of an unprecedented presidential election, we talk to Reid Epstein about mail-in voting — and the lessons we can learn from the different approaches of two states.

Wednesday: “My grandmother told me that I only have to do two things in this life, and that’s stay black and die.” Sharhonda Bossier, a Black activist and organizer, takes us through her path to the front lines of protests against police brutality.

Thursday: Vivian Yee on living through the explosion in Beirut: “When the world stopped cracking open, I couldn’t see at first because of the blood running down my face.”

Friday: We spoke to Twitter’s C.E.O., Jack Dorsey, about the platform’s role in American political life, its “electric” first years and the mistakes it made early on.