Note: The transcript for this episode is below, rather than in the usual separate post. We’re experimenting with ways to make our podcast posts more convenient and easier to find. Feedback is welcome as always at shakethedust@ktfpress.com!
This month, our bonus episode features a discussion about our big-picture thoughts on the 2024 presidential election and the possibility of a second Trump term. Jonathan and Sy get into:
- How a Trump Reelection would harm marginalized people, democracy, and creation
- How God’s sovereignty and familiarity with suffering would get us through another Trump administration
- How both the oppression Biden’s administration causes and US history give us helpful context for thinking about Trump
- How we can minimize the suffering of others by overreacting to Trump
- And a discussion about a recent highlight from our newsletter on prison slave labor in America’s food industry
Resources Mentioned in the Episode
- Our YouTube video of Dr. Mika Edmondson on MLK’s theology of suffering and sovereignty
- The essay from our anthology, “Bad Theology Kills” by Jesse Wheeler
- The AP’s investigation into prison labor and the Food Industry
Credits
- Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com
- Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads
- Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon
- Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify
- Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram
- Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra
- Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra
Introduction
[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]
Jonathan Walton: I think there's a, there’s just healthy, healthy gifts in Scripture when we remember that Jesus lived in an occupied territory by an empire that was ruthless, just like the United States. It’s not a new thing to Jesus, it’s not a new thing to God, which I'm really, really grateful for. Like our Savior understands. That's the reason he can say in scripture, “There will be wars and rumors of wars, let not your heart be troubled.”
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I am Jonathan Walton.
Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra. We today, are going to be talking about the election coming at the end of 2024.
Jonathan Walton: Lord Jesus…
Sy Hoekstra: Of course, I'm talking about the election for New York City comptroller. No, I'm talking about the presidential election [laughter] in the United States of America. When it comes to season four of this show when we get started in a couple of months, we are going to be talking mostly, if not all, about the election. Kind of bringing on some guests that we think have a really good perspective, just really diving deep into this crucial subject for this time. And we thought it would be a good idea to give you, our lovely paid subscribers some perspective before we dive into that. Some of like where we are coming from when we think about the election.
How important is it? What are the truly bad things that will happen if Trump gets reelected? And without minimizing any of the harm that will come if he is reelected, how can we sort of contextualize these issues within history and theology from the perspectives of marginalized voices, to give us just kind of a broader understanding of kind of the real consequences and really what's going on this year? So what happens if Trump gets reelected and how earth shaking is it [laughter]? That's effectively what we're talking about today. We will also be doing our new segment, which tab is still open, diving a little bit deeper into one of the recent highlights from our newsletter, in this case, is going to be my highlight, a massive AP investigation into prison labor, and how it supplies the food that is absolutely in your kitchen. If you didn't take a look at it, it will be in the show notes. It is a shocking one, and we're going to talk about that one a little bit more. But before we jump into the main discussion, Jonathan.
Jonathan Walton: Yes, before we jump into anything, we just have one quick favor to ask of you. And that is, go to Apple or Spotify and give this show a five-star rating. It's a quick, easy, free way to support us and makes us look good, and other people look us up. So please go to Apple or Spotify, give us a five-star rating, and if you can, leave a review. It's just a super, super helpful way to support the show, and many of you have done it. And so there's an unlimited invitation to this party [Sy laughs]. So please do give us a five-star rating, write a review. We really, really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much in advance.
A Trump Reelection would Multiply the Harm We Do to Marginalized People
Sy Hoekstra: Alright, let's jump into it. I know that both of us think this election is really important. But I also know that we both have some historical and theological perspective that might somewhat ironically, maybe make us think that it's a less earth-shaking election than other people might. But I just wanted to start by talking about what will happen. Why is this election important? If Trump gets reelected, Jonathan, what will happen and why does it matter?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, actually, as I've been thinking about this question, I think that the reason that it's important, are the reasons that have always been important. It's just a problem at a fire when someone has kerosene, and it's just walking around, throwing it everywhere. Right?
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.
Jonathan Walton: And so it's like, it is not untrue that the United States has, it has been and has baked in racist, bigoted, misogynistic frameworks into our entire systems and structures. It was intentional, and it is still working very strong and well today. That has always been true. What changes, I think, is how these systems and structures impact a lot of the vulnerable people. And if you vote for Donald Trump, or lean into the things that he normalizes as everyday practices, that is a profound problem for the most vulnerable people in our country. We are living in the wake of significant cultural, political, theological and demographic change in the United States, and to have a president that explicitly endorses exploitation and militarism and hyper-capitalism, then we have a serious problem.
The things that I am hopeful do not happen is the expressed situational, like contextualized things in our time and culture, which again, I'm not saying they haven't happened before. I'm not saying that they're more unique than other things that have happened before. What I am saying, is we're living in this moment, and we have an opportunity as best as we possibly can to push back against systems that oppress, abuse and violate. And one of the ways to do that is to not vote for someone who's going to do and say things that cause oppression and violence and abuse to be multiplied the world over, because he sits in the most quote- unquote, “powerful” seat in the country. So Sy, that was a lot from me. What do you think about this election, and why is it important to you?
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, so I think this question for me, is the one that I kind of want to answer a little bit talking more to marginalized people than not. And then the kind of like get some broader, bigger perspective questions that we're going to ask in a minute, are kind of the things that I think need to be directed towards people who come from the dominant side of a hierarchy, right? Like, right now I'm talking to people who are not white, instead of me talking to white people. Right now I'm talking to people I think, mostly who are disabled, and I'll be talking to able bodied people in a minute. And the reason I say that is like, I think this question of why is this important, primarily for me is like acknowledging all the things that have happened to marginalized people in his first term, and that will happen again, if he's reelected.
So, for instance, because I'm married to an attorney who was working in immigration during the first Trump term, and because I have a good friend who applied for asylum just before Trump was elected, I saw kind of firsthand, like a lot of the very kind of small administrative things that Trump did in the immigration system that had a huge effect on the lives of just like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people that kind of went under the radar, just because they weren't flashy. I don’t know how much you remember—how much you've put your memories of the Trump administration out of your mind for your own sort of mental peace. But there was so much stuff going on every day. Like he would say something new that was absurd, that topped the absurd thing he said yesterday, and proposed some new ridiculous policy and whatever.
So a lot of things just like went under the radar that were small. And I'll give you an example. One was this woman I know who applied for asylum just toward the end of Obama's presidency. Had like an absolutely open and shut case for asylum. There's no question ever that she was going to be granted it. She was a woman from Iran who converted to Christianity and basically became a women's rights advocate. She's not going back to Iran. So she—without being persecuted, it's open and shut asylum. So she comes here and applies, and then just as, like she's kind of work… you know, it takes a while to get your asylum application granted, but it doesn't take as long as it took her.
Because what happened was, Trump, in his efforts to deter as many people from coming here as possible, did this thing where he said we're going to process all of the applications that have been filed most recently first, and then we're going to make our way back towards the applications that were filed, sort of in the past. So she was making her way through the line through the processing thing, and then all of a sudden, the line flipped, and she was at the end again. So it took eight years to process her asylum application, which was unheard of previous to the Trump administration. And that just like left her in a state of limbo and uncertainty, it makes it, there's all kinds of things that are just harder when you haven't been granted that when you can't be moving on your path towards citizenship. There's all kinds of bureaucratic things that are complicated, and it just put her forever wondering whether she was going to be able to stay in this new place that she had made her home. And that's like one example of so many different things that happened.
The worst things that we've been seeing at the state level are going to be amplified if Trump gets reelected. Meaning, think about like the DeSantis takeover of public schools in Florida. Like just anything to do with talking about race in history, or gender or sexuality, those things are going to be stamped out as vigorously as possible by the federal government. The violence towards immigrants on the Texas border that we've written about in the newsletter a couple of times, like the ways that Greg Abbott is just like actively killing people who try and cross the river into Texas.
The way that he and Ron DeSantis are trafficking immigrants to Blue cities for like a political stunt. All that kind of stuff would be approved of and encouraged by the head executive of the country. Everything we're seeing about don't talk about…the attempts to completely erase queer people from our public education system, attempts to ban even like life-saving abortions. All that kind of stuff, the President would be behind all of it, and that is quite scary.
Trump Will Undermine Democracy, Damage Creation, and Embolden People with the Worst Ideas
There will be I think increased attempts to undermine democratic norms and processes. Obviously, he did that in his first term. He will be maybe better at it. I mean, it's hard to tell, right [Jonathan laughs]? He's still, he's the same blustering guy that he was before. And there are some things that he's proposing doing that he would absolutely never be able to do, that the President doesn't have the power to do.
But you know that he's going to undermine as many norms as possible to get whatever he wants. You know that if he loses this time, there will be election violence. I mean, I would be willing to bet that at some point, he goes, “Hey, about those term limits [laughs], what do we think of those still?” And his supporters are going to say, “Get rid of them,” and he will try. Again, not something he has the power to do, but that doesn't mean that there won't be violence if he can't do it. I mean, these are all totally realistic possibilities. And then foreign policy is just going to go off the rails. Can you imagine what would be happening right now in Gaza, if Israel had the full-throated support of the American President to do whatever they want to fight terrorism, which is absolutely what he would do. Right? I mean, it would be… like not that it's not terrible now, it's horrifying now, it would be on a whole different scale if Trump was president. Because ultimately, as we've discussed in the newsletter, like what the American president says are the guardrails of Israel's military operations, are in fact the guardrails of Israel's military operations. We sort of define how far they can go or Western powers defined how far they can go. That's always been the case.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: The environmental situation will get way worse, he's promised a ton more drilling. He's said he's going to pull out of the Paris Accord, which is the big multinational treaty about climate change that exists right now. It needs strengthening, but it's the one that exists. So basically, everything I'm saying is, the reason that it's important. The reason that it's going to be bad if he gets reelected, is because it will negatively affect actual people. Actual, marginalized people will be hurt. And the creation, like God's creation will be damaged. And the line that I do want to draw there a little bit for the clarity of our thinking is, that's the problem.
The problem isn't that he will degrade America's greatness or whatever. He will harm like, he may hasten the decline of America, but America to me is not like theologically or morally significant, except insofar as it contains people. It contains people…
Jonathan Walton: Exactly, yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: …who bear the image of God, and the creation that God made and wants us to steward. So I think that's worth keeping in mind as well. Do you have any other thoughts? There's a lot from… Now, you did a lot from you, and I did a lot from me. Do you have any thoughts?
Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Well, I think what you said put hands and feet to what I was thinking. Like naming specific policies that will violate and destroy the image of God and people downstream of the American empire. And the American empire looks like what's happening in Palestine. Looks like what's happening in the Congo. Looks like what's happening in neighborhoods in New York City, and around the country where kids won't be able to get books because they will pull the funding from the library. They will have made sure that these school boards would be completely flipped because the bully pulpit as they say, the presidency, as you said, full-throatedly endorses a race-based, class-based, gender-based environmental hierarchy that makes sure things run a certain way.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, the importance of him just emboldening people can't really be understated. I mean, it's like a little bit hard to remember now, but 8, 10 years ago, we were not regularly talking about the Klan, or the Proud Boys or like the QAnon or whatever. Any of these alt right things that have cropped up since he basically made it okay to have their views and be at least around mainstream politics, right?
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: I mean, you just, I don't know. There are so many people now who on their TV shows will have, who never would have done this before. Now, I feel like they have to have somebody who just has the absolute worst views you can imagine about whoever, to come in and comment like a really serious commenter because that's the environment that Trump has created. That's the people have been emboldened by him.
Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely.
Trump’s Reelection Is not the End of the World
Trump Isn’t God, and Jesus Knows the Suffering of Oppression
Sy Hoekstra: Okay. So let's pivot to some caveats or some ways that we think about another Trump presidency, from a broader perspective. Not at all trying to minimize any of the harm that we just detailed, but Trump isn't the only thing in the world that causes harm to marginalized people or to people in general. So maybe put it this way, Jonathan: would a second Trump term be the apocalypse?
Jonathan Walton: [laughs] No.
Sy Hoekstra: Why not Jonathan?
Jonathan Walton: I think that for all of the strong feelings and emotions and all the things you just heard, I think it is helpful to remember that Trump is not omnipresent [Sy chuckles], neither is the United States empire. Trump is not omniscient, neither is any apparatus of the United States. And nothing about the United States government, any of its representatives or agents is sovereign. None of that. And so, I think there's just healthy, healthy gifts in Scripture when we remember that Jesus lived as an occupied person in an occupied territory by an empire that was ruthless, just like the United States, that felt overbearing, just like the United States. There was a culture, and a very clear invitation to demonize your enemies and make into divine counsel all the people who are in power.
Like this is not a new thing to Jesus, not a new thing to God, which I'm really, really grateful for. Like our Savior, sovereign king of the world, Jesus Christ, son of the living God, flesh incarnate, raised from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father, understands what we’re talking about. And I think that's the reason he can say in scripture, “There will be wars and rumors of wars, let not your heart be troubled. Take heart, I have overcome the world.” And then when we actually lean into that, we can say yes, what Trump says he's going to do is terrible, and not new. What Trump desires to perpetuate in the United States, what his administration desires to make happen is terrible, and it is not all encompassing.
Only thing, the only being, the only power that can declare that is the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit. And I think we hold all of our fear and frustration and anger before the God who holds all things together. And that is to me, an exceptionally grounding place. So if you were… [laughs] I feel like this should be the cold open so we make it through all that nonsense of like 20 minutes that we talked about [laughter]. But just to remember that God is God and Trump is not. The kingdom of God is not America, and God is faithful to all people who call on his name, near to the brokenhearted and close to those who are suffering.
God’s Sovereignty is Motivation to Act, not an Excuse to Accept the Status Quo
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I would like to highlight for people, I think there are a lot of people out there right now who hear theological ideas like that, from I don't know, basically any professional Christian talking into a microphone, and kind of think, “You're making excuses for people not to do anything.” I mean, that's just what people hear, because those ideas that you just put forward that I totally agree with, are so often used to silence people. Right?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Or to justify inactivity.
Sy Hoekstra: To justify inactivity or passivity, or going along with the status quo. Or even actively pulling you back on progress. God's got it, we don't need to do anything.
Jonathan Walton: Right, right. Right.
Sy Hoekstra: I just, I hope you know, if you’ve listen to us for any amount of time, that is not us at all [laughter].
Jonathan Walton: No.
Sy Hoekstra: Like Jonathan is trying to provide comfort to the people who are out there working hard, right? And the people who are like not going to stop because they understand the implications of the gospel. Not the people who have never really worked out the gospel in their life, so they're just sitting there happy with the status quo.
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: And you know what, actually, I'm going to put in the show notes for this episode, the YouTube video that we did, that we put out just before Martin Luther King Day this year, which was Pastor Mika Edmondson talking about this very thing. Like MLK’s notion of redemptive suffering, and how it doesn't mean that suffering is good, or we just need to accept it or be passive, but a God who is sovereign, and truly cares about the brokenhearted and the marginalized, should be to us at least an encouragement and a source of power to act.
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
Sy Hoekstra: That's something, everything I just said shouldn't be necessary to say [laughs], but in context, it is.
Thinking Scripture Doesn’t Require Action against Oppression Is Just Bad Interpretation
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. What you're saying is that it's similar to Acts chapter three, and when Peter preaches, right? And Acts chapter two, right after Pentecost. You can have an amazing moment happen, and then how it's interpreted can change everything.
Sy Hoekstra: What happened there, for people who don't know.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. At Pentecost, we celebrate that after Easter slash Resurrection Sunday, like the Holy Spirit of falling, after Jesus ascended to heaven, Acts chapter two. And so right after that happens, people start speaking in tongues, then there are folks gathered from lots of different backgrounds and ethnic identities, and they say, “I hear the gospel being proclaimed in my language.” That's where quote- unquote, “tongues” comes from. In that moment someone said, “These people are drunk.” [laughter] Now, let's just say that that dude won the day, and instead of having an interpretation that says, “No, no,” which Peter stood up and said, “These people are not drunk, they're full of the Spirit,” and then began to preach the gospel to those people in their language, as recorded by the apostles in Acts.
Like, what if the other dude’s narrative had just one? And it was interpreted that these people were drunk or high or under the influence [Sy laughs], and then we just move on. And you don't get Acts three, where Peter does it again for another crowd. You don't get Acts six where Stephen is stoned because he's willing to stand up for marginalized people. You don't get the rest of the book of Acts, if you have incorrect interpretation. The message can be the same. So you could have a pastor, I guarantee this is the case. Because this was like a Baptist orthodoxy for 100 years before segregation was going to be taken away in the 1950s. The reality is, that was the line: Like, “God's got it, he is sovereign, he's amazing, he's wonderful. He cares about you, and therefore the political process does not need us.”
Mika Edmondson, me, Sy, and a billion other people would say, no, because God is sovereign, because he in Luke chapter four, pulled from Isaiah sixty one, and said, “The spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, set the oppressed free proclaimed sight to the blind, freedom to the captives, therefore we will do the same thing. Not, “Oh, God is going to take care of that, and I'm going to keep driving my Jetta and move out.” That's just not… it's in the interpretation in the application. It's not in, the tension is not in the Scripture. And so yes, thank you for naming that.
Voting for Biden is Just Minimizing Damage
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Let me let me talk about why. So that was a really good sort of theological set of reasons why a second Trump presidency is not the end of the world. There are some things that are a little bit more just kind of policy and historically based things. One of those things for me is this idea that we've come back to many times in our discussions about politics from our Anthology, and we've brought this essay up so many times. But Jesse Wheelers essay about “Bad Theology Kills,” which we have republished on our blog, and I'll put in the show notes.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: Basically talking about how… I'll be a little bit broader than Jesse was. Jesse was specifically talking about like drones and bombs in the Middle East and how they don't really change from Democrat to Republican or whoever. Just to so much of the world, America is America regardless of who's in charge, and we are doing the thing that empires do in their lives, doesn't matter if it's a Democrat, doesn't matter if it's a Republican. And that's true for people in the country as well, it's not just a foreign policy thing. So like there are so many things that Biden is doing right now that are actively horrific, right? I just said how much worse it would be if Trump was around for Israel and Palestine, but Biden is still letting the genocide happen.
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
Sy Hoekstra: Not challenging in any way. He's still not reversing some of the terrible Trump immigration related policies that he actually promised to reverse and never did. So my point there is basically just like, we're talking about minimizing harm. Whereas I think this is kind of what you and I are always talking about when we're talking about voting. We are not talking about trying to put the kingdom of God in place. I mean, I want someone who represents my views as much as possible, I want someone who's going to do positive things, but the reality of the two choices that we have in front of us right now is, like I'm going to vote for Biden to minimize damage. That's what I'm doing.
A Second Trump Term Would Be Very Far from the Worst Time in American History
Sy Hoekstra: The other thing to me is to keep in mind the perspective of American history.
And this is again, like I said before, this is kind of where I'm talking to, like white people, or able-bodied people, or people who are at the top of hierarchies. A second Trump presidency is absolutely not going to be the worst point in American history. It's not even going to be close, right? I mean, just look at the historical perspective of basically any marginalized group. The historical like reality and experiences of any marginalized group in America. Jonathan, just look at like your grandparents…
Jonathan Walton: This is true.
Sy Hoekstra: …growing up under Jim Crow in Virginia. Nobody is going to, I highly doubt that anyone is going to experience anything like that under a Trump presidency. Look at people, disabled people like me 100 years ago, were just being sterilized, just for being disabled, as so many people in power in America actively worked with the people in Germany, who would become the Nazis to implement the ideology of eugenics.
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: I'm not going to be sterilized if Trump gets elected [laughs]. Which is not, again, not trying to minimize anything that will happen if he is elected, but that is the perspective that we need to keep in mind.
We Can Minimize the Suffering of Marginalized People by Overreacting to Trump
Sy Hoekstra: and this is where our normalization, and our trivialization of our horrific history really leaves us unable to analyze the present clearly, right?
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: It is really hard, if you haven't had an education system that has actually taught you the daily horrors of slavery for hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people. Millions of black people in American history, then yeah, you might think that what's going to happen next is the most terrible thing that's ever happened, or it's the most important election we've ever seen in the world. It's not. So I want, especially white people to just to be careful when we're talking about how bad it could be in general in America, or how bad it could be for us. If you're worried about yourself specifically, you're still like living on the land that we stole from people who we mostly killed. And I mean, the horrifying things that our people have done. We are minimizing them when we overemphasize how terrible Trump is going to be.
And I just want us to keep that in mind. Again, that shouldn't change your analysis or anything, right? It doesn't mean don't fight. But yeah, I just I want us to be careful, us being white people.
Jonathan Walton: So what's interesting or compelling about what you're saying, and I hope is compelling about this conversation. And for subscribers comments are open, and I'm like, we're open to have these conversations. We're going to roll out some monthly conversations where we're talking about these things with you. But I think one of the, the compelling thing about what you're saying is that if we are, and I say we as like a collective people living in America, documented, undocumented, citizen, non-citizen, Green Card holder, resident, all those things. People in our context. If that is you, I'm talking about us, right? We have to be willing and able to grieve the things that have happened to ourselves and one another, and be grateful for the things that are around us.
And I think it's very difficult to do that when we try to live ahistorically, right? We're not grieving the right stuff, we're not being grateful for the right stuff. We don't even know what and how things came to be. And it's difficult to do that when we're not in community.
Sy Hoekstra: That's so true.
Jonathan Walton: And so, there's a there's an activist that I was listening to. And he goes, a lot of people quote- unquote, on the left who are who are more progressive, are talking about how things are terrible and horrible. And he said, “Listen, 100 percent of Black people before were slaves.” So that amount has gone down, which I praise God for. So he's like, “Let's not say there's been no progress.” And at the same time, so we can be grateful that like Jonathan Walton, like I own a home in New York City. I have a mortgage when my people were the basises of mortgages before. So like there is progress. At the same time, there are real things to grieve, and there are real things to be grateful for.
And that I think, can be a helpful lens for how to then begin to put voting in perspective and engaging with political process in general. Because literally, what Sy just said about voting to do less harm, I had to make that choice. George Santos was unseeded in my district, and I had to choose between Mazi Pilip and Tom Suozzi. Mazi Pilip is a former IDF soldier and dual citizen of Israel. And Tom Suozzi said we do not need more pro-Israel Republicans, we need more pro-Israel Democrats. And so both of them are full-throated supporters of the genocide that is happening in Palestine right now. And so, Maia said to me, “Who are you going to vote for?” And I said, “Maia, I have no idea.”
And I talked to Jesus, and I had to remember, I am not voting for a prophet. I'm not voting for someone who's going to reflect the kingdom of God in all the ways that the Beatitudes talk about. I got in the car after shoveling the snow, and voted for Tom Suozzi, and it bothers me. And that doesn't mean I'm going to like stop advocating, because I'm grateful for the protesters at his event that stood up before he opened his mouth and said, “You are supporting a genocide,” and he looked awkward and didn't know what to say. Because it's true, he is supporting a genocide. And at the same time, I'm glad that I could vote, one, I'm glad I could go to a polling place that was not violent. I walked in and I walked out in 15 minutes.
Two, I'm grateful that my vote actually counted. There were people who were volunteers and a process for that to happen. Three, I'm grateful that there was media that communicated to me who won and who didn't. And I'm grateful that we can continue to protest the policies that hopefully he will change when he leaves this district and goes to D.C. So there's things I can grieve and things I can be grateful for, and I remember that God is sovereign over that. And that I think, is a really difficult place to live in, because there is no winner, there is no loser. I'm not on the good team or the bad team, and I don't get to like run around with my flag and say I’m overtop of all these other people. I sit in the tension with everybody else before Jesus, in Romans 3:23, “That all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” we're all equal before the cross. So all that to say, I'm glad we got to have this conversation.
Sy Hoekstra: Amen. I very much appreciate all that. And also, I always forget that George Santos was your representative [laughter].
Jonathan Walton: Yes, he was! Yes, he was. Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: Speaking of minimizing damage, glad he's gone.
Jonathan Walton: Special… [laughter].
Sy Hoekstra: Like legendarily special.
Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah, I mean...
Sy Hoekstra: special on a level that we don't often get the true lack of privilege of seeing.
Which Tab Is Still Open: Prison Labor in the Food Industry
Sy Hoekstra: Shall we move on to our segment?
Jonathan Walton: Let's do it. Alright, so we're going to get into our segment, Which tab is still open? And that's diving a little deeper into one of our recent newsletter recommendations that we can't stop thinking about. So Sy, why don't you tell us about this AP investigation that had me all in my feelings?
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, me too. I'll give you the details of the investigation and kind of what they discovered about the prison labor in the food industry, and then we'll kind of give you our reflections and feelings on it. So here's some of the basics. Effectively, the story starts in 1865 [laughter]. The story starts when we pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, and we made an exception, which was you can still enslave people as punishment for a crime. It says it explicitly right there in the text. And so we've always, that's how we were able to lease convicts back to the plantations where they had been slaves. We had kangaroo courts that convicted black people en masse of crimes they didn't commit, or crimes that were made up specifically so that we could convict them of something, and then lease them for money back to the plantations where they had worked before.
That's why we have chain gangs picking up trash on the highways. You can do all that because we are still allowed to enslave prisoners. There was a massive two-year AP investigatory effort that basically unearthed that there are hundreds of millions of dollars of food products, going to just every quick service like fast food chain, grocery store, eatery of any kind that you can think of. And the products that these prisoners create are definitely in your pantry. Like the extent makes it unavoidable. The companies often don't know that they are buying food that was produced by prison labor, because they, these AP reporters were literally just in their cars following a truck of cattle that had been raised on a prison farm to see where it ends up. Because people don't keep track of it and there's a ton of corruption and kickbacks and schemes in the system.
And basically, it's just like one of the suppliers for this guy who sells tons and tons of cattle to whoever. Like to farms, then slaughter it and sell it to McDonald's. And there's just like no way for McDonald's or whoever to have known that that's where it was coming from. And they, a lot of these companies actually have policies stating specifically, “We will not buy food produced by prison labor,” and they're just doing it without even knowing it. There's one point in the article where they quote a communications rep from Whole Foods who’s just like, “No, absolutely not. There is no food made by prison labor on the shelves at Whole Foods.” And then they just name very specific products that are absolutely made by prisoners that are definitely on the shelves at Whole Foods.
The labor is like, the labor in prison is sometimes just forced. It's sometimes for like pennies an hour, because there's no minimum wage requirements for prisoners. And then sometimes it's like these programs that are sort of allegedly about job training for prisoners. So, give them skills for when they get out or whatever. But if they don't participate, things can happen. Like they can end up in solitary confinement, or their sentences can be longer. Or other retribution from guards including like really, honestly, overseer levels of beatings. Like just horrific stuff being described by the people that they interviewed. In this article, the conditions for the workers are often really bad and unsafe. Again, labor standards don't apply because we can enslave them.
And of course, the laborers are disproportionately Black and Brown. The majority of this work is happening in the South, and it's often at prisons that are literally buildings on land that used to be plantations. So Bryan Stevenson [laughter] always says that slavery in this country did not end, it just evolved. And this is one of the more concrete ways that that is the case. Jonathan, I've put a little bit of what I thought in the newsletter, and I've just talked for a long time, so I want to hear what you think.
We Don’t Fight Exploitation Because We Will Win, But Because We Are Doing Jesus’ Work
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So I don't know if you saw this Sy, but I posted a video from Angelina Jolie a couple of weeks ago. And listening to her talk about the naivety that she had when she went into activism. And she said about 20 years ago, she thought there were good guys and bad guys. There'd be like progress, things would get better, things like that. And for me, and I think we talked about this in another bonus episode. About 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I was doing a lot to fight homelessness. At that time we call homeless people now that language has changed, unhoused. It was one of those things where like, here I am 10, 12 years later, after being immersed in that work, and the population of unhoused people is bigger than it has ever been.
And I think so for me, I thought subconsciously, that the work that I was doing would make things better. Things would be different because of what I had done. And similarly, when the work that I was heavily involved in, fighting labor exploitation, and I think that feeds into environmental exploitation as well. When we talk about the impact of these massive farms on land, and the people around on that land, not just the prisoners forced to work the land. I think I thought 10 years ago, things would get better. And so when I read this article, I was reminded, one, that it's not a… we don't do this work to make sure things get better. Me being engaged in this work is not contingent upon the success of the work. It is contingent upon the reality that one day Jesus will make all things new, and I am joining him in that work until that work is done in completion.
The Tension between Divesting from Exploitative Systems and Fulfilling Adult Responsibilities
And so as I read the article, after thinking through that, I was just challenged. Because I do have kids, I do have a house, I do have a job, I do have these responsibilities that did not exist when I was in college. And I do not want to be 50, 60, 70 years old saying, “What happened to that person that stewarded my time and energy to learn about where stuff is coming from. To be able to vote in local elections, to be able to advocate in ways that actually impact my life. I do not want, as much as the systems and structures would like to intentionally obscure it from me. I want to be somebody who is trying to figure out what is upstream of me and what is downstream of me so I can steward what I have access to, and what I possess in ways that do not perpetuate or perpetrate systems that abuse or violate.
I do not want to be complicit. And so I was really challenged by that. And so one of the things so for Lent, I'm actually giving up meat and being vegan as a result of this article [laughs]. So to go back to that, and try to be more intentional about that. And just thinking through just how I'm connected to the exploitation of my own people. Because I think that was the big challenging thing for me. And just committing to pray through like what does it look like to reincorporate a lot of the things that I did around food and around what we buy, that I was so passionate about and so engaged with years ago, before I had kids. And so I'm just going to lean into that over lent, and then we'll see what Jesus does with that.
Sy Hoekstra: How do you process emotionally, just the loss of that time and the loss of the capacity to not engage—because you were, just for the audience, very focused on buying fair trade.
Jonathan Walton: Oh, yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: Like really, supply chains, like “I don't want to take part in exploitative purchasing.” Right?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: And it just gets harder, the more obligations you have, because it takes so much time. Because like you said, the system makes it so hard to like just… I don't know, be as ethical as you can. Right?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, if I just go back to what our conversation we were saying earlier, was it's like, when I first started investigating all these things in 2011, there were no apps. You couldn't just google these different things to figure out who made this product and the labor, the US Labor Report, exploited goods wasn't something that was like widely read and distributed by people. That has changed, right? People are more aware now than they've ever been of where things are coming from. And so I think I can celebrate that, knowing that there are hundreds of companies… we bought luggage for our kids, because they're bigger, and it was like, “Hey, we're going to go on these trips, and we want to get you some nice suitcases.” Everybody pitched in, they get stickers and things like that. And those were ethically-made suitcases. ten, twelve years ago, I don't I don't know that ethical was even a category for luggage. But now people are starting to think about those things. And so I think that emotionally, I am grieving the lack of capacity that I have now. And I'm grateful that it does not take as much capacity as it did before. And then I'm going to do my best to make choices aligned with those values and do that same process of grief and gratefulness. Being able to be sad, and being able to be grateful. The fancy way I'm saying it in this new book is like doing the dance between beauty and resistance, is like…
Sy Hoekstra: This new book, Jonathan?
Jonathan Walton: Oh [laughs]. Hopefully, there will be a new book.
Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan is pitching a book around to some publishers. That's what Jonathan just told you without really thinking about it [laughter].
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I did. It's explicitly about things like this. That's all I'll say.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Pray. Pray for success for Jonathan's pitching.
Jonathan Walton: Please do.
We Can Fight Prison Slave Labor with Legislation, and Praying to Burn the System Down
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I think for me, this is one of those things where the… going back to the AP article, the ubiquitousness of it, is such that I don't… Like basically what they're saying in this article is, you can't avoid buying food that was produced by prison slave labor. And because we just, you don't know. There's no way for you to tell if a thing you're picking up off the shelf came from that or not. Unless you're like eating something you grew in your backyard, basically [laughs]. So it's like, I think the answer here to me has to be policy based. And actually, the article does mention, there are I think 12 states this year who have on their ballot, basically provisions to get rid of the prison labor exception to the ban on slavery in their state constitutions. So regardless of what the federal constitution says, the state constitution can ban prison slave labor, and then in that state, it will be banned. So it can, regardless whether the federal constitution ever changes, it can still be fought in other ways. It could just be fought through legislation. Any State Assembly, or even Congress, could just pass laws. So that's I think the level at which we need to operate here, at least for the time being, because there isn't currently, like at this very moment, there is not a way for me to tell whether what I'm buying came from a prison. So I don't know. That's kind of where my head is at when I think about this problem. Also pray. Pray for the… I'm like thinking about how much do I actually get into my own feelings here? Because what I want to pray for is the just immediate and violent destruction of systems [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Hey, listen. You can pray a Psalm 10 [Sy laughs]! There's no problem with that, God can answer it. That's the… It's on him! It's on him to answer the prayer. You just pray.
Sy Hoekstra: You could just open all the doors at Rikers, and then maybe on the way out, they could set a little fire right? That'd be fine, Jesus [laughs]? That's kind of how I feel. Yeah, so that's sort of where I end up. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that. Should we wrap up?
Jonathan Walton: Well, I mean, we are going to release a resource about how to process these hard things. So you can look out for that.
Sy Hoekstra: Yes, we are. We're going to have a little PDF soon that's available for anyone who signs up for the email list, will be able to get a little resource that Jonathan is putting together based on his vast experience of trying to emotionally and spiritually process difficult topics like this, just to give you some pointers. I just read the draft of it. I'm excited to dig into editing it soon.
Jonathan Walton: Amen.
Outro, Credits, and Outtake
Sy Hoekstra: Alright everybody. Thank you so much for listening. We will have more information on season four coming to you relatively soon. So hang tight. If you're not on the email list, go get on the email list. No way, you have to be… No, that's not true.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, subscribers.
Sy Hoekstra: No, hang on. Somebody could be listening to this episode, they're just like with one of our subscribers.
Jonathan Walton: Oh, that’s true [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: You specifically, if you're not on the email list [laughs], go to KTFPress.com and sign up. Thank you so much to the rest of you who are obviously already our incredible paid subscribers who we so appreciate, and without whom we simply would not exist. We just thank you so much for your support.
Speaking of your support, if you wouldn't mind going to Apple or Spotify and giving us a five-star review. We really need them, they help us so much. When people go to look us up, it just makes us look good. Leave a written review if you're on Apple as well. We just got another one. By the way, it takes like two months. Apple only updates those every like two months or so I think.
Jonathan Walton: Oh really?
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So I just saw one from November, that I won't say his last name, but that are lovely and wonderful, and always so supportive. Subscriber Adam wrote on there, and we just, we appreciate it, Adam. Thank you.
Jonathan Walton: We appreciate you.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's very encouraging when we get those. So thank you, all of you, please. Five- star review on Apple or Spotify. Just open up your phone right now. Go ahead, do it. Go ahead. Right now [laughs]. Reach to your pocket. Come on. \
Alright. Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our transcripts are by Joyce Ambale. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess, and we will see you all in a month. Thank you so much.
\[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Sy Hoekstra: You can't avoid purchasing… Hang on one second [some shuffling noises and the clunk of a phone on a desk]. I just had to turn off my Bluetooth because the phone started ringing and then my computer started ringing [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Yes, that's exactly what happens.
Sy Hoekstra: Because I have it hooked up to Phone Link…
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