the end of slavery in the United States,

observed annually on June 19.

Happy Juneteenth, everybody.

It's Kalen Allen here.

We are back with OMKalen.

And today is a very special episode,

for we are celebrating the one holiday that often

gets overlooked, Juneteenth.

Joining me are two very special friends of mine,

actor, producer, and human rights advocate Angelica Ross,

and civil rights organizer and activist and co-founder

of Campaign Zero, DeRay Mckesson.

How are you both doing today?

[INAUDIBLE]

I'm good.

I'm good.

So much work to be done and so much great

work already happening.

I've never been more hopeful about where we

can go for moments like these.

It's been a very challenging and interesting time that we've all

been experiencing.

And we're all in different areas.

Angelica, you're in Atlanta, and I'm here in Los Angeles.

And DeRay, you are in New York.

So we're all experiencing this on different types of levels.

So we're just going to jump into this.

And I think my first question that I

want to start with is, why are we taught the origin of July 4

but not Juneteenth?

Let's just be real.

We know why.

They don't want us to know our rights.

The more we, as black people, are

conscious about the whole history,

the more you can't sit down.

But when you look at our history,

slavery was still happening 155 years ago.

That's not that long ago, OK?

And even though the Emancipation Proclamation

was issued in 1863, it wasn't until June 19, 1865

that all slaves were actually free.

When we talk about "the slaves were freed," I guess,

because it's like, we realize now

that we haven't really been freed,

or that America just created a different version of slavery.

Part of what it means to usher in a new world

is that we actually have to put those constraints out of mind

and say, you know what?

If these weren't the rules, what would we do, right?

What do we deserve?

And that's part of the fight, right?

Is that we actually fight for what we deserve.

We don't fight for what we think we can get.

And I think that we have to help people get to that place.

This system of white supremacy has done such a number

on our community that it has created not only trauma,

but it has created internalized white supremacy.

So when you have internalized white supremacy,

you have black people who have a white perspective

against themselves and their communities about how

to get through this white-centered world.

All black lives matter.

But I think sometimes people will then--

especially white people looking in--

are like, well, isn't that the same as "all lives matter?"

To zoom all the way out, right?

It's a reminder that anytime we focus solely

on black people, people struggle with it, right?

When I go to a breast cancer rally,

I'm focused on breast cancer.

That doesn't mean I don't believe

in the end of other forms of cancer.

It doesn't mean that I don't care about those, that I'm not

rallying for those.

But in this moment, at this walk, at this march,

I'm here about breast cancer, right?

Yes.

So that's how I think about-- when I say Black Lives Matter,

it is, like, we are focused on this issue right here.

That doesn't mean we aren't thinking about other issues.

That doesn't mean we aren't organizing around issues.

But in this moment, in this rally, in this march,

we are marshaling resources towards this.

And if it was true that all lives matter,

we wouldn't be out here in the first place, right?

Because it would just be true.

White people can trust America in ways that we,

as people of color, cannot.

So the conversation then has to go back to trust.

That means I can't trust you.

If you trust in a system that I can't trust,

that means I can't trust you.

Now, DeRay, I want to talk about the 8

Can't Wait, which is a campaign that

introduces eight policies that can decrease police violence.

8 Can't Wait-- when we launched it,

I think that we probably could've done some better

framing around the purpose.

I've read a lot of the criticisms about the plan.

I don't think about this as reform.

I think about this as harm reduction.

I think about this as the path to transformation.

And our idea was really simple.

We were like, if there are any police officers that

exist tomorrow anywhere, they should have less power.

Now, I was talking to the chief of staff

of a major senator in the US Senate,

and he said to me-- he's like, DeRay, oh, we've

already banned chokeholds all over the country.

And I'm like, we haven't--

Check.

--actually.

We've only banned chokeholds in 28 of the 100 largest cities.

That's not a majority of the country.

And we actually haven't even banned strangleholds in all 28

of those places.

So the different-- why this matters

is that a chokehold is your airway.

A stranglehold is the muscles.

So I heard people be like-- they were like, well, chokeholds

were banned in New York City, DeRay.

Why are you even--

it's clear.

It doesn't matter.

And you're like, well, you know what

wasn't banned in New York City?

Strangleholds.

So the moment Garner gets killed,

you know what the police union said?

They said, we didn't choke him.

We put him in a stranglehold.

We don't want to argue semantics with you.

Just ban it all.

When we think about defund, that's also a simple idea,

right?

Who should respond to a mental health crisis?

An expert.

Who should respond to suicidal ideation?

An expert-- a mental health expert,

not somebody with a gun.

Who should respond to homelessness?

An expert, right?

In LA, a third of all uses of force

are used against a homeless person.

That doesn't make sense, right?

The police are the first people to tell us that they're not

social workers.

And we should just say, we agree.

We agree.

And we should move all that money and all those resources

somewhere else.

So in the United States, if you get killed by a police officer

and a newspaper doesn't write about it,

you don't exist in any of the three big databases.

So that, in and of itself, is wild.

Angelica, I want to know how you've seen, since your career,

since you've entered the public life in this way,

how have you-- have you seen the industry change?

Have you seen culture shift around some of these issues?

As a black trans actor in Hollywood, in the industry,

I will tell you it's as if my fairy godmother, Ryan Murphy,

gave me a ticket to the ball--

OK.

--and a ball that I would never have been invited to,

and I'm still not invited to when

it comes to certain places, like BET and other platforms,

you know what I mean?

They just still don't invite us to the ball.

So you call us to tokenize us whenever it makes sense to you

that you know trans people.

So in order to not lose their jobs, they're showing us a face

that they're OK, but there's no action.

There's no heart.

They'll talk about black men being murdered,

but they will barely talk about Breonna Taylor, let alone

Tony McDade and Nina Pop.

I love that you brought up this fairy godmother

thing, Angelica.

Ellen was my fairy godmother.

And what is interesting to me, and what I've always

struggled with, is that sometimes I

do feel as though I do get a little bit of pushback

from the black gay community sometimes

because of my proximity to whiteness.

But that does not threaten my blackness.

I know that I have an audience that is majority white.

And so I look like--

I said, OK.

So in this movement, how can I best advocate?

How do I, in my best way possible, educate?

Because another thing that's very important to realize--

You are white famous, Kalen.

Baby, we went to Disney, and we couldn't-- oh, Kalen!

Every white person within a 5-foot radius

was trying to take a selfie with Kalen.

So the question becomes, how do we

make sure that our values stay present in every room we're in,

right?

And we make it really clear that we

don't compromise because of our proximity

to anything, let alone whiteness--

Yes.

--right?

When I walked into the set of Pose season one,

everyone in the hair and makeup trailer was white.

And let alone, nobody was trans.

And I'm like, how the heck is this going on

on a black and trans show?

And Ryan-- he always listens.

So everything that I--

I push, every time, to the point where I cause tension.

But I always cause tension in ways

that people know that I'm not trying to completely

disrupt and dismantle the entire thing,

but I am trying to create more opportunities.

And by speaking up, last year, a black trans woman

was nominated for an Emmy for makeup--

Deja Smith-- because we're speaking up

and trying to get these folks into the room.

Yeah.

OK, so with Pride also being in June,

and also talking about Juneteenth,

I want to know, how do you balance

the fact of being black within the Black Lives Matter

movement while also having to deal with being queer?

How do you handle the duality of that all?

For me, I have been challenged to reimagine pride.

And I think that's what's happening

as we reimagine America.

I think that's one of the ways that we

shift the narrative from "all black lives

matter" to just black pride.

All of these BLM, Black Lives Matter, protests

that are happening in Atlanta, in Chicago, in LA, all

across the world--

again, like I said earlier, they just organically turn back

into a pride parade--

like a pride thing for black people--

black pride.

And that's what's centered there.

Then we don't have to separate.

We don't have to balance.

I have a complicated history of Pride,

because it wasn't even a thing in Baltimore.

Pride wasn't real to me until I became an adult.

As a kid growing up, I would have

died to see somebody wear a rainbow flag.

So some of my relationship with Pride

is, I wear those things, because I

want to signal to people around me in a way

that I wish that somebody had signaled to me,

especially before I had any public statements about who

I loved or my identity.