Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns

Tiffany Dena Loftin has been in this work for over two decades — from a TRIO student at UC Santa Cruz organizing against tuition hikes, to leading the United States Student Association, to fighting for student debt cancellation at the NAACP and the Debt Collective. She's a labor organizer, a voting rights strategist, a founding member of Freedom Side, and one of the most disciplined relationship builders in the movement. She also served on the advisory board when Dr. David J. Johns led the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. Today, she steps into the classroom for the first time.

This conversation goes everywhere it needs to go. They talk about how authoritarianism uses isolation as a weapon — and why people are making intentional, physical, sometimes spontaneous choices to gather again. They get into what it actually means to find an organizing home when you care about everything. Tiffany tells the truth about the Debt Collective, the SAVE program, and what borrowers sitting in default right now actually need to do. And she closes with a charge that lands hard: we are not going to get free being comfortable.

We're dropping this episode the week of Juneteenth. The promise of freedom is real. The weight of this moment is real. Both are true at the same time.

Find your organizing home. Not tomorrow. Now.

SHOW NOTES

Connect with Tiffany Instagram, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Threads, Bluesky: @tiffanydloftin How We Get Free

Podcast: @howwegetfreepod

Organizations & Resources Mentioned
Freedom Summer 2026 / All Roads Lead to the South blackpowerwarroom.com/dayofaction 
The Debt Collective — the first union of debtors in the United States debtcollective.org
United States Student Association (USSA) usstudentassociation.org and @usstudentassociation.

The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) ticas.org
The Education Trust edtrust.org
NAACP naacp.org 
Referenced in This Episode:
DeJuana Thompson / Black Voters Matter Courtland Cox, SNCC veteran and mentor Carmen Berkeley — on building relationships, not titles Marshall Ganz — on relationships as the currency of power (Harvard Kennedy School) Kingian Nonviolence Certificate Program
Support the Show spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support

Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter is back in the classroom — and this time, the lesson is urgent.

One week out from Equity Week 2026, Dr. Hunter — professor of sociology and African American studies, author of Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation, and NBJC board member — walks us through everything you need to know. Why the week exists. Who it was built for. What it asks of you.

Then we go deeper. The Trump administration’s $1.7 billion fund to compensate January 6th participants is not just wrong — it’s a moral inversion. Dr. Hunter breaks it down: the difference between hush money and reparations, what the Central Park Five actually had to wait for, and why enslaved people didn’t need pardons because they never committed a crime.

He also gives the class a new frame: reparative justice. What it is, why it covers everything from police reform to educational equity, and why — when it comes to reparations — our work has already been done.

Equity Week 2026 is June 10–13 in Washington, D.C. Register at nbjc.org/equity-week.

EQUITY WEEK 2026June 10–13, 2026 | Washington, D.C.
Register: nbjc.org/equity-week
Equity Ball tickets: NBJC Eventbrite page (or pay at the door)
OUT on the Hill Advocacy Day — meet directly with lawmakers and their staff
Equity Ball at the Historic Howard Theatre

NBJC RESOURCESnbjc.org
nbjc.org/nbjc-policy-agenda

LEGISLATION REFERENCEDH.R. 40 — Federal Reparations Commission Bill (Rep. Ayanna Pressley)
The Third Reconstruction Bill — Rep. Barbara Lee (Poor People’s Campaign)
G.I. Restoration Bill — Rep. Seth Moulton, with Rep. Clyburn
Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Act — Rep. Jamie Raskin

IN THE NEWStheGrio: Trump’s $1.7B Fund for J6 Participants — May 20, 2026
Central Park Five / Exonerated Five — context for the fund comparison

BOOKS & ADDITIONAL RESOURCESRadical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation — Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter
Substack: open.substack.com/drdavidjjohns

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

There are moments in this work when you sit across from someone and realize you're not just talking to a lawyer. You're talking to a son. A keeper. A man who has spent his entire adult life making sure that what happened in Greenwood — and what Greenwood actually was before they burned it down — is never forgotten and never left unanswered.

This week, we’re joined by civil rights attorney, author, and Justice for Greenwood Foundation executive director Damario Solomon-Simmons. His first book, Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America, just dropped — and it is a history, a legal thriller, and a blueprint all at once.

We talked about what it felt like to knock on Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle's door at 106 years old and ask her to run toward justice one more time. We talked about Greenwood as a love story. We talked about exhaustion, rest as a revolutionary act, and what it means to keep fighting when the courts keep saying no. And Damario left us with a name we all need to know: Hal Singer — a survivor, a musician, a man on hospice who still wanted to fight — whose words became the foundation of the Justice for Greenwood program.

Get the book. Get in community. Show up.

Class is in session.

SHOW NOTES
Book: Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America Available now wherever books are sold. Community toolkit (free): redeemanation.com Join the 11,000 Campaign: redeemanation.com

Justice for Greenwood Foundation: justiceforgreenwood.org Get involved in genealogy work, legacy protection, narrative work, and legal advocacy.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

This one is different. No guest. Just me—and the truth I can't stop sitting with.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is gone. Not weakened. Not under threat. Gone. The legal architecture that turned 7% Black voter registration in Mississippi into 60%—dismantled, decision by decision, by a Supreme Court that was never neutral and was never on our side.

But that's not even the whole story. Because while the courts were killing the VRA, the Justice Department was being turned into a weapon. FBI agents raided a Black state senator's office mid-day—Fox News already on the scene—while allies under federal investigation had their evidence destroyed. Ballots from Fulton County are in federal custody. Arizona. Michigan. They are building the architecture of election interference before the midterms. In public. And most people don't even know it's happening

This episode is about all of it. The Proud Boys as a militia. The Roberts Court as an antidemocratic enforcement mechanism. The Southern Strategy, sixty years old and running on steroids. And the organizing tradition—Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Hungary's opposition movement—that proves rigged maps can be beaten and stolen futures can be reclaimed.

This is the class I didn't want to have to teach. But you need it. Pull up.

SHOW NOTES
The death of the Voting Rights Act—Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Brnovich v. DNC (2021), and the April 29, 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which Justice Elena Kagan called "all but a dead letter."
The pardon of 1,500+ January 6th participants and the DOJ's move to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders.
The FBI raid on Fulton County's election center, the subpoenas targeting Arizona and Michigan 2024 ballots, and what it means for the midterms.
The mid-day FBI raid on Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas's office, with Fox News cameras already rolling—and not one charge filed.
The two-tier justice system in plain sight: evidence destroyed for allies, prosecutions launched against opponents.
Elie Mystal's proposal to add 20 justices to structurally change the Supreme Court's incentive for extremism.
How Hungary's opposition built 208 local chapters and 50,000 poll watchers—and won a supermajority against a gerrymandered map.
The Afrofuturist tradition of Ella Baker and Bayard Rustin as the organizing inheritance we carry forward.
Black Power War Room — blackpowerwarroom.com 
National Black Justice Coalition — nbjc.org 
NBJC Equity Week — nbjc.org

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and — officially, loudly, and necessarily — a published author. Her debut book, Black. Single. Mother.: Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging, dropped in March 2026, and it is already doing exactly what the best books do: making people uncomfortable in the most clarifying ways.

In this conversation, Jamilah and I go deep. We talk about what Aunt Toni Morrison taught us about writing the books we need—and what it means to actually do it. We trace the wreckage of the 1965 Moynihan Report, the myth of the absentee Black father, and the way respectability politics decides which single Black mothers this culture chooses to celebrate and which ones it chooses to punish. We talk about Nia Long, Taraji P. Henson, and Cardi B. We talk about the African ancestral village and why every-other-weekend is not enough. And we talk about what it costs all of us—not just women—when we fail to love one another fully.

This is one of those episodes you share. With the single mothers in your life. With the men who need to hear it. With anyone who's ever made an assumption about what a Black family is supposed to look like

The class is in session.

SHOW NOTES

Resources & References
Black. Single. Mother. by Jamilah Lemieux — [BOOK LINK PLACEHOLDER]
Jamilah Lemieux on Instagram: @jamilahlemieux 
Jamilah's conversation with Nia Long — https://www.playboy.com/read/entertainment-culture/the-playboy-interview-nia-long?srsltid=AfmBOoocTvvAgpTBuKE2yVFLct-1QDEHfeQspaIQBISiJT7GC0s81gaP 
"Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood" by James Baldwin — originally published in Playboy, 1985; submitted to Walter Lowe Jr., the magazine's first Black editor. Essay also published as "Here Be Dragons" in The Price of the Ticket (1985).
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (The Moynihan Report, 1965) — U.S. Department of Labor

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.