Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.: Hey y'all. Saidu here. So this episode is the second part in my reporting from George Floyd Square, and if you haven't yet, please go back and listen to the first episode. It's called "The Fist Without The Fuss." I love that name. And just a warning, this episode deals with some heavy themes and has some strong language in it. All right, we'll get started right after this short break.
[00:00:25.20]***
Saidu: So when I first got to Minneapolis and pulled up to George Floyd Square, I noticed there was this really beautiful green lawn just north of it. It seemed kind of serene, like lots of green grass, a few lawnchairs and a little pond nearby. It looked like somewhere I could go to kick it after a long day and read a book or something. You know, listen to music. So one day when I was out there, I finally decided to get a little closer.
Saidu: The lawn had everything I expected: birds, ducks swimming in the pond, and there was barely anybody there. But there was also these small white objects sticking out of the ground. I kinda knew what it was as soon as I saw it, and it let me know that even this little oasis was very much part of the occupation of George Floyd Square.
Saidu: This green lawn is the Say Their Names Memorial. It's seven rows of white signs cut into the shape of tombstones. Each stone is inscribed with the name and age of a person killed by police. It has the city where it happened, like New York, LA, Houston, and then it has a Black Power fist at the top of each stone. And at the bottom it says "Rest In Power." This makeshift cemetery, this art installation, it was set up last summer by two artists who wanted to make the loss of these people feel more tangible, more real. And it worked.
Saidu: When I walked through this memorial, I felt the same way I felt when I was inside the square looking at the George Floyd memorial. I felt heavy. But when I walked out of the Say Their Names Memorial, when I picked up my head, there was a man sitting under this little tree—like he was waiting for me.
Saidu: You've been here all day, and you've been here for how long now?
Remi Douah: Since last summer.
Saidu: You've been here since last summer?
Remi Douah: Yeah, since last year. I've been sitting here, yeah. For me, this is a special place. When I come here, I can be here for, you know, straight eight hours because it's calm and it's peaceful.
Saidu: His name is Dr. Remi Douah, and it didn't take me very long to realize that he's an African dad. It wasn't his accent, it wasn't his wire-framed glasses and sensible sneakers. It was that, almost as soon as I sat down to talk to him, the man pulled out a pack of plantain chips and handed them to me. He said it looked like I was hungry. I was, and I ate the hell out of those chips. Apparently he keeps them on him because he says sometimes his son forgets to eat too.
Saidu: Dr. Douah is from the Ivory Coast, one of the countries bordering my country, Sierra Leone. So the chips made sense. We got to talking, and he told me does this a lot with people who come through here.
Remi Douah: Even when I started doing it, I didn't say "Oh, I'm gonna do this." I brought my chairs and next thing I know people come out and they want to talk. I said, "Huh, that's something interesting." And then I realized that this is so profound that you can't go through it and walk away. You feel like you gotta talk to somebody, you know?
Saidu: Yeah, I definitely agree with that because when I went through here I was so overwhelmed. And I still don't even really have the words to describe what I felt. All I have in my head is images. I mean, I had an image of looking at a name. I don't remember the name, but I just remember the age, and it said seven years old. And after that, I couldn't really look at anything else. I just, like, walked between the makeshift tombstones, and didn't really have words. I just have this sort of like knot still in my throat that I can't even really untangle. So when I came out of here and saw you [laughs], I looked up and you kinda just smiled at me or something like that. And I was like, "Oh, all right. This guy's over here. Looks like he wants to say something to me. Let's see what he has to say." And then you just started talking and I was like, "All right. Well, he wants to talk. Let's talk."
Remi Douah: And I think that's—well, human beings are shy, you know? Especially when you come to this sober place. The notion is always to be quiet and don't feel like talking to anybody, but it should be the reverse because there are so many names. And you wonder what could they have become? You know, so it's hard to swallow. And in your case, your head was down. I said, "This dude is fucked up. I need to talk to him." And so that's why I kind of wave at you and I say, "Come on down. Sit down, let's talk a little bit."
Saidu: After the first time I met him, I kept coming back here to find Dr. Douah. And we'd always chop it up for a really long time, too. Every time it felt like this little break from all the other stuff I was reporting on at the square. We talked about fatherhood. We talked about immigrant life in America, how Africans don't belong in the cold yet here we were. I feel like if anybody walked by us, they would've seen two dark-skinned Black men laughing and eating plantain chips in front of a cemetery. They wouldn't have been able to see what was happening beneath all that—we were processing grief.
Saidu: This is the kind of thing that happens pretty often at the occupation. More often than any heated debates over barricades, leverage, or even the future of the square. On the day to day, it's mostly just people trying to make it through. There's been so much trauma here in the last year, and people are dealing with it the best ways they know how.
Saidu: Like this one day, I heard someone playing music at one end of the square that made someone else at the other end just start dancing. I saw two dudes playing one on one with a basketball that barely had any air in it, and they were still cooking each other. I went to a poetry slam at the square, a movie night. I saw Marcia and Jeanelle between their work, hitting a few moves at the gas station. There was room for all that. And this cemetery, this cemetery made room for something else: solitude and reflection over the thing that brought us all here in the first place: grief.
Saidu: Dr. Douah has been out here talking to people for over a year, helping them process their grief. I got the sense it was helping him too, but through what I couldn't really tell just yet. Who was this man who kept showing up with snacks at a cemetery?
Remi Douah: I'm here to listen, you know? But today you're making me talk, so we're reversing the roles. And it's all good, you know?
Saidu: I'm Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. and this is Resistance—a show about refusing to accept things as they are. Today, we're gonna kick it with Dr. Douah.
Saidu: We're sitting on a hill facing the cemetery, and Dr. Douah has his backpack full of goodies and a blanket next to him. Obviously way more chill than I am, which is nice because sometimes really heavy things like this cemetery in front of us, sometimes they require someone who can bring a level of comfort and ease to the whole thing.
Saidu: But he starts telling me this story, right? About his first interaction with American police, and I'm immediately just like, oh, this man might be too chill. Like, way too chill for his own good. It was 1991. Dr. Douah was a young academic, and he and his homie had just gotten a Fulbright Scholarship. They were on a roadtrip across Michigan to give a big presentation at a university.
Remi Douah: So it was me and my buddy fresh out of out of Africa, right? Fresh out of the Ivory Coast. So we rent a car, we get on our way. And then a police officer stopped us on the road. So I managed to park on the side. And so, you know, in Africa, at least in the Ivory Coast and many African countries, when the police stops you, what do you do? You put a little $20, you know, in your hand with your driver's license and you get out of your car.
Saidu: Oh my God!
Remi Douah: So you get out of your car and you give him your driver's license and a little $20, right? So my buddy tells me, "Dude, we're in America. We got to up our game. You must pay at least $200."
Saidu: [laughs]
Remi Douah: [laughs] I'm like, "I don't have no $200 to give this police officer." And so I said, "Well, let me give him my passport and my driver's license." So I open the door of the car and I walk toward the police officer.
Saidu: Oh, man.
Remi Douah: And, you know, with my driver's license and my passport in my hand. And so the guy says, "Freeze." And I was, you know, in 1991, my English was not that great, and I didn't understand American colloquialism.
Saidu: Oh, wow!
Remi Douah: So we in July, and he's telling me to freeze? I'm like, "Dude, I'm not cold. Why would I freeze?" So in the back of the moment I'm processing his language and I say, "Officer, I just wanted to show you my driver's license and my passport because I'm going to a conference and I'm presenting at a conference. I don't want to be late." So I'm telling him and I keep walking in his direction. And then he said, "Stop." I said, "Why would I stop? Listen, I want to make your work easy. Anyway, you're going to look at my driver's license, right? So I want to give it to you right now." So he say, "I'm going to shoot you." Yes, he told me he was going to shoot me. And in my head, you know, shooting, I did not understand that expression "To shoot."
Saidu: You didn't understand? [laughs]
Remi Douah: I didn't know. I was coming off the boat, like you said. So he says, "I was going to shoot you." And in my head, I'm not a football. I'm not a basketball. Why would he shoot me? And I said, "Why would you shoot me? It's not necessary." You know? Then he said—he asked me to stop. I said, "Okay, I'm going to stop anyway if you want to—you know, you're gonna look at my driver's license, right?"
Saidu: I don't believe that you did not understand him saying, "I'm gonna shoot you."
Remi Douah: No, because to shoot somebody ...
Saidu: Shoot a gun?
Remi Douah: Is Ivory Coast a gun culture? It's a different world. We're not in a gun culture. So there was no relevance in my head in terms of everything he was saying.
Saidu: Wow.
Remi Douah: So finally, he come close to me, right? And he was shaking, he was sweating bullet. And he said, "I almost killed you." I said, "Was that necessary over a driver's license? I was going to show you my driver's license." I had no idea what was going on in this country in 1991. I remember it. That was when my fear started kicking.
Saidu: Oh, that's when the fear developed.
Remi Douah: Yeah. Before I didn't have any fear of the police. And it was reinforced and documented by my research because I was a major in American Studies and urban planning so I could see the literature, and all this garbage and now seeing movies, I'm like, "Man, I would have been dead." And then here, looking at the cemetery, you understand that I could have been shot in 1991 in my first encounter with the police. It was a matter of the universe saying that we still need you here, right? But everything that I did was wrong. [laughs]
Saidu: Every single thing.
Saidu: While Dr. Douah was telling me this story, his son Isak was sitting right next to him shaking his head. He'd heard this one before. The world his dad had grown up in back in Africa was so different from Isak's world here in the States. In a way, his dad was able to maintain his innocence about American policing all the way up until that traffic stop. Isak was only 16 when he learned about that stuff. He was protesting before he even learned how to drive.
Isak Douah: We fought so hard for, like, police reform back when Philando Castillo was murdered. I mean, they got that shit on tape, tape, tape. Like, it was 4K, and he got let off scot-free. So it kind of just got my, like, faith in reform, was getting chipped away and chipped away. And then when George Floyd was murdered so egregiously, I was like, I don't know what type—there's no reforming this.
Saidu: Isak's 23 years old. He's a tall dude. His mother's height, and his father's round eyes and charming smile make him look like he belongs in a magazine. A couple years ago, he left Minneapolis to chase his dreams of starting an apparel company in Amsterdam, but last summer, Isak had to put all that stuff on hold.
Isak Douah: I was watching my friends on Live choke on tear gas that the police and the National Guard were shooting at them, catching rubber bullets to the dome, all kinds of crazy shit. So I was feeling super helpless out in Amsterdam because I was sitting mad cozy in my, you know, government student housing apartment. I could open the window, hear birds like this type shit. And meanwhile, my friends in my own neighborhood were just like in a war zone. And that's honestly, like, what's stressed me out the most, so ...
Saidu: That made you feel uneasy. Made you feel—did you feel a little bit of guilt?
Isak Douah: Yeah. I mean, definitely. I just felt like unfair, but also just felt like I wanted to pull my weight. You know, I still had, like, about a month left of school. I was still in university at the time, but I said, "Fuck it." And booked the next flight back to Minneapolis.
Saidu: Okay. So you come back. Then what?
Isak Douah: So I remember I got off the plane and my parents were like, you know what I'm saying, you want to come home, take a nap? I was like, take me to George Floyd Square, like, right now. So we went. I think we might've stopped by the crib real quick. I picked up a vest and then I came here. And it was mad emotional walking through the square, catching up with people I haven't seen literally, like, in years since I moved away. And then I came to the cemetery and I remember when I saw Philando Castile's name.
Isak Douah: I honestly was just like closing my eyes, trying not to cry. Tears was running into my mask. I was like, fuck, snot all in my mask. I was just standing there for a long time and they were probably like, "N**** we got to go. Like, we've been here for a minute." But I just could not move. And I was like, looking down and I was just trying to keep it, like, low key. And then people noticed eventually.
Remi Douah: Then that's when I realized that there was something wrong.
Saidu: What did he do? Like, what ...?
Remi Douah: I mean, he was sobbing. He was crying, literally, you know? And Black boys seldom cry. You know, if a young man decide to cry, it means that it's serious.
Isak Douah: Like, I cried for, like, the first time in, like, years. Just because I mean, George Floyd, like, obviously he's the—his murder has been so sensationalized that it's like "the" murder. But, you know, for me back in the day when we were protesting for justice for Philando, I feel like we failed him.
Remi Douah: And so me as the father, I'm taken aback. I'm saying, "Man, my son is—something is happening," you know? And now I'm crying, you know? And his mom is also emotional. And we sat down somewhere around here. And then as we were walking home, I said, "You know, we need to do something about it."
Saidu: After the break, Dr. Douah and Isak figure out what they're gonna do. We'll be right back.
[00:16:34.16]***
Saidu: Welcome back. So I'm sitting with Dr. Remi Douah and his son Isak Douah on this really nice lawn just north of George Floyd Square. We're staring at the Say Their Names Memorial, this makeshift cemetery that was put up to memorialize people who've been killed by police. The first time Dr. Douah brought his son out here, the first time Isak set foot in GFS, it was a really emotional experience for him, but he told his dad he was gonna keep coming back to start helping out with the occupation.
Saidu: And Dr. Douah, in true African dad fashion, tried to stop Isak from coming back. He said it was too dangerous. But Isak, in true American son "Don't tell me what to do" fashion, didn't listen to his dad. To Isak, he didn't come all the way from Amsterdam to just sit around and mope. There was so much work to do to stop tragedies like this from happening again. So Isak kept coming back to GFS, to volunteer any way he could.
Saidu: Isak has a permit to carry in Minneapolis, and he had a decent amount of experience around weapons, so he decided to offer his services to one of the many security teams at the square.
Isak Douah: It was all these different families, friend groups or honestly, gangs that were just doing their own patrols of the neighborhood and making sure shit was straight because there was white supremacists from all over the country driving around, setting fire to people's homes and lighting shit on fire and intimidating people doing fucked shit. So people were trying to come home at night and ,like, I knew I could help.
Isak Douah: Isak: So I just showed up one night, and I met everybody, learned their, like, code names. To this day I don't know these n****s names. Can you imagine that? I was like, "Hello, my name is Isak Douah." They were like, "Oh, I'm Pocket." You know what I'm saying? And I'm like, "Oh, snap!" [laughs] Anyways, I met all of them and they took me in, taught me all kinds of stuff. I learned how to, you know, use walkie talkies, like, program them. I learned how to correctly wear a vest. All the different, you know, ratings of bulletproof plates or bullet-resistant plates and a myriad of other information that I never would have thought I would need a use for. You know what I'm saying? They also taught me how to—I saw them de-escalate situations and learned so much from how to do that.
Saidu: Do you remember a time when you saw somebody do a de-escalation and it was successful?
Isak Douah: Yeah. So I mean, there was a time that someone came to the square, a community member was just like kind of drunk and belligerent and, like, someone saw that, like, they had a gun on them. And they disarmed him. And I was like, you know, if someone had called the police, they would have come shot that man. But since they knew bro, they knew dude's first and last name, they knew where he stayed, they knew he was in a terrible position, they knew he had, like, mental health issues. They could handle the situation way more surgically. And I was really impressed by that. So, you know, later when I had to disarm someone ...
Saidu: Oh you disarmed somebody?
Isak Douah: Oh, yeah, yeah. Later in the summer, I seen dude stumbling around and playing with it and passing it to people and laughing and showing off and shit. So, you know, me and some of the comrades, we walked up on dude and just told him, like, "Hey." You know what I'm saying? "You're making us all feel really antsy and itchy doing what you're doing right now. I think you should just call it a night, go home and sleep it off, and we can talk about it in the morning."
Isak Douah: And then he was just like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever." He flipped it around, grabbed the barrel, passed me it, put it in my face and was like "Take it." And I was like, "I'm not trying take it. I want you to leave, please. Like, just go home." And he was like, "Nah, take it from me. I want you to take it." Eventually I was like, "All right." I took it from him, stuffed it in my bag, and he stormed off into the neighborhood. Never seen folks again. Never even came back for the gun. So I feel like me, at the time I was 22, I had no training as a security guard. You know what I'm saying? I'm not like—for those of you listening to this, I'm not like a big, tough guy, you know what I'm saying? But I had the ability to de-escalate that super tense situation, and everybody walked away with their life. And if police can't do that shit, it shows you a lot about their training and, like, what their job even is, you know?
Saidu: Day after day at the square, Isak was facing dicey situations. And even at 22, he was handling them pretty well. But there were some situations that no one at any age should be expected to handle.
Isak Douah: On Juneteenth, I was feeling really great. Me and all the homies was here, it was a big celebration. Girls was out. Like it was fun, you know what I'm saying? But they were bustin' fireworks. And then, like, I heard some, like, gunfire, like, in between some fireworks. And I was like, "Hold up. Was that gunshots? I don't know." And then a bunch of people came rushing past me and running away from it. And I was like, "Okay, so there's definitely gunfire." You know what I'm saying? I'm wearing the vest. I got the walkie talkie, I'm hearing the walkie talkie chirping. I ran towards where I'd heard, you know, all this gunfire. By the time I got there, Murphy Ranks had been shot, like, multiple times and our, like, medics, you know, got there maybe right before I did. And, you know, they, awesome medics I mean, they did their their best to keep him with us, but the type of bullets that stuck, I mean, he was done for. But yeah, that was a gruesome scene, man. That was rough. And I remember, you know, thinking like this is gonna stick with me for the rest of my life. And I wasn't wrong.
Isak Douah: I called my dad right away and was like, "Yo, they just—like, they shot this n****. It was terrible."
Saidu: His dad wasn't far away. This whole time Dr. Douah had been here at the Say Their Names Memorial right outside the square, just waiting for his son to call. Dr. Douah had clocked his son's grief the first time he broke down out here, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it showed up again. He also knew he couldn't stop Isak from coming back here to help the occupation, so instead of fighting him on it, Dr. Douah decided he would drop everything and start showing up to this green lawn. He'd bring his folding chair and his backpack—far enough to give Isak his space, close enough to respond if he ever called.
Saidu: Dr. Douah never knew when that call would come, so in the meantime he just kept showing up to this memorial, and his presence started becoming useful to other people who'd show up here. In front of this makeshift cemetery, he was becoming something of a makeshift counselor. He didn't have a degree in psychology or anything like that, but he knew how to take up space without sweating people. He knew when to speak and when to listen, the way he'd done for Isak. And as he was talking to people out here, Dr. Douah noticed that a lot of younger people who came through and sat with him were just like his son: they were struggling to make sense of their grief too.
Remi Douah: When they talk about the youth, it's a misnomer because their life experience that they have double their ages. They had to mature so quickly. You know, the lady, the young girl who recorded George Floyd's murder, she's no longer—she's an adult now. She's having adult realities. And that's the case of our children here. We robbed them. Society robbed them of their youth.
Saidu: Isak's generation and my generation literally grew up watching Black people get killed on camera. And I don't know. I feel like you see that enough times, you start to become numb. You start to turn off really important parts of yourself like sadness or anger or rage. Sometimes it's because as Black men, holding back is the safer option. And sometimes it's just because it feels pointless to have to feel all that grief over and over again. It's just easier to bottle it up and keep it pushing.
Saidu: And Isak did bottle it up. For a long time, he didn't even tell his mom what he'd seen, until one day they went on a walk together, and he finally told her what happened.
Isak Douah: When I told my mom, she was like, "Well, have you thought about, you know, seeing a therapist?" And I was like, "Oh, you know, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. I feel good, basically." I was like, "I'm straight." Because it wasn't the first time I'd seen bloodshed like that, you know what I'm saying? In the neighborhood. And she was like, "You know, don't you think you being so numb to this violence is even more reason to go?"
Isak Douah: That was one of the biggest breakthroughs for me over the summer. I was like, "Wow. Yeah, you're right. Like, just me feeling so good in this situation doesn't mean I don't need to go see help. Like, it's even more reason, actually, to go see help." So that's when I—you know, my dad introduced me to this Liberian woman, this awesome Black therapist that I've been seeing since then. And yeah, seeing my ability to navigate my own emotions after that and, like, the difference it made in my life and my mental health, I was like, I want everybody to have this.
Saidu: His dad wanted that too. Dr. Douah thought about all the young people he'd met while sitting out on the lawn who were also struggling with their mental health. He started bringing a pad of paper and a pencil to the cemetery and writing down ideas about what he could do.
Remi Douah: How do I get one youngster to overcome his or her fear of interacting with a mental health professional? That's like climbing two Mount Kilimanjaros, you know? [laughs] Because they say, "Well, you know, I don't need it. You know, I just want to fuck the police." I say, "Yeah, we're gonna fuck the police, but before you do that, let me fuck your head a little bit. Let me fuck with your brain." [laughs] I say, "Let me twist your little coconut head so that you understand that, you know, it's real. You know, it's a silent killer." And therefore, any time I come here, I'm aware of that. I'm aware that people need help. And it's very, very difficult for a human being to ask for help.
Saidu: Dr. Douah talked to enough people to know that traditional forms of therapy wouldn't work for everyone. They needed therapy that could meet people where they were.
Remi Douah: So there was this person who came, and I could see that, you know, I don't know what triggered me. I said, "Hey, listen. Here's $20. Go buy some food. Buy me a little burger, come back and then we'll talk." And he started crying, saying that he hadn't had any food in three days. I could have said, "It looks like you haven't eaten in three days," but that's insulting. But if I said, "Let's go—why don't you go, you buy us some food and we share it together." That's the route that I took. And I didn't know the person. The person could have gone with my $20. I said, "I don't care about $20." But my thing was, if I'm able to address the immediate needs then we can go further. You know, I cannot talk to you about therapy if your belly's empty. So we had to look at the food insecurity, housing insecurity. You know, maybe because of my training that I can easily see all those pieces being interconnected. It's not just about therapy. Go fuck therapy if your belly's empty, I mean, if you have no food in your stomach, why would you go talk to somebody, come home and nothing has changed in your community. I'm sorry, it's not gonna work. So I have to address it.
Saidu: Dr. Douah and Isak started an organization to address it. They called it 846s in honor of George Floyd's last moments. They wanted to normalize mental health among young people, so in the beginning, they'd pull up together at protests and interview young activists about how they were taking care of themselves. Later, they started connecting some of those people to mental health professionals. And since then, they've been raising money to help pay for the sessions. On the day to day, Dr. Douah still comes out here and sits under his tree in front of the memorial and waits for people like me: people who think they're keeping it all together, but whose faces are telling a whole different story.
Remi Douah: The main thing that I ask people when I talk to them, in the end, I said, "You know what? I'm gonna ask you three questions." So I say, "The first question is: what makes you happy?" And I swear to God, people are silent. And for the most part, they cry because they haven't had the chance to reflect on their own journey and what makes them happy, because we have so much anger in ourselves in this day and age. And rightfully so. I mean, you come out of this place, you're all fucked up, you can't even think about—there's nothing we can do to bring them back. But you are still here.
Remi Douah: So the first place is, you know, trying to get them to think about themself. I say, "You as a person. What makes you happy?" And I say, "You don't have to give me any answer now, but I want you to leave this place thinking about you, not just George Floyd. George? George is gone. What about you? You're still here." So the next question is, "When was the last time you were happy? What was that like? What were the elements? What really, you know, put in a position where you were like, you know, in jubilation, right?" And that's when you start seeing them realizing that they haven't put any energy on them, you know? But it was easy to look at what's outside and fight what's outside. But to circle back and look at their own self in the mirror, is something that people were not ready to discuss, right? And the last question is, you know, "What can we do together to bring that sense of happiness again? What—how can we co-create that? And if you need me to be a partner in that, here is my card. I can hook you up with, you know, a mental health therapist. We pay for the sessions, but I want you to be happy."
Remi Douah: In many African societies, you have the concept of the baobab tree. And, you know, same with the Ivory Coast, you will always see an elder under a tree or under a shade with a chair. And we knew that we had the freedom to go talk to them. There was always somebody you could go talk to, no matter what. And that's kind of what I'm doing here.
Saidu: Thank you so much for listening. And yo, I have a small favor to ask before you go. I want to ask for your voice in a new episode we're working on. So usually on our show we hear these big stories about people engaging in huge acts of resistance, uprooting their entire lives to make changes in their communities, like Dr. Douah and Isak. That work is hella important, but just as important are smaller acts of resistance—the tiny ways we refuse to accept things as they are in our everyday lives. Like, what are the ways you've resisted in school, or at work, or I don't know, like, standing in line at the gas station or waiting for the train? Did you work up the courage to wear your natural hair in an all-white space? Did you de-escalate a situation that could've gotten bad, or see someone who did? Or even better, did someone resist in a way that helped you out? Basically, we just want stories about small acts of resistance in your own life that had a big impact on you. And preferably, I'm looking for stories from Black, brown and Indigenous folks. Please send us your stories. We wanna hear from you. Record a voice memo on your phone and send it to resistance@gimletmedia.com.
Slide in our DMs. Please, I'm waiting. I can't wait to hear y'all's voices.
Saidu: Resistance is produced by Bethel Habte, Aaron Randle, Salifu Sesay Mack, and hosted by me: Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. Our supervising producer is Sarah McVeigh. We were edited by Lynn Levy, Brendan Klinkenberg, Lydia Polgreen and W.J. Sunday.
Saidu: Mixing, scoring and magic by Haley Shaw. Thank you, Haley. Additional scoring by Bobby Lord and Catherine Anderson. Theme by Bobby Lord. Our music supervisor is Liz Fulton. Original compositions by Drea the Vibe Dealer and Teiji Mack.
Saidu: Fact checking is by Nicole Pasulka. Thank you Nicole. Our show art is by Darien Birks of The Stuyvesants. Credits music—what you're listening to right now is "Come On In" by Lady Wray. Love this song.
Saidu: And big shout-out to the artists who created the Say Their Names Memorial: Anna Barber and Connor Wright.
Saidu: If you enjoyed this episode, tell a friend about it. I'd really appreciate it. And you can find me on Twitter at @saiduttj. You can follow us on IG @resistancepodcast. Resistance is a Spotify original podcast and Gimlet production. And today's episode marks one year since we got started. Happy anniversary to all of y'all who have been rocking with us since the start. And special thanks to those of you who followed us over to Spotify. Y'all are the real MVPs. Thank you so much. We're taking a little break to celebrate and to work on our next episode which will be out on November 10. And this one is going to be really, really good. I can't wait for y'all to hear it. All right, see you all in four weeks.