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The Current Transcript for March 26, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

DON Lemon I said no more books. I don't want to do a book. I have a full-time job. I anchor two hours a night on CNN. I have enough of responsibility. And then Charlottesville happened. And then Ahmaud Abery happened. Then, Breonna Taylor happened. And then George Floyd happened.

MATT GALLOWAY: The CNN host joins us to talk about James Baldwin, the racism he himself experienced growing up in the South, and his role as a Black journalist in this moment of racial reckoning. But in an era where the truth can feel under siege, we start with the fight against disinformation in this pandemic. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is "The Current".

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Combatting online disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines

Guests: Imran Ahmed, Fatima Tokhmafshan

MATT GALLOWAY: There are all sorts of wild claims online about the COVID-19 vaccines, they can change your DNA, they will implant a trackable microchip in you, or they just simply don't work. Just to be clear, those are all completely untrue. A House committee in Washington met last week to question Facebook, Twitter and Google about this type of disinformation circulating on their platforms. Democratic Congresswoman Kim Schreier, who's also a paediatrician, had this to say.

KIM SCHREIER: There are doctors who, after spending their entire day on the frontline fighting this virus, they come home at night and spend their scarce free time and family time fighting misinformation about vaccines online. And this misinformation, of course, comes primarily from Facebook and Twitter.

MATT GALLOWAY: A new study released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found that 65 per cent of anti-vaccine content online comes from just 12 main sources. Imran Ahmed is the center's CEO. Imran, good morning.

IMRAN AHMED: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: You have labelled these 12 sources the "Disinformation Dozen". Who are they?

IMRAN AHMED: Well, they're a mix of individuals who we've been tracking for some time now, who are the key players in the anti-vaccine industry. These are people who spread disinformation about vaccines in order to persuade people to take their false cures instead. And quite often, they're making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars from this trade.

MATT GALLOWAY: OK, so there's a couple of things in there. One is you call this an industry. These are people who are posting this information, this disinformation. They're doing it deliberately.

IMRAN AHMED: Absolutely, and look, they'e spent a lot of time thinking about what works and what doesn't to dissuade people to stop people from taking vaccines, it is a sick industry of people who seek to... and like any groomer, what they do is they try and push people away from the sources of influence that would normally give them medical information, whether that be doctors or the government or the CDC or trusted intermediaries, and instead make them the source of information or disinformation, in this case.

MATT GALLOWAY: Now, what sort of stuff are they posting?

IMRAN AHMED: Well, look, there's all sorts on there. Fundamentally they're trying to persuade them of three cases. One is that COVID isn't that dangerous. Two is that vaccines are dangerous. And three is that you can't trust doctors or health professionals. And that's really what every single one of those garish names is... is seeking to do. And that seed of disinformation once planted. First of all, it persuades people not to take a vaccine or make them hesitate about taking a vaccine that may save their life. The second thing is it brings them into the draw of the individual spreading the disinformation, who can then sell them all sorts of nonsense cures, whether it's vitamin C drips or in some cases with one of the members that "Disinformation Dozen" it's hydrogen peroxide nebulised, that's literally inhaling bleach. So we see here a really, really pernicious industry that frankly has been given a huge amount of energy through its ability to work with impunity on social media.

MATT GALLOWAY: And why are they doing this? I mean, is it really just about money?

IMRAN AHMED: Well, there's... there's always different... there's different reasons for each individual. And I can't look into the hearts of human beings and tell you what they really think. But for the main part, they seem to be making an awful lot of money because we've been tracking the companies, the 50123s, that's charities in U.S. speak, and different entities that they use to funnel the money that they get from these enterprises. And, look, they're causing a huge amount of harm. These people will kill. They're targeting, for example, moms with specific marketing that we see for moms. They're targeting young women saying, talking about fertility. They're targeting African-Americans, saying, remember Tuskegee? Muslims by saying there's noN-halal products in there. This is... this is an industry. Once you start to look at it as an industry, you understand why they market and operate in the way they do.

MATT GALLOWAY: Your organization worked with the CBC television program "Marketplace" on an investigation and found that 800 online posts had been flagged as containing misinformation or disinformation. But only 12 per cent were actually labelled as that or taken down. Why are only a small percentage of these posts being removed?

IMRAN AHMED: Well, and this anti-vaccine industry has 59-million followers across the U.S. and U.K., and it generates, by our estimates, which we put out in July 2020, a billion dollars a year for the social media companies because that's a huge amount of traffic they generate. This is attractive to controversial conspiracism, and conspiracism is, unfortunately, engaging. And so the social media companies have become addicted to the profits that come from the traffic generated by militant information, whether it's hate conspiracy theories or, in this case, deadly disinformation. If nine and 10 bits of disinformation are left up, even when we report it to them using their platform's own reporting tools. And this was, of course, done by professional CBC journalists. So they can't turn around and say, well, this is just some, you know, as they do with the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They can't say it's just a pressure group. This has been done by professional journalists. And they found that when... when push comes to shove when they think no one's watching, the social media companies sit on their hands and happily trade in the profits that come from disinformation.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so just to be clear, you're saying that even though these are false claims, the more time that people spend on the platforms debating those false claims, the more benefit it is to the owners of those platforms, to Facebook, to Twitter, to... to Google.

IMRAN AHMED: Absolutely. And that's why one of the most frequent things you'll hear from both the social media companies that we were looking at is that good information can be bad information. The truth is that having a... having an information ecosystem in which this information flows freely, you can't distinguish it easily on these platforms from good information. It's a disaster for science. It is a disaster for trying to combat climate change. As we saw, it's a disaster when it comes to election misinformation and for identity-based hate. So these platforms have for too long used myriad excuses to get... to stop actually doing their duty. And we can see, look, I always say judge... judge someone by what they do when they think no one is looking. When they thought no one was looking, when they thought it was just normal members of the public reports disinformation, the social media companies showed their true colours by doing absolutely nothing.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's been a lot of talk about what governments can do to rein in these social media companies. What would you like to see? In the face of this specific story, what would you like to see governments do?

IMRAN AHMED: Well, I think in the United States, we're going to see reform of the key legislation that allows social media companies to operate with impunity. It's called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Last week, or perhaps it was a week before, Anthony Housefather from the Canadian parliament invited myself and a few others to speak to parliamentarians in Canada about what needs to be done. In Britain, I've been advising Her Majesty's government on the online harms bill and the legislation there. Look, everyone around the world after January the 6th in particular, and 2020 with COVID and the Anti-vax disinformation. And of course, January the 6th, the Capitol riots. There's no one asking me anymore is there an offline cost for online disinformation? We all know that there is lives have been lost. And at that point, that's when governments need to step in, and I think they are, to say it's time for regulation. It's time to actually create some costs for these companies so that they don't just see disinformation as a source of profit.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just finally, before I let you go, what do you see as the long-term effect of this? I mean, we've been talking about, you know, what's being spread in the midst of this pandemic. But when we eventually get out of this, what's the long-tail effect of this?

IMRAN AHMED: Well, I mean, look, if uncorrected, then this starts to roll back basic enlightenment ideas like science, like tolerance. And we see that with the targeting and trolling of Black, of minority ethnic, of women, of gay people on social media, trying to... trying to force them off the platforms. We see voices being pushed out of the public discourse that we've worked so hard to bring into public discourse. You see, when it comes to climate change, and we track disinformation across a number of different fields, including climate change and sexual and reproductive rights. These things are being rolled back because, unfortunately, social media platforms have become a toxic slew of hate disinformation. That you don't know who put it there. That it could be a domestic actor, someone trying to make a buck. It could be a foreign actor who's trying to kill people in our countries. So there is... there is a potential of our society really, really rolling back a lot of the progress that we've made. We need to stop that now.

MATT GALLOWAY: Imran, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

IMRAN AHMED: Thanks.

MATT GALLOWAY: Imran Ahmed is the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. He was in Washington, DC. Here in Canada, the federal government has pledged 64-million dollars to combat confusion around the safety and efficacy of the vaccines meant to fight COID-19. Some community groups have been working against COVID misinformation, and they say the money could be a big help. Fatima Tokhmafshan is a bioethicist and geneticist in Montreal. She helped start COVIID-19 Resources Canada. That group hosts nightly Zoom sessions, where experts answer people's questions about the vaccines. Fatima, good morning to you.

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do you make of what you've heard from Imran there just about what he sees as a very dedicated, he calls it, an industry to try and confuse and spread disinformation in the midst of this pandemic?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: I know this is a radio show, and you can't see, but I was nodding my head all along. [both chuckling] As a scientist and also as a racialized person myself, these are the challenges. These are the realities that we are dealing with every day. And this is not something new. Again, as a scientist, we've been used to debunking pseudoscientific misinformation floating around for a long time. But it's the amount of it is staggering since the pandemic started. That's why the WHO has called it an infodemic. And that's why grassroots initiatives like ours are really working hard in combating misinformation.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me how you do that. What are you doing through these sessions?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: Well, this session really started ad-hoc. And the point, the sort of spark was fired because we were just seeing too many people, too many group having questions that are going unanswered. Very specific questions that are going unanswered. So we just put a Zoom link out, and we advertise it, and people have been showing up non-stop. It's... it's... it's great!

MATT GALLOWAY: How much of this comes out of your own experience? You came to this country as a refugee. And I just wonder what... you referenced the fact that you're a racialized woman yourself, what is what you have experienced offering in terms of how you run these programs?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: I would say it helps me immensely because it gives me the perspective of knowing what social determinants of health are from personal experience. Language, culture and identity being important aspects of that, and added to that layer, my training as a scientist, I think it enables me to empathize with people's struggles and anxieties and be able to relate to them better. And I would say our entire team is quite diverse. Majority of experts who show up on our nightly Zoom sessions, they speak more than one language. They come from diverse groups. Many of them belong themselves to marginalized and underserved groups. So that helps a lot.

MATT GALLOWAY: How are they... I mean, give us an example of how the diversity of that group would help address some of the concerns that you're hearing in these sessions.

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: One of the items that your previous guest raised was, for instance, the issue of whether certain communities are targeting certain communities? I'll give an example of my own community, the Muslim community, for instance. I've been hearing a lot of concerns about whether the vaccines are halal or not? So being part of that community, knowing where the values are, what the context of that culture is, I am able to engage with members of my community by reaching out to religious units, the religious leaders within particular communities, here in Montreal, for instance, and having a real honest discussion, bringing in quotes from the Quran or from the Prophet and making it really relatable, not coming from a position of condescension or trying to tell people how to behave themselves within their religious beliefs, but having a real honest and humble conversation. And because I come from that culture because they know that we share the same values, our... our culture, context and identities align, we are able to basically work through those issues.

MATT GALLOWAY: Where are the people who are attending those sessions, hearing or reading information about the vaccines? I mean, Imran is talking about Twitter and Facebook and through Google as well. Where are your visitors coming from in terms of where they would be gathering information on the vaccines and on the pandemic, more broadly?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: I would say the majority of it is online platforms. A good number of it also comes from, especially for marginalized and underserved groups, comes from closed groups on WhatsApp and Facebook, where they get the information in their language of choice from basically cultural groups that they trust and rely on for connectedness.

MATT GALLOWAY: How do you go about unpacking that if they're closed groups? I mean, one it's one thing for somebody to sign up for a Zoom session, but if people are having conversations with friends and colleagues in a closed WhatsApp group, how do you go about actually addressing that?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: It's extremely difficult, but we are able to do it. And a lot of other community groups across the country are trying to do it by engaging with... with those communities. You need to have representation. Our country, our nation, is very diverse. But unfortunately, diversity doesn't always go hand-in-hand with inclusion. We need to make sure we are engaging community leaders, religious leaders, elders. There are a lot of communities that look up to their elders. They... they much rather get information from their cousin or somebody they know and they rely on. So if you make sure you have representation, it benefits you twofold. One, you know what kind of a discourse, what kind of misinformation is floating around within those specific communities, within those closed groups. And secondly, you have that shared element of culture, identity and context. That person can be an agent of empowerment and empower their own community by debunking the misinformation.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's the role of the federal government in this? I mentioned in the introduction that the government is putting up something like 64-million dollars to combat vaccine misinformation. So where should that money go?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: I would say it would be great if we would have a way to bring together all those little networks. There are a lot of other groups like ours who are doing outreach. I don't like to call it vaccine hesitancy. I like to call it vaccine empowerment sessions. So it would be nice to sort of bring these little hubs together because we could learn from each other's experiences. I could learn from outreach experience of somebody in BC within Indigenous communities and apply it here in Quebec.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just really briefly, what's the difference between vaccine hesitancy and vaccine empowerment?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: I would say vaccine hesitancy, that label hesitancy comes... it's loaded. It's a loaded term. It comes with a lot of negative connotations. People who asked us questions, often they... they feel like they need to prequalify their question by saying, I am not hesitant. I vaccinate my kids. I vaccinated myself. But... and then they go on to say their question. So I don't like to use that at that term, especially when it comes to certain groups that have very valid historical reasons to have anxieties and questions about vaccine safety. So I like to call them vaccine empowerment because you're empowering people with accurate information. And an informed population is an empowered population.

MATT GALLOWAY: We just have a few seconds left. Is your sense a year into this pandemic that we are getting better at communicating with these different communities across the country?

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: Um, we, as in the government, or we as just the public. [both chucle]

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, we as a society, I suppose, and as a nation, if we're all in this together, yeah.

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: Well, we have made some progress. There's still a lot more to do. And that comes... that is closely tied to systemic barriers that certain groups face within the health care system, within our systems in general. So we still have quite a lot of work to do.

MATT GALLOWAY: Fatima, it's really important to hear about the work that you are doing. Thank you very much for speaking with us.

FATIMA TOKHMAFSHAN: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Fatima Tokmafshan is a bioethicist and geneticist in Montreal. She helped start COVID-19 Resources Canada, a group that holds nightly Zoom meetings where experts answer people's questions about the COVID vaccines. Your CBC News is next. And then,.

MARGARET ATWOOD We spent an hour watching a thing in her field that either was a snowy owl or it was a gallon white plastic milk bottle. Just as we had decided that it was a plastic milk bottle, it flew.

MATT GALLOWAY: Above all, searching for snowy owls takes patience. Margaret Atwood on the beauty and meditative properties of birding with her late partner, Graham Gibson. That's coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current" on CBC Radio One.

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Margaret Atwood on her late partner Graeme Gibson, and their shared love of birds

Guests: Margaret Atwood

MATT GALLOWAY: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. And you're listening to "The current".

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MATT GALLOWAY: Still to come, CNN's Don Lemon says that while it may feel like storm clouds have lifted in America, there is still a reckoning ahead when it comes to race. He is here in 40 minutes. But first, if you've ever wanted to hear the author, Margaret Atwood, imitate a parrot, just keep listening.

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MATT GALLOWAY: When Graeme Gibson died in 2019, we lost a gifted novelist, a great champion of Canadian literature and a passionate conservationist with a special love for birds. He captured decades of fascination with all things avian in a beautiful volume called "The Bedside Book of Birds". As a book, it's kind of hard to classify, combining memoir with a wild array of writing about birds fictional, historical, scientific, poetic. There are gorgeous illustrations as well. The book is being rereleased this spring with a new forward by his longtime partner, Margaret Atwood, who's with me now. Margaret, good morning.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me about Graeme and birds. What did he love about birds?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, Graeme was a late-life convert, by which I mean he did not grow up watching birds. And then he had one of those light bulb experiences in one of the Don Valley ravines when he saw a large bird, and he didn't know what it was. So he found out it was a red-tailed hawk. And from that moment on, he was a birder, as we say. And he was indeed very passionate. And we went on many an adventure for that very purpose, including to Amherst Island, which is a very super place for owls in the winter, where I almost froze to death. We were up there in a cold snap. And where we spent an hour watching a thing in a field that either was a snowy owl or it was a gallon white plastic milk bottle. [Matt laughs] Just as we had decided that it was a white plastic milk bottle, it flew. [laughing]

MATT GALLOWAY: It pays to wait! [both laughing].

MARGARET ATWOOD: That's so!

MATT GALLOWAY: What did he love... I mean, you talked about the red-tailed hawk, and that was like his... his trigger bird. What did he love about... about seeing that bird, and what did that kick-off for him, do you think?

MARGARET ATWOOD: He was not a lister, by which I mean he did not keep a life list, and he wasn't interested in seeing a bird just to check it off and say that he had seen it. I think he found it a form of meditation. There's a book by somebody called Baker called "The Peregrine", in which he follows around a peregrine falcon just to see what it does. And to... to partake of its life, which is very different from our life. So Graeme was like that. He... he liked watching what birds did, not just identifying them. And towards the end of his life, when he had forgotten the names of the birds, he said, well, I no longer know the names of the birds, but that's all right because they don't know my name either.

MATT GALLOWAY: He writes in the book that watching birds was it produced a kind of ecstasy. I mean, that's a really powerful word. What did he mean by ecstasy, do you think?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, I think out of your own body, and at one with this other life that you're watching. Naturalists are quite frequently like that, especially field naturalists. And that... that experience can be had watching all kinds of animals, and seeing what they do, and seeing how they live. You know, what... what how are they conducting their time on this earth? And for Graham, it was birds, but for E.O. Wilson, it was... it was ants. [both chuckle]

MATT GALLOWAY: Is that something that you have ever felt in watching birds?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, that's a hard question. So you can feel joy, and I don't know whether ecstasy... ecstasy you're really carried out of yourself in ecstasy. You know, those pictures of saints with their eyes turned up to Heaven? I'm not sure on that much of an extremist in any way, [Matt chuckles] but they certainly can make it make you feel very joyful. And if birds were suddenly all of them to vanish from this earth, we would miss them. We kind of take them for granted. But if they were gone, we would really miss them.

MATT GALLOWAY: When did this book start for him, "The Bedside Book of Birds"? When did... when did he start to pull this together?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, we were just going here and there, and he was collecting. So he was collecting images primarily. And then he started collecting mentions of birds. And that took place over... over years. So, if we were in a place, for instance, New Zealand, and there was a natural history museum, off we would go to it to see what was in it. Or if there was an art museum, off we would go to that to see what was in there in the way of birds. So he collected these things over years and years and years and years. And then he put the book together, and it was turned down by everybody. So 10 years later, [chuckles] they... the point was grasped. You know, suddenly the point was grasped, and then Graeme started going, well, it has to be forest-friendly paper. [both chuckle] Then we got into a whole range of other issues. But it worked out because they thought that the pictures wouldn't print as well on forest-friendly paper, but, in fact, they printed better. So that was a great thing. And he had a wonderful designer on this book who was very involved in the project. And by the time they were deciding to publish it, the publishers were all on board. They... they they got it. Whereas 10 years earlier, they were saying, well, who would buy this and what is that anyway? And we wouldn't know what shelf to put it on in the bookstore and things like that.

MATT GALLOWAY: What is it anyway? I mean, how would you describe what it is?

MARGARET ATWOOD: It's a miscellany, which was a well understood Victorian form, and it's making a comeback. For instance, I just read a miscellany about dogs published in England. It's not so much the pictures, but it's... it's writing about dogs by various people.

MATT GALLOWAY: Right.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Musings about dogs. And before this, the closest you would come to it would be a poetry anthology. But a miscellany is somewhat different because a poetry anthology is going to be all poems. And a miscellany is all sorts of things. So the kitchen sink. It could be a carving, it could be a painting, it could be from somebody's diary, it could be a poem, it could be a scientist writing. And that's what he has done. He has mixed up all the modes and under various themes. So one chapter is about birds that are scary. Remember "The Birds", Alfred Hitchcock? [Matt chuckles] Unfortunately, you could see the strings tying their legs to the roof, but never mind, they were supposed to scary. [both chucKling] So, like that. It's a miscellany.

MATT GALLOWAY: Did he... I mean, I'm trying to imagine because as you mentioned, you were travelling around, and he would sort of collect these things. I mean, did it fill up the house? All of the little bits of bird ephemera that he had collected around the world?

MARGARET ATWOOD: We do have a lot in the way of prints and... and doodads. You know, little doodads of various kinds.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is the technical term.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Yeah, doodads. And so. [both chuckling] Yes, bird items we have, but they don't fill up the house. And every once in a while, for instance, upcoming on May 8th is our Pelee Island Bird Observatory and Pelee Island Heritage Centre online gala, and some bird doodads are going to be door prizes, and other bird doodads are going to be silent auction items. Both of these events are things that Graeme was a founder of. So people are enthusiastically carrying on with them.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the book, he writes that one of the rewards of bird watching is the escape from our need to make nature useful.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Right, yes. And we do try. And it's the same with the arts. You know, you're constantly being asked about the usefulness of what you do, [chuckling] whether it has social relevance, and what is your message, and things like that. But I think the arts are something that human beings have always done. It's a part of being human. And they can have all sorts of functions in various different societies. But there isn't one use that you can point to. Similarly, birds. Go as far back as you can and you will find bird images, and bird mythologies. In fact, a lot of how did the universe originate stories begin with an egg, an egg out of which things then hatch or they begin with sort of original birds. Even the Bible begins that way. The spirit broods upon the waters. Well, what is broods? Broods is when you're hatching an egg. [laughing].

MATT GALLOWAY: What is it about birds that make them so ripe for metaphor, do you think? I mean, to your point, you can track that all the way back through history, through literature, through the intersection of the two.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, first of all, they do two things that we have always wanted to do, singing and flying. And we, like the birds, seem always to have had a connection with music. They have found a 40,000-year-old flute made out of guess what? A bird bone. And the scale on it is the same as the scale we have today. So we seem to have been musical for a very long time. And, of course, so have birds. Some of them are not musical as such. They make horrible squawks and rackets, but they communicate with other birds through the sound that they make. So we have been like that. And the flying, we gave the bird's wings to the angels because we didn't have any. And we gave the claws to the devils. We're not very... we don't want to have claws like birds, but we do want to have wings like birds. And the closest we've been able to come are hang gliding and balloons, aeroplanes and helicopters and rockets.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me about Harold Wilson, who is not the former British prime minister, [both laughing] but his pet parrot. Graeme's pet parrot.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Harold Wilson, was named after the former British prime minister. And Graeme tried to teach it to say, what about the workers, but [Matt laughs] not that kind of parrot. So he rescued this parrot. It was the year he was living in Mexico writing "Five Legs". And he rescued the parrot, which was in a sack, and some kids had it. And so he bought it from them. And then he had to make a case for bringing it back to Canada, which he managed to do. And then it was with him, and it learned to imitate a vacuum cleaner. And it gave him a bit of trouble when he was out on his front porch, and the parrot was behind him, not very visible. And girls would walk by, and the parrot would go [whistles]. Thy'd all look at him, and he'd go, no, no. Not me, not me. And then they would go along a little further, and the parrot would go [sqwaks]. [both laughing] Than they thought he was really crazy, and they would run very fast. However, the house was... was dark in winter, and he felt that Harold Wilson was unhappy and lonely. So he took Harold Wilson to one of these zoos where there were some other parrots because parrots are a group animal, they fly around in flocks. They're very social. So Harold Wilson, at first, was... was rather perturbed. And he was put into an enclosure with a female parrot called Olive, and all of a sidled towards him. And Harold Wilson sidled away. And Graeme said it was like dropping your kid off at summer camp because as he walked away, the parrot said in his children's voice, which it had never had before. It said, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Then he felt horrible. But when he went back to visit Harold Wilson six months later, there was a happy flock of parrots, and Harold Wilson did not acknowledge him. So Harold Wilson had adjusted to his life at college, [Matt chuckles] and did not wish his parents interfering.

MATT GALLOWAY: You mentioned the scary birds. You have a poem in this book, "Vultures". Would you mind reading it for us?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Vultures are not scary birds.

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, we'll talk about that in a moment. OK, read the poem, and then we'll talk about scary... scary or not.

MARGARET ATWOOD: In Disney movies, they're are given a bad rep. But India had an awful vulture problem, which was that an antibiotic used in cows killed 95 per cent of them before people caught on to what was doing. And all of a sudden, there was a huge infestation of rats and wild dogs and rabies. And it cost the Indian government billions of dollars. So be thankful for the vultures you have. They clean up dead animals, which would otherwise become quite troublesome. OK, "Vultures". And some vultures are actually very good looking. And there is a reason why a vulture was one of the royal symbols for ancient Egypt. Vultures, but these are just... these are not God vultures. They're natural vultures.

MARGARET ATWOOD: [reading] Hung there in the thermal white-out of noon, dark ash in the chimneys updraught. Turning slowly like a thumb pressed down on target. Indolent these flies until they drop. Then they're hyena's raucus around the kill, flapping their black umbrellas, the feathered, red-eyed widows whose pot-bellied bodies violate morning, the snigger at funerals, the burp at the wake. They cluster like beetles, laying their eggs on carrion, gluttonous for a space, a little territory of murder, food and children. Frowzy old saint, baldheaded and musty, scrawny-necked recluse on your pillar of blazing air, which is not Heaven. What do you make of death, which you do not cause? Which you eat daily? I make life, which is a prayer, I make clean bones, I make a grey zinc noise, which to me is a song. Well, heart, out of all this carnage, could you do better?

MATT GALLOWAY: That's Margaret Atwood reading "Vultures" from "The Bedside Book of Birds" written by her late partner, Graeme Gibson. So I love the sight of turkey vultures in fall, in the fall migration, over a big city like Toronto, you'll see Turkey vultures drifting over the city, and they're beautiful and kind of ominous, but way up there and wonderful. How did they get a bad rep, do you think?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, you can see why. [both laughing].

MATT GALLOWAY: What, with the eating of the dead, what have you?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Yes, the squawking, the eating of the dead. I mean, when they drop, it's because one of them has something to eat, and the others watch all... all of their pals. And when one drops, they... they will all come and see what's up? And then they will do a certain amount of squabbling. So we were on Pelee, we spent March there. And the ferry doesn't run in march, and it's supposed to start running on the 1st of April. But something went wrong, and therefore we were on the island. We couldn't get off. And the food was running low. So I was out on the lawn digging up the dandelions because you can eat dandelions in the spring, and the spring, vulture migration came through. When vultures see you down in a sort of low position, they think, hmm, [Matt chuckles] maybe something for me soon. So they all settled around the tree, around in the trees and were watching me like [Matt chuckles] I was going to fall over. [both chuckling] And it was pretty funny.

MATT GALLOWAY: You mentioned Pelee Island. You and Graeme helped create the the Bird Observatory in Lake Erie down on Pelee Island. What did that place mean to him?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Oh, he loved it. It is a... it is a bird migration hotspot. So if you look at a map of Pelee Island, you will say there's a chain of islands that used to be a limestone land bridge going right across Lake Erie. There used to be two Lake Eries. And the islands that remain are remnants of that. So, although Hawks did not like flying over open water, a lot of other birds will migrate across the lake. And they typically stop at the southern end of Pelee, and they eat their way up to the northern end and wait for a favourable wind. And then they will take off and fly to the mainland of Ontario, where they will disperse out into the boreal forest in order to nest. And a lot of them land on Point Pelee, which means that it's a birding hotspot, too. So he just loved all of that. And he particularly liked having people from other parts of the world who hadn't seen those birds come to see those birds. So one of the more recent people that we had as an honorary birder at the Pelee Island Heritage Centre's Spring Song event, which involves a green bird rice than a conventional bird rice was Sean Dooley from Australia, who is BirdLife Australia. And he had a wonderful time seeing the spring migrating woodland warblers, which of course, he would never have seen. So birders are very sharing in that way. If you have not seen a bunch of birds because you've never been to that place, they're very happy to show you around. And our honorary birder this year is coming to us remotely because we had to do it online. But it's David Lindo, who you go to Urban Birder on Twitter or other places, he's called Urban Birder. And he's currently in Spain. So he'll be beaming to us from Spain. And the last time I was talking to him for his show, he said, let's go to Serbia and watch owls. [both chuckling].

MATT GALLOWAY: An invitation you can't turn down!

MARGARET ATWOOD: You cannot turn down that. But then I said, have you been to Chernobyl yet? And he said, No, want to go?

MATT GALLOWAY: Let me just... before I let you go, just a couple of quick things. And one is about what we've seen in this pandemic, where because people are at home, there's been a huge spike in the number of people who... who have taken to watching birds over the course of this pandemic. And we've spoken to to David Alan Sibley about this. And we've spoken to people who perhaps had taken birds for granted, as you said, and now have a new appreciation for them. What do you think that this has given people in this moment?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, when you can't see your friends and relatives except online, and you're... you're worried about, you know, life and death, which people increasingly have been aware of, and you realize that possibly life is more transient and fragile than you may have thought. I think it's been very calming to a lot of people to feel I'm not alone on the planet, and other creatures are doing OK. But I think we're going to come out of the pandemic, and we're going to focus even more than we have been on the climate crisis and the endangered species problem. So wipe all life over it and and we're going with it because we cannot actually survive without other life, particularly the... the oceans that make 60 to 80 per cent of the oxygen that... that we breathe, as they did one-point-nine-billion years ago, before which it was a methane atmosphere. So we need oxygen. We're a mid-sized lifeform. And I think the cockroaches will probably be OK. But if the oxygen supply goes down, down, down, we will not be OK. So let's fix that if we want to be a species. And birds are the canaries in the coal mine. So when the birds start vanishing, you know, there's something toxic around. And possibly, we should be looking into what that is and doing something about our plastic and chemicals problem.

MATT GALLOWAY: Last thing is, this is... I mean, the spring migration is on our doorstep, and birds are starting to return. And and it's magical and wonderful when you hear them or you see them for the first time having been away. Is there... you said he wasn't, you know, somebody who kept a scorecard in many ways of the birds that he saw. But is there a bird that you see in that spring migration that lets you think of Graeme?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Oh, well, yes, we think of Graeme all the time anyway. But let's say the prothonotary warbler. He was always very happy to see one of those. And they do make it up as far as Pelee Island.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's a beautiful bird.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Gorgeous.

MATT GALLOWAY: Margaret it's a great pleasure to talk to you, as always. Thank you very much.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Lovely to talk to you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Margaret Atwood, acclaimed Canadian author and poet. And she's written a new forward to "The Bedside Book of Birds" by her late partner, Graeme Gibson. So the spring migration is underway. Have you seen birds, perhaps long-legged tall birds or tiny bug-sized small birds? That from the children's book by Joanne Oppenheim. And I mention that because we want to hear your stories about birds. They are returning. And, to Margaret Atwood's point, in some ways reminds us that despite all the disruptions, the natural world continues on. You can send your bird stories and what you have seen in the midst of this spring migration to: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Or perhaps fittingly on Twitter: @TheCurrentCBC. Coming up after your regional update,.

DON LEMON: Once November happened, it started to ease up. Like, all of a sudden, the sun started coming up. It was just odd. I'm not sure of Canada, you guys understood what a negative force the former president was on this country.

MATT GALLOWAY: CNN anchor Don Lemon on Donald Trump, George Floyd and being Black in America. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". We're back in 90 seconds.

[Music: Theme]

CNN host Don Lemon on being a Black journalist in America

Guests: Andre Picard, Don Lemon

MATT GALLOWAY: Hello. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". New modelling shows that Canada is on track to see a strong resurgence of COVID-19 infections. Variants of the virus, and the easing of some restrictions prompted Canada's chief public health officer, Dr Theresa Tam, to implore over the weekend for people and provinces to take stricter and stronger measures. Here to parse out the precautions and the spike in numbers as Globe & Mail health columnist Andre Picard. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do you make of Dr. Theresa Tam issuing this warning over the weekend?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, it's sort of the same old story, right? We hear this over and over that cases are rising, so the only way to to slow that down is with new measures. But it's becoming harder and harder for people to listen to that. They're just getting fed up. So it's a constant battle between the virus and the vaccination and our... our patience, I guess.

MATT GALLOWAY: Getting fed up, but also perhaps confused. There was a photo circulating this weekend of a field hospital being erected in Toronto at the same time as an announcement being made that you will soon be able to get your hair cut inside the hair salon or the barbershop. Are people right to be confused?

ANDRE PICARD: Yes, there is confusion. There's contradictory messages. There's, you know, you have to be prepared. So we do things like field hospital in case of the worst-case scenario. At the same time, there's pressure on governments to open up. People have been cooped up for a long time. Businesses are still suffering. Things like haircuts, they become an image, but not that great a risk in the grand scheme of things. But they send the message that life is getting back to normal and... and maybe people will take more of other kinds of risk. So it's really hard to get that balance right, especially for politicians. They get the pressure from all sides.

MATT GALLOWAY: Are we walking towards another lockdown, do you think?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, it almost seems inevitable given our history. You know, the first two waves we saw that we hesitated as stated, then it got so bad we had to do it. So the big question with the third wave is, can we keep it to a ripple by staying locked down to a certain degree or are we going to let it get out of control before we lock down? But I think there's probably some measures coming. But the question is when and how effective they'll be?

MATT GALLOWAY: People have characterized this, and we've talked about this before, as a race between the vaccine and the variants. There has been a relatively low uptake on vaccines in some jurisdictions. Toronto reported on Friday that there were something like 30,000 unfilled vaccination spots this week. What does that tell you?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, there's, again, mixed messaging there, too. You know, there's good news about vaccines. We've administered more than five million. Now we're going to get another three-point-three-million doses this week. We're up to doing 150,000 shots a day. There's lots of good news on the vaccine front. So when we see things like unfilled spots, the question is what... what's happening? Are people hesitating, or did they just don't know? Are the rules confusing? And I think it's the latter. The rules seem to be different everywhere. People are not sure if they should go out. They see pictures of older people with mobility issues waiting in line for two hours. That's a turnoff. So there's all kinds of reasons. But I don't think it's hesitation, and I don't think it's fear of the vaccine. It's just people aren't sure, so they're waiting.

MATT GALLOWAY: There have been real stories around the complications as well in the registration systems in the various provinces and territories. I mean, a year into this, do you scratch your head wondering how we ended up in this situation, how it's not more streamlined and smoother for people to sign up and get the vaccine vaccinations that we've all been waiting for?

ANDRE PICARD: It's very, very frustrating. And I think, unfortunately, it's like many other things, it's like the problems in long-term care, it's very structural. So we, you know, for years, we've been talking about the lack of vaccine registry, the lack of electronic health records. All these things are biting us in the wrong place right now. That's what's making it more difficult to do simple, seemingly simple, tasks like vaccination. So all these structural issues, these normal things that should be in place aren't. And it makes our job massively more difficult.

MATT GALLOWAY: You could imagine that this will be the subject of reports in months and years ahead. There was an auditor general's report on Canada's COVID preparedness released last week. It was described, the preparedness or lack thereof, as an utter failure. What did you make of that report?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I think, you know, we didn't distinguish ourselves. We know that. But these reports, I think they're always difficult. It's always easy to be critical in hindsight. It's interesting that Dr. Theresa Tam, who's very laid back, really fought back on this one. She... she pushed back and said, no, we did what we could based on the information at the time. So that's... that's the big issue. Can you put yourself back in that exact spot? But I think some criticism is warranted. I think the question is, when should we be doing this? You know, is it useful to have the auditor general criticizing the public health agency at a time when the third wave is coming along? Does that undermine confidence? I think these issues are are complex, but I think it'll be years before we get a full picture of how well we actually did.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the meantime, I mean, in your paper, Theresa Tam is accused of defending the indefensible today. So what kind of position, just briefly, what kind of position does this put her in as we're still not even out of the pandemic?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, puts her in a very difficult position. And, you know, the criticism, a lot of it is warranted. But it's what you said, is it useful at this point, and does it undermine her... her voice at this important time as the third wave is coming?

MATT GALLOWAY: We'll talk again, Andre. In the meantime, it's always good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Andre Picard, the health columnist for The Globe & Mail.

[Music: Ambient]

MATT GALLOWAY: You're listening to "The Current" on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

DON LEMON: Here's my question, I asked you last time, I said... and people some people were shocked, if you were racist? You knew I was asking you that. Are you racist?

DONALD TRUMP: I am the least racist person that you have ever met. I am the least racist person.

DON LEMON: Are you bigoted in any way?

DONALD TRUMP: I don't think so. No, I don't think so.

MATT GALLOWAY: That was CNN's Don Lemon interviewing candidate Donald Trump in December of 2015. Trump, as you may have heard, went on to lead one of the most divisive administrations in American history, a government that his critics accuse of stoking racial tensions, and emboldening white supremacists. Now that that presidency is over, a racial reckoning in that country is far from done. Don Lemon is the anchor of "CNN Tonight". He's known for his no holds barred commentaries in interviews, and he's the author of a new book. It's called "This is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism". Don Lemon, good morning.

DON LEMON: Matt, good morning to you. It's a pleasure to be here.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's great to have you here. Did you --

DON LEMON: I wish we were in-person!

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, next time. We'll do that next time. But given this current circumstances, the Internet will have to provide. Did you have any doubt at that time that Donald Trump was a racist?

DON LEMON: I knew that he had... he had exhibited racist qualities, and he had done racist things. Because I was fully aware of his birtherism plea and plight that he had taken upon himself to do since around 2011. And quite frankly, that was the last interview I had done with Donald Trump, was I had an interview with him. I asked him about the birtherism, saying he got really upset with me. We had a heated argument on television. I thought it was going to go viral. And then Osama bin Laden was killed the same day. And that was the last interview that Donald Trump did with me. And he would not do an interview with me after that because he called me racist.

MATT GALLOWAY: You aren't particularly impressed with people who say racist things and then protest that they are not racist. Why is that? I mean, you write about it in the book. Why is that?

DON LEMON: Because I think that... I think that then you are elevating yourself and your privilege, and you are actually showing your racism because you are... you're aggrieved by your own... the possibility that someone may call you racist. You're prioritizing that over the actual act of racism. And that's... that is what privilege is, that's what entitlement is. And most people don't see that. The fact that you don't see that, you might have... most of us have racial blind spots. Most people do. Most people have some degree of a bias in them. And until you realize that, then we're not going to fix the problem. But to sit there and say, well, I'm not racist, to become offended by all of that, then you're elevating and prioritizing your actual own feelings over the... the act of racism, which is worse.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is that what you mean by mashed potato racism?

DON LEMON: Mashed potato racism is just the things that we swallow every day, as I say, we swallow this sort of mashed potato racism every day, and then we realize that it's filled with broken glass. It's the things that happen every day that... how Black people have to live in a certain degree of paranoia about how they conduct themselves, where they where they are, how they can carry themselves if they're going to be discriminated against, if they're going to get the job or the promotion, if someone's going to tell them that they're in a place where they're not supposed to be. It happened to me this weekend. So I think that's the mashed potato racism. And that you think that white is the pre-eminent voice when it comes to America. That you actually think that the popular depiction of Jesus as a white hippy is the one that is real. Those... that is mashed potato racism.

MATT GALLOWAY: Rewind a little bit. You said this happened to you this weekend. What happened to you this weekend?

DON LEMON: I was just out on the jogging path, and, you know, as I was jogging, I was trying to navigate between this woman who was standing like she was at a stand either ordering a trinket of some sort or something to eat. And so we're all in the running path, and it's in a park next to the river. And so I see her there, and she's just kind of looking around, moving and walking and back to towards the little shack wherever you buy the food or paraphernalia, and onto the running pat back and forth, and not paying attention to what she was doing. And so I kind of slowed my jog and waiting for her to move. And then finally I decided, OK, she went left, I'm going to go right. And then, all of a sudden, she goes right, and we bump into each other. And I said, Oh, ma'am, excuse me. And she turns around, and she looks at me, and she goes, Really?! Really?! You're not even supposed to be... you're jogging. You're not supposed to. And I just looked at her, and I said ma'am, you're the one who's not paying attention to where you are. You're... You're on a running path. Really?! You're not even supposed to be jogging here! I said it's a running path. And the first thing in her head was, I'm not supposed to be there. Not that, oh, I'm sorry. I bumped into you. Regardless of whose fault that it is, the proper thing to say is, hey, I'm sorry. So I just kind of looked around, and she was with her family, and I looked around, and I said, let me get out of here because in that particular place, I was the only person who looked like me. But there were other people who didn't look like me, who were jogging, just running by. And she looked at me and said I wasn't supposed to be there.

MATT GALLOWAY: Let me ask you about the title of this book, "This is The Fire", which speaks directly in many ways to the James Baldwin book, "The Fire Next Time". Why did you want to use those words, and invoke what Baldwin did in in that slim but really powerful book?

DON LEMON: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water. The fire next time, which is in James Baldwin's book, and his book is called "The Fire Next Time". ecause Baldwin is my literary icon, hero. He's also the person who changed my life when I started to read his books. It changed my life as a Black gay man growing up in the South because he's a Black gay man. He grew up in the north, but he helped me to understand racism and homophobia in this country at a very young age. And I had written a book a while ago, 10 years ago, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I said, no more books. I don't want to do a book. I have a full-time job. I anchor two hours a night on CNN. I have enough of a responsibility. And so, during the Trump era, everyone had been asking me to write a book. Every time the president tweeted about me or said something, or I did an interview like the one you played at the beginning of this interview. And people would... a lot of people, as you know, were capitalizing on books during the Trump years. And I said, I don't want to do that. And then Charlottesville happened, and that got me to thinking, man, where's this country going? And he kept offending racism and racists and neo-Nazis and white supremacists and doubling down on it. And then Ahmuad Abery in Brunswick, Georgia - young man shot while jogging with a shotgun. And that was on videotape. Then, Breonna Taylor happened. And then George Floyd happened. And I had to get these feelings out because we're at home in the middle of a quarantine on lockdown. And I wanted to be with my family. And I was really concerned about the world that I was leaving to my great-nephews because those are the youngest people I love. And they are the people who are going to have to deal with this world on a prolonged basis, longer than I will have to. And I said I didn't feel like I had done a good job, a good enough job, and I wanted something to lead to them. My nieces, their moms, are grown, in their 30s, so, you know, they can take care of themselves. And just as James Baldwin had begun "The Fire Next Time" with a letter to his nephew, I sat down and wrote a letter to my nephew. And that's how the book came about.

MATT GALLOWAY: The context that it comes out in, and you've hinted at this, is... is a summer of reckoning in many ways when it comes to race and anti-Black racism in particular. As a Black man who is a journalist, what is your role and your responsibility in this moment, do you think?

DON LEMON: Well, I have a responsibility to tell the truth. And I have a responsibility to tell the world what it feels like to be a Black man living in this era with... with complete transparency and candour and a full perspective on what that is. And I have a blessing, if you want to look at it that way, to have the platform that I have to be able to speak to millions of people. It is a huge responsibility. But I think you'll understand this, Matt. It is an awesome responsibility to have because so many people, especially over the last few years, have felt powerless. Well, I refused to feel powerless. I felt powerful. And I refused to let some bigot or someone who is as small a mind and spirit and is as small a person as Donald Trump helped to shape my life and the lives of Americans in a negative way. So every way that I could contribute positively, that's what I chose to do. I chose to stand up and be powerful and not powerless.

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, and you write about how in some ways how difficult that is when you talk about, you know, getting to the truth that there is this... and perhaps more evident now, but there is this line that people try to walk in this business between being the journalist and being the activist. And you talk about how difficult it is to walk that line. What was most difficult about that?

DON LEMON: The most difficult part was to be called biased or racist. And I'm neither. Do I see the world through a particular lens, as we all do? Yes. Might I have some blind spots in particular areas? Yes. We all do. And until we admit that we're not going to be able to to fix the problem. And the personal attacks that would come with that, from speaking the truth. It wasn't that I felt that I was biased, or it's that other people tried to paint me that way because the truth wasn't on their side. And the truth of it was that in order to do what... what Donald Trump did, it had to be a lie. He had to lie. The people who supported him had to believe the lie, and they had to live in that lie. And in order to negate what I was doing, they had to label me either racist or biased or bigoted or ignorant or dumb. And that was none of it. So it was tough to be called all of those things. But at the very end of the day, I have to set the same example that I set for other people. I had to realize that none of those things. So I'm not going to be aggrieved by that. And I'm going to figure out how to be the best of what I am supposed to be. And that is a truth teller. But I think the real tough part was the personal attacks. That was a tough part, coming from the highest office in the land and then having millions of people do the same thing.

MATT GALLOWAY: What was the effect of those attacks on you? Personally, what was it like not just to be attacked by the president of the United States on social media, but then to have everything that was whipped up come at you as well?

DON LEMON: My personal life became smaller, my circle became smaller. I had to you know, you look over your shoulder all the time. I had to mute the comments on my social media because they were often more than not based in homophobia and racism and lies. I had to, you know, insular, go inside. Just it was mostly me and my partner and a very few friends. And I had to be particular about who I spent time with and where I spent time and who I allowed into my life. I decided that I wasn't going to allow that negativity and toxic toxicity into my life. As much as I could control it, I would. And it was, trust me, very tough. And there was some depression, a lot of therapy, a lot of sleeping and a lot of self isolation. And it's... it's so weird how once that... you know, once November happened, it started to ease up like, you know, it was like that, all of a sudden the sun started coming up, the fog lifting. It was just odd. It was such I'm not sure of Canada, you guys understood just how negative... what a negative force the former president was on this country.

MATT GALLOWAY: What happened this summer? I mean, there was a lot that's going on, and you mentioned Ahmaud Arbery, and you mentioned Breonna Taylor. The video of the murder of George Floyd by the police in Minnesota was for so many people this catalyst for the reckoning that we saw over the course of the several months after. You wrote that you saw the sluggish murder of ourselves in that video. What do you mean by that?

DON LEMON: Well, I think that all, especially men of colour related to that, and that was, again, one reason why I wanted to write the letter to my great-nephews. And I wanted my great-nephews to hear me and feel me and understand that they didn't... I didn't want that to happen to them. And my greatest hope was that they didn't have to live in a world like that, and that they wouldn't inherit a world like that. But, you know, I wrote about how I closed the door and... and cried because there but for the grace of God go I. No one is perfect. There are no perfect victims. I know people like to believe that. And when you know, when... when you see something like George Floyd happened, there's a character assassination. And people say, oh, my gosh, well, he was doing this, and he was on drugs news or whatever. Well, that's what policing is about, deescalating those sorts of situations. And again, no one is perfect. And usually when you have an encounter with the police, there is some sort of incident that's going on that's out of the ordinary. And tempers are flared and, you know, everyone is sort of, you know, it can go to 100 in a second, but that's what police officers are supposed to deescalate regardless of the situation. And so I had seen too many incidents, and I had been involved with too many negative incidents with police officers to know how terribly wrong it could go. And I didn't want it to happen anymore. And that incident, I think, affected not only me. And it didn't affect just black men, but I think we felt it more deeply than than anyone else. But it affected the world because we were all sitting at our homes, and we had nowhere to go. And we were open. We were vulnerable. We didn't know if we were going to have a job. Or some people where their next meal was going to come from. How they were going to pay the rent. If they were going to become sick with COVID. You had to remember the time that we were in. So I think it affected everyone, but it deeply affected Black men.

MATT GALLOWAY: It also affected people because they saw this video again and again and again. And I mean, you have concerns around that. You've said that these are, in essence, almost snuff films. Why do you think people repeatedly watch them?

DON LEMON: Well, because you couldn't help yourself. And, you know, I'm glad that... it's a weird thing to say. I'm glad that people got to see it. But I wish we didn't have to see it. I wish it didn't have to happen. And I think it can become, you know, sort of, as I said, a snuff film. But it's.. it's Black death exploitation to see it over and over and over. But to see it over and over and over drove the point home that we need a change. And it drove the point home, that it indeed does happen. And that the denial of it was something that we needed to cast aside, that we needed to get rid of because that was proof positive about how these things take place.

MATT GALLOWAY: People have said that this time feels different. And you write in the book that this time feels different. But there's a but that follows. What's after the but?

DON LEMON: I think with time, the complacency sets in and we have to let go of our complacency because then we just... it's human nature to want to move on and not to want to feel pain and not to want to live in a place where that makes us feel, quite simply, bad, and that's not a good thing, no one wants to be in that place. And I think, listen, I hear it now, people who wanted... who wanted to help and who were very open and willing to to help, willing to make change and to change themselves in the beginning of this. And now they just want to go back to being snarky on Instagram. I hear it all the time. But then as I write in the book about Amy and Kristen Cooper about their encounter in Central Park with her dog, that if we don't fix this problem, someone is going to come back with a bigger dog. And so that bigger dog after Amy and Kristen Cooper was the denial of the election, that it was a fraud, right? And then the bigger dog after that was the insurrection. So what is the next biggest dog going to be? Is it going to be take over of the street, of the government? Is it going to be martial law? Is it going to be what's next? How big how big does a dog have to get before we really tackle this problem in a substantial manner?

MATT GALLOWAY: You believe most people can be reached. I mean, you wanted to talk to Amy Cooper, and you weren't able to do that. Why do you believe that most people can be reached?

DON LEMON: Because I think that we have to begin to see each other's humanity. The only way you do that is through a relationship. If you see someone, they're just another person for the most part, or you don't know someone who is from a different ethnicity and they just become that other person. That that's sort of other thing that is discussed. You know, in many in the minds of many people, quite honestly, they become, you know, there's that black guy over there. There is that affirmative action hire. I'm just using that sort of terms that people use. Or, you know, or there's the Muslim guy, or the immigration Latino. And until you get to learn about people and you have a human relationship and contact with them, then you begin to see their humanity. And it's hard to once you begin to see someone's humanity, it's hard to treat them in a manner that is derogatory or that denigrates them.

MATT GALLOWAY: So just finally, I mean, you quote the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, who says he doesn't have time for pessimism. What gives you optimism? What gives you hope given what you talk about in this book, the summer that you've been through and where you find yourself now?

DON LEMON: The optimism, it comes from when James Baldwin talks about the very few Blacks and very few whites who must, like lovers, insist on fixing this thing. I think that there are enough like-minded people in America, especially in America, but in the world who want to see us move in the right direction. America is built on the promise of a more perfect union. Not that we are perfect, not that we will ever achieve perfection. And quite frankly, perfection is boring. We know that, Right? It's all the things that that the times that you are trying to get to something and get to that perfection that really resonate. And so I think that there are enough people who are willing to lean in that right direction that's going to keep us on the path. We're at the precipice now, and we can either fall off or we can continue to build relationships and do do it the right way. And I think we're doing it the right way. And I think the November election was evidence of that. And I hope we continue on.

MATT GALLOWAY: Don Lemon, it's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

DON LEMON: Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to see you. Hopefully, next time in-person.

MATT GALLOWAY: I hope so. Thanks again.

DON LEMON: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: CNN anchor Don Lemon, his book is titled "This is the Fire: What I Say to my Friends About Racism". He was speaking about the death of George Floyd as a catalyst for writing this book. The man accused of Floyd's murder, Derek Chauvin, goes on trial today in Minneapolis. He will face a panel of jurors who will rule on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. And that trial is expected to take several weeks. Well, that is "The Current" for this Monday. Tomorrow, a special edition of the program. We are going to be talking about Canadian real estate. And we will find out what the exuberance in the market means for anyone looking for housing. And by exuberance in the market, we mean really, really high housing prices. And it's not just buying a house, it's renting as well. We'll talk about people being priced out of the towns and cities that they want to live in, and what that says about where we will all live in future. A special edition of "The Current" looking at real estate tomorrow on CBC Radio One. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to "The Current". Take care. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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March 29, 2021 Episode Transcript

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