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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, in our spring membership drive trying to reach our goal of 10,000 donors. Thank you for being one, if you can. We will have another 10-question quiz for the membership drive later in the show, loosely based on the public radio program, title Science Friday. If you're a little bit of a science geek, or at least follow science news a little bit, this one is going to be for you in about an hour. You don't have to be a chemistry major, if you know what I mean, to get these right. You just have to be paying a little bit of attention to the science news that comes our way often in the headlines. That's coming up.

During this drive, we're sampling from The Brian Lehrer Show bookshelf. A lot of interesting books have come out this spring, and we've invited 10 different authors to share their minds and hearts as they poured them into their books.

Today, we have two authors. Later in the show, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude with his take on the relationship between political leaders who we like, not the bad guys, whoever the bad guys are for you, but the relationship between you and political leaders who inspire you. It's more complicated and more interesting than you might think, that relationship or at least what the ideal relationship between you and your heroes could be according to Eddie. That's coming up.

Right now, Ali Velshi is with us with his new book Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy. Some of you know Ali from his MSNBC show Saturday and Sundays 10:00 AM to noon, great time to host a news talk show, 10:00 AM to noon. He is also their chief correspondent and does go out and cover stories. He also hosts the Friday night 10:00 PM hour, The Last Word, which Lawrence O'Donnell hosts on the other nights of the weekdays.

Ali also hosted the recent podcast series called The Velshi Banned Book Club. It was great. He was editor of the book The Trump Indictments for which he wrote an introduction to the actual text of all 91 pending criminal counts against the former president. He also read them out loud in full as a podcast. He's been an anchor on Al Jazeera America and a business channel host for CNN. Again, the new book is called Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy.

Before we bring Ali on, I'll just say it's quite a story of his and his family's personal experiences as they've connected to world events. His great-grandfather lived in an ashram run by Mahatma Gandhi. Speaking of heroes, his parents fled South Africa for Kenya because of apartheid. Ali grew up mostly in Canada, his father got elected to office there.

Ali happened to be moving to New York for his CNN job on what day of all days? September 11th, 2001. He describes being a brown-skinned Muslim and training to be a pilot no less, crossing the border into the US just after that particular moment. Oh, and he got shot by police while covering the George Floyd protest in Minneapolis in 2020.

With all of that as prelude, Ali, it's always great to talk to you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Ali Velshi: Good to be back with you. Thank you for having me and thank you for that robust introduction [laughs]. Makes me feel very important.

Brian Lehrer: Well, you are. Before we get to your book, can I start with your Banned Book Club Podcast? I wish I had thought of that idea for this show, honestly. Did you seek out the authors of banned books or historians on the books from the past that are now banned? How did you do that?

Ali Velshi: Yes, it was all of the above. Largely it started with the discussion about The 1619 Project with Nicole Hannah-Jones. When I first interviewed her about The New York Times Magazine article she had written, my initial reaction was, "Well, that's interesting. Here's a date with which I was not familiar, and now it adds to my corpus of knowledge." I thought that was just fantastic, something else to put into the mix.

I was very, very surprised by the immense reaction she got, negative reaction, to the idea that she was introducing this new piece of history to think about, a new way to think about African Americans and how they had come to America.

What we learned in studying this a little bit on my team is that there really just four or five reasons to ban books. They're all the same. They've always been the same. People are either prudish or they don't want a different perspective on history.

Honestly, it was the easiest segment to ever produce because it just kept coming our way. All these local school boards and city councils kept banning more books that didn't make any sense to ban. This has become the best thing we do because we dispense with why a book was banned fairly quickly. Then we lean into the book itself and the author and the words, and that part makes it tremendous.

Brian Lehrer: Did you see a pattern to the books that have been banned in recent years?

Ali Velshi: Yes. Look, mostly it's books written about things that are adversarial, that happened to young people, their confusion about their gender, their first same-sex experience, sexual assault, sexual harassment, coming-of-age, racism, those types of things. The general objections from parents are, there's crude language, there's sexuality or there are negative experience that they're teaching their kids about.

Then there's this whole category of books about race that make other non-dominant races in America seem quite human and lovable. Apparently, we're not into that either. Then there's some feminist concepts that people don't like, and then the age-old classics like Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale that continues to get banned by virtue of the fact that it's starting to look very much like some parts of America are today.

Brian Lehrer: Some people don't want to look that in the eye. Your book is largely the story of you and your family, as you've all intersected with world events going back generations, as I said in the intro. What made you decide to write not just a personal memoir, but a family memoir?

Ali Velshi: Well, it was mostly a device. I was Erik Larsoning the book a little bit. I was trying to say if we create historical parallels and show people the intersections at which things were going on, what it underscores is the fact that my family history is not that impressive. Everybody's family history will probably look the same. People made decisions to migrate from one place to another for the betterment of their family.

It was a series of things that members of my family undertook over the last 125 years, none of which would have been notable unto themselves necessarily, but all contributed to an ethos of pluralism and public service and democracy that I got to say, in my journalistic career, I wasn't sure connected to me. I thought this was a fight that was over, and it was done.

Things happen between 2015 and 2020 to make me realize it's not over. The fight for democracy is never really over. Even when you have really good democracy, it takes some care and watering. That's the moment we're in right now. We can care and water our democracy better now, and we can sustain it as a result.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you tell some of your family story. Maybe we could start with who in your family moved from India to South Africa, and why?

Ali Velshi: Well, that was my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother. They had been fairly prosperous in India, but India had suffered a lot of drought in the 1800s which is why there is an Indian diaspora around the world in the first place. Most countries probably could have handled that drought, but India had been so impoverished by colonialism, When colonialism first came to India, India was about a quarter of the world's GDP, a quarter of the world's economy. By the time it left in 1948, it was 2%. India just couldn't fight off this drought, so lots of people left.

My family went to South Africa. They were Gujarati-speaking. As their small businesses-- When I say small, they were doing business out of wheelbarrows and handcarts. As their small businesses grew, and they needed an accountant, an outside accountant, they just happened to be sharing one with Gandhi. Gandhi and my great-grandfather became friends.

Gandhi is one day having dinner at my great-grandfather's house because that was in Pretoria where he needed to go for government meetings. He lived in Johannesburg. He said, "The Indians in this country do not have what it takes to fight the injustice, the racial injustice." It wasn't yet apartheid. He says to my great-grandfather, "May I have your son," who would turn out to be my grandfather, "to be my youngest student at my ashram?" I think my great-grandfather was trying to get out of this.

He says, "Gandhi, we are Muslims. You are a Hindu. I can't send my seven-year-old son to your school," to which Gandhi replies, "I will learn your scriptures. I will learn the Quran. I will learn Islam to teach it to him," which he did. My grandfather learned his Islam from a Hindu. He grew up as a Hindu. He grew up not eating meat. He grew up on this ashram where there was no hot water. They had no beds, they slept on one blanket, and they had one on top of them.

Fundamentally, this was all training to go to jail. The point was, if you're going to fight the injustice, you're going to get arrested, and you're going to go to jail, and we're going to make you live in a way that jail feels comfortable. That's what they did. That's the ethos with which my grandfather grew up, the ethos of fighting injustice, fighting for pluralism, fighting for equality, and existing in a state of discomfort if that's what it takes.

Brian Lehrer: I'm starting to think your family is a little like Forrest Gump; wherever the big events of the world are happening, there happens to be a Velshi. Leaving South Africa for Kenya, again, just as some listeners may have not realized until you told that story, that Gandhi spent a good portion of his life doing his work in South Africa, not just in India. Some listeners may not know in apartheid South Africa, there were white people, Black people, and there was a significant Indian population that had its own designation and rights and limitations on their rights. What were the circumstances of your parents' migration in that generation from South Africa to Kenya?

Ali Velshi: Well, they had built this business up. It was a commercial bakery. They baked 4,000 loaves of bread an hour. They had been using their money to fund anti-apartheid activities. My father's brother was a guerilla in the movement. The South African government had largely had it with them, so drove them out of business. They went to Kenya where my father had two siblings who had been married to other people there. They started to make a go of it there. They got to Kenya. This was a colonial country where they got to see the end of colonialism. They saw the British flag come down. They saw the Kenyan flag go up and it looked very hopeful to them. It was still a racist society, but it didn't have the Byzantine racism.

Brian Lehrer: This was the 1960s, right?

Ali Velshi: This is the 1960s, right. What had happened is that there started to be a very valid "African only," meaning Black African only movement to say we have not had the chance to run our own country, so we would like to. The Indians were not particularly welcome because what happened, these Indians would occupy spaces that looked like the next space up that Black Africans wanted to occupy. While the anger should have been at Colonial Britain, as is often the case, the Indians were in the middle. It was starting to become a hostile environment for Indians, which it really did in Uganda in the early 1970s.

My parents, at that point, searching for democracy in its fullest, were recruited to go to Canada and ended up in Canada in 1971, where they threw themselves into civic life and politics with both feet because they were so excited to be in a place where they could fully participate.

Brian Lehrer: We have the family moving from India to South Africa, South Africa to Kenya, now Kenya to Canada, which is where you grew up. I see your parents had a travel agency, and then your father got elected to the legislature of Ontario.

Ali Velshi: Yes. More importantly, in 1981, before he got elected, it was 10 years after he got there, he said, 'I'm going to run for office." Everybody around him said, "That's ridiculous. Something like this has never happened before." He said, "Well, it hasn't happened because we haven't tried." He wanted to understand that there was no impediment to him running. He ran for office in 1981. I was 11 years old.

He lost quite decisively. In fact, when the radio went on to announce the results of the election that night, his was the only one that could be called as a defeat. He was so proud. I was so disappointed he lost and I said, "Why did we run if we were going to lose?" He said, "Because we can. Nobody gets arrested now. We go on with our lives." Six years later, he did run and he became the first South Asian and the first Muslim elected to major office in Canada. Subsequently, my mother would run and my sister would run.

It was a remarkable journey into these pluralistic societies where it's not to say there wasn't racism, there weren't problems in Canada, but it was welcoming in terms of being able to participate in the political process. It reminded my parents, after three countries, that they actually found a place in which they had agency. My reminder to everybody today is, while things don't always succeed the way you want them to in your efforts to make society better, these seeds you plant sometimes work.

My grandfather died in South Africa thinking his Gandian fight against racism had failed. He never would've known his son had become a member of parliament. He certainly wouldn't have known I existed and I'm talking to you this morning.

Brian Lehrer: For you, journalism rather than politics, but to the same ends?

Ali Velshi: To the same ends. We grew up watching the news. We were so involved in politics that the only way to understand politics and to make good decisions was to follow people who were like you, Brian, people who gave us analysis and gave us context. That, to me, was very important growing up. While everybody else in the family went down the road of politics, I went down the road of journalism.

Brian Lehrer: You write that being shot by a police officer with a rubber bullet while you were covering, as a journalist, a protest after the police killing of George Floyd is what inspired this book. Can you describe what happened?

Ali Velshi: Yes. It made me realize I had really thought that when my parents got to these shores, the Canadian part of them, 53 years ago, the fight for democracy was over. They had achieved their success. I grew up with no sense of there being any importance to be associated with a fight for democracy. Sure, you could fight for little things. I'd been a protestor in school. What I learned is that the actual fight for democracy is never over.

Democracy doesn't need a ton from us, it's like a cactus, but it does need some sun, and it does need a little moisture every now and then. We do need to constantly do things to improve our democracy. It will not simply survive without us. We are in a moment where if we don't pay close attention, it will be eroded.

It's a positive book. I'm talking about the agency we do have and the things we can change and the things we should. In a world where it can feel a little overwhelming, this is a book to say, "Yes, it can seem a little overwhelming. It's okay. You've got power to change things."

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, one thing on the news, Ali, because you compiled all the Trump indictments into your last book, and wrote the introduction, and you read all the indictments out loud as a podcast, I'm curious if having done that has informed the way you're observing the trial that's happening in Manhattan now, the first of those indictments to actually go to trial.

Ali Velshi: It really does inform the way I think about them. Let me tell you, when I first started reading them, I thought to myself this can be a little bit dry and a little bit difficult, but, boy, there's a tail in there. In all four of those separate cases, there are very detailed tales including the one in New York, which seems less interesting to people. It seems more like an accounting trial. When you read those indictments, you understand what is truly alleged to have happened.

You don't have to believe them. You can hear them tried in court, but it is important to understand what they're talking about. As I look on social media, I see a lot of commentary about things that don't have to do with what's actually happening in that court. It's an easy read. It's downloadable. Other people have written similar books.

I would suggest people read them so that they're not susceptible to misinformation that's out there on the internet. These are serious charges in all cases. Donald Trump has not been adjudicated and has not been found guilty of anything yet. He deserves that. You should read what's charged because it is eye-opening.

Brian Lehrer: Ali Velshi's new book is called Small Acts of Courage, A Legacy of Endurance and The Fight for Democracy. Again, his Saturday and Sunday show on MSNBC is 10:00 AM to noon. That is a great time to host a public affairs show. 10:00 AM to noon, and I guess somebody has to do it on the weekends. The news cycle never seems to take the weekend off anymore. Does it seem like that to you?

Ali Velshi: It never does. We used to have slow weekends, slow Fridays, and slow summers. None of the above happen anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Ali, thanks for joining us. We really, really appreciate it.

Ali Velshi: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: It's a wonderful book.

Ali Velshi: Thank you.

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