Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian who's off today. I hope everyone is staying warm. It is already really cold and the temperature is dropping dangerously to low levels today, I'm sure you've heard that. I hope everybody stays warm as well as they can.

On today's show, we're going to hear from New York Magazine editor Choire Sicha who will talk about the new rules, etiquette for 2023. Plus New York City is losing Black families, at least 200,000 people over the past 20 years. We'll hear your stories about where you or your Black friends and family members are moving and why. Bronx Assembly Member Karines Reyes will join us to react to Governor Hochul's budget proposal and talk about a new law that bans the toxic chemical mercury from beauty products.

First, it's been a week since the release of that graphic and disturbing footage of Tyre Nichols. The 29-year-old Black father, brother and son was beaten to death at the hands of Memphis police officers who were also Black. Five officers had been fired and face a series of charges including second-degree murder. On Wednesday, three weeks after his death, the family of Tyre Nichols gathered to mourn.

Aaron Morrison of the Associated Press wrote, "The funeral on Wednesday had all the hallmarks of what's known as a homegoing service in Black American communities. Comforting gospel hymns, remembrances from loved ones and a stirring eulogy from a clergyman. In addition to the offering of an outlet for private mourning of Nichols' family and friends, this ritual was also public and political." That from Aaron Morrison. A delegation from The White House was there led by Vice President Kamala Harris. She spoke from the pulpit and praised Nichols' parents, Rodney and RowVaughn Wells, for their strength. Here's about a minute of her talking about this loss, especially for his family.

Kamala Harris: Mothers around the world, when their babies are born, pray to God, when they hold that child, that that body and that life will be safe for the rest of his life. Yet we have a mother and a father who mourn the life of a young man who should be here today. They have a grandson who now does not have a father. His brothers and sister will lose the love of growing old with their baby brother. When we look at this situation, this is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe.

Brigid: Several members of Nichols' family also spoke. His big sister talked about taking care of him as a little kid, how he was happy with a bowl of cereal and cartoons. When his mother RowVaughn Wells spoke, her pain was palpable.

RowVaughn Wells: First of all, I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out to pay tribute to my son. Tyre was a beautiful person. If it is to happen to him, it's just unimaginable. I promise you, the only thing that's keeping me going is the fact that I really truly believe my son was sent here on an assignment from God. I guess now his assignment is done. He's been taken home.

Brigid: All of this ceremony was televised with cameras and microphones capturing each moment. My first guest Charles Blow, New York Times columnist wrote this week about how this case and the many that preceded it distorts the grieving process for these families. "Privacy is unavailable to them," he wrote. It's among the countless injustices that this and too many other families have faced, how to grapple with staggering grief while being in the public eye. How the discussions inevitably shift to politics and what's broken systemically even as individuals suffer how broken they feel individually. Charles Blow is also an MSNBC analyst, and author of The Devil You Know and Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Charles, welcome back to WNYC. I really appreciate you joining me.

Charles: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Brigid: Listeners, we want to check in with you this morning. How are you processing this past week? Have you had to talk to your children or maybe your parents about Tyre Nichols' death? Are you the mother or father of a Black child? How are you working through your fear, your anger, and your grief? Did you make a point to watch any of his funeral this week?

What are the ways you have found to grieve privately or did you seek out comfort in community? Were you inspired to protest? Give me a call at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692 or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. Charles, you attended Tyre Nichols' funeral this week. Can you talk to us a little bit about what it was like in that church and what your experience was like there?

Charles: Absolutely. First, it is not the first time I've been to one of these funerals, and so some of the things that were part of the funeral were familiar to me. What we have to remember about these families in these particular kinds of cases that garnered so much attention, is that they become a magnet for a lot of people around the families. The incredible entourage of dignitaries was remarkable. This is something that you notice. The church had three sections, one down the middle, one right and left.

I don't know how many rows there were but probably a quarter of the front sections in all three sections was reserved for dignitaries. It was like six or seven rows of other pastors, activists, politicians, movie directors. That is part of what ends up happening to these families is that their grief, their journey is no longer completely their own. They're sucked into a vortex of people saying things to them that they need to do or should do, or advising, or counseling.

Also, them feeling that they need to do these things in order to have access to some sort of justice, to rationalize what has happened to the child, the tragedy, to make their death count in a way. There are PR lawyers all around who are never going to go to court, by the way. There are activists, and there are other ministers, and there are people in the community, and then there is politicians. Everyone wanting them to set the tone for the grieving of the community. It becomes very interesting to watch all of the pulling you can tell is happening on the family and that shows up even in the funeral.

Brigid: There were also families of other people who died from police violence at this funeral. I understand there were families of George Floyd, Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, but there were also families of people whose names some of us may not know as well. You met a mother whose son had also been killed by Memphis police. Can you tell us about her?

Charles: Yes. Her last name is Gates Bullard. Her son's name was Gates. I don't have his first name, I can't remember it right now. Sorry about that. He was killed by sheriff deputies in Memphis. It was part of another crazy tough-on-crime program called jump and grab, an undercover sting around drug usage. They went to court. One of the sheriff's deputies was convicted of violating her son's civil rights. One of the interesting things that you're pointing out here is something that I have noticed in the 10 years that I have been covering these cases, which is that, first of all, the number of mothers is legion. You have no concept of how many people this is.

Most of them are mothers-- that we're pointing out are mothers of people who died, but there's also multiples of that of mothers of people who are roughed up and lived, who were damaged, injured, and lived, who we never talk about. What they end up doing is they make pilgrimages to funerals and occasions of other mothers. It's a fascinating phenomenon that it's happening. It's sorority of sorrow if you want to give a delivery thing that they bind themselves together, whether they know each other or not, whether they communicate or not.

They still show up at these other funerals because the grieving has not ended for them. There is no termination on this, no wrapping it up because it was a tragedy, it was a betrayal of the state of the system around you. It's almost like a betrayal of the air. There's something all around you. You have no choice but to be in it, and that is the thing that kills you. That makes it inescapable and therefore they're grieving about it. In my experience just seems to never have some [unintelligible 00:11:15]. There's no in way for them wrap it up. They continue to grieve other mothers, and it resurfaces their own pain every time they hear about one of these cases.

Brigid: Charles, in your latest column it's called This Is a Moral Crime. You wrestle with some of what we talked about, that idea of how a family like Tyre Nichols is robbed of the space to mourn privately, becoming immediately the leaders of mass public mourning. To the extent that you've described part of this sorority of mourning. Can you talk about also how some of the grief experts you spoke with describe what that does to them and what they're losing in that process?

Charles: Absolutely. I will say this, it's not that these families don't have some sort of agency. There are a lot of families that choose not to mourn publicly in this way. There's some for whom their cases just don't rise to that level and therefore they don't even get a chance or a choice in the matter about whether or not they are more public about it. For a lot of the families they understand that their only access to the possibility of justice is to publicly mourn and that becomes their loss.

They have to make this horrible choice. I mourn silently but that may mean that a person gets away with it, or I mourn publicly and let people tap into my opinion and valorize it, and that is the only way I have to access to that. The grief experts were talking to me more about the ritual. There's a sacredness to mourning, and when you have to perform your mourning you lose some of the ability to have that sacredness.

You lose the quiet space that is really important to mourning and the reflection time. Just the sitting with a relative or a friend and someone bringing you tea and you crying and they just holding your hand, those moments-- not that these families won't have any of that. I'm sure that they will. Eventually, the television cameras will go away. Eventually, the protesting will stop. You need that normal, natural-- whatever normal, natural is for you, mourning to take place.

A lot of times it is quiet-- a lot of times it's not articulate and these families are forced to articulate their feelings constantly. It seems like a very normal and natural question for a news person to ask the people, how are you doing? It's actually for some people a very cruel question. It is an unanswerable question for them. I remember being with Tamir Rice's mother on one year anniversary of his death, and there was a program for that at the church.

I meet her in the back of the church and the woman comes up and she says, "Oh my God, I feel your pain. I'm so sorry for you." She hugged her. As soon as the woman worked where she says, "I am tired of giving hugs and these people have no idea how I feel." You could tell there was an anguish in it, the constantly having to perform, to constantly having to be present for other people's mourning that could not even compare to yours, but they're mourning about your child. It's very complicated to these families.

Brigid: I was struck by-- excuse me-- your description of your interview of Trayvon Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, and the way her grief had affected her physicality. The way she gravitated to her own mother. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Charles: Yes. The first time I interviewed her was in-- I think it was Miami Gardens, the neighborhood near Miami. She wanted to meet at a restaurant, so we did. She showed up with her mother-- it occurred to me for comfort. As she would sit and answered questions about her own son she wrapped her arms around her mother's arm and rested her head on her shoulder like a child would do. You could see that she was grasping for comfort. You could see the deep grief in her, and it was expressing itself literally in her body.

That was fascinating for me to watch. Also, I'm a journalist but also a human being, so you're trying to be very delicate about what you are seeing and understanding that this person-- maybe this is not even the time for her to speak about it, but she wants to speak. It is my job to bear a witness so it becomes complicated for us too. The very thing that I am discussing here, which is intrusion and spotlights, as a journalist you're constantly-- you're part of that. You have to figure out, how do I also not intrude and interrupt this person's grief at mourning. It's a very complicated situation.

Brigid: I want to bring in one of our listeners. Let's go to Lex in the Bronx. Lex, thanks for calling. Welcome to WNYC.

Lex: Thank you and good morning.

Brigid: Good morning.

Lex: I'm blown away literally by how routine dealing with death, particularly in our Black community, but also in the American community. It's literally like murder is sport. It hurts so much more at this time because it's us doing it to us. It's Black people taking the lives of Black people, like literally on camera. It's like it's tailor-made for a media field date and that's exactly what we have. I've lost family, medical emergencies I've lost family to gun violence.

I very much believe we carry our dead with us, and the pain is definitely a part of that issue of grief. What we do with it and why we keep going through it those are questions that we have to ask ourselves. I think it's time to look in the mirror. I'm in a position where-- I'm born and raised in New York. I'm from the Bronx, Albert Einstein Hospital. I'm the only individual in my family still living in America.

My entire nuclear family is out, gone. They're in the islands back in the Caribbean. They're in Central America. I'm trying to get out too, because my wife is in South Africa right now looking at places. Point I'm making is, we know what time it is here. We see the effects of it. I can't stick around and wait for that rain to fall on me or mine because I'm already near the edge. It's out there. It could happen today. That's just what it is. The pain and the grief is always with us, and I feel for those who are going through with us.

Brigid: Lex, thank you so much for calling, and for holding so you could share your feelings with all of our listeners. Charles, I want to give you a chance to respond to Lex.

Charles: It's a fascinating phenomenon that people are experiencing in this country, particularly Black people with this issue of police violence and police killings. Police violence and police killings are not the biggest threat to anyone's life in America. It's more community violence. It is more crime on a local level that is more of a threat to your life. We expect criminals to be criminals. We do not expect the state to also be a threat to your life. It is the ubiquitousness of the state that makes it more threatening to a lot of people than the criminals themselves.

You can imagine as any other person in America, in any city that you live in. You know that your mother or whomever father says, "Don't go over in that area, it's a little bit more dangerous over there. Stay in this area, or play here at this playground, or go to that grocery store." You kind of learn the topography of safety in your neighborhood, in your city. There is no typography of safety when you are Black in America and you're dealing with police officers because we see these police killing everywhere. It doesn't matter if you're near your home, away from your home. It doesn't matter if you're in your car, you're out of your car. It doesn't matter if you're walking, if you're running.

In each of those circumstances, we have seen Black people killed by police. It becomes a ubiquitous threat for a lot of Black people that community violence simply does not present for most. You sometimes can make a choice to go to somewhere where you feel less safe. In the community you can sometimes register other areas, let's say. It is different to know that anywhere you are there is law enforcement, and the record keeps saying to Black people that you are disproportionately likely to encounter these officers in a negative way. That becomes traumatic for a lot of people.

Brigid: We're going to have to take a short break. More with New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow and your calls coming up. Stay with us.

[music]

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. My guest is New York Times opinion columnist and MSNBC analyst and author, Charles Blow. We're reflecting on this past week after the footage of Tyre Nichols' death was released and his funeral on Wednesday. Listeners, we're checking in with you this morning. How are you processing this past week, and what are your thoughts about grieving privately or with others? I want to go right to one of our callers. Chris in Queens, welcome to WNYC.

Chris: Thank you. Good morning. My introduction to grief was a very young age with Clifford Glover. I was close friends with his younger brother. Excuse me, Henry. I remember when Clifford Glover was murdered in South Jamaica I lived in Union Hall Street, he was around corner which was then New York Boulevard, now Grand Boulevard. I remember going to the funeral home at 10:00, I couldn't even process. I couldn't even make sense of it that we went to PS4 together. He was laying in the casket in the suit. I just couldn't put together and it just keeps going on and on.

Like the previous caller, one of four boys and all my brothers are going. One of my brothers got murdered in 1991. It don't go and it just keeps happening. When you see something like this is like you don't-- let me just say it about Black cops in the Black community. Nobody's more vicious, the Black people in the Black community than Black cops. I can almost understand white cops what they do, their racism, whatever. Whatever way they got to become the people they are, but Black cops in our community, what was going on over there, happens all the time. That's why they was there because they went rogue.

All I can say is the grief turns into the [unintelligible 00:24:52] married 34 years ago, great kids, college grads, but it stays with you. It's like insanity almost. You're scared of that call in the morning. The fear that you have of a call 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, because you dread them calls because you don't know what it is. What the grief turns into when you have children, and with the cops out here turns to fear. Sometimes I wish I'd never had kids because I constantly-- I love my kids. I love my family. You almost waiting for the day that something happens to them, and that's what it does to you, it breaks you down. That's my comments. Thank you.

Brigid: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for calling. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing an incredibly painful story. In that story, what part of I think I heard Chris raising was this sense of the idea that a police force without guardrails. Charles, as you and others have noted in reflecting on Tyre Nichols' funeral, politics definitely became part of that event. I want to play a little bit more. This is Vice President Kamala Harris who said this.

Kamala: As Vice President of the United States we demand that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act-- Joe Biden will sign it. We should not delay and we will not be denied, it is non-negotiable.

Brigid: Later in the service, RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols' mother echoed that appeal.

RowVaughn: I just need, whatever that George Floyd bill, we need it passed. We need to take some action because there should be no other child that's just suffered the way my son, and all the other parents here have lost their children. We need to get that bill passed, because if we don't, that blood, the next child that dies, that blood is going to be on their hands.

Brigid: Charles, as you wrote, Ms. Wells has been forced to shift so quickly from her own grief to being an advocate. She and her husband, Rodney, will actually go from this week of mourning to the State of the Union next week in Washington. Do you see value in bringing the Nichols family to the State of the Union?

Charles: Yes, they want to be there. If that is part of their journey and they were asking and they agree to, yes. Whatever the family needs and wants, I believe, grant them that, but there is the political side of it, and the politics of it is partly theater. Always, that's not a partisan thing, politics is theater. You heard there the vice president saying is non-negotiable, but actually, there was negotiation between Tim Scott and Cory Booker, and another senator, about this bill.

There are a lot of people who don't think that the administration weighed in heavily enough. It's not that you can change any senator's votes, but just pressure, public sentiment, using the bully pulpit helps. It also sends a signal to the people who support the action that you are actively engaged, you're not sitting silently on your hands. The administration in a lot of these cases have basically taken the position while the negotiating was happening, that they were going to be a little bit more hands-off.

Whether that be voting rights, or police reform, or whatever but these things died. They died almost silent death. You can't blame the administration for Republicans not voting for something, and you can't blame Tim Scott trying to water down this police reform bill to be almost meaningless. That loud vocal demand from the vice president it would have been also nice to hear a lot of that when the bill was actually still alive and still being considered.

Brigid: There were reports that the Congressional Black Caucus met with President Biden yesterday and reached some legislative package agreement, again, just a proposal. As well as some ideas for community-based solutions. I think we can anticipate how some of these proposals may play out. From your mind, how important is it that a package includes something like ending qualified immunity for police officers?

Charles: First of all, it's better to do this when you control all three branches of congress than when you don't. We already know that these go nowhere now. What they are laying out is a set of principles that if they could get them passed, these are the principles that they would want to have enacted into the legislation. On principle, absolutely qualified immunity is part of it. You heard Ms. McConnell say after this most recent case that he's-- maybe I don't know how it was reported, but maybe open to some-- being able to have litigation against departments.

That's actually not helpful. Suing a department is suing the city which is suing the taxpayers, and in Memphis most of the taxpayers are Black. You are going to take my money to pay for killing people who look like me? That doesn't make sense to me. The individual officers just like individual doctors or individual drivers of big rigs. If you do something that costs a loss of life, you are responsible individually. That's what makes things accountable. There was a great line that Sharpton used in the funeral which he says, if you are able to be sued, you have a different conversation when you leave the house with your spouse.

Don't go out there and be stupid and do something and make us lose our house. Don't do something stupid and make us lose the money for the kid to go to college. It makes you change behavior because you individually become at least-- qualified immunity is about civil suits and therefore monetary compensation. That's part of your livelihood and so it changes your conversation about that. That's important to me because individual accountability is what we're talking about, not departmental responsibility. Taxpayers will eventually pay that money, not the person

Brigid: I want to go to another one of our callers Annette in Queens. Annette, welcome to WNYC.

Annette: Oh, same. The last caller when he talked about Clifford Glover, he forgot to mention that Clifford Glover was only 10 years old. I'm going to be 80 and I never forget what happened to him. As far as the funeral, the person who was there, who has been most of the funerals is Reverend Sharpton. The families know exactly what their funeral and what it's going to entail.

Is going to be like you said homegoing. It's going to be, what's our next move? You're going to get it all political and that's because they call on him because they trust him. His message is the one they want to hear. Now when I'm listening to Mr. Blow, it sounds like he was critiquing the service and giving what-- maybe people want more privacy, or he was more to me critiquing maybe this shouldn't be this type of funeral.

That's what I'm getting from him, but he didn't say it out loud. From the way he was talking about performance, he was really trying to critique the funeral and saying that he didn't really think it should have been that kind of a funeral. I disagree with him because they know Reverend Sharpton, and they know exactly what kind of funeral is going to be. As I said his notes are in his head and he's been doing this many and many times and they trust him. That's just my opinion from what I was listening to him saying.

Brigid: Thank you so much, Annette. Charles, obviously I want to give you a chance to respond to Annette.

Charles: That's not the critique. The critique is the American critique which is that because America has not dealt with this issue, families are forced into a position where they have to wrestle with the idea that one of the only avenues to justice is to put their grief on display. It is to call in the biggest names that you can possibly have for the funeral so that they can bring the cameras. One of the things that they presiding preachers said during the ceremony is that Al Sharpton does just go where the cameras is. He brings the cameras.

That's what the presiding minister at the funeral said. Mr. Sharpton brings the cameras and shines the light on the case so that the families can get more justice. If justice was available to these families and America made justice available to these families, you wouldn't need to have all that. Because it is not available to these families in America, and this keeps happening as many of your callers have pointed out, then the families are put in a position where they need to have the person at the funeral who will bring the cameras.

They need to have the PR lawyers. They need to have the activists show up. They need to have the cameras show up. When all of that happens, it alters the way that mourning happens for us naturally. The critique is not of the funeral itself. The critique is not in any way of the family's choices. The critique is of an America that will force a family into having to make the choice, to make their funeral of their loved one public rather than private.

Brigid: Charles we started this conversation reflecting on that very idea how we grieve and this idea that this deeply private internal grappling has to go on before the cameras, in front of the microphones. I'm also wondering as someone who has had to cover this as you've said for over a decade, how do you cope with covering so many of these stories? Is your writing a meditation in some way?

Charles: Maybe it is. I work around journalists who do far more devastating coverage than me. I work at The New York Times. You have war correspondents. They see more hard and you can imagine in a day and they still file their reports at the end of the day. you talk to them they talk about this idea of keeping distance as best you can because you have a job to do. It's more important to record and bear witness than to succumb to your own personal emotions about it. You learn from other journalists how to best compartmentalize.

You are a human being and so it affects you. When my own son was stopped at Yale, the officer pulled his gun out of his holster. That officer was also Black. I had just come out of covering one of these other killings, and because of that it's in my bones and I freeze up and become angry and undone. Because I don't want to be one of the parents that I'm writing about because I see how devastated those parents are and I don't want to ever feel what they're feeling.

Brigid: Charles, thank you so, so much for being with us this morning for helping have this conversation with our listeners and listening to their stories. Charles Blows a New York Times opinion columnist, MSNBC analyst, and author of The Devil You know and Fire shut Up in My Bones. Thank you again for joining me in WNYC.

Charles: Thank you.

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