India Walton: At a certain point, I was just like, what did I even do wrong? I didn't steal, I didn't lie, I didn't cheat. We ran a very clean race, but our opposition was so angry. 

(Death, Sex & Money theme music)

Anna Sale: This is Death, Sex & Money.  

The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot...

...and need to talk about more.

I’m Anna Sale.

(end Death, Sex & Money theme music)

MSNBC newscaster: All eyes may have been on New York City's mayoral race last night, but the biggest upset might have actually been in the state's second largest city, which could soon see the country's first socialist mayor in half a century.

Anna Sale: In Buffalo, New York, in June of 2021, India Walton beat 4-term incumbent Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic Primary. She was 39, a registered nurse, mother of four kids. The political establishment was shocked. And so was she.

India Walton (field recording): Mommy! I won! Mommy I'm the mayor of Buffalo. 

(laughter)

India Walton: Well, not til January, but yeah.

Anna Sale: This video of her calling her mom after her victory went viral.

India Walton (field recording): Yes! 

(clapping)

India Walton: Yes, mom! I won.

India Walton (interview): My mother is probably the only person on this planet that I really care about what she thinks of me. So. I work really hard to try and make her proud. And she and I had been speaking, um, for a few months about my reasons for continuing to live in Buffalo. She lives in Alabama, she loves it there, I have family in Georgia. And I promised her that if I did not win the primary that I would pack up and I would come down to Phenix City, Alabama, with her.

Anna Sale: Oh, so there was a lot in that call. There’s like–

India Walton: Yeah.

Anna Sale: –I did this mommy, and you were also calling to say, I'm not coming to live where you live.

India Walton: Right.

(music)

Anna Sale: I’m staying in Buffalo.

India Walton: Because, um, presumptively, I was going to be the mayor. So that's the job I can only do from here.

Anna Sale: India Walton is not mayor of Buffalo. The incumbent mayor she beat launched a write-in campaign and was sworn in to another term at the beginning of 2022. We talked about that election loss, and also, about all that happened before that in her life that shaped her politics: becoming a parent for the first time at 14, being a survivor of intimate partner violence, putting herself through nursing school, and then in her mid-30s, leaving that career behind to become a neighborhood organizer. 

And we also talked about the horror in Buffalo, five months after her campaign loss, when a white supremacist gunman murdered ten Black people in a grocery store.

(music fades out)

India Walton: My youngest son still won't go into a grocery store. He sits in the car while I grocery shop, or he just is really adamant that we Instacart instead.

Anna Sale: The shooting took place on Buffalo's East Side, the predominantly Black part of town where India grew up with her mother and five siblings. For school, she was bussed across town, where mostly white people lived. 

India Walton: And my best friend when I was 12 years old, um, Carrie, lived in South Buffalo. And Carrie and I didn't see each other over the summer. Um, we used to write letters and put 'em in snail mail to communicate because I wasn't allowed to go to South Buffalo outside of being in school. And she wasn't allowed to come to East Buffalo.

Anna Sale: Hm, you didn't like hang out together at the mall over the summer. 

India Walton: No.

Anna Sale: It was like you were in different worlds.

India Walton: Exactly, and there was a palpable difference in the standard of living, right? I mean, where I was experiencing a lot of demolitions happening in my neighborhood, the neighborhood I went to school in was still very well maintained even down to being able to walk on the sidewalk safely, um, as opposed to in my neighborhood where there were sidewalks that are broken, cracked or nonexistent at all, and we just had to walk in the street. 

Anna Sale: Tell me if any of this is too, too personal, but I’m cur– I wanna hear about when you became a mother–

India Walton: Mm-hmm.

Anna Sale: –the first time when you, when you realized you were pregnant, um, was it a surprise?

India Walton: Unfortunately, no. Um, I was the primary caregiver for my siblings. My mother worked full time and overtime as a pharmacy technician at the VA hospital. And, um, in all of my smartness, I figured that if I had a child of my own, then I could just move out and I wouldn't have to be responsible for my other siblings. And if I could do that, I might as well run my own household. And, you know, that's not only coupled with the weight and responsibility of helping my mom take care of the home while she worked outside the house. But you know, just a lot of other traumatic and inappropriate things that were happening because she was away from home so much and I had older brothers whose friends would come over, you know, I had been sexually assaulted multiple times and just wanted to get away.

Anna Sale: Wow. So for you, for your 14 year old self, becoming a parent was a way to get some control over, over your life.

India Walton: Mm-hmm.

Anna Sale: It didn’t take long for India Walton’s plan to fall apart. Her son Mahkahi was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia and her relationship with his dad ended.

India Walton: When Mahkahi I came back home with my mother. Um, eventually I voluntarily went into placement with the state. So, I lived with my baby in a group home for teenage mothers.

Anna Sale: Mm, what was that like?

India Walton: It was a formative experience. It was how I learned to live independently. 

Anna Sale: Uh-huh.

India Walton: Um, it was how I learned to anticipate needing a coat and boots for my baby before the snow actually came. 

Anna Sale: Uh-huh. (laughs)

India Walton: (laughs) Um, it was how – it was how I learned to manage, um, being able to go to school and still spend time with him. And, you know, do basic things like plan a menu and buy, buy groceries. Um, it was a supportive environment where there were expectations and rules, and I think that I've made lots of questionable decisions in my life, but that– the decision to go into placement for me was one that, um, that paid off.

Anna Sale: Lots of questionable decisions. (laughs)

India Walton: (laughs)

Anna Sale: When you say “to go into placement,” like what, what did that mean? Was that saying like, I need help from the state. Was that saying, I– what did that, what did that look like?

(music)

India Walton: it meant that I had to convince my mother to agree to waive her parental rights and allow me to become ward of the state.

Anna Sale: This, India says, was a way the government helped her as a young mom, but the school system… not as much. India stayed in school at first, in a program designed for students who were mothers, but she says she eventually got bored because she felt the school wasn’t academically rigorous enough. She dropped out, got her GED, and when she was 19, gave birth to twin boys.

India Walton: They were born at 24 weeks. Um, and their chances of survival were really slim. They spent six months in the hospital and, um, I had complained to one of their nurses about the way some of the other nurses spoke to me and spoke about them, and she said, if you don't like it, why don't you go become a nurse? Um.

(music fades out)

Anna Sale: (laughs) Challenge accepted.

India Walton: (laughs) So. As is, um, sort of my M.O., I, I went to nursing school, and eventually I went back and I worked in that same NICU where, um, where my boys were born. Where Kathy told me if I didn't like it, I should go be a nurse. And I worked there for almost 10 years.

Anna Sale: Wait, was Kathy one of the nurses who spoke to you in a way you didn't like?

India Walton: No, Kathy was my girl.

Anna Sale: Oh, I see. Okay.

India Walton: (laughs) Kathy was one of the, one of the few people that I felt like I could relate to. And who spoke to me like I had half a brain, who explained things fully, and who really honored my role as a mother, as a part of the care team.

Anna Sale: Um, the nurses who didn't speak to you with respect, um, were they white?

India Walton: Yeah. I mean, the interesting part about life in the NICU is that, um, I mean, you know – when we talk about infant mortality and maternal outcomes, people who are disproportionately impacted by that tend to be women of color. And, you know, we are servicing a client that 80% of the consumers are on Medicaid, and yet there's hardly any staff that look like the folks we serve and zero Spanish-speaking nurses. Um, you know, we had to use a translator phone to speak to families who spoke Spanish as their first language. And it was just like – in my opinion, it was an issue. And, um, I used to get into quite a bit of conflict regarding the lack of diversity and the lack of culturally competent care. 

Anna Sale: Can you give me an example of what that conflict looked like?

India Walton: You know, just listening to team members say distasteful things about the families, um, about mothers, about the future of whatever these children's lives might be like, and having to say, “I don't think it's right that you're saying that about them.” So. I would go to work, do my job, and then I would go home and hug my babies and cry sometimes, but it's okay.

Anna Sale: In 2014 India left the NICU and became a nurse at a Buffalo Public School, kindergarten to 8th grade. For some of her students she was the only health care professional they saw.

India Walton: It's funny because, um, one of the teacher's assistants came into my office one day and she said, “I wish I could have this job, just sitting here all day, doing nothing.” I was like (laughs) I said, “Girl, I'm not doing nothing. I'm responsible for every person in this building. All 452 people – students, teachers, visitors. Right, if something goes wrong, I have to know what to do in all of those situations.”

Anna Sale: Did you talk to the kids who were on the verge of puberty, uh, about sex and having been a young mom?

(music)

India Walton: I did. I actually, um, I would punch out at three o'clock and take off my nurse's hat. And then at 3:15, I would put on my mentor hat and I ran an afterschool program called FLY Girls. F-L-Y stood for Finally Loving Yourself. And, um, one day I brought in a bunch of mirrors from the dollar store, and I made them just stare at themselves in the mirror for like five minutes and then write down like what they saw and what they thought of themselves.

Anna Sale: Coming up, India talks about her decision to leave her husband.

India Walton: The last altercation we were in, he broke a couple of my ribs. It was the day before my birthday, I had to go to the hospital, and when I got – when I left the hospital, I could not return.

(music fades out)

Anna Sale: This is Death, Sex & Money from WNYC. I’m Anna Sale. 

India Walton describes “democratic socialism” as the politics of caring, and into her twenties she had cared a lot… cared about diversity at work, about her patients and students, and she wanted to learn how to organize to care for more people. 

She had received some training as a union leader at the hospital, and after she became a school nurse, she saw an ad on Facebook for a leadership course with a local grassroots group, Open Buffalo. 

India Walton: All of the oppression and systems that I noticed all along, right, and that I would, like, call out in like discreet ways, but didn't have the vocabulary to explain what it was I was experiencing, right.

Anna Sale: Mm-hmm.

India Walton: Um, and I think that like, racism is a very loaded term, right? But when you can drill down and talk about social determinants of health and how racialized capital prevents people from being able to do basic things, right, and it's like, not because they don't want to – it's because they can't, cause they don't have the resources. And I've seen that translate into the education system, the healthcare system, housing. All of these concepts can be applied, right, like at the intersection of everything.

Anna Sale: While India was having these eye-opening realizations about the language of systematic racism, at home, things were oppressive. Her husband, the father of her three youngest boys, was physically abusive.

India Walton: One of my twins witnessed my husband beating me up, and he went to school and told his teacher. And his school called Child Protective Services on me. And they were threatening to, um, remove my children from my care because I was being physically abused by my husband. So my choices were to either end my marriage, um, or allow the state to place my children in foster care. And that was how it ended. It ended with us going to court and the court saying he had to leave that day, um. And just like that, it was me and my four boys.

Anna Sale: How long had you all been together when, um, when it first became physically violent, this relationship?

India Walton: We had been together for 10 years.

Anna Sale: Uh-huh. And when that happened, was it a surprise to you?

India Walton: It wa– it– Hmm. I don't think it was a surprise because… I could see things begin to escalate. So, um, I met my husband when I was 17 years old. And at each step of growth and maturity for me, he would say or do something, right. He would say, um, “When you get your GED, you're gonna leave me. When you get your LP, you're gonna leave me.” Um. And then I had weight loss surgery, I lost 120 pounds, and that was when the physical abuse started.

Anna Sale: After you had this physical transformation, um–

India Walton: Mm-hmm.

Anna Sale: Did you tell anyone when he became physically violent?

India Walton: I did not.

Anna Sale: I think often when we hear about stories of, of violence and, and intimate partner relationships, it's often from people who, um, are telling the story of having made the decision to leave. Um, and I'm wondering if you can go back to, to that period of time when you didn't know that the relationship was gonna end – you wanted to keep advancing to take care of your family. You needed to – and the way that you advanced needed to be done in such a way that it wouldn't make your partner violent. What was it like to be trying to, um, navigate all of those concerns, when you weren't really the one in charge of whether something was gonna become violent?

India Walton: Um, it was one of the most difficult times of my life and… the way I dealt with it was I got hyper religious, because I thought that like, church was a safe place. And that if I could convince him that I was good, that he would be nice to me, um, and that he would protect me from himself. Um. And I mean, when things were good, they were good. And most times they were, but when things were bad, they were bad. Like he – oh goodness. I remember like he would do things like intentionally deprive me of sleep. Like I would be sleeping and he would just wake me up, like knowing that I had to go to work for a 12 hour shift, like just would not allow me to sleep.

Anna Sale: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did anyone at church know what was happening at home at the time?

India Walton: I don't know. 

(music)

India Walton: I do remember one of the elders. Um, you know, when I said that I was thinking about leaving, telling me that a wise woman builds her home, but a foolish one would tear it down with her own hands.

Anna Sale: Oh man. Do you still go to that church?

India Walton: I do not.

Anna Sale: And was it after that, that you started the FLY Girls?

India Walton: It was during it.

Anna Sale: Hmm. Did you get yourself a dollar store mirror to look in – look at your face and write down words?

India Walton: I did, I cried right along with them.

Anna Sale: Coming up, India finds a new line of work…

India Walton: When I discovered that there were folks who get to speak up against injustice and it's their actual job, I said, I wanna do that. I wanna be an organizer.

Anna Sale: (laughs) You can get paid for that?

(music fades out)

India Walton: (laughs) Who knew?

(Death, Sex & Money theme music)

Anna Sale: Over the years, we’ve had a number of political leaders on the show: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, current Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and way back, in one of the show’s very first episodes, former Wyoming Senator Al Simpson.

I love these episodes because they remind me that despite how much we hear people in politics talking in the news, it is incredibly rare to hear them describe their lives in a real way, free of platitudes, or you know, just in a way that acknowledges they haven’t always gotten it right. 

We’ve put links to those episodes in our show notes, and who knows! Maybe listening back will make you realize you may have more to contribute in the political realm. 

Of course, joining in the fray of our nasty politics these days sounds less pleasant than a root canal, but for those of you who have put yourselves forward, to do something in public life, in your community, we want to hear why. What was the deciding factor for you to step forward and try? 

Whether you’ve been a candidate yourself, or started a neighborhood group, or volunteered or organized a protest or letter-writing campaign, send us an email at deathsexmoney@wnyc.org and tell us about your experience, and how your newfound resolve affected the rest of your life. We want to hear about your forays into politics and community building, the big and small. And we’ll share some of what we hear back in our weekly newsletter. 

If you’re not already getting that, you are missing out! Each week there’s a personal note from myself along with stories from our listeners and other fun stuff. Subscribe at deathsexmoney.org/newsletter.

(end Death, Sex & Money theme music)

Anna Sale: This is Death, Sex & Money from WNYC. I’m Anna Sale. 

Buffalo, New York, continues to be a city starkly separated by race. Eighty-five percent of the city’s Black population lives on the east side. When India Walton was in her thirties, she moved to the historic east side neighborhood called the Fruit Belt, which was once covered in orchards. The streets are still named after fruit. 

India Walton: There's Orange, Grape, Lemon, Locust, Mulberry... and Maple. And then, if you go on the other side of the Kensington Expressway, there's also Cherry, Pine, Spruce, Hickory – um, but now that that neighborhood has been severed, um, by the creation of an urban highway.

Anna Sale: They built a highway right through this idyllic orchard area.

India Walton: Yep.

Anna Sale: As India began her career as an organizer, this neighborhood was in transition. For decades after the highway went in, property values sank, and housing fell into disrepair. Some were demolished in the name of quote-unquote ‘urban renewal.’ By the time India moved there, developers were interested in the area. And long-time residents, fearful of getting priced out, eventually joined together to form a land trust that took over ownership of vacant lots. 

India was a big part of that effort. But her first paid organizing job, in 2016, focused on criminal justice. 

India Walton: It was a vision for how we end cash bail. How we stop low-level marijuana enforcement. How we continue to address the problem that we have with violent crime and gun violence while making sure that we are able to have some accountability measures for our law enforcement, so um. It just – it exposed me to being able to dream of another world, um, that's, that's centered on caring about people.

Anna Sale: Hm. Were you making about the same amount of money as you had when you were a nurse?

India Walton: No. Um, I went from making about, close to $70,000 a year working part-time, um, to making 40.

Anna Sale: Mm, with three kids at home?

India Walton: Yeah.

Anna Sale: That must have been hard – have your income cut in about half and figure out how to do it.

India Walton: It was, it was rough. But the work-life balance, the feeling that I got from doing work that I found to be extremely meaningful – and I also felt like it was a temporary state of being – there were gonna be opportunities for me to advance fairly quickly and make more money? Because I was really good at what I was doing. 

Anna Sale: Do you th– how do you think of yourself when it comes to like, risk calculations and making moves, like, um, I'm just hearing in, in the way that you tell these stories a sense of confidence, um, of just, and clarity. And I just – I'm wondering, do you know where that comes from?

India Walton: Um, I think it comes from surviving. (laughs) Yeah, I – I've had times in my life where I’ve thought “Man, can things get any worse?” And then they did, so. (laughs)

Anna Sale: Uh-huh.

India Walton: It's just kind of like, I – I'm not afraid of failure. I’ve just for a long time felt like I don't have anything to lose, and I can't really lose if I don't try. So why not?

Anna Sale: When it first popped into your head, “Maybe I'm gonna run for mayor Buffalo.” Like, what was the feeling you had when you first had that idea?

India Walton: Um. I said… Byron Brown has fumbled every major issue of our time. And, um, I'm like, it's a long shot, but someone has to do something. Like we can't allow him to just keep being unopposed and then begging for audience from him when it's time for him to make decisions that benefit us. Why are we still the third poorest city of its size? Why do we have a child poverty rate of 40%? Why do we have one of the, the largest racial wealth and home ownership gaps in the country? Why? Why? Why do we have a Black mayor and we have not seen any progress in the Black community for the last 30 years? I just felt like I had to do something. And unlike a lot of people in Buffalo, I have this nursing thing to fall back on. So I'm not married to having to work for a non-profit or even the municipality – so many people are in some way connected to city government that they don't feel like they can speak out against him because there's this culture of fear and retribution that I am not immune to, but very insulated from. There's nothing that anyone can really do to me. 

Anna Sale: Hm.

India Walton: So I sort of felt obligated.

Anna Sale: He's making you do it. (laughs)

India Walton: (laughs)

Anna Sale: It just sounds, it – the echo of like, I have to be in this NICU, like, identifying how it could be different, um, and then you're in a position where you can try to change it.

India Walton: And it's a privilege, you know, to – it's, it really is.

Anna Sale: But I, I – were you startled? Like, was there any part of you that was startled by the like, “Oh my gosh, I'm gonna do this”?

India Walton: Not really.

Anna Sale: Uh-huh.

India Walton: Not until it was too late. (laughs) Um, I really–

Anna Sale: What do you mean by that?

India Walton: I knew that it was gonna be tough, but I did not expect it to get as nasty as it did. 

(music)

India Walton: Um, I really, honestly, somewhere deep down inside was believing that Brown was a reasonable person and that if I won the primary, he would turn into a mentor and there would've been a productive transition.

Anna Sale: That did not happen. After India won the Democratic primary, Mayor Brown would not concede, and he launched a write-in campaign to stay in office. 

(sounds of crowd, applause, yelling)

Person giving speech: Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one mayor of the city of Buffalo, and that is Mayor Byron Brown. They do not want a radical socialist occupying the mayor's office in Buffalo City Hall.

Anna Sale: After her primary win, Bernie Sanders fundraised for India. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to Buffalo to campaign with her. But some prominent state Democrats sat it out. The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, who’s from Buffalo, did not endorse India, and the chairman of the New York Democratic party, Jay Jacobs, didn’t either – as he shared in a local TV interview.

Jay Jacobs (news clip): Let's take a scenario, uh, very different, where David Duke, you remember him, the grand wizard of the KKK. He moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat and he runs for mayor in the city of Rochester, which has a low primary turnout. And he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I don't think so. Now of course, India Walton isn't in the same category, but it just – it just leads you to that question. Is it a must? It's not a must.

Anna Sale: Local media also started digging into India’s past.

News announcer: Public records filed at the city and county courthouses show that Walton has been accused of welfare fraud, failed to pay her taxes and was caught driving with a suspended license.

(music fades out)

Anna Sale: How do you answer that reporting, and what do you make of that being presented in the press, where the implicit argument is that that should be disqualifying?

India Walton: Um. The thing about it is that, you know, the comms team, you know, wanted the oppo and like, well, what's gonna come out about you and how are you going to explain it? How do you spin it? And I said, I'm not gonna spin it. I'm gonna tell the truth. They're things that happen to regular people, especially poor and working class folks all the time. In fact, there are systems that are set up in order to punish people. Particularly for being poor. Like why my license was suspended for unpaid parking tickets. How – how do you ex –  if I couldn't pay the parking tickets, right, and I don't have a license, how am I supposed to get to work to pay the parking tickets? I'm not your average politician, I'm not trying to sell you on whether I'm a good or bad person. I'm trying to introduce you to better policy that is going to keep the stories that are being told about me from happening to you. 

Anna Sale: India says she could feel this heightened scrutiny from others as she campaigned ahead of the general election. Sometimes it was expressed as outright hostility.

India Walton: I was actually at a strip mall in a first ring suburb of Buffalo. I went to Ulta to get tinted moisturizer.

Anna Sale: Oh.

India Walton: And I was walking out of the store and, you know, people point, and whisper, and sometimes they take photos of me. And I try and be engaging, and most interactions are pleasant. So this person is walking with his female companion, and they're pointing and whispering to one another and I can overhear her saying, “I think that is her.” So I said, “Hi!” And he said, “F you!” and he gave me the finger. And I said, “I hope you have a blessed day.” So as I'm continuing to walk to my car, he's now in his truck and throws the coffee out of the window of the truck and drives off. And I think that was the last day I was allowed to go outside by myself.

Anna Sale: To the extent that you do have a sense, um, why do you think that person threw hot coffee at you?

India Walton: (sighs) Because I'm audacious. Because I am a brown woman, and how dare I challenge power, and how dare I take up space, and how dare I tell the truth and expose the corruption when I should be shrinking, um, and ashamed of my past. Um, and I'm not proud of everything, but there's nothing that I'm ashamed of.

Anna Sale: In the November general election, India lost to Mayor Byron Brown, who won with nearly 60 percent of the vote – again, as a write-in candidate. 

Mayor Brown said voters saw the progress he had brought to Buffalo in the past 16 years, including economic development that had attracted more people to move the city. He called his re-election “one of the greatest comeback stories in our history.” 

Anna Sale: When you realized how the general election was going, what the results were, did you call your mother, that night?

India Walton: She was here.

Anna Sale: What was that like?

India Walton: She was in Buffalo. Um, it was somber, and it was sad. But I am very proud of the campaign that we ran. I mean that race took a lot out of me. Um, I am still very much going through a process of healing, and of grieving, but you know, right now I am enjoying my child. I am enjoying being in love and eating good food and hanging out with my sister and my niece and nephew. 

Anna Sale: We haven't talked about who you're in love with.

India Walton: Ooh. (laughs)

Anna Sale: Is it a new romance?

India Walton: It is a new romance. Old friendship, new romance. It is the healthiest relationship I've ever been in in my life.

Anna Sale: That's nice. Did you know each other as like teenagers, like young kids?

India Walton: No, we, um, we know one another from community work. Um, yeah, it's new to me, having, um, a partner who communicates and talks about his feelings, um, and is just very reassuring and reaffirming to me. Um, and also just allows me to be myself and, um, if I'm having a bad day, I can say I would like some space and it's not a big deal, I can get some space. 

(music)

India Walton: And when I say I'm having a bad day and I could really use a hug, that can happen too. So it's pretty cool.

Anna Sale: That's nice.

Anna Sale: And as she grieved her campaign, there was another heartbreaking instance for India, of thinking things can’t get worse… and then they do. 

News announcer: We begin with breaking news from Western New York. Just moments ago, Buffalo police confirmed an 18-year-old man opened fire at a supermarket, killing 10 people and wounding 3 others.

Anna Sale: On May 14th, 2022, India was at her 12 year-old son’s baseball game when her phone started blowing up.

India Walton: All of these text messages were coming in saying “Where are you? Are you okay? Check on your people.” Like, um, it was unbelievable. 

(music fades out)

India Walton: And I thought for about an hour, maybe two, what my role is and whether I should go to the scene or not. Um, yeah. And then I started getting text messages saying that people were looking for me.

Anna Sale: Did you go?

India Walton: I went. I went, and I went up there every day. But it was, it was difficult. I was, uh, asked to appear on Democracy Now! Sunday morning. 

Amy Goodman (on Democracy Now!): India, welcome back to Democracy Now! Right now you’re just a few blocks from the grocery store where the shooting took place. Can you describe… (fades out)

India Walton: And this was before I had read the list of victims. Um, and on Democracy Now! was actually like when I found out that my friend Kat was in the store.

India Walton (on Democracy Now!): Um, there are a lot of heavy hearts in Buffalo right now. Details are still emerging, Amy. And as a matter of fact, I didn’t know that Kat Massey was one of the victims, um. I started my organizing… (fades out)

Anna Sale: I saw that India and I thought, “Oh. You're being called upon to be a spokesperson of sorts for Buffalo, for the communities you come from in Buffalo. And you're also – the horror of the personal loss is still unfolding in real time. And you're on camera when you realize someone you worked alongside was murdered.”

India Walton: Mm-hmm. 

Anna Sale: Is there anything you wanna say about your friend Kat?

India Walton: She was a lovely person. Um… I would go over and knock on her door every few months just to check on her. She'd invite me in for tea. And we would look at pictures. Kat always had her camera, and this woman attended every single Fruit Belt meeting. She was one of the very first people who truly believed that we could pull it off and actually build houses for our community. And I'm gonna miss her. She (laughs) once sat me down and she said, “I love everything that you're doing, but I want you to know that you get more bees with honey than you do vinegar.”

Anna Sale: (laughs)

India Walton: (laughs)

Anna Sale: I love you. I love what you're doing. I'm gonna tell it to you straight.

India Walton: She was like, “India, just stop, stop cursing people out.”

Anna Sale: (laughs) Have you?

India Walton: For the most part. I turned 40 this year. Um, and I mean, just being in the public eye consistently and having everything that I say or do scrutinized has made me a little more aware, but I'm still human.

(Death, Sex & Money theme music)

Anna Sale: That’s India Walton. Since the election in Buffalo, she's taken a new job as an advisor with New York’s progressive Working Families Party. She’s still working closely with organizers in and around The Fruit Belt and she told us she’s considering running for city council in 2023.

Death Sex and Money is a listener-supported production of WNYC Studios in New York. This episode was produced by Zoe Azulay. The rest of the team is Andrew Dunn, Afi Yellow-Duke, Liliana Maria Percy Ruiz and Lindsay Foster Thomas. Special thanks to our colleague Jon Campbell, Albany reporter for WNYC and Gothamist.

The Reverend John Delore and Steve Lewis wrote our theme music.

Thank you to Claire Muerdter from Iowa City for being a member of Death, Sex & Money and supporting us with a monthly donation. You can join Claire and support what we do here by going to deathsexmoney.org/donate.

Anna Sale: And does your mother, does your mom still want you to move to Alabama?

India Walton: I'm sure she would love it. But I am in the process of purchasing my first home.

Anna Sale: Oh, you are.

India Walton: I am, and she's really proud of that, so I think that she sees that I’m puttin’ down roots even deeper into Buffalo.

Anna Sale: Do you know where the house is? Which neighborhood is it in?

India Walton: Right around the corner from the mayor.

Anna Sale: I’m Anna Sale and this is Death, Sex & Money from WNYC.

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