Protect Your Peace: Renée Graham

What’s In It For us, theGrio’s weekly political podcast hosted by Christina Greer, PhD., welcomes special guest, Boston Globe Associate Editor and Columnist, Renée Graham.  This week: the steep price of protecting your peace. We talk tennis superstar Naomi Osaka and the $15,000 fine she was charged for not talking with the press at the French Open after citing the need to protect her mental health. We break down the ongoing uproar around her decision, and the pressure and expectations placed on Black athletes. Plus, who do you call if you can’t trust the police? The nation’s top lawyer, Merrick Garland, hopes to topple the staggering number of hate crimes by urging district attorney’s throughout the country to create coordinator positions to improve communication between local and state authorities. We unpack what the move could mean for the marginalized communities who tend to not report crimes committed against them to the police. Lastly, an interruption in the school-to-prison pipeline? Somerville recently became the second city in Massachusetts to remove policing from schools, but Dr. Greer and Ms. Graham say taking officers out of school is just one of many steps needed to see true, meaningful change. With so much going on, we have to stop and take a moment to ask, “What’s In It For Us?”