Oral History Interview with Heather Seger

Title: Oral History Interview with Heather Seger
Interviewee: Heather Seger
Interviewer: Kaila Seger
Description: Heather Seger of Nashville, Tennessee, was interviewed by Kaila Seger, a Sewanee student, on November 28th, 2023 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included how "school choice" voucher legislation can affect current educational inequities in Tennessee. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.
Transcript: 0:00:00 Kaila Seger: Start. Okay.

0:00:04 Heather Seger: Okay.

0:00:05 Kaila Seger: I have started recording and we're going to go ahead and jump into it.

0:00:13 Heather Seger: I'm ready.

0:00:14 Kaila Seger: This is Kaila Seger from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is 4:34 PM on November 28th, 2023. I am with, go ahead and introduce yourself.

0:00:32 Heather Seger: Oh, Heather Seger

0:00:35 Kaila Seger: And you are from

0:00:37 Heather Seger: Nashville, Tennessee.

0:00:39 Kaila Seger: Alright. Thank you Heather, mom, for being here. We're going to go ahead and get into our general questions before we get into the meat of it. And we're going to start with, where are you originally from?

0:01:00 Heather Seger: Indianapolis, Indiana.

0:01:04 Kaila Seger: Okay. And so how did you get to Nashville?

0:01:09 Heather Seger: My parents decided to move and get another job, so my dad put resumes out to a lot of different places in Nashville Answered. So that's where we moved to.

0:01:24 Kaila Seger: Okay, so then you just kind of ended up in Nashville?

0:01:32 Heather Seger: Yeah, I mean it was for my dad's job, but he had put out resumes in a lot of places and Nashville was the only place that was hiring at the moment or needed what he does. So we just decided that we would move here.

0:01:52 Kaila Seger: Okay. And what did he do?

0:01:54 Heather Seger: My parents did. He was an archivist librarian.

0:01:59 Kaila Seger: Okay. How old were you when you moved to Nashville?

0:02:03 Heather Seger: I was 12.

0:02:05 Kaila Seger: 12. Alright. Then where did you find community as a child?

0:02:18 Heather Seger: Well, how young a child? What age groups?

0:02:24 Kaila Seger: Let's say about 18 under,

0:02:32 Heather Seger: Well, while we were here, it was mostly just school in my neighborhood in Indianapolis, it was the neighborhood and Blue Birds, which is kind of like Girl Scouts here, but we had Blue Birds and campfire girls instead of brownies and Girl Scouts. But here it was mostly just neighborhood. I lived in a neighborhood that was full of kids and very walkable and we just hung out and stuff. We didn't really go anywhere. I wasn't really any parts of any groups of people or anything as far as Girl Scouts or any clubs or anything. I don't remember any.

0:03:33 Kaila Seger: Okay. So then where do you find community today as opposed to when you were a child?

0:03:53 Heather Seger: I really sadly don't have much community since my child grew up and move away because my community used to be around having a daughter and we'd go places, we'd do things and now I just sit at home basically on not really any, I don't engage in a lot of groups outside of the home or work, so I don't really do much now. All of that activity and community was when you were home involved with your schools and involved with Girl Scouts and involved with the Boy Scouts and the stuff you did and softball and all that. Now I don't have anything to do.

0:04:51 Kaila Seger: You're making me sound like such a bad daughter for going to college

0:04:55 Heather Seger: No, no. It's the facts of life. You grew up, you grew up and you went away. That's what you have to do. So I mean, it's just that now I don't have any kind of activities to go do necessarily. When I get home, I'm tired, I just want to sit and I don't do much out there in the world anymore.

0:05:25 Kaila Seger: That's fair. Okay, so then what is your occupation and what was your journey to this role?

0:05:34 Heather Seger: Well, I'm a dispatcher and customer service rep of sorts. I guess at an air conditioning and heating company. I really had no journey to what I do.

0:05:54 Kaila Seger: Well, you can go through your past occupations, all the different jobs that you've had up to now.

0:06:01 Heather Seger: Well, I started in Bonanza and then went to Target like teenage years, college years, I just went to a technical college. So I worked at Target after Target. They got me a job at Waller Buick between the guy at Target and my auto mechanic teacher from high school and the principal over the new school, new building,
0:06:42 Which was the technical vocational building. They got me a job at Waller Buick. I worked there for quite a while. I then, where did I go after that? I delivered papers for many years working nights and delivering weekly papers like the Nashville scene, things like that because there was a lot more freedom with it and I could make just as good of money. I dabbled in the photography end with a job in photography. I always enjoyed photography, but I've never really done much with it. But at that time I worked there for a year and then your dad's dad, your grandpa was dying from cancer and so he wasn't working as much. So I had figured that I could make more money going back to the newspaper delivery. So I been working 40 hours at that place. So I went back to the paper delivery and did that for many more years. And then I quit to have you
0:08:08 And didn't go back to work for a job paying until you were probably, I think middle school and I went back to a seasonal job that was just spring, but they liked how I worked. So they let me come back in the fall also where it was one or the other, I think fall. And then they let me come back in the spring because slower in the spring. And then when they sold their business to somebody else, I got a job at Advanced Auto Parts just for 20 hours a week just to have a little money coming in. And then we know the guy that owns this heating and air company and he was looking for somebody else to help in the office. So they talked to Daddy about it. They just hired me. I went in and sat with Rosemary one day just to get a feel for the place and she liked me. She didn't like many other people that had worked there. And I just ended up there doing something I thought I'd never do because I didn't ever want to have a job talking on the phone to people. But now I do.

0:09:37 Kaila Seger: Now you're forced to.

0:09:39 Heather Seger: Yep, that's where I am now. I've never had a plan. I've never done a job that was my degree from my technical school that I went to.

0:09:52 Kaila Seger: Not even at Waller Buick. What did you do at Waller Buick?

0:09:56 Heather Seger: No, I was a mechanic, but my degree is in automation robotics.

0:10:03 Kaila Seger: That doesn't apply to being a mechanic?

0:10:07 Heather Seger: No, no. I took that because the guy that lived next door to us was a counselor, a career counselor at Nashville Tech, and he had suggested I was going to go to a school for mechanics, but he had suggested I go to Nashville Tech instead. And he assured me that automation robotics was going to be similar to it and it is to a degree, but it's more working on the hydraulic robots and the computerized robots that build cars and things,
0:10:52 Not the actual things in the cars, but I had worked at Target in the auto mechanic in the automotive department, changing tires and batteries and oil. So that's how I moved from that to Waller Buick after, well, I still was going to college. It took me a long time to get my two year degree. I didn't do it in two years, but that's how I got to Waller Buick. Now within Waller Buick, I worked on cars, I did the oil changes. I was up in the tower dispatching jobs to the mechanics. I was in the parts department delivering parts. I did multiple jobs back there working on cars. But all at Waller Buick, not quitting and coming back.

0:11:53 Kaila Seger: Okay. Alright. Then what traveling have you done?

0:12:04 Heather Seger: Well, we traveled pretty extensive as a family. My dad would have these meetings, the ATLA meetings. I don't really know what it stands for, but it has to do with the library and his job. And so we always had to travel to Colorado to visit my grandparents there and Florida to visit my grandparents there. And then on top of those two trips once a year we would go to wherever his meetings were. And so we went to quite a few places. Vancouver, Canada, it was the farthest northwest I've been. And I don't know, just a lot of states that we've gone to and we would vacation then that would be our vacation of sorts because the other was just visiting family and doing the things we always did, visiting them. But I have traveled quite a bit and most all of it by car driving and most of it in cars with no air conditioning, driving in hot summer places. But

0:13:31 Kaila Seger: If you had to put a number of how many-

0:13:33 Heather Seger: Yeah, so I've always been, I have been to almost all of the lower 48 I would say. How I haven't been to California or Nevada and I might not have been, I don't know. Most of the states in the west I've been to, I'm sure there's one maybe South Dakota I've not been to. I would say there's way less than 10 that I have not been to. I would say five or six. I just knocked a couple more off this trip at South Carolina, so I would almost want to say five or six, but can't name which ones. That's okay. I know at least three, but there's probably a few up in the northeast I haven't been to.

0:14:46 Kaila Seger: Yeah,

0:14:46 Heather Seger: I'm not sure. I mean, we did go all the way up to Maine and come down the coast one year, but I don't know. I was probably 8, 9, 10. So,

0:15:03 Kaila Seger: Is Vancouver the only international travel that you've done?

0:15:09 Heather Seger: No, we went to Mexico, Jamaica, and Grand Cayman on our honeymoon, and I've been to Canada. I think that's probably, I haven't been outside of those, just surrounding

0:15:35 Kaila Seger: Just like the Americas in general.

0:15:38 Heather Seger: Yeah, I mean Jamaica and Mexico and Grand Cayman is a British isle. And then Vancouver and we cut back across Canada and came down through Montana. So went up through Washington State, but came back across and down Montana and across. That was a big trip we went. We covered a bunch of states.

0:16:17 Kaila Seger: Yeah

0:16:17 Heather Seger: We were gone a month

0:16:19 Kaila Seger: #NAME?

0:16:20 Heather Seger: Yeah, well we were gone a month.

0:16:26 Kaila Seger: Alright, let's go ahead and move on to the meat of it past our general questions. And let's go ahead and start with how do you receive the news?

0:16:47 Heather Seger: Well, we watch our local news and I watch the one half hour of the NBC World news most nights a week, but I could take it or leave it. I don't care. And then on occasion I watch blurbs from people on YouTube, but they're not news, they're just commentary people. They're not the true news or anything. But that's about the only news. And that's only Monday through Friday. I don't watch it on the weekend. On occasionally Monday through Friday I'll look on a newsfeed that flips on the edge thing, but a lot of that is also people who are not necessarily good true reporters. So I just glance at the headlines.

0:17:54 Kaila Seger: What are some of the names of the YouTube channels that you watch?

0:18:01 Heather Seger: Is that what it is? Midas Touch damage report. David Packman. There's a couple. I can't, Jesse Dallamore, Brian Tyler Cohen. And usually I don't sit and watch their whole show, but I watch their little 10 minute blurbs. They put on

0:18:36 Kaila Seger: Bits and pieces,

0:18:38 Heather Seger: Yeah, segments. They're segments that they put on separately. I don't sit and watch the full hour show of it.

0:18:53 Kaila Seger: Do you tend to read any particular news source or do you just leave it and then maybe we'll read something if it's interesting?

0:19:07 Heather Seger: Well, I read something if I think that it seems not true, the headline is outrageous and I'm like, really? And I read it and I say, yep, you're full of it. And I do read ap, which is I do trust more what they write, but I don't search them out. I do get an email from 'em daily, but I don't really even look at 'em every day. Just if I'm going to read a story that I feel like I'm going to get more of the truth from it be an AP story. But any of the others I take with a grain of salt as to how much is true or not of a hundred percent.

0:20:14 Kaila Seger: Okay. So then what is your experience with social media?

0:20:22 Heather Seger: Well, I don't know. I don't hardly look at Facebook anymore.
0:20:29 I don't really look at Instagram or Twitter. I have accounts, but I've hardly ever looked at 'em so often. There's just so many hatred, people putting up hateful things. And it's not just being social and fun and catching up with friends and I just don't have time for that. I've got enough to worry about and not get angry at friends because they're spitting vitriol MAGA stuff. So I don't want to know that because then I don't really have much respect for 'em because they aren't. So I just don't want to hurt friendships. So I just don't look at a lot of it

0:21:26 Kaila Seger: There. So it's not really interacting with it at all?

0:21:30 Heather Seger: No, I mean, the only time I might catch a glimpse, like today getting on this computer, I caught a glimpse of Facebook where Michelle put up our, well, Mary and her and Keith and Scott up in front of the tree, and that's the only thing I saw before I went on to something else. She had posted that on Facebook. But I just, every now and then if I scroll down through it, that's fine. I mean, my Facebook really, I don't get a lot of the political ads. I don't see a lot of the political people hating things as much anymore. But I don't know, you can get stuck in there. And I see I just end up watching people saving animals and I'm like, okay, that's just, I've got to stop and get out of here.

0:22:36 Kaila Seger: Yeah,

0:22:37 Heather Seger: I just get sucked into that black hole. So

0:22:41 Kaila Seger: Doom scrolling.

0:22:42 Heather Seger: Yeah, so it's just as well I don't get on it. Of course, then I miss some things because people say, oh, didn't you see that? No, I didn't see that.

0:22:53 Kaila Seger: It's like, no, no, I didn't.

0:22:55 Heather Seger: No.

0:22:57 Kaila Seger: Alright then how did you first encounter the Black Lives Matter movement?

0:23:07 Heather Seger: Well, I don't know that I'd say I encountered, what do you mean just heard about it? I didn't encounter any pile of people that were doing Black Lives Matter.

0:23:20 Kaila Seger: Just like when did you first hear about it? When did you first become aware of it? What's the first moment where you really saw that this was a movement or an organization that was happening?

0:23:40 Heather Seger: Well, I mean I guess you watch a lot more news back in the covid time. And so I guess it would be during Covid at some point where people were, I mean there was so many people doing tons of different demonstrations because of Trump being such a butt. But I would say, I mean I guess it came after that man was killed by those cops on his neck and Floyd George Floyd or whatever. And I would say I just heard about it on the news and around that time, because of course pretty much everybody was home, nothing to do and watched a little more news trying to keep up with what was happening with the Covid and stuff.

0:24:55 Kaila Seger: Yeah. Alright. So then what is your opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement?

0:25:08 Heather Seger: Well, I think that it's a very valid point and I am sad if the organizers or some people within the organizing just took a lot of the money and stuff because I believe the movement behind it
0:25:31 Is a very good movement. I think that a lot of people made a bad name for it both within the Black Lives Matter organization, and of course on the wrong side, the MAGA side, of course, they tried to villainize everybody, the people who did break into buildings and things did not help. That's not who Black Lives Matter was, but of course that's what Black Lives Matters got labeled. And then if people stole the money that had organized it and collected money, I don't think that that's what the movement was. The movement was the people behind all that stuff. But it is true that if Black Lives don't matter, all lives don't matter. And they are treated very badly and poorly with equality. And I think that the movement and the people with it in their heart, they are the true Black Lives Matter and those people are very good. Unfortunately. People have to try to ruin it for them.

0:27:11 Kaila Seger: So you already mentioned how people on the other side have taken to villainizing the movement, but you also mentioned that you thought that there was, how do I, I'm trying to think back of how you phrased it so I don't phrase it wrong, but people on both sides making it look bad.

0:27:46 Heather Seger: Yes. I mean there were-

0:27:46 Kaila Seger: You elaborated on the other side making it look bad. What do you think is happening on-

0:27:55 Heather Seger: Well, there were things done on all sides that had nothing to do. I don't feel it really had to do with the movement. I think it was people taking advantage
0:28:11 And yes, they might've started when they started organizing it. They might've started with good intentions but then got greedy. And I don't know, I've just been told that some of the organizers has just stole the money, just took the money and didn't use it for things that it was supposed to be used for. That's all I'm saying on that part because, and that gave, because I know anytime I say something about Black Lives Matter, it's thrown into my face. Well, they were stealing money from their own people. No, but that's not what the movement is about. The organizers got a group together and started this, but the movement took on its own soul and the people who were marching down the streets and standing out there with signs, those are the people that I feel are the Black Lives Movement. They're the ones, anybody in the organization that might've stolen money, they're not the organization. Anybody who got drug into the riots saying that this is Black Lives Matter, it's the only thing we can do to have people hear us, which it's not.
0:29:46 I'm sure some were Black Lives Matters people marching, but I do believe that it has been proven that some of the instigators were MAGA people and you get that group mentality and they were able to drag some into that riot. Now that doesn't make it right. And again, I don't feel those are Black Lives Matter people. That is people just taking advantage of a situation and they did it in the name of Black Lives Matters, which soils it, whether it was people in the movement doing it alone or people telling people, Hey, come on, we're Black Lives Matter. Let's go and tear this town apart, do this and that, and egging 'em on. Because even if they weren't MAGA people that were starting it, they're people just opportunistic that are going to riot for whatever. And then you get a crowd going and they'll join and they shouldn't.
0:31:08 Just like January 6th, those people that stayed out on the lawn, they weren't insurrectionists, they weren't had every right to stand on the line of the capitol and say they were against this, the President Biden getting put into office. But those that went in, I don't feel sorry, even for the ones who said, oh, well, it was just the moment everybody, I don't care. There were a lot of people that stood outside and the same on those riots, black Lives Matter people, a lot of them marched on by and did not go and join in. So when you join in to me, you have left that movement. You're not standing for anything anymore. So those people were wrong. And then of course you had the MAGA people who still are trying to say Antifa, Antifa, Antifa, which I don't think is a thing. I think it's just a thought. And they say it's a group like Black Panthers, which doesn't exist. There's no secret meetings of Antifa to my knowledge. So they of course I hear at work, well, black Lives Matter so stupid because they think they're the people that were rioting and causing trouble. And to me that wasn't, some got sucked in. Yes. But when they got sucked in, they left the movement because that's not what it's about and that's not what you do to get attention.
0:32:56 People are hearing thousands of people walk down the street in peace and they weren't peacefully met by the police and they didn't fight back and do terrible things at those times. So that movement there is the true heart of it. The other things try to make a bad name for it and make it less of a movement, I think.

0:33:27 Kaila Seger: Okay, I see Zoom has done the thing where it's giving us the 40 minutes and we have about two minutes and 30 seconds left before it decides to cut us off.

0:33:45 Heather Seger: Yeah, I see that.

0:33:47 Kaila Seger: So I am going to let this run out and then we can come back to go again and all that mess. Sorry to Dr. Maginn who's going to have to cobble this together.

0:34:19 Heather Seger: Why? Are they supposed to take this long?

0:34:24 Kaila Seger: It is supposed to be as long as it takes. There's no set time limit. It's just that for some reason Zoom won't let me host a meeting for more than 40 minutes at a time without upgrading to the pro version. And that's kind of insane. And it's also very expensive, so I'm not going to do that. And it'll only do, if there's someone in the meeting with me, if it's just me in there and recording to do a in-person interview, it doesn't do it. But yeah, at least we got to a good stopping moment before.

0:35:32 Heather Seger: Are you going to just send it to my email again because

0:35:35 Kaila Seger: Yes. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording. Alright, we are back recording again. Thankfully we were at a good moment for that to happen. Let's go ahead then and move on and say, has Black Lives Matter affected how you talk with family and friends if it has at all?

0:36:16 Heather Seger: No, I don't think so. I don't really have a lot of family or friends that are against it or for it, I guess I have two friends I talked to about it at times when it was real prevalent but haven't, it's been quite a while since I've tried to talk to anybody and has had any conversation about it. So I don't think it's really changed anything.

0:37:07 Kaila Seger: It hasn't changed if you're more willing to talk about political issues, has it had some sort of effect on that? Maybe not just talking about Black Lives Matter, but political issues in general?

0:37:30 Heather Seger: I don't think that that has that big of a difference.

0:37:37 Kaila Seger: Okay.

0:37:39 Heather Seger: I mean, mostly don't talk political with anybody because of Trump and all those people because he spread so much hatred and they're putting out so much stuff of hatred that you could almost feel like if you said something political that,

0:38:02 Kaila Seger: Uh huh

0:38:02 Heather Seger: You might get beat up at the very least. But nobody's really talking about Black Lives Matter when they're talking politically too much, they treat, it has its own entity. And of course right now they got so much time trying to get the insurrectionists free and all that stuff that they're not thinking about Black Lives Matter. I mean, they're not even blaming January 6th on Black Lives Matter. They're blaming it on Antifa. It's kind of gone out of the news.

0:38:44 Kaila Seger: I see. Has it changed how you've talked with just coworkers, like regular other people that are outside of that friends and family sphere? Or is it the same sort of thing?

0:38:58 Heather Seger: Well, I think most everybody at my work is Republican and I just am best to not speak at all about any of it because I mean, they won't be mad, get angry and fight or anything. But
0:39:21 I don't know, just whenever they do talk about anything, the way they say the word a liberal or Democrat is like they're cussing and spitting it. So I just don't feel the need to carry on. You can't carry on a conversation with, and even the one I can carry on the closest conversation when we get even close, she just immediately shushes and changes because she's not happy. She gets mad and I'm just trying to have a normal conversation with my opinions. But so many of them you can't do that. I would love to have a intelligent conversation with somebody with my thoughts and my opinions and not be hateful and disapproving of theirs. But nowadays in this political climb, you just can't.

0:40:26 Kaila Seger: Okay, so then speaking of political climate, what is the state of race relations in the United States in your opinion?

0:40:41 Heather Seger: Well, I think they're still there. A lot of governments are trying real hard to repress them. Again, people of color period of all different races. If you're not white and if you're a woman, if you're not white or you're a woman, they're trying real hard to take your rights away under a mask. They're veiling it, but they are, they're trying real hard. The white men are trying real hard to put everybody back to the 18 hundreds or something and that won't work. But they're trying real hard and they're taking away a lot of rights of people of color. That just really makes me angry. The education system,
0:41:43 All of it is just had that conversation last night about these vouchers that they're going to give people to go to private schools. Why don't you spend that on the public schools? And they're also talking about not taking the federal government's money for education. Well, you already short the system for a lot of things and now you're going to take even more money from them. And so what does that mean to me? It means that the poor people and people of color are going to be in failing schools and they don't care because that's what they want. They want them dumb so that they don't vote Democrat and they vote Republican and follow them like little puppy dogs and believe everything they say. Which some of the stuff they spout nowadays is so crazy. I don't know how you, even with any kind of common sense can believe it, but I think we're going backwards and we're going backwards so quickly and all the strides that we have made over the last 50 years is just dissolving and it's just going down and it's scary. It's scary to think that the children who are in these schools, that they're dumbing down and not teaching true history to are going to be the ones possibly running our country one day and they'll be even stupider than the ones running it now. So
0:43:42 What kind of country are we going to have?

0:43:49 Kaila Seger: Alright, so then how has the Black Lives Matter movement changed how you interact with people of other races, if it has at all?

0:44:03 Heather Seger: It really hadn't. I don't feel like anything's changed. I just treat people. I've always treated them. And in some aspects you shouldn't have to call out anything. I mean, nothing should brought to attention. You don't go meet a black person and say, Hey, black Lives matters. Yay. When you just treat 'em like a human being and treat 'em like they're person and equal and you talk to 'em and you move on, I don't feel like there's any reason I should treat them differently or have different interactions with them. I don't feel like I should be timid or anything. I just treat them with respect and they deserve as being a human being in the human race. It's all

0:45:20 Kaila Seger: Okay. Let's see. How do you think the Black Lives Matter movement succeeded?

0:45:35 Heather Seger: Well, I am not sure if it really has because we're still going backwards. I think it's made a lot of people more aware that there is a lot of police brutality that's out there targeting more people of color than white people. And yes, some white people get treated badly too, and I don't think it's a necessarily a white cop thing because black cops are doing it too. It's a blue versus people of color. And
0:46:25 So, I don't know, I think there's a lot more people who are aware now of the inequality as far as police brutality. But I don't know that any strides were made too much. I would hope that some people changed their minds about people of color, but I think too many other people are trying to make it negated. The riots didn't help it. And the people from MAGA that made it such a terrible name that their propaganda is much more than a quiet, peaceful protest. I mean, that's how such a small group now is making so many changes. If you think about how many people actually want what so many of these Republicans are doing to our schools and our healthcare and everything else, it's a small amount compared to the state, the country, and you just have to get these people out and get rid of them and start going on The men, they are a small group.

0:48:18 Kaila Seger: Alright, so then conversely, how do you think the Black Lives Matter movement failed?

0:48:30 Heather Seger: Well, I don't know. I don't think it completely failed, but I think those organizers, if they did actually take money, that was a big, big mistake and it's a big failure on their part. The ones who were marching peacefully and joined in the riots, they failed themselves. They're failing themselves more than the movement because they're showing they're doing what people say people of color do and they're proving them. Right. And that's not what they do. First of all, that's not what the majority is. And there was plenty white people off in there too. But I don't think the movement itself failed. But certain people within it failed themselves and failed the movement, I think.

0:49:51 Kaila Seger: But the movement itself isn't the failure, it's just the individuals

0:49:56 Heather Seger: That you think. Yeah, because I think the movement itself, while it may not have leaped us ahead in our Neanderthal thinking, it did make things aware. It brought things to light of police brutality and unequal treatment. And it comes out a lot more now that the things, the atrocities that are done to them and stuff. But I mean, I don't think you could ever, the civil rights movements has been going making inches over the decades. So one swift movement's not going to go by leaps, but they did another inch or two. They're adding to that while the MAGA people are eroding as much as they can, they are trying to snowball it forward.

0:51:17 Kaila Seger: Okay. So then you mentioned civil rights inching forward over the decades. Do you think that Black Lives Matter is a part of the civil rights movement? Do you think that the civil rights movement didn't stop in the sixties?

0:51:42 Heather Seger: Well, I mean I think it was stopped being called the Civil Rights Movement, but people of color have always been fighting for their equality.
0:51:57 And I think this is just one more step that they came out and said, look, we are people. And because I think there have been, it was getting comfortable and even for them at times, even though frustrating, it probably was getting just like, well, this is how it's going to be, so I'll just have to learn to live with it. And I don't know, because being a white person, you sit back and you think, oh, well so many of my friends that are black or Hispanic or anything, I don't see their life as being that bad or this or that. But then you watch certain people of color on YouTube, and I'm talking specifically of that swoop, and she talks in depth on occasion about her treatment in the comments and people calling her names and telling her to go back where she lived. And she has done nothing to deserve those words.
0:53:23 And to know that people still do that, and people still call people names on the street, and I don't hear it because I don't hang around those kind of white people and also don't hear it because I'm not black. So it's so sad to hear that this happens to people still to this day as if we were back in the day of the fifties and sixties. And because you get feeling like, Hey, we're really making strides, we're really doing good. And then you hear, no, we're not. And that's because I'm not that person. I'm not in their shoes. And it's terrible that people still feel the need to do that kind of thing to people and call people names and put people down because of the skin color. And you got nothing to say, keep your mouth shut. You don't have to tell people, you don't have to try to hurt people with your words to make yourself feel better, I guess they think they feel like a big important person. They can hurt somebody with words by calling them names. But I don't know, it's just so sad to know that, well, maybe we haven't really made that many strides in it.
0:55:01 And I don't think the civil rights can just stop at a spot. It's something that they're going to be fighting for years and years, hundreds of decades of years from now even. And especially with us being set back more. And women too are starting to be pushed backwards also now, but I think it's just going to take many more decades. And I don't know if we can ever get to a point where we'd be equal, but we should. They're all human. Everybody's a human being and the same inside.

0:55:52 Kaila Seger: Alright, well then I'm going to do my final question for you, which is, what do you think is the future of the Black Lives Matter movement?

0:56:06 Heather Seger: Well, I don't know. They've kind of died down and quieted down. I think mostly probably because of the organizers, but I would hope they can find a place where they can have a voice, kind of like the naacp, where they can try to get a message out and keep that message going. Because I think they're more about getting a message out than, I mean, you can't go out there and say Black Lives Matter and change something, but you have to get people to see that black lives do matter. We are being treated differently than the white people in a lot of instances, and we matter too. We are humans too. And I hope that they can just try to keep getting that message out to people. And at this point, I don't know if they have to change their name from Black Lives Matter to something else because of the tarnishing from the riots and the tarnishing from the right. I don't know. But they need to keep that movement, keep the words out there, and keep it front and center and keep showing atrocities that are done to people of color. I mean, right now it's all about the Jewish people and people doing hate crimes against the Jews, which has been from World War ii. And I mean ever since then they've been a group for people to hate. And I think right now those white supremacists just can't figure out who to attack the most because they are attacking everybody. Muslims, Blacks, Mexican, they're attacking everybody.
0:58:23 So all I can think is that they hopefully find another way to get their message out there and keep their message out there because they weren't really, there wasn't really a thing like Rosa Park sitting on the bus and not getting up. They weren't really doing that kind of thing, making a stand against something. They were more, to me, and this is just to me, I was not real involved in it, but to me it was more about getting out the message that we are important to, it doesn't matter the color of your skin. And I think in some ways they did make some strides because there were police put in prison and tried and successfully committed, found guilty. And that is a big thing to do. And I think it's because of the outcry for the way black people are being treated. And so in that aspect, they have really succeeded with that. And there seems to be more people watching what the police do and videotaping what the police do.
0:59:57 That's what they have to keep doing because that's all they're trying to change. And you can't take 'em to court and say, stop beating us up and make a law where you can't beat us up like they did in the civil rights movements that they went to court for getting the buses integrated and schools integrated and all that. Well, it's already integrated. But now getting their voice out there and making people aware and getting these police officers held responsible, it might start telling these other cops, we can't do this. They will put us in jail.
1:00:45 When you let 'em go, they'll keep doing it. In that aspect, I feel they have succeeded. I don't know if they have a bigger point, a bigger goal in their movement, but to me, if that's what their movement's about, I think they are succeeding in that aspect and they need to figure out a way to keep doing it and keep that out there and try to get the riot people, and get the MAGA people and get the organizers if they, because like I say, I have not read anywhere where the organizers took money, but if they have, then they need to figure a way to get around that and get past it and move on with their message and just keep putting that message out there.

1:01:52 Kaila Seger: Alright, well, if there is any other thing that you just want to throw out there into the void, any other little subtopic within a topic that we talked about that you want to speak on? Any final remarks? Go ahead.

1:02:20 Heather Seger: I don't know of anything.

1:02:22 Kaila Seger: Okay. Well, in that case, thank you so much for being one of my people and for agreeing to do this. I really appreciate it. And yeah. All right. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording.

Part of Heather Seger