A parking lot in Georgia is changing politics

Aug 26, 2022

With help from Brakkton Booker, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz

A collage featuring an image of Lynae.

POLITICO illustration/Photograph by Miranda Barnes the for Nike Yardrunners Class of 2021 shoot

Hey, Recast fam! Biden's student loan forgiveness is still a hot topic, the DOJ makes a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago search affidavit public, and energy prices for July show inflation eased last month. But over here this Friday, we're talking all things Black history, Georgia elections and how social media influences politics with a vibrant internet influencer.

Lynae Vanee, AKA Lyneezy, sits facing the camera, her outfit bold against the gray of the parking lot walls behind her. She starts with her catchphrase, "I'ma keep it Black, but I'ma keep it brief," before diving into the issue of the week while pouring a cup of tea from a beautifully painted teapot.

Each Friday on Instagram, Vanee chops up and contextualizes a news topic, ranging from Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings, to that Oscars slap, to January 6, spilling the political tea while sipping from a delicate teacup. Her small team films the show from a parking lot in Atlanta, Georgia — lending the series its name, "Parking Lot Pimpin'."

Lately, Vanee has collaborated with some familiar faces. In June, "Pose" star Billy Porter joined her to talk about two Republican Texans: Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott. And last month, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams pulled up to the lot to talk abortion access, gun control and affordable housing.

Vanee started the series in June 2020, and has since amassed over a million followers across various social platforms, along with tens of millions of views. She was also nominated for a 2022 NAACP Image Award as an "Outstanding Social Media Personality."

No doubt, the former high school history teacher is compulsively watchable. She has a bookish background — she's a graduate of Boston University and Spelman College — but her show is far from stuffy. More like a spoken word poetry event than a class, Vanee's analysis is lyrical, rhythmic, rhyming and quick — her lines often resemble nimble rap bars — and the three- to four-minute episodes are tightly cut.

This month, Vanee expanded the Parking Lot franchise in the form of " The Let Out," a Patreon-based subscription service including live events focused on wellness — think open mic nights, yoga in the park and hiking.

We talked with Vanee — not in the parking lot, but by Zoom — about the power of social media, how her audience is changing politics and if she'd ever take her message to the campaign trail.

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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

THE RECAST: What got you interested in politics in the first place?

VANEE: I don't necessarily have an interest in politics. My involvement and knowledge of what's going on politically is out of necessity because my platform is used to educate oppressed groups and minority groups about what's going on and how it affects their livelihoods.

As I began doing the work of covering weekly topics and connecting them to historical patterns, I began to really interrogate Black history specifically in a new way, understanding that every movement, every act of resistance or revolution was an effort to obtain rights — natural rights, certain unalienable rights — and all those things are tied to politics, so everything that has been done is a political act.

So, now I make sure I am versed in what's going on, affecting the community that I've built, so they can be aware of their power as voters.

Every week, we sit down with diverse and influential characters who are shaking up politics.

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THE RECAST: You went to Spelman and then you went to Boston for a master's in African American studies. What did you major in at Spelman?

VANEE: Psychology with a concentration in Black studies.

THE RECAST: Why did you choose those subjects?

VANEE: I've just seen a lot. I'd seen what poverty looked like, I'd seen what quote-unquote self-sustenance looked like, but I also just had a keen interest in history. Seeing how things like racism affected my family in the Deep South and Mississippi, affected their ownership over land, how day-to-day issues affected things like alcoholism and different types of abuse, a lack of education — I saw how all these things were intimately tied to one another. I wanted to understand those connections more, and that for me was delving into Black history.

I chose psychology as a major because at the helm of it was understanding people and how they work, how they respond to trauma, how they respond to situations that are high anxiety. From a very young age, I knew that there was always a why.

An image of Lynae in the parking lot.

Photograph by Kyle Woodruff

THE RECAST: After grad school you became a high school teacher. What was that like, and why did you ultimately decide to pivot your educating online?

VANEE: I felt like [high school] was the last opportunity really to engage young people and help them understand more about where they come from and what they have the power to do.

I became very weighed down by what I saw in the education system. I worked in schools that service predominantly Black children and families. These students are required to learn certain things that don't necessarily have anything to do with them, and that also has the connotation, or at least the message, that contributions of minority groups have not been as important or worth committing to memory. I didn't see that as fair.

More and more [it] conflicted with my own personal politics. Whether it was from the administration, whether it was from parents, I was treated different ways due to things like ageism, sexism, being asked not to wear certain things.

The online space allowed me to be completely myself. I wanted to make these topics less arduous to engage in. I just wanted it to feel less stuffy. There's so much jargon and so many requirements for people to discuss scholarship and that excludes a lot of people from the conversation.

There's a very old adage: If you want to hide something from a Black person, put it in a book. It's been transformed over decades — if you would like to exclude marginalized groups from conversation, you change the language into one they cannot understand and one they don't feel fit or feel welcome to engage in. So I definitely wanted to take it to a very conversational, familiar type of level to engage folks from all walks of life, very much in a Thomas Paine Common Sense kind of way.

Vanee wears a Spelman shirt.

Photograph by Miranda Barnes for the Nike Yardrunners Class of 2021 shoot.

THE RECAST: What made you choose the name "Parkin Lot Pimpin'" for your show?

VANEE: I just took a colloquial phrase that's been used in Black communities for some time. It does have its misogynist undertones, but really, at the heart of it, what that act is is sitting in a parking lot and showing off what you have with a lot of flair, a lot of pizzazz and to get folks' attention. There's nothing wrong with that, especially when it's for a good cause.

THE RECAST: Do you think people underestimate the power of an audience like yours to influence outcomes at the ballot box?

VANEE: I do. I think American law has thrived off keeping people — for lack of a better word — dumb, or stupid. There is a group of people who have been intentionally less informed so they do not take advantage of their voting power.

But I think about someone like Stacey Abrams, who has been able to mobilize and galvanize voters in Georgia to do something as historic as we did in the last election — flipping Georgia and then keeping up that momentum.

I definitely think these communities have been underestimated because of this sort of reassurance that we won't care enough to do something. Or we'll be so distracted with all the other elements of systemic injustice affecting our immediate lives that we would not be focused enough to actually do something. There was a hope that we will remain uninformed, but that tide might be changing.

THE RECAST: You recently had Stacey Abrams as a guest in the parking lot — what was it like hanging out with her?

VANEE: She's very sweet, she's very funny. She's a great time. There was nothing stuffy about her. She was willing to engage in all the ways that I do on my show.

THE RECAST: What gives you hope and what makes you angry about politics right now?

VANEE: What excites me is how informed we're getting and how involved we are in this process. I think social media has been excellent in keeping people informed and engaged in these conversations. So I do have a level of hope that enough people will put their money where their mouth is and actually fight back.

What makes me angry is the amount of wishwashyness that happens on the conservative side of the line. I want to call it hypocrisy, I want to call it talking in circles, I want to call it so many things.

This endeavor to tear down the separation of church and state, even though that was something that was intended by our Founding Fathers. But on the other hand, we want to hold on to so many things intended by our Founding Fathers, whether it's the Second Amendment, whether it's beliefs on a woman's right to choose. There are so many things that I think are muddied by religious views. I'm a Christian. But I also know what it means to endeavor to walk like Christ.

Why on earth should we be beholden to the laws and statutes created by men two, three hundred years ago, who thought it was OK to own people? I understand respecting legacies.

'Everybody's ancestors did something important in their eyes. But we can honor them, while understanding change is necessary.'

THE RECAST: Would you ever run for office?

VANEE: Absolutely not. I'm a storyteller, I'm an entertainer — that is the lineage I am walking in as far as staking change and exhibiting new forms of resistance. I think about people like Lena Horne, who would not sing in front of U.S. troops because they made Black people sit in the back. I think of Jesse Owens running in the Olympics, not just for himself but as commentary against Hitler's regime to support the superiority of the Aryan race. I know my lane and I'm sticking to it.

Vanee sitting next to a pile of books.

Photograph by Kyle Woodruff

THE RECAST: You often talk about the importance of diverse representation in arts and media. Could you tell us some of the books, films or TV shows that have shaped you and your politics?

VANEE: "The Read" podcast has been so influential. The show "Pose" has also been influential. On the side of books, I would say "Sister Outsider" by Audrey Lorde, a collection of essays and speeches, "Misogynoir Transformed" by Moya Bailey, "Hood Feminism" by Mikki Kendall, "Eloquent Rage" by Brittney Cooper. The things that I'm reading, the things that I'm listening to are fun. Adults are just big kids, and kids are most interested in things that excite them, that leave a positive aftertaste in their mouth. That's the best way we're going to get people to reach across the aisle — just to have fun with it.

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Happy Fri-yay! Is it us, or did this summer just go poof? Next week, The Recast will be on our end-of-the summer hiatus, so look for us in your inbox on Tuesday, Sept. 6. In the meantime, on this last weekend in August, we're sending you off with some must-dos …

POLITICO's Calder McHugh hung out with Jelani Cobb on his first day as dean of the Columbia Journalism School.

In "Breaking," John Boyega plays a veteran who's mad as hell and can't take it anymore. And Idris Elba has been busy. "Beast" drops today — he fights a lion! — as does "Three Thousand Years of Longing" with Tilda Swinton.

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