Speaker 1: That's what's up. Family. It's your girl to mek A D.
Speaker 2: Mallory, and it's your boy my son a general.
Speaker 3: And we are your host of street politicians, the place
Speaker 3: in the streets and politics.
Speaker 1: Me what's going on, mister Lennon.
Speaker 2: I'm blessing Holly favored, humble, blesseding Holly favored.
Speaker 3: That is me today, that is you today. You seem
Speaker 3: like you're awake today.
Speaker 2: It's very well awake. You know. I've been drinking my vitamins,
Speaker 2: drinking my water, and mine of my business. You know,
Speaker 2: my birthday, I'm trying to stay healthy. Birthday just passed,
Speaker 2: you know, just trying to stay healthy, you know, because
Speaker 2: I'm getting getting LOLd.
Speaker 1: In that it was your birthday. Happy birthday, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. How old are you?
Speaker 2: I am forty seven years of age?
Speaker 1: Wow? Forty seven? Forty seven. It's funny because the years
Speaker 1: just go by.
Speaker 3: Time is passing, and it's going fast, because you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what was it ten even years ago.
Speaker 1: Now we weren't this old. Let's just put it that way.
Speaker 3: It was thirty something, and here we are now you're
Speaker 3: forty seven. I'm about to turn forty three. Yeah, forty three.
Speaker 3: After a while, you really don't even remember.
Speaker 1: Used to do that. I thought they was bullshitting, but
Speaker 1: it's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you missed you a year two every now.
Speaker 3: And then and I can't. I can't always remember my
Speaker 3: child's age. I'll be having to call him like, are
Speaker 3: you twenty three or twenty four?
Speaker 1: He's twenty four. I bet you who's age?
Speaker 2: I do know?
Speaker 1: And that's my green baby.
Speaker 2: I bet you do. No, hege, you ain't gonna never
Speaker 2: forget that.
Speaker 3: He's seven months and she'll be eight months as of
Speaker 3: June sixth, two days before my birthday.
Speaker 2: My little my little g pops baby boy is moving
Speaker 2: up on two, you know, saying his birthday was in March.
Speaker 1: Now he's going on to three. No, the two, No,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be three.
Speaker 3: What about what happens he's gonna be three.
Speaker 2: He's gonna be tree if your gonna be tree exactly?
Speaker 1: Period three.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, I just want to ask this one question.
Speaker 3: Is it just sports?
Speaker 1: Is all year?
Speaker 2: Yeap sports?
Speaker 3: And why they have they have fights and games NBA
Speaker 3: playoff games the same time. I mean, it's just it
Speaker 3: seems to be extreme.
Speaker 2: I mean, listen, the playoffs been heating up. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of upsets Lebron and it's looking like he's
Speaker 2: about to go fishing, as they say, and that means
Speaker 2: you're about to lose. So you go home and you
Speaker 2: go fishing. You on vacation, so you can go fishing,
Speaker 2: You can go on anything you want to do. But
Speaker 2: you out of the you out of the you know,
Speaker 2: the playoffs.
Speaker 1: So it looks like you can.
Speaker 2: Like so yeah, no, he kids, he wants, you know,
Speaker 2: he wants to cement his legacy. He wanted he put
Speaker 2: together a team that he felt was gonna be able
Speaker 2: to win a championship this year and barring a miracle,
Speaker 2: which has never happened in NBA history, no team has
Speaker 2: ever come back from being down three zero two win
Speaker 2: a championship, so barring America.
Speaker 1: So he's not playing light skin?
Speaker 2: Who what? Who's light skin? What do you?
Speaker 1: Steph Curry?
Speaker 2: No, they beat Steph Curry. They beat Steph.
Speaker 1: That's my son, seem Steph Curry.
Speaker 2: They got they got rid of Stephan them. Now it's Denver.
Speaker 2: There's another light skin dude, Jamal Murray. Jamal Murray's out
Speaker 2: there killing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see him, I see him on the end
Speaker 1: so he out.
Speaker 2: There putting a lot work in so they didn't get
Speaker 2: past that lif skin one light skined. W is a
Speaker 2: vengein the other light skinning?
Speaker 1: Yeah, girls, the girls called Steph Curry light skin.
Speaker 2: Okay, light skin did it? He light skinned it? So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know they's looking it's it's not looking too good
Speaker 2: for them. The Boss and Celtics, who was another favorite
Speaker 2: to either win the championships, not looking too favorable for them.
Speaker 3: Miami a minute, So it's not down to the final
Speaker 3: two teams yet.
Speaker 2: Man still fourteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: There's a lot, you know, but what was more, it
Speaker 2: was more of point of emphasis. This weekend this Saturday
Speaker 2: was the fight you know between Devin eighty and Vasilli
Speaker 2: Loman Checko.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you probably not into them.
Speaker 2: There's a lot they were fighting for the unified titles
Speaker 2: this weekend and a lot of people feel, me being
Speaker 2: one of them, that Loman Checko was was jerk. You know.
Speaker 2: I watched the fight, and I've been watching fight for
Speaker 2: my whole life, and I know, you know, when or
Speaker 2: fighter wins and losers, and the majority consensus h even
Speaker 2: people who are Devin Haney fans I'm not so much
Speaker 2: not a fan of his. I haven't seen many of
Speaker 2: his fights, have seen a couple of them, but even
Speaker 2: his own fans and people who betted on him, you know,
Speaker 2: are saying that he didn't win that fight. You know,
Speaker 2: I watched the fight twelve rounds, and there was no
Speaker 2: round to me. And this is me being a just suspectator.
Speaker 2: There was no round to me, not one round where
Speaker 2: I looked and said that Devin Haney clearly won a round.
Speaker 2: There's certain things they look for. They look for, who's
Speaker 2: the aggressor in the fight, right, who's landing the moves shots,
Speaker 2: who looks like the other person's punches are hurting them? Right?
Speaker 2: Those are those are like probably the three main things
Speaker 2: you look And when I looked at the numbers of
Speaker 2: each round, they pretty much were hitting each other the
Speaker 2: same amount of times, and I guess they will buy
Speaker 2: Devin Haney was doing a lot of body shots, you know,
Speaker 2: and I never really see Loman check or hurt by
Speaker 2: any of those body shots. He was connecting with the
Speaker 2: body shots, but I never seen Loman check or any
Speaker 2: and he was the aggressive usually when you he's a
Speaker 2: smaller guy and he's not usually that aggress He usually
Speaker 2: lets the fight come to him. But in this fight,
Speaker 2: he was hawking him down and he was throwing punches
Speaker 2: and he.
Speaker 1: Was you feel like the other guy thought harder or better? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didna win.
Speaker 2: I felt Loman check on one. I felt Lemon checko
Speaker 2: for harder. You know, usually he's a slow starter in
Speaker 2: his fights. He comes out one of two rounds, three rounds,
Speaker 2: he doesn't. He's not aggressive, you know, he just sees
Speaker 2: what's happening and he takes two or three rounds off.
Speaker 2: This fight, he didn't do that. For round one, he
Speaker 2: was throwing punches, he was aggressive, you know, he was
Speaker 2: throwing flurries, he was doing a lot of stuff that normally,
Speaker 2: you know, as he got later in his career, that
Speaker 2: he stopped doing. And you know, and then it was
Speaker 2: about two rounds where he completely dominated to where one
Speaker 2: of the rounds he it looked like he could have
Speaker 2: knocked Devin Heenyuh, Devin Hainey didn't even look like he
Speaker 2: was still there, you know. And then you know, and
Speaker 2: then the last round, I still felt he was dominating
Speaker 2: that last round. Some people you could have went either way,
Speaker 2: but I'm just trying to say, for the majority of
Speaker 2: the fight, it looked like Lomancheko was the aggressive fights.
Speaker 2: You know, there were two to three rounds where I
Speaker 2: felt like he completely dominated those rounds and I never
Speaker 2: seen no round where Haini was completely dominated. It could
Speaker 2: have went either way in any of those rounds. So
Speaker 2: you know, at best it could have been a draw.
Speaker 2: You know, they could have said, look, we're gonna draw
Speaker 2: this fight, We're gonna rank this fight a draw. But
Speaker 2: Devin Handy, there were there put a lot of all
Speaker 2: getting back and forth on line about that.
Speaker 1: Just on line.
Speaker 3: I was in the gym today in my boxing gym,
Speaker 3: and my god, it was loud. Everybody was going back
Speaker 3: and forth and there was only like two people who
Speaker 3: were like, nah, y'all are bugging. He did win, it
Speaker 3: was fair and square. But for the most part, there
Speaker 3: was like a resounding cry out from all of these
Speaker 3: different men that know, you know, he didn't win. It
Speaker 3: was stage. It was this it's about money, da dah dah.
Speaker 3: So my gym was a pretty much with you. I
Speaker 3: go to a gym that is not like there are
Speaker 3: other boxing gyms that I've heard of.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of our friends, uh In fact.
Speaker 3: Actually, well, we won't put people's business in the streets,
Speaker 3: so folks can't find people on their jobs.
Speaker 1: But so when we know they they.
Speaker 3: Have a family member who works in like one of
Speaker 3: those pretty gyms, and you know, and I see him
Speaker 3: all the time, I'm like, wow, I should be in
Speaker 3: these types of gyms. I go to a gym that
Speaker 3: is not pretty. It is for men. It smells like men,
Speaker 3: it looks like men, it acts like men. It's men
Speaker 3: all men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. Actually, yes, it should work out.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a it's a legacy gym. You know.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not putting your business people. You know,
Speaker 2: the person whose gym it is is a boxer, you know,
Speaker 2: for the title, he's he's a well renowned, well loved boxer.
Speaker 2: So it comes from that essence of the streets. You know,
Speaker 2: my gym survived from forty one, you know where in
Speaker 2: Mount Vernon. Shout out to my brother. It's a dope gym.
Speaker 2: It's also you know, so it's so many different gyms
Speaker 2: you could go to, you know that that have different
Speaker 2: essences that the essence in our gym is still it
Speaker 2: still has that from the mud, but it's you know
Speaker 2: it's not as grindy, but I've been to your gym
Speaker 2: and it's grindy, like I've shot videos and never And
Speaker 2: I love it though, because it gives you that it
Speaker 2: reminds me of Rocky by Ball when he was training.
Speaker 2: If you if you go watch Rocky now, go watch
Speaker 2: Rocky now and then watch your gym and then you
Speaker 2: be like it gives you a more of a feel
Speaker 2: and love for what Rocky was doing when he was trained.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you say that because first of all,
Speaker 3: all the those people are on the walls. There's so
Speaker 3: much history there, and there's so many older men that's
Speaker 3: sitting around and there training people without even standing up,
Speaker 3: just like sitting on this, I mean all men and
Speaker 3: they sitting on the side like that ain't nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, let me see this and that and the third.
Speaker 3: And these guys are quick on their feet, like they
Speaker 3: really are at it without them even touching them at all.
Speaker 3: They training, So I know that it's a real professional atmosphere.
Speaker 3: They have a lot of people that are out there boxing.
Speaker 3: My trainer is the bomb. He's the bomb, he really
Speaker 3: really is. And all the kids love him. Everybody's parents
Speaker 3: has their kids going to my training. So anyway, it's
Speaker 3: a great experience. I love I love my boxing. I
Speaker 3: mean right now, I physically hurt so bad. I can't
Speaker 3: even move my arms because one of the things I
Speaker 3: realize is that when you have a crazy work schedule,
Speaker 3: you still have to find some kind of way to
Speaker 3: stretch and work out your body, because if you wait
Speaker 3: in and go back, it's just like you start all
Speaker 3: over again from the beginning, and it's harmor So let's
Speaker 3: talk about the news. We're still observing Mental Health Awareness Month,
Speaker 3: the month of May's going on right now, and so
Speaker 3: we have a guest coming up that's going to talk
Speaker 3: to us more about mental health. We've been talking to
Speaker 3: some great mental health experts and we'll have one today.
Speaker 1: But for our news stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh and by the way, I just want to celebrate
Speaker 3: all the graduates, because you know, we talk about you know, winning,
Speaker 3: losing or whatever, and through a pandemic, through so many
Speaker 3: different things that people are dealing with. It's a pandemic.
Speaker 3: It's a depression, it's a recession. It's murder's murder, death,
Speaker 3: kill constantly, something happening. Politics are terrible, Everything is going on,
Speaker 3: and yet these students. Many students are still fighting through
Speaker 3: and they're graduating, getting high school diplomas, getting degrees, going
Speaker 3: to college, nursing schools, this and that, and so shout
Speaker 3: out to all the graduates that are out there. I
Speaker 3: see prom pictures from celebrities their children. Diddy's daughter Chance
Speaker 3: going to the prom. I think Lebron's son going to
Speaker 3: the prom. Like that's what it's all about. That and
Speaker 3: those types of things. Let us know it's not all
Speaker 3: bad everything that's happening.
Speaker 1: There's also people accomplishing goals.
Speaker 2: Y're definitely shout out to all the graduates, all of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the graduates. Let's talk real quick about Cop City.
Speaker 3: I think we need to kind of get into that.
Speaker 3: There's a whole other topic that I want to talk about,
Speaker 3: Panini America, which is a campaign that Until Freedom and
Speaker 3: Black Church Pack are working on together, but it takes
Speaker 3: more time to sort of lay it out. I would
Speaker 3: like to talk about Cop City, though, and I think
Speaker 3: that even though next week is still Mental Health Awareness Month,
Speaker 3: I believe that we should take some time to have
Speaker 3: on the show some of the folks who are on
Speaker 3: the ground in Atlanta fighting this fight against Cop City.
Speaker 1: So for many people.
Speaker 3: Listen Atlanta, Atlanta, all the Atlanta residents who are followers
Speaker 3: of street politicians or followers.
Speaker 1: Of my son or me or and me, we need
Speaker 1: you to listen to this. There is a huge, big, big, big, big.
Speaker 3: Big problem in Atlanta, and we need you to tune
Speaker 3: in and listen to this.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: Next week we will have more of the on the
Speaker 3: ground grassroots activists Queen Jainastah and others to come and
Speaker 3: talk to us about what's happening. But in short, there
Speaker 3: is something happening in Atlanta where a small part of
Speaker 3: Decab County is being built into Cop City. That's the
Speaker 3: name of it, Cop City. So it is a place
Speaker 3: where so many hundreds of millions of dollars are gone.
Speaker 3: I think it's like three hundred million dollars us going
Speaker 3: into building this place where cops live, where there's training facilities,
Speaker 3: and and cops from all over the country will go
Speaker 3: to this particular training site so that they can you know,
Speaker 3: some of them live there, some of them stayed there
Speaker 3: during the time while they are being trained. The resources
Speaker 3: that will be poured into this particular area are extra
Speaker 3: like you know, big numbers, millions, hundreds, of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars are going into building something called cop City. Now,
Speaker 3: we could sit here in debate all day about why
Speaker 3: we don't even think that cop city and additional training
Speaker 3: is necessary because cops are already being trained at the
Speaker 3: highest levels of training. They are receiving more money. The
Speaker 3: budgets for law enforcement and policing across this country is
Speaker 3: completely imbalance to all the other things. It's Mental health
Speaker 3: Awareness month, and you should find out from your elected
Speaker 3: officials how much money are they spending, how much money
Speaker 3: is allocated towards mental health support versus.
Speaker 1: What the police get.
Speaker 3: In these local municipalities around the country, the militarization of
Speaker 3: police officers is problematic.
Speaker 1: It does not seem that the training that has been.
Speaker 3: Put forth is working because in our communities still our
Speaker 3: people are dying. There is still a disconnect between the
Speaker 3: relationship with police and community.
Speaker 1: But now we won't.
Speaker 3: Argue that because there's some people who are probably like nah,
Speaker 3: I can kind of see why maybe this facility is
Speaker 3: gonna help them. They're gonna get better training and is
Speaker 3: going to be more about our communities and maybe this
Speaker 3: is what we need, is a place where you know
Speaker 3: they're in one environment where they could come in and
Speaker 3: it's real, rigorous training and support for police officers. Maybe
Speaker 3: this is the answer. I've heard people say that. Well,
Speaker 3: let me tell you why it's not. Because the training
Speaker 3: is going to be done. It will be conducted by
Speaker 3: a group called the IDF, which is the Israel Defense Forces.
Speaker 3: Now that is the military that is currently in place
Speaker 3: in Israel that has helped to displace the people of Palestine.
Speaker 1: And don't take my word for it. I just want
Speaker 1: you to.
Speaker 3: Go and do your research and look at how the
Speaker 3: idea kills Palestinians on a regular basis so that they
Speaker 3: can steal the land of the Palestinian people. Now, this
Speaker 3: is a hot topic. A lot of people don't like
Speaker 3: to get into it because as soon as you start
Speaker 3: to say it, there are some people within the Jewish
Speaker 3: community and some conservative Jews who will say that you
Speaker 3: are anti Semitic just because you dare to talk about
Speaker 3: the Palestinian people struggle.
Speaker 1: That anti Semitism.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely exists and we stand against it. However, speaking
Speaker 3: about what is happening with the Idea and the military
Speaker 3: force that is on the ground displacing people from their original.
Speaker 1: Land is not being anti Semitic. It is the truth.
Speaker 3: And so the group of individuals that are responsible for
Speaker 3: training people at cop City are people who in Israel
Speaker 3: kill children, women, okay, families every single day and they
Speaker 3: guard communities that allows the is rallies to walk the streets.
Speaker 3: We saw with our own eyes the Israelis can walk
Speaker 3: the streets certain areas and the Palestinian people cannot. And
Speaker 3: it is the idea that maintains the control for those
Speaker 3: individuals that are free in Palestine or Israel, and the
Speaker 3: others do not have their freedom. So this is a
Speaker 3: very serious thing because basically what it maybe if the
Speaker 3: training was being conducted by something else I don't even
Speaker 3: know what it's called or whatever, I can sit here
Speaker 3: and say, well, hey, maybe this is gonna work, but
Speaker 3: it is not.
Speaker 1: So already they're starting off.
Speaker 3: With a group of a defense mechanism, a military that
Speaker 3: is responsible for the murder and the destruction of a
Speaker 3: particular brown group of people.
Speaker 2: So what do you no, You're right, you know, I
Speaker 2: think the reality of the situation is in order for
Speaker 2: police to have proper training, as you would call it,
Speaker 2: it would have to include people from the community. Right,
Speaker 2: having other.
Speaker 1: Police doing that Also, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I'm saying it would have to include relevant, respected people
Speaker 2: from communities, in communities where people want it to happen. Right,
Speaker 2: You can't impose your will in communities that people don't
Speaker 2: want certain things in. Secondly, what we know is that
Speaker 2: police do not prevent crimes. Right, So the fact that
Speaker 2: we constantly put money and resources into enforcement and and
Speaker 2: penalization of crimes and arresting people for crimes instead of prevention,
Speaker 2: the crime prevention it should be what our money goes into.
Speaker 2: We put hundreds and millions and billions of dollars into
Speaker 2: all Right, you killed somebody, you shot somebody, gonna rest you.
Speaker 2: We're gonna make sure you go to jail. We got
Speaker 2: officers who are prepared to do that. Instead of having
Speaker 2: the services and all of the everything needed to prevent
Speaker 2: the crimes, that people aren't starving in the communities, the
Speaker 2: mental health issues of being addressed, like we need to
Speaker 2: pour that money into that. You know, this cop city
Speaker 2: thing is just it's stupid to me. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: You know, it's never been when the elected officials, including
Speaker 3: the black man who's the mayor there, agree to things
Speaker 3: and I'm not even sure.
Speaker 1: Listen, I want to give the mayor some.
Speaker 3: Leeway here that maybe he doesn't know what the IDF is,
Speaker 3: because a lot of people don't know. Most people will
Speaker 3: not know what the hell I'm talking about what we're
Speaker 3: saying on this show today. Okay, they're gonna have to
Speaker 3: go educate themselves. There are a lot of people that
Speaker 3: don't know. But the fact that the IDF is even
Speaker 3: involved tells me that they are lobbyists and other political
Speaker 3: forces who have talked the mayor into something that they
Speaker 3: make it sound good because they're going to try to when.
Speaker 1: You say that there needs to be people.
Speaker 3: Involved who are from the communities and all of that,
Speaker 3: they are going to say that that's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 3: They're gonna say that they have all types of training.
Speaker 3: It's not just the idea is this is that in
Speaker 3: the third but the mere fact that the idea is
Speaker 3: involved at all is problematic. But how dare you Atlanta
Speaker 3: have the type of homelessness that exists in that city
Speaker 3: when you are staying downtown as I stay all the
Speaker 3: time in downtown Atlanta. Will now don't because my grandaughter
Speaker 3: lives in Bucket, so I have to go with bucket.
Speaker 3: But when I did, I stayed in downtown Atlanta all
Speaker 3: the time, at the Ritz Carlton Downtown.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something.
Speaker 3: The level of danger that I feel, and I am
Speaker 3: not afraid of black people. That's not something that I
Speaker 3: where people like, oh, you shouldn't go here by yourself
Speaker 3: and do this. I love black people. Black people don't
Speaker 3: harm me, right, and even if something happens, I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna look at it as I can all black people
Speaker 3: are bad or all.
Speaker 1: Black people are dangerous.
Speaker 3: We know that there's all types of people that can
Speaker 3: hurt you and incidents that can take place. I have
Speaker 3: never been afraid to walk the streets, no matter the
Speaker 3: time of day, around my people in Atlanta. However, the
Speaker 3: level of mental illness and the people who have displaced,
Speaker 3: the level of houselessness and all the things that's going
Speaker 3: on there, it is dangerous. I had people run up
Speaker 3: in my face. I've had somebody chase me into a bank.
Speaker 3: I've been through so much in downtown Atlanta. It is
Speaker 3: no joke there in terms of all those people who
Speaker 3: are living out in the street. And you mean to
Speaker 3: tell me that you're gonna take your money and put
Speaker 3: hundreds of millions of dollars into more training for cops
Speaker 3: and a place for cops to be comfortable and spread
Speaker 3: their legs and be out in communities and shoot this
Speaker 3: one and beat this one up, versus getting those people
Speaker 3: off the street and making sure that they have the
Speaker 3: necessary resources.
Speaker 1: To be whole, to have homes. This is outrageous.
Speaker 2: That's what they're gonna tell you. They're gonna tell you
Speaker 2: that that's more of a priority. It's more a priority
Speaker 2: to employ more police services and you know, deploy more
Speaker 2: police services to our communities in which they seem to
Speaker 2: escalate more situations than they de escalate. You know, they
Speaker 2: seem to constantly arrest people instead of stopping situations from happening,
Speaker 2: and they don't do anything that's really necessary to further
Speaker 2: the community, to grow and be peaceful and to be
Speaker 2: the beloved community. The only thing they do is arrest people.
Speaker 2: And I'm tired of that, and I think.
Speaker 1: More people are.
Speaker 3: And I want to say that I hope that Mayor
Speaker 3: Andre Dickens as the city council meetings are packed with people.
Speaker 3: Their whole thing is, Oh, these people don't even live
Speaker 3: in Atlanta. It's outside agitators. By the way, I've been
Speaker 3: told by Queen and No Sieh and others that the
Speaker 3: last meeting they were at, it was overwhelmingly a major,
Speaker 3: overwhelming whatever overwhelming majority excuse me of Atlanta residents. But
Speaker 3: many people don't know. And that's why we're using street
Speaker 3: politicians and every other platform to ensure that people know
Speaker 3: what's happening, because too, unfortunately, too often, we find out
Speaker 3: about stand your ground laws after Trayvon Martin has been killed.
Speaker 3: We find out about gentrification and rezoning and all these
Speaker 3: things after it happens, because they keep it quiet. So
Speaker 3: it's not that the Atlanta residents don't care, it's that
Speaker 3: they don't know. And that is why it is our
Speaker 3: responsibility to work with the local grassroots organizers to use
Speaker 3: our national platform to make sure they know. And my
Speaker 3: thought of the day is, Mayor Andre Dickens, is.
Speaker 1: This who you are?
Speaker 3: Is this who you are that you will support the
Speaker 3: idea which murders children every single day in the Palace
Speaker 3: Sinian community. Palestinian people murders babies, shoot women. We have
Speaker 3: it on video, It's on camera, Maya Dickens, and are
Speaker 3: you a person that stands with that and will allow
Speaker 3: the same people who murder folks across the seas every
Speaker 3: single day to come and have training for police officers
Speaker 3: that are already killing black people every day right here
Speaker 3: in the United States.
Speaker 1: What the hell is this?
Speaker 2: That's the thought of today? Ain't none know? We can
Speaker 2: end the show with that one.
Speaker 1: Huh, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Well, we should definitely put our guests through because something
Speaker 3: is wrong with everybody's mental health if this is okay,
Speaker 3: So in keeping with our mental health awareness theme for
Speaker 3: the month of May mental Health Awareness Month, you know,
Speaker 3: as I said, we are not stopping. We're making sure
Speaker 3: that every week we bring someone to you who is
Speaker 3: an expert in this area. I personally think, and I
Speaker 3: know my son you agree that this is probably one
Speaker 3: of the most important conversations we could be having. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously the economic stuff is important, our politics are important,
Speaker 3: but keeping people stable and focused in a time when
Speaker 3: the nation is so out of control, it's also it's
Speaker 3: probably the most important thing. I want to I don't
Speaker 3: know that this artist's name there, but my son sent
Speaker 3: me an image or of some slides of a young
Speaker 3: man who was an artist who wrote on social media
Speaker 3: and his stories all the people he was angry with
Speaker 3: and the people he loved and the people that supported
Speaker 3: him right before he killed himself. Recently, this just happened.
Speaker 3: I'll look it up while you know, once we introduce
Speaker 3: our guests. But this just happened, and a young man
Speaker 3: was ranting about so many things and he took his life.
Speaker 3: And he's a seems to be a well known rapper,
Speaker 3: and so you know, they're there. We're in a very
Speaker 3: very very very delicate time. And I have been very
Speaker 3: specific about wanting as we had doctor Michael Pratts my
Speaker 3: psychologists on last week. I've been very intentional about us
Speaker 3: finding black men who are in this particular field because
Speaker 3: we know black women we always talk about our mental
Speaker 3: health and self care, but black men certainly need a
Speaker 3: real focus on mental health and mental and and and
Speaker 3: mental health awareness. And so today we have mister Elliott Connie,
Speaker 3: who is a Texas based psycho therapist or psycho yeah,
Speaker 3: psycho psychotherapist, I think yes, And he is the founder
Speaker 3: of the Solution Focused University. Welcome the street, politicians. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much much, mister Connie for being with us.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Yes, And it's mister not doctor or a psychotherapist, not
Speaker 4: a psychologist, but.
Speaker 2: Thank you our solution base like that that is for me,
Speaker 2: that's the key to everything. I think everyone focused on
Speaker 2: what the issue is and points out everything that's wrong.
Speaker 2: What made you wanted to call it solution base and
Speaker 2: what does that actually entailed?
Speaker 4: I gotta tell you a little bit of my story
Speaker 4: in order to answer that question. So I grew up
Speaker 4: in a really, really difficult environment. I was born on
Speaker 4: the West side of Chicago, Illinois. My family moved to Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 4: and in both scenarios, I lived in really really rough areas.
Speaker 4: And my mom is the most amazing strong woman ever,
Speaker 4: and she wanted to make sure her children got good education.
Speaker 4: So she moved us to the suburbs of Boston when
Speaker 4: I was in middle school to to just make sure
Speaker 4: I was getting a better education. And my dad was
Speaker 4: like super abusive, and I spent most of my childhood
Speaker 4: really suicidal, like not just talking about it or thinking
Speaker 4: about it, but like like attempting and like like I
Speaker 4: remember when they built like a taco bell in my area,
Speaker 4: and I was like, Oh, I'm sad, I'm never gonna
Speaker 4: eat at that taco bell because I'm not gonna be
Speaker 4: alive when it's built like that kind of shit. And
Speaker 4: when I went to college, like, you know, God loves
Speaker 4: me enough, he blessed me with the ability to play baseball,
Speaker 4: and that got me into college. And when I got
Speaker 4: into college, I started thinking about things like hope and
Speaker 4: love and warmth and like kindness of self. And I
Speaker 4: can't really tell you why I started thinking about those things,
Speaker 4: but as a nineteen year old, that's what I started
Speaker 4: thinking about. And I decided to major in psychology, and
Speaker 4: I went on this journey like not really realizing it,
Speaker 4: but like when you go to graduate school and study psychotherapy,
Speaker 4: there are literally zero black people in our textbooks. Like
Speaker 4: sometimes say like, oh, there's no black people do that,
Speaker 4: but there's like a few. There are literally zero. The
Speaker 4: number of people we see in the textbook educating us
Speaker 4: about psychotherapy that are black or brown are zero. And
Speaker 4: I was so that tripped me out. I was just like,
Speaker 4: that's crazy to me. That either means black people have
Speaker 4: not contributed to the psychology of this field or you've
Speaker 4: ignored black people's contribution to the psychology of this field.
Speaker 2: And I had.
Speaker 4: Turned inward and gone on my own own journey and
Speaker 4: I wanted to touch people. So my son, to answer
Speaker 4: your question, why do I call it solution focus brief therapy,
Speaker 4: because that was the only approach I was studying in
Speaker 4: school that made sense to me. When I was in school,
Speaker 4: I was studying a bunch of stuff that had to
Speaker 4: do with assessment and interpretation. And I do know cross culturally,
Speaker 4: it's very hard for some affluent white person to understand
Speaker 4: my background and what I've learned. Even more in adulthood,
Speaker 4: I actually think it an impossibility. I don't know about you, guys,
Speaker 4: but I've gotten real, real tired of trying to explain
Speaker 4: the plights of black people to people who do not
Speaker 4: and or refuse to understand what it's like. And that's
Speaker 4: like a trauma that we all live with consistently. And
Speaker 4: if you're not capable of understanding the very nuanced trauma
Speaker 4: that we experience, and you can't help me psychologically. So
Speaker 4: I decided in that moment, like this is ridiculous that
Speaker 4: there's no black people doing this, So I wanted to
Speaker 4: change that. I remember thinking like I either want to
Speaker 4: be the black person in these textbooks or I want
Speaker 4: to inspire the black mind that will show up in
Speaker 4: these textbooks, and now it's happened. Like the Solution Focused
Speaker 4: Universe is the largest training organization in our field. We
Speaker 4: train about fifteen thousand new psychotherapists every month on how
Speaker 4: to do this type of therapy. And my favorite emails
Speaker 4: I get from people saying, like I saw you in
Speaker 4: the textbook, an answer to a test question in graduate school,
Speaker 4: and those sorts of things. So it just became super
Speaker 4: important to me to make a difference in this field
Speaker 4: because we need it.
Speaker 1: So you are in the textbooks, now I.
Speaker 4: Am in the textbooks. Now you like to grad school.
Speaker 1: They don't know how long did it take to get
Speaker 1: to that point.
Speaker 4: Uh, it took me about a decade. Actually it took
Speaker 4: it took me a while. Like it was, it was
Speaker 4: a hard it's a hard nut to crack, I'll say that.
Speaker 4: And and the field, like the status quo in this
Speaker 4: field was was just old, male and white, and they
Speaker 4: did not love a black man becoming a leader in
Speaker 4: this industry. So I had to overcome some things.
Speaker 3: You studied to become a psychotherapist, which is different from,
Speaker 3: as you said, being a psychologist, which is what I have.
Speaker 3: So talk about that a little bit, what's the difference?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, so in the helping professions, we have psychologists,
Speaker 4: social workers, marriaged family therapists, life and posessional counselors. Uh,
Speaker 4: and all of us are credential to do psychotherapy. I'm
Speaker 4: like licensed professional counselor. And really the only difference is
Speaker 4: let me know the difference. Actually, it's all kind of universal.
Speaker 4: We all do psychotherapy. The only difference really in our
Speaker 4: field is psychiatrists can provide medications.
Speaker 2: So this is a deep question, right because I always
Speaker 2: I've never I've never contemplated suicide. I've been through a
Speaker 2: lot of different things, like I've been the worst points
Speaker 2: and I've been and I've deal and I know I
Speaker 2: deal with levels of trauma that come from those points.
Speaker 2: But as a as a psychiatist who studies, can you
Speaker 2: try do you have you figured out like what is
Speaker 2: a therapist psycho psychotherapists who studies, who studied the field,
Speaker 2: can you have you kind of like pinpointed or kind
Speaker 2: of figured out what is the thing that makes certain
Speaker 2: people want to commit suicide or or contemplated what like
Speaker 2: for you when you were contemplating suicide, yea, what was
Speaker 2: the thing that mostly triggered you and made you feel
Speaker 2: like this was something that you wanted to do.
Speaker 3: Yes, died by suicide, not commit suicide. They have changed
Speaker 3: the language yes.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: So when I was going through those thoughts, and a
Speaker 4: lot of people think that suicide adallyte is attached to depression,
Speaker 4: and it's actually not. It's attached to levels of hope.
Speaker 4: And some people are better at holding on to hope
Speaker 4: than others. And I'll use myself as an example to
Speaker 4: tell you what I mean by that. If I'm going
Speaker 4: through something hard and it doesn't matter what it is,
Speaker 4: if I have hope that it will one day end,
Speaker 4: then things will be better, I'm significantly less likely to
Speaker 4: die by suicide. If I lose that hope, then I'm
Speaker 4: significantly more likely. So in my experience, it was all
Speaker 4: attached to the trauma of my father, who was a
Speaker 4: very abusive dude, like the way he treated his wife,
Speaker 4: his three kids. It was super duperank kind and it
Speaker 4: went on for so long that the best way I
Speaker 4: can describe it is I would look around the world
Speaker 4: and I would think everybody else seems to have gotten
Speaker 4: this great life, and I got this like shitty life,
Speaker 4: and my father would tell me constantly like you are
Speaker 4: nothing and you're never gonna be nothing. And when you
Speaker 4: start to believe that, you lose hope for your own future,
Speaker 4: and that's when your life becomes in peril. If you
Speaker 4: can hold on to the belief that one day things
Speaker 4: will be different or even positive, then you can essentially
Speaker 4: go through anything. And there are certain people that can
Speaker 4: do that. Like my personal hero that has ever walked
Speaker 4: on this planet is Medeba Nelson Mandela, Like that is
Speaker 4: my guy. I've been to South Africa a bunch of times,
Speaker 4: and I've gotten to talk to people that walked with
Speaker 4: him and rode with him.
Speaker 2: And there are.
Speaker 4: People like him who could sit through a prison sentence
Speaker 4: of twenty seven years and he had this ability to
Speaker 4: always believe that he would be able to create change.
Speaker 4: I don't know why people like him could hold onto
Speaker 4: that for twenty seven years, but some people can hold
Speaker 4: onto it. But that's the key is being able to
Speaker 4: hold on to hope for a different future. And once
Speaker 4: you can do that, then your life is significantly safer.
Speaker 2: So what do you think was the change for you
Speaker 2: that made you say they gave you the hope? Where
Speaker 2: do you see that you started to get home.
Speaker 4: So I'm super stubborn, like I'm crazy levels of stubborn
Speaker 4: and competitive and not in the like I'm rooting against
Speaker 4: you way, but like to drive me to be a
Speaker 4: better version of me kind of way. And when I
Speaker 4: was nineteen, which is probably the worst, it got like
Speaker 4: the closest I got to ending my own life. For
Speaker 4: some reason, I was laying in my college dorm room
Speaker 4: and I was thinking about my eulogy, like somebody eulogizing me,
Speaker 4: and I started thinking that people would say, like I
Speaker 4: didn't know Elliott was sad, and I didn't know Elliott
Speaker 4: was in trouble, and I didn't know Elliott was going
Speaker 4: through these things, and I didn't I couldn't live with that,
Speaker 4: Like I didn't want people to think I was dying
Speaker 4: because of an issue with me. I wanted them to
Speaker 4: know the truth, which was that dude abused me for
Speaker 4: nineteen years. So I decided in that moment, I have
Speaker 4: to outlive my trauma so I could tell my story.
Speaker 4: And I started feeling like I got hope that I
Speaker 4: can do it. I started feeling hopeful that I could
Speaker 4: outlive this trauma just so I could tell people the truth,
Speaker 4: and then I realized I wasn't the only black youth
Speaker 4: in that situation, in that scenario, and then it became
Speaker 4: bigger than me, and I think that's what changed my life.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's really that's powerful, just wanting to outlive your trauma.
Speaker 4: I never even thought of something like that. I made
Speaker 4: a decision. I was nineteen. I like, if I decided
Speaker 4: to take my life, I can do that at any point,
Speaker 4: so it's easy for me or at the time, you know,
Speaker 4: it was nineteen nineteen year old thinking I could take
Speaker 4: my life the day after I share my story, not
Speaker 4: realizing that sharing my story would saved my life. I
Speaker 4: just wanted to outlive this trauma so people could know
Speaker 4: the truth.
Speaker 2: So you you, you tricked yourself into saving yourself.
Speaker 4: I accidentally tricked myself.
Speaker 2: Accident tricked yourself into saving you and so so so
Speaker 2: you've been so how long have you actually been doing
Speaker 2: this work?
Speaker 4: Let me see, I graduated in two thousand and six,
Speaker 4: so I've been doing this a minute, well since two
Speaker 4: thousand and six. Yeah, I got my master's agree in
Speaker 4: two thousand and six, so I've been doing this and
Speaker 4: doing this a minute. And in that time I had
Speaker 4: my own practice, which I still do. I've traveled the
Speaker 4: world teaching people how to do solution focused brief therapy.
Speaker 4: I've written now five books about this. It's literally everything
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: Five books. What are the names of the books I
Speaker 2: want to go out and get him? Send me your address,
Speaker 2: I'll send them to you. Yeah, yeah, Well, give me
Speaker 2: give you two names. What are your two favorites.
Speaker 4: The solution focused brief therapy diamond and let me see
Speaker 4: you one two favors, and the solution focused marriage.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought up the marriage piece because I
Speaker 3: noticed that you you work with married couples, and you
Speaker 3: work with marriage counselors, right training marriage counselors and working
Speaker 3: with married couples. And I noticed that, you know, when
Speaker 3: you think about Twitch, the gentleman who was on the
Speaker 3: Ellen DeGeneres Show, and you see all of these beautiful
Speaker 3: moments with his wife, the dancing, the celebration, the family.
Speaker 3: I noticed when I'm reading some of these stories that
Speaker 3: a lot of people who are dying by suicide are married,
Speaker 3: either very young teenagers and or people who are in
Speaker 3: you know, committed relationships. Let's not necessarily marriage. So can
Speaker 3: we talk about like what is that? What is there something?
Speaker 3: Is it just by coincidence or do you think that
Speaker 3: there's a particular stress in this moment that's happening with
Speaker 3: married couples.
Speaker 4: No, well that's a super complicated question. So I do
Speaker 4: think it's more of a coincidence, like it's not. That's
Speaker 4: not to say people are married are more at risk
Speaker 4: of dying by suicide than people who aren't, But I
Speaker 4: will say the pressures of this world are really really high.
Speaker 4: And when you are married and you have children, you
Speaker 4: have you have a pressure to provide, You have a
Speaker 4: pressure to contribute. But I actually think the biggest pressure
Speaker 4: and that the death of Twitch. That that hit me
Speaker 4: kind of hard, actually, because my whole adult life has
Speaker 4: been motivated to impact people's mental health, in particular like
Speaker 4: black male mental health. And I'm just a psychotherapist. My
Speaker 4: practice is in Texas. And then because I make social
Speaker 4: media content, I get discovered by this Hollywood world and
Speaker 4: making TV content and I'm meeting meeting all these people
Speaker 4: and talking to them about mental health, and I my
Speaker 4: heart broke that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to
Speaker 4: reach him. I think the biggest issue we have is
Speaker 4: the issue of performance versus authenticity, and I think as
Speaker 4: a as a black man, it's very very difficult to
Speaker 4: unmask yourself and be your authentic self. And being your
Speaker 4: authentic self is so healing and so protective, and we
Speaker 4: were not always comfortable doing it. Now. Of course I'm hypothesizing.
Speaker 4: I've never I never spoke to Twitch, but I am saying, like,
Speaker 4: we live in a world where we can't just be
Speaker 4: who we are, Like we get judged harshly, we get
Speaker 4: criticized roughly, we never get the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 4: And that's a pressure that all of us, all all
Speaker 4: African Americans carry and that weight is very, very heavy,
Speaker 4: and we get to a point sometimes where it's like
Speaker 4: we cannot we cannot handle it, Like we get to
Speaker 4: a point right now we lose our ability to believe
Speaker 4: that there's a day after this level of pain and
Speaker 4: trauma and to be honest with y'all. Like when I
Speaker 4: got on, the first thing I said was I'm fans
Speaker 4: of you guys. I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 4: thought about how important you are to the culture, but
Speaker 4: you're incredibly important. Like to Mek, I knew about my song,
Speaker 4: just I knew about my son because back in the
Speaker 4: day when you were fans of record labels as opposed
Speaker 4: to artists, I was a fan of Rough Riders, and
Speaker 4: I remember like Lefty gun up in that right, like
Speaker 4: my song was a rapper that I followed, and then
Speaker 4: he disappeared and I found out my son did time
Speaker 4: and he came back with this ridiculous freestyle in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: And I was just following you as a rapper. But
Speaker 4: now to see the work you do as an advocate
Speaker 4: and Tamika I found you in early twenty twenty. What
Speaker 4: you guys do for our culture is you get angry.
Speaker 4: And the reason that that's so incredibly important is I
Speaker 4: think after the death of George Floyd, a lot of
Speaker 4: black people didn't know what to do, like we were
Speaker 4: just crushed. And then I see this video to Mika
Speaker 4: Maori like going off on a podium, Like that's so
Speaker 4: important because we get to see like it's okay to
Speaker 4: have our authentic feelings from people demonstrating that in an
Speaker 4: unapologetic way, like neither one of you and in those
Speaker 4: moments cared how you were being perceived. You didn't back
Speaker 4: down to the powers that be. You could live withever
Speaker 4: consequences came your way. We need more of that because
Speaker 4: we have to be free to express our authentic experiences.
Speaker 4: And sometimes our authentic experiences is rage, like outright anger,
Speaker 4: and I don't know that as a black man, I
Speaker 4: can walk around all the time and feel comfortable expressing that,
Speaker 4: and people like you, guys and several others. Of course,
Speaker 4: we need to see those examples, and I think that
Speaker 4: saves lives. And I would be willing to bet a
Speaker 4: lot that Twitch was dealing with the battle between performance
Speaker 4: and authenticity and sometimes get wrapped up as if I'm
Speaker 4: too authentic, I'll lose endorsements or lose money, and I'll
Speaker 4: lose whatever problem.
Speaker 1: That's the big issue.
Speaker 3: I mean, we listen. It is not easy. What you
Speaker 3: see is a work in progress. It takes a lot
Speaker 3: of prayer, and it takes a lot of support from
Speaker 3: our community to say that. You know, I've had people
Speaker 3: walk up to me who have resources and say, you
Speaker 3: will never go broke again in life.
Speaker 1: You will never. We will make sure that you have
Speaker 1: food on the table.
Speaker 3: Now, how that materializes when you're actually going broke, I
Speaker 3: don't know. But if damn Suore feels good to think
Speaker 3: that there are people who will make sure that I
Speaker 3: don't have to go as Coca Cola, PETSI, you know, Walmart,
Speaker 3: and the list goes on. Not to say it's anything
Speaker 3: wrong with those relationships, because they should be inad in
Speaker 3: the movement, but I don't have to rely on them,
Speaker 3: and so therefore it gives me the freedom to speak
Speaker 3: and to speak truth to power. It's not easy when
Speaker 3: you don't know where your next meal is gonna come from.
Speaker 1: So I am sure not.
Speaker 3: Necessarily about twitch, but there are a number of people.
Speaker 3: They are artists every day. My son knows he deals
Speaker 3: with it all the time. They are artists and others
Speaker 3: who are in the industry that you can go to
Speaker 3: them and say this is a really important issue, and
Speaker 3: they're like ski, I mean literally shaking about even being
Speaker 3: seen next to you. Forget about speaking on the issue.
Speaker 3: They don't even want to be in the same room.
Speaker 4: I look, I agree. Like the celebrities I talk to,
Speaker 4: the number one thing that they they come to me
Speaker 4: about is fear of being canceled. And I think, while
Speaker 4: I understand it, we have to we have to be
Speaker 4: able to prioritize our own authenticity because when we feel
Speaker 4: comfortable being our authentic selves, we have strong enough mental
Speaker 4: health and we understand, like, I'm not guaranteed like the
Speaker 4: seven figure business, and I like, I would rather be
Speaker 4: be real and work as a cashier at a grocery
Speaker 4: store than be fake and be world famous, because that
Speaker 4: actually crushes your soul. And I learned that like when
Speaker 4: I was when I came into this field, and I'm
Speaker 4: almost embarrassed to admit this, but like I got to
Speaker 4: tell the truth. When I graduated with my master's degree,
Speaker 4: I told you I was super motivated to contribute to
Speaker 4: this field. And no black person in my industry had
Speaker 4: written a book, like nobody had written a book of
Speaker 4: my color about solution focused brief therapy. So within a year,
Speaker 4: I wrote the first book by a person of color.
Speaker 4: It's called The Art of Solution Focused Therapy. And I
Speaker 4: was so excited. I was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 4: just did this. It never dawned on me that psychotherapist
Speaker 4: would be racist, and I know that's stupid, but at
Speaker 4: the time, I just thought, like, if you're interested in
Speaker 4: mental health, you're not gonna allow yourself to have bigoted views.
Speaker 4: And I went to this conference, and I'd never been
Speaker 4: to a conference before, and even I started performing. Like
Speaker 4: I called one of my white colleagues. I was like,
Speaker 4: what are you gonna wear? And he was like, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna wear a polo and slacks, and I'm somebody like
Speaker 4: I like to wear sweatsuit and a hoodie like everywhere
Speaker 4: I go, but I'm not gonna do it at my
Speaker 4: very first conference is back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, and for for I don't know,
Speaker 4: five six seven years, like, I put on the uniform
Speaker 4: so I could be taken seriously. And what I learned
Speaker 4: was it didn't matter how I dressed, it didn't matter
Speaker 4: how I talked. They were gonna hate me regardless. And
Speaker 4: before I knew it, I felt like I didn't even
Speaker 4: recognize who I was seeing in the mirror trying to
Speaker 4: trying to like be accepted in this community that is
Speaker 4: designed not to accept me. So it pissed me off,
Speaker 4: it motivated me, and it helped me shift towards my
Speaker 4: authentic self and to be honest with you, that's where
Speaker 4: healing is. And to mek it like it is not easy,
Speaker 4: Like there were in days where this whole field was
Speaker 4: upset with me, and a few people would email me saying,
Speaker 4: you got to keep doing what you're doing, and I
Speaker 4: will invest in you and I'll keep doing those things.
Speaker 4: And that was like a lifeline, Like that was so
Speaker 4: important because those days are not easy, but they're so
Speaker 4: important because like nobody said healing was easy, and nobody
Speaker 4: said authenticity was consequence free. But it is important. It
Speaker 4: is the thing that we should prioritize above all else.
Speaker 2: Wow, it sounds like you just in my mind right now.
Speaker 2: I'm listening to you because those are things that I'm
Speaker 2: faced with every day. Yes, and being in this field
Speaker 2: coming from where I come from. You know that I
Speaker 2: come from hip hop and the culture and come from
Speaker 2: street culture and wanting to be you know, be strong
Speaker 2: and be an advocate for our people and bring people
Speaker 2: from where I come from to this space because there's
Speaker 2: so many people from the whole who are you know,
Speaker 2: embedded in communities, you know, impoverished communities, who have backgrounds
Speaker 2: of crime and have done things you know that are
Speaker 2: not celebrated by our community, who want to do better
Speaker 2: for our community, who want to be able to utilize
Speaker 2: their voices, who want to be on the front lines
Speaker 2: who want to stand by me, but they don't see
Speaker 2: their faces in it, you know. And that's how I
Speaker 2: got in this. So keeping that authenticity of who I
Speaker 2: am and what it is that I represent, and still
Speaker 2: coming into rooms where people you know, are coming from
Speaker 2: different backgrounds and they're more cultured, and they're more educated
Speaker 2: and have degrees and all these things, and still coming
Speaker 2: in with what it is that I represent. It's hard,
Speaker 2: you know. It's people saying, well, you need to do this,
Speaker 2: or you need to do this a little bit, or
Speaker 2: maybe don't talk about this that much or look this
Speaker 2: way or sound this way, and it's a constant fight,
Speaker 2: and I don't And I'm one of those people that
Speaker 2: I believe in me so much it don't matter what
Speaker 2: you tell me, Like I don't give I really just
Speaker 2: don't give a fuck about how you feel about what
Speaker 2: I feel. And sometimes people make you feel like you're wrong,
Speaker 2: like your selfish because this now need to do this,
Speaker 2: And it's like I wouldn't be me if I capitulated
Speaker 2: to certain things.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, I wouldn't raise my hand
Speaker 3: to speak in this part of the conversation. We need therapy,
Speaker 3: we need podcasts, partner therapy right here, right now.
Speaker 1: So you get you a hat that says I'm a.
Speaker 4: Psychotherapy, They're gonna get my hat.
Speaker 3: You gotta put your so But I do and I
Speaker 3: respect what my son a saying because what he brings
Speaker 3: to the movement is exactly what we needed, especially in
Speaker 3: until Freedom and other spaces that we've been in. And
Speaker 3: you know, so I agree with that, but I do
Speaker 3: think that there is always room for growth. And just
Speaker 3: because you feel like you're being one hundred percent authentic,
Speaker 3: sometimes we have to figure out like authenticity and growth
Speaker 3: have to happen at the same time. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: what I try to explain to him is that everything
Speaker 3: he thinks he can't say why because you also run
Speaker 3: an organization and there are people on payroll and folks
Speaker 3: who are depending on us to make payroll to keep
Speaker 3: the organization going.
Speaker 1: And we have to be really sure when we decide
Speaker 1: we're going.
Speaker 3: To go and speak on an issue or we're going
Speaker 3: to be engaged in something, whatever it is, we have
Speaker 3: to make sure that the stakes of it is something
Speaker 3: that we are willing to throw the whole thing in
Speaker 3: the garbage behind, right. We have to make sure because
Speaker 3: we could tank could we could. He knows we've done
Speaker 3: it right. When people told me I had to denounce
Speaker 3: Minister Farakhan, I said, that's something I just can't do.
Speaker 1: So what happened.
Speaker 3: I lost all the speaking engagements to this, to that
Speaker 3: and the third. But it was something that regardless of
Speaker 3: whether I agree with Minister Farrakhon about a number of
Speaker 3: things that he says, it is not my language, it's
Speaker 3: not the way I would speak, and I don't agree
Speaker 3: with him on the number of point. I still will
Speaker 3: never find myself as a black woman denouncing a black
Speaker 3: man because.
Speaker 1: White people told me I have to do that. I
Speaker 1: just can't do it. I can't do it right. But
Speaker 1: now me getting into a battle with somebody else.
Speaker 2: But see that the problem is this. You can't. You can't.
Speaker 2: You can't have both of those statements.
Speaker 1: I want to say.
Speaker 3: I just want to finish my point, and when I'm finished,
Speaker 3: you're gonna understand where I'm going. Me getting into a
Speaker 3: battle with somebody else on the internet, I have to
Speaker 3: make sure that that fight is one that I'm willing
Speaker 3: to go down all the way. Don't care what people
Speaker 3: think or whatever, and all I have been saying to
Speaker 3: my son is that I'm for what he speaks on
Speaker 3: because the things that he speaks on, my son needs
Speaker 3: to hear it his So there's a group that's outside.
Speaker 4: To hear it like I needed to hear it, Like
Speaker 4: my son inspires the psycotherapy.
Speaker 2: Like my son.
Speaker 4: If you go into your Instagram and find my Instagram page,
Speaker 4: you will find a message for me that I since
Speaker 4: you're like twenty eighteen, saying to you like we like
Speaker 4: you inspire me a random psychotherapist who wants to be authentic.
Speaker 4: And I think, Tamika, what you're saying is one hundred
Speaker 4: percent true. Like authenticity doesn't mean this stubborn like I'm
Speaker 4: gonna go in I'm gonna cuss out the president Like
Speaker 4: fuck that, Like that's not what I'm saying. What I'm
Speaker 4: growth is a part of authenticity, and so to our mistakes.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that do you guys run
Speaker 4: the organization together? Is that true. So one of the
Speaker 4: things that my son has done is he's decided to
Speaker 4: collaborate with an incredibly powerful black female voice who cares
Speaker 4: about him. So he might say, I'm gonna go in
Speaker 4: there and do this, and you are strong enough to
Speaker 4: stand up to him. You are strong enough to tell
Speaker 4: him your truth. He is humble enough to listen to you.
Speaker 4: We gotta give this man permission to make mistakes, absolutely,
Speaker 4: and he's he's making different mistakes. I don't know how
Speaker 4: old you are, my son up, I don't know forty
Speaker 4: Maybe I'll.
Speaker 2: Guess I just turned forty seven actually two.
Speaker 4: Days you see, okay? Oh man, Well, I'm sure if
Speaker 4: I disrespect him at forty seven, I'm gonna get a
Speaker 4: different response than I would have gotten at twenty seven.
Speaker 2: See, And that's what I need people to realize.
Speaker 1: It's I give you my point, miss the kind.
Speaker 4: But you're still gonna get a response though, So call
Speaker 4: me elliot, call me ellie, elly.
Speaker 2: They act like see, just because I'm removed from certain responses,
Speaker 2: you know, the level of the response is. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna get in the mud with you, but
Speaker 2: we still might roll around on the ground. We might.
Speaker 4: Let me give you an example. Let me give you
Speaker 4: an example. My son did something a couple of months
Speaker 4: ago that is an example. Like I told you, I
Speaker 4: followed both of y'all like, and I'm gonna give you
Speaker 4: an example from each of you doing exactly what I'm
Speaker 4: saying that's important. A couple of months ago, a basketball
Speaker 4: player named Angel Reed did this and this crazy dude
Speaker 4: whose name I'm not gonna name, said something super disrespectful,
Speaker 4: and my son said, not on my watch. We need
Speaker 4: to see that now. We need to see as a
Speaker 4: black community that we have people that got our back
Speaker 4: publicly and in those moments. It's important to see it.
Speaker 4: And that's what I mean by authenticity. Something triggered him
Speaker 4: to feel disrespected and he needed to go protect that queen. Now,
Speaker 4: is he gonna go put his hands on that person?
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe not who cares? But she saw it and
Speaker 4: was like, someone out there cares about me to stand up.
Speaker 4: That is incredibly important.
Speaker 3: I agree with you, Elliott, and my son knows. This
Speaker 3: is how I deal with it because to your point,
Speaker 3: you said that we put so much judgment on people
Speaker 3: and make people feel so bad, and we're constantly challenging,
Speaker 3: especially black men. As black women, we have to be
Speaker 3: very careful because when we open our mouths to our men,
Speaker 3: we can take them up or down. And I know
Speaker 3: that I recognize that, and my son and other men
Speaker 3: have checked me on it as it relates to my
Speaker 3: own son.
Speaker 1: Right because out of fear for.
Speaker 3: Him getting in trouble or getting hurt or whatever, I'm
Speaker 3: out here like motherfucker, I said. But I said, and
Speaker 3: they're like, yo, you can't talk to him, Like yeah,
Speaker 3: you gotta build him up. I'm still a work in progress.
Speaker 3: But what I do is that I let I give
Speaker 3: mice or go ahead on tell him they snitches, they liars,
Speaker 3: They they're that and the third. But I always can
Speaker 3: see the twinkle in his eye when his ego starts
Speaker 3: to drive the rest of the ending of it. It
Speaker 3: starts becoming a different thing. And as soon as I
Speaker 3: start seeing that, I'm like, uh, we're in the car
Speaker 3: and everybody's and then now break break, break, break, break break, and.
Speaker 1: I have to pump him down because he's gone with it.
Speaker 4: But that's that's the brilliance of him. Like and so,
Speaker 4: Mike Son, this is my first time talking to you,
Speaker 4: but I'm gonna bet you your capacity to listen to
Speaker 4: a woman like Tamika is different at forty seven than
Speaker 4: it was at twenty five.
Speaker 2: What you did.
Speaker 4: So one of the brilliant things about him is in
Speaker 4: his strength, in his resilience. He maintains the humility to
Speaker 4: be able to listen to someone else who cares about
Speaker 4: him because we none of us can just be all
Speaker 4: rounded like we all have.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 4: And I told you I was gonna give an example
Speaker 4: from each of you on Tamika. I remember following you
Speaker 4: and I'm just going through social media and I see
Speaker 4: a picture of you in a bathing suit on a
Speaker 4: beach somewhere and someone was like, you ain't supposed to
Speaker 4: be showing up like that, and you let that person
Speaker 4: have it. And young black women or young women period,
Speaker 4: but specifically black women need to see like it is
Speaker 4: okay for me to stand on the steps of the
Speaker 4: Capitol Building and speak truth to power because of an injustice.
Speaker 4: And it's also okay for me to be proud of
Speaker 4: my body in the way that I look like. We
Speaker 4: need to see that. And every now and then you
Speaker 4: might go too far, and it's my song's job to
Speaker 4: be like to me, But that's the beauty of it.
Speaker 4: Is a partner partnership that brings out the best in
Speaker 4: each other and protects each other. And so being authentic
Speaker 4: really just means like, I use my voice and we're
Speaker 4: going to make mistakes. I decided to use my voice
Speaker 4: and I got a master's degree in counseling because I
Speaker 4: wanted a very particular group of people to listen to me,
Speaker 4: and I knew I needed credentials to do that. But
Speaker 4: it's really really important to use our body. Like I've
Speaker 4: had to stand up to some of the biggest people
Speaker 4: in this field, and I don't give a shit what
Speaker 4: they think. I'm telling the truth. It really irks me
Speaker 4: when people ask me, like, why don't black people go
Speaker 4: to therapy, because the insinuation is there's something wrong with
Speaker 4: black people. Like they come to me and they say, like,
Speaker 4: why don't black people go to therapy? Like the black
Speaker 4: community is not accepting a therapy and it really irks me.
Speaker 4: And I've had to tell some of the most famous
Speaker 4: psychotherapists in the world stop doing that. The reason black
Speaker 4: people don't go to therapy, it's because therapy wasn't built
Speaker 4: for us and it's not currently being provided by us.
Speaker 4: So if you want black people to go to therapy,
Speaker 4: you should create an environment where more Black people become therapists.
Speaker 4: You guys created this incredibly exclusive environment and then expect
Speaker 4: me to just walk my black culture into your environment
Speaker 4: and allow you to oppress me with your extraordinarily biased
Speaker 4: way of doing psychotherapy, Like that's just not gonna happen.
Speaker 4: If you want more black people to come to therapy,
Speaker 4: you have to create more black Eliotcani's. You have to
Speaker 4: create more black people who look like us and are
Speaker 4: of this culture, and then black people will come to therapy.
Speaker 4: And I know that because I'm getting emails and contacts
Speaker 4: from black people everywhere. And it's so wrong to say,
Speaker 4: like black people don't come into therapy because of this flaw,
Speaker 4: like the flaws in the field itself. So I love
Speaker 4: that my son every now and then goes too far
Speaker 4: because if you're not being authentic, the only way to
Speaker 4: not make mistakes is to overperform. So I have to
Speaker 4: make mistakes like that. That's part of the healing journey
Speaker 4: is every now and then I'm gonna go too far.
Speaker 4: And my son through however way, He's decided to partner
Speaker 4: with with this woman named Tamika who's got his back,
Speaker 4: and she's able to advocate for him to the world
Speaker 4: and and sometimes advocate for him to him. And I
Speaker 4: think that's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate doctor a missing.
Speaker 2: Mister Connor, you got you sound like you know you
Speaker 2: might know a thing or two about a you're gonna
Speaker 2: be our doctor. We're gonna need to talk to you
Speaker 2: a couple of day. We have to get the whole
Speaker 2: team to talk to you. And and we're gonna get
Speaker 2: the whole team asion we know you know, we could
Speaker 2: have this conversation for about another whole hour, but we
Speaker 2: have a whole show to continue on. But we want
Speaker 2: to say thank you. Definitely leave your contacts so we
Speaker 2: can let people follow. Tell everyone how to find you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the easy way to find me is on social media,
Speaker 4: like on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Elliott Speaks. Make
Speaker 4: sure you spell Elliott with two l's and two t's.
Speaker 4: You can just search my name Elliot Connie. There's not
Speaker 4: a whole lot of them. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 4: and Twitter. I'd love to be in contact y'all too.
Speaker 4: Have to follow me, man, I've been following y'all for years.
Speaker 4: We definitely and I and I really mean it, man.
Speaker 4: Like the work y'all do in this field is so
Speaker 4: incredibly important. And I don't know anybody in the world
Speaker 4: who doesn't have strong mental health that isn't they have
Speaker 4: hot people with strong mental health here's the last thing
Speaker 4: I want to say. People have strong mental health tend
Speaker 4: to have high levels of authenticity, authenticity, high levels of humility,
Speaker 4: and high levels of gratitude. And I think that the
Speaker 4: two of you are such amazing examples of all of that.
Speaker 4: Like my song through his music, like I've my favorite
Speaker 4: like and I'm not I'm not even bullshit. Like my
Speaker 4: favorite album for a really long time was your uh
Speaker 4: the Remix. I probably listened to that, like wow, you
Speaker 4: put on like I didn't know how to get it,
Speaker 4: and then you put on Facebook. It was on Dat
Speaker 4: PIV and I was like, I gotta go get that.
Speaker 4: I listened to that like on repeat for about two years, bro, and.
Speaker 1: Such good music, such good But the.
Speaker 4: The reason I bring it up is like, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: good music, but it's also a good message in representing authenticity,
Speaker 4: Like here's where I've come from, Here's where I've gotten,
Speaker 4: Here's what I now know that I didn't know before,
Speaker 4: and here here is like the mistakes I made because
Speaker 4: I didn't know this before, and now I want to
Speaker 4: create healing where I used to create pain, Like like
Speaker 4: it's so important to have high levels of authenticity, high
Speaker 4: levels of humility, And when I say humility, I don't.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we confuse humility like humility is I don't acknowledge
Speaker 4: I'm great, But humility is I don't acknowledge. I acknowledge
Speaker 4: that I don't know everything. So I listen to other
Speaker 4: people and high levels of gratitude. So I want all
Speaker 4: of y'all to represent that continuously, and people listen will
Speaker 4: be inspired to do that. And I love y'all. Thank
Speaker 4: you for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you those.
Speaker 3: Things, and we have much gratitude for you. Join the
Speaker 3: Street Pops today, mister Elliott Connie. We have renamed him
Speaker 3: doctor Elliott Kannie so much.
Speaker 2: Love y'all, thank you, Thank you too, King appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Shout out to our new doctor.
Speaker 1: Wow, he's good too. I like you.
Speaker 2: He's really good and he comes from a place and
Speaker 2: you could tell he's he's the authenticity that he comes from,
Speaker 2: like knowing he knows a lot. He knows a lot
Speaker 2: about my music and things that I'm like, Okay, you really.
Speaker 1: All of that.
Speaker 3: If you're gonna work with black folks, I guess anybody
Speaker 3: but you know we're black, so we don't work with
Speaker 3: black folks. You really do have to have a range
Speaker 3: of understanding. You got to have your hand in many
Speaker 3: different places. Your is to the street. You gotta know
Speaker 3: the gossip, you gotta know the politics. You gotta because
Speaker 3: we have a lot. We're multidimensional.
Speaker 1: You can't have one. That's one of the.
Speaker 3: Reasons why people don't like to go to therapy because
Speaker 3: the therapist has been trained in a very white space
Speaker 3: and they deal with life and culture and whatever mental
Speaker 3: health different from us. So with us, it's flavoring the food.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like when we cook, we got neck bones in it,
Speaker 3: all types of seasonings. Gonna make some corn bread, fried chicken.
Speaker 3: The fried chicken have.
Speaker 1: Mustard on it. You know.
Speaker 3: Like we do a lot of things going on, but
Speaker 3: all that to help to get us straight. And you
Speaker 3: have to be able to understand our trauma.
Speaker 1: That only we have.
Speaker 3: There is literally no other group of people period that
Speaker 3: suffered enslavement for five hundred plus years, nobody slave man.
Speaker 2: It's just it's not even just the enslavement, it's all
Speaker 2: of the mental issues and all of the dynamics that
Speaker 2: come came even as a result after slavery. Right, there's
Speaker 2: never been any recourse. Right, there's never been anything given
Speaker 2: to atone for what's happened to us there. So we
Speaker 2: basically still living in the dynamics of slavery without the
Speaker 2: slavery name of it, you understand I'm saying. So it's
Speaker 2: so many things that we can we the only we
Speaker 2: are the only people who don't have a lineage to
Speaker 2: their culture, right our culture is completely stripped of us,
Speaker 2: like we don't have We have to completely search and
Speaker 2: it's so many different dynamics of people saying, this is
Speaker 2: what your culture was, and this was no this was
Speaker 2: our coachure from so many different every other ethnicity and
Speaker 2: culture can give you back to their getting and say
Speaker 2: this is exactly what it was because nobody destroyed their history.
Speaker 2: Nobody tried to hide it from them. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying that there's one place that they all come
Speaker 2: back from. Even there people that said we didn't come
Speaker 2: from Africa, we came from this, and we did this,
Speaker 2: and we were so many different dynamics of what people
Speaker 2: try to tell us, even though we know that we
Speaker 2: come from Africa, there's so many different people tell us
Speaker 2: what our language was, what our religion originally was, we
Speaker 2: were the more, it's so many different things and people
Speaker 2: are divided. We're the only culture, We're the only nationality.
Speaker 1: That they did a great job.
Speaker 2: The people that tell us that I'm not African, I'm American, Like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck are you talking about your American? Like
Speaker 2: you understand that you'll never hear people Asian communities and
Speaker 2: say those things. They know exactly what their culture looks like.
Speaker 2: They know it's that you understand what I'm saying. So
Speaker 2: even when you look at the Jews, right, they know
Speaker 2: what their their culture is. They can they can trace
Speaker 2: back this is what our coach is, this is where
Speaker 2: we come from.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean and even there, even those people
Speaker 3: who believe that Israel in its current state in Palestine
Speaker 3: or however people want to say it. I'm sure there's
Speaker 3: a politically correct way to explain it. But they are
Speaker 3: able to trace back a time when Jews were there, right,
Speaker 3: So it's it's there are Like you said, most people
Speaker 3: are able to at least points.
Speaker 2: There's ramifications. Yeah, even if you change too, they've given
Speaker 2: they're saying, okay, we acknowledge this happening. We this is
Speaker 2: y'alls now right, We're gonna be able to pay you
Speaker 2: back for this, all right, since you didn't you displaced,
Speaker 2: we're giving you this unis. We've never had any of
Speaker 2: those things. None of that has ever happened for black people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: They didn't even want us to know that going to
Speaker 1: Africa was viable.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Nobody ain't saying, hey, we're gonna give all of
Speaker 2: the people who've been misplaced here when you can go
Speaker 2: back to Africa and we're going in this way here
Speaker 2: is you can find somewhere to live here. Right, That
Speaker 2: doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: For us, but the people of Africa, they do want
Speaker 3: us to understand.
Speaker 2: They're trying.
Speaker 3: But it ain't like you could just go look at
Speaker 3: commercials here or there's some mainstream way that is being promoted.
Speaker 1: It's an underground railroad.
Speaker 3: We have to discuss it among ourselves and educate our people.
Speaker 1: And that's why we're getting ready to go a few
Speaker 1: months from now.
Speaker 3: We'll be back on the Motherland, in the Motherland, learning,
Speaker 3: meeting people and building our alliances so that we can
Speaker 3: find ways.
Speaker 1: It's not that people have to leave the US or
Speaker 1: leave any.
Speaker 3: Other place in the world, but you should at least
Speaker 3: nowhere home is and have some allegiance, alliance connection and
Speaker 3: more importantly, your children need to know the truth about
Speaker 3: our history, our culture.
Speaker 1: Because it helps you to stand.
Speaker 3: You see, our kids, they kill each other, some of them,
Speaker 3: not all of them, some of them they kill each other.
Speaker 1: They're going through all these things. When you go to Africa.
Speaker 3: The one thing that I know happens to almost every person,
Speaker 3: every person that I know from the United States that
Speaker 3: travels to Africa, and you can attest to this mic
Speaker 3: when you come back from there, you don't really want
Speaker 3: to fight your own people because you know that the
Speaker 3: struggle is so much.
Speaker 2: The level of unification and understanding that just comes with it.
Speaker 2: You know, Unfortunately in America, black people only unite through trauma, right,
Speaker 2: that's the only.
Speaker 1: Thing or dance or dance happy moments we do unite.
Speaker 2: We do.
Speaker 3: We do funerals and birthdays and weddings, funerals and weddings,
Speaker 3: but we do have a bigger, unfortunate reaction to trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, unfortunate, that's what we live with.
Speaker 2: But we know what we dealt with and we know
Speaker 2: what the process is gonna take for us to get
Speaker 2: where we are. So once again, shout out to mister
Speaker 2: our doctor Elliott Connie for his his gracious him gracing
Speaker 2: our platform today. Man, I'm definitely gonna go follow him
Speaker 2: and you get into him. But he the theme was authentic, right,
Speaker 2: and authenticity that's something that I live by. If you
Speaker 2: look at most of my things, authenticities is one of
Speaker 2: the major themes of it, you know, and that brings
Speaker 2: me to my I don't get it this new AI thing, right,
Speaker 2: the fact that you can take the voices of people
Speaker 2: and recreate them right, and the average person can't tell
Speaker 2: if it's actually that person or that I was listening
Speaker 2: to a song. I was listening to many men fifty cents,
Speaker 2: many men song that had Biggie and tupacom and it
Speaker 2: was it was. It was crazy, but it was disheartening
Speaker 2: for me. It was really disheartening in the head, like, damn,
Speaker 2: y'all did that to the great Biggie and the great Tupac.
Speaker 2: Y'all took their voices and you immulated it to the
Speaker 2: point where somebody who doesn't know right, and they don't
Speaker 2: even get the credit for it. It's not even who
Speaker 2: they are, Like you've just taken their authenticity and you
Speaker 2: recreated that to make to make them just some common people.
Speaker 2: You understand I'm saying, like you're trying to common, You're
Speaker 2: trying to common people who have reached icon status. They
Speaker 2: can now take voices and put them on average songs,
Speaker 2: where anybody could just say, I got me a song
Speaker 2: by Twopa, I got me a song by Biggie right
Speaker 2: where they were exclusive at one point where Biggie had
Speaker 2: a body of work that he did that was only you,
Speaker 2: the people he wanted to have his voice, who he
Speaker 2: wanted to be all songs was on it. Now you
Speaker 2: could just take somebody that's iconic and put them on anything.
Speaker 2: You know. I don't get why we even want to
Speaker 2: do it. I don't think it's something that's good. I
Speaker 2: don't even think it's something that shit should even be considered.
Speaker 2: But it bothers me, Like I was listening to a
Speaker 2: Verse the jay Z and I'm like, wow, you know, like,
Speaker 2: why do we want to do that? Why do we
Speaker 2: want to water it down and take away somebody's greatness
Speaker 2: by just putting their voice and their likeness on anything.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm so mentally beat down with a number
Speaker 3: of thousands of thousands of problems and things and issues
Speaker 3: that I haven't even begun I haven't begun the process
Speaker 3: of approaching all the dangers of AI, and I know
Speaker 3: it's there, and I see people talking about it, and
Speaker 3: folks have tried to like engage me in a conversation.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, well, right now, I'm fighting diversity issues
Speaker 3: within corporation. So my focus is on like the fact
Speaker 3: that black people who work for Panini America could do
Speaker 3: not rise to positions of like senior level. And they
Speaker 3: also don't recruit and bring people into the company who
Speaker 3: are black, specifically black, not you know, brown too, but
Speaker 3: specifically black, because seventy five percent of their business model
Speaker 3: is based upon the black athletes that they have signed
Speaker 3: for their memorabilia and trading card company. So they don't
Speaker 3: have any black people as senior levels within the company
Speaker 3: that we can find, and they haven't come forward to say, oh,
Speaker 3: excuse me, we're talking about down and on the bottom
Speaker 3: you know, with the back call, there's a chief so
Speaker 3: and so and a senior so and so that's black.
Speaker 1: So they don't have them. But anyway, so I've been
Speaker 1: focused on that.
Speaker 3: So the AI thing is like, oh my god, this
Speaker 3: is yet another thing that is very, very dangerous. But
Speaker 3: the one thing that I did say to I think
Speaker 3: it was our se like my makeup artists of other day,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, we have to have a code.
Speaker 1: For families, right like and friends that this is my code.
Speaker 3: My code is shout out to Let's say it was Trili,
Speaker 3: which is our brother chi Ali's brand, Trili. If that
Speaker 3: was the code, we have to have that so that
Speaker 3: if someone tries to call you with my voice and
Speaker 3: they say to you, oh, my son, come and get me,
Speaker 3: send me some money on this, or that I'm in
Speaker 3: trouble or whatever, anything anything they might say that you
Speaker 3: could you if you feel skeptical, you could say what's
Speaker 3: the code or who is this? Because I think people
Speaker 3: are going to start using it for worse things than
Speaker 3: what you're describing, which is bad. I definitely don't want
Speaker 3: to hear artists of the past. I watched the Whitney
Speaker 3: Houston movie last night. I don't want anybody to recreate
Speaker 3: her voice to put it on something different.
Speaker 1: I don't want that.
Speaker 3: In fact, I was feeling funny about the fact that
Speaker 3: in the movie, you know, it's her singing and not
Speaker 3: the person. In a lot of different you know, I'm
Speaker 3: sure the actress can.
Speaker 1: Sing, but you hear it's with me, right, I.
Speaker 3: Was feeling a way, Not that I didn't think it
Speaker 3: should happen. I'm just saying it made me.
Speaker 1: Feel emotional, right.
Speaker 3: I remember those songs, so I'm just saying they're gonna
Speaker 3: it's gonna be worse.
Speaker 1: It's going to be worse.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if there's a movement or you know,
Speaker 3: it's something we all have to think about. Are we
Speaker 3: supposed to be fighting it? How do we fight it?
Speaker 3: Is it too far gone? We just talked about that
Speaker 3: in the earliest segment when we talked about how people
Speaker 3: don't find out until it's too late about standard ground laws, gentrification,
Speaker 3: all of these things that happened who was running for office.
Speaker 3: We find out about it's so late or we don't
Speaker 3: pay attention to it, and the next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: is problematic. And I don't know how you fix the
Speaker 3: AI situation. But I also see some of our our
Speaker 3: brethren out there supporting it and promoting it.
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's very strange and dangerous,
Speaker 2: and it's moving us further away from authenticity. It's like cloning.
Speaker 2: If you can clone Lebron James, you know who is
Speaker 2: ugly one of the best plays. You can just keep
Speaker 2: cloning him. Then what makes him unique? What makes him significant?
Speaker 2: Why do I need him? I can clone him, I
Speaker 2: can make I can recreate you at any given time
Speaker 2: that you don't capitulate to whatever it is that I need,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's we're moving so far away from consciousness.
Speaker 3: Not that with that rapper who was it like one
Speaker 3: of these record labels, remember it was a Columbia. One
Speaker 3: of these record labels had a rapper that was like white,
Speaker 3: I think, but dressed with like gold chains. Maybe he
Speaker 3: wasn't white, you remember that, And he was supposed to
Speaker 3: be the newest artist that they were releasing, but it
Speaker 3: was it wasn't a real person. It was called fing
Speaker 3: mik It because I know, I think about it just
Speaker 3: because it's got my name.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was an AI artist. Yeah, they were
Speaker 2: trying to.
Speaker 1: Pull that back because people were like no.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, the more they realize time, it's
Speaker 2: like they got to get you comfortable, They got to
Speaker 2: gradually move you into stuff.
Speaker 1: So that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they keep on playing the AI voices and people are,
Speaker 2: oh shit, this shit is dope, and they keep doing
Speaker 2: it and then you start. Next thing, you know, they
Speaker 2: have an AI artist and they be like, yo, this
Speaker 2: this ship is fired.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was a great show.
Speaker 2: It was a great show. Once again. Shout out to
Speaker 2: our doctor mister Ellie and Connie. Go follow him. Elia
Speaker 2: speaks on Instagram, he said, Facebook, all of the all
Speaker 2: of the social media platforms. He's a dope guy. I'm
Speaker 2: going to tune in with him. He seems like he
Speaker 2: knows a lot and he's solution based. That's what we
Speaker 2: need in this time. So thanks for another dope show.
Speaker 2: Number one podcast, Street Politicians. We're moving. You see my
Speaker 2: hat the general see that four seven. Shout out to
Speaker 2: my brother Trioli with the trilill go get you some
Speaker 2: of that and with that, we're gone. Man, We're gonna
Speaker 2: see y'all next week. I'm not gonna always be right
Speaker 2: to me. It's not gonna always be wrong, but we
Speaker 2: both always and I mean always, be authentic.
Speaker 1: Peace.
Speaker 3: Listen to Street Politicians on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And catch us every single Wednesday for the video version
Speaker 2: of Street Politicians or iwomen dot TV. That's how we