Speaker 1: Speaks to the planning. I'll go by the name of
Speaker 1: Charlamagne of God and guess what, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival.
Speaker 1: That's right, We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April
Speaker 1: twenty six at Poeman Yards and it's hosted by none
Speaker 1: other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Weezy. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got the R and B Money podcast, were taking Jay Valentine.
Speaker 1: We got the Woman of All Podcasts with Sarah Jake Roberts.
Speaker 1: We got Good Mom's Bad Choices. Carrie Champion will be
Speaker 1: there with her next sports podcast and the Trap Nerds
Speaker 1: podcast with more to be announced. And of course it's
Speaker 1: bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with
Speaker 1: black owned businesses plus the food truck court to keep
Speaker 1: you fed.
Speaker 2: While you visit us. All right, listen, you don't want
Speaker 2: to miss this.
Speaker 1: Tap in and grab your tickets now at Black Effect
Speaker 1: dot Com Flash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 3: I'm Tamika D. Mallory and the Shit Boy my Son
Speaker 3: a General.
Speaker 4: We are your host of TMI.
Speaker 5: Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, Motivation and Inspiration.
Speaker 4: New name new energy. Say what's going on my son, Lennon?
Speaker 2: Ay much? Tamika? Do you Marry? How you feeling good?
Speaker 4: Doing good?
Speaker 6: I mean you know I've had obviously, we have had
Speaker 6: a major blow in the last few days with the
Speaker 6: loss of my godmother, my movement mother, my friend, my
Speaker 6: big sister, my link sister, so many things, mentor all
Speaker 6: the things, my leader, Hazel and Dukes. For people who
Speaker 6: don't know doctor Duke, she is an icon, a living legend,
Speaker 6: or now unfortunately a deceased legend, someone who never really
Speaker 6: looked for the cover of magazines and you know, to
Speaker 6: be the most noticed, but she did, has done the
Speaker 6: most organizing of anybody that I know.
Speaker 4: I don't know anyone who lived as.
Speaker 6: Long as she lived who made such an incredible impact
Speaker 6: on our society. My Dukes was on the board of
Speaker 6: the NAACP, I'm sure for more than thirty years. She
Speaker 6: is a grassroots organizer from Harlem and her community of Hall.
Speaker 6: Doesn't that that she could be on the national board
Speaker 6: to NAACP. She could be over here in another country
Speaker 6: helping with humanitarian efforts. Baby that Harlem, that local community.
Speaker 6: She was hard pressed about ensuring that the people of
Speaker 6: Harlem knew her. She walked the streets, she shook hands,
Speaker 6: She paid light bills, phone bills, rent went to court,
Speaker 6: family court, went to criminal court.
Speaker 4: Did all of that with people from Harlem.
Speaker 6: She was a go to for elected officials to be
Speaker 6: able to get her her. She was one that you
Speaker 6: had to kiss the ring, because not because she was
Speaker 6: ostentatious and or egotistical, but because she was such an
Speaker 6: important and formidable force within the community that if you
Speaker 6: didn't kiss the ring and people didn't see her with you,
Speaker 6: they want to know what's wrong with you that she was.
Speaker 4: You know that she didn't support you.
Speaker 6: And I tell you even with my dukes, where we
Speaker 6: sometimes wouldn't agree politically. So I'd be with one candidate
Speaker 6: and she'd be with somebody else, and I'll be saying, Ma,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't know why you supporting that person.
Speaker 6: She said, Baby, you live to see a day when
Speaker 6: you put yourself in a position that no matter who win,
Speaker 6: they got to talk to you. So it don't really
Speaker 6: matter like you might be caught up in Well, you
Speaker 6: and I got to be on the same side.
Speaker 3: We don't.
Speaker 4: We don't agree on the same issue.
Speaker 6: She used to tell me you and I have different perspectives.
Speaker 6: I come from a perspective where, yes, I care about
Speaker 6: my youth. I want to see programming for the youth.
Speaker 6: I want to see violence decreased. I want to see
Speaker 6: all that. But I'm also an elder, so senior care
Speaker 6: is important to me, and workers, civil servants, those types
Speaker 6: of things you might your interests might be focused on
Speaker 6: police accountability, which she cared about, but that might not
Speaker 6: be one on the list. That might be three and
Speaker 6: one for her is making sure elderly people didn't get
Speaker 6: evicted from their homes, and then making sure that people
Speaker 6: got their medication and that the hospitals was good. It
Speaker 6: just depended on who was running and what the issues were.
Speaker 6: And sometimes I would be like, well, Ma, you know,
Speaker 6: but what about my candidate. She say, send me the link, baby,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna send them some money.
Speaker 4: So she would.
Speaker 6: Donate even to my person, who she may not have
Speaker 6: been supporting, because she was that strategic that she knew
Speaker 6: how to deal with the entire board, not just be
Speaker 6: so caught up in one thing that you can can't see,
Speaker 6: as she says, the forest from the trees. And so
Speaker 6: I learned a lot of my organizing from her. And
Speaker 6: another thing she used to tell me was don't do
Speaker 6: everything I do. Do your own thing. Listen to me wisdom,
Speaker 6: but don't do everything I do. You do your thing
Speaker 6: your way. And she was very supportive of us. She's
Speaker 6: been by our side. She's been with me in every
Speaker 6: foxhole I ever got into. If I was in trouble,
Speaker 6: she got in trouble with me. You know, she would
Speaker 6: never just let me be out there by myself. And
Speaker 6: so I just Min's passed and we all call her
Speaker 6: my dukes and you know, for me, and I've been
Speaker 6: getting a lot of text messages from people saying, naw,
Speaker 6: like she really really loved you. And I think she
Speaker 6: loved all of us. She had many children, She loved
Speaker 6: every single one of us, and she loved us hard.
Speaker 6: But I think with me she saw a little organizer,
Speaker 6: like a little rival rouser, and.
Speaker 4: So she knew I needed a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of protection.
Speaker 5: I think would think she's seen her a bit of
Speaker 5: herself in you. You know, when I when I listen
Speaker 5: to you and I'm listening to her, there's this spice
Speaker 5: and there's this vigor that y'all both have.
Speaker 2: And I think she's seen. She's like a little bit
Speaker 2: of hunt you so.
Speaker 4: But I think she could find a little bit of.
Speaker 6: Her in all her everybody, all children, a little bit
Speaker 6: a little bougie, a little you know, organizer from like
Speaker 6: an organizational perspective, you know, because us we're kind of
Speaker 6: like decentralized, you know, we believe in having organization and
Speaker 6: things happening all over, and that's kind of that's something
Speaker 6: that she knows how to do because she worked within
Speaker 6: an organization that has you know, units everywhere, chapters moving
Speaker 6: or whatever. But some of her children are all about
Speaker 6: structure and organization and that's what they into and she
Speaker 6: into that too. So you could she could see look
Speaker 6: at so and so every little detail, you know, on
Speaker 6: a little detail, Oh look at so and so knows
Speaker 6: how to rally orly elected officials.
Speaker 4: Oh look at so and so. Good fundraiser.
Speaker 6: She could see herself in every one of us in
Speaker 6: different ways. But with me, I think she always knew
Speaker 6: that I was the one to say the thing and
Speaker 6: get myself in trouble, and so she felt like I
Speaker 6: needed protection. Every child probably need something different from her,
Speaker 6: and I was the one who she needed to protect.
Speaker 6: Marvin bing our brother. She knew she had to always
Speaker 6: monitor his health. He's gonna do his business. But whether
Speaker 6: or not he was taking care of himself, whether or
Speaker 6: not he was letting the stress and the trauma of
Speaker 6: his life, things that happened to him, you know early
Speaker 6: on in life. If he was allowed, if he was
Speaker 6: letting that kill him, she gonna be on top of it,
Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying. So everybody, we all are
Speaker 6: suffering such a great loss. It's such a huge loss
Speaker 6: that it is indescribable that you know, I was there
Speaker 6: with her six or seven days before she passed away.
Speaker 4: You knew it was coming because we could see it.
Speaker 6: You walk in the door, You're like, damn, you know
Speaker 6: her time is winding down. But it's just nothing like
Speaker 6: that last moment when the eyes are closed and the
Speaker 6: story is over.
Speaker 4: So it's a tough thing.
Speaker 2: We've in peace to the Queen, Hazel and dukes Man.
Speaker 2: We missed you already.
Speaker 6: Well anyway, here we are at the end of the
Speaker 6: first season of the Team my podcast, but not the
Speaker 6: first season of us doing a podcast together. New energy,
Speaker 6: the same old us, and as we rebrand, we rebranded
Speaker 6: this season we became the Tamika Mason Information Podcast. But
Speaker 6: I think we now have moved to being a show
Speaker 6: and not so much a podcast, although I still love
Speaker 6: the grassroots and grassrootness of podcasts. I love that, and
Speaker 6: you know, and I am so grateful for the people
Speaker 6: that I meet, especially on my book tour, that are saying,
Speaker 6: oh my god, I love your podcast.
Speaker 4: I watch it.
Speaker 6: I you know, I see y'all all the time. I
Speaker 6: love what you're doing, and so I'm I love that.
Speaker 6: I love that about the fact that this this vehicle
Speaker 6: gives us a way to touch people that we don't
Speaker 6: even get to see until you happen to be in
Speaker 6: West Bubblehell and there goes somebody that's like, oh man,
Speaker 6: I remember that episode when y'all was talking about song.
Speaker 6: So I was so mad because I wanted to get
Speaker 6: my thing in there, and what about me? Because I got,
Speaker 6: you know, my product needs to be on your show too.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: I hear that all the time, and it lets us
Speaker 6: know that we got so much ground to cover. Our
Speaker 6: people are spread out all over this country, all over
Speaker 6: the world, with so much to contribute to the fight
Speaker 6: to information, to fact finding, to truth finding. And I
Speaker 6: am very committed to what we look at feel like
Speaker 6: we change so much about our visuals. We had so
Speaker 6: many great shows during the season, and some of y'all
Speaker 6: stuck with us, and we've got more work to do.
Speaker 6: We've been trying to fine tune so you can find
Speaker 6: us easily on YouTube, so you can listen to our products,
Speaker 6: so that our schedules are tight enough that we're dropping
Speaker 6: what you're supposed to see and hear from us on
Speaker 6: a regular basis. And we're working on all those things.
Speaker 6: But thank you so much for sticking with us.
Speaker 4: Folks. We love and appreciate every.
Speaker 6: Single supporter of the team my show, and we appreciate
Speaker 6: those people who send feedback to help us be better
Speaker 6: at what it is that we're doing.
Speaker 5: We truly appreciate y'all, man, keep supporting us. We are
Speaker 5: going to keep giving y'all all content and all the
Speaker 5: best interviews that we can give you, and we're going
Speaker 5: to try to make sure that everything we give you
Speaker 5: is fact you and that you are definitely in love
Speaker 5: with this podcast because we need about twenty more seasons. Man.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, we're gonna We're gonna be on TV one day.
Speaker 4: That's the goal.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have our own channel.
Speaker 4: So for today, we.
Speaker 6: Did not want to do a show with one guest
Speaker 6: because we couldn't figure out which guests to bring on
Speaker 6: and what exactly to talk about.
Speaker 4: So we said, bring them all on. Let's do a panel,
Speaker 4: bring bring them out, rather than all.
Speaker 6: Of the different segments that you're used to hearing, which
Speaker 6: we're fine tuning in.
Speaker 4: Those as well.
Speaker 6: We see what works, what y'all love, We see what
Speaker 6: has actually sparked conversation on our social media. Uh, And
Speaker 6: so we're gonna we're gonna lean more in the next
Speaker 6: season into those things and just try to revise some
Speaker 6: of the other things we want to tell y'all the
Speaker 6: greatest music and all of that. But sometimes y'all don't
Speaker 6: be paying us no attention and we be thinking it's hot,
Speaker 6: and then they don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 6: We gotta, well, we gotta find a way to what
Speaker 6: y'all said. What did you tell me? Uh that Lauryn
Speaker 6: Hill said you got to add a motherfucker to So
Speaker 6: y'all put a little bit of strawberry and.
Speaker 2: Catch up. You gotta get a little you gotta get
Speaker 2: you edible, you know what.
Speaker 4: God, Sorry, No, you don't have you. Okay, all right, Okay.
Speaker 3: You do it.
Speaker 2: They are puffect.
Speaker 6: So we're gonna find tune that stuff as well. But
Speaker 6: on for today, we wanted to have a panel discussion,
Speaker 6: and uh, I think that this is a good way
Speaker 6: for us to wrap up the season because we have
Speaker 6: individuals who will be here to talk about some of
Speaker 6: the stuff that we've been working on, especially during this
Speaker 6: critical time.
Speaker 4: And so I'm really excited to introduce a panel of powerful, powerful.
Speaker 6: Individuals to you and we will see you in the
Speaker 6: next season after this interview. So we have an entire
Speaker 6: panel of friends today. As I mentioned to you all,
Speaker 6: we at the end of our season of TMI, our
Speaker 6: newly branded podcast, our show. We've been calling it the
Speaker 6: TMI Show. We're no longer the TMI podcast. We're moving
Speaker 6: up in the world. And you know, at the as
Speaker 6: we come to the end of this season, which has
Speaker 6: been one of our best seasons, we put a lot
Speaker 6: of energy into this show. We understand that in the
Speaker 6: age of misinformation, it is going to be on us
Speaker 6: to create content and to make sure that we have
Speaker 6: information for our community where people can find facts. And
Speaker 6: if we don't know, we say we don't know, and
Speaker 6: we go find out. And so today we got a
Speaker 6: group of people to find some things out from because
Speaker 6: they know all kind of stuff. And y'all know that
Speaker 6: our friends are really important to us here at TMI.
Speaker 6: So I'm excited to welcome the guests. My son, you
Speaker 6: ready for the invitation of all our fabulous, fantastic guests.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm always ready. Man.
Speaker 5: We happen to be aligned with some of the most
Speaker 5: brilliant political and just minds in this world, so and
Speaker 5: it happened to be our friends.
Speaker 2: So it's good that we have the ability to.
Speaker 5: Get people on the line that can speak truth to power,
Speaker 5: that can break things down eloquently and with facts, because
Speaker 5: that's all I'm about.
Speaker 2: I ain't with the rest giving me the facts.
Speaker 5: Y'all can have the you know, your opinions, and you
Speaker 5: can have all the rest of the stuff. I just
Speaker 5: want the facts, or the closest thing to the facts.
Speaker 5: And if you don't know, then don't tell me, you know.
Speaker 6: So, first of all, I want to introduce who someone
Speaker 6: I consider to be my leader in many ways, as
Speaker 6: Pastor Michael McBride. So yes, absolutely, I don't know why
Speaker 6: you're looking like you confuse every day, I talked to
Speaker 6: Pastor Mike to just get a little bit more fine.
Speaker 4: Tuning in how I approach the world.
Speaker 6: Pastor McBride is a co founder of the Black Church
Speaker 6: Pack and also executive director of Live Free.
Speaker 4: He'll tell us a little bit more about what both
Speaker 4: of those.
Speaker 6: Entities do, but I can tell y'all, of all the
Speaker 6: people that's doing anything, Pastor Mike is really doing it.
Speaker 6: Let's just put it that way. And then we have
Speaker 6: my two sisters, Teslain Figureo. Y'all know her as the
Speaker 6: Hood Whisperer. She is a Revolt News correspondent. That's her
Speaker 6: newest role, and I'm so excited that Revolt understood that
Speaker 6: they needed you there, tas as well as the host
Speaker 6: of Straight Shot No Chaser, a podcast on the Black
Speaker 6: Effect podcast network, my podcast sibling.
Speaker 4: As they say.
Speaker 6: And then Nina Turner, the honorable Nina Turner. Make sure
Speaker 6: y'all never ever forget to add the honorable. She is
Speaker 6: the founder of We Are Somebody and also leading the
Speaker 6: efforts around Strike for All, And in this particular moment,
Speaker 6: I would say, I would say that Nina Turner is
Speaker 6: one of the most important political minds in our time
Speaker 6: right like they're gonna be history books later to talk
Speaker 6: about how Nina Turner knew to educate us in a
Speaker 6: way that nobody else knows how to do it. You
Speaker 6: talk straight, you're courageous, you're bold, and black, you super black,
Speaker 6: and we love at we love at about you. So
Speaker 6: we've got a great panel today. Let me just start
Speaker 6: off with you, Tesla, and let me just let me
Speaker 6: let me preface all of this that, as my son said,
Speaker 6: everybody's talking.
Speaker 4: Everybody's talking. One of the problems that I think we have.
Speaker 6: I wish the Internet would just cut off sometimes because
Speaker 6: we have so many.
Speaker 4: People who believe that they are an expert.
Speaker 6: And I do believe to some degree, y'all that folks,
Speaker 6: they're Our lived experience does make us an expert at
Speaker 6: what we experience, what we're going through, what's happening in
Speaker 6: our local communities and with the people that we talk to.
Speaker 6: But sometimes the information that we hear is wrapped in
Speaker 6: stuff that's not factual, and that's something that we want
Speaker 6: to TMI is really, really, very very careful about that,
Speaker 6: and I try to be careful about it in my
Speaker 6: day to day communication with people. So one of the
Speaker 6: big top lines in the podcast YouTube World, is this
Speaker 6: idea that we must build our own, that we must
Speaker 6: take advantage of the struggles of this moment that everybody's watching.
Speaker 4: People who never thought about politics, don't care none about politics.
Speaker 6: They're all paying attention in this moment, and this is
Speaker 6: a time where we can use that energy to build
Speaker 6: our own. We agree one hundred percent that we cannot
Speaker 6: come out on the other side of this doing the
Speaker 6: same things that we've been doing for the last unpteen years,
Speaker 6: and we don't have new systems, new mechanisms and things
Speaker 6: that we control our own. We've had a lot and
Speaker 6: we lost a lot Black media. We're down to barely
Speaker 6: anything in terms of networks and magazines and newspapers that
Speaker 6: are flourishing that we own. So we know that some
Speaker 6: of these things we've found out from these boycotts that
Speaker 6: distribution is important, hugely important. How are these black businesses
Speaker 6: going to get their products out there if black people
Speaker 6: and others decide to turn off Target Walmart, Amazon.
Speaker 4: So on and so forth.
Speaker 6: But we also understand that when people say build your own,
Speaker 6: it takes time to stand up a hospital in every
Speaker 6: community that people can get to in five minutes from
Speaker 6: their home, no matter where they live.
Speaker 4: It takes time to build grocery stores and.
Speaker 6: All the things things that we know the federal government
Speaker 6: is responsible for federal and local government because our tax
Speaker 6: dollars not handouts. We ain't asking for handouts for our
Speaker 6: tax dollars are responsible for how some of those things
Speaker 6: are built and maintained and the jobs that go into
Speaker 6: keeping those things going and tesling. Lately, I've been hearing
Speaker 6: you talk a lot about federal workers. Not only are
Speaker 6: you talking about it publicly, you've been texting saying, hey, y'all,
Speaker 6: we on a lot of stuff, but we ain't focused
Speaker 6: on the federal workers and how this is going to
Speaker 6: impact our communities. So why don't you talk about that
Speaker 6: while we're building our own In that context, what do
Speaker 6: we do about the workers that are losing their jobs?
Speaker 7: Thank you, Tamika. I am. There's a lot of things
Speaker 7: that I've organized for throughout my career, like many of us,
Speaker 7: but this one particular thing, to Mika is literally disturbing
Speaker 7: me on a personal level. As you mentioned, we are entrepreneurs.
Speaker 7: You know, we build our own if you will. I've
Speaker 7: won several awards for having a business a Minority Entrepreneur
Speaker 7: of the Year from US Department of Commerce last year,
Speaker 7: Women Who Mean Business, Orlando, Florida, forty under forty NAACP.
Speaker 7: I've won awards. I've had three hundred employees. I'm saying
Speaker 7: this because it's important because as we're having this build
Speaker 7: Owned conversation, a lot of people who are talking about
Speaker 7: build their own, the reality is they've only had one
Speaker 7: or two employees, which is the national average for most
Speaker 7: black businesses. I've had up to three hundred employees signed
Speaker 7: in the front of the check in Orlando, Florida, the
Speaker 7: Amway Center. I say that to say I am the
Speaker 7: biggest proponent of build your Own. I also know that
Speaker 7: it also took government of private partnership, public partnership in
Speaker 7: order to get access, you know, to those types of contracts.
Speaker 7: It also took access to be able to have a
Speaker 7: people hire my folks. And I also know, Tamika, everybody's
Speaker 7: not an entrepreneur. Everybody doesn't have the patience if you will, persistence,
Speaker 7: if you will to say you know I'm gonna do
Speaker 7: without health care. See, we got to really start having
Speaker 7: this conversation. Build your own means I haven't had health.
Speaker 3: Care insurance for eighteen years.
Speaker 7: Build your own means. There has been times one, two,
Speaker 7: three years at a time where I haven't made an income.
Speaker 7: Build your own means, And since an eternity can attestify
Speaker 7: to this, when I was applying.
Speaker 3: At Kroger to.
Speaker 7: Carry bags out, while I was building my own, when
Speaker 7: I was ubering in two thousand and eight, while I
Speaker 7: was building my own, while I was selling shoes at dealers,
Speaker 7: building my own, while I was selling mobile phones at
Speaker 7: T Mobile, building my own. So in this moment, if
Speaker 7: we're going to educate folks on what it means to
Speaker 7: build your own, I want you to build your own,
Speaker 7: but I also want to be truthful about what it takes.
Speaker 7: The support system you may or may not have. Because
Speaker 7: I didn't have one, both my parents are in the ground.
Speaker 7: I believe you really can get it out the muscle.
Speaker 7: But at the same time, what I'm finding is they're shaming,
Speaker 7: if you will, of folks who are depending upon their
Speaker 7: federal jobs. We cannot let it be remissed. I'm all
Speaker 7: about making sure the business is getting taken care of,
Speaker 7: making sure the DEI, the contracts, the target, this to that.
Speaker 7: But what is so pressing upon me is the middle class.
Speaker 7: The center of black middle class is directly in Maryland.
Speaker 7: We're not making this up. We're talking about the median
Speaker 7: income between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand off of
Speaker 7: those federal jobs. So what I'm seeing in the internet world,
Speaker 7: you know folks just talking who I believe are capitalizing
Speaker 7: on the devastation and the desperation of black folks saying
Speaker 7: we know this is a perfect time for you to
Speaker 7: stop begging for money and you need to build your own.
Speaker 7: I take personal issue with this, Tamika. My mother was
Speaker 7: sixty two years old. She did and just barrel men
Speaker 7: as I just say this and I'll give them back.
Speaker 7: Senator Turner knows this because she was with me during
Speaker 7: my time when I lost my mother. She did everything
Speaker 7: to build your own. She worked at the television station.
Speaker 7: She did she was a cosmotologist, had her own cosmetology business,
Speaker 7: had her own typing business. She typed up obituaries, she
Speaker 7: typed up church programs.
Speaker 3: She also was a notary.
Speaker 7: She also was a real estate agent. She saw herbal life.
Speaker 7: She was never on welfare. She did it all to
Speaker 7: build your own. But she also still had a job
Speaker 7: and the one thing my mother said before she passed away, tesling,
Speaker 7: If I could just get this government job, If I
Speaker 7: could just get this government job to get the benefits
Speaker 7: that I need to be able to take care of myself, Tesldan,
Speaker 7: if you just get a government job, you'll be safe.
Speaker 7: I watched my mother to making you know this in
Speaker 7: your book. I live to tell the story. Can I
Speaker 7: tell you my mother did not live to tell the story?
Speaker 7: Can I tell you that for six and seven years
Speaker 7: she sat in the house, did not want to leave
Speaker 7: the house, smoking cigarettes back to back to back to
Speaker 7: back because nobody would hire her.
Speaker 3: After the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
Speaker 7: Can I tell you that my mother said that I
Speaker 7: feel worthless because nobody wants me.
Speaker 3: What have I done?
Speaker 7: Why can nobody take my skill set and the one
Speaker 7: job that gave her the opportunity like many federal jobs
Speaker 7: and state jobs have done. We know this on record
Speaker 7: for black people was the Department of Oklahoma, the Faith
Speaker 7: based Initiative. My mother finally got a job to Meeker
Speaker 7: at sixty years old. She was diagnosed with cancer several
Speaker 7: months after that, and she said, TESLM, I've been wanting
Speaker 7: to die the last several years and finally the moment
Speaker 7: that somebody says I'm worthy enough to be a secretary
Speaker 7: for them, I find out I got eight months to live.
Speaker 3: See she didn't live to tell the story, But have the.
Speaker 7: Health care not been there, which was still inadequate by
Speaker 7: the way Medicare for all. This is what allowed my
Speaker 7: mother to be able to have the treatments so that
Speaker 7: I was able to still see my mother while she died.
Speaker 7: These are the things when that people are not understanding
Speaker 7: that the federal government was all that was willing to
Speaker 7: give her an opportunity. So when I hear people say,
Speaker 7: don't worry about it, that's what they get. They gotta
Speaker 7: come down and do like everybody else. A sixty two
Speaker 7: year old woman in articles about it right now in NPR,
Speaker 7: she was told she had ninety minutes to take her
Speaker 7: stuff out of her office. I think about my mother.
Speaker 7: To me, but what that would have devastated my mother.
Speaker 7: I think about my grandfather, retired at the post office twice.
Speaker 7: All he's ever known was being a post office. He's
Speaker 7: dead and gone. I think about my uncle, who was
Speaker 7: a waste management who was a garbage man for the
Speaker 7: city of Houston, retire twice when y'all say build their own,
Speaker 7: What was my grandfather supposed to do? Go start a
Speaker 7: post office? What was my grandfather's supposed my uncle's supposed
Speaker 7: to do, Go start his own waste management? What was
Speaker 7: my mother supposed to do for the benefits that she
Speaker 7: needed as she set up and sped up.
Speaker 3: Her half getting lung cancer?
Speaker 7: It is in critically important that we have conversations about
Speaker 7: black business, but we must talk about what is happening
Speaker 7: with these workers. Where do they transfer these skills, Where
Speaker 7: do they go into the private sector, What jobs do
Speaker 7: they get? Who will hire them? Because everybody can't be
Speaker 7: a podcaster, Everybody can't do or don't want to be
Speaker 7: in the digital space. So I feel that i'll shut
Speaker 7: up now that there's not enough conversation. Pastor Brian said
Speaker 7: it on the call the other day. You may have
Speaker 7: heard him. He said, three hundred thousand black people will
Speaker 7: be directly impacted this month alone from these federal jobs.
Speaker 7: And so I just I am trying to find ways
Speaker 7: to meet to because I don't have the answers to
Speaker 7: micro organize to get people in the room. If it's
Speaker 7: one hundred people in the room, I'm doing it at
Speaker 7: my town hall in Atlanta, one hundred people in the room. Hey,
Speaker 7: who in here know how to sew? Who in here
Speaker 7: know how to fish? Who in there know how to
Speaker 7: fix a car?
Speaker 3: Who in here know?
Speaker 7: Is that type of micro organizing that people need right
Speaker 7: now before we get the forty six million on board
Speaker 7: and build your own and have these conversations, we need
Speaker 7: twenty five people in the room, thirty people in the
Speaker 7: room that can have a rent party, that can help
Speaker 7: people have a place to stay. We are in building
Speaker 7: time like now more than ever before. And this is
Speaker 7: not a scare tactic. Everybody doesn't have a try to
Speaker 7: make I don't have my parents. I've lost twenty five
Speaker 7: members of my family. The movement has become my family.
Speaker 7: So I know everybody doesn't have that, And can we
Speaker 7: be transparent?
Speaker 3: Everybody in the movement don't have it right, all of
Speaker 3: us don't.
Speaker 7: Have you talked about it in your book? I told
Speaker 7: you two three weeks ago. I was like, girl, I
Speaker 7: wanted to come, but I couldn't afford the ticket. I'm
Speaker 7: trying to buckle down. We got to start having these
Speaker 7: real conversations on this Bill Jones concept that we're talking
Speaker 7: about because it's hard out here and people will need
Speaker 7: our support.
Speaker 3: That was long winded, but I.
Speaker 5: Know it was.
Speaker 2: It was needed.
Speaker 5: It was it was it was all the things that
Speaker 5: we've been talking about. You know, me and Test get
Speaker 5: on the text thread and we be pissed off and
Speaker 5: we go back and forth, and it's real, and I
Speaker 5: just want to say that I love you. You know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying, And whatever we gotta build, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: build with you. And you know, I understand. I'm just
Speaker 5: hear the pain in your voice. But it's it's real.
Speaker 5: And when we have these common stations with individuals and
Speaker 5: we're telling them to build their own from a place
Speaker 5: of privilege, right, when you speaking from a place of
Speaker 5: privilege because you're able to build your own, I always
Speaker 5: give this this conversation.
Speaker 2: It's like telling everybody you can be Lebron James. That's
Speaker 2: not the fact. If everybody could be Lebron James, then
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be calling him remarkable. Right.
Speaker 5: Everybody is not gonna be the best player in the NBA.
Speaker 5: Everybody ain't gonna be Michael jan So they are gonna
Speaker 5: be role players.
Speaker 2: And we and us asked if we the Lebron James.
Speaker 5: We're supposed to make sure that the role players have
Speaker 5: a seat at the table, that they have places to play,
Speaker 5: and when we diminish them and act as if we don't,
Speaker 5: if you just want a job, then there's something wrong
Speaker 5: with that.
Speaker 2: If you're going to school every day and you've studied.
Speaker 5: Because you want this career and you wanted to be
Speaker 5: in government, and there's something wrong with that. We're not
Speaker 5: having real conversations and we're not speaking to the needs
Speaker 5: and the realities of our people. So I just want
Speaker 5: to say thank you Taz for expressing it that way,
Speaker 5: because I don't think nobody else could have said it
Speaker 5: that way. I want to go to you now, Pastor
Speaker 5: Michael Brodd, and I just want you to speak about
Speaker 5: this whole Build your Own and how the Black Church
Speaker 5: has been in the lead a building your own. You
Speaker 5: know for years you've been talking about that, and even
Speaker 5: though you've talked about it and they've been doing it,
Speaker 5: it's not that easy.
Speaker 2: No, it's not that easy. And I think you know.
Speaker 2: I also want to just honor your story since the test.
Speaker 8: I hadn't heard that story before, and I appreciate you
Speaker 8: being vulnerable to share that. I pastor a bunch of
Speaker 8: black folks who have that story, and I think there's
Speaker 8: there's too much cavalier throwing around about what people should
Speaker 8: do and not enough proximity to the people who are
Speaker 8: every day trying to just make their ends meet. They
Speaker 8: don't want to be a billionaire. They want three meals
Speaker 8: to feed their children, a safe neighborhood, and a roof
Speaker 8: over the head.
Speaker 2: That's all they want. They're not trying to be billionaires.
Speaker 8: And I think some of what is happening is our
Speaker 8: people are buying the propaganda of this kind of demonizing
Speaker 8: of government as if it has not been one of
Speaker 8: the important ladders out of exclusionary poverty that we as
Speaker 8: a people. I mean, these are the fights our ancestors
Speaker 8: literally died for to have access to the wealth of
Speaker 8: this country that are housed largely in the federal reserve,
Speaker 8: the federal budget, our tax dollars. Every day we're paying
Speaker 8: into these pots of money, and every federal job is
Speaker 8: paid by our tax dollars. If we pay taxes, why
Speaker 8: should we not have access to the labor force of
Speaker 8: our tax base, And then why should we not also
Speaker 8: have the federal civil rights protection so when we want
Speaker 8: to go get capital to start a business, get capital
Speaker 8: to get a house, get capital to build a church
Speaker 8: where they're not rent lined or frozen out because racist
Speaker 8: white folk and others want to use their own biases
Speaker 8: to further lock us out of capital. It should be
Speaker 8: the conversation at the end of the day about freedom,
Speaker 8: the freedom to choose what you want to do with
Speaker 8: your life and not have yourself locked out in. The
Speaker 8: Black church, for all of its challenges, has been one
Speaker 8: of the most important anti white supremacists fighting organizations since
Speaker 8: this country started. It was founded because we were locked
Speaker 8: out of white churches and white spaces, and black freedom
Speaker 8: fighters abolitionists built institutions to ensure that black people could
Speaker 8: have land, could have resources, have schools, have businesses, and
Speaker 8: informal informal networks for two hundred, three hundred years to
Speaker 8: ensure some self determination. And I do think it's really
Speaker 8: important for us to not allow the kind of talking
Speaker 8: points of small government or the demonization of the federal
Speaker 8: infrastructure and apparatus to become the enemy of that which
Speaker 8: has literally been our lifelong struggle. Black churches, you know,
Speaker 8: employ a lot of folks as well. It's really important
Speaker 8: to say that Liverpool wages. But how many black folks
Speaker 8: have gone to college because of a black church scholarship fund.
Speaker 8: How many black people are getting paid small dollars to clean,
Speaker 8: to play music, to do daycares, on and on and
Speaker 8: on self funded stuff. But it is still not enough
Speaker 8: access to capital to actually solidify the black community. The
Speaker 8: average Black church in this country is less than seventy
Speaker 8: five members. So if you have more than one hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty members, you're in the top ten percent of
Speaker 8: Black churches in this country. We look at Jamal Bryant
Speaker 8: and Gina Stewarts and TV Jakes and all these sorts
Speaker 8: and think the average Black churches is that big and
Speaker 8: has that much access to capital resources in land and
Speaker 8: is just not the case. So you have these small
Speaker 8: mom and pop institutions that have been an anchor, but
Speaker 8: it is not enough. And this is why we have
Speaker 8: to have access to everything, access to everything, that nothing
Speaker 8: should be taken off the table in order for us
Speaker 8: to build and stabilize our communities. And this president, this
Speaker 8: administration is already signaling, if have not already done, they
Speaker 8: have stripped, removed and taken protections out that our ancestors
Speaker 8: have fought for two hundred years. Of course, I would
Speaker 8: say the Democratic Party has not been our friend, but
Speaker 8: I will also say that we must have a both
Speaker 8: and conversation because there are things that were one on
Speaker 8: our blood sweating tiers, not the Democratic Party, our bloods,
Speaker 8: wedding tears, and at the very least some of that
Speaker 8: stuff was protected. Now it's actively being stripped back. We
Speaker 8: are to join this fight from every place where we
Speaker 8: are in this country, but not loose factor freedom, the
Speaker 8: freedom of chruse, the freedom have access. That must be
Speaker 8: our rallying cry and our foundational commitment across the board.
Speaker 6: You Pa, I appreciate that that's true that a lot
Speaker 6: of black churches they hire people as well as as
Speaker 6: you said, you got the minister of music. That's where
Speaker 6: they get their extra money for the daycare or.
Speaker 4: For their family to have a little.
Speaker 6: Bit of enjoyment on the week weekends. You know, the
Speaker 6: person who cleans the church. You know the people who
Speaker 6: answer the phone on Sundays get a little fifty seventy
Speaker 6: five dollars.
Speaker 4: Like you said, it all makes up a pot. That
Speaker 4: is what people are sustaining themselves on.
Speaker 6: And I think we need all of those things. A
Speaker 6: Senator Turner, I want you to talk about some of
Speaker 6: the things that we're doing and some of the I
Speaker 6: want to say solutions, and will break down what I
Speaker 6: mean by that in the moment. But before we get there,
Speaker 6: in the build your own conversation, what we're now talking
Speaker 6: about is.
Speaker 4: People who would be at home.
Speaker 6: Right because they don't have a job their tax dollars.
Speaker 6: At that point, I guess I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 6: obviously you're gonna still pay taxes. I don't care if
Speaker 6: it comes from Medicaid and your check and matter of fact,
Speaker 6: elon must you can't have a welfare check as what
Speaker 6: do they call public assistance because you're parasite.
Speaker 4: So I'm not sure.
Speaker 6: But let's just say a person is working at a
Speaker 6: job and their taxes is they're coming out every month,
Speaker 6: and then you're still telling them.
Speaker 4: Go and build your own. The question I have for
Speaker 4: you is can they stop paying their taxes?
Speaker 6: You don't only want to hear that it was an
Speaker 6: elected official test were you ever elected?
Speaker 4: No, so you are elected official here? Can you just
Speaker 4: stop paying your taxes?
Speaker 6: Because they tell me that in the comments section every
Speaker 6: day that I need to stop paying taxes.
Speaker 4: I need to go and be something else.
Speaker 6: I guess I'm more or whatever some other thing, and
Speaker 6: I could stop paying my taxes. And then, because I'm
Speaker 6: just trying to understand, if I'm paying my taxes, how
Speaker 6: am my ware I'm supposed to get the money from
Speaker 6: to do the building my own? Do I need to
Speaker 6: strip at night? Like I'm serious too, I'm not even joking,
Speaker 6: so I could build my own. So I just want
Speaker 6: to know from you, what's the formula here to get
Speaker 6: into what these people are talking about.
Speaker 9: Well, it's certainly not paying your taxes. Uncle Sam getting
Speaker 9: his one way or the other. He will come for
Speaker 9: you eventually. It might not be overnight, but they will
Speaker 9: get you. So no, that's not an option. And just
Speaker 9: to be with this old gust panel today does my
Speaker 9: heart so much joy to be with true freedom fighters.
Speaker 3: And to my sister FIGUREO.
Speaker 9: I mean, we were on the campaign trail of Senator
Speaker 9: Bernie Sanders when she lost her mom and she didn't
Speaker 9: miss a beat. You know, I am in the lost
Speaker 9: your mama club as well. And it's a hard thing.
Speaker 9: It doesn't matter how young you are, how seasoned you are,
Speaker 9: Mama's mean a whole lot in this world.
Speaker 2: And when I.
Speaker 9: Tell you she did not miss a beat, you're talking
Speaker 9: about a true soldier. You wouldn't have never known that
Speaker 9: she lost her mom, and certainly similar what you're going
Speaker 9: through now, TDM with the loss of Mama Dukes. But
Speaker 9: I just want to lift her up because she told
Speaker 9: the absolute truth.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 9: Work for government jobs used to be a virtue, and
Speaker 9: we let these clowns come in here and make it
Speaker 9: something that is not.
Speaker 3: Virtuous any longer. Federal workers are public servants.
Speaker 9: They just not elected public servants, but they are the
Speaker 9: public servants. The people who work at the Veterans Affairs Administration,
Speaker 9: the people who work at that Social Security Office, you
Speaker 9: name it, the person who.
Speaker 3: Works at the Post Office, and so on and so
Speaker 3: forth those.
Speaker 9: Departments, they are public servants. And Eli must need to
Speaker 9: have several seats because he's on the government dole.
Speaker 3: He receives corporate wearfare. He is a warfare.
Speaker 9: Recipient, and we need to let the world know the
Speaker 9: difference between him and Big Mama and Big Papa, who
Speaker 9: may be receiving some assistance.
Speaker 3: Because of tax dollars.
Speaker 9: It's called a social contract that we put money in
Speaker 9: a pot But the full fledge attack that Figaro is
Speaker 9: talking about is primarily on black folks, but there will
Speaker 9: be a ripple effect for everybody else because when this
Speaker 9: nation come for black folks, contrary to popular understanding.
Speaker 3: And belief, poorer and working class people and barely making it.
Speaker 9: Middle class folks get hit too, of all backgrounds, So
Speaker 9: they need to always watch what's happening to black people.
Speaker 9: But that is how we got into the middle class,
Speaker 9: not just on the federal level, but the state level,
Speaker 9: the local level, and the regional levels of government, because
Speaker 9: our ancestors fought to make sure that that government at
Speaker 9: least would not discriminate against us in jobs. When we
Speaker 9: think about people like asum Philip Randolf, who stared down
Speaker 9: President FDR to try to desegregate it and integrate not
Speaker 9: only just the armed forces, which came by way of Truman,
Speaker 9: but what he was able to get from FDR is
Speaker 9: what you're not gonna do is discriminate.
Speaker 3: In defense industry. So black folks got higher.
Speaker 9: See, this has been a long journey since they brought
Speaker 9: a shift our behinds over here to fight for a
Speaker 9: type of equality and liberation. So we cannot allow an
Speaker 9: elon musk a President Donald J. Trump or any others
Speaker 9: of those folks to diminish.
Speaker 3: It is not normal for.
Speaker 9: Us to look at our sisters and brothers and family
Speaker 9: and friends who work for government on any level and
Speaker 9: tell them get a real job or welcome to the
Speaker 9: private sector.
Speaker 3: Why we lowering standards. We need to.
Speaker 9: Raise the private sector jobs up to the government level jobs.
Speaker 9: Black people would not be as cemented in the middle
Speaker 9: class had it not been for government jobs. And the
Speaker 9: reason why we're cemented is not by happenstance.
Speaker 3: It is because freedom fighters who came.
Speaker 9: Before us ensured that at least in one place, we
Speaker 9: weren't gonna be discriminated against. It's the place where we
Speaker 9: pay our taxes. Y'all gonna hire some black folks up
Speaker 9: in here. That is so real, So anyway that you know.
Speaker 5: It's two hundred percent right, and it's so unfortunate that
Speaker 5: our people have been brainwashed by this. They figured out
Speaker 5: a way to utilize this social media to keep telling
Speaker 5: us the same thing and make us believe that it's
Speaker 5: something wrong with us, for one, in what we deserve,
Speaker 5: what we naturally deserve. And it's such a confused thing, you.
Speaker 2: Know, passing.
Speaker 5: I want to ask you this question because I do
Speaker 5: this anti violence work.
Speaker 2: I do get violence interruption.
Speaker 5: And when we talk about these federal cuts and we
Speaker 5: talk about all these things that are going to be dismissed,
Speaker 5: you know, the Safer Communities Act, which had distributed hundreds
Speaker 5: of millions to anti violence work in the communities, has
Speaker 5: been cut.
Speaker 2: Now, how is that going to affect us?
Speaker 8: I mean, it's it's brutal. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 8: should appreciate that. All the way back in two thousand,
Speaker 8: Man was a new town. Twenty twelve, a number of
Speaker 8: US led the largest group of black directly impacted folks
Speaker 8: the gun violence inside the White House under Obama was
Speaker 8: asking for six billion dollar commitment to fund community violence
Speaker 8: intervention or urban gun violence, and Obama didn't even move
Speaker 8: on it. Biden said he wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 8: And it took us about ten years just to get
Speaker 8: legislation written called the Break the Cycle of Violence. It
Speaker 8: did not get passed, but it was put inside the
Speaker 8: Safer Communities Act, and it set aside about four hundred
Speaker 8: million dollars to ensure that we could at least get
Speaker 8: these resources jump started. We also organized about organizing about
Speaker 8: fifty cities across the country under this thing we called
Speaker 8: fund Peace, and we're able to get the America Rescue
Speaker 8: Plan dollars, the Partner of Education housing, a number of
Speaker 8: federal grant programs to be opened up for local communities
Speaker 8: to apply to do CVI work. All of that added
Speaker 8: up to help contribute to a massive reduction in gun
Speaker 8: related shootings and homicides across the country and get it
Speaker 8: back to pre COVID levels over the last five years. Now,
Speaker 8: why do I say that once the ARP funds, which
Speaker 8: pretty much of sunset it disappear in local cities, we
Speaker 8: are now left with a pre COVID level funding for
Speaker 8: Community Vice Interventions, which has been one of the most
Speaker 8: intensive workforce development program for black men, black women, some
Speaker 8: Latino folks who had criminal convictions, who come out of
Speaker 8: gangs and groups and incarceration to do peacemaking work in
Speaker 8: the community. Trump has not only been noncommittal in continuing
Speaker 8: that funding, a lot of the funding that was allocated
Speaker 8: under the Biden Harris administration has been frozen. Hundreds of
Speaker 8: thousands of dollars that was coming to our work in
Speaker 8: the Bay Area frozen. Nonprofits are closing down as we speak,
Speaker 8: because they can't make payroll because even the federal grants
Speaker 8: that we all fought hard to apply for are reimbursable grants,
Speaker 8: So that means we spent the money already waiting for reimbursements,
Speaker 8: and the Department of Treasury has frozen that under the
Speaker 8: DOGE stuff. So it is, indeed, I think, a very
Speaker 8: perilous moment in our movement for the kind of non
Speaker 8: law enforcement gun violence intervention programs grounded in public health
Speaker 8: that mice in so many in New York and Chicago
Speaker 8: and the Bay we have fought for. There is an
Speaker 8: important kind of consideration that we now have to figure out,
Speaker 8: how do we leverage our tax base locally, leverage our
Speaker 8: tax base perhaps at the state level, to try and
Speaker 8: open these resources back up, and or figure out is
Speaker 8: there a level we can push at the congressional level
Speaker 8: or even inside the White House health freezer is over.
Speaker 8: I guess maybe I don't know, Maybe he'll do something right.
Speaker 8: I don't know, But this is a donut hole in
Speaker 8: the work that has been at least fifteen years in
Speaker 8: the making, and a lot of us are trying to
Speaker 8: figure out where do we go from here. It will
Speaker 8: have a massive impact in building the infrastructure, public health,
Speaker 8: mental health, and workforce development for those numbers of individuals
Speaker 8: in our communities at the highest risk of shooting and being.
Speaker 3: Shot can asen. I want to bring you.
Speaker 6: I want you to come in and talk, but I
Speaker 6: would just want to ask you if you could speak
Speaker 6: to are we begging? I know y'all already covered it,
Speaker 6: but I'm asking you directly. Do you feel like what
Speaker 6: you just heard Past and Mike say sounds like he's
Speaker 6: begging the government to come and do something to save
Speaker 6: us what that we could do for ourselves.
Speaker 7: You know, we're accessing what we've already paid into. You
Speaker 7: know a lot of these folks who are talking about
Speaker 7: stop begging also be asking for cash apps. A lot
Speaker 7: of these folks who'll be saying stop begging also were
Speaker 7: making money off use. You know a lot of these
Speaker 7: folks who are saying stop begging, we are circulating the dollar.
Speaker 7: And it is called a private public partnership. And if
Speaker 7: you give a damn about what's happening to the least,
Speaker 7: we just got to just start naming this for what
Speaker 7: it is. If we give a damn about what's happening
Speaker 7: to the least of these, then you do care about
Speaker 7: gang intervention programs that are now being cut because of
Speaker 7: the lack of funding. If you give a damn about
Speaker 7: what's happening to your cousin that you forgot about, because
Speaker 7: we all not even six degrees separation, but three degrees
Speaker 7: separation from somebody who is hurting and who actually need
Speaker 7: with the recidivism program, with people that are coming out
Speaker 7: of prison, that actually need to be have resources to
Speaker 7: train to get jobs to have that because these build
Speaker 7: your own people are not hiring them. And again we
Speaker 7: are not against build your own, but I like to
Speaker 7: just use real testimonies, guys, because a lot of times
Speaker 7: it goes over people's head. And that's why I try
Speaker 7: to be so transparent, you know, and sharing a personal,
Speaker 7: you know, personal story so they can get it. I
Speaker 7: want to touch on a minute about the disabled and
Speaker 7: like and how this is happening with disabled because we've
Speaker 7: had a lot of conversation on DEI and people think
Speaker 7: we're just talking about somebody's pot pottery business or pots
Speaker 7: and pans and targeting. No, no, no, We're also talking about
Speaker 7: those of us who have decided to say I'm not
Speaker 7: gonna just sit home and be disabled. I'm not just
Speaker 7: gonna sit back and depend on the government. I'm actually
Speaker 7: going to go get a job. And a lot of
Speaker 7: these federal jobs have hired people because they do get
Speaker 7: incentivized to give people a federal job.
Speaker 3: Just a quick story.
Speaker 7: When after I got done building my own in Orlando
Speaker 7: with my three hundred employees, and we lost our contract
Speaker 7: in the volatile private sector, guess who hired me?
Speaker 3: In Oklahoma, I went for one year. I was a.
Speaker 7: Disability adjudicator at the Department of Oklahoma at the Social
Speaker 7: Security Administration. Tammy, my very best friend of thirty years,
Speaker 7: was able to give me a referral to get on
Speaker 7: that job. Tammy has been suffering. I'm saying this because
Speaker 7: it is so important to me. Come again, I'm tying
Speaker 7: in your book with the anxiety and depression people who
Speaker 7: have been suffering that for a very long time. My
Speaker 7: best friend can't even stand up for long periods of
Speaker 7: time because of her physical disability. The government gave her
Speaker 7: job rather than Tammy sitting at home. The same one
Speaker 7: that gave me a job went and got a job
Speaker 7: rather than her sitting at home. The government gave her
Speaker 7: an opportunity. The banks would not hire her. She couldn't
Speaker 7: get a job anywhere else now because they're now forced
Speaker 7: to come back into the office.
Speaker 3: My friend is suffering physically.
Speaker 7: She was doing an at home job, still doing the
Speaker 7: best that she could. When we talk about how this
Speaker 7: is affecting people, to the disabled, to people who were
Speaker 7: discriminated against my mother being hired at sixty years old,
Speaker 7: nobody thought she was worthy enough to meka. She wasn't
Speaker 7: that she didn't want to work. It wasn't that she
Speaker 7: didn't want to pull herself about the bootstraps. It wasn't
Speaker 7: that she didn't want to do for self, and it's
Speaker 7: do for own. These have been places where, like Senda
Speaker 7: Turner eloquently pointed out, that have had an opportunity to
Speaker 7: they otherwise would not have. And so it's just it
Speaker 7: is heartbreaking to me personally, heartbreaking to watch those who
Speaker 7: are literally going into the job with anxiety, with depression,
Speaker 7: who are now literally trying to figure out am I
Speaker 7: gonna have a job. My best friend twenty five years teacher.
Speaker 7: They've now went to four days of school, four days.
Speaker 7: Our babies are not learning what they need in.
Speaker 3: Five China's way ahead of us with education. So because
Speaker 3: of the cuts.
Speaker 7: Now with education, we got our teachers who are now
Speaker 7: working four days a week. What is her recommendation for
Speaker 7: build her own go start a new school where that
Speaker 7: takes capital. We got doctor Steve Perry starting schools. But
Speaker 7: who gonna give them the Capital's right? It requires a
Speaker 7: government partnership. This ain't begging.
Speaker 3: This is about the reality of what it takes to
Speaker 3: start a hospital.
Speaker 5: To start everybody else is doing and everybody this nation
Speaker 5: are utilizing. Look, it's a pubblic good bro. It's like
Speaker 5: we ask the black people to do something that no
Speaker 5: other group of people are being asked to do.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous and that.
Speaker 6: And people can't say we don't have businesses because I
Speaker 6: always say we got to get.
Speaker 4: Straight on what we're putting out in the world.
Speaker 6: On one hand, we're telling folks that we don't have businesses,
Speaker 6: we can't get capital, all of that, and then on
Speaker 6: the next hand we say you gotta shop at Target
Speaker 6: because my businesses is there.
Speaker 4: Either we have the businesses all we don't. It's one
Speaker 4: thing or the other.
Speaker 6: But sit of a turn that when we talk about solutions,
Speaker 6: we know that there's no one hit that can strike
Speaker 6: all these things down at one time. There's a there
Speaker 6: are pieces we've got to build on it. But when
Speaker 6: we talk about not begging, and you hear Tesling saying
Speaker 6: that DEI is not just dee I, but it's diversity,
Speaker 6: the equity, inclusion, and the disability. People have put the
Speaker 6: A on the end, which is accessibility. So it's covering
Speaker 6: all of these things. When we hear companies that are
Speaker 6: having the audacity to debate, or.
Speaker 4: Not even debate, because I didn't even see a debate.
Speaker 4: I just saw Elon Musk, President Musk and co President
Speaker 4: Trump say diversity, equity, and inclusion out and the companies
Speaker 4: just start dropping their draws one by one by one
Speaker 4: by one.
Speaker 6: And so I want to hear you talk about the
Speaker 6: target fast because I know what happens. I've been told
Speaker 6: that a Caucasian fellow who probably had all the right reasons,
Speaker 6: put out the one day nobody buy anything.
Speaker 4: We didn't put that out.
Speaker 6: Also, there's another schedule of boycott Amazon for two weeks,
Speaker 6: and this for two weeks, and that for two weeks.
Speaker 4: We want people to enter the struggle, however they get there.
Speaker 6: But we have been very focused that we're taking in
Speaker 6: one company and looking at the impact that we can
Speaker 6: have there as a part of how we intend to
Speaker 6: use our consumer dollars to push back against all of
Speaker 6: this stuff.
Speaker 4: Why don't you.
Speaker 6: Talk about that really quickly after this, you know, maybe
Speaker 6: another question or two, one question for everybody, but please
Speaker 6: talk about that. Let us know why the target boycott
Speaker 6: and what can we look for and expect to come
Speaker 6: of it as we go forward.
Speaker 9: There's definitely power in our purchase. So people need to
Speaker 9: really understand that before I go there. Sister t just
Speaker 9: got amen, everything that was said ahead of time. When
Speaker 9: it comes to black people, this country always sacrifices us,
Speaker 9: and we know this. The original class class the original
Speaker 9: class clash was chattle slavery, all right, So for those
Speaker 9: folks who care about class over race or cast shall
Speaker 9: I say, then, they need to understand in the United
Speaker 9: States of America, the original.
Speaker 3: Class clash was chattel slavery.
Speaker 9: So when we think about the Capitol and what is
Speaker 9: old to black people and why we are not.
Speaker 3: On a level playing.
Speaker 9: Field, it is by design, it is on purpose. Policy
Speaker 9: is not immutable. So if this country really wanted to
Speaker 9: level the plan field and honor social contracts. It would
Speaker 9: have given us absolutely what it owed us, which was
Speaker 9: the forty acres and the mule, and it still can
Speaker 9: give us. They would talk a lot about the debt
Speaker 9: what is old. Well, the number one debt old in
Speaker 9: this country is reparations to those who are descendants of
Speaker 9: enslaved people. That is the number one debt that this
Speaker 9: country needs to pay. Black people would be better positioned
Speaker 9: if during the American Revolution, when the colonists were fighting
Speaker 9: for their freedom, while they were talking about give me
Speaker 9: liberty or give me death. Hello Patrick Henry, that they
Speaker 9: had in that moment of their transformation and recognizing that
Speaker 9: they didn't want to be controlled by the crown anymore,
Speaker 9: they could have set our ancestors free right then and there,
Speaker 9: and baby, we wouldn't be having this conversation most likely.
Speaker 9: But they did not do that. There is a connection
Speaker 9: to that. That is a connection to red lining, to
Speaker 9: Jim Crow, to Jane craw to the prison industrial complex,
Speaker 9: to the fact that black people have the least amount
Speaker 9: of generational wealth of any other group in the United
Speaker 9: States of America.
Speaker 3: And we built this place. So I want to put
Speaker 3: that right. If anybody talking about we need to pull
Speaker 3: ourselves up, and.
Speaker 9: We done pulled up the whole joint and still got
Speaker 9: a beg y'all to do right by us. You know,
Speaker 9: the great Bayard Rusting One said that this country never
Speaker 9: has a never will do anything.
Speaker 3: Solely for the negro. That is true when he.
Speaker 9: Said those words, and it's true today and once we
Speaker 9: as black people understand that we're.
Speaker 3: Gonna maneuver this thing.
Speaker 9: There's a book I want to recommend called Faces at
Speaker 9: the Bottom of the Well written by a great constitutional attorney,
Speaker 9: by Derek Bell, who just laid it out that this
Speaker 9: country always gonna be like this. But he didn't say
Speaker 9: we should not resist. And that's what this is about.
Speaker 9: It's about setting the record straight and resistant. Part of
Speaker 9: that resists is to boycott Target. Our target and is
Speaker 9: Target because the CEO at the time that George Floyd
Speaker 9: was murdered came out there and said all the right things,
Speaker 9: which is that could have been one of my employees.
Speaker 9: Because this has happened, this is my obligation. This is
Speaker 9: what I am going to do as the leader of Target.
Speaker 9: We're going to spend two billion dollars over five years
Speaker 9: with the black community.
Speaker 3: He said that specifically, and not just.
Speaker 9: Associates and stores, but also people who provide contracts. For example,
Speaker 9: you can retrofit a Target store that kind of thing
Speaker 9: two billion dollars over five years, and he said he
Speaker 9: was going to increase the internal workforce of black people
Speaker 9: inside those Target stores. He did that, and that was
Speaker 9: the right thing to do and the right thing to say.
Speaker 9: I happen to believe that you can do well and
Speaker 9: do good at the same time. Now, what we come
Speaker 9: to find in twenty twenty five, under the auspices of
Speaker 9: now president and president Shadow President Eli Musk, is that
Speaker 9: CEOs liked this one at Target wasn't obligated to it
Speaker 9: in the first place, because if they were obligated to it,
Speaker 9: they wouldn't be so quickly to your point, when did
Speaker 9: they have a meeting and say that they weren't committed
Speaker 9: to it.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't be.
Speaker 9: So quickly uncommitted if you were, in fact committed to
Speaker 9: the fact that diversity, equity and inclusion means something.
Speaker 3: It doesn't even benefit black folks the most.
Speaker 9: Hello, somebody, it benefits white women more than any other group.
Speaker 3: However, it's a path.
Speaker 9: So as we we are somebody until freedom of pastor
Speaker 9: Jamal Brian is involved in this. So many others are
Speaker 9: like setting the stage for this boycott of target.
Speaker 3: We got.
Speaker 9: Boycotts have to be specific and they came in until
Speaker 9: we get what we want. So why I salute the
Speaker 9: folks who went on the twenty four hour boycott.
Speaker 3: The thing is.
Speaker 9: I want we want people to get involved, come in
Speaker 9: where you fit in. We also want them to join
Speaker 9: this because if I'm doing a twenty four hour boycott, hell,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna buy my stuff either before or after. What
Speaker 9: is the long term impact to do these businesses so
Speaker 9: that they know we not playing games. If we can't
Speaker 9: move politicians because they answer to their owner donors, then
Speaker 9: we got to deal with the owner donors. Target and
Speaker 9: picking one specific entity right now because we know the
Speaker 9: others gets us what we need to be able to
Speaker 9: fight the others. It is likened to the Montgomery bus boycott.
Speaker 9: They didn't boycott every place in Montgomery that wasn't doing
Speaker 9: black folks right. They picked one target for three hundred
Speaker 9: and eighty one days, sacrifice life, physical life, and limb.
Speaker 9: At least in the twenty first century, we got more options.
Speaker 9: We're just telling people boycott Target, but they can go
Speaker 9: to some of these other places and get what they need.
Speaker 9: And then to roll that into what Pastor Jamal Brian
Speaker 9: is doing, which is the Target fast from ash Wednesday
Speaker 9: to Easter, over one hundred thousand people, which he got
Speaker 9: those sign ups to say we will not shop at Target.
Speaker 9: We're asking people to make a sacrifice, and God help
Speaker 9: folks that just can't make this. This is very easy
Speaker 9: sacrifice when the people who came before us, and some
Speaker 9: of them are still walking this earth, made sacrifices that
Speaker 9: are more deeper than what we could ever make.
Speaker 3: And then you got, well I was gonna call them mofos.
Speaker 9: You got people who don't even have enough intestinal fortitude.
Speaker 3: To just just just don't go to Tark.
Speaker 9: But we pushing, were pushing. Nevertheless, we're gonna make an example.
Speaker 2: I want to.
Speaker 7: I want to say this just for the Dude for
Speaker 7: the Self community, because I I it would be disingenuous
Speaker 7: if I did not mention this. I did have a conversation,
Speaker 7: you know, one of our brothers that is leads this
Speaker 7: Dude for Self, you.
Speaker 3: Know, conversation.
Speaker 7: I won't say his nagas he's not here to you know,
Speaker 7: give his own retort, but I will say that we
Speaker 7: did have a very robust conversation, and I think more
Speaker 7: conversations like this needs to happen to me because he
Speaker 7: did explain to me his position that he was not
Speaker 7: against the things that we're talking about, and I did
Speaker 7: have I did think he was. I did, you know,
Speaker 7: And he told me it's not against understanding the politics
Speaker 7: and protests are very much a part of it, but
Speaker 7: he's talking about a long term vision and he talks
Speaker 7: a lot about.
Speaker 3: Local politics, and so I just told him, you know,
Speaker 3: I would.
Speaker 7: Appreciate if you maybe figure out a way to include
Speaker 7: it in your conversation, because it's being taken as if
Speaker 7: you know, you're not considering those things. And he said,
Speaker 7: you know, those are not the things that I that
Speaker 7: I'm an expert on, and I said, and I respect that,
Speaker 7: But he did say he was talking about a long
Speaker 7: term plan to do for self.
Speaker 3: Community talks about a long term plan, and I said,
Speaker 3: I get that.
Speaker 7: I respect that, but I'm talking about what's going on
Speaker 7: April first, literally April first. So I think I know
Speaker 7: that this conversation is helpful. I think we need more
Speaker 7: of it. I've invited him to come to my platform
Speaker 7: to continue it with, whether it's Instagram, live platform, no platform,
Speaker 7: you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: I think these.
Speaker 7: Conversations are important because those of us who really are
Speaker 7: committed to this the right way, I think it's going
Speaker 7: to show up. We're gonna see in this moment who
Speaker 7: really about black people and who's really not. So I
Speaker 7: do want to take leadership to me because I tapped
Speaker 7: into her leadership because you know, normally I ain't got
Speaker 7: nothing on it, but I tapped into Tumika's leadership this week,
Speaker 7: and I did hold the space to at least try
Speaker 7: to hear, you know what, what I'm misunderstanding. And so
Speaker 7: I think as we continue to have this may maybe
Speaker 7: I'm not understanding what y'all mean when y'all saying do
Speaker 7: for self, because we getting real confused on this side.
Speaker 7: So I did have the conversation, and I think we
Speaker 7: need more of it because we are not against nobody
Speaker 7: not being successful or a millionaire or I am not
Speaker 7: pushing people just being complacent. But to respect to what
Speaker 7: pastor Mike said, not everybody has the same ambition, right,
Speaker 7: and that's what we recognized that.
Speaker 5: And I think it feeds into this capitalist mondste right
Speaker 5: that separates us. When you do for self, it doesn't
Speaker 5: mean you're doing for us right, because I don't want
Speaker 5: it like as a leader, as someone who wants to
Speaker 5: see better for my community, better for all of us.
Speaker 5: I don't want to do for self. I do for self.
Speaker 5: I never had a problem doing for self. But when
Speaker 5: I look at the majority of my people and understand
Speaker 5: that they're not gonna be in rooms, They're not gonna
Speaker 5: have opportunities that I have. They're not gonna have the
Speaker 5: same luck that I've had to get into spaces and
Speaker 5: acquire things that I've acquired, I know that I have
Speaker 5: to provide and fight for them to be able to
Speaker 5: survive in the ways that they are capable of surviving.
Speaker 5: That's what leadership looks like for me. I don't understand
Speaker 5: the mentality of do for self because that what it does.
Speaker 5: It pits me against you. If I gotta do for self,
Speaker 5: then I gotta make sure that I do better than you. No,
Speaker 5: I wanna do for me so I can make sure
Speaker 5: that we're all good. I want to do us to
Speaker 5: do as a unified front. And I think that's that
Speaker 5: messaging for me is confusing I don't. I never think
Speaker 5: about myself when I think about this, because I'm gonna
Speaker 5: always survive the way I've always survived. I Dodne, lost
Speaker 5: million dollar record deals, came home from jail, figured it out,
Speaker 5: got it out the mud. I'm gonna get it somewhere
Speaker 5: like my kids is gonna eat. I like nice things.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna figure out how to get it. But I
Speaker 5: understand the majority of our people don't have that reality.
Speaker 5: So when we have in those conversations and if we
Speaker 5: and we're talking about being leaders and from a position
Speaker 5: of leaders, then we have to speak to our people
Speaker 5: on the same level that they are and try to
Speaker 5: bring them to where we are.
Speaker 7: But it's say, when they tell you what you just
Speaker 7: need to tell everybody to just step it up.
Speaker 3: They should want more. What is your answer?
Speaker 5: My answer to that is that, like I said about everything,
Speaker 5: everybody is not gonna be Lebron James, everybody ain't gonna
Speaker 5: be Kobe Bryant, right, And the understanding that we were
Speaker 5: on a team, and if I know that I'm a leader,
Speaker 5: if I know that the skill set and the reality
Speaker 5: of my situation is not everybody's, then I have to
Speaker 5: play a team team ball with them. I gotta make
Speaker 5: sure that I provide a shot for the two guard
Speaker 5: who can create his own shot. The center ain't gonna
Speaker 5: be able dribble the ball like he can't do old things.
Speaker 5: I gotta make sure I throw alley you to him.
Speaker 5: That's what leadership is, That's what teamwork does, is understanding
Speaker 5: the deficiencies and the skill set of everybody else and
Speaker 5: providing opportunities and way for them to be able to score.
Speaker 8: I just can I just quickly say to you know,
Speaker 8: the insidious part of this whole conversation about do it
Speaker 8: for yourself being like injected as a delegitimizing of the
Speaker 8: effort to stay federal jobs, to me, has to be
Speaker 8: called out as a co intel protactic. I know that
Speaker 8: it may not be the intent of some folk, but
Speaker 8: we who know history have to acknowledge that black folk
Speaker 8: have always been attempting to do for ourselves, and they're.
Speaker 4: We built stuff.
Speaker 2: We built.
Speaker 5: Look, whenever we built Black Wall Street, whenever we built
Speaker 5: anything that was black wealth centered, the US government literally
Speaker 5: burned to the ground, bombed, sent white vigilantes and mobs.
Speaker 8: So so the idea that you can just create something
Speaker 8: that's that's just by black people for black people. If
Speaker 8: we don't have federal civil rights protections at work to
Speaker 8: protect us from the violence of white vigilantes, doing for
Speaker 8: yourself is not enough without the protection that we all
Speaker 8: our ancestors fought for to make sure that when we
Speaker 8: do do for ourselves, we are not redline, we are
Speaker 8: not victims of predatory lending and capital and all these
Speaker 8: other kind of things. And so the conversation has to
Speaker 8: be expanded. And I would also say it, since it
Speaker 8: is the case that the largest growth of the middle
Speaker 8: class black middle class is for federal jobs, should that
Speaker 8: not be seen as a positive for.
Speaker 2: The do it yourself?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, pastor Mike.
Speaker 7: And the reason why, I'm just gonna go ahead and
Speaker 7: name it like I get it as a counter pro tech.
Speaker 7: But some of this is just bottom line jealousy. Let's
Speaker 7: just name it for what it is. And I'm just
Speaker 7: talking about the miserable people in the comments. I'm not
Speaker 7: talking about the grand scheme of things. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: the bigger thing, I just because I try to That's
Speaker 7: why I say I'm the hood with I try to
Speaker 7: talk to every lane and what to be honest, with.
Speaker 3: You, pastor Mike.
Speaker 7: The people in the comments that are saying, uh, yep,
Speaker 7: come back down here with us. Some of the oh yeah,
Speaker 7: the bou leg oh yeah, they just said all those
Speaker 7: kind of Some of these people again in the comments,
Speaker 7: are just simply jealous that that cousin went and got
Speaker 7: a degree, went and got a job, went and made more,
Speaker 7: and was able to leave a level of poverty, never
Speaker 7: look back. Maybe they didn't give a cousin two hundred
Speaker 7: dollars five out, whatever it is. And some of this
Speaker 7: just bottom line jealousy. There are some people that have
Speaker 7: records that did not esponge the record figure out another
Speaker 7: way to change their life around, like my soigns. So
Speaker 7: they get bad at my son because he's elevated himself
Speaker 7: on different level. Some of this ain't even that complicated
Speaker 7: as no counter, but its just bottom line. I want
Speaker 7: to see you do bad because I'm doing bad. And
Speaker 7: we have to name that very clear, because what I
Speaker 7: like to remind people is America is a hierarchy.
Speaker 3: Baby. So if these people are.
Speaker 7: Coming down where you are, guess what's gonna happen to you.
Speaker 7: You're gonna go further. See the high argument. You're gonna
Speaker 7: go further down. We are in a race to the bottom.
Speaker 7: So if the qualified multiple.
Speaker 3: Degree, master's degree, have him.
Speaker 7: Self, whoever it is, they got the government job, that
Speaker 7: now they got to come to the warehouse where they
Speaker 7: gonna be the supervisor. And that means whatever supervisor job
Speaker 7: you want it because again, at the end of the day,
Speaker 7: is still based on skilled education, experience.
Speaker 3: All of that.
Speaker 7: We are in a hierarchy system. Now you're gonna be
Speaker 7: pushed out of your job, sirs and ma'ams, and you're
Speaker 7: gonna be in a lower position. So there is this
Speaker 7: conversation pastor might between the have and the have nots.
Speaker 7: The town's are tenth in this the bulet that you
Speaker 7: can look at my comments when I put it in
Speaker 7: and say, oh, that's right, the bulet all the people
Speaker 7: crying about these federal jobs. Is the bulet too bad?
Speaker 7: They're gonna have to figure it out. They gotta come
Speaker 7: down here with the rest of us. Okay, sir, I'm
Speaker 7: agreeing you're gonna be put out your position as well.
Speaker 7: And I'm not saying it's not count of protelle. I
Speaker 7: know it's still the same tactics, but for some people
Speaker 7: it's very very Now look at you. Now you're gonna
Speaker 7: suffer like me, and misery loves company, and I love
Speaker 7: to see people take a loss. I worked a federal job,
Speaker 7: and I didn't like it for me because federal jobs
Speaker 7: they typically promote you based on tenure and all of that.
Speaker 3: I like to be I like the private sector.
Speaker 7: But for many people, people are j us that people
Speaker 7: have had those opportunities past the mike, and they just
Speaker 7: don't want to see people do well. That's just the
Speaker 7: honest true. These are the same people that celebrate any
Speaker 7: time somebody take a loss. They're the first ones pointing
Speaker 7: now out of booboo because they're they're they're they're thriving
Speaker 7: off of resentment, and they have folks that follow them
Speaker 7: that thrive and feed off of that same type of
Speaker 7: red meat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 8: When I say cortel pro I'm meaning the tactic to
Speaker 8: divide us, to ensure that we can't get the momentum
Speaker 8: necessary to win over the long haul. I'm not suggesting
Speaker 8: that somebody sitting in the federal government like yeah, but
Speaker 8: it's just the tactic to divide.
Speaker 2: They're more sophisticated.
Speaker 5: They don't have to, but they don't need it anymore
Speaker 5: because we're doing it to ourselves. You know, the box
Speaker 5: that being my comments, it's amazing, Like I know, I
Speaker 5: know that they send them there to my comments. It
Speaker 5: don't even make no sense because it's no reason for
Speaker 5: you to be here because me and y'all don't think
Speaker 5: nothing alike.
Speaker 2: So it's no need for y'all to have one hundred
Speaker 2: comments or something. What's ironic to me?
Speaker 8: If you have a job and you're solidly in a
Speaker 8: black middle class, would you not have more liquid income
Speaker 8: to buy from a to it for yourself?
Speaker 5: That's what most people do me all man. My best
Speaker 5: friend started his store. He started, you know, he started
Speaker 5: selling clothes out his trunk. He started selling hats. He
Speaker 5: opened the store, and he worked for the transit every night.
Speaker 5: He get his benefits. He put his money into the store,
Speaker 5: and he about to open another restaurant, but he said,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna keep this job.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 7: We're making the assumption, yeah, we're making the assumption that
Speaker 7: some of these people really want people to do for themselves.
Speaker 7: You know, like when you say, well, wouldn't that we
Speaker 7: have more access to buy more product? These people A
Speaker 7: lot of these people are talking they don't have no
Speaker 7: products to sell.
Speaker 3: They want to sit. You know what I'm saying, We
Speaker 3: acting like that's the real motivation. I'm talking to that group. Now,
Speaker 3: we all talking to different groups. I'm talking to.
Speaker 7: The bottom line, jealous bottom line. They don't have no
Speaker 7: business to sell. They're not trying to free up no capital,
Speaker 7: so perp. They just spoken.
Speaker 3: That's it. They just bottom lie.
Speaker 7: Everybody's gonna sell T shirts, everybody's not gonna sell hats,
Speaker 7: and everybody's gonna start no damn podcast.
Speaker 5: And that's why we and that's why we need our
Speaker 5: brothers who are not that to understand that they feeding that.
Speaker 5: That's why we love y'all and y'all can't feed that
Speaker 5: because they can't wait. They just want they want to
Speaker 5: see us drown anyway. So when you say that, they
Speaker 5: utilize that as ways to tear us down and to
Speaker 5: feed into the negativity. So that's why I just having
Speaker 5: a conversation. I'm like, brother, we don't kind of agree
Speaker 5: about everything, but don't utilize. Don't let these people utilize
Speaker 5: you to try to bring us all down at the
Speaker 5: same time because they utilizing your mentality of being an
Speaker 5: entrepreneur and maybe because you don't know. Maybe you don't
Speaker 5: understand that you're not politically savvying that, and in that regard,
Speaker 5: you don't understand what boycotts and what the diversity equity
Speaker 5: inclusion actually mean to the majority of people. Since you
Speaker 5: don't know it, they don't make it seem as if
Speaker 5: that's something wrong, right, because they're gonna utilize you. They're
Speaker 5: gonna keep tagging me that you said this and oh
Speaker 5: such and said I'm not here to go through that.
Speaker 2: I'm especially with you because me and you are not
Speaker 2: my equal.
Speaker 5: You know, I debate with my equals everybody else I teach,
Speaker 5: and I don't even feel like I want to teach
Speaker 5: you because you don't want to be taught. You just
Speaker 5: want to be you know, control oppositions. I just want
Speaker 5: our brothers to understand don't let them use you.
Speaker 4: But I want to call time. I thank y'all so
Speaker 4: much for coming.
Speaker 2: In because we be here O day. I'm just.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 6: I want I want to I want y'all to come
Speaker 6: back the next time we invite y'all.
Speaker 4: But I do want to say that, you.
Speaker 6: Know, I hear you test and I appreciate and I've
Speaker 6: had many conversations with many of our brothers and Sistern,
Speaker 6: who said, well, you know, I'm not necessarily well versed
Speaker 6: in that area. And also, that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: And so if people took it that way, that's on them,
Speaker 6: because that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I learned is, you know,
Speaker 6: when I made the statement about Kamala Harris, I was
Speaker 6: by TMZ, do you think that Kamla Harris can become president?
Speaker 6: This is once she was the nominee or once they
Speaker 6: were elected Biden Harris, and they said. The TMZ person
Speaker 6: asked me, well, do you believe that she will become president?
Speaker 6: Because most vice presidents ascend to the president to seat,
Speaker 6: or at least they tried.
Speaker 4: And I said, well, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I said, you know, racism is terrible, I said, but
Speaker 6: sexism can be worse. And when I said that, it
Speaker 6: went out that Tamika Mallory has said sexism is worse
Speaker 6: than racism. And I don't know, maybe my words was
Speaker 6: a little different or whatever, but that was my point.
Speaker 6: Sexism is worse. And I was speaking because I knew
Speaker 6: I was talking about a black woman. So it's not
Speaker 6: like I'm saying white women, the sexism for white women
Speaker 6: is worse than the racism for all black people.
Speaker 4: My point was that as.
Speaker 6: A black person, you already got some sahi t you
Speaker 6: gotta deal with, and then when you add on top
Speaker 6: of it that she's a woman, now, that creates a
Speaker 6: whole other another layer of disrespect, so on and so
Speaker 6: forth challenges. But I noticed that a lot of people
Speaker 6: heard that what I said, they heard it a certain way,
Speaker 6: and so I have to take responsibility for the fact
Speaker 6: that I need to be real clear very much. So
Speaker 6: what I learned from U test I hear you talk,
Speaker 6: you break down all the points. You don't really let
Speaker 6: people cut you off. You make sure that and and
Speaker 6: you will not just be clear about it, but you
Speaker 6: repeat the same things, sometimes ten times until people get
Speaker 6: it right.
Speaker 3: You do it.
Speaker 4: That's what you do.
Speaker 6: And because I didn't do that, I left it open
Speaker 6: that even people who respect me and love me were
Speaker 6: contacting me like yo, what you were saying here because
Speaker 6: I didn't get it.
Speaker 4: So we are responsible for what we put in the universe.
Speaker 6: And if you see that your words is creat are
Speaker 6: are creating a certain type of response.
Speaker 4: You got to do better. In the way in which
Speaker 4: you communicate. So if you don't know that what you're
Speaker 4: doing is making it seem like institutions are the elder
Speaker 4: institutions have been diminished, or you are diminishing their value.
Speaker 4: If you don't realize that that's what you're doing, you
Speaker 4: have to fix that. But I believe that people are
Speaker 4: real clear on what they're doing, and what is happening
Speaker 4: is that the rest of us are seeing it and
Speaker 4: speaking out about it. And as a result, now it
Speaker 4: becomes well, that's not really what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 4: and I'm not this, that and the third. So I
Speaker 4: can't get I can give but so much grace because
Speaker 4: this has been going on with a lot of our
Speaker 4: people that are out there.
Speaker 6: They have influence online, podcaster, this, that, and the third.
Speaker 4: They continuously say things that is a dig.
Speaker 6: At the institutions and the organizations and the efforts of
Speaker 6: our people of the past. And I just want to
Speaker 6: say for this, for today, nothing that anybody is talking
Speaker 6: about is a new strategy or a new idea.
Speaker 4: Build your own. We already did that.
Speaker 6: Invest in community, we did that Montgomery bus boycott. They
Speaker 6: had Uber before Uber was created. Because how you think
Speaker 6: they got bull of them. People shuffled back and across
Speaker 6: the think across the city. Meanwhile, they didn't even have
Speaker 6: cell phones to be able to do it. We've done
Speaker 6: all of this stuff before. What I think would be
Speaker 6: would benefit us best is that every time we get
Speaker 6: an opportunity in a platform to speak, rather than calling
Speaker 6: out what somebody else didn't do, what's your plan? That's it,
Speaker 6: Just tell us this is what we want need to do.
Speaker 6: Here's where you need to put your money, this is
Speaker 6: how we're gonna do it. And if you are asked
Speaker 6: about institutions, oh, they did a great job with their
Speaker 6: in their time. But we are evolving this thing. We
Speaker 6: kicking it up to the next level, and we're using
Speaker 6: some of the wisdom of the past in order to
Speaker 6: inform how we move forward. That to me is an
Speaker 6: honest leader. I think it is disingenuous and it is
Speaker 6: extremely harmful to our community when we look at all
Speaker 6: of where why are we sitting here today?
Speaker 4: It's because we built it. I mean Senator Turner already
Speaker 4: said that we built this entire thing. So to say
Speaker 4: that we got.
Speaker 6: Lazy or we dropped the ball, no, we wouldn't even
Speaker 6: be sitting here talking about any of this if it
Speaker 6: were not for the hard work of people who came
Speaker 6: before us. And I just say, Mama Dukes in her honor.
Speaker 6: She was one of those who built her own, helped
Speaker 6: to build the NAACP, put young people in college, so
Speaker 6: many young people she fought for to She done paid
Speaker 6: light bills, she done paid college tuition, and she helped
Speaker 6: to organize some of the most powerful institutions that have
Speaker 6: done so much to help us in our community.
Speaker 4: So rest in peace to her.
Speaker 6: And I ain't never heard my ever walk around downing
Speaker 6: what anyone else has done. She only just took the
Speaker 6: time to focus on building what she was doing. But
Speaker 6: we also, to me, we got to add an extra
Speaker 6: slice of an extra challenge up what's the plan in
Speaker 6: the next sixty days? Because what I learned when I
Speaker 6: did my show the other day and he came in
Speaker 6: with these big plan they love talking about what's such
Speaker 6: and such road and such and such book and the
Speaker 6: great this said that no, no, no, no, no, you know,
Speaker 6: I cut folks off, tell.
Speaker 3: Me what we've just do on April.
Speaker 7: First, Let's narrow this scope a little bit, because when
Speaker 7: we ask what's the plan the answer usually is twenty
Speaker 7: thirty years.
Speaker 3: We gotta do this, we gotta do that, we gotta
Speaker 3: get forty six men on board together.
Speaker 7: Let's let's challenge it a little bit and let's talk
Speaker 7: about what you're gonna do the next thirty days. The
Speaker 7: next thirty days, I already know, like you said, nothing's new.
Speaker 7: We already know do this, build on infrastructure, circulate the
Speaker 7: dollar we need to be No, just tell me what
Speaker 7: are we gonna do, because I can tell you what
Speaker 7: I'm doing March thirtieth. I tell what I'm doing April first,
Speaker 7: I tell what I got on April fifteenth.
Speaker 3: Let's just talk about what we're gonna do right now.
Speaker 7: And you'll notice that when you ask that, not just
Speaker 7: what's your plan in the next thirty days, homie, what
Speaker 7: you're doing the next third day, you'll notice there's no answer.
Speaker 3: There's absolutely no answer.
Speaker 7: So let's let's let's step it up a little bit
Speaker 7: and ask for the next ninety day plan, and then
Speaker 7: let's circle back in ninety days and let's do a
Speaker 7: review and let's see where everybody's staying with it, because
Speaker 7: this is how we have to start moving moving forward.
Speaker 7: We just got to start doing report cards, cards, moving forward, soul.
Speaker 3: And let's put im table.
Speaker 4: I love y'all so much. Thank you. This has been
Speaker 4: a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 6: This episode being at the end of our season gets
Speaker 6: us kicked off for the next season the right way
Speaker 6: because this graduation.
Speaker 8: Y'all winning y'all dope season two.
Speaker 7: Congratulations, Congratulations to you guys. Shout out to Black Effect
Speaker 7: Podcast Network. Charlemagne had the vision to build your own
Speaker 7: five years in the game, all of us we started
Speaker 7: right at the beginning of the tooth. I don't mean
Speaker 7: take over there, but I got a shout out. We
Speaker 7: got to shout out Charlemagne, who had the ideal when
Speaker 7: they said, oh, well, why you partner with our heart? Well,
Speaker 7: many of those people that said you should just build
Speaker 7: joe own one hundred percent, guess what, they started networks
Speaker 7: and their networks and not standing today. So there has
Speaker 7: to be something said about partnership, partnering with other entities
Speaker 7: to get black voices out. Fifteen sixteen creators that go
Speaker 7: out every week, three hundred episodes strong. I've done for
Speaker 7: five years. I know y'all have just as many as
Speaker 7: the same that actually putting this content out. Building our
Speaker 7: own never stopping our voice, not one time if somebody
Speaker 7: told me you can't say this, and you can't say that.
Speaker 7: We have absolutely been able to be on the largest
Speaker 7: audio platform in America and don't nothing get more build
Speaker 7: your owning that.
Speaker 3: So shout out to you.
Speaker 7: Congratulations guys for being my podcast siblings on the Black
Speaker 7: and Fed podcast.
Speaker 4: I Love you, Love you Pasting night. Thank you so too.
Speaker 5: That was an excellent panel, you know, and I knew
Speaker 5: it would be because the brilliant minds and people who
Speaker 5: just have perspectives that are elite, you know.
Speaker 2: And and Tessant really touched me.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: I speak to Testant all the time.
Speaker 5: Tessnan't and me are in chat messages and text messages
Speaker 5: all the time, and whenever something goes on, she will
Speaker 5: send me a screenshot. But like look, and then we
Speaker 5: go back and forth, and then we go in the
Speaker 5: in and it because we don't just we don't just
Speaker 5: be talking to each other. We take we take our
Speaker 5: gripes to the internet.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: She'll tell me when she got a gripe with the situation,
Speaker 5: she go right on the internet and then she'll send
Speaker 5: me something that piss me off. And the next thing
Speaker 5: I know, I do them posted about it, so you know,
Speaker 5: that's my sister right there.
Speaker 2: So with just hearing her passion and just understanding.
Speaker 5: The severity of where you know, this federal situation is,
Speaker 5: and her speaking that passionately about it, like you always
Speaker 5: hear her speak passion, but I never seen her get
Speaker 5: teary eyed, you know, speaking about a situation that was
Speaker 5: that personal for us. So you know, I just want
Speaker 5: to send our love for her for being that transparent
Speaker 5: and and choosing our platform to even have that conversation.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 6: I appreciate it as well. And I was say that Teslin,
Speaker 6: as she said, she built her own right, and we
Speaker 6: built our own from nothing. We started this podcast. We
Speaker 6: didn't have a Black Effect deal when we started. We
Speaker 6: made it to Black Effect because they saw what we
Speaker 6: were doing by.
Speaker 4: Ourselves with nothing. Shout out to Patrick.
Speaker 6: Had to give her a lot of respect because she's
Speaker 6: one that noticed us and you know, believed in us
Speaker 6: and gave us the space. But we've been producing our
Speaker 6: own podcast even before we joined Black Effect, which God
Speaker 6: thanked God they came and bless them, and my Lord.
Speaker 4: Thank you Jesus.
Speaker 6: It was hard to do on our own and it's
Speaker 6: still a struggle. It's still a struggle. But also, you know,
Speaker 6: we have businesses I haven't worked for, and I've never
Speaker 6: really worked for white folks.
Speaker 4: I've never I always worked for somebody that built their own.
Speaker 6: Law firm, supermarket was the Latino community built their own
Speaker 6: that I haven't worked yet. The supermarket that was the Latinos,
Speaker 6: they built their own.
Speaker 5: I worked for Macy's in nineteen ninety four. That was
Speaker 5: the last time I had a job that we didn't
Speaker 5: build their own.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The law firm that I worked for, Michael Hardy, Shert
Speaker 6: Wiggan Hardy.
Speaker 4: They built their own. Okay.
Speaker 6: Then I went to Nan National Action Network built its own.
Speaker 4: So I don't know. That's all I know.
Speaker 6: But my parents who gave me an opportunity. Both of
Speaker 6: them collected a check from school servants, and they the
Speaker 6: ones that put me in a position to be able
Speaker 6: to build my own.
Speaker 4: So this all makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 6: And I'm not you know, I'm not gonna let anybody
Speaker 6: make us think we're crazy.
Speaker 2: But we oh, we ain't crazy.
Speaker 5: Man, speaking to thinking own, this is pretty much my
Speaker 5: I don't get it of the day. You know, I
Speaker 5: wanted to and It's something I heard a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks ago, you know, and I hear this a lot,
Speaker 5: you know, Shout out to doctor Umar's who's somebody I
Speaker 5: actually respect.
Speaker 2: I think he's a brilliant man.
Speaker 5: Sometimes he says things that throws me off, and then
Speaker 5: sometimes he says things but I feel like he hits it.
Speaker 2: On the mark.
Speaker 5: But this one right here was something that I had
Speaker 5: to speak of because these are two situations that I
Speaker 5: personally were involved in. You know, he was talking about gatekeeper.
Speaker 5: Shout out to my Sarah. Sarah, the kid who is
Speaker 5: from the Bronx and he's a rapper and he has
Speaker 5: a podcast, and he was talking to Doctor Umar, and
Speaker 5: Doctor Umar was talking about black gatekeepers, and you know,
Speaker 5: he mentioned a lot of names, and all of them
Speaker 5: I couldn't, you know, speak up because I don't really
Speaker 5: know their situation. But he talked about jay Z and
Speaker 5: then he's talked about Ben Crump. So yeah, he said
Speaker 5: that jay Z was a gatekeeper based on what happened
Speaker 5: with callan kappening. And he said, you know, jay Z
Speaker 5: took a deal with the NFL and Kulin Kapernick never
Speaker 5: got his job back, you know, and being on the
Speaker 5: front line of that situation, being out there in front
Speaker 5: of the NFL protesting Forkalent Cappenick, fighting for kaln Kaepernick,
Speaker 5: being and having knowledge of actually went on. Count Kaepernick
Speaker 5: had filed a lawsuit against the NFL and then had
Speaker 5: a settlement with a non disclosure. Nobody knows what the
Speaker 5: settlement was. Nobody knows what happened at that point. It
Speaker 5: quieted the reality of what was going on with the protests.
Speaker 5: Those of us who are on the front line didn't
Speaker 5: even know what was going on. We couldn't even fight
Speaker 5: no more. We were trying to fight, but there was
Speaker 5: no more account Kaepernick. And that's just the reality. I
Speaker 5: don't know what we're on behind the scene. I can't
Speaker 5: tell you why, but I just tell you that a
Speaker 5: lot of us were confused, you know. So what jay
Speaker 5: Z did was after that situation. Now, whatever him and
Speaker 5: jay Z had a personal situation, I can't speak to that.
Speaker 5: But Jay's is he in the NFL deal was not
Speaker 5: hindering what Kelan Kaepernick had going on with the NFL,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: And that's just my p Well.
Speaker 6: You and I have debated this many times. We've debated
Speaker 6: it many times. I I feel like, yes, Colin may
Speaker 6: have reached the settlement with the NFL, but there was
Speaker 6: still a lot of energy in the fight because it
Speaker 6: got bigger than that. People started talking about domestic violence
Speaker 6: issues and lack of ownership with black folks of the
Speaker 6: different teams, like it grew beyond that. What happened, in
Speaker 6: my opinion, was that Colin in many ways kind of
Speaker 6: stepped away to do his own thing. He was really quiet.
Speaker 6: There was no real coordination. In fact, I brought this up.
Speaker 6: I write about this in my book, that there was
Speaker 6: no real coordination.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the way that people operate in.
Speaker 6: Movements is that most people want the person who is
Speaker 6: the family of the victim or the person who was
Speaker 6: harmed or whatever they want to see them. They feel
Speaker 6: like they could get behind messaging that's coming from that person.
Speaker 6: You said that it was because after the settlement, Colin
Speaker 6: kind of had no choice but to accept the agreement
Speaker 6: and whatever the terms was. I don't know, perhaps it was,
Speaker 6: but what I noticed from behind the scenes was that
Speaker 6: and maybe.
Speaker 4: That was the beginning of it, is.
Speaker 6: That there were a lot of changes happening and a
Speaker 6: lot of energy or lack of energy.
Speaker 4: That was unsaid to the public.
Speaker 6: So it's a lot of things that people do not
Speaker 6: even know what's happening. And I witnessed some of it.
Speaker 6: You witnessed some of it. A lot of us witness
Speaker 6: different things. So I don't think that Jay was being
Speaker 6: a gatekeeper, but I do think that people had the
Speaker 6: right to question and feel a way when they were
Speaker 6: in the middle of being like the NFL is canceled
Speaker 6: and then all of a sudden, j comes out with
Speaker 6: a deal with the NFL.
Speaker 4: What I have been saying is that the.
Speaker 6: Resources that they received are part of the deal that
Speaker 6: they made. Absolutely went to grassroots efforts around the country.
Speaker 4: I know it for sure. We saw the numbers.
Speaker 6: We know whether it was Parchment Prison or if it
Speaker 6: was Kansas City, Kansas, other things.
Speaker 4: That we've done. Breonna Taylor.
Speaker 6: They invested the folks, our people, the Crutcher Foundation and
Speaker 6: the family there had resources that they were able to
Speaker 6: get to do work in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: And the list goes on.
Speaker 6: A Carmen President in the Gathering for Justice, The list
Speaker 6: goes on and on and on. The ACLU working on
Speaker 6: some of the cases of people who have been vindicated
Speaker 6: and freed they took money from the NFL and applied
Speaker 6: it and put it towards grassroots groups and other groups
Speaker 6: that are doing things that we all claim we care about.
Speaker 6: So I don't know if I would call a gatekeeper,
Speaker 6: but I know that the way in which everything happened
Speaker 6: in the beginning, when the outside world is unaware of
Speaker 6: what's going on, it can definitely seem as though some
Speaker 6: funny business went down.
Speaker 5: But I think for me, I think what I'm saying
Speaker 5: is this and I'm not saying it doesn't seem what
Speaker 5: I'm saying is my personal just based off what I
Speaker 5: ain't know about the situation. Jay Z was not involved
Speaker 5: to silence the voice of account of Cappin. Jay Z
Speaker 5: didn't get involved in silence because that's what gatekeepers didn't, Okay,
Speaker 5: So that's what I'm trying to say. Jay Z got
Speaker 5: involved with Kala Kaepernick, and he took a knee with him,
Speaker 5: he wore his jersey, he said that we don't need
Speaker 5: to be in NFL. Was he was there to support
Speaker 5: count of Kaepernick. I think that based on what the
Speaker 5: knowledge that I have, because I was there to support
Speaker 5: Klein Kaepernick, I boycotted the NFL.
Speaker 2: I said that I wasn't doing all these things. And
Speaker 2: I think that after.
Speaker 5: Whatever the settlement was with Kalan Kaepernick, a lot of
Speaker 5: us were left confused.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't know if that was jay Z's situation.
Speaker 5: Maybe he had a different situation, but I know a
Speaker 5: lot of us on the front line were frustrated because
Speaker 5: we didn't know what was going on. All we heard
Speaker 5: was that there was a settlement, and then whatever direction
Speaker 5: that Kinen decided to.
Speaker 2: Go in, it wasn't.
Speaker 5: It wasn't on the same course that we were moving on,
Speaker 5: and we were sacrificing. I was literally sacrificing things that
Speaker 5: I didn't even have the sacrifice. So at that point,
Speaker 5: when he said that jay Z gate Keep and count
Speaker 5: of Kapniy didn't get to get his job, I said
Speaker 5: to myself, if I sue my job right and I
Speaker 5: come with a settlement in a non disclosure, they're not
Speaker 5: going to let me work there. Again, that's just not
Speaker 5: how this works. That's just not how it works.
Speaker 3: Different.
Speaker 6: That's that I agree with you about that, and that's
Speaker 6: my whole situation.
Speaker 4: I kind of feel like history is going to have
Speaker 4: to tell this story.
Speaker 5: I mean, history would have to tell me I'm just
Speaker 5: I'm telling my story just based off somebody who was
Speaker 5: out there advocating, who was a starch advocate for Klean Kaepernick.
Speaker 5: I was everything Klen Kapepernick, and I've seen how it unfolded,
Speaker 5: and I just want I personally will not allow people
Speaker 5: to say something that I think is false without me
Speaker 5: giving my perspective from being in there. I do not
Speaker 5: believe that jay z Gate kept that situation. I think
Speaker 5: that in the situation when he looked and seeing that
Speaker 5: there was a settlement and people were moving in a
Speaker 5: different direction and there wasn't no cohesiveness, he figured out,
Speaker 5: how do I maximize on the situation and be able
Speaker 5: to benefit black people the best that I can. And
Speaker 5: That's just my perspective. And now I'll move on to
Speaker 5: the next person because I want.
Speaker 2: To get to that.
Speaker 5: He talked about Ben Crump being Crump is somebody that
Speaker 5: I know personally who works with these families, who puts
Speaker 5: so much into it. I've never seen get Bankrump Gate
Speaker 5: keep anything. I watched Bankrupt's sacrifice. He does the best
Speaker 5: business or. He is a civil lawyer.
Speaker 2: He does not.
Speaker 5: Defense attorneys, not a prosecutor. He can't prosecute these cases.
Speaker 5: Only thing he can do is take the cases and
Speaker 5: make sure these people are paid for them being the
Speaker 5: civil injustice that they get.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing he can do.
Speaker 5: So when he speaks about Ben Trump saying how can
Speaker 5: he gate keep anything, I've never watched gate bank.
Speaker 2: Trump quiet anybody. I watched Ben Crump.
Speaker 5: Go out there and speak for the families and say,
Speaker 5: this is the worst thing we've ever seen. These people
Speaker 5: need to be compensated. The person needs to be prosecuted
Speaker 5: to the fullest extent of the law. So those are
Speaker 5: two people that he made a statement on that I
Speaker 5: just wanted to say that I didn't understand it.
Speaker 2: I didn't get it, and I didn't believe that.
Speaker 5: It was it was warranted that he made those statements
Speaker 5: about those two individuals.
Speaker 6: Okay, I mean I I you know how I feel
Speaker 6: about Ben's so I don't know. I would love to
Speaker 6: hear more about what he thinks Ben has done to
Speaker 6: be a gatekeeper. I mean, Ben's politics is not always
Speaker 6: the same as doctor Umar's, right, so they, you know,
Speaker 6: do operate in two different worlds. But from what I
Speaker 6: have always seen of been, he you know, he always
Speaker 6: empowers the local community to do whatever they got to do.
Speaker 6: That He's definitely not gonna sit here and say go
Speaker 6: burn the town down, but he's not stopping people from
Speaker 6: passing local legislation demanding whatever.
Speaker 4: In fact, I have literally witnessed.
Speaker 6: The White House or and or you know, somebody in
Speaker 6: the federal government or in Congress calling him like Ben,
Speaker 6: like you're killing us. Why are you how he is
Speaker 6: suing us for the farmers, Like you're supposed to be
Speaker 6: our guy. We invited you to the picnic, and now
Speaker 6: you're suing us for the black farmers. Or you're suing
Speaker 6: the federal government for many different reasons he been and
Speaker 6: suing attorney Suanne Robinson, are suing the federal government right
Speaker 6: now for Shanquala Robinson because they won't extradite the person
Speaker 6: who we believe is responsible for Shanquala's death to Mexico.
Speaker 6: And they also haven't brought an charges on their own.
Speaker 6: So I mean, I would just like to hear more
Speaker 6: about it. Not that I will ever agree, but I don't.
Speaker 6: I want to be able to speak intelligently in terms
Speaker 6: of my response to it. So I would love to
Speaker 6: hear what he has to say about why he thinks
Speaker 6: that Ben specifically is a gatekeeper.
Speaker 5: I think it's just a narrative, right, just like it's
Speaker 5: a narrative that Ben loses cases all the time, right,
Speaker 5: And that's just so crazy because he's not the prosecutor,
Speaker 5: he's not the defense attorney. So when they say he
Speaker 5: loses cases, and then you actually look at if you
Speaker 5: actually look at his documentary and see the amount of
Speaker 5: cases he's won, I don't really know too many cases
Speaker 5: that he's actually lost that he's litigated.
Speaker 2: It's not too many of them, you know.
Speaker 5: So those are these are narratives that are out there
Speaker 5: because you stand by black people because when the situation happens, right,
Speaker 5: you're the most prominent face in the most dominant voice,
Speaker 5: because they know when they see you, they need to
Speaker 5: be scared. And most people who who are who have
Speaker 5: those situations, who have civil cases, are gonna call Ben
Speaker 5: Crump because they know that he's gonna make sure that
Speaker 5: the publicity gets there, that people paying attention to it,
Speaker 5: and he's gonna get what it is that you deserve.
Speaker 5: So I think, because it's like anything else when we
Speaker 5: have conversations, these narratives get pushed aby the individual because
Speaker 5: they have a certain level of visibility and fame, you know,
Speaker 5: And I think it's it's unwarranted for Ben because he's
Speaker 5: one of the most genuine, part you know, honest brothers
Speaker 5: that I know like and and you know, if you
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 2: Those individuals, then you don't know.
Speaker 5: But I think it be remiss if I didn't speak
Speaker 5: on behalf of people that situation. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: I would be if I didn't speak on behalf of
Speaker 5: individuals that I know and I work with all the time,
Speaker 5: and I know situations.
Speaker 2: So I just wanted to speak to that because I
Speaker 2: really just didn't get it.
Speaker 5: Okay, Okay, So with that said, we at the end
Speaker 5: of another episode and the end of another season of
Speaker 5: the TMI Podcast. We appreciate y'all for supporting us and
Speaker 5: making us the number one podcast in the world. We're
Speaker 5: just gonna get better and better and better. Thank you
Speaker 5: to all of the guests who are on this season.
Speaker 5: We had an amazing season. Shout out to Podcast Central
Speaker 5: Armine Do for supporting us. Shout out to our fans.
Speaker 2: We love you. We're gonna see you next season. We're
Speaker 2: gonna be bigger and better and make sure.
Speaker 5: That you understand that we do have power, and we
Speaker 5: do love you. And I'm not gonna always be right,
Speaker 5: Tamika d. Marriage is not gonna always be wrong, but
Speaker 5: we will both always and always I mean always be authentic,
Speaker 5: So Louke