Speaker 1: Keep on riding with us, says, we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
Speaker 1: weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cycer Army host ramses
Speaker 1: job he.
Speaker 2: Is Rams Jo, I am q Ward. You are hopefully
Speaker 2: still tuned in the Civic ccycler him.
Speaker 1: Not, then, Welcome to the show. We're having a good
Speaker 1: time here. We are joined by Brandy Irvin and Talley
Speaker 1: hornback from the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. In corporate reading.
Speaker 1: We were having a conversation about a Kamala Harris rally
Speaker 1: that recently took place here in Arizona, and now we
Speaker 1: are going to spend the next part of the show
Speaker 1: figuring out how to have conversations with people who disagree
Speaker 1: with us politically speaking online. So buckle up because q
Speaker 1: is going to give us all the game that we
Speaker 1: saw him deploy.
Speaker 2: And last week.
Speaker 1: Keep positioning that, Yeah, witness, I witnessed a master at
Speaker 1: work and you will you will learn his secrets today,
Speaker 1: So please stick around for that and so much more.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, let's discuss b A b
Speaker 1: Becoming a Better Ally BABA and today's Baba A sponsored
Speaker 1: by Friends of the movement. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: the Free Voter Wilder from Fotmglobal dot com to support
Speaker 1: black businesses and allied businesses as well as making an
Speaker 1: impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot Com. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to share a letter. You know, BABA is
Speaker 1: a segment that we dedicate to people who have done
Speaker 1: great things, and people have done nice things and whatever.
Speaker 1: But this really is just about being who you are
Speaker 1: and coming as you are and doing what you can.
Speaker 1: And this happened. Q doesn't know this, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: share it. We got a letter from a lady named
Speaker 1: Laura says Hi Rams's jaw Q. I was listening to
Speaker 1: your most recent show on KOPN, Columbia, Missouri. You were
Speaker 1: talking about getting some hate mail. It's no surprise in
Speaker 1: this crazy time, speaking the truth puts you right in
Speaker 1: the cross heres. I wanted to send you a different
Speaker 1: kind of note from a white person, as it were.
Speaker 1: I always appreciate your show and was completely caught by
Speaker 1: surprise when you asked the question about the magic wand
Speaker 1: would you rather have cheap gas, cheap food, or cheap housing.
Speaker 1: As a person who's never been insecure as far as
Speaker 1: far as housing, my first thought was all three were
Speaker 1: equal in value. I was so impressed by your explanation.
Speaker 1: I see it everywhere I go in our town. Besides
Speaker 1: the crazy market, everywhere, college students here have priced working
Speaker 1: people out of affordable housing, and landlords rent to them
Speaker 1: rather than take a housing voucher. Thanks for continuing the
Speaker 1: good work of keeping us informed. Laura and Laura, the
Speaker 1: reason that you are our baba this week is because
Speaker 1: you don't know what it means to have a kind
Speaker 1: word sometimes when all the words that you hear are
Speaker 1: either from the echo chamber of your own making. Q
Speaker 1: and I we spend a lot of time together, or
Speaker 1: the words from social media, where our algorithm puts us
Speaker 1: with people that would probably rather see us and our
Speaker 1: children dead if they have their way. So this letter
Speaker 1: means a lot, and we want to say thank you
Speaker 1: for being a better ally. Now we are going to
Speaker 1: to take some time to have Q tell us a story.
Speaker 1: So we have some some some action steps that we'll
Speaker 1: get to a little bit later.
Speaker 2: But uh.
Speaker 1: Something, Let me set you up. Let me set you
Speaker 1: up a little better than now. You deserve better than
Speaker 1: that Q.
Speaker 2: I saw Q.
Speaker 1: You know we're we're friends on social media, of course,
Speaker 1: and he put up a post of something that he
Speaker 1: should have been very excited about. We had press credentials
Speaker 1: to go to the Kamala Harris rally in Arizona. And
Speaker 1: I understand and respect that no matter what, politics is
Speaker 1: complicated and you have one person that's supposed to be
Speaker 1: all things to all people, right, I understand and see
Speaker 1: that entirely. But for some people who get excited, reasonably
Speaker 1: excited about a person that they see the themselves in,
Speaker 1: or that they see, you know whatever, or that if
Speaker 1: this candidate makes the people around me happy, if Kamala
Speaker 1: Harrison makes my little sister happy, gets what I'm happy,
Speaker 1: that's the end of the sentence. Doesn't matter, because my
Speaker 1: sister's the most important person to me. There are people
Speaker 1: who will jump in and try to rob you of
Speaker 1: that moment, rob you of that joy. And Q is
Speaker 1: one of these people that approaches social media very cautiously.
Speaker 1: You might if you follow our social media, you might
Speaker 1: see my afro on a lot more pictures than you
Speaker 1: see Q's beanie. But because you know, we we have
Speaker 1: our difference. Accused strengths are in certain places and my
Speaker 1: strengths are in others. That doesn't mean that I'm invincible,
Speaker 1: but I will never let my brother fall on a
Speaker 1: sword that I can take myself right. And we have
Speaker 1: this approach to each other. Well, in the common section
Speaker 1: of a post that he put up where he was
Speaker 1: sharing the credentials of that that rally against something that
Speaker 1: we would have never anticipated or expected that we would
Speaker 1: even be a part of, much less. Hey, you guys,
Speaker 1: you guys, come up to the front, you stand right here.
Speaker 1: You got good audio, you know that sort of thing
Speaker 1: where we're the like kind of the important people around.
Speaker 1: They're making sure we're taken care of. To be proud
Speaker 1: of that and to be happy and excited about a
Speaker 1: candidate that is a little bit closer to our age
Speaker 1: and kind of has some of some of our sensibilities
Speaker 1: are shared with this candidate. There's there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: c sharing a little bit about that moment. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: tagged in in the post in question, and so I
Speaker 1: got a lot of the comments that people were sharing,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not a social media person like that.
Speaker 1: I posted ghost because I ain't here for it either.
Speaker 1: But I noticed that there was one person that kind
Speaker 1: of kept coming back, coming back, coming back, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know what that means. There's a discussion, and if
Speaker 1: it's a discussion online, it's not really a discussion, right,
Speaker 1: And so I'm going to turn it over to Q
Speaker 1: to kind of take it from there and kind of
Speaker 1: tell us what was happening, and then of course I
Speaker 1: want you both to chime in if and when you
Speaker 1: feel that it's appropriate.
Speaker 2: So interesting to be positioned as some sort of social
Speaker 2: media expert, especially with regard to non constructive dialogue. Some
Speaker 2: of my personal friends noticed that for about four years
Speaker 2: I was completely absent from social media. There was no Twitter,
Speaker 2: there was no Instagram, there was no Facebook, there was
Speaker 2: no nothing, because I went through what they now call bullying,
Speaker 2: but back then it was just mean people. But there
Speaker 2: were thousands of mean people because of something that I
Speaker 2: went through in my personal life that brought an audience
Speaker 2: with it. In real life, there's not much that I
Speaker 2: can't stand up to. I show up completely as myself
Speaker 2: in spaces, in person, and in most cases, and I'm
Speaker 2: by most, I mean like ninety nine percent, you'll get
Speaker 2: one of the most pleasant people you've ever encountered, unless, however,
Speaker 2: you run a foul of someone that I care about,
Speaker 2: and then as justly as I could possibly show up,
Speaker 2: a different version of me avails itself. But again, those
Speaker 2: encounters are rare in person, because most people in person
Speaker 2: are not as bout it about it as they would
Speaker 2: have you believe they are online. In recent years, since
Speaker 2: Ramses and I stepped away from the entertainment side of
Speaker 2: our career into the social justice and activist space, the
Speaker 2: type of interactions that we get from followers and listeners
Speaker 2: and people who would, as Ramses you know so eloquently put,
Speaker 2: would probably rather the worst outcomes for us. People that
Speaker 2: look like us and those that we care about, they
Speaker 2: show up in a way that's very very aggressive, very
Speaker 2: very negative, and very very mean. So from the beginning
Speaker 2: of the show, I've kind of not engaged at all
Speaker 2: with our comment section, But as the show grew, so
Speaker 2: did the comment section, and once it became something that
Speaker 2: was noticeable, I removed myself as an admin from our website,
Speaker 2: from our socials, and deleted social media apps from my
Speaker 2: phone with regards to my personal accounts, cause I just
Speaker 2: don't do well with the negative discourse online. This hit
Speaker 2: me more specifically and more personally when Donald Trump became president,
Speaker 2: because there have been topics and things throughout our collective
Speaker 2: lives that black people used to be united on, Like
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, I wouldn't have had to wonder if
Speaker 2: any of my friends supported Donald Trump. It would have
Speaker 2: been a very obvious no, like every black person I
Speaker 2: knew would have been in solidarity on that point. The
Speaker 2: reason why I know that's true is because OJ Simpson
Speaker 2: was on trial for something that most people know he
Speaker 2: was on trial for, and without having to gather facts,
Speaker 2: without having to have a meeting, black people kind of
Speaker 2: unilaterally and collectively supported him. That was not because we
Speaker 2: knew OJ was a great manner that we knew that
Speaker 2: he was innocent. We just knew what black people's relationships
Speaker 2: were like law enforcement, and in the wake of Rodney king.
Speaker 1: O, J.
Speaker 2: Simpson presented himself as a symbol that black people could
Speaker 2: unify and say, Okay, not this time. We probably didn't
Speaker 2: do that correctly. However, the reason why we showed up
Speaker 2: the way that we did was obvious. We had been
Speaker 2: under the thumb of law enforcement in this country since
Speaker 2: the law enforcement was created. Absolutely so when we watched
Speaker 2: a black man in the name of Rodney King be
Speaker 2: the victim of police violence on video and there be
Speaker 2: zero accountability for it. The next time a black man,
Speaker 2: especially a famous black man, was put in a position
Speaker 2: where it was him versus the LAPD, collectively black people
Speaker 2: just said, Okay, we're riding with him on this one.
Speaker 2: That group of black people would not have in any
Speaker 2: way stood for the type of candidate that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: was because once upon a time he was a celebrity
Speaker 2: that black people kind of shouted out, you know, once
Speaker 2: upon upon a time Nelly dropped his name in one
Speaker 2: of the biggest hip hop songs ever. But as we learned,
Speaker 2: but as we learned more about him and especially his
Speaker 2: quote unquote politics, because that's an interesting way to put it,
Speaker 2: because he doesn't politic He doesn't give you policy, he
Speaker 2: does not legislate. He just sow's division and hate. When
Speaker 2: that happened, I, you know, all of mine, Naivete showed
Speaker 2: up very upset about that result and expected people that
Speaker 2: I care about and that I know to feel like
Speaker 2: I felt. But oh, contrere, monfrere, and people who look
Speaker 2: like you, yes, but even people that don't. Right, if
Speaker 2: you know me and you've met me, and you've held
Speaker 2: my child, my Mexican and black child. That's important to
Speaker 2: say because when these people are screaming build that wall,
Speaker 2: I think you would expect that that wouldn't be something
Speaker 2: I'd be happy about if you're somebody that claims to
Speaker 2: care about me. So, as my dms started to fill
Speaker 2: up with people who look like me and those that
Speaker 2: don't in defense of all the great things Donald Trump
Speaker 2: had done for black people, Okay, I got to get
Speaker 2: off of this thing again. And you know, most recently,
Speaker 2: as Civic Cipher has grown way beyond what Ramses and
Speaker 2: I thought when we were just trying to get on
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night on Saturdays to give
Speaker 2: people like yourselves a platform to talk about important moments
Speaker 2: like this. We did not know we would then end
Speaker 2: up on the radio and seventy six cities and growing
Speaker 2: and across digital platforms from every way that you can
Speaker 2: access digital media. As your audience grows, so do those
Speaker 2: that oppose you. So two separate people made their way
Speaker 2: onto my wall as we used to call it, or
Speaker 2: comments section.
Speaker 1: Talk about the lady first and the back and forth
Speaker 1: because this part is really important and how hitting her
Speaker 1: with facts and so versus and all that stuff. How
Speaker 1: it doesn't do anything just because I want people to
Speaker 1: relate to that. I think that's important.
Speaker 2: So people would have to understand. I was a DJ
Speaker 2: for eleven years, and at the height of my DJ career,
Speaker 2: I became the full time official and arena DJ for
Speaker 2: the Phoenix Suns and I got to do a radio
Speaker 2: show with my best friend. But a radio show CARDI
Speaker 2: b Tickets, Migos, Underground hip Hop, like everything that you
Speaker 2: would expect from a hip hop radio show. It's fun,
Speaker 2: it's celebratory, it's not overly serious. It's definitely not political,
Speaker 2: except George Floyd was murdered and talking about that on
Speaker 2: the radio put me and Ramses in a position where
Speaker 2: we had to make some very interesting career decisions. So
Speaker 2: when I go from that to being press credential to
Speaker 2: cover the rally for what might be the first black
Speaker 2: female president in our country's history, I feel damn proud
Speaker 2: about that. And I simply shared that I was press
Speaker 2: at the Kamala Harris tim Wall's rally. I did not
Speaker 2: endorse the candidate. I did not implore people to vote
Speaker 2: for her, just really celebrating a moment for myself sidebar.
Speaker 2: Pay attention to the party that's imploring people to register
Speaker 2: to vote in general, one party saying registered to vote.
Speaker 2: They're not even saying vote for me, just register to
Speaker 2: vote and vote. The other parties not saying that, not
Speaker 2: even to vote for them. So that's just something that
Speaker 2: we should pay very close attention to. And this young
Speaker 2: lady who I will not name, commented, wonder how many
Speaker 2: people were really there, as the photoshop photos in front
Speaker 2: of the Air Force too had no reflection of people
Speaker 2: in them. Now, what Ramses had to teach me to do,
Speaker 2: God bless my brother is give people the benefit of
Speaker 2: the doubt, because I be ready. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some things are black and white, not gray.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. People that are listening, y'all
Speaker 2: can't see my face, but you know what I'm saying too.
Speaker 2: So I said, you know what, maybe in good faith,
Speaker 2: this young lady was fooled by one of those photoshopped images,
Speaker 2: because anybody can be fooled by that stuff. Not all
Speaker 2: people are here intentionally for the propaganda. They just end
Speaker 2: up victim to it. Somebody that was louder than me
Speaker 2: told them something, so they think it's true. So let
Speaker 2: me just educate her. Because I was there. I can
Speaker 2: just show her a first hand account that's not photoshopped
Speaker 2: and that there were really thousands of people.
Speaker 1: There, nineteen thousand something like that.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 2: My photo and video and comment from first hand accounts.
Speaker 2: Because you see this press thing, we're not enough for her,
Speaker 2: and this is when you start to see that this
Speaker 2: is something else. Her response to me, saying, so, the
Speaker 2: problem with the photoshop conspiracy theory is that we have
Speaker 2: live video footage of Air Force two arriving and of
Speaker 2: all of the rallies in this case, I was there,
Speaker 2: not photoshop. But you have fun with that. Her response,
Speaker 2: I'll just make a left here because we're not in
Speaker 2: the same reality and we don't agree with what facts are. Okay,
Speaker 2: she's the VP, now, why is she waiting to maybe
Speaker 2: win and not making changes now? So we're not even
Speaker 2: going to acknowledge the photoshop myth that we just debunked.
Speaker 2: We're just going to change the goal. We'll move the
Speaker 2: goal post. Let's talk about something completely different and deflect.
Speaker 2: And at this point I quit. But I have a
Speaker 2: brother here, and he presented her with credible sourced articles
Speaker 2: and at this point, I'll spend all day trying to
Speaker 2: read all of these responses for her because she's very
Speaker 2: committed to nothing's real. And oh you're one of them.
Speaker 2: I thought you were somebody who might have been taken
Speaker 2: advantage of. And this is what I mean when I
Speaker 2: say some people show up and they're kind of ashamed
Speaker 2: to be make America great again from the jump, they
Speaker 2: need to kind of be.
Speaker 1: They don't want to make it about them. They want
Speaker 1: to make it about how you're wrong, not how they're right. Yes,
Speaker 1: so so let me jump in here because so for
Speaker 1: this one woman, as Q mentioned, she would kind of
Speaker 1: move the goal post. And moving that goal post meant
Speaker 1: that now we have a new thing to engage with.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I want folks to take
Speaker 1: from this is when where I chose to engage because
Speaker 1: I know Q is that's not his thing. It's like
Speaker 1: I I have a little bit more reserves there, not
Speaker 1: a lot, but I have a little bit more. And
Speaker 1: that feeling of like somebody coming and saying some comment
Speaker 1: and they're wrong and you just letting it live. That's
Speaker 1: that's hard for me. That's hard for a lot of
Speaker 1: us because you're wrong and I got to tell you,
Speaker 1: but it's a slippery slow as we'll get to. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything to her anything at all. I
Speaker 1: just provided links. So when she said, well, what about
Speaker 1: Kamala hair dored doing this? And then I would send
Speaker 1: her a link and then she'd be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's CNN, that's the Clinton News Network, and there's tons
Speaker 1: of links. That's just the first one that I found. Right,
Speaker 1: But I'm starting to see, Okay, this person is not
Speaker 1: looking for credible evidence. So then she moves the goal
Speaker 1: post again. So then I say, you know, before you
Speaker 1: hit the rest of these MAGA talking points, here's a
Speaker 1: whole Time magazine article debunking all these popular MAGA myths
Speaker 1: about Kamala Harris. Right, So then I submit that and
Speaker 1: then she responds saying, oh, well this must be true
Speaker 1: because I have a link to it. And the link
Speaker 1: said Tim Wall's YouTube parody account parody of Tim Wall's
Speaker 1: song or something, the title parody in the title. I
Speaker 1: didn't even click it.
Speaker 3: But it said parody YouTube and not likedible news.
Speaker 1: Someone has that's anchored to some a journalistic credibility. So
Speaker 1: what I'm what I've started to see and what this is.
Speaker 1: This happens quite a bit, but to see us kind
Speaker 1: of go through it and see mentally where a person
Speaker 1: could take you, I started realizing, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is something that a lot of people are going through
Speaker 1: right now, especially people who are in support of Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: in the midst of this these crazy disinformation campaigns, in
Speaker 1: the midst of these bots, in the midst of all
Speaker 1: of this misinformation, as I mentioned, disinformation, to try to
Speaker 1: defend their position, their intelligence, their integrity as a voter,
Speaker 1: as a conscious being in this society. And so I
Speaker 1: came up with some action steps that I saw Q
Speaker 1: take and that I kind of jumped in and took too.
Speaker 1: And this is this is not the first time we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation.
Speaker 3: But I can just make a quick comment, Yes, I
Speaker 3: know when you know it was it was initially Trump
Speaker 3: on the ballot years ago. I had a similar conversation
Speaker 3: and I can't recall you know who who shared their insight,
Speaker 3: but I walked away with recognizing, I guess learning and
Speaker 3: a lot of these instances, right, we're talking about fat
Speaker 3: versus opinion or an emotions or alternative factor emotions, Right,
Speaker 3: A lot of folks on the other side who do
Speaker 3: throw this away, right, you're putting things in their face.
Speaker 3: We have to recognize that this is tied to who
Speaker 3: they are at the deepest core, at their identity. So
Speaker 3: you're trying to change more than just an opinion.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yes, So here's some advice that I think you
Speaker 1: want to take with you, some action steps. Number one,
Speaker 1: just don't engage. Number one, just don't engage. Right, If
Speaker 1: you can find it within yourself, don't do it. But
Speaker 1: if you must, know that it's a war that you
Speaker 1: need to win, not a battle, So don't give all
Speaker 1: your attention to this one. That's good. Keep a cool head,
Speaker 1: cite your sources. You might end up learning something, you know.
Speaker 1: I found out that Trump didn't actually cut the CDC funding,
Speaker 1: He just wanted it cut, and I had to apologize
Speaker 1: for that on the air. Prepare for lots of cognitive dissonance,
Speaker 1: and don't be afraid of the block button. So we'll
Speaker 1: leave that one right there. As always, I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank you very much for tuning into Civic Cipher. I've
Speaker 1: been your host Rams's job.
Speaker 2: He is still Rams's job. I am most of the time. Qwar.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and uh, thank thank you so much to our
Speaker 1: guest Brandy Irvin to leyhorn Back, thank you for coming
Speaker 1: in and uh for just being who you are, being
Speaker 1: the women that we look up to, that protect us,
Speaker 1: that keep us in position to be able to do
Speaker 1: what it is we do. You inspire us and we're
Speaker 1: grateful for the both of you being here. Just because
Speaker 1: we have a few moments, we want to say it again. Uh,
Speaker 1: the black woman is as close to God as we'll
Speaker 1: ever be on this planet, and so the thanks is
Speaker 1: never going to be enough, but we will say that
Speaker 1: much and make sure that we share the audience.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to submit anything, uh T questions, topics,
Speaker 1: any donations you want to submit, do so at civiccipher
Speaker 1: dot com. You can follow us on all social media
Speaker 1: at Civic Cipher until next week.
Speaker 2: Y'all, Peace,