Speaker 1: Were waiting no reparations, waiting listening, waiting on reparations. The
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio tell tell us the possible
Speaker 1: industry and being Sherman's Company and the big private prison
Speaker 1: propertier Telling Company, and the big parmaceutical industry and comfortably
Speaker 1: mo medical indebticness crushes is underneath I'm but won't believe
Speaker 1: the working people love the ones that need the biggest
Speaker 1: chunk of cheese. And with Bernie Sanders one in the
Speaker 1: scene every man woman and see if you tan Germanic,
Speaker 1: if you're transterfering, and seat you're a friend of serving
Speaker 1: to see Sherman kering. The week workers earn a fifteen
Speaker 1: gon Zoomers earn the degrees with human friending the week
Speaker 1: attacking the corporations with certain decurb greeted with the green
Speaker 1: new deal. The earth burning will see. So who are
Speaker 1: you on on this battle for humanity? Are you with
Speaker 1: the Ola Garta with the working families? Are you with
Speaker 1: the future of our planet or his enemy? Are you
Speaker 1: with the one person? Where were you on the sands
Speaker 1: and the revolutions over and exploding like a nova? I
Speaker 1: just took a right of Kroger and nobody pulled me over.
Speaker 1: I got lost on site and ain't nobody sober. You
Speaker 1: know my name, Dope Knife. My mama called me Toga go.
Speaker 1: We smoke up. It's all leegal, We all equal, We
Speaker 1: all ball. No such thing as small people, gunsticks, pots
Speaker 1: and pans before evil. Now we got plots of land fall.
Speaker 1: Zero sedo. I won't be shocking and jobbing. Blaze at
Speaker 1: your face. Why the fuck are you smiling? Politicians ain't original,
Speaker 1: nothing surprising. They clones of each other like they stuck
Speaker 1: on the island. Well, what's up, y'all? What's happening? My
Speaker 1: name is Dope Knife, Lingo franca and we are waiting
Speaker 1: on reparations. Hurry, Hey, So how you doing. I'm busybody,
Speaker 1: fresh off of quote unquote vacation in North Carolina. Else, Dope,
Speaker 1: watch a lot of Netflix, uh ate a lot of
Speaker 1: cookie doughs straight out of the tube. So it sounds
Speaker 1: like a little bit of what you're doing here. But
Speaker 1: over there, yeah, I pretty much the same thing. I'm
Speaker 1: still going to commission meetings and whatnot. Um, but just
Speaker 1: in the company of my mother. How is she all right?
Speaker 1: She's good, mean, she she's got lupus and so she's
Speaker 1: been very careful with COVID and everything and just generally
Speaker 1: has a lot of like long issues and so, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that she's staying safe and inside. I was
Speaker 1: reading at home. So yeah, So I have a meeting
Speaker 1: with the police chief of Athens tomorrow about some of
Speaker 1: the movement's demands. Um that we've been uh having his
Speaker 1: protests over continually. I've been seeing you know, all of
Speaker 1: the country. They're still ongoing. Even the media has not
Speaker 1: covered it. It's closely, but you know, there's been a
Speaker 1: call for like a ban on neck restraints here, a
Speaker 1: ban on tear gas like they've done in Seattle, Denver, Dallas,
Speaker 1: Philadelphia and in Portland. Um, and a lot of other
Speaker 1: things that aren't even radical, like the finding the police
Speaker 1: freak people out, but like things like requiring officers to
Speaker 1: give a warning before they shoot is actually required in
Speaker 1: seventy out of one hundred of the largest police departments
Speaker 1: in the country. You know, as a fan of action movies,
Speaker 1: cops in action movies used to like yo freeze all
Speaker 1: the time. I don't know what happened to that. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: there's the requirement that officers have a duty to intervene
Speaker 1: to stop another officer from using excessive force, which is
Speaker 1: standard in fifty out of one d of the largest
Speaker 1: police departments in the country. Um, out of the hundred
Speaker 1: largest police departments in the country have de escalation continuum
Speaker 1: and like a use of force continuum. And so like,
Speaker 1: we're just asking for things that him. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to presently see him tomorrow. Um does he not know this?
Speaker 1: He knows the ship. You know, this is what we want. Uh.
Speaker 1: They called this meeting because they were like, Mariah, you
Speaker 1: have to stop having these caravans without apertmit. And I
Speaker 1: was like, the movement does not ask for permission to
Speaker 1: mass disrupt, Like you know what I'm saying, Well, how
Speaker 1: are you doing. I'm good. Um, I was chilling here
Speaker 1: taking care of your cat. And uh, you know, sweet boy,
Speaker 1: he was coming in and out as he pleased, but
Speaker 1: he was good. Um. Made some more progress on my
Speaker 1: comic book, and I produced a bunch of beats that
Speaker 1: I'm going to be using on this show soon. Sick
Speaker 1: not gonna be on this episode. This episode is going
Speaker 1: to be some of my older beats and Factor chandelier.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna have some new fire for the people
Speaker 1: in a little bit, and the Black Lives Matter Punisher
Speaker 1: shirt that I did with Jerry Conway, the creator of Punisher,
Speaker 1: that finally got printed and people are starting to get those.
Speaker 1: So and then on top of that, I'm getting ready
Speaker 1: for this show that I have on July eight. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be on Twitch tv Slash the Grand Collab. But
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like an indie hip hop stream show
Speaker 1: is going to be a bunch of dough backs, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be one of them. So yes, tuned into
Speaker 1: the rap a little bit. But yeah, Now other than that,
Speaker 1: just been watching the news and and you know, writing
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. You you heard about this Kanye show.
Speaker 1: Is there something new? Well, I mean development, you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't we haven't talked about him since he announced
Speaker 1: that he was I feel like last time that we
Speaker 1: mentioned him, he announced that he was going to run
Speaker 1: for president and it's obviously bullshit, But just your general thoughts.
Speaker 1: I mean, I loved watching like the libs lose their
Speaker 1: ship about it. A lot of people doing the you know,
Speaker 1: doing the research about what countries, what sorry, doing the
Speaker 1: research about what states he can't get on the ballot
Speaker 1: for how would it affect the electoral math and whose
Speaker 1: votes would he take? Oh, the young black voters aren't
Speaker 1: gonna vote for Biden anymore. I'm kind of mad that
Speaker 1: it's Kanye, to be honest with you, like I'm mad
Speaker 1: that it's not that if it was any other rapper
Speaker 1: that I would think it's as acceptable or that they're qualified.
Speaker 1: But at least I would understand people's logic, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Can I ask you a question? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if it was tell them quality? Yeah? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: So that's exactly what I'm saying. So I'm not saying that, oh,
Speaker 1: I think that Taller Quality is qualified to be president,
Speaker 1: but if somebody says, oh, Tler Quality should be president,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, okay, while people are looking at famous people
Speaker 1: to be president these days, So alright, Tyler Quality is
Speaker 1: a conscious rapper who people know is politically where I
Speaker 1: understand someone's logic in picking. What if it was Chance
Speaker 1: the rapper, You know, he was going hard for Kanye
Speaker 1: the other day when about operations in abolishing prisons. But
Speaker 1: exactly at the same time, I will say, you know,
Speaker 1: Chance the rapper is a lot more politically aware of
Speaker 1: of a rapper and a person just historically than Kanye
Speaker 1: has been in my in my opinion, from my point
Speaker 1: of view. So again, I would understand people's train of
Speaker 1: thought to be like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna I think
Speaker 1: the chance of the rapper. But but what but like,
Speaker 1: would you feel tempted, would I want? Would you feel
Speaker 1: tempted what to vote for? Chance the rapper? Hell, I
Speaker 1: might be a little bit tempted. No, I'm kind of over.
Speaker 1: I'm over like celebrities. I think I think I've seen
Speaker 1: what that's like. Good, all right, Fine, well let's talk
Speaker 1: to our real candidate, all right. So yeah, bottom line,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't I think that it's I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of racist to frame it in this in
Speaker 1: the way of, oh, a black person's running, they're going
Speaker 1: to siphon the black vote, doesn't matter who they don't
Speaker 1: understand how hip hop works. But in the sense that
Speaker 1: like white listeners make up like Kanye was able to
Speaker 1: like catapult to such a ban because his appeal is
Speaker 1: mostly to white people. But the thing that you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to cover it a bit on our our
Speaker 1: episode that we're doing on Donald Trump at some point.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, like I feel like when I
Speaker 1: think of Donald Trump as president. To me, and I've
Speaker 1: always felt this, there's like a list of qualities that
Speaker 1: I think disqualify him from being from being able to
Speaker 1: lead a country point blank period. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: They're like a list of like character traits and human
Speaker 1: qualities that I feel like, Okay, that's checked off, Okay,
Speaker 1: check off, and they'd like go into order of like
Speaker 1: importance of just like functionality of what somebody needs, the
Speaker 1: tools of someone needs to like be the head of stay.
Speaker 1: And like he's racist is like number four in there,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. But there's like a couple
Speaker 1: other traits that I'm like, yeah, I see that in Kanye.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want that to be president at all. Like ever,
Speaker 1: like no, like you know what I'm saying, I feel
Speaker 1: the same exact way that I feel about that of
Speaker 1: Trump about it. So I don't know. To me, it's
Speaker 1: it's just it's disappointing that I mean, we're here at
Speaker 1: all because we could have had Bernie Sands. Speaking of Bernie,
Speaker 1: so like I feel like, you know, I opened up
Speaker 1: the show with some bars I wrote about Bernie back
Speaker 1: in February because our guests this week has somewhat failed
Speaker 1: a void in a lot of like young progressive organizing UM,
Speaker 1: like capacity, UM, media, attention and leadership UM. His name
Speaker 1: should hit Batar. He's running for UM Dancy Pelosi seat
Speaker 1: in the twelfth congressional district of California. And so I
Speaker 1: think that like a lot of folks are turning for
Speaker 1: hope else that they're looking to people like shot Head,
Speaker 1: looking to people like Kanye. Maybe not like Bernie Bros
Speaker 1: said as much. I don't know. I saw mixed things
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Frankly, what about Bernie Bros Being like, yeah, Kanye. Well,
Speaker 1: this is going to be part of a series that
Speaker 1: we're gonna be doing of interviews with people who have
Speaker 1: or who have had a foot in the culture of
Speaker 1: hip hop as active participants, whether that be an m
Speaker 1: C breakdancer, graffiti artists, but then also have another foot
Speaker 1: either in politics or activism just general cool ship that's
Speaker 1: making an impact, making a difference in the world. This
Speaker 1: series is called Spitting Images. I thought that myself, And
Speaker 1: so there's obvious races that like progressives are now sort
Speaker 1: of turning their attention to UM across the country because
Speaker 1: you know the very policy driven um we're seeing now
Speaker 1: with pandemic unfolding and five point four million people having
Speaker 1: lost their health insurance UM since it started, like you know,
Speaker 1: fucking Medicare for all man, it could have been a
Speaker 1: thing um and stuff like that. So we're like trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to keep that those policy goals alive.
Speaker 1: And it's through electing people like shot Ahead, I think.
Speaker 1: So to start for folks that don't know about you,
Speaker 1: if you can tell us a little bit about yourself
Speaker 1: and why you're running down set Nancy Pelosi in Congress.
Speaker 1: I'm an immigrant, UM, an artist. I'm a lawyer and
Speaker 1: an advocate, and I basically watched my city in Washington
Speaker 1: for the better part of twenty years be represented by
Speaker 1: a voice that's proven all too willing to Sup or
Speaker 1: Wall Street before San Francisco. And I've been in San
Speaker 1: Francisco since two thousand. I spent about half that time
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. Fighting for San Francisco's values and
Speaker 1: interests there without a seat in Congress, and from the
Speaker 1: time when I was challenging bushes, wors for profit and
Speaker 1: Obama's drone strikes and wars on the press and deportations
Speaker 1: and mass surveillance, and then Trump's corruption and mendacity and
Speaker 1: assaults on human rights and reason across every one of
Speaker 1: those eras of abuses, I've seen Nancy Pelosi standing with
Speaker 1: corporate and conservative interests instead of the progressive interests of
Speaker 1: the city that I love. And so you I've heard
Speaker 1: you refer to yourself in in other interviews as a
Speaker 1: political artist, and I wonder how UM arts have factored
Speaker 1: into your advocacy or been leveraged for your advocacy in
Speaker 1: previous campaigns that you've fought for US issues. It's been
Speaker 1: really for me, very integral, even before politics, like in
Speaker 1: a meta sense, like I got a culturated basically through
Speaker 1: spoken word and hip hop, Like it was hearing I
Speaker 1: was in Chicago in the nineties and um, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Green Mill is a place that comes to
Speaker 1: mind on the north side of the city. And you know,
Speaker 1: even like just back in Hyde Parks on the south side,
Speaker 1: just hearing in Cipher's hearing on stages and open mics
Speaker 1: on the trains, and like the trains and the train stations,
Speaker 1: like moming with people. You just to hear people's stories,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's it was through the mechanism, if
Speaker 1: you will. It's like a gross ware to apply here,
Speaker 1: like the word is the beginning of art, and I
Speaker 1: think it was the art is always reflecting on the
Speaker 1: circumstances that we come from and and are in. I
Speaker 1: think any art that pretends not to be political is
Speaker 1: simply blind to its political insinuation. It was like, if
Speaker 1: you're not challenging the power in your art, you're implicitly
Speaker 1: deferring to it. And much of the art I had
Speaker 1: a chance to hear in that era was very, if
Speaker 1: not challenging power, at least speaking from beneath the boot.
Speaker 1: And so that's plus my own experience, you know, that's
Speaker 1: kind of a perspective through which I see policies, you know,
Speaker 1: from the lens of an immigrant whose family migrated around
Speaker 1: the world, you know, halfway around the world twice to
Speaker 1: get here, seeking the freedoms and opportunities that we continued
Speaker 1: to deny our own people here in the United States
Speaker 1: and always have you know, um, when did you first start,
Speaker 1: like wrapping, and what impact do you think it had them?
Speaker 1: Like your ability to communicate in general or in public
Speaker 1: speaking U in late high school around how old, were
Speaker 1: you h sixteen fifteen sixteen, I was doing musical theater.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Oh, I said, word, that's that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're We're like a hippoie hob show, so we
Speaker 1: say stuff like word fresh though, no, no, it's cool.
Speaker 1: I think I had to turn up the volume on
Speaker 1: my mike because obviously I think I had it turned down.
Speaker 1: So that's fil and fall. Sorry for that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, for me, musical theater was like how I
Speaker 1: cracked out of my shell. You know, I was an
Speaker 1: awkward immigrant and I didn't really know how to fit in.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in rural Missouri and we moved
Speaker 1: to the suburbs, and that was a pretty profound cultural change.
Speaker 1: It's like we immigrated by moving half an hour, no
Speaker 1: second time, and for my family a third time. That
Speaker 1: was the second time. For me. You know, my family
Speaker 1: moved from Pakistan to England, and from England to rural Missouri,
Speaker 1: and then from rural Missouri to the suburbs. Every one
Speaker 1: of those was a, you know, pretty profound migration. And
Speaker 1: then I moved to the South side of Chicago before
Speaker 1: I went to Stanford for law school and like every
Speaker 1: one of those was a pretty profound migration. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the art I mean for me, I would say poetry
Speaker 1: and lyrics, both in the sense of giving me the
Speaker 1: opportunity to just speak to things that I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: even address in my politics, you know, like just where
Speaker 1: your soul comes from, Like that's a venue for a
Speaker 1: whole range of expression beyond that, and you know, like
Speaker 1: the metaphysical unity of all things and how we all
Speaker 1: share an interest ultimately, like a self interest in preserving
Speaker 1: a future for all of us. Like that's like the
Speaker 1: thing I don't necessarily like riff on a lot in
Speaker 1: a left brain this course, you know, but like the
Speaker 1: heart gives me a chance to hit on um, so
Speaker 1: that the more visionary side. And then also just in
Speaker 1: the sense I would say, you know, I get um.
Speaker 1: I get occasionally shouted out for knowing how to use
Speaker 1: a microphone, and I think that that particularly came from
Speaker 1: performance and just time on micure the path that you're on,
Speaker 1: Like was this all was this always part of your
Speaker 1: plan or was there ever like a point where you
Speaker 1: considered actually focusing on music or poetry. I mean my
Speaker 1: dream if I were instruct my like yeah, like if
Speaker 1: you had a genie that you could just like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd rather be an artist, frankly, not to keep my
Speaker 1: time than to dabble in politics. I feel that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, Definitely I feel pressed into politics. I mean
Speaker 1: this is I feel scripted by by cur Yeah for sure, definitely.
Speaker 1: I feel the same in like, you know, my political work.
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't have to be doing this, but
Speaker 1: someone has to be pushing for these changes. I'd rather
Speaker 1: just be rapping all day. But well, but that idea
Speaker 1: of doing it off on and off the mic, you know,
Speaker 1: being about it, Yeah, is is you know something I
Speaker 1: take that from. Like, you know, there's so many m
Speaker 1: c s over do you remember, like back in the day,
Speaker 1: I think it was Al Gore and Bill Clinton were
Speaker 1: demagoguing sisters soldier. That's like become a political colloquialism for
Speaker 1: speaking out against your base pretty much. And she was
Speaker 1: like she was a spoken word community organizer. Like you know,
Speaker 1: the number of people I've met over the years who
Speaker 1: are compelled by the things they witnessed to speak the
Speaker 1: truth whatever it means for power. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: like the grist from which all useful anything in our
Speaker 1: society has calm, you know, those those are the grios.
Speaker 1: That's the oral history that preceded the institutional history that is,
Speaker 1: you know, brainwashed gation. I've been for the last few days.
Speaker 1: I've been, um bumping, get out of your chair your
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight album, right, So I'm just just
Speaker 1: curious just how did that album come together? Because it
Speaker 1: seems to be the only one in your discography, so like,
Speaker 1: you know who produced it? Was it all all the
Speaker 1: beats somebody you knew or was it you or I
Speaker 1: couldn't really find too much of the credits for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll break it down, um, and yeah, I've had other
Speaker 1: songs since, but not really enough to put an album
Speaker 1: together out of Oh my God, the world needs it. Nancy,
Speaker 1: will you give us the second album? I appreciate that
Speaker 1: I have. I have tracked in the can, right, but
Speaker 1: I've never released just because it's like I don't have
Speaker 1: any time like make cover art or I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got this one song Justice that have had mccan for
Speaker 1: like a year, and it's just like bumping house track.
Speaker 1: It's a little poppy and it riffs on mass incarceration,
Speaker 1: homelessness in particular as well as militarism. Like I try
Speaker 1: to do like the Doctor King's intersecting evils. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know it's like probably my best like vocal
Speaker 1: rendition of anything song. So like you know, I like
Speaker 1: to sing and wrap over house tracks. That's kind of
Speaker 1: a don't tease this with stuff that we'll never get
Speaker 1: to hear. Well, if it's like that, if I hear
Speaker 1: there's an audience, I'll just put a random like that's
Speaker 1: definitely an audience for my man. That's definitely what's wearing
Speaker 1: right now. Well, we're actually this is gonna this is
Speaker 1: gonna be This interview is part of a series that
Speaker 1: we're thinking about doing where we're just gonna be talking
Speaker 1: to people who are you know, one foot in hip
Speaker 1: hop and the other foot in politics or activism, you know,
Speaker 1: right on, because there's a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: doing it. Apparently, talk to equipso make sure you talk
Speaker 1: to him. And Okay, definitely Fristco five, you know, helped
Speaker 1: organize the one of the really driving forces behind the
Speaker 1: longer strike at the Mission District Police Station responding to
Speaker 1: the murder of Alex Nieto and Mario Woods. Before that,
Speaker 1: UM and if you get a chance to talk to
Speaker 1: Keith Ellison. One of my favorite moments of TC my
Speaker 1: first time there. I think this would have been like
Speaker 1: two thousand nine eight. I'm riding up an escalator and
Speaker 1: I'm right next to representative at the time, Keith Ellison,
Speaker 1: and somehow we fall into a cipher to each other
Speaker 1: the escalator. It was it was really like I remember
Speaker 1: that moment just feeling because it was very like not
Speaker 1: to kind of ship that happens. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's the thing with like MCN is this like fight
Speaker 1: club and ship like we're everywhere, we're the politician teachers.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. My favorite cipher I was ever and
Speaker 1: was at net Roots in two thousand seventeen in Atlanta
Speaker 1: with a bunch of folks from like Democracy for America,
Speaker 1: my Working Families Party. We're just like, you know, we
Speaker 1: just ciphered up in the lobby of the highest, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was like about defeating mass incarceration and uplifting
Speaker 1: working family escention. Hell yeah, but sorry, we were talking
Speaker 1: about back to the album. Yeah, so yeah, So the production.
Speaker 1: The production was really unique. It had a lot of
Speaker 1: like hand percussion. It sounded really had a homemade sound
Speaker 1: to home, made like acoustic quality to it. That that's
Speaker 1: it's most of the hand drumming you heard on that album.
Speaker 1: There were two people of Kristin Rant in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And Ken Qualm in Washington, d C. And they both
Speaker 1: illustrate exactly what we're talking about. Kristen. Kristen has a
Speaker 1: lifetime band from the National Press Club because she interrupted
Speaker 1: Donald Romstall to drop the banner saying you have blood
Speaker 1: on your hands, are speaking of the press conference in
Speaker 1: two three. I met her right when I moved to
Speaker 1: Washington the first time, and we co organized the DC
Speaker 1: Gorilla Poetry Insurgency. It's one of the grassroots performance collectives
Speaker 1: and I put together over the years. And then she
Speaker 1: she's we've performed together like any number of places. She
Speaker 1: taught me to draw. And then Ken Qualm and on
Speaker 1: a Boss, the China Town Boss. I think from China,
Speaker 1: I think from Boston to New York and like two
Speaker 1: thou So then maybe and he was at the time,
Speaker 1: he was like a young man, he'd been organizing against
Speaker 1: the war as a student on his college campus, got
Speaker 1: super into it, got super burnt out. I think he
Speaker 1: ended up paying some like personal prices for his organizing
Speaker 1: in terms of like you know, needing to take some
Speaker 1: time away from school and like definitely burned out of
Speaker 1: his inspiration and then like I've seen him since get
Speaker 1: reinspired in reuation the movement, and he'd come to he
Speaker 1: was Remember he was a trained musician at the Berkeley
Speaker 1: School of Music, so that he was like a legit musician.
Speaker 1: And Kristen is too. She she trained an oboe in particular,
Speaker 1: and they were basically the instrumentation you heard on the
Speaker 1: album was like my holies, you know, and like who
Speaker 1: I could drag into a studio. So and and it's
Speaker 1: interesting too because that album, you know, it reflects much
Speaker 1: more of like a funk and you know, live music
Speaker 1: performance sensibility than most of what I performed is like
Speaker 1: wrapping with a DJ. I started DJing to throw myself
Speaker 1: beasts that I could run over, and so I'm much
Speaker 1: more a househead than I am what comes across in
Speaker 1: that album. But that album, frankly is also much more
Speaker 1: kind of like what I bring to the mic, and
Speaker 1: you know, in a space where I don't have a
Speaker 1: DJ in a sound system like that, so you're like
Speaker 1: a you know your your double threat. You know, are
Speaker 1: you you wrap in you DJ? But are there any
Speaker 1: other like elements that you get down on, Like I
Speaker 1: can bring a little I play cupo. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people who do that. It was like a
Speaker 1: transition and a break in for though. Yeah, I started
Speaker 1: training because it's like I mean, I used to kickbox
Speaker 1: and study a keo before this. And so the martial
Speaker 1: element of couple particularly appeals to me in additions and
Speaker 1: the like stylistic embellishments that you know, the b boys
Speaker 1: and be they're also like developed to innovated on. So
Speaker 1: I just like to move on my kindness the final
Speaker 1: love motion. So dance and martial arts both kind of
Speaker 1: like snowboarding, all those things kind of hit that button
Speaker 1: from me. Where on the Katie Helper Show you made
Speaker 1: a joke about rap battling Nancy Pelosi, Are you you
Speaker 1: don't strike me as like the battling type when I
Speaker 1: battle wrap, I just called people out for being egotistical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you have any battle with your blood,
Speaker 1: like like get grandmother on it, Like you know, what
Speaker 1: would your mom thinking, you know, saying like that's a
Speaker 1: good that's a good strategy. I used to. I used
Speaker 1: to battle myself, so though I know I ran across
Speaker 1: some cats like you nice were you were? You still
Speaker 1: djaying every Thursday in the Castro up until the pandemic hit,
Speaker 1: every month a month until until the pandemic. And I
Speaker 1: saw the last time I was rolling through. Actually there
Speaker 1: was a former member of our Board of Supervisors who
Speaker 1: passed away recently, so there was a memorial for him.
Speaker 1: And as I was walking to the memorial, I just
Speaker 1: happened to pass the spot where I played piece every
Speaker 1: month and they start it, uh, serving people out on
Speaker 1: the sidewalks. So they kind of moved the service out
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk. So I'm open maybe to get back
Speaker 1: in there and bumps some beats off the dolphin, you know.
Speaker 1: Well not even campaign events, just like different playing the ball.
Speaker 1: Well I had a chance to do some of that.
Speaker 1: We just played actually a renegade in Alamo Square at
Speaker 1: sunset on my ex girlfriend's friends put it together Thursday.
Speaker 1: I think that lies and uh, and then this is
Speaker 1: even crazier. An art truck just got to town. It
Speaker 1: used to be the Bernie Man and our homie David
Speaker 1: just got to town on Friday, and we spent all
Speaker 1: weekend bumping beats all over the city and different like
Speaker 1: block party protests, all youth lad My favorite moment of
Speaker 1: the whole week was Saturday morning, Independence Day. I'm on
Speaker 1: the roof of a van in a Code Pink and
Speaker 1: Extinction rebellion caravan going to Nancy Pelosi's house for an
Speaker 1: empty chair debate, chanting defund, police and the Penting defund
Speaker 1: we had. All the horns are going, Yeah, that's what's up?
Speaker 1: So what is the pandemic? In the campaign? Trail been
Speaker 1: like free musically, well musically it's just kind of like
Speaker 1: shut down music. But I missed it all. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still write lyrics. Um, I've gotten to plug in
Speaker 1: on a couple of like Zoom conferences, like basically different
Speaker 1: DJ crews that are doing live streams. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like dance with everybody in there their living rooms, in
Speaker 1: their bedrooms, and that's kind of cool, but like I feel,
Speaker 1: I feel pretty shorn. That's one thing I missed. Frankly.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things too. More and then
Speaker 1: I'm like this and I have more than once more,
Speaker 1: particularly like just the experience of people being together, and
Speaker 1: especially because like I don't even know when we experienced
Speaker 1: that together that that's one reason for me that Renegade
Speaker 1: Alamo Square was like so it was my heart because like,
Speaker 1: I haven't I haven't been on a dance floor with
Speaker 1: a group of people and you know, months, and then
Speaker 1: we're out there and there's all these little dogs and
Speaker 1: little kids and like people having their picnics and like
Speaker 1: help me throwing down. Sam's throwing down some beautiful house music,
Speaker 1: and it's a sunset on this I think after them
Speaker 1: and the system was it was perfect. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: it was evening because I usually worked all around eight
Speaker 1: or nine, so I think I got there right around sunset.
Speaker 1: But it was just like the feeling of just being
Speaker 1: in community and motion, you know, like we talked in
Speaker 1: the house music community sometimes about like you know, the clubs,
Speaker 1: church and you know, yeah, I hadn't gone to a a
Speaker 1: church in a while, so yeah, speaking of faith. On
Speaker 1: the same Katie Helper interview I listened to, when speaking
Speaker 1: of faith, you said, like any good DJ, you remix
Speaker 1: things and religious in refference to your religious practice. And
Speaker 1: I wondered if the mindset of remixing makes its way
Speaker 1: into your political work at all or if other musical
Speaker 1: mindset sets inform your political efficacy. That's a fascinating question.
Speaker 1: And I suppose yeah. I mean, I was just talking.
Speaker 1: I remember on a podcast with the Student Texas over
Speaker 1: the weekend, and at one point in the conversation I
Speaker 1: described progressivism and libertarianism as flip sides at the same point,
Speaker 1: and he has a libertarian seemed to be very compelled
Speaker 1: by that. And you're talking that through and you know,
Speaker 1: that's there's a remix there. I'm a democratic socialist, and
Speaker 1: I often said, but the D back in democratic socialism,
Speaker 1: people focus on the S because that's what's you you know,
Speaker 1: like socialism in the face of corporate capitalism is like
Speaker 1: people are like, wow, that's novel. You know, maybe it is,
Speaker 1: but a lot of us have long been committed to
Speaker 1: making sure that people get housing and food and health
Speaker 1: care first before people get yachts, and so like, that's
Speaker 1: that's socialism. The D and the democratic social movement is
Speaker 1: just like maintained the best digital commitments to democratic governments
Speaker 1: that are slipping to our fews. And that's much more
Speaker 1: typically if you trace it back, that tends to go,
Speaker 1: you know, to libertarians tend to be the people more
Speaker 1: concerned with that kind of stuff. But I remember co
Speaker 1: intel pro though you know, I was born in the
Speaker 1: tail end of it and socialized certainly after it. The
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom would suggest it ended. But the threat to
Speaker 1: dissent and the weaponization of intelligence apparatuses and police departments
Speaker 1: to suppress dissent and and subvert our democracy by using
Speaker 1: security and public safety as a ruse to offend First
Speaker 1: Amendment principles. That is as timeless as the United States,
Speaker 1: and that goes back to the wards into the FOM.
Speaker 1: That would just say, in terms of the remix, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of democratic socialists they lead into the
Speaker 1: socialism and they forget the democratic and so like, if
Speaker 1: I have a remix, it's that I'm bringing in this
Speaker 1: like and you know, I would say it's like particularly
Speaker 1: inflected by a memory of the Panthers and the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement and the movement for peace and Vietnam and
Speaker 1: what happened to those movements and how they were neutralized.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of contemporary socialists forget that
Speaker 1: not distant history and reed in the first place because
Speaker 1: of the way our schools work. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: but it's so relevant. But it's so relevant absolutely, I
Speaker 1: absolutely agree. Yeah, in digging like through you know, your music.
Speaker 1: Something that was of note was in twinty four Team
Speaker 1: you put out like a video slash song called us
Speaker 1: A versus the N S A and then and say
Speaker 1: versus USA. And then I also noticed that you you
Speaker 1: were spitting you know, there's some videos on YouTube of
Speaker 1: you spitting a Ferguson too Jerusalem like verse while djaying sometimes.
Speaker 1: And it's just I know that at that particular moment
Speaker 1: in time and in there were a lot of things
Speaker 1: going on that for whatever reason, I personally was just
Speaker 1: compelled to talk about within my art. So did that
Speaker 1: did that moment in time like have any sort of
Speaker 1: special significance that you felt the need to like write
Speaker 1: those two things, because that's around the time of like
Speaker 1: Edward Snowden obviously for the Ferguson shooting all within Yeah,
Speaker 1: within about a year of each other. Lots of things
Speaker 1: to say that. I mean, my dream has always been
Speaker 1: this gets back to your question only about you know,
Speaker 1: how would I construct my life if I wanted it?
Speaker 1: My dream has always been do like rapid response political
Speaker 1: education through like hip hop and house music and if
Speaker 1: I could drop a music video within a week of
Speaker 1: a new cycle to be like, here's what it is, like,
Speaker 1: here's the background, here the context, here's when you're not
Speaker 1: being told in the media, and like people don't have
Speaker 1: the stomach to read that I've discovered, but it seems
Speaker 1: like they'll watch a music video for it, So like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just let's package it like that. I think that's
Speaker 1: like that could be a thing. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: we do on this show. That's my vision, y, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: if that's the vision that you're promoting, I mean I
Speaker 1: props to you. I mean, if you have a page
Speaker 1: on my website, not for the campaign, but like my
Speaker 1: personal science just my name dot com where the lyrics
Speaker 1: for n S a versus USA are annotated and hyperlink
Speaker 1: to background news stories and articles like every word in
Speaker 1: that in that song means something. And you know, I
Speaker 1: basically write whether it's for an academic audience or a
Speaker 1: public literary audience, or for like a musical audience as
Speaker 1: like public education slash propaganda recognizing that so right, and
Speaker 1: and those songs for me in particular, I guess we're
Speaker 1: like my they were My opus is in the sense
Speaker 1: of actually responding in as close to real time as
Speaker 1: I could get. Like I dropped n S a Versus USA.
Speaker 1: It took me about a year after the Snowden revelations
Speaker 1: to get the music video done, but like you know,
Speaker 1: I had to like you to Kickstarter and the whole
Speaker 1: nine and like that took me a while, but by
Speaker 1: the time it dropped, it was like still it remains
Speaker 1: unfortunately entirely too relevant. You know, it goes back to
Speaker 1: the plot to kill Dr King and connects that to
Speaker 1: Fred Hampson's assassination and the bombing of Judy Barry and
Speaker 1: Edward Snowden's revelation or Obama's continuation of Bush's legacy, and
Speaker 1: you know the way that DHS biometric data collection inflex
Speaker 1: all this and like you know, the corruption that evades
Speaker 1: this entire enterprise. Yeah, we actually we did. Um we
Speaker 1: did an episode on Conceal pro recently in the history
Speaker 1: of FBIIL and some black musicians, and I was really
Speaker 1: hoping to hear you talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: CIA's involvement in the War on drugs. That's kind of
Speaker 1: an extension of the way the federal government has worked
Speaker 1: to break up breakup black communities and what you, as
Speaker 1: a congressman would do to heal the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: War on drugs. Thank you so much for bringing the
Speaker 1: lens there. People forget this entirely, and I find and
Speaker 1: in contemporary mobilizations around the Movement for Lick Lives, this
Speaker 1: tends to be the thing I talked about is Gary
Speaker 1: Webb's legacy and how it relates to the issues and
Speaker 1: we are confronting today in terms of militarized police and
Speaker 1: the assaults on our communities. It is documented fact that
Speaker 1: the Central Intelligence Agency ran crack cocaine into US cities
Speaker 1: in the nineties to fund its rogue foreign policy abroad
Speaker 1: and its human rights abuses across Latin America. And the
Speaker 1: agency never paid any price for that, no budgetary price,
Speaker 1: no programmatic price. Nobody went to jail. You know. The
Speaker 1: worst that happened there was the Iran contra scandal, which
Speaker 1: was a piece of it. You know, the fuller dimensions
Speaker 1: of this never emerged until later. U s cops were
Speaker 1: dying on the streets of US cities, gunned down by
Speaker 1: narco traffickers that the CIA had trained and equipped. And
Speaker 1: as a response to that and a generation of people
Speaker 1: participating in an underground economy. But the CIA created we
Speaker 1: sent two and a half million black and brown people
Speaker 1: to prison. And that's that's changed the hip hop generation
Speaker 1: and the post hip hop generation, like indelibly that Like
Speaker 1: it's such a formative like part of our history and
Speaker 1: our story, the stories that we're still telling through our music.
Speaker 1: And I fear that as we tell those stories, we
Speaker 1: tell them almost as if we are depicting an elephant.
Speaker 1: But talking about the tusk, like we talk about the
Speaker 1: militarization of police, we talked about how it impacts our communities.
Speaker 1: But behind the tusk is this whole other thing. And
Speaker 1: that's not just police. That is an extractive international industrial complex.
Speaker 1: That's what Eisenhower warned us about, the N one. And
Speaker 1: it's much bigger than police. It is an industrial system
Speaker 1: of capital extracting wealth from people and communities around the planet.
Speaker 1: Like and that's the story of imperialism. And so policing
Speaker 1: is like one face of a hydra. And I'm very
Speaker 1: adamant in my policy recommendations and you know, the policy
Speaker 1: I aimed to effectuate as a legislature, as a legislator
Speaker 1: to deal not merely with the task, but to dismantle
Speaker 1: the elephant, the elephants of the GOP, the elements of imperialism,
Speaker 1: the elephants of social control, whether from corporate sources or
Speaker 1: government sources. Policing is absolutely the tip of the sphere.
Speaker 1: I mean, the tusk is a good metaphor there, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot more behind it, and I'm adamant to
Speaker 1: get at all of it. Yeah, I found really interesting
Speaker 1: that UM among calls to defund the police nationwide. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, Bernie Sanders hasn't like necessarily gotten behind that,
Speaker 1: but has put forward legislation to to fund the Pentagon
Speaker 1: by ten percent and redistribute that fundamed communities. I think
Speaker 1: that is making that link between the broader industrial complexes
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with with that that tie into militarization
Speaker 1: and social control. And I know that you yourself have
Speaker 1: also UM joined this call to to fund the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to see if you could talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about why. Yeah, the two absolutely connect.
Speaker 1: It's micro and mac. You know, the policing is the
Speaker 1: part of the military industrial complex that we see. The
Speaker 1: Pentagon is the part of the military industrial complex that
Speaker 1: we project and especially now in a time of pandemic
Speaker 1: and economic collapse. Knowing how crucial is the need to
Speaker 1: establish universal healthcare doesn't just put your neighbors at risk
Speaker 1: when they can't get their medicine. It puts us alid.
Speaker 1: Looks like, we need medicine, we need doctors. We need
Speaker 1: cost not to be an impeditt We need to keep
Speaker 1: people in their owns, We need rent mortgages not to
Speaker 1: be an impediment. Right. I mean that we're going to
Speaker 1: have a wave of evictions and homelessness if we don't
Speaker 1: do something to keep people in their homes. If we
Speaker 1: play out the tape, and you know, presume for the
Speaker 1: moment that we managed to hold the pandemic at bay
Speaker 1: long enough to develop a vaccine or herder immunity, then
Speaker 1: of course climate to the hystrophe remains looming. If we
Speaker 1: are to see brighter days on any of these fronts,
Speaker 1: if we are to survive them, we have to put
Speaker 1: something other than profit at the center of our calculus.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, I see in the rented mortgage
Speaker 1: crisis and the failure of corporate democrats to support for
Speaker 1: MS in Silhana Mars proposal to cancel rents and mortgages,
Speaker 1: and and provide government support for small landlords so that
Speaker 1: they also don't have to bear the burden of this crisis,
Speaker 1: but to make sure that housing costs fall where they
Speaker 1: can be most easily shouldered, particularly on banks and corporate landlords,
Speaker 1: which we have bailed out before. So you know it
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. But you can't find a corporate democrats
Speaker 1: see yeah, um, as well as you've fought for I
Speaker 1: guess you could say civil digital rights, digital civil rights
Speaker 1: for twenty years both US constitutional lawyer and it is
Speaker 1: part of the Electronic front Frontier Foundation. And in our
Speaker 1: co Intel pro episode we talked a bit about digital
Speaker 1: safety while protesting, highlighting that people you know might come
Speaker 1: prepared for tear gas or bring water, but they might
Speaker 1: forget what risk there are with like facial recognition software
Speaker 1: other in forms so veilance to control. So what do
Speaker 1: you like, how would you define our digital civil liberties
Speaker 1: and how have you fought to protect them as well
Speaker 1: as what work remains to be done? Right, So, digital
Speaker 1: civil liberties there are sort of the idea of keeping
Speaker 1: ourselves safe in spaces even as we move into digital spaces,
Speaker 1: right So, and and frankly, the whole in the bucket
Speaker 1: when I talk about digital civil liberties as we're losing
Speaker 1: civil liberties in other than the non digital arena. So
Speaker 1: I think of them expansively as like kind of like
Speaker 1: again like progressivism and libertarianism or flip sides of the people.
Speaker 1: It's like liberties in my mind. But there's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people who are particularly concerned about one part
Speaker 1: of that, which is the liberties online. And you know
Speaker 1: the threat vectors, there are plenty. Unfortunately, corporate platforms do
Speaker 1: everything from spy on their users to constrain what they see,
Speaker 1: often very arbitrarily, without any motive in the due process.
Speaker 1: I actually had an interdu taming down my YouTube and
Speaker 1: Google subsidiary about two maybe three months ago. I did
Speaker 1: an interview with an independent journalist Anymore and I to
Speaker 1: hear with and it's it's it's even crazier when you
Speaker 1: consider the subject matter, because what we were talking about
Speaker 1: was how the mainstream press was not covering the congressional
Speaker 1: attempts to railroad and other extension of the Patriot Act
Speaker 1: government surveillance powers through Congress, and how it wasn't drawing
Speaker 1: press attention. So we do this interview YouTube takes it
Speaker 1: down within ten minutes of it hitting the web, right,
Speaker 1: he didn't record a local copy of it, so it
Speaker 1: was gone effectively. So that's a corporate platform. So they
Speaker 1: never told you what the reason was. We suspect because
Speaker 1: this was early in the pandemic and there were you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of concern about fake news relating
Speaker 1: to it, and we did talk about the coronavirus stimulus
Speaker 1: packages and my critique of corporate democrats and their privileging
Speaker 1: corporate interests and you know, some of the same issues
Speaker 1: we're talking about now. So the theory is that saying
Speaker 1: the words COVID or coronavirus basically triggered some other, right,
Speaker 1: So it's we don't think it's and this is the
Speaker 1: danger when we talk about digital civil liberties. Maybe here's
Speaker 1: the thing that makes it digital. It's less the concern
Speaker 1: about censorship by a sensor within afarious intent, which is
Speaker 1: still a real thing, just to be clear. But what
Speaker 1: we're really concerned about a censorship by algorithm there where
Speaker 1: there's no one making the decision at all, you know,
Speaker 1: And and that's a good metaphor for capitalism. Capitalism is
Speaker 1: like computers, here, it's a thing and mechanism to be
Speaker 1: built to try to facilitate something that has gotten off
Speaker 1: its leash, that's run a month, that is now calling
Speaker 1: the shots. You know, capital is supposed to be a
Speaker 1: thing that facilitates exchange, maybe a way to better more
Speaker 1: efficiently out of a resources. But when capital attains a
Speaker 1: gravity of its own such that our democratic processes sort
Speaker 1: of it instead of our communities, we have a problem,
Speaker 1: a pretty severe problem because it inevitably, whether through a
Speaker 1: pandemic or the grinding gears of a military industrial complex
Speaker 1: or paramilitary police, it leaves people dead. And to wait, yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the George
Speaker 1: Floyd Justice and Policing Act. Um do you think there's
Speaker 1: any wins for the movement here? And um, where, if
Speaker 1: anywhere does it fall short? And I guess for listeners
Speaker 1: who might not be um familiar with the George Floyd
Speaker 1: and Just Justice and Policing Act, like, what is it? Right?
Speaker 1: This is the bill that the House passed recently. I've
Speaker 1: been quite critical of it and the theater surrounding it,
Speaker 1: but I do want to acknowledge the parts of it
Speaker 1: that are worth praising and you're right to just invite
Speaker 1: sort of parsing it because it is a very multi
Speaker 1: component measure. So for the better part of twenty years
Speaker 1: have been advocating measures, including the Undracial Programming Act, which
Speaker 1: corporate Democrats have never supported. Parts of it are included
Speaker 1: in the Justice and Policing Act. Other things that we've
Speaker 1: proposed for years, including any qualified immunity and creating a
Speaker 1: violent registry of violent police, they're also included in the
Speaker 1: Justice and Policing Act. And I'm grateful to corporate Democrats,
Speaker 1: including Nancy Pelosi, for fighting off parts of our platform.
Speaker 1: I wish they did it sooner. I'm glad they finally
Speaker 1: showed up. The bill has yet to become laws, still
Speaker 1: has to pass the Senate and be signed by a
Speaker 1: president into law, so just to locate where it's out
Speaker 1: in the process, A critical cynical view of the passage
Speaker 1: of the law through the House might suggest that because
Speaker 1: the Senate will pass it, it was politically cheap for
Speaker 1: the House to do it. There was no cost they
Speaker 1: have to pay because it can't become policy as long
Speaker 1: as the Senate is constituted as it is, right, So
Speaker 1: that's that's a cynical view of the passage of it.
Speaker 1: Another cynical view of the passage of it is the
Speaker 1: theater surrounding it, which was Nancy Pelosi and the entire
Speaker 1: Democratic leadership kneeling in traditional West African barb reserved for
Speaker 1: royals on the House floor. After having legislated for a
Speaker 1: generation the measures that created this crisis, from the Crime
Speaker 1: Bill to the measures that allowed the transfer of military
Speaker 1: equipment to local police, to the serial funding requests by
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice that then fund local police whether
Speaker 1: or not they comply with civil rights. Each of these
Speaker 1: active measures by Congress have built the problem that they're
Speaker 1: now showing up to claim to care about, and just
Speaker 1: to get into the last party of question around what
Speaker 1: were the parts of the bill that fell short? And
Speaker 1: and frankly, there's one particular part of it that is
Speaker 1: actively harmful and I want to dig in on that
Speaker 1: in terms of falling short. What the bill does not do,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned Senator Sanders also has yet to support
Speaker 1: casts a defund police. That is the community demand. And
Speaker 1: the reason we're demanding that is because we have been
Speaker 1: through this too many damn times. We are tired of
Speaker 1: saying their names the time for commissions is over. There
Speaker 1: have been commissions, there have been proposals. We are done.
Speaker 1: We know that that community safety is undermined by police.
Speaker 1: What we need public safety. The way to get public safety,
Speaker 1: and too many communities is to remove the publicly subsidized
Speaker 1: threat in our communities and then the military agents of
Speaker 1: the state who murder arbitrarily with immunity. And just to
Speaker 1: get into that next part about what in the bill
Speaker 1: is actively unharmful. Beyond failing to defund police, the Justice
Speaker 1: and Policing Act also inflates police budgets by trying to
Speaker 1: create a national mandate for police body which do not
Speaker 1: help civil rights. Police body cameras are a corporate bait
Speaker 1: and switch. You cannot get accountability through a body camera,
Speaker 1: both because the most it even offers, even if they're
Speaker 1: always on, and even if we always got the footage,
Speaker 1: the most it offers is the officer's perspective of a
Speaker 1: particular set of incidents. It doesn't give you transparency into
Speaker 1: an incident, just an officers perspective. It doesn't give you
Speaker 1: transparency into patterns or practices or what the officers doing
Speaker 1: out of the field of view. And it doesn't give you.
Speaker 1: This is the key accountability. Even if a body camera
Speaker 1: gave you transparency into the entire setting, which a dash cam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just about to say. It strikes me that
Speaker 1: usually it's the dash cam they captured stuff like that
Speaker 1: when you see videos. Dash cams are helpful because they
Speaker 1: capture the officer in contact. Bodycams are not because they don't.
Speaker 1: And in any case, even with all the tools, whichever
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's dash cams or body camps, and
Speaker 1: too many cases, the problem is the law not transparency.
Speaker 1: When we say George Floyd's name or Eric Garner's name,
Speaker 1: we are remembering people who were killed on video that
Speaker 1: we have all seen hundreds of millions of people happening
Speaker 1: exactly and it didn't put anybody in prison, right The
Speaker 1: only person from Eric Garner's scene who went to prison
Speaker 1: was the man holding the camera, Ramsey Taga, I think,
Speaker 1: isn't uh. And the idea that that transparency is going
Speaker 1: to equal accountability presumes that the law actually works, and
Speaker 1: the only way the law works is to insulate power
Speaker 1: from accountability, and ending qualified immunity is a big part
Speaker 1: of this. So that's part of the justice and policing Act,
Speaker 1: which is frankly, uh, you know, I'm among the things
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for. This last most recent and continuing wave
Speaker 1: of popular mobilization for doing is expanding the popular consciousness
Speaker 1: around when we say defund police, when we say end
Speaker 1: qualified immunity. These are proposals, you know, I proposed defunding policing,
Speaker 1: ending qualified immunity in twenty een. These are proposals the
Speaker 1: Movement for Black Lives study We've all been saying, but
Speaker 1: only recently have they become embraced by institutional actors, by
Speaker 1: casual observers of the movement. And I think the public
Speaker 1: education that the movement has done, particularly around issues like
Speaker 1: ending qualify and im like defunding police, is driving the
Speaker 1: legislative agenda. And I say, you know, the future is
Speaker 1: this simple. You're either on the train with our communities
Speaker 1: or you're not. You're in the way, and we're going
Speaker 1: to take your seats. It's that simple, show up for
Speaker 1: our communities. We're going to show you the door. And
Speaker 1: I aim to be a vehicle and agent of that
Speaker 1: transition in a particularly pivotal seat because of who is
Speaker 1: occupying and it has occupied for the last three years.
Speaker 1: Has the campaign that you're on seen any sort of
Speaker 1: boosting attention since Bernie dropped out hugely, So I've been
Speaker 1: amazing a lot more often our Bernie grief having to
Speaker 1: put those dollars. Thank you for this report. It makes
Speaker 1: a huge difference in you know, as soon as we
Speaker 1: won the primary, I knew that there would be a
Speaker 1: because we now have a foot in the door until November,
Speaker 1: and I knew that there would be a point and
Speaker 1: the cycle where more and more eyes would be turning
Speaker 1: to us, if only because the field would be narrowing
Speaker 1: and we'd be one of the last of the Mohicans
Speaker 1: for our movement on the field in this cycle. I
Speaker 1: had hoped certainly to be running on the ticket behind Bernie,
Speaker 1: because our nation needs his vision now more than ever,
Speaker 1: and because frankly, I would rather my time in Washington
Speaker 1: be about building a brighter future rather than trying to
Speaker 1: stave off the worst parts of our predatory paths. But
Speaker 1: you know, be that as it may. When Bernie suspended
Speaker 1: his campaign, I think a lot of people around the
Speaker 1: country we're looking for opportunities to vindicate our movement and
Speaker 1: still advance the principles that we all share in the
Speaker 1: not REOs movie, and I am incredibly humble, grateful for
Speaker 1: frankly just astounded by be what's happened. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: auditioning for a chance to represent a city in Congress,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, without frankly any design or
Speaker 1: even idea that this was a possibility, I stumbled into
Speaker 1: an opportunity to be one of the voices representing a movement.
Speaker 1: And again, I'm just grateful for the chance to play
Speaker 1: that role, and really great full to all the people
Speaker 1: around the country we've been blocking to our campaign. We
Speaker 1: now have. I think we're right around twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: donors across the country, which for a congressional campaign challenge. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean we're raising as much money sometimes there have
Speaker 1: been days recently where we've raised as much as in
Speaker 1: a day as it took me a month to raise.
Speaker 1: And I got as many votes as are Consing and
Speaker 1: Cortes did after three months in the race, and I've
Speaker 1: got four times since then. And we've been building this
Speaker 1: campaign pretty dramatically and it's you know, reflecting in ways
Speaker 1: and I didn't even again when I started out, I
Speaker 1: didn't even understand where possible. And yeah, I'm looking very
Speaker 1: much forward to the next three months into the my
Speaker 1: first term in Congress after removing Nancy. So what does
Speaker 1: winning look like to you, like in terms of the
Speaker 1: coalition you need to build and the outreach that's left
Speaker 1: to do. So, the folks at the core of the
Speaker 1: coalition include the progressive social movements of San Francisco, so
Speaker 1: the immigrant rights community, the movement that's been very active
Speaker 1: and resisting police islands, the movement for a Global peace
Speaker 1: and justice, the civil liberties, digital civil liberties. These are
Speaker 1: all very much core parts of our coalition. Other parts
Speaker 1: of our coalition include artists, countercultural community that recognizes the
Speaker 1: co optation of our hopes and dreams by an establishment.
Speaker 1: They include um beyond immigrant rights like immigrants communities of
Speaker 1: various pieces, and so this is one among the parts
Speaker 1: of the coalition we really need to more solidify. Include
Speaker 1: Chinese speaking immigrant communities. We have a very robust and
Speaker 1: active Spanish language outreach program, so that's also building UM.
Speaker 1: The gay community in San Francisco is something of a
Speaker 1: political kingmaker, and I've done a lot of work defending
Speaker 1: gay rights and the primary uh the parts of the
Speaker 1: city where the lgbt Q community are most concentrated did
Speaker 1: support Pelosi far in a way. I think that's driven
Speaker 1: by a false impression that she is resisting Trump when
Speaker 1: it actually does so much to advance Republican policies. And
Speaker 1: so a big part of our work is cracking that
Speaker 1: impression and educating many of our neighbors about how we
Speaker 1: are actually representing in Congress and what Polo season record
Speaker 1: actually looks like. It's one reason why I'm so eager
Speaker 1: to have a debate with her. But she hasn't debated anyone.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, but you know, she hasn't debated anyone
Speaker 1: in thirty years. So is she going to show up
Speaker 1: for work now? I would certainly hope so, But you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately it's up to what news organization to CNN going
Speaker 1: to like do its job or not. Is the chronicle
Speaker 1: going to make it happen. She can decline our invitations,
Speaker 1: she can decline. She's already declined KPF as well. She's
Speaker 1: refused to respond to it. So that's that's her emo.
Speaker 1: She just doesn't show up. If I debated her house,
Speaker 1: A bunch of groups brought me to her house this weekend,
Speaker 1: set up a chair outside her house, asked her a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions, particularly about the military budget. She wasn't
Speaker 1: there to answer them, and then they enemy the microphone
Speaker 1: and indicated that she wants to participate in debate at
Speaker 1: all um her I think her only indication. I think
Speaker 1: she would regard this race as basically a threat to
Speaker 1: her to ever acknowledge the only acknowledgement I've ever heard,
Speaker 1: You're gonna like this. I woke up one morning to
Speaker 1: read in the New York Times that Christine Pelosi, Nancy's daughter,
Speaker 1: who they want to give the c to after Nancy retires,
Speaker 1: to then wield it for another generation. Christine's on the
Speaker 1: d n C, she apparently has recorded in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, had called Bernie Sanders to complain that Susan
Speaker 1: Sarandon had endorsed me. And the Times article didn't name me,
Speaker 1: It just depicted this saga about what right, And I tweeted,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, if you all are so concerned
Speaker 1: about actresses in Los Angeles endorsing my campaign in San
Speaker 1: Francisco to represent our city in Washington, D C, why
Speaker 1: can't you just instead of calling Bernie Sanders in Washington
Speaker 1: and it being reported in New York. Just show up
Speaker 1: for the damn debate. It's not defend your position, it's
Speaker 1: just entitlement, you know. And the whole situation weeks of
Speaker 1: entitlement to me. So when you ask me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: will she show up for debate? What's her attitude of
Speaker 1: the race? I mean, as far as they're concerned, I
Speaker 1: think like they own the seat and it's that simple,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm just a usance. If the conditions
Speaker 1: of stuff have them in a position where they don't
Speaker 1: have to even engage in a debate for thirty years,
Speaker 1: that's that's not democracy at all. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the conditions now are very different. I think the conditions
Speaker 1: now are very are such that they probably can't survive
Speaker 1: ducking a debate, like how can And this is the
Speaker 1: ultimate question, not just for the people of San Francisco,
Speaker 1: for our news media, but I think our democracy were
Speaker 1: large is can the leader of the opposition party actually
Speaker 1: get away with keeping a criminal president in office and
Speaker 1: doing everything she can to advance his criminal agenda while
Speaker 1: mouthing resistance on television? Like is anyone going to call
Speaker 1: her on that? And like I'm calling her on that,
Speaker 1: But it's a journalists in particular, I would just say
Speaker 1: for the sake of news media as an institution. And
Speaker 1: I'm saying this part particularly in the context of a
Speaker 1: criminal president waging an outright assault on their profession. And like,
Speaker 1: you know, given that you have a right wing ideologue
Speaker 1: deriving the press as telling fake news, you have a
Speaker 1: corporate defender in the supposed opposition party who refuses to
Speaker 1: actually demonstrate in meaning any of the words that she's saying.
Speaker 1: So you have to two very powerful oligarchs, real estate
Speaker 1: tycoons born with silver spoons in their mouths, to powerful
Speaker 1: East Coast families basically governing by theater, trading illustrations with
Speaker 1: smoke and mirrors. And that's what the press has been
Speaker 1: reduced to reporting on to the American people. And I
Speaker 1: would like to just offer a little bit of truth
Speaker 1: in that equation if anybody can tolerate. I'm assured that
Speaker 1: whoever wins the White House in the next term, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be fighting them from the left, because it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of you know, which racist misogynists with
Speaker 1: a history of promoting belligerent international conflict is the one
Speaker 1: I'm going to be charged to fund and I'm eager
Speaker 1: to see. Yeah. Well, I got two final questions for you.
Speaker 1: The first um, you are on a podcast called Waiting
Speaker 1: on Reparations, and so I feel like we have to ask,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts of reparations fully legit? I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been four centuries of theft from an entire
Speaker 1: set of people. I would like to see reparations effectuated
Speaker 1: through a set of measures that particularly address dynastic wealth.
Speaker 1: So my first law of your article. In two thousand,
Speaker 1: I wrote a paper about ways to advance economic equality
Speaker 1: through a market framework, and inheritance in particular violates and
Speaker 1: market framework. If you think about a market distribution norm,
Speaker 1: that's about theoretically distribution according to productivity, but it's decidedly
Speaker 1: not distribution according to birth. That's a feudal norm, not
Speaker 1: a market norm. So if we disaggregate feudal him from capitalism,
Speaker 1: there's a huge opportunity to shake loose a massive accumulated
Speaker 1: pool of resources that have basically been siphoned off the table.
Speaker 1: There's a French economists many years later, about five years ago,
Speaker 1: Thomas Picketty who wrote a book Capital, establishing empirically that
Speaker 1: the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of
Speaker 1: increase in productivity growth, meaning that fortunes accumulate over time,
Speaker 1: and the accumulations of fortunes basically deprived the economies that
Speaker 1: they're siphoning resources out of. So and a trusts and
Speaker 1: estates policy that claused back from dynastic fortunes the funds
Speaker 1: that could get redistributed through a reparations process could be
Speaker 1: one interesting way to get there. I think there are,
Speaker 1: you know, interesting ways to get there in terms of
Speaker 1: like tax amnesties that we could consider, you know, like
Speaker 1: what would four centuries of tax amnesties of of a
Speaker 1: federal tax amnesty for black entrepreneurs and wage earners look like. No,
Speaker 1: but like there's lots of creative ways to to to
Speaker 1: synthesize what reparations might look like. At the very least,
Speaker 1: we need to move forward. There is a proposal for
Speaker 1: a formal commission to propose potential structures, and I want
Speaker 1: to see that. I really like the idea of a
Speaker 1: tax amnesty because you know, the predictable responses always you know,
Speaker 1: how do we pay for it? And in this context
Speaker 1: and size steps that problem and says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of neat waste and elegant ways
Speaker 1: to address to establish criticisms that I think, yeah, critics
Speaker 1: haven't even needed to grapple with because we haven't synthesized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they think that how you're gonna pay for it is
Speaker 1: the end of the conversation, and really it's the beginning
Speaker 1: of a conversation that fos have already been having. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we've seen in the last three months that
Speaker 1: if they want to come up with ship ton of money,
Speaker 1: they can pretty quickly. I think it's been really eye
Speaker 1: opening for a lot of the public. Yeah, definitely, right,
Speaker 1: another just creative way here that we can do some remixing,
Speaker 1: you don't try to Reflecting on your earlier question, think
Speaker 1: about equity licensing schemes in the cannabis industry. If we
Speaker 1: legalize cannabis at the federal level and say that enterprises
Speaker 1: can only be of a certain size unless they're black owned, like,
Speaker 1: that's a way to effectuate reparations that that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: any public expenditure, you know, it's it's using a license
Speaker 1: or to effectually and effectively put in place like a
Speaker 1: you know, a what in another another era we might
Speaker 1: have written off as a fermative action and you know
Speaker 1: all the things that it became subject to politically, like
Speaker 1: reparations are an opportunity to revisit that conversation in the
Speaker 1: way they could be more sustainable polity. And my final question,
Speaker 1: any music recommendations for the people always public enemy and uh,
Speaker 1: they've got this new tour with Rage Profits of Rage,
Speaker 1: which digging on that, highly recommend it. I actually had
Speaker 1: a friend Obey, who performed with them, so that it
Speaker 1: was cool. Yeah, that must be a fierst brother to
Speaker 1: have the like with those folks. That's yeah, I should
Speaker 1: I should share while I'm on your show that one
Speaker 1: of my dreams is to be endorsed by Chuck d
Speaker 1: tom Morello. Actually I'm the first politician he's ever endorsed.
Speaker 1: The endorsed eighteen. That's pretty proud of that m But
Speaker 1: you know, Chuck, somebody along been inspired by any number
Speaker 1: of mcs. But just in terms of other recommendations, there's
Speaker 1: a house producer by the name of Ross Couch who
Speaker 1: puts out some just beautiful music that would often some
Speaker 1: very visionary lyrical samples and vocalists. He seems to know
Speaker 1: curate that there's one track I've been spinning. I played
Speaker 1: the other day and almost square the one I'm the
Speaker 1: kind of chance to play recently that just took me back.
Speaker 1: It's The Shaman is a British group from like the
Speaker 1: late eighties or only nineties. They have this track move
Speaker 1: any Mountain that to me is very um. I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I had an anthem for our campaign, that would
Speaker 1: be it. And you know, I remember hearing this track.
Speaker 1: It was like on the desk or when I was
Speaker 1: like seventeen eighteen, and you know, maybe it's been ringing
Speaker 1: in my head for twenty years, but I do feel
Speaker 1: very firmly that we used people can in fact move
Speaker 1: any mountain, and that is exactly what we're going to do. Well,
Speaker 1: how do people help you? Movies, mountains, show head, tell
Speaker 1: them how to stay in touch with your campaign? Good
Speaker 1: looking out Folks can visit us online. Our website is
Speaker 1: shaw Hit for Change dot us. We're also on all
Speaker 1: of the major social media platforms Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch,
Speaker 1: YouTube at shaw Hit for Change awesome. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on. It's been wonderful campaign. We're
Speaker 1: rooting for you. Thanks y'all, I appreciate it. You have
Speaker 1: super fun conversation. I wish I had I had more
Speaker 1: chances to have exchanges like this, and I appreciate you
Speaker 1: bringing me on. Alright, we'll have a good night. Hey,
Speaker 1: when you're whenever you're thinking about picking up the you
Speaker 1: know the mike again, you know, holler at us. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll throw down some verses right on, right down with that.
Speaker 1: Let's make that happen. We got this sound truck out
Speaker 1: so we can bump right exactly. Well, ship, it ain't
Speaker 1: nothing too but to do it, I mean, we're all here.
Speaker 1: We got to beat yo. Let's get a beep going.
Speaker 1: Let's do this hey hey yeah, heah a wait in
Speaker 1: the reparations, we did it in Minnesota. We did it
Speaker 1: up in the front and in November, we're sending another
Speaker 1: member of the squad to go representatives in Congress. Remember
Speaker 1: the name of shot but Todd. When you go to
Speaker 1: the dropping option in the ballot box. We finished the
Speaker 1: funder panagon and put it in the medica. We're all
Speaker 1: I'm making sure what Todd. Let's get to go to college.
Speaker 1: Quarter pop every heap of godless within New wa Less,
Speaker 1: excuse up and really live, honest people who promised you
Speaker 1: for people over profit. But now we got it for
Speaker 1: the lawyer artists advocate. You can't it. Get your head up, Congress,
Speaker 1: yoga bullshit, open us to know what can breathe this
Speaker 1: mask on. Don't approach me when I go in the street.
Speaker 1: I'm a beast. Where the host or I'm roasting a beat.
Speaker 1: You want some hold to believe the vote Shaheed never
Speaker 1: seems the way we go wins holding like no escape.
Speaker 1: And that's why the big homie is going against the grain.
Speaker 1: But wait, because if we all get Pelosi to go
Speaker 1: to fake, he'll expose make resistance. Mostly it's just a fake.
Speaker 1: I don't give a funk with nobody saying you better
Speaker 1: go out and play. I read books. I ain't voting
Speaker 1: for you over the day. I don't even know what
Speaker 1: they're trying to beat. Got a nigger feeling like the
Speaker 1: last of a dying breathe. Whish I was a little
Speaker 1: bit taller, Wish I was a baller, then I could
Speaker 1: get tested for corona. But I'm not so that you're
Speaker 1: gonna accept I be a Ghana. That's why I'm smoking
Speaker 1: so much. Merrijauna on your Hey, my name is dope
Speaker 1: knife Franca we are waiting reparations. See you next week.
Speaker 1: Next week. Waiting on Reparations as a production of i
Speaker 1: Heeart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.