Speaker 1: Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
Speaker 1: weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher once again. I
Speaker 1: am your host, Ramsey's job. A big shout out to
Speaker 1: my manqu Ward, who could not be here today and
Speaker 1: I know he is kicking himself because we have a
Speaker 1: very special guest with us today on Civic Cipher. The
Speaker 1: man goes by the name of Kassim Rashid and he
Speaker 1: is an actor, an author, activist, and attorney who is
Speaker 1: running for Illinois eleventh Congressional District and a social media
Speaker 1: constantly viral social media presence who uses his social media
Speaker 1: platforms for activism the kind that you would know and love.
Speaker 1: Welcome back with us. We certainly have a lot more
Speaker 1: to talk about, and again it is an honor to
Speaker 1: have you on the show today, Sir.
Speaker 2: Brother Sabia Ramsey, It's great to be with your brother.
Speaker 3: Thank you, mam.
Speaker 1: So please be sure to stick around for that. We
Speaker 1: are going to be discussing his campaign specifically in the
Speaker 1: state of Illinois, and there's a whole lot of questions
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten too yet, so a lot to stay tuned.
Speaker 1: For But before we get there, we are going to
Speaker 1: discuss as always be a b A, becoming a better
Speaker 1: ally BABA. And today's BABA is sponsored by Friends of
Speaker 1: the Movement. You can sign up for the free voter
Speaker 1: wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and
Speaker 1: allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again,
Speaker 1: that's Fotmglobal dot com. And today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Erica Gaines, who is the president and CEO of
Speaker 1: a company called TAC.
Speaker 3: Mobility, and you're going to want to hear about this.
Speaker 1: Controlling the Mind and the Machine, a training program whose
Speaker 1: vision is to heal the racial divide between people of
Speaker 1: color and police officers through law enforcement wellness and community dialogue.
Speaker 1: While an unlikely candidate to advocate for police, this dark skinned,
Speaker 1: multiracial woman from Phoenix, Arizona continues to use her voice
Speaker 1: to talk about trauma, recovery, self awareness, and suicide. The
Speaker 1: number one cop killer in America. With inadequate clinical research
Speaker 1: to pull from, in twenty nineteen, Erica created the world's
Speaker 1: most extensive ongoing study of law enforcement officers and cumulative
Speaker 1: stress arm with data in twenty twenty Erica created a
Speaker 1: four hour Peace Officers Standards and Training post training course
Speaker 1: accredited through the National Certification Program developed by the International
Speaker 1: Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training. The
Speaker 1: training program and fiscally sponsored nonprofit tax Mobility, Controlling the
Speaker 1: Mind and the Machine offers stress and trauma awareness, rehabilitative stretching,
Speaker 1: and self awareness to police officers in the United States.
Speaker 3: With a straightforward approach.
Speaker 1: Erica uses tax Mobility to heal traumatized officers in an
Speaker 1: effort to bring communities closer. She believes that supporting the
Speaker 1: mental and physical health of officers ultimately brings support back
Speaker 1: to the community, enabling them to balance compassion, courage, and empathy.
Speaker 1: And we are very critical of police on this show,
Speaker 1: but we do recognize and respect that police are human
Speaker 1: beings and as a result, they are our brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: So again, check out tax Mobility if you wish to
Speaker 1: become a better ally and give her some support. All right,
Speaker 1: seem it has been a pleasure to get to know you, sir.
Speaker 1: You were everything that I was expecting. And now let's
Speaker 1: shift gears here and let's talk about your campaign. What
Speaker 1: makes you different from your opponent Bill Foster.
Speaker 2: Well, I think just about everything that Democrats and Americans
Speaker 2: care about. You know, he grew up quite wealthy. I
Speaker 2: grew up low income. I know the struggle of economic
Speaker 2: injustice of housing and food insecurity of working since I
Speaker 2: was fifteen. In Congress, the running joke is that the
Speaker 2: one thing that's the similar about us is that he
Speaker 2: and I have both passed the same number of bills
Speaker 2: in Congress, which is zero. He hasn't passed piece of
Speaker 2: legislation as lead sponsor if you exclude post offices, which
Speaker 2: that's your thing, okay. But on policy we see a
Speaker 2: massive contrast. I'm fighting for guaranteed universal healthcare. He is
Speaker 2: heavily funded by the health insurance companies and refuses universal healthcare.
Speaker 2: He's a pro for profit kind of guy. I'm taking
Speaker 2: the climate crisis seriously and calling for twenty to thirty
Speaker 2: carbon neutrality. He's shooting for twenty fifty, which scientists tallis
Speaker 2: is too late. He's pro fracking, pro drilling, pro Exxon,
Speaker 2: pro carbon capture, which is a debunk technology. On civil rights,
Speaker 2: I think civil rights are sacred. I strongly support HR forty,
Speaker 2: the bill to study reparations. I strongly support ending the
Speaker 2: George W. Bush Patriot Act, which has been used to
Speaker 2: conduct wantless searches on US citizens over the last twenty years,
Speaker 2: disproportionately black and brown people. I strongly support protecting disability rights.
Speaker 2: He voted a strip down disability rights. I strongly support
Speaker 2: ending AID that has been used by the Israeli government
Speaker 2: to detain Palestinian children. He refuses to co sponsor that bill.
Speaker 2: Let's talk bank regulations. While I'm a human rights lawyer,
Speaker 2: I did spend four years working on bank regulatory compliance.
Speaker 2: It is as boring as it sounds, but it's also
Speaker 2: so critical to protect consumers. I gave him credit for
Speaker 2: voting for dot Frank in two thousand and eight, but
Speaker 2: then he decided to vote Donald Trump to deregulate banks,
Speaker 2: and I think that was a terrible vote. It also
Speaker 2: helped enable the bank collapse we saw last year. I
Speaker 2: take the opiate crisis seriously. I've lost love ones to
Speaker 2: the opiate crisis. He is funded to the two of
Speaker 2: a half million dollars in the same companies like Walgreens
Speaker 2: who are causing the opiate crisis. You can google the
Speaker 2: article right now. Walgreens just settled a two hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty million dollar lawsuit for enabling mass deaf via illegal
Speaker 2: opiate prescriptions. The list just goes on and on, but fundamentally,
Speaker 2: the difference between Bill Foster and I comes down to
Speaker 2: this principle. Every vote and policy decision I make is
Speaker 2: based on what the facts tell us and what will
Speaker 2: benefit working families. Every vote and policy he takes depends
Speaker 2: on whether a corporation is funding him for that vote
Speaker 2: or not. And I gave some examples earlier where you
Speaker 2: can see him vote the right way, take corporate money,
Speaker 2: and then vote the wrong way. You know, in law
Speaker 2: school teach you that you recuse yourself if there's a
Speaker 2: conflict of interest, and you recuse yourself when there's even
Speaker 2: a perception of a conflict of interest. And so I
Speaker 2: want voters to know that by supporting my campaign and
Speaker 2: by electing me, they will know that every vote I
Speaker 2: make will be one hundred percent and exclusively accountable to
Speaker 2: what working people need us to do as elected officials.
Speaker 2: This is why I think he has been hesitant is
Speaker 2: probably too generous of a word even to show up
Speaker 2: to debate. He committed to three canceled all three, showed
Speaker 2: up last minute to a fourth one, and then midway through,
Speaker 2: just thirty minutes into it, gets up that says I
Speaker 2: have to be somewhere else and just left the debate
Speaker 2: midway through. It was extremely shocking for me, But this
Speaker 2: is what I mean. We are ready to not only
Speaker 2: defend our record, but make the argument on facts and
Speaker 2: science as to why our platform is better aligned with
Speaker 2: the needs of working people. Bill Foster wants voters to
Speaker 2: vote for a record that even he isn't willing to defend.
Speaker 2: So it's no wonder to me that that's showing up,
Speaker 2: because if I had a record like his, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: show up either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that it's you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get dirty here, but at a point, caution
Speaker 1: orders on cowardice, and at a time like this where
Speaker 1: the country is so politically divided and we really do
Speaker 1: need to get on the same page about listening to
Speaker 1: real human beings, real American citizens who go to work
Speaker 1: and then they go home and they have a repair
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, and they have to go shopping for
Speaker 1: their kids over the weekend, and then they have a
Speaker 1: birthday party to get to on Saturday. Those people that
Speaker 1: live day to day lives for those people who make
Speaker 1: up the fabric of this country to not be heard,
Speaker 1: and to then have a candidate come up and say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you, and the incumbent will not debate
Speaker 1: me again, that word cowardice comes into play, and I
Speaker 1: know you mentioned the reasons for that, as did I.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's money in politics, and there's.
Speaker 3: A lot at stake.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that I've come to appreciate about
Speaker 1: certain politicians is the ones that say, listen, I don't
Speaker 1: need to do this job forever. I just need to
Speaker 1: do this job until the job is fixed. And then
Speaker 1: there's a different set of politicians who are career politicians,
Speaker 1: who say I need to do this forever. So I
Speaker 1: need to make sure that I keep the money moving
Speaker 1: and I keep you know, enough support from enough people
Speaker 1: to where it doesn't look like I'm as corrupt or
Speaker 1: as morally compromised or indeed morally bankrupt as I truthfully am.
Speaker 1: And this is true not just for Republicans, but this
Speaker 1: is true in all of politics. And so that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that at least I found frustrating with
Speaker 1: respect to your back and forth with Bill Foster because
Speaker 1: that was something that I was hoping to see. And
Speaker 1: the truth is, I don't even live in Illinois. It
Speaker 1: just is something that was necessary. So you know your
Speaker 1: response and then we'll move on.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's in the nature of Americans to
Speaker 2: want to be able to compare. In contrast, we like choices.
Speaker 2: We want to know what the options are. It's it's
Speaker 2: why you go to the grocery store and there's two
Speaker 2: hundred kinds of cereal. Right. We like having our options
Speaker 2: and we don't like being told this is the only
Speaker 2: option and everything else is off limits. So you know,
Speaker 2: I will say this about Bill Foster that at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, he is accountable to the American people.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he knows that. And you know,
Speaker 2: we made a commitment at the start of this campaign
Speaker 2: that we are going to be unassailable, meaning every critique
Speaker 2: we make will be on policy. I'm not gonna mustling,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to name call. At an event a
Speaker 2: couple of nights ago, he flat out called me a liar.
Speaker 2: And what's unfortunate about that is is one I think
Speaker 2: is beneath the dignity of politics, because he didn't give
Speaker 2: any examples of what I'm misrepresented because he can't. But
Speaker 2: more importantly, it's one thing to not show up to
Speaker 2: defend your record. It's another thing to then just say, well,
Speaker 2: he's lying without any explanation or excuse. I don't think
Speaker 2: the American people appreciate that. And I'm not going to
Speaker 2: respond in kind. I'm not going to call him names.
Speaker 2: I just I think people are sick and tired of
Speaker 2: the divisiveness. I think they want adults in the room
Speaker 2: making these decisions. And I will say this. You know
Speaker 2: I'm not running for money or power, or fame or prestige.
Speaker 2: There's a reason why our campaign slogans justice can't wait.
Speaker 2: When you think about the you know, the person who's
Speaker 2: suffering from asthma under the climate crisis, we can't tell
Speaker 2: them to wait till twenty fifty. When you talk about
Speaker 2: the fact that Black Americans are arrested seven times the
Speaker 2: rate of white Americans despite having lower crime rates, you
Speaker 2: can't tell them wait a little bit longer. You talk
Speaker 2: about the woman who has breast cancer and can't get treatment,
Speaker 2: or the woman who needs reproductive healthcare but doesn't have access,
Speaker 2: you can't tell them to wait we need to act now.
Speaker 2: And you earlier you asked me, what's the difference between
Speaker 2: me and Bill Foster. You know, he admits that he
Speaker 2: didn't even get involved into politics until well into his fifties,
Speaker 2: when he had already made tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: It must be nice to have that kind of privilege.
Speaker 2: I grew up wondering where my next meal was going
Speaker 2: to come from. I knew from an early age that
Speaker 2: I needed to be actively engaged in the community here
Speaker 2: and now, and I consider it by distinct privilege that
Speaker 2: from a low income background, I'm at a place where
Speaker 2: my wife Eishin and I are doing well enough for ourselves.
Speaker 2: But we see these issues of wealth and income inequality
Speaker 2: worse now than the word thirty years ago. The climate
Speaker 2: crisis worse now, the opiate crisis is worse now, race
Speaker 2: relations worse now, and that's not going to be fixed
Speaker 2: by delaying and saying it will come in due time.
Speaker 2: We need to be active and deliberate now to make
Speaker 2: it happen now.
Speaker 1: I want to get a couple more things fleshed out here,
Speaker 1: because you did a very good job of covering many
Speaker 1: of the things that you're campaigning on many of the
Speaker 1: things that you want to affect once you're elected. On
Speaker 1: this show, we have conversations about lots of different things,
Speaker 1: and some of these things we haven't been able to
Speaker 1: touch on yet. So I want to get your thoughts
Speaker 1: on It's called American history in our estimation, but it's
Speaker 1: been rebranded as critical race theory. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the recent attacks on critical race theory and would
Speaker 1: you do what would you do if you could do
Speaker 1: anything to impact what's going on with respect to CRT
Speaker 1: in this country, well at least in Illinois.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is right wing outrage on a solution to
Speaker 2: a problem that doesn't exist, and it just kind of
Speaker 2: manufactured outrage in this space. This is a college of
Speaker 2: a law school level course that looks at the role
Speaker 2: that race has in how our legislation has been passed
Speaker 2: in the systemic injustice that exist as a result of that.
Speaker 2: To put in a simpler term, this is about how
Speaker 2: systems of oppression have been built and sustained for racial oppression.
Speaker 2: It's not about saying, hey, you white person individually, you're racist.
Speaker 2: That's a nonsensical way of looking at it. But I
Speaker 2: go even a step further and say, if you think
Speaker 2: teaching children about America's history of racism will shame white kids,
Speaker 2: then you need to answer a question, because yes, white
Speaker 2: people were enslavers, but there are also white people who
Speaker 2: are abolitionists like John Brown. If you think teaching about
Speaker 2: America's history of racism will shame white children, you need
Speaker 2: to answer why you think those kids will associate more
Speaker 2: with the enslavers that with John Brown, you're projecting, you're
Speaker 2: telling on yourself at that stage of the game. And
Speaker 2: so for me, this is about understanding history in a
Speaker 2: way that is constructive, that doesn't beat anyone down. That's
Speaker 2: never been the point of history is to understand why
Speaker 2: things happen the way they happen, and how we prevent
Speaker 2: them from happening again in the future. And I've long
Speaker 2: said one of the reasons why we're here today in
Speaker 2: the country is because unlike South Africa, for example, or
Speaker 2: unlike even Germany, which I'm not going to hold either
Speaker 2: country as some beacon of tolerance and prosperity, however, both
Speaker 2: those countries had a history lesson to reconcile the history
Speaker 2: of aart conversation about it exactly, and it's actively taught
Speaker 2: in their schools. We've never had a reckoning for the
Speaker 2: genericide of Native Americans, or for the enslavement and mass
Speaker 2: murder and trafficking of Africans and non African Americans, or
Speaker 2: the interment and concentration camps of Japanese and Jactans, reckoning
Speaker 2: for the outright ban on Asian immigration, or the lynching
Speaker 2: that black and Latino Americans went through. None of that.
Speaker 2: Actually there was no reparations paid. I mean, for God's sake,
Speaker 2: Tulsa survivors are still with us in a court role
Speaker 2: that they are not qualified for reparations. So until and
Speaker 2: unless we can have some kind of reckoning in that
Speaker 2: space with actual monetary value transferred to those who've been marginalized,
Speaker 2: I don't know if we're going to be able to
Speaker 2: truly heal race relations in this country. However, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean we shouldn't continue to work towards that space and
Speaker 2: build capacity so that this younger generation knows that they
Speaker 2: control the reins into the future and they can bring
Speaker 2: about those changes. You know, justice delayed is justice denied,
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that we prevent justice from being
Speaker 2: implemented in the future. It can still happen if we
Speaker 2: go after it aggressively.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a post that I came across, might
Speaker 1: have been earlier today, in fact, and it says, the
Speaker 1: people who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to
Speaker 1: go to school are now upset their grandchildren might have
Speaker 1: to learn about them throwing rocks at Ruby Bridges for
Speaker 1: trying to go to school. It's so interesting because this
Speaker 1: year she's sixty nine years old. And so for the
Speaker 1: folks that really push back against again, we're going to
Speaker 1: call it what it is, American history, the teaching of
Speaker 1: American history in the you know, K through twelve grades
Speaker 1: that has been rebranded as CRT. For those folks that
Speaker 1: push back against that, there's often a sense of shame
Speaker 1: is that they associated with it that, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: may not necessarily translate to their children. They may not
Speaker 1: identify as the rock throwers in the story. They might
Speaker 1: identify as an entirely separate group of people. And this
Speaker 1: is the way that my youth, you know, because I
Speaker 1: learned all this stuff, that's the way I thought about it,
Speaker 1: and I saw, you know, my non black classmates responding
Speaker 1: to it. So that's a very interesting perspective. I'm also
Speaker 1: appreciative of how you connected that with the conversation about reparations,
Speaker 1: because again by not having that racial reckoning. We covered
Speaker 1: something recently on the show here it might have been
Speaker 1: two or three weeks ago, where we talked about the
Speaker 1: different reparations that were paid in this country to Native Americans,
Speaker 1: to in slavers or loss of property, to you know,
Speaker 1: Japanese Americans, to reparations paid to the descendants of the
Speaker 1: people in the Holocaust and the people who were in
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, and you know, and they had the total,
Speaker 1: we had the total of the amount paid by the government,
Speaker 1: you know, and adjusted for you know, inflation and you
Speaker 1: know how money works. And then it got down to
Speaker 1: the bottom the reparations paid to Black Americans, and that
Speaker 1: was zero dollars. And when you look at it in
Speaker 1: terms of the actual harm done just by the act
Speaker 1: of slavery by itself, it's it's immeasurable. But even if
Speaker 1: we take slavery out of the equation, on this show,
Speaker 1: we discuss everything that followed that. We discuss everything from
Speaker 1: you know, the black Codes and Jim Crow and the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement to redlining to the War on drugs too,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, you know, over policing, disproportionate arrest rates,
Speaker 1: judicial sentencing, you know, on and on and on and
Speaker 1: and and then you know, more recently we're finding out
Speaker 1: the impacts of environmental racism, how that factors into healthcare
Speaker 1: outcomes for black and brown people in this country. And
Speaker 1: so it's just a very interesting segue to go from
Speaker 1: why folks are banning CRTA and why we need to
Speaker 1: push back against that to the conversation about economic restorative
Speaker 1: justice or you know, in truth.
Speaker 3: Reparations.
Speaker 1: And so one last thing I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: and that's about affirmative action.
Speaker 3: You know, the Supreme Court recently.
Speaker 1: Overturned you know, a very and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: sad day for a lot of us, you know who.
Speaker 1: We're happy to have that built into the equation to
Speaker 1: kind of offset some of the historic injustices.
Speaker 3: That we've endured.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to bait the question for you, but
Speaker 1: give us your thoughts on that, and you know what,
Speaker 1: if anything, you would do if elected?
Speaker 3: You know about that?
Speaker 2: Well, I will start again with the contrast when affirmative
Speaker 2: action was repealed by the Supreme Court, my opponent didn't
Speaker 2: think it was important enough to talk about or condemned
Speaker 2: that rule, which says a lot about his view of
Speaker 2: reparations of justice for black people in general. And I
Speaker 2: spoke extensively about this issue. You mean, the first, the
Speaker 2: irony of it, all right, that affirmative action has actually
Speaker 2: benefited white women more than black and brown and Asian
Speaker 2: people combined. I mean, just statistically speaking, because it's not
Speaker 2: just about education. It's also in the workforce as well.
Speaker 2: And women. You know, until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy four, women didn't have basic economic access
Speaker 2: in this country, white or black. Two. Affirmative action was
Speaker 2: never about admitting unqualified black people. It was about ensuring
Speaker 2: that qualified black people also got access considered. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean and basic consideration. People talking about unqualified people getting admission.
Speaker 2: That's not affirm redaction, that's legacy admissions. A recent study
Speaker 2: benefits white folks exactly because legacy admissions is if your
Speaker 2: grandfather went into Harvard and during Jim Crow and black
Speaker 2: people weren't allowed, you get automatic admission or you get
Speaker 2: preferential treatment of a reason. Study showed that forty three
Speaker 2: percent of white admittance to Harvard university were legacy admissions,
Speaker 2: and three quarters of them would not have qualified on
Speaker 2: their own merit, and so to the comparison, it's like
Speaker 2: a ten x factor. So even if you go with
Speaker 2: the incredulous argument that affirmative action admitted unqualified people, even
Speaker 2: with that ridiculous argument, the number of white people getting
Speaker 2: admission through legacy is ten x that. But you never
Speaker 2: heard anybody complain about that. That's a non issue. The
Speaker 2: issue is this misperception that a black person got admission.
Speaker 2: And then look, I think fundamentally it also speaks to
Speaker 2: just this the systemic racism that we're facing here.
Speaker 3: Fantastic, Well, do us a favor.
Speaker 1: Let everyone know how they can connect with you, how
Speaker 1: they can support you, how they can support your campaign
Speaker 1: on the ground and around the country, and let's make
Speaker 1: sure that we have everybody tapped in.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It was BEAUTA hill about our campaign is
Speaker 2: we are building a coalition black, white, brown people of
Speaker 2: all based and backgrounds were working together. And that's the
Speaker 2: key element I want to focus on that we solve
Speaker 2: these issues by working together across faith, race, gender, socioeconomic status.
Speaker 2: That's how we build a more perfect union. You can
Speaker 2: visit us at my website www dot Cossumrashid dot com.
Speaker 2: I'm on social media at Cossim Rashid q A s
Speaker 2: I M R A s H I D and reach
Speaker 2: out to us. Let's get involved. And if you're in
Speaker 2: the district in Illinois or in the northern Illinois area
Speaker 2: and you're looking for some extra work, we're starting camus
Speaker 2: like twenty dollars an hour, paying a decent way to
Speaker 2: get folks engaged. So get get involved, get engaged. Let's
Speaker 2: let's win this election because why because justice can't wait.
Speaker 3: Well, best wishes to you on your campaign.
Speaker 1: I know that it's impossible for me to make a
Speaker 1: recommendation to our listeners, but.
Speaker 3: I wish everyone well. How about that?
Speaker 1: And as I would love to thank you again for
Speaker 1: taking the time to be on the show. It really
Speaker 1: means a lot to us. And you know, if we can,
Speaker 1: let's do it again soon. All right, Hey, brother, thank
Speaker 1: you having this Blas, thank you so much. If you
Speaker 1: want to find anything that we missed on today's episode,
Speaker 1: do us a favorite. Hit the website to excite for
Speaker 1: dot com check out anything that you missed. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can download this in any previous episodes We sure
Speaker 1: to follow us on social media, and until next week
Speaker 1: you'll pea