Speaker 1: It's a lot going on in the street, and you
Speaker 1: grew a beard. So there we go. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying to big Big life. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I'm in my bed, y'all, because unfortunately, if I showed
Speaker 1: you guys like what it looks like in my entire
Speaker 1: apartment because I have work being done on a major
Speaker 1: part of my place, um, you would probably scream. So
Speaker 1: I have to actually be in my bed. This is
Speaker 1: not something that I would generally do on Live on
Speaker 1: the Street politicians live. But we got to do what
Speaker 1: we got to do. So what we're talking about. You
Speaker 1: had the time that man, you had. You know, you
Speaker 1: had the Internet going a little crazy because and I'm
Speaker 1: not hear it all the time. I post on my
Speaker 1: page about things, and you know you post about let's say, yesterday,
Speaker 1: Um I posted or I didn't even post. I just
Speaker 1: seen yesterday that they attempted to hang him in like
Speaker 1: some white some white people was in They were I
Speaker 1: think they were on the camping trip or something, and
Speaker 1: they approached some black dude and it was attempting to
Speaker 1: hang him and some people called them and it's like
Speaker 1: hey stop that stop that They got it on camera
Speaker 1: and everything, and you'll post something like that and people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, why you don't post about the violence
Speaker 1: that's happening in black on black crimes that's going on,
Speaker 1: you know, or your post I posted today? You know,
Speaker 1: there was a video I don't know where how how
Speaker 1: it created, I mean, what we created the situation, but
Speaker 1: obviously there was some type of um disturbance inside. I
Speaker 1: think it was a restaurant or something with a white
Speaker 1: white man, a white woman her man, I guess, or
Speaker 1: somebody was with her, and I guess she was having
Speaker 1: some is was with some black people. So one of
Speaker 1: the black ladies that she was having an issue would
Speaker 1: look like she tried to grab all hit her and
Speaker 1: the guy that was with her ted off from started
Speaker 1: punching on like she was to do uppercutting. And a
Speaker 1: black dude came out and he he toys asks up,
Speaker 1: he let him up, you know. And then you have
Speaker 1: people say, you know, yeah, you'll show that, but why
Speaker 1: you don't talk about the black on black crime or
Speaker 1: why you don't talk about the people that killed somebody
Speaker 1: in the wrong and we and and it's so it's
Speaker 1: so annoying to me, right and they and they don't
Speaker 1: realize the correlation to all of these things. So there's
Speaker 1: so many people that make it seem like, you know,
Speaker 1: black people and in the communities, they just negative, they
Speaker 1: just violent, These people just shooting each other because it's
Speaker 1: just hid of y'all. You know, these people were just terrible,
Speaker 1: They most evil, the most you know, demonized savages people
Speaker 1: in the world. You know. And I've seen you make
Speaker 1: a post about how systematic racism causes is the cause
Speaker 1: for the violence of the black music, and you know,
Speaker 1: and there's always people that, oh, you don't want to
Speaker 1: be healthy, accountable, people just want to act like there's
Speaker 1: nothing going on. Black people need to pull yourself by
Speaker 1: the bootstraps and stop making excuses. And you can't blame
Speaker 1: the white man everything. And I hear this bullshit over
Speaker 1: over thousands, thousands towns, And you know, I'm so glad
Speaker 1: that you posted that. So it gave us an opportunity
Speaker 1: to have a conversation and delve deep into what systematic
Speaker 1: and systemic racism is and how it really plays the
Speaker 1: part you're talking, you know, you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: heard about obviously a lot of the shootings that happened
Speaker 1: over the weekend I was hearing about it. You know,
Speaker 1: as we do, we get reports. Unfortunately add things are
Speaker 1: happening from you know, I'm on you and I both
Speaker 1: on one group in New York which is made up
Speaker 1: of all the major anti violence groups and UM and
Speaker 1: Park Park Jayton, We're gonna come right to your m
Speaker 1: But all the major anti violence groups that are in
Speaker 1: New York City are on a thread and we're constantly
Speaker 1: back and forth. And you know, and I really am
Speaker 1: more of a bystander, just kind of listening and and
Speaker 1: figuring out how I can be helpful and UM. So
Speaker 1: you unfortunately get to hear this happened at this time,
Speaker 1: like it's in real time. You find out about things
Speaker 1: that's going on. So and of course, even though it's
Speaker 1: a group in New York, you share relationships and partnership
Speaker 1: and family with people from all around the country, and
Speaker 1: so you hear about incidents that are happening even before
Speaker 1: the general public knows about, you know, different shootings. And
Speaker 1: so I'm staring a lot about kids being killed. And
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the post that I wrote last night
Speaker 1: that for the over the last twenty five years of
Speaker 1: my life, I have UM unfortunately helped to bury a
Speaker 1: lot of kids, um, you know a lot of kids,
Speaker 1: you know, and and I guess the one case that
Speaker 1: is the most significant to me, not that any child,
Speaker 1: like I guess all of them are significant, but the
Speaker 1: one that I really literally helped with everything and getting
Speaker 1: him a casket that was um fit for his side.
Speaker 1: He was too small for the other caskets, he was
Speaker 1: too small for a big too big for a baby casket,
Speaker 1: but too small for any of the other caskets, and
Speaker 1: so um we had to have a special casket board
Speaker 1: in And it was for young Christopher Lloyd Morgan UM
Speaker 1: and his parents Lloyd and Um. And it whether or
Speaker 1: not they don't even need to be given out his
Speaker 1: parents name. The bottom line is that that particular service,
Speaker 1: that funeral, it really mice tore like something into my
Speaker 1: soul to watch these people, this family, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess Cheyenne doesn't doesn't mind me talking about her because
Speaker 1: she's told her story a million times, But to watch
Speaker 1: her bury her baby was so incredibly painful for me.
Speaker 1: I have never been able to erase the image of
Speaker 1: that baby in that casket. I've never been able to
Speaker 1: get that out of my mind. It was so painful,
Speaker 1: and to watch her family go through the turmoil, and
Speaker 1: she had another child and other you know, her mom
Speaker 1: and all of what they suffered. And so I know
Speaker 1: all too well that what happens, you know, to a
Speaker 1: family when a child dis killed, is like no other
Speaker 1: pain in the world. So this is not about excusing
Speaker 1: those individuals responsible for killing Um Young. In fact, when
Speaker 1: I think about it, um we went to court, we
Speaker 1: actually need to court, then into court and sat with
Speaker 1: her while she had to face her children's murderers. And
Speaker 1: so I don't think that anyone is saying I know
Speaker 1: for sure that no one that I know that's in
Speaker 1: the anti violence world, people doing this work for many years.
Speaker 1: No one is saying that it's acceptable, that there is
Speaker 1: a there's an excuse that can be made for it,
Speaker 1: that it is uh, you know, it's it's it's okay,
Speaker 1: or that anyone who challenges these individuals is wrong, or
Speaker 1: that we are going to challenge their parents for saying
Speaker 1: that they want to see um that that these that
Speaker 1: the individuals that are responsible for killing their kids are
Speaker 1: health responsible. I don't think anyone is saying that I know,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not that's not that's not the point.
Speaker 1: But what we know, or at least what I know,
Speaker 1: is that this particular type of of of activity or
Speaker 1: or or horrific action really only takes place in certain communities.
Speaker 1: So I'm really trying to go slow with this so
Speaker 1: we can really break it down because unpack. It's a
Speaker 1: lot to unpack, and it's hard when you move fastward
Speaker 1: because people be like, I know, I do not miss it. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take We're gonna take our time to wet time.
Speaker 1: We got time. So we're gonna break it down slow. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it only happens in certain communities. So when I
Speaker 1: go to hey, Derek, my brother, I love you. It's
Speaker 1: not like when I go to the black community in
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills, or in Buckhead, or in on Strivers Road
Speaker 1: or those Strivers Row in Manhattan is very close to
Speaker 1: you know, Edge Home and other places. But I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you get the point. I go into those places and
Speaker 1: I bring those places because black people live in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: black ship live in um and and what's the other
Speaker 1: place in u uh no, no, no, But in the
Speaker 1: other place I said, in Buckhead, black people live in Buckhead.
Speaker 1: The black people live in um in uh Strivers Row
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, and Harlem, in Edgewater, New Jersey. Puts give
Speaker 1: us some other places where black people live in these
Speaker 1: rich areas. These things don't happen there. Now, what some
Speaker 1: people will try to have us believe, Mice. I want
Speaker 1: to say, is that kids who lives in the Bronx, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is different somehow mechanically like their makeup from the
Speaker 1: child who grew up in Edgewater. Check that. I think
Speaker 1: all these children are born the same. But then something happens.
Speaker 1: So now you want to pick it up because I
Speaker 1: don't want to. Can. I know you you you use teaching,
Speaker 1: use teaching. So there there is, there is, and this
Speaker 1: is what my whole conversation is. There is a direct correlization.
Speaker 1: And I made up a word, my fault, correlization. It's correlation.
Speaker 1: There's a direct correlation to poverty en violence. You know,
Speaker 1: there is a direct correlation. They are they are connected
Speaker 1: at the hip. And that's why when you say that there,
Speaker 1: when you talk about that, black people are you know,
Speaker 1: are prevalent in out that where there is not poverty,
Speaker 1: there is not violence that follows. So that shows that
Speaker 1: we're but it's not just that black people are just negative,
Speaker 1: violent people. There is something that is causing violence. And
Speaker 1: when we talk about poverty, poverty in our communities is
Speaker 1: a direct effect of systemic racist going through fast fact. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's tell me the problems. Some people are not even
Speaker 1: clear how the poverty does even have. Let me let
Speaker 1: me okay, let me break down to the poverty creates
Speaker 1: the violence. Because look, you're in a community, right, you
Speaker 1: wake up hungry, Right, that's that's the first thing. You
Speaker 1: wake up hungry. That causes trauma, and the trauma eventually
Speaker 1: leads to mental health issues. Right. A lot of these
Speaker 1: people who are committing violence are doing two things. They're
Speaker 1: trying to eat and they're dealing with mental health issues.
Speaker 1: So you go outside after you're hungry. Right, you don't
Speaker 1: have much money. The only vision of success that you
Speaker 1: have in your community is the drug dealer. Right, the
Speaker 1: drug dealer comes outside. He has the nice clothes you want,
Speaker 1: he has to the car you want, he got the
Speaker 1: girl you want, he got everything. You woke up hungry
Speaker 1: because the food stamps that they said and then didn't
Speaker 1: feed everybody, because you got about six and seven brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters, you know, and there's not you you want.
Speaker 1: This is this is your situation you was born into
Speaker 1: as a young boy. You didn't you didn't just didn't
Speaker 1: do your job. You came into. You were born to
Speaker 1: a project household where it's not much going on. It's
Speaker 1: three bedrooms and it's about ten or fifteen y'all you're
Speaker 1: sleeping on and you wake up, you frustrated, your little
Speaker 1: sister and Pete in the bed. There's pistons in the mattress.
Speaker 1: You hunt all these things you dealer when you come outside,
Speaker 1: and the drug dealer got the brand new Jordan's you want,
Speaker 1: and the girl you could try to talk about something.
Speaker 1: My acutity is you ain't. It's no doctor to the
Speaker 1: next door to you, ain't no lawyer that next door
Speaker 1: to you. The only vision of success or the person
Speaker 1: that you see closest to the proximity of success is
Speaker 1: this drug. Because where did the doctors go and the lawyer?
Speaker 1: The doctors and the lawyers don't went to Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: They they didn't. They didn't stay here and tell you
Speaker 1: how to be a doctor. And the lawyer they didn't
Speaker 1: give you no, no, no, no, you know, no blueprint.
Speaker 1: They didn't give you anything possible, They didn't let you
Speaker 1: know anything that you was able to do was absolutely
Speaker 1: no nothing. So what happens is now you was left
Speaker 1: with the drug deal you know, and he don't know.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the drug dealer, because the drug
Speaker 1: dealer is there. Yes, that is true, and you've talked
Speaker 1: about that. So I think that's very personal for you
Speaker 1: that the drug dealer became someone that you saw and
Speaker 1: sort of idolized, if you will. Right, But David John says,
Speaker 1: there was no cliff notes. They was just it was nothing.
Speaker 1: It was just literally and and and someone else says,
Speaker 1: here we got to talk to our Our father was
Speaker 1: Nate Jones, who I love much, said, and she said,
Speaker 1: you gotta sell some of them stamps because the food
Speaker 1: stamps by the day. But so you gotta sell some
Speaker 1: of them stamps, right, but talk about it, he said.
Speaker 1: The fathers, where were the fathers? The father is there,
Speaker 1: your father is there. Sometimes the father is there, But
Speaker 1: the father who is there is working for uh the
Speaker 1: bus what you call it, uh m t A maybe
Speaker 1: driving a train. You left out image in the household
Speaker 1: and of of a man who's working hard. But he
Speaker 1: doesn't look shiny like the dude on the street. But
Speaker 1: that is old school mine. You're talking old school, you're
Speaker 1: speaking from Okay, so now we're talking about the skin
Speaker 1: the scammera now, but I ain't even talking about the
Speaker 1: scam because the old school. What I'm saying is old
Speaker 1: schools that drug dealers in the community, and therefore you
Speaker 1: got to see him in a certain way. Now it's
Speaker 1: on your cell phone. Everybody on your cell phone, on
Speaker 1: on instag it's late, they're rich, they everybody. Everybody on
Speaker 1: your cell phone is literally lit like everybody even if
Speaker 1: you got nothing, they are lit on the cell phone.
Speaker 1: So these are these are the things that you're she said,
Speaker 1: the weak minded individuals. Well, the problem with that, with
Speaker 1: that philosop sided people, all the weak minded individuals now
Speaker 1: ain't a attentative people fall to that same reality like
Speaker 1: we don't you don't We figure it out later. You
Speaker 1: understand I'm saying. But for the most part, everybody's trying
Speaker 1: to be lit. When you're young. We ain't sitting there,
Speaker 1: We ain't got this events mind saying, Yo, you know,
Speaker 1: don't do that. That's not what we're going for. We're
Speaker 1: going forward was lit. We're going forwards hot. We want
Speaker 1: nice things? Why don't we want nice thing? I young,
Speaker 1: when I was a young girl, I say this in
Speaker 1: my documentary, I wanted to be married to a drug
Speaker 1: dealer because when I asked my parents for stuff, they
Speaker 1: told me, you can't have that. I ain't buying that.
Speaker 1: That's stupid. This is that I'm not spending that kind
Speaker 1: of money on these things and that thing. So that's
Speaker 1: what I learned. Now I'm just saying, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Tamika Mallory. There is a direct line between what I
Speaker 1: was looking for when I was young. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be married to a drug dealer. And then I met
Speaker 1: my baby father and he was working in a print shop.
Speaker 1: He was working in a print shop at a at
Speaker 1: a law for he was he was he was tempting
Speaker 1: at night, making copies of the legal documents for the
Speaker 1: next day. His brother had him doing that job. But
Speaker 1: I wanted things, so I would say I want this,
Speaker 1: I want that, I don't understand it this and that
Speaker 1: you can't do nothing for me. That that that was
Speaker 1: doing the net vib and the whole thing. And guess
Speaker 1: what happened next thing, you know, he started selling weeds
Speaker 1: trying to keep up. It wasn't just me, but I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm taking full responsibility because I don't really give
Speaker 1: a funk with anybody thinks I'm telling the truth. He started,
Speaker 1: he started selling weeds, and that was just supposed to
Speaker 1: be some extra money on the side. But guess what,
Speaker 1: within X amount of years the weed turned into a
Speaker 1: little bit of weed that went to a lot of
Speaker 1: bit of weeds that went to him being killed because
Speaker 1: of um you know, folks saying that he sold drugs
Speaker 1: or whatever. Some that the head was drug related, and
Speaker 1: come to find out when it was all said and done,
Speaker 1: another young lady said she was piste off with the
Speaker 1: guy who lived in the house and so she stole
Speaker 1: the drugs. And yet my baby Frother was blamed for it.
Speaker 1: He was shot and killed. He was left in the
Speaker 1: dish for two weeks before he was discovered. So, you know,
Speaker 1: for us, like some people think, oh, you guys are
Speaker 1: out here just fighting, um uh for against police brutality,
Speaker 1: but you're not really doing anything about the issue of
Speaker 1: fix my camera. If they all on me about get
Speaker 1: it together, um um sorry. You know, some people feel
Speaker 1: like well, you know, they just out here fighting police brutality.
Speaker 1: They're not really dealing with the issue of violence in
Speaker 1: our community. And I'm like, yo, part of it might
Speaker 1: just be our fault that we haven't really expressed to people,
Speaker 1: um what we do and our real stories. Maybe they
Speaker 1: just haven't heard it. Maybe they are a lot of
Speaker 1: new followers, people who don't really know our stories. But
Speaker 1: we're not talking about stuff that is far, you know,
Speaker 1: away from us, or things that we can't touch and
Speaker 1: feel and smell and taste every day, because this is
Speaker 1: actually our lived experiences, right and that's pretty much what
Speaker 1: it is. And so when we break down these situations,
Speaker 1: when I talk about how, you know, what my experience
Speaker 1: growing up young was, I understand how that reality created violence,
Speaker 1: created and talking about I was talking about how, you know,
Speaker 1: how we really grew up poor, you know, and how
Speaker 1: could the crackt error in our community completely wiped us out,
Speaker 1: you know, and it made us It created mental health,
Speaker 1: it created trauma, it created poverty, created all of those things.
Speaker 1: And those things come from somewhere, you know. People just oh,
Speaker 1: you just made bad decisions. Everybody has to be responsible
Speaker 1: for the decisions, which your decisions is based on your choices.
Speaker 1: You understand what I'm saying. I'm I'm quite sure, okay,
Speaker 1: so let me explain to you. Your decision is based
Speaker 1: on your choices. Now you have okay, hey, there's no
Speaker 1: food in refrigerator, you can not eat. Hey, you can
Speaker 1: go access neighbor to see if maybe they have something,
Speaker 1: which they probably won't be when you can see go
Speaker 1: outside and probably steal something to see d or you
Speaker 1: can go out and hustle and pretty much not you know,
Speaker 1: figure out when your own and make your own money.
Speaker 1: But you can have more money for even more than
Speaker 1: just groceries. You can actually have some sneakers that don't
Speaker 1: have holes in it, right, and what comes with that,
Speaker 1: A lot of people in the community are choosing indeed,
Speaker 1: because you don't really want to steal. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. You want to make your own money that
Speaker 1: you don't want to starve, you don't want to be hungry.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people in your same community are
Speaker 1: choosing indeed. Now what happens was d is everybody can't
Speaker 1: make money in the same place because if you make
Speaker 1: it money he making money, then all the people that
Speaker 1: hustle on it's not really making no money. So what
Speaker 1: happens is you realize that in order for you to
Speaker 1: actually make money, there has to be some level of
Speaker 1: violence that comes with this situation, because you gotta make
Speaker 1: them believe like, you can't just hustle on his block
Speaker 1: because I can't pay the money if we all hustle
Speaker 1: on the same corner, because everybody ain't coming and buy
Speaker 1: the same drugs, and everybody ain't coming to buy the
Speaker 1: same somebody. Somebody can't work it. So what happens is
Speaker 1: the toughest person is the one that gets to be
Speaker 1: able to make the money on the block. So you
Speaker 1: learn that just by watching whoever they're scared of is
Speaker 1: the person that's able to make them money. So you
Speaker 1: start to adopt that mentality. And what happens is everybody
Speaker 1: else to die tell you, so they have to prove
Speaker 1: to you that you're toughing in them or they're tough
Speaker 1: than you. And then what happens after they starts out
Speaker 1: with fist fights on the block, it turns into the guns.
Speaker 1: And this is all these things are creative because people
Speaker 1: just don't want to be hungry. I put you fast, yo,
Speaker 1: you gotta slow it down for the people in the
Speaker 1: back because they can't hear you in the back. Ok
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that we're not saying we don't want
Speaker 1: to see violence. Man, I wish Erica could be in
Speaker 1: this conversation. But they got to do better with this
Speaker 1: where we can have more than one person on Instagram
Speaker 1: at one Instagram, you gotta start getting three or four ways,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly. And my brother is on here flawless, um, flawless,
Speaker 1: n T. He's on here talking about how like I
Speaker 1: was mad young. That's the thing about lived experience is
Speaker 1: I was like fourteen and fifteen years old after my
Speaker 1: brother had been shot several times and he was in jail,
Speaker 1: and I was traveling on buses back and forth to
Speaker 1: go see him in jail. I was I was going
Speaker 1: to the grocery store helping my mother to pack up
Speaker 1: boxes to ship him to send him, to help him
Speaker 1: in his situation. Like this is our live experience, Okay.
Speaker 1: And he he was not born a bad person, he
Speaker 1: was not born angry and evil. Actually, he's a very sweet, kind,
Speaker 1: thoughtful and loving person. Actually. However, however, based upon the
Speaker 1: fact that he is not my mother's child, this is
Speaker 1: actually he's actually my cousin who we lived. I lived
Speaker 1: with him, so he is my brother, but he's my cousin.
Speaker 1: He lived in a situation where his father was deceased
Speaker 1: when he was very young. He lived with his mother,
Speaker 1: who had little means. They lived in a certain community
Speaker 1: that was very violent. It was very rough, it was
Speaker 1: very challenged, and he's he became a victim of his environment.
Speaker 1: So now someone saying, we want to discuss George Sorrows,
Speaker 1: whatever your questions are, please, I need or George Sorrows
Speaker 1: to give him some money. He's applying. He is asked
Speaker 1: many times, I got the fellowship last year. We are yes,
Speaker 1: we I got some money from George Sorrows. My son
Speaker 1: did not. He's trying. So I'm trying because I hate
Speaker 1: giving up money and free money to please free because
Speaker 1: I have to work. I got a project. But anyway, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, people try to make it seem
Speaker 1: like they're doing some gotcha thing like so anyway, um,
Speaker 1: that's how I lived experience, and when you it resonates
Speaker 1: with me when you talk about the crack addiction. My
Speaker 1: parents were not addicted to crack, right, That's something that
Speaker 1: I didn't have to deal with. So I did a
Speaker 1: little bit better than most of the people around me.
Speaker 1: But down the hall from me, I lived in in
Speaker 1: a project on a in a project building where there
Speaker 1: was twenty floors, and on each floor there were four
Speaker 1: apartments for three four so it was eight nine, eleven,
Speaker 1: eleven apartments on each floor. Every other door had people
Speaker 1: addicted to crack. Sverrely, I'm not listen. I was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty. I'm not talking about people addicted to
Speaker 1: crack today, because I understand there's a difference between the
Speaker 1: today crack addicts and the crack addicts of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: They were severely addicted to crack cocaine. This was the
Speaker 1: first time in the in the and and I think
Speaker 1: in our exact sense that black women would sell their children,
Speaker 1: the children. And this is not this is not a bullshit.
Speaker 1: They were selling their their bodies and their children. They
Speaker 1: was literally leaving their children in the crackhouse as collateral
Speaker 1: to come back for cracks, saying listen, you can hold
Speaker 1: my baby if you don't think I'll come back, and
Speaker 1: leaving the baby with the drug dealer for weeks at
Speaker 1: a time. Newborn babies, man like, I literally seen this
Speaker 1: like I watched these things happen. I watched women who
Speaker 1: I've seen who are nine the five working every day,
Speaker 1: the most beautiful, smart people in the world was outside
Speaker 1: knocking on doors saying they would do anything in the
Speaker 1: world just to get a hit like this. And we
Speaker 1: we learned because it has now proven and recording that
Speaker 1: crack cocaine was implanted in our communities, that the federal
Speaker 1: government had lots to do with how crack cocaine became
Speaker 1: prevalent in the Black community. And I think it's important
Speaker 1: for us too, because we gotta swing back because I
Speaker 1: know Cat is gonna get on us our producer about
Speaker 1: staying on point about white supremacy and about systemic racism
Speaker 1: and how there are some people who do not understand
Speaker 1: the connection between the ways in which our communities have
Speaker 1: been literally designed. Like right, they say that the c
Speaker 1: i A. Someone Nicole is saying exactly the c I
Speaker 1: A Is reported to having been engaged in ensuring that
Speaker 1: crack cocaine was and dope and all of those things
Speaker 1: were prevalent in the black community. So we what we
Speaker 1: what we? What we? What we? And that's why I
Speaker 1: wrote in my last post last night, we have a
Speaker 1: We don't understand because when you hear white supremacy, people
Speaker 1: start saying, well, white people didn't run up and actually
Speaker 1: shoot and kill the black people or children. We're talking
Speaker 1: about people. We're talking about the system, system, system. Take
Speaker 1: You could take Johnny out the system and put in
Speaker 1: uh Mark Jack and it was the system was still run.
Speaker 1: The same world will continue to run because the system
Speaker 1: has been designed in a way that is set up
Speaker 1: to keep our communities oppressed, dependent and broken and violence
Speaker 1: exactly violence. This people don't understand when you say systems,
Speaker 1: racism and what you they don't understand what capitalism is
Speaker 1: built on. Capitalism is built on the fact that there
Speaker 1: will be a lower class. There has to be a bottom,
Speaker 1: and this structure was built with black people to stay
Speaker 1: at the bottom. The main structures that are funding capitalism
Speaker 1: is the prison industrialism and the prison industrialism incorporations. And
Speaker 1: they invest in the bottom. They invest in us killing
Speaker 1: each other, they're invest in us dying, they invest in
Speaker 1: us being a consumer. Everything about capitalism is built on
Speaker 1: the back of black empore people in the world. That
Speaker 1: is how they make their money. They make their money
Speaker 1: betting on the fact that we will go to jail,
Speaker 1: that we will die fast, that we will overpopulate the prisons,
Speaker 1: that we will um spend most of our money into
Speaker 1: anything that they put out. This is how this structure
Speaker 1: has been So when we talk about system make racism,
Speaker 1: that is what is built on. It's understanding that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make sure that they have access to guns,
Speaker 1: even though they don't make any guns in the community.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make sure that they have abundant of access
Speaker 1: to guns so that they can continue to kill each other,
Speaker 1: so that we can continue to lock them up and
Speaker 1: make billions and trillions of dollars a year. I'm laughing
Speaker 1: because people are talking to me in the comments, but no,
Speaker 1: and we are don't. He just wanted some batteries. His
Speaker 1: mother can batteries. Um that that we have to understand
Speaker 1: that when you and I and I really mean my
Speaker 1: slow slow for real, because I'm telling you last night,
Speaker 1: I sat up for two hours and talk to people
Speaker 1: in the in the comments that are lost, they don't know.
Speaker 1: They think that this is about locking up Ray Ray
Speaker 1: now that you can lock up and the violence in
Speaker 1: our communities because the same the same position and if
Speaker 1: you can't change his conditions, You cannot change his reality.
Speaker 1: This is why when you look at our rappers, when
Speaker 1: you look at our rappers, when you look at our athletes,
Speaker 1: when you look at all of our people who acclimate
Speaker 1: to a level of success, if you watch how they
Speaker 1: come into the business, as to how the mind state changes,
Speaker 1: and how they're able even able to capitalize and monopolize
Speaker 1: any of these industries. When you look at fifties, I
Speaker 1: teach courses. I sit down and teach educators about They asked,
Speaker 1: why are we not able to grab the bonds of
Speaker 1: these young geniuses in elementary school and junior high school?
Speaker 1: How do people like jay Z don't even go or
Speaker 1: graduate high school? How does fifty cent of them drop
Speaker 1: out of junior high school high school? How aren't we
Speaker 1: able to capitalize on these young brilliant minds. And it's
Speaker 1: because the structures, and it's in the poverty and all
Speaker 1: the things going on around us. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of us to be to be in golf, in school
Speaker 1: and the structure of school that it's not meant to
Speaker 1: really teach us or teach us how to be the
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs that other white white counterparts. Again, so we're not
Speaker 1: even grabbing onto that we're dealing with. So to listen
Speaker 1: to me. I was dealing with so much ship in school,
Speaker 1: I mean in my home that by the time I
Speaker 1: was probably one of the most intelligent my kid. My
Speaker 1: teachers to tell you that from kindergarten through a high school,
Speaker 1: I was one of the most intelligent kids. But I
Speaker 1: was dealing with so much trauma and ship in my school.
Speaker 1: It was from you mean my home. I was dealing
Speaker 1: with so much trauma in my home. That why I
Speaker 1: was dealing with the drugs in my household. I was
Speaker 1: dealing with domestic violence in my household where they was
Speaker 1: up fighting half the night, or one of them wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Me and my sister was in the household night. We're
Speaker 1: worried about where they where. They had eight and nine
Speaker 1: years old. There's nobody in the house. You're waking up,
Speaker 1: you hungry, you scared to death. You don't know if
Speaker 1: they killed your mother out there because you know she
Speaker 1: was getting high. You know, you don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on your My father died when I was twelve, So
Speaker 1: it was so many different things and and you you
Speaker 1: had to call the police. Police knocking on your door.
Speaker 1: Some nights, the drug dealer knocking on your door to
Speaker 1: out your mother didn't come with his money where she
Speaker 1: had and you know what I'm saying, it's it was
Speaker 1: so much that you had to deal with as a kid.
Speaker 1: Police knocking money door because your mother and your father
Speaker 1: was fighting all night, so the neighbor then called the police.
Speaker 1: Y'all had to sleep in the police presept because your
Speaker 1: mother don't pushed charges. And then you know you, you
Speaker 1: you up all night, you had eight You scared the death.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's going You got to go to
Speaker 1: school tomorrow and try to try to pay attention to
Speaker 1: what's going on school, and nobody knows why you lashing. Now,
Speaker 1: nobody knows why you're angry, and they're telling you you
Speaker 1: gotta behavior problems. Now those behavior problems. Somebody teasing you
Speaker 1: about the sneakers you had. So now you get into
Speaker 1: a fight. Now you you're in the principle's office. Your
Speaker 1: mother's mad because she was getting asked and now she
Speaker 1: gotta come to school and talk about you. So now
Speaker 1: she ready with your ass. Uh, so much ship that
Speaker 1: you're dealing with class. By the time you get the class,
Speaker 1: the white teacher that about already told you that you'll
Speaker 1: be dead by the time you're seventeen years old. You know,
Speaker 1: my third grade teacher told me that I'll die before
Speaker 1: I was eighteen, or I'll be in jail for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. So nobody understands that. So now
Speaker 1: when you're tired of being you tired of deal, you
Speaker 1: figuring out. I gotta get out this house. So I gotta,
Speaker 1: I gotta help my mother. I gotta, I gotta me
Speaker 1: and my sister can't live here. We gotta figure it out.
Speaker 1: My little sister was selling drugs before she was twelve.
Speaker 1: She was on planes but fucking cocaine inside of her body.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about this. She was coming back giving
Speaker 1: me a thousand. So my my little sister introduced me
Speaker 1: to hustle in the street because she was tired of
Speaker 1: us being broken, people picking on us. So this, this
Speaker 1: is what you don't understand. So people, this all you're
Speaker 1: just a savage. And this is now you outside the
Speaker 1: people picking on you. You're not gonna let nobody hurt you.
Speaker 1: Your sister because it's just you and hug and and
Speaker 1: and she's small, she's sucking ninety pounds with the biggest
Speaker 1: mouth in the world. So you gotta protect her, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So you gotta fight for her,
Speaker 1: and you can't be sold. So now it's nothing all
Speaker 1: you have surrounding, it's testoster on the ego and violence
Speaker 1: and all this. So you want to become that. That's
Speaker 1: like in your nature. You're a good kid. He was
Speaker 1: a smart kid. You played. You was one of the
Speaker 1: smartest kids in your community. Everybody knew you was smart.
Speaker 1: But you didn't have the opportunity to capitalize on none
Speaker 1: of that. Ship. You couldn't catch your because your friends
Speaker 1: around you was like, yo, we remember the first time man,
Speaker 1: I still crack was in nineteen I think it was
Speaker 1: eighty six, eight five or eighty six. My friend showed
Speaker 1: me cracker said it's gonna get us rich. God blessed
Speaker 1: that when said this is gonna get us and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not selling that. I wanted to do with drugs,
Speaker 1: And next thing I know, they had man and everything,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was still trying to do the right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't my reality. I was tired of being her,
Speaker 1: not having enough. I was tired of trying to go
Speaker 1: to school, and having to hop the train to go
Speaker 1: to John J. College because you got birth bit, you know,
Speaker 1: And I don't want to and I don't want I
Speaker 1: don't want to cut you off because people need to
Speaker 1: understand this, like deeply, like deeply deeply understand because in
Speaker 1: the in the projects where I lived, I didn't even
Speaker 1: have parents that was messed up on drugs, but the
Speaker 1: sirens all night and the sounds of the drama, and
Speaker 1: and my neighbor having to give my mother her money
Speaker 1: every month when she or every whatever time they got
Speaker 1: their welfare check, so my mother could hide the money
Speaker 1: because her children were so messed up on crack and
Speaker 1: they would throw her down the stairs and her money
Speaker 1: and they will fight their mother. And then they had
Speaker 1: children that were my age that were also dealing with
Speaker 1: a whole lot like our community. And and mind you,
Speaker 1: the mere fact that that can be going on uptown
Speaker 1: and then downtown like whenever you had to go downtown,
Speaker 1: was like, why ain't how they live in so good?
Speaker 1: Like how what? How is it so different in these
Speaker 1: two areas? And it makes me think about people. So
Speaker 1: I want to bring us to like right now, but
Speaker 1: I mean, yo, we need whole live on how I
Speaker 1: grew up. And you want by white people specifically, like
Speaker 1: I want white people. I'm ain't talking about black folks.
Speaker 1: I want white people to sit and watch and listen
Speaker 1: to many of us to tell stories about how I
Speaker 1: grew up. It's people that know how we grew up
Speaker 1: to Mika, and one of two of them might have
Speaker 1: made it off the block. Like, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: dude on my page. I don't want to bring up
Speaker 1: their name, but this thing was one of the first
Speaker 1: talking about who was one of the people. Know, it's
Speaker 1: a dude that's that he comes on my page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not bringing No, I'm not talking about that crews. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking I ain't getting mother that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: It's dudes on my page that come from my community.
Speaker 1: And I watched these dudes sit on the corner and
Speaker 1: hustle and sell drugs for years, Like this was one
Speaker 1: of the and they finally made it out. You know,
Speaker 1: they got something, you know, they changed their life around.
Speaker 1: And now every post is everybody's a savage in the
Speaker 1: community and they need to die and don't blame us
Speaker 1: because we did the right thing. And I'm like, brother,
Speaker 1: you you was going to see block I was on.
Speaker 1: I watched you. You contributed. You saw some of these
Speaker 1: these kids mother's dogs. You're the reason some of them
Speaker 1: was was crack babies. You understand saying now you better
Speaker 1: than everybody. Now everybody need to figure it out. Everybody's
Speaker 1: a thug and all this because you figured out how
Speaker 1: to move past that, like weird And that's the mentally.
Speaker 1: I watched a lot of people come from and it's
Speaker 1: like brother, and they're like, I did it. You could
Speaker 1: do it too. No, listen to me. The understand that
Speaker 1: you are the exception, not the rule. Because if ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the people ain't doing the ship you're doing,
Speaker 1: it's something because it's a reason why you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, oh my god, that's about I gotta
Speaker 1: do a bell because that's the whole thing. Well, I
Speaker 1: know some people who figured it out and they made
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, sure, ship, there's a few of us
Speaker 1: that have made it out. But you always got to
Speaker 1: ask yourself, where's the majority? Where does where's the line
Speaker 1: of majority? It's the exception and not the rule, and
Speaker 1: that's it. And when you realize that you're the exception,
Speaker 1: not the rule, and you stop holding people to a
Speaker 1: stay because to be successful coming from our community, it
Speaker 1: takes this. It takes skill, It takes drive, it takes push,
Speaker 1: it takes luck, It takes everything to happen at the
Speaker 1: exact same time perfectly perfectly, because you don't because if
Speaker 1: you think you just did it because you're just smaller,
Speaker 1: and you know you like I'm telling people, they said
Speaker 1: I wasn't lucky at what told I said, Well, listen,
Speaker 1: you could have been the Central Park five. You're lucky.
Speaker 1: You could have been colde Prouder. They didn't that wrong,
Speaker 1: but they lost half their life in prison. So when
Speaker 1: you when you don't realize that that could have been,
Speaker 1: you could have been a young boy, another young boy
Speaker 1: that just got shot walking down the plot who just
Speaker 1: didn't make it. When you come from our communities, there
Speaker 1: is a very large element of luck that you are.
Speaker 1: That you you got. You know what I'm saying, that
Speaker 1: you got to be some successful because a lot of
Speaker 1: people that didn't do nothing that was on it. The
Speaker 1: young boy the other day, seventeen years old, they said
Speaker 1: he was on his way to get a college scholarship.
Speaker 1: He ain't here today. And it's not just that it's
Speaker 1: so evil that he that's not okay, but wait, I'm
Speaker 1: losing the point that I think is important. I want
Speaker 1: us to go back to the children of today and
Speaker 1: what is and how does systemic racism into what we see? Okay,
Speaker 1: talking about social constructs, communities that are constructive in a
Speaker 1: certain way. Right. So they asked the question, what is
Speaker 1: the difference or at least I propose, what's the difference
Speaker 1: between systemic racism and systematic racism? Hold on, let me
Speaker 1: see Tony lindsay. He said, black people have been conditioned
Speaker 1: to see exceptions as rules. Um, whether it is the
Speaker 1: ones who made it out or the black on black
Speaker 1: crime skate go into the ones who commit crimes exactly, Okay,
Speaker 1: come back to you. So from what And I was
Speaker 1: thinking of what's the easiest way to explain the difference
Speaker 1: between the two. From a systemic okay, you can't see me,
Speaker 1: what is happening? Okay? From a from a systemic racist
Speaker 1: is um systematic? Let's talk about systematic. First, tramatic racism.
Speaker 1: It means the district attorney decides that he is going
Speaker 1: to you know you you you finally elect a district
Speaker 1: attorney like say Ken Thompson in Brooklyn. He was an
Speaker 1: amazing uh a district attorney, which we didn't always agree
Speaker 1: with that, but he did a lot of good work.
Speaker 1: So you so you do the work right because you're like, yo,
Speaker 1: the previous district attorney was sending mad people to jail
Speaker 1: right for crimes they didn't commit that. He was a
Speaker 1: crook and he was terrible. So you get the people together,
Speaker 1: the people like, we're gonna vote, and we're going to
Speaker 1: make sure that that we that we elect. Somebody knew,
Speaker 1: So then you get a new district attorney. And then
Speaker 1: that district attorney goes into these courtrooms and finds out
Speaker 1: that the judge and other people who are working within
Speaker 1: court system are literally working together, like the ones in
Speaker 1: Philly who were literally sending boys to prison for crimes
Speaker 1: at higher rates so that they can feed them into
Speaker 1: the system, so they can go to jail and make
Speaker 1: products and whatever else and become products of the state,
Speaker 1: so that the prison system could stay wealthy and and
Speaker 1: and and full of people. Right. So that's that's systematic.
Speaker 1: That means planned that people were involved that even though
Speaker 1: you may have had one good person trying to do
Speaker 1: the right thing, they got they get hit with a
Speaker 1: wall because they come up against people like the judges
Speaker 1: and others who are working together and they are conspiring
Speaker 1: for a particular goal, which is the prison schools, so
Speaker 1: that money can can can continue to flow within certain communities.
Speaker 1: It's how you can see systematic. It planned, its scheduled,
Speaker 1: it's very intentional. But now when you start talking about
Speaker 1: systemic racism, systemic racism looks like no knock warrants, like
Speaker 1: what killed Brianna Taylor, being active in a particular community
Speaker 1: where they only use no knock warrants on black folks
Speaker 1: and brown folks and people in poor communities. But they
Speaker 1: can just show up at your house, kick your door down,
Speaker 1: come into your house, and if you protect yourself, they
Speaker 1: can kill you with impunity and say, oh, well that
Speaker 1: doesn't that The reason why that systemic is because it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter which officer was involved. It could have been
Speaker 1: Ray Johnny Leroy, it could have been a black officer,
Speaker 1: Latino officer. They are following a law that has been
Speaker 1: put into the place that is definitely going to marginally
Speaker 1: in effect black and brown employ of people in areas
Speaker 1: every time. It's just just like the legal system is
Speaker 1: is systemic racism because it allows you to pay for
Speaker 1: your freedom. So if you don't have money, then you
Speaker 1: are going to go to jail. When you have money,
Speaker 1: you can buy your way out of the out of jail.
Speaker 1: When you don't, you could go if you go to
Speaker 1: the best lawyers, they can tell you for twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: I can guarantee that you will not do jail time.
Speaker 1: When you don't have money, they guarantee you will do
Speaker 1: jail time. And they under and the people who don't
Speaker 1: have money is mainly our people. Right, So it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Someone said, frist these are laws that have been put
Speaker 1: into place that it doesn't matter what it could be.
Speaker 1: It could be. You could you could go and and
Speaker 1: and and and and and and changed and spit twenty
Speaker 1: cops out and then bring twenty tho more in, and
Speaker 1: maybe one or two might try to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: But overall, excuse me, overall the way in which the
Speaker 1: system operates, police officers and others walk into it and
Speaker 1: began to carry it along the way from forever. So
Speaker 1: it's like some of our traditions in our family are systemic.
Speaker 1: Great great grandmother put the honey, the garlic and the
Speaker 1: limen in a spoon and has been feeding it to
Speaker 1: you when you get a cold all your life. That's everything.
Speaker 1: That's that's all we know. It was pretty much tradition.
Speaker 1: It's tradition. It doesn't right, it doesn't matter if Barbara
Speaker 1: comes into the fan Emilie, Barbara is doing the same
Speaker 1: ship that everyone else has been doing, because that is
Speaker 1: the way it works. So when we say this this,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why what I'm saying or what we're
Speaker 1: saying right here is important because when people say, well, nah,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you should never kill kids.
Speaker 1: We know that, we know that. But what we have
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves is when kids are the ones killing
Speaker 1: the kids? Right? Why why you think that a child?
Speaker 1: Do you think a child just woke up this morning
Speaker 1: and said, or a person just woke up this morning
Speaker 1: and said, oh, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: shoot a five year old, a six year old, a
Speaker 1: seven year old. Hell no, hell no, that's not what happens.
Speaker 1: But when you are living in a sense of starvation,
Speaker 1: you are starved mentally, you are started spiritually, you are
Speaker 1: starved educationally, you are starved housing, you and and and
Speaker 1: we are living in the era of COVID. It is
Speaker 1: my expectation that this violence that we are seeing is
Speaker 1: going to actually get worse. It's going to yeah, because
Speaker 1: just just looking at where it stems from when we're
Speaker 1: living in this area of COVID. If you realize the
Speaker 1: level of trauma and fear that was instilled in us
Speaker 1: throughout this era, you understand that when you look at
Speaker 1: the the level of trauma and fear couple with the
Speaker 1: loss of jobs, with the loss of activity for our communities.
Speaker 1: They took away some of youth. They took away the
Speaker 1: the basketball, the sports, everything that these people were doing
Speaker 1: that was that was giving them some level of joy
Speaker 1: that was now you're sitting on corners and nothing but heat.
Speaker 1: Already frustrated to feel like you lost. People have lost.
Speaker 1: Kids didn't even graduate, they didn't go to the people
Speaker 1: that went to school, they were like they didn't have
Speaker 1: a graduation. They didn't have a proper graduation. There's people
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be starting schools, they're supposed to
Speaker 1: start certain jobs. They was they was they were sold Americans.
Speaker 1: People were sold the American dream. They were supposed to
Speaker 1: start their dream job last month and the job ain't
Speaker 1: even there no more, you know what I'm saying. Like
Speaker 1: they're supposed to start college college, they can't even go.
Speaker 1: Like everything they've been tought to live, to believe up
Speaker 1: to a certain points, it's not even happening anymore. The
Speaker 1: whole trajectity of life has changed for our youth. So
Speaker 1: do you understand you know what I'm saying. Do you
Speaker 1: understand a level of trauma that is in itself? And
Speaker 1: then you you you you couple that with just the
Speaker 1: regular what we see or TV every day, and racism
Speaker 1: just in general, and you think it's not gonna get worse,
Speaker 1: the trauma that they see watching murder happen in their communities.
Speaker 1: Why do I Why do I feel that I have
Speaker 1: anything to lose if the jump Out boys roll up
Speaker 1: in on my block every day, throwing me up against
Speaker 1: the wall, you know, just treating us like ship. The
Speaker 1: point that I'm making here is that we are we
Speaker 1: are naive to not have an understanding of the level
Speaker 1: of trauma that these young people and other individuals are
Speaker 1: under with all the different things that's happening in our communities.
Speaker 1: And what scares me, um, what scares me is this
Speaker 1: what scares me. Is this idea that, as I said before,
Speaker 1: just locking people up, it's going in and that personal
Speaker 1: responsibility is the solution for decades and decades and decades
Speaker 1: trauma and pain and and and and unequal and unfair treatment.
Speaker 1: You can't lock that up. You can't still people, you
Speaker 1: know when you so close minded right, because you you
Speaker 1: have to understand when when you look at trauma right
Speaker 1: and stress and realize that during the COVID that that
Speaker 1: that um that suicide was up, right, When when you
Speaker 1: when you realize that alcohol intake was up, that drug
Speaker 1: intake was at at old time. How when you look
Speaker 1: at all of these things right, and to not understand
Speaker 1: that if if some if people, if the rates of
Speaker 1: people killing theirselves is up, why would you not think
Speaker 1: the rates of people killing other people would be up.
Speaker 1: You know, every everybody deals with trauma differently. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody deals with pain differently. We we cannot ignore the
Speaker 1: fact that that the violence is a way that people
Speaker 1: deal with trauma. There are so many people that don't
Speaker 1: know how to take their own trauma and just hold
Speaker 1: onto it and figure out ways to prevent it out
Speaker 1: without hurt harmy people. So when you keep saying it's
Speaker 1: not excuse. No, we're not making excuses, We're giving you reasons.
Speaker 1: There are difference between excuses and reasons. If you if
Speaker 1: something happens, right, you have to try to figure out
Speaker 1: why is that thing happening. The reason why this is
Speaker 1: happening is because there's a reason. It's not just happening
Speaker 1: by our most reason. It's because there's a reason. And Mike,
Speaker 1: someone else on here said, how do we know that
Speaker 1: black people are actually ones doing the killing? Right? So
Speaker 1: that's a different that's and then you got Branches, and
Speaker 1: so this question around how do we know that black
Speaker 1: people are the ones doing the killing? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's too deep. I am so disturbed by the level
Speaker 1: of ignorance with our own people not being able to
Speaker 1: understand how societal failures have created violent communities and how
Speaker 1: we need to dismantle fund and defund police in order
Speaker 1: to address some of our issues. Right. I am so
Speaker 1: disgusted with that that or not discussed it, so saddened
Speaker 1: by it that I can't even get to the point
Speaker 1: of explaining to you that it is ironic at in
Speaker 1: the same weekend where police officers said we're not doing
Speaker 1: our jobs anymore because some of them are piste off
Speaker 1: about the accountability, a little bit of accountability that has
Speaker 1: been happening over the last few months where you see
Speaker 1: some officers being arrested, some officers being fired, and you
Speaker 1: see some type of activity happening here where we're pushing
Speaker 1: forward and forcing the system to reckon with itself to
Speaker 1: some degree that there are people they are police officers
Speaker 1: are so piste off about it that they're like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quit my job. I'm not gonna show up two
Speaker 1: different you know, to to where I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a longer time to get there. This
Speaker 1: is this is the attitude that they have. And then
Speaker 1: in the same time period, they are all these shootings
Speaker 1: happening across the across the country, and your shootings don't
Speaker 1: generally even happen. But if you bring that up and
Speaker 1: start talking about coin tell pro and talking about how
Speaker 1: they these people are not your friends, they actually they
Speaker 1: actually work together. Just like they plant guns and drugs
Speaker 1: on people. And you don't think for one moment that
Speaker 1: they will not turn around and plant guns or people
Speaker 1: who look like us in our communities that will commit crimes.
Speaker 1: But let's go to that, because that's we can't even
Speaker 1: do that one, that's too deep. Let's start with let's
Speaker 1: just touch a little bit team on the idea. Okay
Speaker 1: that and because this might piss some people, or they
Speaker 1: killed the same amount of people last year. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is when people say, how do we
Speaker 1: know it's black people because we buried kids last fourth
Speaker 1: of July, last Memorial weekend, this is not a new phenomenon.
Speaker 1: That's maybe y'all just woke up. They've been doing. It's
Speaker 1: hot weekends. That's what it's called a hot weekend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the reality of situation. And and we just get
Speaker 1: so when we get so caught up because now we're
Speaker 1: allowing them to change the narrative. You know what some
Speaker 1: people are some people are getting caught up, old man.
Speaker 1: You know why we're not talking about what we're doing
Speaker 1: to our own community. We've been talking about that. The
Speaker 1: difference is in what I say all the time is
Speaker 1: when we do it, it is called a crime. It
Speaker 1: has always been a crime for for when murders happen
Speaker 1: in our communities has never been labeled anything else. When
Speaker 1: Ray Ray kills Pooky and they catch Ray Ray. He's
Speaker 1: gonna do a hundred years. Ray Ray is gonna die.
Speaker 1: This is the typele We know that the law state
Speaker 1: that when one of us killed, you are going to
Speaker 1: jail forever. We are protesting get us the fact that
Speaker 1: Officer Jack does not go to jail. Officer Jack goes
Speaker 1: home on pay vacation. Officer Jack gets to sit at
Speaker 1: a desk until they figure out what happened. That's what
Speaker 1: the whole protesting about it. It's not when we were
Speaker 1: not when they don't march for this. We marching because
Speaker 1: we want justice. Justice is going to be served in
Speaker 1: our community every time somebody skills unfortunately, but we understand
Speaker 1: that first you have to change the conditions in the community.
Speaker 1: We know that we are a hundred percent short that
Speaker 1: when you give these kids a reason to live, when
Speaker 1: you give them something um adequate amount of resources, you
Speaker 1: give them jobs, to give them opportunities, they are lots
Speaker 1: less likely to do violence. We know that because anythingwhere
Speaker 1: where black people are in communities that are thriving, there
Speaker 1: are no violence. Different the out little kids getting shot
Speaker 1: in the cross fire, that it doesn't happen because it's
Speaker 1: not even shots because well, I'm gonna say there's no shots.
Speaker 1: I don't think they report of it, but it would
Speaker 1: be domestic violence. But but there's not people on the
Speaker 1: street just there's not random acts of violence. There's they're violence.
Speaker 1: Violence is that they are gonna there's always gonna be
Speaker 1: violence to some level everywhere because that's the negative and
Speaker 1: positive is the balance of the world. And but when
Speaker 1: you look at the violence that's in communities where people
Speaker 1: are successful, is there is there's a situation that occurs.
Speaker 1: You know, there's something that it traces back to this situation.
Speaker 1: There's domestic issues, their problems that's going on. But you
Speaker 1: do not see random acts of violence where you know,
Speaker 1: where unintended victims are being killed. There's very very very rare.
Speaker 1: You completely eradicate violence. The issue is reducing it. And
Speaker 1: Erica is asking what we're saying about we've been doing
Speaker 1: it and what we were saying. Erica Ford, who has
Speaker 1: a who has a program in New York City called
Speaker 1: the Crisis Management System. You know when people say to me, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, all you do is talk about police brutality,
Speaker 1: but you don't you don't do anything regarding uh violence
Speaker 1: in the community. Well, guess what I actually was one
Speaker 1: of many people not well, first of all three and
Speaker 1: then many since then, Lance Fotado and others um are
Speaker 1: are here on this live many many years ago. Um,
Speaker 1: we started a program in New York City, uh called
Speaker 1: the Crisis Management System that you know, as I said,
Speaker 1: a few of us got together and work to get funding.
Speaker 1: I think the first amount of funding we got was
Speaker 1: five million dollars that was allotted for grassroots organizations and
Speaker 1: it was and easy to get. We protested, just like
Speaker 1: we do for police brutality. We have to go you know,
Speaker 1: hold up, not not stick up, but you know, uh
Speaker 1: a four side way into meetings and conversations with elected
Speaker 1: officials to get them to actually put some money behind
Speaker 1: grassroots organizations that hire people who are formally incarcerated, people
Speaker 1: who have direct connections to the streets, people who know
Speaker 1: who the shooters are and who the one who the
Speaker 1: people are that have issues. We we we went out
Speaker 1: and we found a way to get funding for those programs.
Speaker 1: It was at five million, I believe when we first started.
Speaker 1: It's over thirty million dollars and in fact yet actually
Speaker 1: that's right, Erica. We were bringing caskets out in the
Speaker 1: street protests and showing the caskets to to represent the
Speaker 1: bodies that we lost. Um. I remember one Memorial weekend
Speaker 1: we had it was like seventy shootings across the city
Speaker 1: of New York. We did mad work and it started
Speaker 1: out being five million dollars, of which at the time, Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: who just tried to run for president, was the mayor
Speaker 1: in New York City and he sat I don't know, Erica,
Speaker 1: if you remember that meeting where he sat with us
Speaker 1: and he specifically told me to my face that he
Speaker 1: would not fund any grassroots organizations because there was no
Speaker 1: data to prove that those types of groups work in
Speaker 1: in terms of reducing violence. But after doing some pushing
Speaker 1: at the time, uh, you know, a councilman Jamanni Williams
Speaker 1: and I think Fernando Cabrera and also a speaker Quinn,
Speaker 1: they got together and and they got gave us five
Speaker 1: million dollars, not us, because Tamika Mallory probably has received
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars ever from it. Completely. Um, from the
Speaker 1: entire program I helped to found it, help to do
Speaker 1: all the work, but I did not receive any resources.
Speaker 1: I want to change that at some point because I
Speaker 1: need to focus on doing my work. But nonetheless, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that was where we started. Today it's over
Speaker 1: thirty million. And now the new the mayor of New
Speaker 1: York City, Bill Deblasio, has given another ten million dollars
Speaker 1: to the program, where he will give ten more million
Speaker 1: dollars to the program to ensure that because he realizes
Speaker 1: that his police department is unable to do the job
Speaker 1: he is hereby in our communities, they don't have the
Speaker 1: credibility and and and and the police is not designed
Speaker 1: to prevent crime. It is not. It is the police
Speaker 1: that's when the crisis management system, that's what the crisis
Speaker 1: and and and and and so that people can understand
Speaker 1: in all the places where the crisis management program exists,
Speaker 1: so in places where they actually have centers set up
Speaker 1: where people like the Erica Fords, the A. T. Mitchell
Speaker 1: and the if E F A. Charles and I mean
Speaker 1: and Lance for Titles and all the others where they work,
Speaker 1: where they do their work right, violence is down. These
Speaker 1: are places where when and I would say that this
Speaker 1: summer right now, we're experiencing a peak environment. But for
Speaker 1: the last five to six years, violence has been down
Speaker 1: in these things called in catchment areas because the ways
Speaker 1: in which these programs exist is not that uh they
Speaker 1: called the cops and called big brother as soon as
Speaker 1: something happens. No, they empowered the community to do its
Speaker 1: own work. So in the community, there's somebody who has
Speaker 1: mental health services, there's someone who knows where you might
Speaker 1: be able to get jobs, a g D program, a
Speaker 1: college program, someone that you can talk to, you can
Speaker 1: you can have you know, there's there's therapy. Um, we
Speaker 1: even are learning how to eat better through the leadership
Speaker 1: of Capri Kiers. What else is? What else is there? Erica?
Speaker 1: Feed me some more. We got man, big brothers, big brothers.
Speaker 1: You need to pick up the phone and call none valunity.
Speaker 1: But to Erica's pointing, to your point, my son Conca
Speaker 1: actually showing up after the ship that went down. That
Speaker 1: is happening from the crisis management system. That now that's
Speaker 1: something that's going on and doing the work to go
Speaker 1: round up the young people, round up the potential shoot
Speaker 1: is and sit down and try to broke the deals
Speaker 1: to to to kill the noise. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: talk anymore after this because because this this is the
Speaker 1: main this is the point and you wanted to do that,
Speaker 1: you need money exactly. And that's what I tell people
Speaker 1: all the time, and they say, oh, well, you know
Speaker 1: you you keep talking about this. We need to govern
Speaker 1: our own communities. And until the the quote unquote games
Speaker 1: is doing, I'm saying, do we reality is, it's possible
Speaker 1: if you employ these young boys who want the street,
Speaker 1: who think they don't have any other either, any other
Speaker 1: reco negative. You know, if you employed them and you say, look,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna make sure that you don't have
Speaker 1: to stay in the corner because we've actually gonna pay
Speaker 1: you more than you actually doing making out here on
Speaker 1: this corner. But we want you to be responsible for
Speaker 1: protecting these communities you want to. We want you to
Speaker 1: to be the media that people respect you enough, so
Speaker 1: we want you to be able to go and and
Speaker 1: and you know, and prevent some of these crimes, just
Speaker 1: gonna prevent some of the violence. That's gonna stop some
Speaker 1: of the beef and suddenly be because they respect who
Speaker 1: you are. So when you're when you say something, your
Speaker 1: word actually means something. So when you're paying somebody to
Speaker 1: do the same thing that you and you're taking some
Speaker 1: resources away from the police because they're not capable of
Speaker 1: doing that. They don't have credibility in our communities. They
Speaker 1: can't come and put to Joe Joe and Ray Ray
Speaker 1: and say look, we need you to sit down and squashes,
Speaker 1: because that ain't gonna happen. When you got somebody who's
Speaker 1: able to do that, then they need to be paid
Speaker 1: for those services. You can't go to work at uh
Speaker 1: the McDonald's all day long and then later on and
Speaker 1: then think you're gonna get to the situation that's about
Speaker 1: to go down when you get off, when you take
Speaker 1: your nap. You gotta have a full time job on
Speaker 1: the ground. And I think about just a few months ago,
Speaker 1: freezing cold outside, you and Erica Ford were and and
Speaker 1: and and and a you and others were out there
Speaker 1: and we're out there in the projects. Now. I'm not
Speaker 1: seeing y'all solve the problems forever, because there's probably still
Speaker 1: ship that's going on in the same area in Queens.
Speaker 1: But you was able to help save some young people's
Speaker 1: lives another day just by going out there talking to them,
Speaker 1: offering them resources, offering them some kind of hope, and
Speaker 1: letting know that people care about them to jump out
Speaker 1: police boys. They cannot offer that. And so what we're
Speaker 1: saying is when we say you need money, but we
Speaker 1: what we're saying is there is no reason for police
Speaker 1: officers to have billions of dollars to show up in
Speaker 1: our communities to deal with damn to deal with a
Speaker 1: pro approach. And they come out, the protest happens, and
Speaker 1: they show up with horses and and military equipment and
Speaker 1: all this freaking gear that they don't need. They don't
Speaker 1: need that. Take that damn money and put it into
Speaker 1: the communities so that people can actually feel like there's
Speaker 1: some hope and there's some actual care, some understanding of
Speaker 1: what it is that they need. I made, I said
Speaker 1: to us, I was saying the Erica today. I was
Speaker 1: have an argument with somebody the other day and he
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, but what we're gonna do
Speaker 1: about these knuckleheads? I said, give him a job. Well,
Speaker 1: but you know the projects that I live next do
Speaker 1: or two. There's always some ship going on, and this
Speaker 1: one apartment in particular, where they just they whole house
Speaker 1: is messed up. The fathers on drugs. So the son
Speaker 1: he got and I said, you know what if I'm
Speaker 1: the president. If I'm the president of the Housing Association
Speaker 1: and that project, right, I'm I'm the one. I'm the
Speaker 1: big dog in the in the in the in the community, Okay.
Speaker 1: And I find out that in building number seven, Apartment four,
Speaker 1: Team B, it's all kinds of ship going on. There's violence,
Speaker 1: somebody kills somebody last night. All is happening when I
Speaker 1: go up there, because the community says, we gotta deal
Speaker 1: with it. Something has to happen. And let's just say
Speaker 1: we decide we're not calling non one one no more
Speaker 1: so now the housing Authority, the housing president, she's gonna
Speaker 1: go upstairs and she's gonna talk to miss Mary about
Speaker 1: what's going down in her household when she gets there.
Speaker 1: She needs some jobs, she needs a mental health program,
Speaker 1: she needs a drug treatment program. She needs a cow
Speaker 1: that can't read. Need some help. They might need some
Speaker 1: food tonight, not calmed help, help going around the way.
Speaker 1: We got food tonight that will get you over for
Speaker 1: the next week or two, because we know what you're
Speaker 1: going through. We know what you're going through. You you
Speaker 1: probably hungry. You can't even control these kids. They because
Speaker 1: you're in here broken, they're like that. We ain't gonna
Speaker 1: be pol like this is a reality of what's going on.
Speaker 1: If you're coming in with resource, it's like what if
Speaker 1: you look at um um lean on me, man. That's
Speaker 1: Mr Clark used to go to the house and said,
Speaker 1: what you need. You know what I'm saying. We're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna give you some resources. We're gonna get you
Speaker 1: a job. I know Connesian got the baby. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take it like we're gonna do like. People want to
Speaker 1: feel like you actually kid. They don't want to feel
Speaker 1: like you're coming at them calling them more sucking police.
Speaker 1: And people are frustrated. It's too much going on daily. Man.
Speaker 1: They want somebody to just give him a hug some time.
Speaker 1: Mrs She just want to hug you, to get somebody
Speaker 1: to understand what's she going through. And then guess what.
Speaker 1: Then guess what happened? Ray Rey gotta go to work
Speaker 1: in the morning cause she's don't told him listening your
Speaker 1: job this week, you're gonna be down there helping Mr
Speaker 1: John at the at the wherever the mechanic to this
Speaker 1: that at the third he got a job for you.
Speaker 1: He's gonna hook you up with some resources. So I
Speaker 1: need you to go down there and and and every
Speaker 1: morning you gotta be there at seven o'clock. So now
Speaker 1: my own son, I see it with my own child,
Speaker 1: mice where he gotta get when he got something that
Speaker 1: he's focused on, and it's some money involved. Especially dude,
Speaker 1: go in there and turn the lights off, turn every
Speaker 1: TV off. He goes to bed so that he could
Speaker 1: get up in the morning to take care of his business.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's gonna be something that don't but the
Speaker 1: majority will do it. And then after a while, when
Speaker 1: when trouble come about, they turned around to Miss Sue,
Speaker 1: the president and the Tennis Association, and they say, Miss Sue,
Speaker 1: you know, man, I know you helped me out with this,
Speaker 1: and now we got this going on. The light bill
Speaker 1: was never really paid. Okay, no problems to be hard.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you this piece of paper. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: help you'll fill it out. Because I realized that you
Speaker 1: may not have you may not you may not have
Speaker 1: your reading skills because the school failed you. And you
Speaker 1: don't want to tell anybody that you can't really read. Okay,
Speaker 1: you might not have a knowledge of all of these
Speaker 1: complicated things that they're asking you for making you fill
Speaker 1: out all the ship and do all this ship that's
Speaker 1: complicated as fun to get some damn help. So I
Speaker 1: can't do all of that. I'm stressed out. My husband
Speaker 1: is having problems. Somebody in the fucking house is sit
Speaker 1: and now somebody and not my mama got fucking COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: so this is a lot. Now got COVID and watching
Speaker 1: the death count on TV, you're just kneeled in George
Speaker 1: Floyd's net. People are telling me to fight, fucking Brianna Taylor.
Speaker 1: I got all this ship going on, and you want
Speaker 1: me to fill out a goddamn application to get talk
Speaker 1: about the census and all this ship. It's too much.
Speaker 1: It's too much, it's too much, and you don't and
Speaker 1: you can't even survive. You barely count survived, and you
Speaker 1: gotta deal with all you were survived. You was you was,
Speaker 1: You didn't even have lunch meat before this ship happened,
Speaker 1: and now this happened. You you below starvation? What like? People?
Speaker 1: You t like the job? The lay they said fifty
Speaker 1: billion dollars went to in the similar package. Come on,
Speaker 1: come on, man, in biduals got twelve hundred dollars there's
Speaker 1: too much. Man, we do have to do the census.
Speaker 1: We do, we do. We're not saying if you don't
Speaker 1: actually got it's a lot Erica gotta do the sense,
Speaker 1: but it's too much, gotta do the census. But but
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, I'm just saying, with the whole, with
Speaker 1: the with the the damn it, I lost it because
Speaker 1: the census is mad important. I can't remember, but y'all
Speaker 1: like it's way too much, like it's over the freaking top.
Speaker 1: So now our position is if you want to stop.
Speaker 1: And and by the way, everything that we're saying here,
Speaker 1: these fucking people understand. They know it. They know it,
Speaker 1: they know they know what's going on there. They know,
Speaker 1: and we got vote, and we gotta vote, even though
Speaker 1: you're my damn shit, I don't, I don't, I don't
Speaker 1: care about none of that yo. In your local communities.
Speaker 1: If you don't vote, other people will and then you
Speaker 1: don't be sucked up. Oh I know that the person
Speaker 1: thank you for bringing me back. Yeah, there's twelve hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You get one dollars. Well, if your old child support,
Speaker 1: if you had certain types of femily convictions, if this
Speaker 1: and that and your paperwork wasn't right, and you didn't
Speaker 1: even get the twelve hundred dollars. So now you don't
Speaker 1: even have the money that the little, the little twelve
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. You didn't even necessarily get that, or you
Speaker 1: may have gotten it, But the corporation's got fifty billions,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna tell us that systemic racism is not relevant.
Speaker 1: Listen to me. These corporations think they were in the
Speaker 1: game the riots. That's why you've seen these white people
Speaker 1: out there breaking Target windows and ola talking. Got all
Speaker 1: this money, then they got the the insurance from the stores.
Speaker 1: They then they got the insurance from people burning down
Speaker 1: their stories like this ship. This ship is old. Target,
Speaker 1: don't be talking about that about my target. Target came
Speaker 1: out and said they was for the protests. Of course
Speaker 1: there was, because now they got the surers money plus
Speaker 1: the hundred they got all the money. Don't put targets
Speaker 1: target all of these stories. But seriously, they got there
Speaker 1: is sent this money out there, and it was to
Speaker 1: the tune of fifty billion dollars that was given out
Speaker 1: to people. Yet and still individuals every day, people may
Speaker 1: or may not have gotten twelve hundred dollars and then
Speaker 1: of course you got your unemployment checked. Some people, some
Speaker 1: people not, like we're dealing with some real ship. So
Speaker 1: when you say, well, why is it, why is this happening?
Speaker 1: First of all, every single summer, every single summer, not
Speaker 1: some summers, not summer twenty years ago. Every single summer,
Speaker 1: children are killed. Children are killed in Chicago, children are
Speaker 1: killed in New York, children are killed in every single
Speaker 1: summer across this country. In Alabama. Unfortunately, this stuff happens
Speaker 1: every single year. Well, we have to do and I
Speaker 1: think we're coming down, coming down today to the end
Speaker 1: of this. What we have to do, brothers and sisters,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen and family. It's first of all, not
Speaker 1: allow these people to change the narrative on us. Don't
Speaker 1: be allowing people to make you feel like the fact
Speaker 1: that you fight against police brutality means that you don't
Speaker 1: care about what's happening in your own communities. Because we
Speaker 1: do care. Okay, we do definitely care, and people of
Speaker 1: us are doing real work. Some people could be doing more,
Speaker 1: but some people are doing real work to deal with
Speaker 1: by islens in our own community. So it's not allowed
Speaker 1: them to change the narrative, because that's the goal, that's
Speaker 1: the whole gool want to do. They want to talk
Speaker 1: about something different. You keep your foot on their Next
Speaker 1: Next Tuesday, we're going to Kentucky. We're going to uh
Speaker 1: have a direct action that may get us arrested for
Speaker 1: Brianna Taylor because they are trying to sweep Rihanna Taylor
Speaker 1: under the rug. They want us to forget about that
Speaker 1: and start focusing on blaming one another and arguing with
Speaker 1: one another. And we are not going to do black
Speaker 1: black crime. Whatever the funk that is? What is that?
Speaker 1: What is black? You know? I guess it's just an
Speaker 1: easy way for some people to explain a black person
Speaker 1: killing a black person. And I think we just have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to educate people. I love the mean that
Speaker 1: I've seen that says thirty eight six percent of white
Speaker 1: people who kill other white people. White people who are
Speaker 1: killed are killed by other white people. So every community
Speaker 1: has the same thing. Yes, it's called proximity, called proximity crimes. Right,
Speaker 1: whoever you're close to, you are most likely to commit
Speaker 1: a crime against it. We never heard white on white crimes,
Speaker 1: So stop saying, don't let these people keep telling you
Speaker 1: this black on black ship. Please, it's it's a point.
Speaker 1: So that's one. Let's let's not let them change the narrative.
Speaker 1: Second of all, let's continue to fight for people like
Speaker 1: Brianna Taylor. And then I think the last thing is
Speaker 1: let's invest in local grassroots organizations that are actually doing
Speaker 1: the work, because there are people in your local community.
Speaker 1: Every single day they march. You just don't go. It's
Speaker 1: not that there's not a march that happens. My son
Speaker 1: and Erica was just doing the march. When was that Sunday,
Speaker 1: the fourth of July, the fourth of your mind, just
Speaker 1: out there shout out to East Key. She had you know,
Speaker 1: she had a rally outside outside of the um the
Speaker 1: PE Center and was out there with along with Michael Kay.
Speaker 1: Michael Killis came out there. You know. So my askar
Speaker 1: is asking us, how do you get funding? I think
Speaker 1: you get funded by defunding the police. You don't need
Speaker 1: them to have the military equipment, you don't need them
Speaker 1: to UH to do nothing in our communities. In some instances,
Speaker 1: we need to take those that money, take those resources
Speaker 1: and shifted to community UH funded programs, to resources and
Speaker 1: services that we need in our community. So the end
Speaker 1: of the day, support grassroots organization. You can go right now, Erica,
Speaker 1: put put your Life camp um tagging here and my son,
Speaker 1: you could pen it for the next couple of seconds
Speaker 1: that were on here, but you can go right now
Speaker 1: at this moment and give to a group like life
Speaker 1: Camp and other groups that are actually doing the what
Speaker 1: they are stopping violence on a regular basis. And if
Speaker 1: you live in a city and you're like, damn, what
Speaker 1: can I do? But you have relationships with legislators, you
Speaker 1: need to get in touch with us and find out
Speaker 1: how we did it. The funding literally you know, generally
Speaker 1: will come from some of the funding will come from
Speaker 1: UH City Council, UH and other legislators, and then people
Speaker 1: can also go out and get private funds to match
Speaker 1: that money. So that's what you guys need. Okay, right there?
Speaker 1: Did you see that right there? Give right now to
Speaker 1: two pieces of lifestyle dot com. Go to Pieces of
Speaker 1: Lifestyle dot com and support local grass organization. Support man
Speaker 1: support because it's like down to look, yeah, support g MAC.
Speaker 1: I see somebody saying definitely Shan Duke mcfadder our brother,
Speaker 1: support him, support Manna support. Uh what's the fa Tito
Speaker 1: brothers organization name I can't remember it right now, because
Speaker 1: like King of Kings, King of Kings, King of Kings
Speaker 1: support them. Okay, this links for the jobs of kids
Speaker 1: and someone. This is how they trying to perform how
Speaker 1: to free money too implemented. M h m hmm right
Speaker 1: because this this the city this year said they didn't
Speaker 1: have enough resources to uh to hire all the kids
Speaker 1: the way that they have in the past, the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen issue and other things, and so they don't have
Speaker 1: enough money. Um, so we should make sure to support
Speaker 1: people like life Camp or organizations like life Camp, like
Speaker 1: life Camp that are going to continue to keep our
Speaker 1: young people employed. I see also shar Bates is here
Speaker 1: with cash ap. My vote is hip hop. These are
Speaker 1: people who do real work. These are people doing real
Speaker 1: live work. And of course you can support until Freedom
Speaker 1: by going to until freedom dot com. That is my
Speaker 1: son and my organization that tonight is not about us.
Speaker 1: Give to small grassroots organism stations like um I was
Speaker 1: a smaller grassrooms too. But you understand my point. Yes,
Speaker 1: but you hear me, do I sound better? Not much
Speaker 1: not much better? Okay, So that's it. That's it. So
Speaker 1: we hope we listen. We hope that you learned something,
Speaker 1: you know, We hope that you you you understand why
Speaker 1: systemic and systematic racism play major parts in the violence
Speaker 1: and black communities. We hope that you know, like we
Speaker 1: say all the time, we we don't not want to
Speaker 1: be accountable. We definitely want we did we deal with
Speaker 1: our accountability, but we have to understand where these things
Speaker 1: stem from. They don't just come out of the clear blue.
Speaker 1: Black people ain't just shooting and killing and they're just like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: what's going on? They just know there are things that
Speaker 1: created the situations. And I hope my realities and my
Speaker 1: experiences that I gave that I was you know, honest
Speaker 1: about and to me it was honest about her experiences.
Speaker 1: I hope that you listen to those, you know. I
Speaker 1: hope that you actually listened so that when you and
Speaker 1: just not just listen to to rebut but listen to
Speaker 1: actually just really understand there are really serious situations going
Speaker 1: on in our community. So, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are angry with me because I refused to all
Speaker 1: the ways condemn what's going on in the communities, and
Speaker 1: I confused to you know, speak out and and against
Speaker 1: these young because I understand what they're dealing with, you know,
Speaker 1: and I understand that that Malcolm X was read before
Speaker 1: he was Malcolm X. You know, there there there was
Speaker 1: a process that we all have to go through to grow,
Speaker 1: you know. You know, I come from the streets, and
Speaker 1: a lot of my understanding came from the streets, and
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I believed that helped me
Speaker 1: to survive came from the streets. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of negative things that I learned from the streets, but
Speaker 1: I was able to identify and understand that these young
Speaker 1: kids are getting these same lessons that I learned, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them have been taught wrong. And but
Speaker 1: they're not bad people. You know that this is not savages,
Speaker 1: They're not animals. They've just been raised and taught negativity
Speaker 1: was you know, we've been we've normalized abnormality for a
Speaker 1: long time. And I'm just one of those people that
Speaker 1: try to meet people where they are because I remember
Speaker 1: when I was there, you know, And I just hope
Speaker 1: that you don't look down on your brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: that's going through a lot in these communities and have
Speaker 1: made bad and poor choices and you know, and you
Speaker 1: don't see yourself as above them, but just understand that
Speaker 1: it is your duty and it is your duty to
Speaker 1: try to help them, you know, and try to change
Speaker 1: all of our brothers and sisters realities and situations. So
Speaker 1: with that said, I'm just happy we had this conversation.
Speaker 1: It requires more and more because it was so much
Speaker 1: to impact. Yeah, but um, you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to even try to match that because I I know
Speaker 1: when our brothers speak, especially in your situation and things
Speaker 1: you've been through, you can speak to it even better
Speaker 1: than me. So we appreciate you and I love you too,
Speaker 1: dy um Mice and you know, and I think tonight
Speaker 1: trying to give people just a little bit of a
Speaker 1: glimpse of what it is that we go through. But
Speaker 1: I will end this by saying, you still can't be
Speaker 1: killing our babies. Definitely can't, and it's not acceptable. It's
Speaker 1: not acceptable, man. We have to What we do have
Speaker 1: to do, is what I definitely say, is we cannot glorify.
Speaker 1: We cannot allow anybody who is harming our community, who
Speaker 1: is you know, terrorizing our community, either whether it's systemic
Speaker 1: or not, to feel like it's some bad, bad you honor.
Speaker 1: You know, we have to. We have to. That's one
Speaker 1: thing that I learned from being in the streets is
Speaker 1: that we have to create what cool is. When we
Speaker 1: in these streets say, yo, it's not cool for you
Speaker 1: to hurt your own people. That's not quote unquote gangster.
Speaker 1: Because people want to be considered real. They want to
Speaker 1: be considered this gangster. And when we start changing the
Speaker 1: definition of what that is, then you you start speaking
Speaker 1: their language. You have to speak to the people that
Speaker 1: you want to help. You gotta speak the language over
Speaker 1: and they want to be considered real. They want to
Speaker 1: be quote unquote gangster. Well, gangsters. Making sure that nobody
Speaker 1: comes to your community and harms nobody. Gangsters. Making sure
Speaker 1: that you're not robbing these old people, that the old
Speaker 1: people feel safe when they see you on the block
Speaker 1: because they know that you're going to protect them. That's
Speaker 1: what gangster is. That's what real is. So when we
Speaker 1: we we can't glorify nobody's shooting and killing their own
Speaker 1: over two and three dollars or fifty or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: We can't make that cool no more. That ship is over.
Speaker 1: It's completely dead, you know, it's there's no there's no
Speaker 1: honor in that. There's no gangster, there's nothing in that.
Speaker 1: And that's what we have to do in our community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no killing babies. When I was a kid, when some
Speaker 1: ship was about to go down, they came and they said,
Speaker 1: women and children out the park, women and children go upstairs.
Speaker 1: They forced us upstairs, and and uh, and they made
Speaker 1: sure that the treets was clear before they did whatever,
Speaker 1: handle their business or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: And we gotta make sure there's some kind of colde
Speaker 1: in the streets. So if you're O G, if you
Speaker 1: somebody to think you are O G and you're on
Speaker 1: this live. The biggest part of the work that we
Speaker 1: do is making sure that people who are like you,
Speaker 1: people who've been through this, people who know these young
Speaker 1: people are taking the time to talk to them about
Speaker 1: codes in the street and make sure that they never
Speaker 1: ever opened fire when young kids are around, especially, we
Speaker 1: want them not to open fire at all. But we
Speaker 1: understand that to have poverty and trying to say piece
Speaker 1: needs to exist in the same place is not realistic
Speaker 1: at this point in every situation. But you cannot You
Speaker 1: cannot be in a place and a time in the
Speaker 1: space where you so damn frustrating, crazy off the wall
Speaker 1: and whatever else that a child gets killed, so piece
Speaker 1: out street to listen. We may not always agree, but
Speaker 1: we agreed a lot today. You know, we haven't been
Speaker 1: listen to disagreeing lady. But you know it's gonna be
Speaker 1: times when we talk about uh culture issues we don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we when it comes to when it comes to this movement,
Speaker 1: we're pretty much on on point. But like, but this
Speaker 1: is our closest statement. So we always say we may
Speaker 1: not agree, we may not always be right, and we
Speaker 1: not always be wrong, but we will always be all authentics.
Speaker 1: They tuned for Street Podcast, Street Politicians Podcast. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be we got a major things coming, So thank you
Speaker 1: all for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed it. We
Speaker 1: hope you learn something. We learn from y'all and peace.
Speaker 1: That's how we own it.