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Speaker 5: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to Malik's Bookshelf, bringing a world together
Speaker 5: with books, culture and community. Hi, my name is Malik,
Speaker 5: your host of Malik's bookshef Woo. We had an eventful week,
Speaker 5: an All Star week and community events that were hit, home, run,
Speaker 5: electric and amazing. Well, the Covenant with Black America twenty
Speaker 5: years later was very informative and quite enlightening, and I'm
Speaker 5: going to feature in some of the conversations that took place.
Speaker 2: Tavis Smiley has.
Speaker 5: Updated this new book with new essays contributing Covenant. Yes,
Speaker 5: we're at the event and they spoke and I was
Speaker 5: able to record some of their words as Tavis Smiley
Speaker 5: was the keynote speaker.
Speaker 2: So I want to feature some of that.
Speaker 5: Most enlightening conversation and talk that took place. So I
Speaker 5: want to definite make that my main subject for this
Speaker 5: particular episode. I want to also feature at a later
Speaker 5: time the Jay Ellis event that we hosted that had
Speaker 5: over four hundred attendees, and it also had a mini Insecure.
Speaker 2: Reunion that took place.
Speaker 5: I'm going to probably address that next week, but this
Speaker 5: particular episode this week, The Covenant with Black America Twenty
Speaker 5: years Later by Tavis Smiley and contributing Covenant authors. We
Speaker 5: had a community event this week and the title of
Speaker 5: the event was called The Covenant with Black America Twenty
Speaker 5: years Later, and the keynote speaker and contributing.
Speaker 2: Author and editor is Tavis Smiley.
Speaker 5: So this event had Covenant contributors and their names are
Speaker 5: Connell West, Melina Abdullah, Connie Rights, Mark Willie Thomas, Elisa o'doona,
Speaker 5: and Tyrone Howard.
Speaker 2: All of them.
Speaker 5: Spoke just a little about the essays that they contributed
Speaker 5: to in this new book, because it's been revamped and
Speaker 5: the essays been updated, and it's called The Covenant with
Speaker 5: Black America twenty years Later by Tavis Smiley. I was
Speaker 5: able to record some of the words of the Covenant
Speaker 5: contributors at the event, so I'm going to feature that
Speaker 5: on this episode.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna start with Tavis Smiley.
Speaker 4: This book has done a lot of work over the
Speaker 4: last twenty years.
Speaker 6: So here we are now twenty years later with this
Speaker 6: new edition of the text.
Speaker 7: And so we have.
Speaker 6: Reached into the best of Black America to get a
Speaker 6: variety of persons, thought leaders, opinion makers, influences to write.
Speaker 8: New essays for this edition twenty years later.
Speaker 6: We are fortunate that a number of these contributors in
Speaker 6: the book, for those who already had it. A matter
Speaker 6: of fact, turn if you got a book, we gotta
Speaker 6: make my Bible studies being the church. This Bible study
Speaker 6: you got if if you got your Bible, if you've
Speaker 6: got your book, I'm sorry, I hold your book up.
Speaker 4: Let me see this. Get that shot, Get that shot.
Speaker 2: Pren you that shot, Get that shot, get that photo.
Speaker 2: Hold you from something high everybody where your book sitting, hold.
Speaker 4: Yours in there, and way you just do care. So
Speaker 4: we are fortunate. And it didn't really I didn't plan
Speaker 4: it this way.
Speaker 8: I just reached out to some of the best and
Speaker 8: most brilliant people that I know, asking them twenty years
Speaker 8: later if they were to consider writing a new essay
Speaker 8: for this text on these particular companies.
Speaker 2: Tyrone Howard, can we.
Speaker 9: Show some serious and not give me some serious love
Speaker 9: attention effects for brother Tamas.
Speaker 10: Right out of time like gim like, what are we
Speaker 10: to give host the flowerpots? Were not to give the
Speaker 10: flowers the brothers, There's not happening with our use your
Speaker 10: vision and your commitment, your position and my mind, your
Speaker 10: love for us, and so I just hope we love
Speaker 10: on you the way you love on us. And so
Speaker 10: I just want to say thank you for the vision,
Speaker 10: thank you for allowing me to be a part of this.
Speaker 10: As you all know, for those who know me, for
Speaker 10: those who don't, our education.
Speaker 4: Have been my passion for a long time.
Speaker 9: And essentially what I've tried to capture in this particular
Speaker 9: essay is that education has always been a harveuser of
Speaker 9: basic human rights in this country.
Speaker 4: When you want to look at whenever Americans.
Speaker 9: Tried to show how it feels about black costs, all
Speaker 9: you have to do is look at at schools, and
Speaker 9: so the goal will be showed me the schools public
Speaker 9: education that are done right, and then you can start
Speaker 9: to tell me about how this country is serious levet
Speaker 9: doing right by black folks. And so what I raised
Speaker 9: are some real compelling questions that we must think about
Speaker 9: moving forward when it comes to public education.
Speaker 4: One is this.
Speaker 9: Racial recording that we have seeing a massive and unprecedented
Speaker 9: racial transformation in our schools in this country, and black
Speaker 9: folks are becoming less and less and less the flavor
Speaker 9: of the month, despite the fact that black folks have
Speaker 9: always been the ones at the forefront of ensuring that
Speaker 9: we have the highest quality of public schools. So part
Speaker 9: of what we have to recognize in this country is
Speaker 9: that Black folks, while our numbers continue to decrease in
Speaker 9: terms of public schools, we have still had the most impact.
Speaker 9: We have still had the most for force and fight.
Speaker 4: And so I want to.
Speaker 9: Make sure that we don't lose the ways in which
Speaker 9: black folks have been at the forefront of creating the
Speaker 9: public schools that have the highest of quality.
Speaker 4: Second thing I'll talk about.
Speaker 9: Real quick is I want us to find a way
Speaker 9: to begin to be really unapologetic about the end of
Speaker 9: the criminalization of black children in schools, in anything primalization,
Speaker 9: because there's too much data that still shows the ways
Speaker 9: in which black bodies are scrutinized, black bodies are surveilled,
Speaker 9: black bodies are policed all in public schools.
Speaker 4: You look at the data on.
Speaker 9: Who's most likely to be expelled, it's black children. You
Speaker 9: look at the data, who's most likely to be suspended,
Speaker 9: it's black children. You look at who has the highest
Speaker 9: suspension rates of babies in pre school is black children.
Speaker 9: I'll say that again, suspension of babies in pre school
Speaker 9: is black children. So until we begin to have these
Speaker 9: serious conversation about ending the criminalization and the policing of
Speaker 9: black children, we're not going to be serious about that.
Speaker 4: So the Covenant talks about how we have to.
Speaker 9: Get serious about making sure public education is right, that
Speaker 9: we lift up the important role that racism has played
Speaker 9: and continues to play in public education, and how we
Speaker 9: create up more bright, better affirming, and loving public education systems.
Speaker 5: Melina Abdullah, Hey everybody, Tabis, thank you for including me,
Speaker 5: and thank you for look, I'm gonna just expose who
Speaker 5: I am.
Speaker 4: I like to follow through.
Speaker 11: On things that I'm also a hell of a procrastinator,
Speaker 11: But you can't procrastinate with Tabas tennys Is.
Speaker 4: Like you said at five o'clock, it's seven o'clock, right,
Speaker 4: And so thank you for me.
Speaker 11: I'm patient looking me and thank you for including me
Speaker 11: in the book, and so many things that have been
Speaker 11: really really important, not just for me, but for this
Speaker 11: movement and many of you have heard on streets that
Speaker 11: Black Lives Matter is a thing of the past.
Speaker 4: Right what lives matter moments is over? Say she looks,
Speaker 4: they're liars. They're liars. We were getting.
Speaker 12: It's not over.
Speaker 11: It is not over when mainstream media, when corporations, when
Speaker 11: white supremacy turns it ten.
Speaker 4: It's because we're affected.
Speaker 11: And so we have to remember that we are lions
Speaker 11: who tell our own stories. And I'm so so grateful
Speaker 11: to Brother Tabs for giving us a platform to tell.
Speaker 4: Our own story. But this is not a drill. Every
Speaker 4: single Saturday on kb LA, we're.
Speaker 11: Always including an uplifting movement and everything that he does.
Speaker 11: So he asked me to write an essay on community policing,
Speaker 11: which I absolutely do not believe in. And the reason
Speaker 11: I don't believe in community policing is because I know
Speaker 11: that police don't create safer communities resources too. And so
Speaker 11: the essay that I wrote comes in the name of
Speaker 11: Wakisha Wilson, And so if you could say her name
Speaker 11: with me, I'd appreciate it. Wakisha Wilson, say your name,
Speaker 11: Say your name.
Speaker 4: Wakisha Wilson was a thirty.
Speaker 11: Six year old black mother who was taken to Metro
Speaker 11: Detention Center.
Speaker 4: Here in Los Angeles for a very very.
Speaker 11: Reminder crime or so called crime for basically telling somebody off.
Speaker 11: And her family didn't have a lot of extra money.
Speaker 11: Her mother's an in home care worker, and so like
Speaker 11: many of our folks, they made the decision that she
Speaker 11: would stay in until Monday, when she could go in
Speaker 11: front of a.
Speaker 4: Judge and then be released on a walk. She didn't
Speaker 4: live that long.
Speaker 11: She was killed inside LAPD Metro Detention Center and the
Speaker 11: tape that surveiled her cell was deleted. There were twenty
Speaker 11: two minutes of missing video. Here's what's worse is that
Speaker 11: they never even bothered to tell her family. So her
Speaker 11: mother frantically searched for her for four days before she
Speaker 11: discovered that her daughter had been killed inside. So this
Speaker 11: essay is written in the name of Wakisha Wilson in
Speaker 11: collaboration with sister Lisa Hines and sister Shila Hines, who's
Speaker 11: her auntie has been struggling for justice in Wakisha's name
Speaker 11: ever since Wakisha was killed in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: The premise of the essay is when we fled our.
Speaker 1: Communities resources with things like housing with things like quality education.
Speaker 11: With healthcare, with livable wage jobs, with all the.
Speaker 4: Things that our communities want, neat and deserve.
Speaker 11: Then we can remove police who cause harm from our
Speaker 11: communities and instead have communities of care. So community policing
Speaker 11: is different for me than.
Speaker 4: It is for many others who.
Speaker 11: Advocate having cops with guns and badges in their neighborhood.
Speaker 4: That's never made me feel safer. I don't think it's
Speaker 4: made most black people feel safe.
Speaker 11: What makes us feel safer is resources, and so I
Speaker 11: encourage it to enter the essay for us to consider abolition,
Speaker 11: which means tearing down systems of harm and building systems
Speaker 11: of care that really nurture black people.
Speaker 4: When black people get free, everybody else off.
Speaker 2: So I'm grateful to be able in Connie Rice, of.
Speaker 4: Course of nature.
Speaker 1: You know, you galvanize, you organize, you mobilize. I've never
Speaker 1: seen anybody, and I've been all around the country. No
Speaker 1: one uses the media more strategically to fight some good fight.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you a good fight, I'm telling everybody knows about.
Speaker 4: It's wonderful to be here with you.
Speaker 13: I did.
Speaker 4: You can skip my essay. All I did was I'm
Speaker 4: in I'm in uh Taviss, like, can't you make it broader?
Speaker 4: Cause I said, no, No, we got one thing to
Speaker 4: do this year. We we we cannot let a white.
Speaker 1: Nationalists supremacist get in the White House.
Speaker 13: That's all.
Speaker 4: That's how I got. If you want me to write something,
Speaker 4: that's all. I feel like frightening you're gonna have to
Speaker 4: do so anything. You forbting me. I'm surprised you inviting
Speaker 4: me back. I don't expect any that find My message was.
Speaker 1: Justice is a relay. My my grandmother told me. She said,
Speaker 1: because I started to complaining about Raven. Okay, she said,
Speaker 1: you don't have the right to complain. You have learned
Speaker 1: the right to complain.
Speaker 4: M until you've had to sit in your kitchen.
Speaker 1: In Birmingham, Alabama, with the lights out and a long
Speaker 1: gun over your knee, waiting for the klan. Mm I
Speaker 1: wanna hear you can play about anything. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is walk through the doors we died to open.
Speaker 4: So justice is a relay. You take that Batona, don't
Speaker 4: drop it like my guard folks did in Paris.
Speaker 11: I don't know.
Speaker 4: That's not the women's teams dat I can remember crack
Speaker 4: swimming and.
Speaker 10: Drop your not drop the batonas I'm like.
Speaker 1: My grandmother said that justice is not a sprint, it
Speaker 1: is a relay, and generation to generation you hand out
Speaker 1: the town on and you run like the wind. And
Speaker 1: so now on our watch, this is our watch, it's
Speaker 1: our watch. Our folks had a my grandparents and my
Speaker 1: great grandparents. I'm the great granddaughter of slaves and slave owners.
Speaker 1: Just great, not great, gready, just great. It's been four
Speaker 1: generations from my family. That happens if you were the
Speaker 1: youngest of the of ten and fifteen kids and they
Speaker 1: all lived in ninety that's how that happens.
Speaker 4: But you know, it just hadn't been that long. When's
Speaker 4: the person.
Speaker 1: Who's the child of slaves, the last child of slaves
Speaker 1: to die?
Speaker 12: Do you know?
Speaker 4: When he died two years ago? Two years ago, died
Speaker 4: in Washington, DC, and they documented that.
Speaker 1: His father was born into slavery.
Speaker 4: So it has not been that long. But we have
Speaker 4: come a long way, with much much further to go.
Speaker 4: This is our watch. It's never been easier to fight
Speaker 4: this fight. Many some of us face dead, but not many.
Speaker 1: All our great grandparents face dead trying to vindicate African
Speaker 1: American rights and so my little essay, I'm sorry to have.
Speaker 4: Us say, you know, it came in. I said, this
Speaker 4: is all I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said, I love I love folks expressing their opinions.
Speaker 4: We are one job because it's bad. Somebody said, why
Speaker 4: do you do a why do you.
Speaker 1: Support the constitution and enshrined your inferior already as a
Speaker 1: woman and as an African American?
Speaker 4: Why do you fight?
Speaker 1: I said, because without that document we probably do.
Speaker 4: Be pub pickn.
Speaker 1: Cotton freed slaves and escaped slaves, freed themselves and made
Speaker 1: Lincoln realize that he had end slavery.
Speaker 4: We gave him that idea, our ancestors gave him that because.
Speaker 1: He needed to free us in the rebellion States to
Speaker 1: win the war.
Speaker 4: It was out of any altruism. I don't know whether
Speaker 4: you believe. You know, he wanted to deport us after
Speaker 4: we were free.
Speaker 1: So let's understand we were freed by all white supremacist
Speaker 1: but we don't know. Let the second one get in, all, okay,
Speaker 1: So I my little lessay is you vote for whoever
Speaker 1: is and get to two hundred and seventy, two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy if we can count electoral College one of
Speaker 1: the artifacts of slavery.
Speaker 4: It locked in the power of the Southern States. We
Speaker 4: still have it.
Speaker 1: It's still tilted toward the anti African American liberation forces.
Speaker 1: The electoral college is one thing, the filibusters Another's a
Speaker 1: whole drop down many of the things we have to
Speaker 1: do to fix this democracy.
Speaker 4: But we got to have a democracy to fix. Okay,
Speaker 4: so that you know I'm all for it. Listen, It's
Speaker 4: not gonna be my candidate.
Speaker 1: You know, folks I want probably can't get elected in
Speaker 1: my lifetime, but we better go.
Speaker 4: We've got a much of it.
Speaker 1: Harris has put us back on the board and back
Speaker 1: on the court, and.
Speaker 4: She's making three three point shots and we need to
Speaker 4: get behind here. I don't care if you'd agree with
Speaker 4: everything about her. That's how we get the democracy. So
Speaker 4: that's what my essay is about. In Tavis, thank you
Speaker 4: for inviting me back. I'll probably be dead at the time.
Speaker 2: You can do it in another twenty years, Alissa o'donah.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you wake.
Speaker 7: Up in the morning and you're wondering, are we making
Speaker 7: a difference, How do we sustain ourselves in the work.
Speaker 7: How do you not get burned out when you see
Speaker 7: so many of our brothers and sisters, aunties and mamas
Speaker 7: out on the street.
Speaker 4: And I remember my uncle Ray.
Speaker 7: Who growing up in this community with experienced homelessness after
Speaker 7: World War Two, and I remember my mom. We would
Speaker 7: always go to a local barbershop or a bar to
Speaker 7: look for him. And at that point our community was
Speaker 7: able to sustain enough or we had some resource.
Speaker 4: Not all doctor Villa.
Speaker 7: We need more always, but at least there was a
Speaker 7: sense of community where we could look after each other.
Speaker 7: And back then, we didn't know something of being uncowled
Speaker 7: or the term of homelessness. We just knew this was
Speaker 7: our loved one and the community helped us take care
Speaker 7: of him because he didn't want to come inside. So
Speaker 7: fast forwarding to that where we have four out of
Speaker 7: ten people experiencing homelessness across this country are our brothers
Speaker 7: and sisters.
Speaker 4: When we look at the state of.
Speaker 7: California, every counting, I literally the data, we are disproportionate
Speaker 7: compared to our census count in the homelessness population. Only
Speaker 7: Native Americans come after us. So this is a real crisis.
Speaker 7: And Tatus and Supervisor, I'm really thankful because we don't
Speaker 7: talk about.
Speaker 4: It as a national issue.
Speaker 7: We talk about it when it's on our doorstep. We're
Speaker 7: wondering what do we do about it. But when you
Speaker 7: look around the room, and if we ever had time,
Speaker 7: maybe there were days of dial up to understand how
Speaker 7: many people where homelessness has been a part of their
Speaker 7: own story. Maybe they live in the car, maybe they
Speaker 7: live with a friend. At some point you understand the
Speaker 7: structural It's not a personal responsibility issue. And so I'm
Speaker 7: so glad that we're able to take it tonight to
Speaker 7: a national level.
Speaker 2: So thank you, Mark Ridley Thomas.
Speaker 12: I'm simply in the context of the state of Felipe,
Speaker 12: although it should be appreciated that this state has the
Speaker 12: largest proportion of homeless people across people within any state
Speaker 12: in the United States. It is a crisis across the nation,
Speaker 12: basically disproportionately African American. And it's interesting today not this
Speaker 12: in terms of no matter what city, county, state, you
Speaker 12: find yourself that the disproportionate skew is toward African Americans
Speaker 12: facing this crisis, and that has prescriptive implications in terms
Speaker 12: of how we address it. And so for us in
Speaker 12: this essay, we try to make the point that homelessness
Speaker 12: is the manifestation, the contemporary manifestation of structural violence. It
Speaker 12: is essentially to say that Black people have to contend
Speaker 12: with the.
Speaker 4: Rough edge, the hard edge of poverty. It is called homelessness.
Speaker 12: And I know if I want to survey the room,
Speaker 12: somebody here would raise their hand and say either they
Speaker 12: know someone who has been or is homeless, the homeless,
Speaker 12: who has experienced homelessness with themselves.
Speaker 4: This is what I want to leave you with. And
Speaker 4: I'll step aside.
Speaker 2: Cornell west yea.
Speaker 1: Who is holding up the bludstay Ganna.
Speaker 4: To support this book. Just movement. We know the Black
Speaker 4: street of movement.
Speaker 13: Has always been the eleven in the American Democratic lowest
Speaker 13: tide of Drew.
Speaker 4: Tellen and Justin c and Brother Tamas. I want to
Speaker 4: begin by saluting you, my bride.
Speaker 13: You have been.
Speaker 10: We have been blessed to be brothers now for over
Speaker 10: thirty five yeah.
Speaker 13: Old of the countrict and the world, trying to be
Speaker 13: true to Frederick Douglas and I to.
Speaker 4: Be Wales, Martin King and Patty Nohema and so many others.
Speaker 4: I wanted a little to court mark really common and
Speaker 4: I think I heard the game, and I give it
Speaker 4: as the biggest love up before.
Speaker 1: We can buy stuff from the part of it.
Speaker 2: Both dynamic duo.
Speaker 4: When it comes to forces of good in the.
Speaker 13: Plos and July, oh Lord have pursed. And then my
Speaker 13: running made my.
Speaker 4: Dear sister my day. I'm doing together, but the.
Speaker 12: Others in solidarity with the president Brown family.
Speaker 4: So the kind of running it's hard to find out, sharper,
Speaker 4: legal and social kind of drink into our struggle and
Speaker 4: it goes on and on and on and so many
Speaker 4: others there. I don't want to take your time.
Speaker 13: I want the book signing to be in but.
Speaker 4: Heat in mind that twenty.
Speaker 12: Years later we're still on fighter.
Speaker 4: Twenty years later, we still as committed, as dedicated and
Speaker 4: as do.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 13: But you ain't on the chocolate side of town and
Speaker 13: before working people around the world. And yes we're toys bears,
Speaker 13: Yes we're relay brunners.
Speaker 4: Yes we loved witers, Yes your freedom.
Speaker 12: Fighters, yes with toy spreaders.
Speaker 2: Yes what woulded he is?
Speaker 10: That's part of the part of who we are as
Speaker 10: a black people at our best, a great Black people
Speaker 10: at our best.
Speaker 13: That's what the Covenant is about.
Speaker 10: Twenty years ago with Brolla, I can't Third World Press.
Speaker 12: Twenty years later, we still swing.
Speaker 13: In brother Town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, were.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Malik's bookshelf with topics on the
Speaker 3: shelf are books, culture, and communities. Be sure to subscribe
Speaker 3: and leave me a review. Check out my Instagram at
Speaker 3: bleak Books. See you next time.