Speaker 1: All right, it's another edition of the boutlet Cap podcast.
Speaker 1: That's right, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I want
Speaker 1: to say shout out to everybody who's tuned in a
Speaker 1: lot of great things in the works for the bootlet
Speaker 1: Cap podcast. So if you're listening, I really appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I want to say thank you to everybody. So
Speaker 1: we're supposed to put a Conway episode out on Monday.
Speaker 1: Conway's album got pushed back a little bit, so that
Speaker 1: episode is coming out this Monday. Exclusive interview with Conway
Speaker 1: the Machine today's episode, though, we're gonna get to that
Speaker 1: in a second. First, though, let's shout out to sponsors
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Speaker 1: crazy week behind us. By the way, lots of dope
Speaker 1: new music came out. Just want to shout out to
Speaker 1: Drake for putting out a hell of a record. And
Speaker 1: I'm not a big Drake fan, but I really enjoy
Speaker 1: this song. He just dropped tonight with a with a
Speaker 1: little Dirk. The video was crazy. It was like a
Speaker 1: really long ass Nike commercial. I'm not gonna lie fire
Speaker 1: ass video nas just dropped out a new record with
Speaker 1: hit Boy and announced he's coming out with a new
Speaker 1: album next Friday. Holy shit, I've known about this for
Speaker 1: a while, but holy shit excited that the rest of
Speaker 1: the world knows about it. Hit Boy will be on
Speaker 1: the podcast soon. Shout out to Nasty Nas. What else
Speaker 1: came out? I think you know? Shout out to Davies
Speaker 1: that Karma Three's out, a lot of dope hip hop out.
Speaker 1: My Phoenix Suns got their hearts broken. For my basketball fans,
Speaker 1: you already know we went eight to no in the bubble,
Speaker 1: did not make the playoffs, but nonetheless, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: next season all right, But I appreciate everybody for rocking
Speaker 1: with the podcast. Make sure you hit me on Instagram, Twitter,
Speaker 1: all that with your feedback very important. I want to
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Speaker 1: Today's episode of the podcast features somebody who I've been
Speaker 1: following on social media for a very long time. His
Speaker 1: name is Sean King. He is a civil rights activist.
Speaker 1: He's somebody who has really dedicated most of his life's
Speaker 1: work to helping people and to spreading awareness to a
Speaker 1: lot of the injustices that happen not only to black
Speaker 1: and brown people, but just to everybody. And so I
Speaker 1: think Sean King is a man. It's someone I really admire.
Speaker 1: I've actually been dming him for like four years trying
Speaker 1: to get an interview with him, and he actually hit
Speaker 1: me like last week, and you know, so I had
Speaker 1: been dming him for like four or five years, and
Speaker 1: you know, we set this up. So shout out to
Speaker 1: Sean King, somebody who, like I said, is a very
Speaker 1: very dope human being, anybody who puts as much effort
Speaker 1: as he does into helping people and into spreading awareness
Speaker 1: of injustices. Like hell of a dude. Man. He's got
Speaker 1: a new book called Make Change that's out and I
Speaker 1: really really suggest everybody go support it. And for people
Speaker 1: who are about to listen to this podcast, you will.
Speaker 1: It's political heavy, so that's something that if you're not
Speaker 1: into you might want to just like not listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast. But specifically if you're I don't know what
Speaker 1: kind of shit you're on, but if you're li like
Speaker 1: into that Trump shit, probably not going to be this
Speaker 1: episode for you, bud. But yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: political talk in this podcast, a lot of defining what
Speaker 1: needs to happen, how people can actually make change. I
Speaker 1: know that's the name of his book, but that was
Speaker 1: not on purpose. But yeah, let's get into it. Sean King,
Speaker 1: legendary guy. Man. Super proud to have this guy on
Speaker 1: the podcast and hope to have more conversations like this
Speaker 1: in the future. Also a little side note, my audio
Speaker 1: does sound like absolute shit. It was just my computer audio,
Speaker 1: my mic and my interface was left at my studio
Speaker 1: and I forgot to go pick it up. So this
Speaker 1: interview Sean King sounds amazing. My audio sounds I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: it's good enough, but it sounds like as cheeks. But
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Hey, man, how are you good?
Speaker 1: Good to see you face to face. Man, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? I'm good, man, I you know,
Speaker 1: just I've just had a crazy week. Oh yeah, me too, bro,
Speaker 1: me too. I can imagine. I've seen you doing like
Speaker 1: the virtual book tour. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's going pretty well. Man.
Speaker 1: I did a I'm doing two or three events every evening,
Speaker 1: which is which on paper looks like one thing. But
Speaker 1: it's hard. Man, it's a grind, I can imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had planned on before the pandemic, we had planned
Speaker 1: on having a tour all over the country. That's a
Speaker 1: real grind. And so this is not nearly as hard
Speaker 1: as it would have been to be actually going to
Speaker 1: all of those cities, right right right? Yeah, well see,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you tapping in, man, I've been a big fan.
Speaker 1: I'm a big Bernie guy too. Yeah. I miss Bernie's man.
Speaker 1: I take every I take every loss like super personally,
Speaker 1: not because of like wins and losses. But I know
Speaker 1: the people that I'm fighting for actually are fighting for
Speaker 1: everyday people. And I know that when Bernie loses, or
Speaker 1: when somebody else that I'm fighting for loses, people suffer
Speaker 1: as a result of that. And so he to me,
Speaker 1: if you went into a lab and made a candidate
Speaker 1: designed for a pandemic, Bernie would come out of that
Speaker 1: like he was made for this moment. Like I so
Speaker 1: desperately wish he was president, man, and I think he
Speaker 1: would have mopped the floor with Trump. Man. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll just dive right into it because, like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm very passionate about Bernie, and I was when
Speaker 1: he lost in twenty sixteen, and there was that moment
Speaker 1: at the at the convention where his brother was crying
Speaker 1: that shit, oh yeah, killing me. Well, you know, his
Speaker 1: brother loves him, man, and and what people, you know,
Speaker 1: I worked with Bernie on this for this campaign. You know, Bernie,
Speaker 1: Bernie was deeply hesitant to tell his own origin story
Speaker 1: and what his brother knew in that moment. Man, they
Speaker 1: grew up rough man, Like his family narrowly escaped the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: Most of Bernie's family died in a Holocaust, and they
Speaker 1: grew up dirt poor in the middle of Brooklyn, in
Speaker 1: a community of really of Holocaust survivors, and they both
Speaker 1: of his parents, his mother and his father died when
Speaker 1: he was in college, and it it changed Bernie in
Speaker 1: a huge way. Man. And when his parents died is
Speaker 1: when he threw himself into the civil rights movement. And
Speaker 1: his brother knows all of that better than me or
Speaker 1: you or anybody. And so to see, uh, to see
Speaker 1: him his brother was was deeply touched. It was a
Speaker 1: it was a special moment for Bernie, who who doesn't
Speaker 1: show a lot of his emotions on his sleeve. You're right,
Speaker 1: he doesn't, Yeah, And to see him do that, I
Speaker 1: was it was deep. Man. I'm curious, like, obviously we
Speaker 1: are in a weird situation. You and I as people
Speaker 1: who rode very hard for Bernie Sanders and and and
Speaker 1: the ideals that he stood up for, and obviously was
Speaker 1: very frustrating two times in a row to kind of
Speaker 1: see the DNC like, uh, it seemed like they really
Speaker 1: worked against him. You know, Bernie, he wrote the Bernie
Speaker 1: wrote the forward to my book, and when he wrote it,
Speaker 1: he was still running and change, which is out right now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And he says something in his forward and he was
Speaker 1: thinking about something else when he said this. But what
Speaker 1: we have to come to understand is as much as
Speaker 1: the Democratic establishment two different times conspired against Bernie, it's
Speaker 1: on us to make a survey of who is for
Speaker 1: us and who was against us, and we have to
Speaker 1: out maneuver and out smart and outorganize them. And in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways in retrospect, after Bernie was was
Speaker 1: crushing it in the primaries basically, and then South Carolina happened,
Speaker 1: and yeah, well it was not you know, he lost
Speaker 1: South Carolina, but literally two days before that, Bernie won
Speaker 1: at in a landslide and state, right it was a
Speaker 1: caucas state. But then you know, Bernie won California, and
Speaker 1: typically the candidate that wins California wins the nomination. And
Speaker 1: having one and compete it in all of the places,
Speaker 1: Bernie was always in first or second, and and the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party basically said, listen, we need all of you
Speaker 1: to drop out, we need all of you to get
Speaker 1: behind Joe Biden, and we like need you to do
Speaker 1: it tomorrow. And so you saw Amy Klobash, Ar Mayor
Speaker 1: p Betto and others all said, okay, and it was
Speaker 1: too much to overcome. But but here's what Bernie talks
Speaker 1: about in his forward, man, is that instead of focusing
Speaker 1: on how they walloped us, in the future, we have
Speaker 1: to think how might something like that happen? And how
Speaker 1: could we outflank an out maneuver, how could we out
Speaker 1: organized something like that? And in a way, I don't
Speaker 1: think this is on Bernie, but I think that move
Speaker 1: kind of caught the campaign flat footed. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's the media, it's a lot of things. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's on us, man.
Speaker 1: You know, if you lose an election, it's on you.
Speaker 1: You lost. And I just now in retrospect, there are
Speaker 1: twenty things I wish we had done differently to help
Speaker 1: his campaign. Yeah. I just hope that you know, he
Speaker 1: sparks the next great you know politician, because his ideas
Speaker 1: obviously are are and just his authenticity, yeah, and his
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, if you were to just
Speaker 1: go into the lab and find like a presidential candidate
Speaker 1: that would fit what's going on right now. But just
Speaker 1: in general, just like somebody who is really a unicorn
Speaker 1: in the sense that like they've never really switched up
Speaker 1: on what they believe in. Man, you can cut and
Speaker 1: paste that dude from any generation and he's Bernie. He's
Speaker 1: fighting for universal health care, he's fighting for poor and
Speaker 1: marginalized people, he's fighting for equality and access, and he's
Speaker 1: fighting against war. And you can see him doing it
Speaker 1: in every generation, relentlessly, no matter what it cost him.
Speaker 1: You can see him calling out, you know, wealthy, special interest,
Speaker 1: and it can be a speech from nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: or two thousand and nine. And it's not that it's
Speaker 1: repetitive each time. He's saying it with passion zeal. He
Speaker 1: means it every time. But I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: to learn from that. I think a lot of up
Speaker 1: and coming politicians and leaders that he loves, like he
Speaker 1: loves AOC. He loves Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman who
Speaker 1: just won their primaries in Missouri and New York. He
Speaker 1: loves Jamila Jayapaul, Promila Jyapaul, other in Seattle, UH and
Speaker 1: a lot of others. There's some people coming up who
Speaker 1: are you know, he loves. He loves the Squad and
Speaker 1: they were all members who supported him. And so there's
Speaker 1: some people coming up that I think have that level
Speaker 1: of authenticity and courage. You know, he'll continue. I think
Speaker 1: he's the type of person that will will continue leading
Speaker 1: on the issues, and I think he'll be around, you know,
Speaker 1: still for maybe even another generation. Basically, what we need
Speaker 1: is you and Killer Mike to run for office somewhere
Speaker 1: right right. You know, I think Killer Mike could Killer
Speaker 1: Mike and I Killer Mike is born or raised in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and I lived in Atlanta for almost twenty years. Somebody
Speaker 1: like him could run for Congress or mayor. And he knows,
Speaker 1: he knows that it's got to happen. I've talked to
Speaker 1: him definitely about it, and he knows that, yeah, not
Speaker 1: ready yet. But uh, I feel the same way, you know, I.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: that he and I both would have to change about
Speaker 1: the businesses that we run, the tours that we do,
Speaker 1: the way that our lives go. When when you are
Speaker 1: a serious elected official, most of that has to come
Speaker 1: to a complete stop. And uh, I have so many
Speaker 1: other responsibilities for me. I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: like I would love to run for something local, even
Speaker 1: in New York, like a city council position. What happens
Speaker 1: is people put on Mike or me or others that like,
Speaker 1: you should run for mayor or president and there's a
Speaker 1: place for that, but you know it is not the
Speaker 1: place yea. Yeah, yeah, And so I tell people it's
Speaker 1: like no, like I actually, if I'm going to do something,
Speaker 1: I want to do it well first. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and I think that's that shows respect for the
Speaker 1: position and the office. I don't see that in my
Speaker 1: future anytime soon. And I think Mike is probably still
Speaker 1: a ways away from it. But he and I both
Speaker 1: are always trying to figure out how can we lead
Speaker 1: with the influence and position that we have. Now, Well,
Speaker 1: look we got Sean King. It's the blueleg Head podcast.
Speaker 1: We haven't eve done an official introduction. We went on
Speaker 1: a Bernie tangry right away. Man, that's my guy, Man,
Speaker 1: make change. The book is out while we're talking politics.
Speaker 1: I was very very annoyed for you over this past
Speaker 1: few days. Yeah, it's okay. It's funny because, like you said,
Speaker 1: like I feel like once every five or six weeks
Speaker 1: you trend on Twitter. Yeah, and for me it was
Speaker 1: frustrating because people were putting a tweet that you had up.
Speaker 1: I don't know during the primaries up. It was even
Speaker 1: before the primaries. It was I wrote a tweet in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, before the Democratic primaries even started, before Bernie
Speaker 1: had even announced, and I hadn't actually endorsed Bernie yet,
Speaker 1: and sincerely I was open to endorsing someone other than Bernie.
Speaker 1: And I said that to Bernie and others that I
Speaker 1: wanted to see who all was going to wow, And uh,
Speaker 1: I just said, I know two candidates that I won't
Speaker 1: be endorsing for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: because of their role in mass and in helping build
Speaker 1: mass incarceration. Uh. It wasn't that I would never support
Speaker 1: them in life or never support their policies, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they were and not even I wasn't even talking about
Speaker 1: for president. It was the tweet was actually in a
Speaker 1: tweet thread. People were going to say the one tweet
Speaker 1: that they tried to use against you from this week
Speaker 1: was was like the last tweet of like four or
Speaker 1: five Yeah, I wrote, I wrote, so that's what they do.
Speaker 1: So I wrote a tweet thread that was also still
Speaker 1: very critical of of Kamala And just like I have
Speaker 1: a friend Jamal truelove and Jamal was wrongly convicted of
Speaker 1: murder in San Francisco, a murder he didn't commit, spent
Speaker 1: eight years in prison, and he was convicted by Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: It ruined his life. Wow, and the city of San
Speaker 1: Francisco had to pay ten million dollars in that wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction suit, and it changed Jamal in immeasurable ways. So
Speaker 1: like as district attorney, she was deeply problematic. All I
Speaker 1: wanted people to say, and then people start saying stupid
Speaker 1: stuff like is Sean paid by the DNC. I was
Speaker 1: never paid by Bernie. I never worked for Bernie. It
Speaker 1: was always a volunteer. I've never been paid by a
Speaker 1: politician the day of my life. And I've studied Kamala's record.
Speaker 1: I have no desire to be buddies or friends with
Speaker 1: her or with her campaign. She's gotten significantly better and
Speaker 1: she's improved on issues like she now stands against qualified
Speaker 1: immunity for police. She's one of the few senators who
Speaker 1: does so. She now stands for the full decriminalization and
Speaker 1: legalization of marijuana, which Joe Biden doesn't. And she was
Speaker 1: a co sponsor of a bill with Corey Booker, which
Speaker 1: was probably the best bill ever on expunging people's records
Speaker 1: who were ever convicted in the War on drugs. And
Speaker 1: she was a co sponsor of that bill. And so listen,
Speaker 1: I know that she and Joe Biden, they're not my
Speaker 1: dream come true. They weren't in my neither were in
Speaker 1: my top ten. And yet Joe, Yeah, especially Joe. And
Speaker 1: because here's the thing. I can't say for Joe what
Speaker 1: I can say for Kamala. She has evolved and improved,
Speaker 1: and if people don't want to give her credit for that,
Speaker 1: that's more says something about them. But Joe hasn't. And
Speaker 1: Joe basically still won't acknowledge his role in building mass incarceration.
Speaker 1: He still won't stand for the most basic policies that
Speaker 1: are actually popular among Democrats, uoting universal health care, including
Speaker 1: basic criminal justice, re foreign policies and so. And it's
Speaker 1: not because of his age. I don't I don't accept
Speaker 1: that it's him. I saw Bernie. He lacks a lot
Speaker 1: of humility. Joe Biden doesn't have a lot of humility.
Speaker 1: Oh he doesn't, man, and he he couches it in
Speaker 1: some other things. But no, no, he's uh you know,
Speaker 1: he's always been that way. And you know, I also gave,
Speaker 1: probably for the first time in two years, I gave
Speaker 1: Joe Biden a compliment in that tweet thread to say
Speaker 1: that I was surprised that he picked Kamala because she
Speaker 1: was the only person that ran against him, that walloped him.
Speaker 1: She later she went in on him during the the UH.
Speaker 1: I watched every debate and yeah, she she really held
Speaker 1: him over the fire. We couldn't, Bernie. It's not in
Speaker 1: his it's not his style to hit people like that, right,
Speaker 1: And all of us who were in his corner wanted
Speaker 1: him to throw knockout punches against everybody. And it's just
Speaker 1: he's just a good, good guy. And Kamala was a
Speaker 1: former prosecutor what we were just talking about, and she
Speaker 1: hammered Joe Biden on the crime bill. She hammered him
Speaker 1: on his role of between integration and segregation, and they
Speaker 1: were they were probably two of the low moments for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden in the whole debate. And so I said,
Speaker 1: I thought it took some level of guts for him
Speaker 1: to pick the candidate who hammered him the hardest one
Speaker 1: could argue to remember, I mean there was a point
Speaker 1: in time during the primary where it seemed like he
Speaker 1: was done. There was no money coming in, and I
Speaker 1: mean he was a South Carolina saved his ass, you know,
Speaker 1: and I have I have some beef with how that happened.
Speaker 1: You almost aren't allowed to criticize how South Carolina saved
Speaker 1: him because it seems anti black or racist, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it can venture into that, right. I just think that
Speaker 1: like Bernie won Nevada with a huge majority of the
Speaker 1: Latino vote in the same way that Joe won South Carolina,
Speaker 1: except Bernie got no credit for it, and I felt
Speaker 1: like both win. I thought the win in South Carolina mattered.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it doesn't. I don't think it settled
Speaker 1: the campaign. The guy was dead in the water and
Speaker 1: he literally never even campaigned in I think forty four
Speaker 1: states have any money. Like for a while there, he
Speaker 1: just didn't have money, no man. I swear he probably
Speaker 1: was doing like or doing like budget rental cars. Man,
Speaker 1: like they were struggling. And I you know, I did
Speaker 1: an interview with Michael Moore recently, and I thought about
Speaker 1: the campaign a lot. I think in retrospect, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: was clearly more formidable then we gave him credit for
Speaker 1: his role as Barack Obama's vice president is deeply meaningful
Speaker 1: and underestimated. I'm sure at the time it was. And
Speaker 1: for even in my own house, like in most black households,
Speaker 1: there's there's you know, I'm looking at my screen. Here
Speaker 1: there's God. Here, there's Michelle. Obama was a little less
Speaker 1: in God, and Barack is just a little less than Michelle.
Speaker 1: And then there's everybody else. And for most black voters,
Speaker 1: particularly black voters over forty, the fact that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: faithfully served as Barack's wing man for eight years, dude
Speaker 1: didn't matter to them, man, And I just think we
Speaker 1: didn't give that enough credit. I think Bernie struggle in
Speaker 1: the South in twenty sixteen, but in this time, we
Speaker 1: actually fought hard in South Carolina. What I didn't understand
Speaker 1: was once we're kind of wonky right now, but once
Speaker 1: once Congressman Clyburn endorsed Biden, South Carolina was pretty much over.
Speaker 1: And what I didn't know, I don't live in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: I didn't know he had juice like that. I didn't
Speaker 1: I knew he had a lot of influence. Exit polls
Speaker 1: showed that sixty of voters chose their candidate in the
Speaker 1: final two or three days, which is when he endorsed,
Speaker 1: and so you know, Clyburn had everything to do with that.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's dirty. I don't think it's like listen,
Speaker 1: that's Clyburn used his juice. And we have to think
Speaker 1: like that and figure out how do we win and
Speaker 1: what are the path the paths the victory, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sour grapes over it at all. I'm
Speaker 1: proud of how we did. And I campaigned hard in California.
Speaker 1: I did nearly fifty events up and down California. Bernie
Speaker 1: won there. I campaigned in New Hampshire and you know,
Speaker 1: and we won there. So you know, and Bernie never
Speaker 1: sold out, and I just I wish there was still
Speaker 1: this enthusiasm. I have two daughters who are eighteen and twenty,
Speaker 1: and this is the first presidential election they get to
Speaker 1: vote in. And Joe Biden was pretty much the least
Speaker 1: liked candidate among young people for all the candidates, So
Speaker 1: young people are having to learn how old are you? Man,
Speaker 1: I'm thirty three, so I'm forty. And the older you get,
Speaker 1: sometimes you vote for people you just half like, And
Speaker 1: that's how politics can be. You don't always get to
Speaker 1: vote for somebody that just blow owes you away, right,
Speaker 1: You don't even always get to vote for people you love.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to be super practical about it and say,
Speaker 1: this guy, Donald Trump is a monster and he has
Speaker 1: to be defeated. And even though I'm not enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: Joe Biden have all of these criticisms for me this year,
Speaker 1: I'm really voting to defeat Donald Trump. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think that that is kind of the weird because I've
Speaker 1: been super critical of Joe Biden on social media, especially
Speaker 1: during the primaries, and I feel like that is the
Speaker 1: position that people like you and I are in that
Speaker 1: have platforms that people for whatever reason. Obviously yours a
Speaker 1: lot bigger than mine, but people like look to us
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. It's kind of a weird, you know,
Speaker 1: situation to be in because it's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: had maybe this not been Donald Trump that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: was running against, like maybe you might ride in a
Speaker 1: third party candidate or something, but now is the time. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, guess what another four years of Trump
Speaker 1: might just the world might be gone as we know it.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Here's the thing, man, You
Speaker 1: and I have a certain level of success and privilege
Speaker 1: and security. But Donald Trump is a dire threat to
Speaker 1: very particular communities in this country. And we owe it.
Speaker 1: We owe it to immigrants in this country, we owe
Speaker 1: it to Muslims in this country, and to many other
Speaker 1: communities to make sure that he doesn't have another day
Speaker 1: in office. He even his gross Smiths management of particularly
Speaker 1: his gross smith management of the of the pandemic, I
Speaker 1: think will go down in presidential history as one of
Speaker 1: the greatest failures in American leadership. Yeah. Man, it's not
Speaker 1: the greatest, it's one of them. Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You know, we are celebrating now in other countries that
Speaker 1: have gone one hundred days without a single case, and
Speaker 1: our country just crossed five million. Now I saw you
Speaker 1: post you know the rankings of all the countries, and
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy when you look at the countries that
Speaker 1: are getting that are growing in the pandemic. It is
Speaker 1: it's all developing countries and the United States and now
Speaker 1: we don't like to think of ourselves as a developing nation,
Speaker 1: but we have to ask ourselves, why are we not
Speaker 1: only on this list, but we're leading the list. And
Speaker 1: I just think the United States, it's even it even
Speaker 1: gets to our healthcare systems, it gets into racism and
Speaker 1: discrimination and how inequity is built into our nation. There's
Speaker 1: a reason why we're failing. And almost every other developed
Speaker 1: nation in the world has already flattened the curve. They're
Speaker 1: already pasted it, and there's almost no I don't see
Speaker 1: any end in sight for us right now. Yeah, it's rough. Man.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you because I feel like
Speaker 1: you've kind of become one of one of the leaders
Speaker 1: in this country kind of by by default when it
Speaker 1: comes to just spreading awareness to what's going on, like
Speaker 1: and you've you've I mean I've been following you probably
Speaker 1: for five or six years now, and you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like what you do is that's why I get
Speaker 1: so irked when I see people trying to come at you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, like, this guy's like because you've been around,
Speaker 1: you see more context and uh, and you also see
Speaker 1: kind of the manipulation of how people will extract one
Speaker 1: quote and extract words from another quote and say, look
Speaker 1: at this guy, he's a hypocrite and for me, I
Speaker 1: tell you what. I tell you what did it for me?
Speaker 1: I was the I was the senior justice right had
Speaker 1: I moved my whole family to New York. We moved
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn, and and I was the senior justice writer
Speaker 1: for the New York Daily News. And I wrote hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of articles for the paper, even articles that
Speaker 1: were on the front page, articles that were the most
Speaker 1: shared articles in the for the entire paper. And then
Speaker 1: I would walk around the streets of New York, this
Speaker 1: is before the pandemic, and people would come up to
Speaker 1: me and they wouldn't tell me they read my articles.
Speaker 1: They would say something like this to me. They would say, Sean,
Speaker 1: everything I know about the news I get from your Instagram.
Speaker 1: And at first when people told me that, I freaked
Speaker 1: out a little bit because Instagram's not really built for that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't designed to be a news source. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't running my page to be a news source. And
Speaker 1: so I continue to write my articles, continue to push,
Speaker 1: you know, push forward as a journalist, and everywhere I
Speaker 1: would go, people would say, listen, if you don't post
Speaker 1: it on Instagram, I don't see it. And eventually, instead
Speaker 1: of rejecting that. I just leaned into it and said,
Speaker 1: for better or for worse, people are using this community
Speaker 1: in this source, that's how they learn about police brutality,
Speaker 1: about racism and bigotry, and I have to find smart,
Speaker 1: useful ways to curate this thing better to be responsible
Speaker 1: for it. I'm still frustrated that we don't have better
Speaker 1: new sources for people to lean into where they can
Speaker 1: get current, up to date information on these types of issues.
Speaker 1: But in the absence of it, I just leaned into
Speaker 1: it and just said, okay, let me, let me try
Speaker 1: to do better and share as many stories as I can.
Speaker 1: So that's me. I don't have any help. That's me,
Speaker 1: you know, posting them, writing them. I don't have any
Speaker 1: special apps on my phone, chugging along, trying to trying
Speaker 1: to keep people as informed as I can, and just
Speaker 1: holding people accountable on your page. You know, I think
Speaker 1: the fact that like I mean, look as a white
Speaker 1: guy in America who has made his entire living as
Speaker 1: a grown up off of the back of black culture,
Speaker 1: Like I've been involved in hip hop my entire life,
Speaker 1: and that's how I feed my family. You know, I
Speaker 1: got a biracial son and you know, like, I like,
Speaker 1: your page is really something that like, you know, me
Speaker 1: and my wife or even my son who's fourteen, he
Speaker 1: follows you. It's like we'll see. I get that everywhere, man, everywhere.
Speaker 1: That changed me too, Like when someone like you tells
Speaker 1: me that you have a child who fought everywhere I go.
Speaker 1: I get parents who say, hey, my kids turned me
Speaker 1: on to your page, or I get school teachers who
Speaker 1: tell me elementary, middle school, high school teachers say we
Speaker 1: use your social media as a primary source for how
Speaker 1: we study these issues. And it just caused me to say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is is uh. You know, social media was kind
Speaker 1: of designed for like laughs and giggles. It was designed
Speaker 1: for cat pictures, you know, it was designed for for
Speaker 1: you know, for models. I mean yeah. But then at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's it's also you know, it's it's awareness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I tried to lean into it, man. And
Speaker 1: and so when somebody tells me like, so, I don't
Speaker 1: take that lightly. You know, when when people's children or
Speaker 1: students or teachers or professors are using this as a source,
Speaker 1: I put a lot of effort into it. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so I see, as weird as it is, I
Speaker 1: never imagine it would be this way. Like I see
Speaker 1: the community that I have, particularly on Instagram, as being
Speaker 1: my primary way to inform the world of injustice, and
Speaker 1: I try to give people. I try not to just
Speaker 1: tell bad stories. I try to point us to solutions
Speaker 1: actions that we can pay. Yeah, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: you use what you have, you know, and I'm trying, man,
Speaker 1: what the book make change? I do feel like there
Speaker 1: is a we got like and I feel like you
Speaker 1: do a good job of this with grassroots law. But
Speaker 1: I you know, it's easy to post something on Instagram, right,
Speaker 1: It's easy to spread stuff socially online. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's enough if you're truly you know, obviously it
Speaker 1: helps with spreading awareness, but like a perfect example, like
Speaker 1: you know, a blackout Tuesday when everyone posted a black square,
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, like everyone posted that not necessarily just
Speaker 1: because it was the thing to do. Like you look
Speaker 1: like an asshole if you didn't post a black square,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But what I'm curious, like,
Speaker 1: what would be advice you would give somebody who might
Speaker 1: just share stuff on social media who doesn't necessarily like
Speaker 1: know how to really you know, their put their money
Speaker 1: where their mouth is and or take further steps to
Speaker 1: try to make change. I know, you know, you can
Speaker 1: write politicians, you can call you know, I call police
Speaker 1: departments and left voice fails and send emails. But like
Speaker 1: what is kind of just some some bare bones advice
Speaker 1: I got you. That's why I wrote the book, keV.
Speaker 1: You know, when I've traveled now, from the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter movement until right before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I've traveled to forty seven states. I've been to not
Speaker 1: just the sixty five largest cities, but I've been into
Speaker 1: North and South Dakota. I've been deep into Alaska, into
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Delta, all over Texas and Florida, South Carolina, Alabama,
Speaker 1: and everywhere in between. And everywhere I would go, people
Speaker 1: would ask me one question. They some version of this question.
Speaker 1: They would say, Sean, I am I'm frustrated about injustice
Speaker 1: or racism or bigotry or police brutality, but please tell
Speaker 1: me what I can actually do about it. They would
Speaker 1: always ask me some version of that, Sean, what decisions
Speaker 1: do I need to make? What actions do I need
Speaker 1: to take to actually change this thing? And it was
Speaker 1: to answer that question that I wrote the book. I've
Speaker 1: answered that question in little sound bites and in little
Speaker 1: clips to thousands of people. But in the book I
Speaker 1: took two hundred and seventy two pages to say, actually,
Speaker 1: let me spell out for you how you can use
Speaker 1: your life to make a substantive, measurable difference. I'll say
Speaker 1: two things, man. One is that most of what we
Speaker 1: do fighting back against an injustice builds awareness. But in
Speaker 1: this and that's good, you you have very little change
Speaker 1: without awareness. But this country, if it's taught me anything,
Speaker 1: it's that it's fully willing to be aware of its
Speaker 1: worst problems and about them. Yeah, and say we see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not and that's not just a Trump thing.
Speaker 1: That's Democrats and Republicans. Yeah, it's a and it's not
Speaker 1: just police brutality and mass incarceration. It's school shootings, it's
Speaker 1: climate change, it's our it's our our horrible immigration system.
Speaker 1: We know these systems are failing. We are fully aware.
Speaker 1: But being aware is not enough. And and my book
Speaker 1: starts after awareness. So let's let's assume you are aware.
Speaker 1: Here's the first decision that you have to make. And
Speaker 1: I literally spend a few chapters walking people through how
Speaker 1: to make this decision. You have to choose a cause,
Speaker 1: and until you choose, until you say, listen, I'm going
Speaker 1: to fight on this issue, this very particular issue. Mine
Speaker 1: is police brutality and mass incarceration. That's the decision I made.
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm here at my now. My wife she
Speaker 1: chose childhood literacy, and she's been fighting and working and
Speaker 1: hustling to teach children to read for nearly twenty years now.
Speaker 1: But whatever your issue is, you have to really plant
Speaker 1: your feet down and say I'm literally not moving until
Speaker 1: I change this. Now. What I say to people is
Speaker 1: it's not enough for you to be able to tell me, well,
Speaker 1: here's my issue. Here's how I kind of prove whether
Speaker 1: or not you've actually chosen a cause. It's if I
Speaker 1: ask your friends and family, Hey, do you know, does
Speaker 1: keV have a cause that he's chosen. It's when I
Speaker 1: ask your neighbors, when I ask your coworkers and colleagues.
Speaker 1: When you've chosen a cause to devote your life to,
Speaker 1: everybody around you knows this, you won't leave them alone
Speaker 1: about it. You are constantly trying to recruit them to it.
Speaker 1: You'd be hard pressed to find a single person, not
Speaker 1: just in my family, but anybody who knows me who
Speaker 1: couldn't say yes, Sean is the guy that fights back
Speaker 1: against police brutality. It's not just because I'm well known.
Speaker 1: It's because I'm relentless with it. And the same is
Speaker 1: true for the most effective people in the world. And listen,
Speaker 1: the truth is, it's true for anybody who's effective at
Speaker 1: what they do, not just fighting for change. It's true
Speaker 1: for lebron with with sports and even getting into entertainment.
Speaker 1: It's true anybody who's chosen their thing. You know it,
Speaker 1: It's unmistakably clear. And you know those people standing like
Speaker 1: almost to a point, that's how I am. You know,
Speaker 1: Like I'm around a lot of younger you know, I
Speaker 1: work in the music industry, so i own a recording studio,
Speaker 1: so I'm always around a lot of younger, younger people,
Speaker 1: and I'm always beating them over the head about shit,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I'm sure it annoys them at times. See,
Speaker 1: most people, though, most people are frustrated, they're frustrated with
Speaker 1: the world. That's a start, but most people haven't made
Speaker 1: a choice. You know what, this is my thing. I'm
Speaker 1: fighting for the rights of girls and women. I'm fighting
Speaker 1: against climate change. I'm fighting Most people see problems and
Speaker 1: they're angered by them, they're aware of them. But change
Speaker 1: begins with making a hardcore decision. And when you make
Speaker 1: that decision, you start to see the world. It's almost
Speaker 1: as if when you own a car, you now see
Speaker 1: that model of that car everywhere. When you make a
Speaker 1: decision to change the world in a very particular way,
Speaker 1: you then develop a new lens to see opportunities, to
Speaker 1: see how to solve that problem. What I have found,
Speaker 1: as basic as what I just said, is most people
Speaker 1: haven't made that decision, and it's why. It's part of
Speaker 1: why we see a whole lot of awareness but very
Speaker 1: little change. Not enough people have decided. Okay, I fought
Speaker 1: for awareness, but now I'm dedicating my life to changing
Speaker 1: this issue, and it's a serious decision, A issue I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to you about because I do feel
Speaker 1: like there is two factions of the defund the police conversation, right,
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, my mom and my dad
Speaker 1: got into a huge argument, and my parents are older
Speaker 1: white people. My mom's super hippie. She's like, she's really
Speaker 1: on her fuck the police shit, and my head is
Speaker 1: a little less like you're crazy, right, But I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that that, at least where I
Speaker 1: stand on it is a I think San Francisco just started.
Speaker 1: Like are you You had posted about it again, getting
Speaker 1: a lot of my news from you. Yeah, they start situations.
Speaker 1: You don't need military. You know, you don't need armed
Speaker 1: police to show up for certain situations. If a kid
Speaker 1: gets caught shoplifting a candy bar at a liquor store,
Speaker 1: there should not be a you know, three cop cars
Speaker 1: to show up. And you, I mean, at least you
Speaker 1: know where I grew up. I didn't grow up in
Speaker 1: great area, so I know better than anything, no matter
Speaker 1: how small or insignificant, the call is, it's always three
Speaker 1: cop cars to show up, no matter what. Yeah, billy
Speaker 1: badass sometimes guns out and they're gonna make an arrest.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be it's not gonna be pleasant. And
Speaker 1: it could literally be over a candy bar or a
Speaker 1: can of soda or somebody just having a bad day
Speaker 1: at the bus stop and someone drives by and see
Speaker 1: like yo, this guy's acting crazy at the bus stop.
Speaker 1: But what I was gonna say was I do think
Speaker 1: that it's important that we reform the police departments that
Speaker 1: we have because there's so much bureaucracy involved, and it's
Speaker 1: less about doing the right thing and more about all
Speaker 1: of the bureaucracy that comes with a police department and
Speaker 1: the unions and all that. And I think that at
Speaker 1: least where I stand on defund the police is reallocate
Speaker 1: a lot of the sources in the same way that
Speaker 1: our military is overfunded, like grossly, so insanely, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like those more than the next ten countries combined, you know, right,
Speaker 1: and hundreds of billions of dollars are just wasted. And
Speaker 1: then the same thing with our police departments. A lot
Speaker 1: of these police departments have equipment that they'll never use,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: against just getting rid of the police, but I am
Speaker 1: four reallocating funds into the community from the police and
Speaker 1: reforming the idea of what police are. Yeah, let me talk,
Speaker 1: let me let me say something about it. First, your
Speaker 1: dad and most Americans are taught that police keep communities safe.
Speaker 1: And I've done studies on this, man, If you go
Speaker 1: to America's safest cities, if you go to America's safest neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: You can hardly find a police officer in any of them.
Speaker 1: They're safe. But where do you live right now? I
Speaker 1: live in Burbank. Yeah, if you go to the safest
Speaker 1: neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles, they're not swarming with police.
Speaker 1: You don't see police precincts, you don't see jails. They
Speaker 1: are safe because everybody there is employed. Everybody there has jobs,
Speaker 1: health care, education, everybody there has resources. They are clean,
Speaker 1: they are well cared for. There's access to there are
Speaker 1: no food deserts, there are wonderful grocery stores, there is
Speaker 1: no lack. The things that make America's safest neighborhoods in
Speaker 1: cities safe aren't or police. And that's widely known. If
Speaker 1: you literally go to the ten safest areas of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you could hardly find the police here. And so that's
Speaker 1: number one that the safest communities in America, they're safe
Speaker 1: for very particular reasons. And what we're saying is we
Speaker 1: want to duplicate that safety, that kind of safety in
Speaker 1: other communities. But secondly, in Los Angeles is probably the
Speaker 1: most important illustration here right now. The LAPD takes up
Speaker 1: over fifty percent of the general fund of all of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, over fifty percent of the budget. If you
Speaker 1: go to other mega cities around the country, it tends
Speaker 1: to be between one and four percent. In Los Angeles
Speaker 1: it's fifty one percent. It's so much, it's so bloated
Speaker 1: that that there's then not funding for homelessness, there's not
Speaker 1: funding for substance abuse. And so what they do is
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and other cities around the country, police
Speaker 1: are just expected to handle everything. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: it's substance abuse or homelessness, it doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 1: school truancy. In most cities now police are even the
Speaker 1: office handling pet problems and missing cats and dogs. And
Speaker 1: it's like, listen, let's remove as much of this as
Speaker 1: police from police as we can. Number one. And then
Speaker 1: another study showed, and this blew my mind, even as
Speaker 1: somebody who studies policing. This was in the AP just
Speaker 1: recently that in the average major police department in America,
Speaker 1: less than one percent of all of their time is
Speaker 1: spent on violent crime. The other ninety nine percent is
Speaker 1: spent on traffic tickets, is spent on unarmed, nonviolent disputes,
Speaker 1: it's spent on substance abuse issues, it's spent on homelessness.
Speaker 1: And what we're saying is when we talk about defunding
Speaker 1: the police, we're saying, hey, let's use money smartly on
Speaker 1: substance abuse, homelessness and all of these other issues. And
Speaker 1: if they're only actually spending one percent of their time
Speaker 1: on violent crime, let's find a way for them to
Speaker 1: make that basically their major thing that they do, and
Speaker 1: let's put everything else and assign that to social workers,
Speaker 1: to doctors, to nurses and other civic groups that can
Speaker 1: handle it without shooting and killing somebody. In some cities
Speaker 1: right now, nearly sixty percent of all people who are
Speaker 1: killed by police are having a mental health crisis. You know,
Speaker 1: many people are having either a version of a substance
Speaker 1: abuse and a mental health crisis. And it's like, listen,
Speaker 1: we have problems. Los Angeles has problems. I live in
Speaker 1: New York has problems. They're hard, they're complicated, and traditionally
Speaker 1: police showing up to the scene with guns doesn't help
Speaker 1: any of these problems. I want us to solve them.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying the NYPD and the LAPD don't have
Speaker 1: a quality track record on solving the problems of substance
Speaker 1: abuse and homelessness. They've been at that stuff for generations
Speaker 1: and it's still here. Let's actually tackle our hardest problems,
Speaker 1: but do it in a way that's bigger than a
Speaker 1: gun and a badge. And so when we say defund
Speaker 1: the police, we're saying, if cities say that black lives matter,
Speaker 1: if cities say that children matter, just make your budget
Speaker 1: say that. And right now, most city budgets don't show
Speaker 1: the priorities they say they have. And we're saying, we
Speaker 1: got to reconsider how this works. Yeah, I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: you used La as a great example. Like, we're in
Speaker 1: a city where really, no matter what area you're in,
Speaker 1: the homeless problem is. It's crazy. It's literally it's a
Speaker 1: real crisis and way, but like La San Francisco specifically, right,
Speaker 1: it's a real and And my thing is to say
Speaker 1: that when you criminalize poverty, which is basically what police do,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, you're homeless, we're arresting you. You can't Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't criminalize substance abuse, you can't criminalize mental health problems,
Speaker 1: you can't criminalize poverty. We have to actually treat these problems.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. These problems are expensive, they're complicated, and
Speaker 1: they're not easy solutions. What we know is that police
Speaker 1: are horrible at solving those three problems. And if they,
Speaker 1: if they knew how to solve those problems, Los Angeles
Speaker 1: would have nobody who was homeless because again, fifty of
Speaker 1: the general fund in Los Angeles goes to the LAPD. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's not what they do. Man, Homelessness is
Speaker 1: I worked at a homeless shelter in Atlanta, and I
Speaker 1: learned quickly that it is about the intersection of poverty,
Speaker 1: of mental health, of substance abuse, of poor health, of unemployment,
Speaker 1: and then you mash all of those things together in
Speaker 1: one human body and then have somebody that's homeless for
Speaker 1: a year, or two years, or ten years. As I
Speaker 1: lived in Los Angeles before, too, I would meet men
Speaker 1: and women who have been homeless forever. But they're struggling
Speaker 1: with not only deep, deep poverty, they're struggling with mental
Speaker 1: health problems. They're struggling with substance abuse and addiction. Many
Speaker 1: of them now have chronic health problems that even deteriorate
Speaker 1: their body and their mental acuity. Man doesn't solve Sending
Speaker 1: those people to jail is cruel and unusual when they
Speaker 1: go there. That makes sense, Yeah, why would you put
Speaker 1: someone in jail for using a substance. Well, it's not
Speaker 1: only that. When you send them to jail, they are abused,
Speaker 1: they are neglected, they are not jail. Jails were not
Speaker 1: built to house people with those challenges and problems. And
Speaker 1: the biggest myth is jail like it's not there's no
Speaker 1: rehabilitation that oh no, no, no. It generally exacerbates your
Speaker 1: worst problems. And most people obviously you see success stories
Speaker 1: from time to time, but if you go through the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles jail system, you often come out much worse
Speaker 1: than you were when you got in. And it's uh,
Speaker 1: it chows people up and spits them out. It's an
Speaker 1: unhealthy environment. I feel like what you were saying, like
Speaker 1: if the police quote unquote just focused on violent crimes, right, like, hey,
Speaker 1: someone broke into my house or there's a guy with
Speaker 1: a gun that's trying to get into my front door
Speaker 1: or whatever. If if you know, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: one percent of what they actually do is probably violent crimes.
Speaker 1: The rest of it is a bunch of bullshit. Imagine
Speaker 1: if you if you actually extended the hiring process, the
Speaker 1: training process, you know. I feel like that's another part
Speaker 1: of defunding the police is also just rethinking, how do
Speaker 1: we make someone a cop? They should be the hot
Speaker 1: the best of us, the best of society should be
Speaker 1: police officers. They should not the guys who you know,
Speaker 1: couldn't get you know that. I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of cops And this is a blanket statement. I guess
Speaker 1: I won't make it, but I just feel like, in general, no,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of man it a lot of
Speaker 1: bad people end up becoming cops they do, and honest
Speaker 1: people in the profession. I'm friends with several brilliant, kind,
Speaker 1: compass and souls who are currently working on the NYPD.
Speaker 1: One of one of my friends, named Edwin Raymond, is
Speaker 1: a lieutenant inside the NYPD. He would tell you some
Speaker 1: of the worst people in all of New York work
Speaker 1: on that force. They are now he has, He has
Speaker 1: men and women in there that he reveres and loves,
Speaker 1: but it attracts a certain brand of asshole and then
Speaker 1: you then empower that person, yeah, to arrest people and
Speaker 1: give them a badge and a gun. It's a. It's
Speaker 1: a dangerous you know, quotient of factors coming together. And
Speaker 1: and so you know, the problems in Los Angeles, the
Speaker 1: problems in California, the problems here in New York. Both
Speaker 1: both of our states are super expensive, and and these
Speaker 1: states are our states are complicated in general. We pay
Speaker 1: a lot of taxes, and but most of that is
Speaker 1: going to things that don't actually solve our problem. And
Speaker 1: what Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles is saying is no, no,
Speaker 1: we want to solve the same problems. We also want
Speaker 1: to be safe. We just want to go about it
Speaker 1: in a very different way. And I also think that
Speaker 1: it's a perfect example to where it's not necessarily a
Speaker 1: partisan problem because we are a democratically ran city and
Speaker 1: a democratically ran state and as top the bottom as
Speaker 1: is New York. Yep. And it's you know, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up when I was like eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: it's like, yo, just Democrat, Democrat, you know, it's like it,
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of get because I grew up
Speaker 1: in a Democratic household. My grandma loved Bill Clinton, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? My mother and my mother loved
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton as well. A long time for me to realize,
Speaker 1: like the Clintons are kind of shit, kind of yah,
Speaker 1: But I feel like the same thing. Like we look
Speaker 1: at a city like Los Angeles where Garcetti is a Democrat,
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom, and I think Gavin Newsom is a good dude,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like he has good intentions, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's one of the better. He's one of the better
Speaker 1: governors of all the governors. I agree he's I think
Speaker 1: he's handled the pandemic well, We've been overly cautious. But
Speaker 1: I do feel like, you know, it's not a partisan thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, at the end of the day, governing is
Speaker 1: a hard job. But you know, I think la New
Speaker 1: York City, there's married Deblasi, there's Mary Garcetti, and not
Speaker 1: just that in in New York and California. In New
Speaker 1: York City and Los Angeles, our city council is completely
Speaker 1: controlled by Democrats. Yours is too. Our state legislature is
Speaker 1: completely controlled by Democrats. Yours is too. And so in
Speaker 1: these states, whatever problems we have, you can't blame Trump,
Speaker 1: you can't blame Republicans, Like these are our problems and
Speaker 1: we and my thing is, let's let's own them. Let's
Speaker 1: figure out the hard work that may take the rest
Speaker 1: of our lifetime. Let's figure out the hard work to
Speaker 1: solve these problems. But it's on us. And in these
Speaker 1: states that are completely controlled by Democrats, there are no scapegoats,
Speaker 1: they're no they're no boogeymen. It's it's democrats that control it.
Speaker 1: And so we have to own these problems. I wanted
Speaker 1: to I wanted to ask you this in the same
Speaker 1: way that police brutality has always been around, except for
Speaker 1: now we have phones that can record it as it happens. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not like this is a new thing. This is
Speaker 1: something that's always existed. It's just easier to see what's
Speaker 1: actually happening. I feel like a lot of Trump becoming
Speaker 1: president embolden a lot of people who were already racist
Speaker 1: to just be more outward with their racism. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would almost argue though, that that started when Obama became president.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not his it's not Obama's fault. But I
Speaker 1: just feel like when when the black man became president,
Speaker 1: that's when, Yeah, people started to lose their fucking mind
Speaker 1: and really show their true colors. Unequivocally. Absolutely, But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Though there's so I get that question all
Speaker 1: the time. People will ask me, Sean, is police brutality
Speaker 1: actually worse or is it just social media and technology?
Speaker 1: And the answer is, well, both. Every study shows that
Speaker 1: police brutality actually is worse, and we're now able to
Speaker 1: film it, document it, share it, tell those stories. But
Speaker 1: we have more cases of police brutality year over year
Speaker 1: over year. We have more hate crimes in America now
Speaker 1: than we did five years ago and ten years ago.
Speaker 1: So hate is rising, police brutality is rising, and we
Speaker 1: have the tools to share and talk about it. So
Speaker 1: it's not it's a bit of a misnomer. And I
Speaker 1: hear that I heard. I heard Will Smith say something
Speaker 1: very similar to what you said. keV was saying, like, listen,
Speaker 1: we've always had these problems. That's see. That is true,
Speaker 1: but the problems actually are getting worse. It's not just
Speaker 1: that we're seeing it more. Every metric in every study
Speaker 1: I've ever seen shows that these problems are getting substantively worse,
Speaker 1: and we now have the tools to be able to
Speaker 1: tell it and share it. So it's kind of both,
Speaker 1: and in that sense that it does feel like it's
Speaker 1: getting worse because it is but it also feels like
Speaker 1: it's getting worse because we're now inundated with information about
Speaker 1: it every single day. Where do you see our country going, Sean,
Speaker 1: I know that, you know, all the polls are saying
Speaker 1: that Biden and Kamala. I mean, the Post said Hillary
Speaker 1: was gonna win. Obviously, you never know what kind of
Speaker 1: tricks Trump should they should, you would hope. But what
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask is like, obviously, assuming that they win,
Speaker 1: the country is extremely divided. I don't think that any
Speaker 1: time soon, No, not at all. I do feel like
Speaker 1: a leader like Bernie was, someone who could talk to
Speaker 1: both extremes of the aisle yeah and say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: you know, because at the end of the day, there
Speaker 1: are people who voted for Trump that voted for him
Speaker 1: because maybe they felt like they were left out, you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily Trump. Trump sold to millions of Americans. I
Speaker 1: don't care what anybody says. Millions of Americans felt, millions
Speaker 1: of white Americans felt abandoned by the Democratic Party. And
Speaker 1: he came in and said, listen, I love you, and
Speaker 1: not only do I love you, but I'm gonna stand
Speaker 1: with you. I like you. I want you to rock
Speaker 1: with me and it was for the first time for
Speaker 1: communities of white Americans that often voted Democratic in states
Speaker 1: like Kentucky where I was born and raised, and others
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin and Michigan. Listen, he appealed to a level
Speaker 1: of racism and bigotry and messie no questions asked. But
Speaker 1: Democrats have to own the reality that they abandoned millions
Speaker 1: of working class people, not just working class whites, but
Speaker 1: just working class people all together. And those people have
Speaker 1: become disaffected, they've become frustrated, and and Joe Biden, I
Speaker 1: think a younger version of Joe Biden, tried to engage
Speaker 1: that community of people in a way. But I don't
Speaker 1: think Democrats should take for granted that they're going to win.
Speaker 1: Also that none of us should take for granted the
Speaker 1: bs that Trump might pull. I see all day to
Speaker 1: day and stuff he's trying to do, trying to postpone
Speaker 1: the I mean, you know, Bill Mars been saying this
Speaker 1: for a long time that like he feels like he's
Speaker 1: not gonna leave. He's a he is a He's one
Speaker 1: of the worst human beings ever elected to office in
Speaker 1: this country. And that says a lot, because there's any
Speaker 1: human beings that have been elected KKK members have been elected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's up there, man, he's just here. He's he's
Speaker 1: he's so unethical and so immoral consistently, and that I
Speaker 1: still to this day am having a hard time imagining
Speaker 1: him leaving. I just I'm not seeing it. Man, you
Speaker 1: posted today that you were taking your Instagram page private.
Speaker 1: I know that you've obviously had a lot of death threats,
Speaker 1: even I think a few of the cops here in
Speaker 1: Long Beach were, right, Yeah, several current and former Long
Speaker 1: Beach police officers. There was a group of on Facebook, right,
Speaker 1: thirteen different police officers throughout California had posted death threats
Speaker 1: inside their private Facebook group. But why take your IG
Speaker 1: page private? Oh man, it's I'm I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: I did. Actually, now there are some drawbacks that I hate.
Speaker 1: It makes it hard to share what I what I post,
Speaker 1: and I'm okay with that. It makes it hard. So
Speaker 1: if you're not already following me, it makes it very
Speaker 1: difficult for me to add new people every day on
Speaker 1: my page. Thousands of times a day, my page was
Speaker 1: being spammed with really three pieces of content, like full
Speaker 1: on spammers who were selling products who were actually targeting
Speaker 1: and kind of praying even on some of the people
Speaker 1: in my community, saying like do you need us to
Speaker 1: pay a bill? Follow me and I'll help you. Scammers,
Speaker 1: do you need help with the coronavirus? Follow me? Or
Speaker 1: people selling cryptocurrency stuff like that. So spam now all
Speaker 1: of that is gone. I hardly see any of it
Speaker 1: now that I've made my page private. Secondly, my page
Speaker 1: was being flooded with people who were there deliberately posting
Speaker 1: misinformation and lies about me every single day. Well, what
Speaker 1: we discovered was that the majority of the people would
Speaker 1: post that, sometimes with fake accounts, sometimes with accounts that
Speaker 1: looked real but really weren't. They never followed me, and
Speaker 1: when you make your page private, they now no longer
Speaker 1: have access to that. And the third is we saw
Speaker 1: different white supremacist groups and others frequently planning like everybody
Speaker 1: flood this post, flood this thing that Sean just said
Speaker 1: with rebuttals and things like that, and just to flood
Speaker 1: my page with misinformation. Now that it's private, nobody can
Speaker 1: do that. Now. The drawback is now it's a closed ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and I hate that, But at least for the time
Speaker 1: being it is virtually spam free, there'll still be some
Speaker 1: of it, but my estimate is that probably ninety five
Speaker 1: to ninety six percent of it has already disappeared just
Speaker 1: with a click of a button. Instagram has a real
Speaker 1: problem with spam. Man, you do even like, you know,
Speaker 1: every time I post something that's get your page verified?
Speaker 1: Or do you need a cartoon draw? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the cartoon in its consistent. Man, they always get me
Speaker 1: like sign cartoons. Yeah yeah, yeah. And so no, man,
Speaker 1: if you go to my post, now, nobody's selling cartoons,
Speaker 1: nobody's asking and it just it just limited all of it.
Speaker 1: So whatever algorithms these people are using, they never thought
Speaker 1: to actually follow people. And and so now I've kind
Speaker 1: of closed the bubble at least at least for now.
Speaker 1: We'll see how it goes on the lighthearted side. You know,
Speaker 1: typically we have a lot of hip hop people on
Speaker 1: the podcast. I know you're a hip hop guy. What
Speaker 1: are your like, top three, four or five albums of
Speaker 1: all time? Sean King? Oh? Man, man, I would have
Speaker 1: to you know, I was a huge Nipsey fan, and
Speaker 1: I keep Nipsey's last album on. It's literally maybe the
Speaker 1: only thing that I listened to consistently. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: just so I continue to listen to it. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: only thing I do to mix it up is like
Speaker 1: sometimes I put it on shuffle, you know, to mix
Speaker 1: the order, to mix the order of it up. Then
Speaker 1: I would have to go back, man, I would have
Speaker 1: to go I still listen to the stuff that I
Speaker 1: grew up on. You know, I grew up on Tupac,
Speaker 1: I grew up on Biggie. I've tried to teach and
Speaker 1: share some of that with my kids, like the uh
Speaker 1: the edited versions, but edited old school hip hop. They
Speaker 1: didn't edit as well. It was like reverse words. It's
Speaker 1: like what was going on anyway? Yeah, so the edits
Speaker 1: aren't nearly as clean. Man. You know, I love the
Speaker 1: good kid mass City from Kendrick, and I still think
Speaker 1: that might be my favorite Kendrick album of all time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what's crazy with that? With that album?
Speaker 1: Everyone revers that as like his classic, like his like
Speaker 1: Illmatic if you will, yeah, in a way, right, if
Speaker 1: you go back and listen to like to Pimple Butterfly, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he so well with what's going on in the world. No, no,
Speaker 1: it is so relevant for now and then man, I
Speaker 1: would have to I would have to go back. Man,
Speaker 1: I have a hilarious uh story about some West Coast
Speaker 1: rappers I would I'm gonna have to come back on
Speaker 1: and tell you this story. But I grew up listening
Speaker 1: to uh like West Coast rappers like Sea Bowl, who
Speaker 1: was up in Brother Lynch all that Yeah, all of
Speaker 1: that brother. I listened to Brother Lynch all of that stuff, man,
Speaker 1: and uh, I still go back and listen to some
Speaker 1: of some of my old I feel horrible when I
Speaker 1: listened to it becausere's there's nothing redema Brother Lynch. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't go back and listen to Brother Lynch. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid and I heard Brother Lynch, I
Speaker 1: thought he was really out here doing all that ship
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was really freaked out. It
Speaker 1: was scary, man, it was on something different, like what reason.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, we were told that he
Speaker 1: was dead and that because he was dead on the
Speaker 1: on the album cover and we were all like, you know,
Speaker 1: there was no social media and so like rumors like
Speaker 1: that could spread and last for a long time. And
Speaker 1: then his friend X rated was in jail, like it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so funny. Man, never would have taken you as
Speaker 1: a brother Lynch got no, man, we love that, you
Speaker 1: know as kids. Now, when Brother Lynz first came out,
Speaker 1: I was like fourteen or fifteen years old, and so, man,
Speaker 1: you know, we were just badass kids, man, so and
Speaker 1: so all of that stuff. You know. I loved E
Speaker 1: forty and the click and ce Bowl and all of that.
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole chapter about a story I have
Speaker 1: with ce Bow that that's not in this book, but
Speaker 1: it'll have to be in maybe my next book. I
Speaker 1: got to share it with you one day. Man. That's fair. Man,
Speaker 1: Well listen the book make changes out. I think you're
Speaker 1: a national treasure man, and I appreciate. I appreciate everything
Speaker 1: you do. And I also appreciate the way you navigate
Speaker 1: a lot of the negativity that comes your way. Thank you, man.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot that could be learned from
Speaker 1: the way you handle a lot. Hey, when did you
Speaker 1: see the Andrew Schultz thing he did about you? Oh? Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I you know I hated that because, you know, like
Speaker 1: guys like Andrew, like I like Andrew, and it's like,
Speaker 1: why why do that? Like I've never had and Andrew
Speaker 1: and I have several mutual friends, and it's just like
Speaker 1: it's sometimes it's an outer body experience. Man, it's almost
Speaker 1: like being featured on SNL low key. But I do
Speaker 1: feel like there was just so you know, there's a
Speaker 1: thin line between it being comedy and it being like, yo,
Speaker 1: you're forming, like he forms a lot of people's opinions.
Speaker 1: What those vits he's been doing? Yeah, And it is
Speaker 1: what it is, man. You know, I see part of
Speaker 1: it as because I'm so public at this point, it's
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna mean that I'm subject to misinformation, to comedy,
Speaker 1: to whatever. So I don't take it personally. I just
Speaker 1: but I do hate it because it's like, damn, dude,
Speaker 1: you could have literally reached out out to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: gotten better information. But his job is his job is
Speaker 1: to kind of be a comedic asshole. Like I mean that,
Speaker 1: not even as an insult, that's kind. And his stick
Speaker 1: is to to push the envelope and to kind of
Speaker 1: be a hilarious asshole. And he's great at what he does.
Speaker 1: It just sucks when you're on the receiving end of it.
Speaker 1: But I don't I can't generally speaking, I can't dwell
Speaker 1: on it. For long. I see it, think about it,
Speaker 1: and I got to keep it moving. You got the
Speaker 1: uh the Bulls poster behind you? Oh no, no, this
Speaker 1: is that's Boys in the Hood. Oh it looks like
Speaker 1: it's all blurry. That looks like the chicog you know what?
Speaker 1: In fact, when okay, I see what you see? Uh
Speaker 1: looks like right there, that looks like a Bulls logo
Speaker 1: right there? You know what that is? That is it
Speaker 1: that says that's this poster is like an original poster.
Speaker 1: It says it said, it's a weird logo that says
Speaker 1: share the dream with Coca Cola. Right, I see what
Speaker 1: you see. It looks like the old Bulls logo. But
Speaker 1: this is a this as Boys in the Hood. Like
Speaker 1: there's I see I see the font that it could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sean.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you, man, and keep fighting the good fight
Speaker 1: and make sure you go get the book make change Amazon.
Speaker 1: Did you the audible version you read that like like
Speaker 1: you had? Oh? Yeah, man, the audible version is great. Man.
Speaker 1: I narrated Bernie's on there. We have twelve different guest voices,
Speaker 1: including Buster Rhymes. Chuck Dia is on there. We have
Speaker 1: five original songs that are on there. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, man, Like I don't think there's ever been
Speaker 1: an audiobook like Chucky and Bust. The rhymes on the audiobook,
Speaker 1: yeah on the audio book, and uh and and others. Man.
Speaker 1: We have I think thirteen different guest voices that are
Speaker 1: on there. We have original music that's all about make change.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a ton of fun. Man. That's man amazing.
Speaker 1: Go support the book, and you know, go get the
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I ordered the book on Amazon, but I
Speaker 1: feel like now I got to get the audio version.
Speaker 1: Get it on audible. Man, No, you'll love it. It's
Speaker 1: a different We got it for people who don't normally
Speaker 1: do audiobooks, you know. So I think you'll enjoy it
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. Man. Well, look, I appreciate you and
Speaker 1: keep finding a good fight. I'll be in contact with you.
Speaker 1: So man, thanks for checking in body. Take care, man,