Speaker 1: I'm Tamika d. Mallory and it shit boy. My son
Speaker 1: is generally we are your host of TMI.
Speaker 2: Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, motivation.
Speaker 1: And inspiration, new energy.
Speaker 3: What's going on, my son, Lennon, How I'm doing good?
Speaker 3: Drum road, drum roll. I'm just laughing because I'm so tired,
Speaker 3: so tired that it's just trying to hold it together. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, the season has begun where it's time to
Speaker 3: travel around this country and we just sain't got ship
Speaker 3: to work with, like honestly, like it's really really hard
Speaker 3: because well, and I think that what we do have
Speaker 3: and the only thing we have is the issues that
Speaker 3: matter to our communities, Like we really have to be
Speaker 3: focused on local people, local issues, and then how those
Speaker 3: local issues play into the larger narrative in terms of
Speaker 3: what's happening in our communities, because every which way we turn,
Speaker 3: there are I mean, these folks that we fight against
Speaker 3: every day are extremely strategic and so every city around
Speaker 3: this country there's some type of dynamic where they have
Speaker 3: begun to make shifts in the politics on the ground,
Speaker 3: whether it be inserting there is a new it's not
Speaker 3: new in terms of it's never happened before, but there's
Speaker 3: a reignited effort to bring black people who don't align
Speaker 3: with our issues and put them in position in communities.
Speaker 3: And so what we're dealing with now is combating the
Speaker 3: Daniel Cameron effect, that is the Attorney General was the
Speaker 3: attorney general of Louis I mean of Kentucky who tried
Speaker 3: to become governor black man, and we had to sit
Speaker 3: him down. And so we have you know, this is
Speaker 3: a situation where all around the nation we're seeing these
Speaker 3: types of black people popping up, and it's it's it's
Speaker 3: a trying time because at the same time trying to
Speaker 3: sell people that we still can do this, like we
Speaker 3: still can continue to fight, we have we don't need
Speaker 3: to give up that there is in fact so much
Speaker 3: possibility in us like staying together and staying on the
Speaker 3: wall and continuing to do the work.
Speaker 1: It's really hard right now.
Speaker 3: People not interested because people, let me not say people,
Speaker 3: it's just some people. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 3: are very interested, but there are some who and they
Speaker 3: are it's the ones.
Speaker 4: That contact with the people that we've seen that have
Speaker 4: really put blood, sweat and tears into trying to fight
Speaker 4: for our people, right, and they just sometimes you just
Speaker 4: get deflated.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: You see certain things and you feel like you're making
Speaker 4: strides and you feel like you're going forward, and then
Speaker 4: there are certain things that just take wind out of yourselves.
Speaker 4: And you know, and I say that all the time.
Speaker 4: I see what happened to a lot of our elders
Speaker 4: and our ancestors that fought and just got tired. You know,
Speaker 4: there were some of them that made history and continued.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I was watching Harry Belafonte's one of the movies that
Speaker 4: they put out of following Harry and just looking what
Speaker 4: he went through in different generations, right, Like I watched
Speaker 4: him as a young man fighting with Doctor King, right,
Speaker 4: and he was there and he was he was funding
Speaker 4: the movement, he was right with him. And then doctor
Speaker 4: King told him, I feared that, you know, I've integrated
Speaker 4: our people into a burning building. Hearing Doctor King say that, right,
Speaker 4: and then he's still fighting. He's he was confused, like
Speaker 4: what do you mean? And then as he started to continue,
Speaker 4: he started to see that, right. I seen him having
Speaker 4: conversations with you. I see them having a conversation with
Speaker 4: the dream defenders. I see them having conversations with March
Speaker 4: for Our Lives like different generations of freedom fighters, and
Speaker 4: him explaining to what is happening, like this moment is
Speaker 4: for now, what are you gonna do? And each one
Speaker 4: of them like we're gonna fight, We're gonna fight. And
Speaker 4: then you just see another and him constantly explaining to
Speaker 4: you that they're trying to dismantle this, They're gonna do
Speaker 4: everything to dismantle this, and then you see it play
Speaker 4: out in each one.
Speaker 2: Of those movies.
Speaker 4: They're gonna attack you, they're gonna do these things, and
Speaker 4: then watching it continue to play out. So when you
Speaker 4: see that and that man died right, still trying to
Speaker 4: give that knowledge and still trying to fight for those things.
Speaker 2: But you could tell that there.
Speaker 4: Was this this this feeling of are we actually gonna
Speaker 4: see freedom?
Speaker 2: Like We're still gonna fight.
Speaker 4: I'm going to fight and I'm going to give you
Speaker 4: this energy and I'm going to talk. But you've seen
Speaker 4: the vigor, right that you've seen it vigor. Now it
Speaker 4: was just an elder who was knowledgeable just giving it
Speaker 4: to you, saying hopefully you could take this information and
Speaker 4: do what we haven't been able to do. Right, you know,
Speaker 4: and I understand how that happens, because you just fight
Speaker 4: so long and you just feel like, you know what
Speaker 4: I'm saying, you dig in a hole and you don't
Speaker 4: find the bottom, you know, but you when you're a fighter,
Speaker 4: you just keep digging.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what we have to spread. But when
Speaker 3: you're on is this beginning of the summer, at least
Speaker 3: three days, I've been in a loop of canceled flights
Speaker 3: and delays and six hours in this airport and whatever.
Speaker 3: And I don't know that people understand the tire tracks
Speaker 3: on your back when you're trying to get this work done,
Speaker 3: and then when you're talking to people who are like,
Speaker 3: don't come over here with that. I don't want to
Speaker 3: hear it, and you want to be frustrated, like man,
Speaker 3: I traveled, you know. I'm trying to really get us
Speaker 3: to be under to be sold not on candidates, not
Speaker 3: even on any of that, but to be sold on
Speaker 3: our possibility that even you could run, like Killer Mike
Speaker 3: said at the BET Awards, if you could run, Like,
Speaker 3: how can we use this energy to set it up
Speaker 3: for you to run?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And and and and then.
Speaker 3: You just and you have to deal with people who
Speaker 3: are so frustrated you can't even get upset with them,
Speaker 3: because I understand.
Speaker 1: I feel that way.
Speaker 3: So today is one of those days where I'm just
Speaker 3: like pulling the train along. But tomorrow I'll be back
Speaker 3: in there doing what I have to do.
Speaker 4: I'm with you, man, you know some days I get
Speaker 4: that and you gotta. That's why we got each other, right,
Speaker 4: That's what we got in this movement. We feed off
Speaker 4: each other's energy. Some days you're gonna have more energy
Speaker 4: than I have. Some days I'm gonna have it for you.
Speaker 4: So today I'm gonna carry you know, but you shout
Speaker 4: out to my black print. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: See what it said, You see what to say. Run
Speaker 4: run us ode reparations. Man, shout out to them for
Speaker 4: the shirt. I got one for you, got one for
Speaker 4: you too. And that's what I feel like. We gotta
Speaker 4: fight for our reparations. We're gonna have to. They're not
Speaker 4: gonna give us our reparations. Every every day is a
Speaker 4: fight for our reparations. And that's what our people got
Speaker 4: to understand. We deserve certain things. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: We were denied certain things, and we built this back
Speaker 4: this country.
Speaker 1: On our back with our for free.
Speaker 2: For free, so run uside reparations.
Speaker 1: I know that's right. So let's see my thought of
Speaker 1: the day today.
Speaker 3: You know, last week awful, awful, awful, awful debate, and
Speaker 3: you know some people that want to jump to awful
Speaker 3: debate because Biden his performance was not at all where
Speaker 3: it should be. Well, his performance is not where most
Speaker 3: people would want it to be, but it actually is
Speaker 3: where it should be for eighty something year old man
Speaker 3: who has been in public service for a long time,
Speaker 3: dealing with extreme stress, and also he has a stuttering disability,
Speaker 3: and therefore he has some you know, a trifecta of challenges.
Speaker 3: So no, it's not where people want it to be,
Speaker 3: but he's actually not that far off from most eighty
Speaker 3: year old people that you put them on the stage
Speaker 3: and tell them that they need to debate and at
Speaker 3: nine o'clock at night. So and I'm not even making
Speaker 3: excuses for it's not my point, let me get to it.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying people want to say that that's the
Speaker 3: only reason why the debate was so terrible. But I'm
Speaker 3: also not into listening to somebody who's real quick with lies.
Speaker 3: So and by the way, there's been some fact checkers,
Speaker 3: even President Biden a few times, some of the things
Speaker 3: they he said it's not one hundred percent accurate. So
Speaker 3: it's not that one person that every that the president
Speaker 3: was this great on this great moral standing, and then
Speaker 3: Trump wasn't. Trump just is an habitual liar and a
Speaker 3: very dangerous individual.
Speaker 1: And then you have him up against.
Speaker 3: A man who I believe there's some issues that President
Speaker 3: Biden has, some blind spots that he has and in
Speaker 3: some areas that he's committed to that I just don't
Speaker 3: agree with and could never ever, ever ever comfortably say like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm for Biden because of some of his decisions and
Speaker 3: the ways in which his administration has carried out their duties.
Speaker 3: But in addition to that, I also know he's an
Speaker 3: older man. So what it basically says to me is
Speaker 3: the whole shit is a mess.
Speaker 1: Like it's a mess.
Speaker 3: You got, lion, You've got a person who needs rest
Speaker 3: and relaxation. That's what people at eighty years old, people
Speaker 3: should be resting from working their entire lives trying to
Speaker 3: get up there, and everybody's putting this pressure on you
Speaker 3: that your responsibility is to save democracy and all of
Speaker 3: this and that, and yet the democracy that you are
Speaker 3: engaged or supposed to be engaged with across the seas
Speaker 3: in the Middle East, you are part of destroying that
Speaker 3: little piece of whatever slither of democracy those folks may
Speaker 3: have had.
Speaker 1: So it's just all of it is.
Speaker 3: I can't find super positive things anywhere, right.
Speaker 1: But here's what I was going to talk about.
Speaker 3: Because then, of course, the first thing that happened, which
Speaker 3: is also disingenuous, All these newspapers and op eds came
Speaker 3: out quickly saying that Joe Biden needs to resign. I mean,
Speaker 3: he needs to step aside. And I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what that means. I mean, I've read a few articles.
Speaker 3: Some of it means just go to the convention with
Speaker 3: a different candidate as the as the nominee for president,
Speaker 3: or allow the process to take place where there is
Speaker 3: another candidate can emerge. Some people want him to he
Speaker 3: that they believe he's in such bad shape at this
Speaker 3: moment that he should not even be able to to
Speaker 3: he should not be able to continue to be the president,
Speaker 3: which we know is not going to happen. And also,
Speaker 3: you know, we know people that work in a White House.
Speaker 3: People who have audience with President Biden all the time,
Speaker 3: and they say there's literally nothing wrong with him. And
Speaker 3: I'm talking about people that's my friends that would tell
Speaker 3: me girlo lord.
Speaker 1: They've told me other.
Speaker 3: Things, but they they say there's literally nothing wrong with him,
Speaker 3: like you could sit down and have a conversation with him.
Speaker 3: But when a person stutters and they're older, and again
Speaker 3: the stress of the job when they are when they
Speaker 3: are speaking, sometimes they need extra time to process, remember
Speaker 3: and then be able to have the conversation. That's just
Speaker 3: a natural thing that happens to you as you start
Speaker 3: to get older. So so with that being said, no,
Speaker 3: he should not be the nominee, not now.
Speaker 1: Now we're all the way far down the road before.
Speaker 3: With what he said when he ran the first time
Speaker 3: was that he would not run for reelection. And that's
Speaker 3: what they should have stuck to because at that time
Speaker 3: he was a little bit younger. He was a he
Speaker 3: was an older white man up against an older white man,
Speaker 3: which probably was a good man, I mean obviously because
Speaker 3: he won. But now he was he's too he is
Speaker 3: too much in his senior years and it is too
Speaker 3: much of a stress on his whole system to try
Speaker 3: to stand up there and have the type of debate
Speaker 3: with a man who is a straight lunatic like you
Speaker 3: gotta be on your lunatic to talk to the lunatic
Speaker 3: for real and not and not for nothing. This this
Speaker 3: is my real thought of the day about what I
Speaker 3: want to say because I'm not you know, I want
Speaker 3: to focus on black folks right and our issues. One
Speaker 3: people are talking about third party candidates. So first of all,
Speaker 3: the way this system is set up, they have long
Speaker 3: time ago rigged it to where trying to get a
Speaker 3: third party candidate elected at this point, they already know
Speaker 3: it's damn there impossible because you have the Democratic Convention
Speaker 3: coming up.
Speaker 1: You also, and I.
Speaker 3: Get it, some people will say, well, I'm gonna still
Speaker 3: vote for them. That's fine, But the third party candidate
Speaker 3: nine times out of ten, unless we can move an
Speaker 3: exodus of people, and it ain't just black people, it's
Speaker 3: not just black people. You need people from all races,
Speaker 3: everybody to come together. And if we already divided within
Speaker 3: the black community, because you have people who are saying
Speaker 3: we don't want Donald Trump so much that we cannot
Speaker 3: afford to take the shot.
Speaker 1: Now I'm with it. I'm with it.
Speaker 3: If we had, if cornell Us was.
Speaker 1: A real, real, real, real real.
Speaker 3: Shot for us to win, not only would I be
Speaker 3: behind him. And I'm still willing to listen to somebody
Speaker 3: tell me on what we can do to get Cornell
Speaker 3: on the stage at the Democratic Convention and figure out
Speaker 3: how we can support him and move votes in his direction.
Speaker 1: I'm with it.
Speaker 3: But I also sit around and talk to our people,
Speaker 3: and I realized that in conversations with us, we still
Speaker 3: need a lot of work to get to the point
Speaker 3: where all of us and then some other folks make
Speaker 3: that shift. And this was done to us, and it's wrong.
Speaker 3: It is wrong that we live in America in a
Speaker 3: place where we cannot look at the two top candidates
Speaker 3: and say I don't want them. I mean, right like,
Speaker 3: I'm sure we can talk about that later on or
Speaker 3: another day. But here's the thing, the reason why I
Speaker 3: know about the challenge.
Speaker 1: That we face as a people.
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris is the vice president, which means that in
Speaker 3: the proper world, she would advance because of if the
Speaker 3: president was incapacitated or decides.
Speaker 1: That he does not want to run again, she would have.
Speaker 3: Quite And it's supposed to naturally advance to being at
Speaker 3: the head of the ticket.
Speaker 1: Here's the issue if.
Speaker 3: The Democratic Party and the white folks that's over there,
Speaker 3: and the black and brown people and other people that
Speaker 3: go along with white folks who are in charge of
Speaker 3: every damn thing, if they go along with this process
Speaker 3: of them needing a new candidate. At first those articles
Speaker 3: was coming out, they weren't even mentioning Kamala as the person.
Speaker 3: So what they would attempt to do is find some
Speaker 3: other person, which Gavin Newsom couldn't really necessarily be it
Speaker 3: because he's from California and so is Kamala, and that
Speaker 3: never works in any scenario that there's two people at
Speaker 3: the top and second on the ticket from the same state. Right,
Speaker 3: But if they go and find some other person, more
Speaker 3: than likely a white person to put over Kamala, black
Speaker 3: people will most a lot of black people, a lot
Speaker 3: of large majority of black people would lose our minds
Speaker 3: that you have disrespected a black woman. And again it
Speaker 3: would be race.
Speaker 1: And then, as I have said a million times, when.
Speaker 3: You take race and couple it with sex and sexism,
Speaker 3: that sexism piece can be even more damning because we
Speaker 3: already had a black president. So we know almost any
Speaker 3: kind of man can win, right, almost any kind of man,
Speaker 3: but a woman, any race, number one, definitely black. It
Speaker 3: is very It is very difficult. Do I think that
Speaker 3: she could have debated Donald Trump and kicked his butt?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Do I think that she could run the country and
Speaker 3: do the thing and and and and really be a strong,
Speaker 3: powerful voice around this world.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think that she's educated, she's talented, she has all
Speaker 3: the things. But do I understand the challenges of a
Speaker 3: black woman being at the top of the ticket? Of course,
Speaker 3: and so do they know that within the party, which
Speaker 3: is why they would attempt out of sexism also and racism,
Speaker 3: but ultimately just practicality, they would attempt to put somebody
Speaker 3: over her.
Speaker 1: So you know what would happen.
Speaker 3: The Black people would be like, this is disrespectful and
Speaker 3: go crazy about how Kamala is being disrespected. But then
Speaker 3: if they did put her at the top of the ticket,
Speaker 3: you know what some of them saying, Black people say,
Speaker 3: she's not black enough. She was a prosecutor and she
Speaker 3: put black people in jail.
Speaker 1: She did this, she did that, She's not enough of this.
Speaker 3: She don't know how to dance properly, she know, she
Speaker 3: looked like she never danced before. She's married to a
Speaker 3: white man. So no matter which way you start trying
Speaker 3: to go and which way you start shifting, we will
Speaker 3: find a reason to try to discredit that black woman's right,
Speaker 3: which is why right out of ego they are ill advised.
Speaker 3: Some of it is disrespect, other parts of it is
Speaker 3: an attempt to preserve the dignity of the current president
Speaker 3: and also the dignity of the United States, because when
Speaker 3: these things happen, it's it's its history.
Speaker 1: Forever.
Speaker 3: People will be saying they had to remove or President
Speaker 3: Biden had to step down or whatever, and out of
Speaker 3: their ego, and again some of it being the disrespect
Speaker 3: for black women, some of it being just made it
Speaker 3: just ill advised, and they made a bad decision to
Speaker 3: allow him to run for president again.
Speaker 1: They I don't believe.
Speaker 3: I believe that that makes them feel that they have
Speaker 3: no choice but to take this man all the way
Speaker 3: to the end and hell Mary that he wins while
Speaker 3: killing babies in Palestine. While people have serious questions over
Speaker 3: especially the marketing of what they have been able to
Speaker 3: accomplish in a time when inflation is killing people, I
Speaker 3: don't care what they say. They keep saying jobs is
Speaker 3: at the highest number I know at least twenty people
Speaker 3: that have been and continue to search for work. They
Speaker 3: are struggling, people are homeless, people are hurting. So you
Speaker 3: got all that happening, and then you got a liar
Speaker 3: who knows how to market and twist and say crazy
Speaker 3: things that makes people feel like, well maybe, and then
Speaker 3: and then people get so frustrated about either one of
Speaker 3: them that they start talking about taking their votes and
Speaker 3: splitting them and going to another place. It's a hot
Speaker 3: ass mess. And I don't care if people could get
Speaker 3: mad at me. They can say whatever they want. But
Speaker 3: part of why we are here is because when Joe
Speaker 3: Biden said he would not run for reelection, that's what
Speaker 3: he should have done.
Speaker 1: We should have.
Speaker 3: Figured this out from four four years ago when he
Speaker 3: became president. They should have decided how they were going
Speaker 3: to make sure that Kamala was able to get to
Speaker 3: the end and become the nominee with people really behind her.
Speaker 3: That's what we should have done, because that's who they
Speaker 3: chose for vice president. And if they weren't gonna do
Speaker 3: it with Kamala, which by I support one hundred percent,
Speaker 3: that a black woman be.
Speaker 1: At the head of the ticket.
Speaker 3: But if they weren't gonna do it with Kamala, it
Speaker 3: should have been somebody else. This should have been the
Speaker 3: plan since even before he became president, and they did
Speaker 3: not do that. And now we are in a situation
Speaker 3: where we're dealing with a man who has the court
Speaker 3: stack in his favor to be able to do the
Speaker 3: most unconscionable criminal bullshit ever and we're sitting up here
Speaker 3: with another man over here that is in charge, that
Speaker 3: is not in charge of excuse me, that is helping
Speaker 3: to fund a genocide.
Speaker 1: It's too much for me.
Speaker 4: I said from the beginning, we're not choosing, We're not
Speaker 4: picking an ally. Were picking an opponent, right who we
Speaker 4: got to battle against. So our whole mind state with
Speaker 4: this president and she should have been building up for
Speaker 4: the next four years. Who do we actually want to
Speaker 4: see a president? When they said he was only going
Speaker 4: to do four years, then we should have been making
Speaker 4: sure that if we wanted Kamala to be the president,
Speaker 4: that people supposed to get behind Kamalin. We're supposed to
Speaker 4: demand that she had more of a president were supposed
Speaker 4: to be. You know, we're supposed to demand that she
Speaker 4: she did things that led to people to believe that
Speaker 4: she was prepared to be the president.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: People see right now, like you see her talking here
Speaker 4: and there, and she's very smart. But since she's been
Speaker 4: vice president, she has not been vocal. She has not
Speaker 4: been She hasn't been. I mean, she hasn't been exactly.
Speaker 4: She doesn't get she doesn't have the presence, right, she
Speaker 4: doesn't have the presidence that that she once had. And
Speaker 4: she doesn't and she's not speaking in a manner in
Speaker 4: which she once spoke because now as the vice president,
Speaker 4: you have to speak, you have to be a lot
Speaker 4: more careful.
Speaker 3: So Joe Biden saying, yeah, she used to talk stuff
Speaker 3: about the president.
Speaker 4: She like, she was very vocal. So you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of people don't have faith in it. The system,
Speaker 4: the structure that we have right now, people don't have
Speaker 4: faith in And that's why I said we need something different.
Speaker 4: We were supposed to go from state to state and
Speaker 4: build up our network and build up what we wanted
Speaker 4: to see in our next president, what we wanted exactly
Speaker 4: what we wanted, right, and we were supposed to find
Speaker 4: that candidate that you know, that embodied everything that we wanted,
Speaker 4: you know, or for.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 4: But I'm saying that embodied the most we have because
Speaker 4: we understood. Now we got a ship show, you know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. It's literally a show, and.
Speaker 3: Everybody is admitting that now, which before people wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Say we have a ship show. Wow, it's real.
Speaker 4: It's more to mess up. It's it's actually horrible because
Speaker 4: when you look at what you have to, like you said,
Speaker 4: we have to choose between you know, genocide, you know,
Speaker 4: and what's going on in guys that we have to
Speaker 4: choose between that, and then we have to choose between
Speaker 4: a fascist dictator who pretty much had said that he's
Speaker 4: going to get in office and rewrite the constitution that
Speaker 4: pretty so it benefits him that he's pretty much above
Speaker 4: the law and put police above the law. So this
Speaker 4: is what this is what we're faced with. These are
Speaker 4: you know what we have to sit here and say,
Speaker 4: you know, I gotta choose.
Speaker 1: I gotta contend with these.
Speaker 3: But I know one thing, Donald Trump, if I have
Speaker 3: anything to do with it, he can't be the president
Speaker 3: of the United States, not not for me. From my position,
Speaker 3: I'm making it very clear. You know, I've struggled. I
Speaker 3: have struggled, I have cried. It hurts a lot that
Speaker 3: we're in this situation that we're in, and I see
Speaker 3: that now the rest of the world's coming to the
Speaker 3: place where we were because we were saying that the
Speaker 3: same stuff about Biden, not we us, not wanting Joe
Speaker 3: Biden to continue on and become president.
Speaker 1: We were saying all.
Speaker 3: Of that, and people were like, how can y'all do this?
Speaker 3: You know, you you're gonna get You're gonna mess around
Speaker 3: and make Donald Trump the president. You know, y'all are
Speaker 3: being traders basically to our community because you're so worried
Speaker 3: about a war that's happening over there, and now we're
Speaker 3: watching because again, as Senator Nina Turner said, what happens
Speaker 3: over there happens over here. So if you're taking our
Speaker 3: money and you're invested in a war that it's not
Speaker 3: even a war, an assault that is happening over there,
Speaker 3: and then not doing what needs to be done for
Speaker 3: the people over here, that is where the connection is made.
Speaker 1: And we have been sounding the along.
Speaker 3: We are always ahead of our time because we were
Speaker 3: always calling out the State of Israel. We were always
Speaker 3: doing that and been punished greatly for talking about the
Speaker 3: occupation that we know is happening there in Gaza because
Speaker 3: we were there and in the West Bank and what's
Speaker 3: happening to the Palestinian people. But we were punished greatly
Speaker 3: for that, and now the rest of the world, people
Speaker 3: you would never even imagine, are saying the same thing
Speaker 3: because they can see it now that it's on mainstream media,
Speaker 3: playing out right before our eyes and of course on
Speaker 3: your cell phone.
Speaker 1: And it's the same thing with Joe Biden before war.
Speaker 3: But certainly since since October seventh, we have been saying
Speaker 3: he is not the right person to lead us through
Speaker 3: something like this, because yes, he has an allegiance to Israel,
Speaker 3: he has an allegiance to Jewish constituents that you know
Speaker 3: needs safety as well. And we haven't argued that Jewish
Speaker 3: people need safety. We have not argued that. What we've
Speaker 3: argued is that safety comes from everybody being safe.
Speaker 1: Not just one group of people.
Speaker 3: And his commitment and his Zionism and all the things
Speaker 3: that he said, we always knew that it was going
Speaker 3: to lead us to this place. And now here we
Speaker 3: are with age plus the support for genocide coming together,
Speaker 3: and it is it is, it's destructive, it's dangerous, and
Speaker 3: I just don't know what's gonna happen. But I do
Speaker 3: know that I've made a very conscious decision within myself
Speaker 3: that I cannot allow for my granddaughter's benefit, Joe, I mean,
Speaker 3: excuse me, for my rand daughter's benefit. Trump cannot be
Speaker 3: the president of the United States of America. Where we
Speaker 3: go from there, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe
Speaker 3: the convention will be broken and somehow a leader will emerge.
Speaker 3: Of course, they still probably will support genocide, which is horrible.
Speaker 1: But even the Muslim community.
Speaker 3: Is saying if Joe Biden steps aside, they ready to
Speaker 3: get in line. That's literally what some Jewish I mean,
Speaker 3: excuse me, that is literally what some Muslim organizations have
Speaker 3: been putting out there. We're ready to get in line,
Speaker 3: but not behind Joe Biden. I mean, it's a mess.
Speaker 3: All right, Look, well, we should get into our guests.
Speaker 3: I'm excited about these two beautiful young ladies who are
Speaker 3: joining us today.
Speaker 1: They're doing something really really incredible.
Speaker 2: Childhood you.
Speaker 1: All right, so new friends to me, friends of yours?
Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes absolutely, I've been blown away by the experience
Speaker 3: where you asked me to accompany you to a program
Speaker 3: with these beautiful women and learning more about what is
Speaker 3: happening with this program that they have. I wonder where
Speaker 3: in the world was it when I was like cut
Speaker 3: in school. I needed somebody to come get me and
Speaker 3: bring me to class and help me with so many
Speaker 3: of the challenges, especially when I got pregnant. I mean,
Speaker 3: the story goes on and on, and so I'm really
Speaker 3: really excited to have here these two powerful, powerful black women,
Speaker 3: Tiffany Law and Tijuana Butler bats And they have a
Speaker 3: program called Learning and it's excuse me, it is a
Speaker 3: business called Learning and Educational Solutions, Inc. Which is l EES.
Speaker 3: And I think for the purpose of folks really understanding
Speaker 3: what you all do, is better for you to talk
Speaker 3: about it so that our audience can really understand what
Speaker 3: Learning and Educational Solutions is is and what powerful work
Speaker 3: you all do in the community.
Speaker 5: Well, Learning and Educational Solutions, Inc. Started off to solve
Speaker 5: the dropout rates throughout New York City, and then we
Speaker 5: extended it to solve the dropout rates across the world,
Speaker 5: one student, one school, one community at a time. So
Speaker 5: when we started doing it, originally we started off from
Speaker 5: one program we had which was called Our Roads program,
Speaker 5: which was removing obstacles and achieving dreams role to graduation
Speaker 5: students who were struggling to come to school and they
Speaker 5: were about to graduate, but something was going on and
Speaker 5: the schools just did not have the capacity to figure
Speaker 5: out what was going on with them, so they would
Speaker 5: just fail them and they won't graduate, and then you
Speaker 5: never hear about the student. So when I tested the pilot,
Speaker 5: it was just about me seeing what was hindering these students.
Speaker 5: I got my own child together. It was my personal experience,
Speaker 5: and I asked the Department of Education, what can you
Speaker 5: do to help me? I need an educational crisis management
Speaker 5: team and they laughed and said there's no such thing.
Speaker 5: Did you make that up? They was like, we don't
Speaker 5: even have the capacity for that. So I thought, I said,
Speaker 5: you know, what will my credentials after I get my
Speaker 5: child on point. I will definitely be an advocate for
Speaker 5: other parents going through what I'm going through. So that's
Speaker 5: what I did. A principal gave me an opportunity. She said,
Speaker 5: I have some students they are not going to graduate.
Speaker 5: I don't know what's going on with them. She said,
Speaker 5: I'm going to give you these students, if you can
Speaker 5: help them by any means necessary, let me know and
Speaker 5: then we'll be onto something. And what I did was
Speaker 5: I worked with each individual student and I made a
Speaker 5: lot of discoveries. Some students wasn't coming to school because
Speaker 5: they were homeless. Some students was pregnant and needed a babysitter.
Speaker 5: Some students just didn't feel like coming to school because
Speaker 5: they had some drama or something in the school and
Speaker 5: they didn't feel like, you know, they were getting the
Speaker 5: attention they needed somewhat in gang related activities. The list
Speaker 5: goes on. So what I did was what we call
Speaker 5: our roles, removing obstacles and achieving dreams. I worked with
Speaker 5: each one of their families because I had to connect
Speaker 5: the school with the family, and I worked with them.
Speaker 5: I mean I had parents who was like, if you
Speaker 5: could give me a section eight listing with apartments and
Speaker 5: then you could focus on my child, that would be great.
Speaker 5: And that's what I did. I did whatever I had
Speaker 5: to do to bring that student back to school. Some
Speaker 5: students couldn't graduate from the school they was in because
Speaker 5: they couldn't read, or they had other challenges. Social and
Speaker 5: emotional factors played the role. I had to figure out
Speaker 5: what it was. And then I partnered with transfer schools
Speaker 5: that had great programs, accelerated courses, and I went with
Speaker 5: the family to the interviews, helped them get into the school.
Speaker 5: And next thing, you know, every last one of those
Speaker 5: students graduated. If they didn't graduate from her school, they
Speaker 5: graduated from a school. And then that's when we were like, oh,
Speaker 5: we got something big here, this is what's needed. And
Speaker 5: then city council got wind of it and they say, hey,
Speaker 5: wonder what you could do with a team. And then
Speaker 5: that's when I started to panic. And then here comes Tiffany.
Speaker 5: And so it's started in twenty sixteen. I even did
Speaker 5: it before I had the name. Maybe it was like
Speaker 5: towards the beginning of twenty seventeen, and I said, L yes,
Speaker 5: L yes, I think that sounds good. But yes, it
Speaker 5: started around that time. And then after the year of
Speaker 5: doing good, because we were bringing this particular school came
Speaker 5: from one point to the next, everybody wanted to know, like,
Speaker 5: how could you be a school on watch list? And
Speaker 5: you just jumped so fast, so it had to be explained.
Speaker 5: How So once it was explained that you know the
Speaker 5: methods that was usual to make this happen. They was like,
Speaker 5: let's see what you can do with a team, and
Speaker 5: then after that it was about getting helped with findings.
Speaker 5: And then that's why I always tell my story, because
Speaker 5: Tiffany came on board simply to just help me with
Speaker 5: the finance part, so when I have a team, I'll
Speaker 5: be able to manage it. And then I said, Tiffany,
Speaker 5: I want to pay you to do finance with me.
Speaker 5: And she said, oh, I don't know if you could
Speaker 5: follow me, but I can help you. I like what
Speaker 5: you got going on here, and next thing, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, she loved it so much. She came on
Speaker 5: board and we just the sky was not the limit
Speaker 5: because this footprints on the moon. She said, let's do two, three, four, five,
Speaker 5: six schools. Now we're in over twenty five schools. We'reing
Speaker 5: all the burrows, and we worked directly with superintendents and
Speaker 5: the Chancellor's office, and now it's just time for us
Speaker 5: to really expand to the point where everybody knows who's
Speaker 5: behind all of what's going on.
Speaker 4: You have a background in finance. What made you want
Speaker 4: to be a part of this education?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: For me, obviously, just a little Black Girl from the Bronx.
Speaker 6: I always felt like average. I've been in finance for
Speaker 6: a long time, and specifically education operations on the university
Speaker 6: level since I was out of college, and I always
Speaker 6: felt like, I'm over here managing two hundred million dollar budgets, right,
Speaker 6: but it's for causes that I just didn't believe in.
Speaker 6: But I had to feed my kids, right, so I'm
Speaker 6: gonna I'm gonna do this job. I'm gonna take these benefits.
Speaker 6: So when Tawana came to me with the idea, I
Speaker 6: just it just it just filled my soul, like I
Speaker 6: just was like, where was this when my brothers needed it?
Speaker 1: Right, right?
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm one of five and I'm I'm the
Speaker 6: only one that went to college and make it through,
Speaker 6: but the other four didn't. So it's like we needed
Speaker 6: some help. We needed this, My cousins needed this help.
Speaker 6: So I don't know, it just filled me. Even though
Speaker 6: she couldn't afford to pay me, we did it anyway.
Speaker 6: I just I knew it was more than it just
Speaker 6: it mattered to me more than money did. So I
Speaker 6: was able to come in and kind of take Tajuanta's ideas,
Speaker 6: which were great, right, and turn this into a business. Honestly,
Speaker 6: that's what I was able to come in here and do.
Speaker 6: I mean, and I think it takes two people, like
Speaker 6: two different kinds of people. We are very different to
Speaker 6: Wanta is like ideas through the moon, and I'm like,
Speaker 6: how much that's gonna cost? You know, how much is
Speaker 6: that gonna cost? How do we make that happen? How
Speaker 6: do we make it profitable?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 6: But how do we serve our communities? So yeah, that's
Speaker 6: how I started. We took that one program she was
Speaker 6: calling it one program. I think I've I've expanded that
Speaker 6: to about seven to ten programs. That's not one program.
Speaker 6: She was given that away for one. You knows one thing,
Speaker 6: that's not one.
Speaker 7: This is ten things. This is how we're gonna do this.
Speaker 6: I was able to digitize these things she was doing
Speaker 6: on paper.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: Some time.
Speaker 6: She and I said, yea, we got to be able
Speaker 6: to allow people to work from Zoom, allow people to
Speaker 6: work from Georgia like wherever we can hire people from.
Speaker 7: But we need to digitize this. We need to make
Speaker 7: this computerized.
Speaker 6: So that's what I've been able to do, is to
Speaker 6: help expand l e s and to honestly make it
Speaker 6: profitable because we are doing great work, but now we
Speaker 6: thankfully are being pig to do well.
Speaker 5: Yes. Yes, And I would just like to add also
Speaker 5: creating a team. I would go do our dropout prevention
Speaker 5: services by myself, and it was also about safety, so
Speaker 5: I would literally go to these students' homes, sit down
Speaker 5: with their parents, talk to them and figure out a
Speaker 5: plan on how they can get back to a school
Speaker 5: and what they needed. But then Tiffany was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: we gotta be safe when we're doing this. We got
Speaker 5: to get a team out there, two people, let's do
Speaker 5: this because we want to. We don't know how everybody's
Speaker 5: house is. And I guess I was just so I'm like, listen, passionate.
Speaker 5: Everybody's gonna do what I say to do because they
Speaker 5: know I love them and I'm gonna make this happen.
Speaker 5: But I had to make sure. I mean, it's times
Speaker 5: I was running up the hill and hells from a
Speaker 5: dog and she says, see, you can't be doing this.
Speaker 3: So that's I mean, a story is beautiful and I
Speaker 3: want to hear more about like just that, like what
Speaker 3: it felt like for you to have another black woman
Speaker 3: not there to take take away, talk it down, tell
Speaker 3: you what it can't work, but instead to invest in
Speaker 3: it before you get to that. Though, would love to
Speaker 3: hear about your own child because one of the things
Speaker 3: that I find interesting, and I'm the mother of a
Speaker 3: twenty five year old son, and my son obviously has
Speaker 3: his children, it's really hard sometimes to get your own
Speaker 3: child together while working with so many other people's children.
Speaker 3: So I find it interesting that you said first you
Speaker 3: had to focus on that and you were successful.
Speaker 5: Yes, So what happened was it was two things I
Speaker 5: want to talk about. One with my child. It was
Speaker 5: about me having social and emotional role factors that played
Speaker 5: a role in my life. I had just I was
Speaker 5: with her father from pretty much my teenage years to adulthood,
Speaker 5: and the transition was a lot for her, and with
Speaker 5: us bickering back and forth, everybody's thinking about themselves and
Speaker 5: not really what's happening with her. So it became a
Speaker 5: shock when she wasn't doing well in school, and I
Speaker 5: felt so horrible about I felt like I neglected, you know,
Speaker 5: her education, because it was like the focus was us
Speaker 5: tuggle warning her, and I felt like there was had
Speaker 5: to be something in some way that I can get
Speaker 5: her back on track. And then I just assumed that
Speaker 5: there was schools that would be able to just say,
Speaker 5: you know what, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm
Speaker 5: going to monitor her, handhold her through these classes, and
Speaker 5: then minute she does have a little panic attack or
Speaker 5: a breakdown, we'll pull her out and see what's going
Speaker 5: on and see what we can do. And the reason
Speaker 5: why I thought that is because let's go back to
Speaker 5: when I was younger. I messed up in school and
Speaker 5: my mom put me in a transfer school. And I
Speaker 5: sat in that transfer school with my arms crossed and
Speaker 5: I said, I'm only coming to school because you're making
Speaker 5: me And my mother was like, well, it's okay. You
Speaker 5: still got to come to school. And the people did
Speaker 5: not judge me so much that they allowed me into
Speaker 5: their school and I was on an honor roll, and
Speaker 5: it changed my life. So I was like, I got
Speaker 5: a chance. Do they still have these chances, because now,
Speaker 5: fast forward years later, I'm going through this with my
Speaker 5: own child. So I just assumed the help that they
Speaker 5: sort of gave my mom with me, and it changed
Speaker 5: my life. I was the child who said I wasn't
Speaker 5: going back to school. Not only did I graduate, but
Speaker 5: I went to college. And then I told my mom
Speaker 5: and I'm getting my master's and I did. And she
Speaker 5: was like, the girl who don't want to go to
Speaker 5: school is going to get her bachelor's and masters And
Speaker 5: I did it all. So I said, maybe, you know,
Speaker 5: but the times have changed and it just wasn't like that,
Speaker 5: Just like it wasn't like people back in the days.
Speaker 5: Remember when they'll come with the car and make you
Speaker 5: go to school and pick you up cheu and see.
Speaker 5: So I was just taking it back and they was like,
Speaker 5: we don't even do any of that. So I was like,
Speaker 5: what like so if.
Speaker 1: She yeah, we did I do? Okay?
Speaker 7: Yeah with the age ten, eighteen and twenty.
Speaker 3: Three, Oh okay, so you have yeahs too, so you
Speaker 3: know all about what needs to be done. So talk
Speaker 3: about that as women, like how this came together and
Speaker 3: you know, and just what for you has been you know,
Speaker 3: sort of like the most heartwarming part of having this
Speaker 3: other black woman to help you expand and I guess
Speaker 3: the same for you.
Speaker 5: Having Tiffany come in and give and work with me.
Speaker 5: I feel it was a blessing. I gave my husband
Speaker 5: a hard time because I felt like I had someone
Speaker 5: that I was going to work with, and you know,
Speaker 5: they it just didn't work the way that I wanted
Speaker 5: it to. And I was so invested and I needed
Speaker 5: someone that can believe in this, like I did, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. So when my husband introduced me
Speaker 5: to Tiffany and said, no, listen, she's about her business
Speaker 5: and she's very strategic. She's gonna be able to break
Speaker 5: this all down for you. She's gonna be able to
Speaker 5: help you, I was like, all right, you know. But
Speaker 5: when she moved forward and started doing it and then
Speaker 5: telling me that you selling this program for this when
Speaker 5: you should have seven, and started you know, getting into
Speaker 5: the logistics of things and the details.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 5: It was a great fit. It was a great fit.
Speaker 5: It worked, and we were able to expand so much
Speaker 5: so that we went on to a whole other level.
Speaker 5: We became part of the four percent minorities. I think
Speaker 5: it's probably under four percent now that actually has an
Speaker 5: m TAC, which is which is what's it? A multiple
Speaker 5: task award contract contracts? Yeah, for New York City right now.
Speaker 3: If you don't have that, you can only get one
Speaker 3: contract at a time.
Speaker 6: You can get more than one contract at a time.
Speaker 6: But the cap you at twenty five k per school, right,
Speaker 6: per program, and that's what we had for five years straight. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just hustling, you know, trying to make that happen in
Speaker 6: multiple schools. But now once you have that MTACH, you
Speaker 6: can charge whatever you want.
Speaker 7: A school can have all ten of your programs. There's
Speaker 7: no ceiling anymore.
Speaker 2: And what exactly all the programs that you guys offer
Speaker 2: to the school.
Speaker 6: So we have the road to graduation that Tawanna talked about.
Speaker 6: We also have the road to alternative, which is like,
Speaker 6: if this program isn't working for you, right, let us
Speaker 6: find an alternative for you. So it's not really like
Speaker 6: we know, we have so many different things. We do
Speaker 6: whatever is necessary. You might need an online school right
Speaker 6: in New York City. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 6: know that, but post pandemic they banned the online schools.
Speaker 7: So we had to be strategic, right. I do a
Speaker 7: lot of reading all at night.
Speaker 6: I do a lot of reading of the Chancellor's regulations,
Speaker 6: the Mayor's initiatives, and I find loopholes in almost anything.
Speaker 6: So I found several loopholes to make these things work.
Speaker 6: So we have kids that are in the online schools now,
Speaker 6: even though we don't have much support from the districts
Speaker 6: to do this, but we just had our first graduate.
Speaker 6: I think I discovered this back in November. We had
Speaker 6: in March. I think I started to enroll. I think
Speaker 6: I enrolled about sixty kids into the online school. It's
Speaker 6: very expensive. Also, this isn't free, y'all. We took the
Speaker 6: money out of Parkert to do this. But I wanted
Speaker 6: to pilot it. I wanted to see what we could do.
Speaker 6: And we just had our first graduate June twenty eighth.
Speaker 6: This boy hadn't been in school for two years.
Speaker 3: Wow, okay he finished Generally black and brown, these are.
Speaker 6: Black and brown children, these are our children. And in
Speaker 6: sixty days he got a high school diploma.
Speaker 5: Yes, he did a high school diploma.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Just so that's some of what we do. Again, we
Speaker 6: transferred to transfer schools, depending on what you like. We
Speaker 6: might have kids who want to dance, who want a filmmate.
Speaker 6: We connect you with schools that are going to give
Speaker 6: you what you need, not just a school just to
Speaker 6: go to, just because we really want to see these
Speaker 6: kids be sustainable citizens. Right, do whatever it is that
Speaker 6: you want to do. We encourage them.
Speaker 5: We have our attendance program. We have schools that have
Speaker 5: very low attendance, so they hire an LS team to
Speaker 5: bring their students back to school because they can do well,
Speaker 5: they just need to come into the school. So a
Speaker 5: lot of times we go to the homes and discover
Speaker 5: they move, they don't even live here anymore. So we
Speaker 5: do a lot of coal heart cleaning up for the
Speaker 5: schools to where if the schools, if the student is
Speaker 5: no longer there, they can come off the cohort, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. They just need an address. So
Speaker 5: we do all of that. They call us investigators. We
Speaker 5: have our safe and secure hallways to where we have
Speaker 5: mentoring on a goal. The mentoring on a Goal program
Speaker 5: is a major hit because it all started with to
Speaker 5: be in supportive of school safety. Just you guys haven't noticed.
Speaker 5: Didn't know this about me, but I used to be
Speaker 5: school safety for years. I transferred to become a cop
Speaker 5: and then I was like, this is not for me.
Speaker 5: I took the teacher's test and became a teacher. So
Speaker 5: I had many different careers. Yes that led me into this.
Speaker 5: So I went back into school safety mode and I
Speaker 5: discovered that school safety. They don't have them doing the
Speaker 5: things they used to have us doing. So with the mentoring,
Speaker 5: I noticed that the students wanted someone that looks like them,
Speaker 5: the auntie, the uncle that can relate to them, and
Speaker 5: we created that and we were able to make sure
Speaker 5: that the mentoring on a goal was getting to know
Speaker 5: the students in transition to class, making sure that Johnny
Speaker 5: who's always late, you're not late because I'm walking you.
Speaker 5: This is how we're doing it, and it's so great
Speaker 5: to the point where they actually tell the principles will say, oh,
Speaker 5: the teacher's coming to you because you know today about
Speaker 5: what happened.
Speaker 6: What I love the most is that these are just
Speaker 6: like they're big brothers and sisters. We're literally taking people
Speaker 6: out of the community and bringing them in like we
Speaker 6: have open houses in the community. We have people that say, oh,
Speaker 6: I haven't worked before, Oh I don't know if I
Speaker 6: have the tools. It's like, we give you the tools
Speaker 6: you do if you have a passion, if you want
Speaker 6: to help kids, we'll help you get to that.
Speaker 1: Next figure it out.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, of course, there's some hindrances with New York
Speaker 6: City that we tend to phase because again, if you
Speaker 6: have ever been convicted of a crime, you can't work
Speaker 6: in New York City.
Speaker 1: I ever been convicted.
Speaker 6: I've ever been convicted, even if you had a miss
Speaker 6: themeanor so we have to then deal with that. So
Speaker 6: it's an investigative side on the other hand, where I
Speaker 6: have to write these letters and get these people clear.
Speaker 7: Which takes a really long time.
Speaker 6: It's like it feels like, I mean, we do our best,
Speaker 6: but there's several like hindrances I think within the system
Speaker 6: that could be fixed.
Speaker 4: I'm just so proud of Tiffany, like knowing her since
Speaker 4: she was like in elementary school like four and five
Speaker 4: years old. We went to the same like knowing that's
Speaker 4: growing up and just seeing her growing to this this
Speaker 4: is just who.
Speaker 3: Do Yeah, it's amazing. I Mean, the entire program to
Speaker 3: me is precisely what we need. And one of the
Speaker 3: reasons why we wanted to have you all on the
Speaker 3: show so quickly after visiting the graduation ceremony is that
Speaker 3: around the country, we're in a time where everybody is
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what do we do while we're
Speaker 3: under attack? Right, like we as black people, as black
Speaker 3: and brown and vulnerable communities, even white communities, are suffering
Speaker 3: and are at the cross section of real attacks against
Speaker 3: our education, attacks against our health, both everything, our economics, everything,
Speaker 3: and models that people can use in their particular cities
Speaker 3: that will help to keep afloat. And this has happened
Speaker 3: throughout history, if we you know, if you think back
Speaker 3: through history, there've always been times when there was a
Speaker 3: recession and people had to figure out how to feed themselves,
Speaker 3: or how to travel and spend less money to get
Speaker 3: to work, or you've always had to have models pop
Speaker 3: up that would give folks hope that we can do it.
Speaker 3: And I think l Ees is one of those models.
Speaker 3: You know, I really truly think that. And so so
Speaker 3: talk about what does it take on the financial side
Speaker 3: to keep a program like this going.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's expensive.
Speaker 5: It's very expensive, extremely expensive.
Speaker 6: It's very expensive because we don't have just one person
Speaker 6: right on the ground for one program. Like we said,
Speaker 6: we have the team that's out. They have to be
Speaker 6: out in a duo. That was something that we had
Speaker 6: to implement two people the time. We also have to
Speaker 6: have attendance people who are like analysts they say, behind
Speaker 6: a computer, but they're calling constantly excuse me. We were
Speaker 6: literally searching for these kids. We find kids in Texas,
Speaker 6: we find kids in yeahmen, we find kids in Africa.
Speaker 1: He supposed to be here and they went wherever.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So that's also helping to decrease that drop off.
Speaker 3: What was some of the worst stories that you found, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, give me a story of something
Speaker 3: that you all had to work through that was really
Speaker 3: really challenging.
Speaker 5: So a lot of the families during the pandemic did
Speaker 5: not know how to work the Google classrooms, so we
Speaker 5: had to put our team in place to make sure
Speaker 5: that they went to some of the houses. Could you
Speaker 5: imagine they had to suit up and do all types
Speaker 5: of zooms to help families. We discovered a lot of
Speaker 5: kids were raised by their grandparents, so the grandparents was
Speaker 5: like on the Tyler Prairie. I don't know about that
Speaker 5: algio what you're talking about. So we had to figure
Speaker 5: it out to help them. And I remember this one
Speaker 5: specific story that there was a student who was he
Speaker 5: was pretty much an a student, and the school called
Speaker 5: us and said he was not coming to school. They
Speaker 5: don't know what was going on, and we was like,
Speaker 5: we gotta find him. So I remember I didn't have
Speaker 5: a partner to go with me in the field at
Speaker 5: that time, and Tiffany was busy doing a lot of
Speaker 5: the other stuff with the staff behind the scenes. So
Speaker 5: I made my husband go with me and we put
Speaker 5: on our out offense. He helped me. We geared up
Speaker 5: and he said, put your mask on. We put our
Speaker 5: mask on. We put everything we needed to and we
Speaker 5: went to the house and we asked him what happened,
Speaker 5: and he said, my mother lost her jobs during the
Speaker 5: pandemic and I have to help her and I have
Speaker 5: to help her some way. And then I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: where's your mom. The mom came down, she was crying,
Speaker 5: and I said, mom, he only has a few more
Speaker 5: months ago. I said, what is it we need to
Speaker 5: do to help? Because he has a promising career and
Speaker 5: at this particular time, he was up for internship with
Speaker 5: BMW and Mercedes Bens because he's a mechanic. He grew
Speaker 5: up being a mechanic and fixing cards with his grandfather.
Speaker 5: So the mom was like, I don't know, I'm just
Speaker 5: you know, I don't want him to quit school. He's
Speaker 5: just depressed. Here with me. So I said the first
Speaker 5: things first, that you have all your basic necessities, and
Speaker 5: she says she didn't have really a lot. So my
Speaker 5: husband and I we took a list what do you need?
Speaker 5: We went and we got the list of stuff and
Speaker 5: we went and bought everything for her. And then Tiffany
Speaker 5: was like, yeah, we could swing a couple of hours too.
Speaker 5: Let's give them something, try to hold them over because
Speaker 5: he's graduating. And that's what we did. We came back
Speaker 5: and they cried and they hugged us, and I said, listen,
Speaker 5: I need you to go and log on. He logged
Speaker 5: on to school and he graduated. I mean, he was
Speaker 5: a successful graduate. And I think that was a great
Speaker 5: story because we had to get up no matter what.
Speaker 5: We didn't even care. Everybody was scared in the house,
Speaker 5: like we was like, no, we gotta go there.
Speaker 4: I love this because it intercepts the school of prison pipeline, right.
Speaker 4: This completely gives our kids an opportunity because I remember
Speaker 4: when I went to school in can I remember.
Speaker 2: That there was a day that all the.
Speaker 4: Kids that didn't go to school, they just kicked you
Speaker 4: out the school, Like that's how it is.
Speaker 2: Literally, it was.
Speaker 4: One day like you be going and we be having
Speaker 4: fun and the next thing you know, they just had
Speaker 4: made a bigger announcement and told you to come to
Speaker 4: the office and said you're no longer in this school,
Speaker 4: no more, and they sent you to one of those
Speaker 4: schools that nobody went to. Like it was like the
Speaker 4: fifty or sixty of my friends just completely got kicked
Speaker 4: out of the school. So when you look at programs
Speaker 4: like this and you see that these opportunities, it could
Speaker 4: have saved.
Speaker 2: A lot of a lot of them. Not here, a
Speaker 2: lot of them.
Speaker 4: In prison, you know what I'm saying, because they just
Speaker 4: threw them out in the street and there was nobody
Speaker 4: there that really kid enough. So when I look at
Speaker 4: your program, it's really going to make real change.
Speaker 5: And the kids that come from prison, oh, we get
Speaker 5: them soon as they And when we find out that
Speaker 5: there's a student that may have gotten locked up, we
Speaker 5: tell the school please keep us posted, and then we
Speaker 5: reach out to the family let us know, especially if
Speaker 5: it's a student that we know. Have a couple of months,
Speaker 5: we keep them on our lists and then we revisited
Speaker 5: again and as soon as they get out, we're right
Speaker 5: there to get them back acclimated with a school and
Speaker 5: what's going on now the school that they were in
Speaker 5: may not work for them, but we find a school
Speaker 5: and sometimes you have kids, we have kids we worked with.
Speaker 5: We had to meet them where they were, meaning at
Speaker 5: their house, like they were not trying to come out
Speaker 5: for whatever reason or something that happened. So we had
Speaker 5: to send a tutor to the home and we was like,
Speaker 5: help us get this work now, Tiffany find loopholes and
Speaker 5: that's the problem when we find those loopholes all the time,
Speaker 5: they Department of Education seems to forget that they have
Speaker 5: that loophole. Felt like, where did you find this? Who
Speaker 5: said like we have to use this? And we're like
Speaker 5: really pressing them and pressing them like you said this,
Speaker 5: you created this. We just went to a press release recently.
Speaker 5: Were one of the loopholes we found that they said
Speaker 5: they were rescinding and not using which is the online school.
Speaker 5: They just announced that they're going to do it. So
Speaker 5: we were very confused.
Speaker 1: Because they listen, people watch you exactly.
Speaker 3: You don't think that they do, but they watch you
Speaker 3: and they watch your work and then they start saying
Speaker 3: they want to implement things that you're doing. Yes, do
Speaker 3: you all have a relationship at all with the Chancellor
Speaker 3: directly or.
Speaker 7: I think it's indirectly.
Speaker 6: We work with Project Pivot, which is the Chancellor's initiative,
Speaker 6: so we work with his team, which are some great
Speaker 6: ten black men who are like on the ground with
Speaker 6: us every day. So it's an indirect relationship. But I
Speaker 6: think because we do have a black mayor and a
Speaker 6: black chancellor, I think they need to know about this.
Speaker 6: They need to definitely invest in this because what I
Speaker 6: find is the most horrible thing is that these programs
Speaker 6: that this program is great, right, but there's not a
Speaker 6: lot of programs that you can give for these teenage students.
Speaker 6: It's kind of like they want to help them until
Speaker 6: they get to be about thirteen is and then when
Speaker 6: you get to high school, there's nothing. There are no
Speaker 6: programs for them. Why not these are tomorrow's leaders. Why
Speaker 6: are we not investing in them? Why are we just
Speaker 6: they're just like letting them drop out. I mean to
Speaker 6: be honest, there's a lot of principles that give us
Speaker 6: a list and they will be like, oh, here, work
Speaker 6: with these five. That's another thing that started when I
Speaker 6: got here. They were like these seven of these five
Speaker 6: and town is like, yes, great, And I had to
Speaker 6: dissect that and say, let me see your data.
Speaker 7: So I require the data.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: I want to see how many kids on this that
Speaker 6: are enrolled in this school are not coming to school,
Speaker 6: and I want to know what. You don't give me
Speaker 6: your seven because what happened to the other And I
Speaker 6: always the kids they're like, oh, he doesn't come. Oh
Speaker 6: he's just all these excuses, and I'm like, no, in
Speaker 6: order to work with us, you have to give me
Speaker 6: all fourteen of them.
Speaker 1: That's what that's the one I want.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how we exactly when we do our
Speaker 3: organizing work in communities around the nation, we always are like, okay,
Speaker 3: where they you said they shooting and killing over there?
Speaker 3: That take us over there and drop us off and
Speaker 3: we'll see. We're gonna we're gonna work with our own people.
Speaker 3: And we have to find the people who because if
Speaker 3: there is violence or you know, some sign of like
Speaker 3: a real uh what's the word I'm looking and for,
Speaker 3: if there's violence, or if the community seems like it's
Speaker 3: really really like a stress depressed neighborhood, we know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of promise there because that means that people
Speaker 3: are hurting. So we don't look at violence as it's
Speaker 3: just criminals. We look at violence as somebody's in pain
Speaker 3: and therefore they need the resources we actually.
Speaker 1: Should be focusing on that.
Speaker 3: It's funny that so many elected officials and otherwise. Is
Speaker 3: one of the kind of the challenges that I had
Speaker 3: with Bernie Sander's my son that was his candidate. It
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't mine. Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren was my candidate.
Speaker 3: But one of the issues that I had with Bernie
Speaker 3: was this idea that if we start at the bottom,
Speaker 3: like if you know, we just like kind of like
Speaker 3: what do they say, all rods and tides raises all
Speaker 3: ships or something like that. So that's cool, that sounds great,
Speaker 3: but he would never identify the who was at the
Speaker 3: bottom by saying black folks, because we are the one
Speaker 3: that no matter how you you could take the data,
Speaker 3: flip it upside down, shake it out iron it is
Speaker 3: always going to come back that our communities are the
Speaker 3: ones that are suffering the most in every single category.
Speaker 1: And so I do believe that that strategy can work.
Speaker 3: But then that means that you have to be able
Speaker 3: to name our people, you know.
Speaker 7: You have to be able to be one of our
Speaker 7: people well too.
Speaker 1: That's a fac too.
Speaker 3: And I only bring that up because, you know, I
Speaker 3: feel like, then I need to talk to Pooky, Pooky Pooky,
Speaker 3: not just Pooky because Pooky might just be a nickname
Speaker 3: for Robert.
Speaker 1: Who has a good job, who's doing I'm talking about Pooky.
Speaker 5: Pooky's Pooky Pooky right.
Speaker 1: You might not even have a house. He's living from
Speaker 1: the house, touse. That's where we have to go.
Speaker 3: And that's what my song does every day is work
Speaker 3: with the ones that I see them, and I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 3: this is tough gud until Freedom run programs in Newark
Speaker 3: and I was watching the kids the other day and
Speaker 3: then listening to what the instructors were saying, and they
Speaker 3: were like, they started looking for him. Those kids, those
Speaker 3: same kids that would have seen him coming before or
Speaker 3: probably did like.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this, so you know whatever.
Speaker 3: But then because he was consistent, they were like, well
Speaker 3: where is he at?
Speaker 4: Like young boys, you know, they they are able to
Speaker 4: see you, right, because I remember being a young boy,
Speaker 4: and that's why I mentor from that position. I don't
Speaker 4: mentor from where I am. My mentor from where I was,
Speaker 4: And what would it have taken for me to identify
Speaker 4: with somebody, or trust somebody, or change the direction that
Speaker 4: I was going to for somebody. Right, it would have
Speaker 4: to be consistency. It would have to be that you
Speaker 4: earn respect, it would have to be honesty, it would
Speaker 4: have to be that I sense all of those things
Speaker 4: in you. Right, So that's how I try to mentor.
Speaker 4: And I think this is what this program is like.
Speaker 4: When you when I listen to you, it's not you
Speaker 4: didn't say we try to figure out how to make
Speaker 4: some money. No, you've seen in this necessity out of
Speaker 4: something that you actually were dealing with and said, people
Speaker 4: really need these things, right, And then y'all connected those
Speaker 4: dots and said, well, while we're doing this, we still
Speaker 4: have to survive, and we got to make sure and
Speaker 4: why we survive, and we got to be able to
Speaker 4: provide for the people that were helping because a lot
Speaker 4: of these things are financial. I say all the time,
Speaker 4: poverty is violence, and when we look at we're dealing
Speaker 4: with levels of violence on so many different levels. It's
Speaker 4: not just physical violence, it's emotional, you know, it's help
Speaker 4: all of these things. So when you when you start
Speaker 4: tearing back the layers and you talking to these parents,
Speaker 4: you realize, like, damn, it's deeper than just a kid
Speaker 4: don't want to go to school. Like it's way deeper
Speaker 4: because I remember when I wasn't going I remember the
Speaker 4: things that was going on in my house. I was
Speaker 4: an age, I was a top student, and then the
Speaker 4: things that was going on in my house stopped me
Speaker 4: from going to school. You know, I had to focus
Speaker 4: on you all. I gotta survive, Like it's just me
Speaker 4: and my sister. What do I gotta do?
Speaker 2: How? You know, so it takes you out of it.
Speaker 4: And if I'd had somebody that could come and gave
Speaker 4: me resources and help my mother go through what she
Speaker 4: had to go through, Like I it's no telling where
Speaker 4: I would have been. I wanted to be the president.
Speaker 4: I wanted to be one of the best lawyers, Like
Speaker 4: I went to is. I was one of the best.
Speaker 4: My attorneys in my school, like when they when we
Speaker 4: had those attorneys and we had those mock trials, Yeah King,
Speaker 4: and man, I was what Yeah, she went to King.
Speaker 4: So what I'm saying, like I really was one of
Speaker 4: the best of those. Then I went to John Jay
Speaker 4: and I was doing mock trials and writing up closing arguments.
Speaker 4: My teachers was like, Yo, it's nobody better than you
Speaker 4: with this. But life was calling the things that was
Speaker 4: going on in my household and me trying to survive.
Speaker 2: I was like, I can't even get to school no more.
Speaker 5: And that's what we go through with the students and
Speaker 5: their families. A lot of times they will say things like,
Speaker 5: you don't know what I'm going through. So because I
Speaker 5: always like to say every single part of every single
Speaker 5: program we have of l S, I've actually done it myself.
Speaker 5: So when I love when they tell me that because
Speaker 5: I know person, I always tell them I have personal experience.
Speaker 5: When they go, oh, you don't know, it's hard to
Speaker 5: have a child. That's this, I'm like, what I tell
Speaker 5: them my story or the children. The children always say
Speaker 5: to me, you don't know how it feels when you
Speaker 5: go to a new school. I tell them my story.
Speaker 5: And when I tell them my story about what happened
Speaker 5: when I went to that new high school, they said,
Speaker 5: and now you work for L E S. SMIs. I say,
Speaker 5: now I own L E. S. They say, sign me up, man.
Speaker 5: So it's always a story that I'm telling them and
Speaker 5: they're like, wow, oh this happened because they want you.
Speaker 5: They want to know that you know, you not just talking.
Speaker 6: We make sure that we hire genuine people who want
Speaker 6: to be a part of this cause. I mean, you
Speaker 6: can have all the degrees in the world and we're like,
Speaker 6: we've turned away so many people and I'm like, they
Speaker 6: just don't fit, or is like they don't fit and
Speaker 6: we wan't.
Speaker 1: So you too have to agree on we agree on people.
Speaker 6: We do because we look for different things and we
Speaker 6: just want to make sure that people are out here
Speaker 6: who understand the mission and who are here not just
Speaker 6: to get paid, because we understand everybody has to be paid,
Speaker 6: but really want to help these kids.
Speaker 1: Do y'all hire family members?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yes?
Speaker 1: Did it work?
Speaker 2: Some?
Speaker 1: It does?
Speaker 7: Sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 6: It's harder obviously with your family members, because I can't
Speaker 6: separate the fact that you know, to be honest, our
Speaker 6: husbands work for the company.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right, they're invested.
Speaker 6: They invested, but they get on our nurse too. Okay, right,
Speaker 6: it's different, but you have feeling. Yeah, but you got
Speaker 6: to go lay down with them tonight and you're like,
Speaker 6: I just had to tell you to go do this,
Speaker 6: and I know you didn't like it, but you know,
Speaker 6: let's separate it, so it gets hard. My sister is
Speaker 6: one of the people who's been with us since day one, Right,
Speaker 6: She's been a loyal employee. I don't do day to
Speaker 6: day with her on purpose, so we also make sure
Speaker 6: that we're not directly involved with our family to Wanta
Speaker 6: takes on her more. But she's been amazing, right, And
Speaker 6: I think just for us. Our mother came from public
Speaker 6: service and worked for Social.
Speaker 7: Security and HRRA her whole life. Right. My mother always
Speaker 7: she worked at a local community center. Right.
Speaker 6: My mother was everybody's mom. She just are growing up.
Speaker 6: So I think it's just natural for us to feel
Speaker 6: like this is where we belong.
Speaker 5: And I forgot to mention. I got to shout out
Speaker 5: my Queens. I'm from jim I'm from Okay. So I
Speaker 5: was raised in South Jamaica, Queens by way of Queensbridge Projects.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So you know people out there?
Speaker 5: Yes there?
Speaker 7: So what do you need?
Speaker 1: How can people help and where can they find you?
Speaker 6: I think we need awareness, We need to We just
Speaker 6: want people to know what l e S is. We
Speaker 6: need people like you guys who allow us on your platforms.
Speaker 6: I know Mice talked to me about just like joiningdor
Speaker 6: ambassadors in every borough. Like, so, Mike, you help my
Speaker 6: ambassador for the Bronx.
Speaker 7: I got.
Speaker 6: Cameron reached out to me the other day. He wants
Speaker 6: to be the ambassador for Harlem.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: He's excited about doing a back to school event with
Speaker 6: us immediately, like he wants to do it this summer.
Speaker 7: I have Jada Kiss reached out.
Speaker 6: He wants to do you because he's like, I know
Speaker 6: y'all do New York City, but I'm like, we do wherever.
Speaker 6: You know, we got people reaching out in Philly. My friend,
Speaker 6: one of my best friends, lives in Philly, so she's
Speaker 6: she has a hair salon, so she has a lot
Speaker 6: of teachers and principals who have been reaching out. So
Speaker 6: we definitely want to make it there. But I think
Speaker 6: our goal right now.
Speaker 7: Is to con New York.
Speaker 6: We want to get ambassadors for all of the burroughs.
Speaker 6: We want to get the Chancellor's ear, the Mayor's ear. Yeah,
Speaker 6: we want to.
Speaker 7: We're working on RFPs this summer. You guys know what
Speaker 7: those are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we need to really get the Mayor's air,
Speaker 5: meaning that I've been going to a lot of them.
Speaker 5: We're MWBE right. So I've been going to the MWBE
Speaker 5: events they have and I see them all. I mean
Speaker 5: it's times where the chancellor have seen me and he's
Speaker 5: telling the mayor come over here. I want to hear.
Speaker 5: I want you to hear what they have going. But
Speaker 5: then they get so busy after they hear it, and
Speaker 5: then they give you all these numbers and say let's
Speaker 5: set up meetings, and.
Speaker 7: They send other people.
Speaker 5: And then they send other people and then it's like
Speaker 5: but they don't realize that the numbers that they're getting
Speaker 5: is because of people like us. We find hundreds of
Speaker 5: students who have dropped out of school and bring them
Speaker 5: back in. They're coming. They're not just going back. We're
Speaker 5: getting that.
Speaker 4: Specifically me and we can have a little bit of
Speaker 4: connections here and there that we might be able to
Speaker 4: do something. So I really want what y'all do to
Speaker 4: be implemented in every school like this is really important,
Speaker 4: you know, and I just want to commend y'all for
Speaker 4: the work that you do. You know, it's amazing, and
Speaker 4: it started out of necessity. It started out of you
Speaker 4: seeing what was missing. And that's what I tell these
Speaker 4: kids all the time. If you want to do something
Speaker 4: to find out what's missing when you see that something
Speaker 4: that's missing, fill that void, you know, and this is
Speaker 4: a void that definitely needs to be filled, especially in
Speaker 4: our community. So I want to commend y'all and thank
Speaker 4: y'all for joining us. Tell them where to find.
Speaker 5: Y'allt email us at NFO at l E sink dot org,
Speaker 5: or you can go to ww dot l E sinc
Speaker 5: dot org. I'm at just Tiffany twenty five and you
Speaker 5: are and I am. I am Coco bats, but I
Speaker 5: would rather them go.
Speaker 1: To Hey, let me follow that.
Speaker 5: Please follow Learning Underscore, Educational Underscore Solution and Twitter, which
Speaker 5: is learning Edu.
Speaker 1: Thank y'all so.
Speaker 2: Much for having whatever we could do. Yes, I like Elliott,
Speaker 2: I love Elliott.
Speaker 3: I like young ladies. I'm so grateful to you for
Speaker 3: introducing me to them. I feel I always feel so
Speaker 3: excited when I know I could do something to help
Speaker 3: somebody really like.
Speaker 2: It's it's you know.
Speaker 4: As soon as I heard the program and then I
Speaker 4: knew I know, Like I said, I know Tiffany since
Speaker 4: she was a baby, like literally and just knowing how
Speaker 4: she's always been focused, been driven. She was the girl
Speaker 4: that was never into none of the bull stuff, always
Speaker 4: smart and all of that. And just when I heard
Speaker 4: her name involved and them, we got to pay attention
Speaker 4: to this, you know. And her husband is my friend,
Speaker 4: shout out to j T. So these is like brothers
Speaker 4: and sisters to me. So just and then seeing that
Speaker 4: what they're doing, it's just amazing.
Speaker 2: Man. We need this.
Speaker 4: We definitely need this kind of program. This, This is
Speaker 4: what I've been talking about when we're talking about community
Speaker 4: doing things for the community and community like policing the community,
Speaker 4: taking care of the community, entrepreneurship, educating the community.
Speaker 2: That's what it is.
Speaker 4: Is they've created an ecosystem that you each level of education,
Speaker 4: they are able to do something for, you know, when
Speaker 4: it's public safety, you know, getting the kids back.
Speaker 3: I don't use the word policing in our community.
Speaker 4: Most publicly, Okay, I'll change the word, you know, public
Speaker 4: safety in our community.
Speaker 1: And no, I love it.
Speaker 3: I think that as you know, the more that we
Speaker 3: help them to get the awareness out there, I think
Speaker 3: that they can go that other people in other states
Speaker 3: can really look at their model and people are already
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 2: It was done.
Speaker 4: We just taken back, they took or this is why
Speaker 4: I had this conversation shout out to may Adams that
Speaker 4: we had because I know that it was there. Like
Speaker 4: me and her were talking about, there was a program
Speaker 4: in our community called the Mosaic in which.
Speaker 2: They had every level.
Speaker 4: They had entertainment, they had mentorship, they had sports, they
Speaker 4: had education, they had after school on programs where the kids,
Speaker 4: there were daycare centers that everything that the community needed
Speaker 4: was in there, and they hired everybody from the community
Speaker 4: to work in there. So it was a beautiful thing.
Speaker 4: And then they just cut the funding and now it's
Speaker 4: not even it's a shell of.
Speaker 2: What it want was.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not even thinking so much about the programs.
Speaker 3: I think the programs are important, and you have programs
Speaker 3: all around the country, specifically their road removing obstacles achieving dreams.
Speaker 1: That is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: The idea that they literally go find the kid.
Speaker 1: They say they found.
Speaker 3: Kids in Yemen in Africa, and you know, probably in
Speaker 3: the school building, right and then you find out that
Speaker 3: these kids have a variety of problems or issues they're
Speaker 3: dealing with their family members, and now here they are
Speaker 3: working to try to solve problems so that the young
Speaker 3: person can get back in school. We know of a
Speaker 3: few programs like that. I know certainly Erika Ford at
Speaker 3: Life Camp. That's something that I that they definitely they
Speaker 3: figured out through years and years of research that you
Speaker 3: can't even help the child until you help the mother.
Speaker 3: You can't help the mother and not the father. You
Speaker 3: can't help the mother and father, and the grandmother is
Speaker 3: living there and doesn't have the medical needs that they
Speaker 3: may have or other children in the home, so incarceration
Speaker 3: can become an issue. So there's so many barriers, and
Speaker 3: I think what they're doing is something that if you
Speaker 3: are a person who's in you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: Alabama right now, and you're like, wow, the dropout rate
Speaker 3: is so high, because you know the stats are in
Speaker 3: New York that since the pandemic, there's a real struggle
Speaker 3: to get young black boys to go back to school.
Speaker 3: And so if you're in Alabama, you're in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: you're in Wisconsin, you're in Michigan, you're wherever, and you
Speaker 3: realize that that's an issue, then perhaps looking at l
Speaker 3: Ees and the model and then using your own spice,
Speaker 3: because every local community has its own issue. Someplace New
Speaker 3: York is buildings, so we have a different strategy. Some
Speaker 3: places his houses, some places, trailer parks, I mean, everywhere
Speaker 3: has something different.
Speaker 1: I think Lis and what they're doing is brilliant, brilliant man,
Speaker 1: brilliant for sure.
Speaker 4: I appreciate him, love him. That brings me to my
Speaker 4: I don't get it. We're talking about children and we're
Speaker 4: talking about parents. Lebron James, who is arguably too many
Speaker 4: the goat greatest of all time basketball. Not really my goal,
Speaker 4: but he's he's up there, he's in the top five
Speaker 4: to me. His son, Ronnie James, you know, just got
Speaker 4: drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, and there is this
Speaker 4: big uproard. Oh you know, he's he doesn't deserve it.
Speaker 4: There's people that deserve that spot. They just got him
Speaker 4: there because it's Lebron's son and this and that, and
Speaker 4: I say, that's right, right, that's and that's what they
Speaker 4: should like.
Speaker 1: You don't think he deserves it.
Speaker 4: No, I think he deserves it. But I think that
Speaker 4: he's Lebron's son, and that's why he got on the
Speaker 4: team because Lebron said, I want my son to play.
Speaker 1: With me and Lebron if he if he was good.
Speaker 4: No, he is good. You know what I'm saying, He's
Speaker 4: not no better than anybody, no worse than at fifty
Speaker 4: threet went. He went at fifty five, the fifty fifth pick,
Speaker 4: Like that's like barely making the team. But the fact
Speaker 4: is that people, yeah, that's what And the thing was,
Speaker 4: he was a mcdonaldhall American. He was he like he
Speaker 4: was at the toppest level, you know, in basketball. And
Speaker 4: then he got an injury in which he had a
Speaker 4: heart injury in which you know, Lebron didn't even know
Speaker 4: if his son was going to survive, let alone play basketball.
Speaker 4: And to ignore what he did to rehab hisself, to
Speaker 4: work himself back in the position to be able to
Speaker 4: play on the NBA team, to ignore that, just that
Speaker 4: in itself, like forget everything else, the fact that you
Speaker 4: were on to the point where you thought you would
Speaker 4: probably never played basketball again, and you defied that. You
Speaker 4: work hard, You practice, you exercise, you did everything necessary.
Speaker 4: Then you went to those combines and you impressed those
Speaker 4: people and people seeing you. You played hard, you did all
Speaker 4: those things. You know, what else should a father do?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: If I tell my son all the time, I just
Speaker 4: if you want me to help, you, just show me
Speaker 4: the initiative, because if you show me that you wanted
Speaker 4: like that, And I heard Lebron said, Lebron James said,
Speaker 4: he asked his son, what do you want this?
Speaker 2: What do you want with this?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: What do you want to do with me? He said,
Speaker 4: I wanted to play in the pros. That's what I want.
Speaker 4: And he said, he said that and then he showed
Speaker 4: me that. So as a father, that's what you're supposed
Speaker 4: to do for your kids when they put the work in.
Speaker 4: You supposed to be able to if you are in
Speaker 4: a position to make things easier after they put the
Speaker 4: work in and put them the doors to where.
Speaker 2: When they get in there, and that was up to you.
Speaker 2: I can get you in the door. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 4: You showed me that you're willing to do it, and
Speaker 4: I'm willing to put my name, my everything on the
Speaker 4: line because you worked hard enough. That's what we're supposed
Speaker 4: to do as parents.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I heard Stephen Stephen Jackson, Stephen jacks he said, black privilege.
Speaker 4: Black privilege.
Speaker 2: I love it. You know.
Speaker 4: We put yourself in a position because that's what's been
Speaker 4: happening in these leagues for.
Speaker 1: Years, the white people.
Speaker 2: I mean just everywhere, everywhere.
Speaker 3: People's department, the elected officials passing down a seat to
Speaker 3: their child. Corporate leaders, they you know, their their kid
Speaker 3: or their nephew or someone becomes the new CEO once
Speaker 3: they get, you know, to a certain point. And so
Speaker 3: I think that I personally don't think it's that it's
Speaker 3: not that I don't think it's that big of a
Speaker 3: because you and like some of y'all on social media
Speaker 3: that then got upset about them, are the only people
Speaker 3: that's talking about it around me, Around me, they saying.
Speaker 2: I mean around you.
Speaker 4: But I'm saying, but if you go through the sports world,
Speaker 4: they got people in the list on you know, on
Speaker 4: ESPN and all the sports world, you got people they
Speaker 4: can't know they ain't gonna get him nowhere and shout
Speaker 4: out to le bron Shout out to Bronnie James, and
Speaker 4: you know, and I hope this right here gives us
Speaker 4: to understanding what we should be doing right.
Speaker 2: We should be We should be creating.
Speaker 4: Generations, setting up our own foundations. Give everybody else a chance.
Speaker 4: But I'm I'm gonna I'm not going to act like
Speaker 4: if my son or my family member is qualified to
Speaker 4: do a job just as qualified as somebody else that
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna give them that opportunity. And that's how
Speaker 4: we create generational wealth.
Speaker 1: If we don't own nothing well but talented.
Speaker 4: They do need to be talented, because the thing is,
Speaker 4: you can only get him somewhere talent. The rest of
Speaker 4: that gotta take him somewhere.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: I can get you to the to the interview, I
Speaker 4: can get you to try out, but your skill is gonna.
Speaker 2: Get you in the game.
Speaker 4: If Ronnie James don't perform, you know, they say, they
Speaker 4: talk about it now, they talking about what's his name? Giannis.
Speaker 4: Gianni's brother is on the team. He don't play at all,
Speaker 4: but he get paid a check and for five or
Speaker 4: six years, however long he been on that team, his
Speaker 4: brother got a check because he made sure that his
Speaker 4: brother to check in order for me to sign.
Speaker 2: You gonna sign my brother.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not against making sure your family members and
Speaker 3: other people, friends or whomever, or just someone you met,
Speaker 3: that they are taken care of. But I do think
Speaker 3: that the person should be qualified for the job, and
Speaker 3: or at least on a trajectory to become qualified. Because
Speaker 3: I do believe I don't think that people should be
Speaker 3: surpassed that have skills so that you can make a
Speaker 3: space for your lazy nephew or oh yeah, madic daughter
Speaker 3: that I don't I don't agree with that.
Speaker 1: They need to have a benefit.
Speaker 3: So, like you said, even if he's not playing, perhaps
Speaker 3: there's something that he's doing behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they I mean, I'm.
Speaker 3: Assuming that Whateen has people that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he hugs his brother up, he gets on. He
Speaker 4: has this energy that comes out whenever he's in a huddle.
Speaker 2: You see him.
Speaker 4: He's more energetic, and that provides something for the team.
Speaker 4: People need that. They want that, So Lebron.
Speaker 3: Have that on all teams, like people that don't play.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's certain people on the team that you don't like.
Speaker 4: They rally around inside the locker rooms. They're the voice
Speaker 4: in the locker rooms. He might be the best practice player.
Speaker 4: You know he out there filing hard. You know he
Speaker 4: gonna bring everything. So every team has someone that other
Speaker 4: people might not think it's good enough or but they
Speaker 4: provide something for the team.
Speaker 3: But I've been on teams before where children or family
Speaker 3: member or associates have been problematic, you know, messy and problematic,
Speaker 3: and then you and then you know if they're there
Speaker 3: because it's a part of like your contract or it's
Speaker 3: a part of the relationship that you have with the boss.
Speaker 3: That's problematic, and I never wanted that. In fact, i'm against,
Speaker 3: you know, as we just finished talking to these two
Speaker 3: sisters about hiring family members, I have against having.
Speaker 1: People who work for me, I mean people who are.
Speaker 3: In my family work for me, and or suggesting them
Speaker 3: for other jobs. It's not so much against, but very reluctant,
Speaker 3: because everybody that walks in the door with my name
Speaker 3: on them, I want my name to be held just
Speaker 3: the same way that I try to perform in jobs.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying that I've always done the great jobs.
Speaker 3: There's been some places I'm like, wow, I remember that
Speaker 3: I was going through man problems, or my kid didn't
Speaker 3: really have the right childcare, or babyfather died or this happened,
Speaker 3: or I was just outside, and I know I didn't
Speaker 3: really really really focus on that opportunity the way that
Speaker 3: I should have. We all have to be able to
Speaker 3: admit that. But I also know that whoever helps me
Speaker 3: get it, I become an extension of them. So I
Speaker 3: think we should not be asking people to hook us up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want the one to hook up.
Speaker 4: If you come to me and you got the you know,
Speaker 4: you have the right requirements, if you got the resume
Speaker 4: and it shows that you can do something, and I'm
Speaker 4: able to utilize a resource that I have or know
Speaker 4: somebody that can put you in a position that you
Speaker 4: can you can apply the skill set that you have,
Speaker 4: you know, to the fullest of your ability, and I
Speaker 4: know that you're going to maximize on that situation, then
Speaker 4: by all means, that's that's what we have.
Speaker 2: Related.
Speaker 4: They say all the time, it's not what you know,
Speaker 4: it's who you know. You know, that's a fact.
Speaker 1: That's just the one.
Speaker 4: Nobody else gonna help us. Man, And what that said
Speaker 4: brings us to the end of another beautiful episode. Shout
Speaker 4: out to Twyna and Tiffany from l E S. The
Speaker 4: work they're doing is amazing. Make sure you follow them, Mayor.
Speaker 4: We need to make sure that this is everywhere. We
Speaker 4: gotta make sure we get these people in. This is
Speaker 4: what it is. This is what I was talking about
Speaker 4: right here. Make sure that you hit us up. D
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Speaker 4: We appreciate you for continuing to make us the number
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Speaker 4: Tm I were doing our thing, dm I t m
Speaker 4: I And with that said, I'm not gonna always be right,
Speaker 4: Tamika D. Malory's not gonna always be wrong, but we
Speaker 4: will both always and I mean always, be a thing.
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Speaker 2: That's how we