Speaker 1: Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Reason Choice Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home everyone.
Speaker 1: I'm Angela Raie, a host of Native Lamppod, and it
Speaker 1: is Solo Pod Day. There is so much going on
Speaker 1: in the world, and we will get into so many
Speaker 1: of those topics on Thursday for our main show. Today,
Speaker 1: I have the opportunity, the privilege, and the pleasure to
Speaker 1: speak to someone who is a dear brother, dear friend
Speaker 1: to me. He is a civil and human rights attorney.
Speaker 1: He has long represented the survivors of the Tulsa Race massacre,
Speaker 1: also known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or
Speaker 1: Greenwood as many of you know as well. He is
Speaker 1: the founder and executive director of Justice for Greenwood. And
Speaker 1: today we're going to get into a discussion about reparations
Speaker 1: his upcoming book.
Speaker 2: That will be available for pre order very soon.
Speaker 1: And so let's bring de Mario Solomon Simmons to the stage.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Hey d.
Speaker 3: What's going on? Angela's good to see you as always.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good to see you virtually too.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: First, I want to hear about this new book that
Speaker 1: you are dropping because it is so timely, so important.
Speaker 1: We are living in a day and age where you know,
Speaker 1: fact free debates, alternative facts, erasing of history. So Redeem
Speaker 1: a Nation feels like a really appropriate title for a
Speaker 1: really challenging time.
Speaker 2: Talk to us a little bit about the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really excited about this, been working over over
Speaker 3: four years. Redeem a Nation book dot com. You can
Speaker 3: go there the book. As you stated, we're all feeling
Speaker 3: in Angela, We're all feeling that America's going to a
Speaker 3: place and particularly in our lifetime, has never been to.
Speaker 3: And one of the main arguments I'm making in my
Speaker 3: book is to redeem this country, you must have reparatory
Speaker 3: justice for black people. That's the only way you're going
Speaker 3: to ever have a country that it says it is
Speaker 3: on paper. If you don't redeem and have a repertory
Speaker 3: of justice for black people, who will not have And
Speaker 3: when I talk about redeem a nation, I am talking
Speaker 3: about getting us back to a place that we have
Speaker 3: never been before. We've never been redeemed. The only way
Speaker 3: it can actually occur if there is real repair, and
Speaker 3: then that repair will allow us to become the nation
Speaker 3: that we say on paper we want to be people
Speaker 3: talk about democracy and this and that there is no
Speaker 3: democracy without reparatory justice for black people. And what I'm
Speaker 3: excited about the book as I outline and explain the
Speaker 3: people get behind the scenes of my twenty five plus
Speaker 3: years of fighting for reparations both here for the Tulsa
Speaker 3: Race Masacre and in general, but also in my think
Speaker 3: Greenwood Principles, which you and I have talked about, where
Speaker 3: I really lay out a plan of action that any
Speaker 3: black community can utilize to create the type of Greenwoods
Speaker 3: we need. So a lot of people think when they
Speaker 3: think about Greenwood, they think about, like you said, black
Speaker 3: Wall Street, which is fine, But black Wall Street was
Speaker 3: just a part of Greenwood. The real story is the
Speaker 3: community of Greenwood, and that community was created by five
Speaker 3: particular principles. In the first was community love. We need
Speaker 3: that more than ever in today's world. The second was
Speaker 3: the freedom mind state. The third was ownership, and not
Speaker 3: just ownership of tangible things, for ownership of ourselves, ownership
Speaker 3: of our mentality, ownership of where we want to go
Speaker 3: in life. Numberfore we had education and web concentration, and
Speaker 3: number five with our real resilience. And these are things
Speaker 3: I'm talking about in the book because we're going to
Speaker 3: need all of those as we continue to go in
Speaker 3: this Magna two point ozero world.
Speaker 1: You know, it's timely because it's the holiday season. You know,
Speaker 1: Black folks in this country sometimes also celebrate Kwansas. So
Speaker 1: I like the fact that the think Greenwood principles are
Speaker 1: closely aligned with the principles of Kwansas. So hopefully folks
Speaker 1: can get the book. Where can they get a DN
Speaker 1: Is it available now for purchase?
Speaker 3: It's available now for pre order. Go to Redeem nationbook
Speaker 3: dot com. Redeem nation book dot com get your pre order.
Speaker 3: If you pre order now, and in this holiday season,
Speaker 3: my publisher is going to provide you expert died in
Speaker 3: a chapter about the book. So the book actually publishes Tuesday,
Speaker 3: May twelve, twenty twenty six, which is just a few
Speaker 3: weeks before the one hundred and fifth anniversary of the
Speaker 3: Tulsa Race Massacres. So yes, it's very very timely. And
Speaker 3: I'll tell you Angel you know, about writing a book.
Speaker 3: I was wanting this out a long time ago, but
Speaker 3: I'm really happy that it's coming out right now, right
Speaker 3: before the Anna Persi and the mid terms. I think
Speaker 3: it's gonna be something that's gonna really move our community forward.
Speaker 1: And I'm waiting on editor's notes right now, so you
Speaker 1: are ahead of me, my friend. As you know, I
Speaker 1: will just say to you that it's also very timely
Speaker 1: because we lost a heroin from the Tulsa Race massacre.
Speaker 1: With Mother Fletcher and all that she's done to make
Speaker 1: sure that she keeps or she kept the Tulsa Race
Speaker 1: massacre at the front of our minds and of our hearts,
Speaker 1: I want you just to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Mother Fletcher. For those who do not know her, I
Speaker 1: have the privilege of hearing her story. Can you please
Speaker 1: just share a little bit about Mother Fletcher Fletcher giving
Speaker 1: her recent passes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and thank you for that. It's been about two weeks,
Speaker 3: and honestly, the pain is still there. Mother Fletcher, Viola
Speaker 3: Fort Fletcher, we call her Mother Fletcher, was one hundred
Speaker 3: and eleven years old. She was the oldest living survivor
Speaker 3: of the Tulsa Race massacre. She was born in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 3: She was an extraordinary woman who really if you think
Speaker 3: about Angela, she lived the entire arc of black people
Speaker 3: in this country right born in a great community of
Speaker 3: greenwood and got to enjoy a little bit of that
Speaker 3: before she had to run for her life on a
Speaker 3: horse and buggy for her family where everything was destroyed.
Speaker 3: Therefore she didn't get to get her education. They were sharecroppers.
Speaker 3: Then she grows up as a jim crow. She's dealing
Speaker 3: with being a domestic worker for over seventy years, working
Speaker 3: for pennies, literally not getting the proper pension that she needed.
Speaker 3: And yet despite all of that heartache, she's still volunteered
Speaker 3: during World War Two to work and shipyard to San Diego, California,
Speaker 3: building navy ships. She still raised a family, she still
Speaker 3: became a grandmother and a great grandmother and an auntie.
Speaker 3: And then in her twilight years, when I met her,
Speaker 3: As you know, and I've been working on this for
Speaker 3: a long time, so I've known literally over a couple
Speaker 3: hundred survivors I've represented, but I didn't meet Mother Flesh
Speaker 3: until twenty twenty. When I met her, she was one
Speaker 3: hundred and six years old, living by herself, living on
Speaker 3: her own, and she could have easily said, look, let
Speaker 3: me just live out my life. I'm good, but she decided, no,
Speaker 3: I want to I want to get justice because every
Speaker 3: night I still see the bodies in the street. I
Speaker 3: still can fill the flames and see the flames. And
Speaker 3: this lady was relentless committed to the calls. Not for
Speaker 3: herself she would always say, you know, hey, I'm over
Speaker 3: one hundred, but for her family before the broader black community.
Speaker 3: She never missed the court date. We had several court days.
Speaker 3: She never missed. She flew to Washington, DC on three occasions.
Speaker 3: She met She testified in Congress on May nineteen, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. We met the Vice President, Kamala Harris. You
Speaker 3: helped that happen in Angela. Thanks again. She came back
Speaker 3: to d C and twenty twenty three to meet with
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice to push for investigation. She told
Speaker 3: me one time early on, I said, mother Fletcher, you know,
Speaker 3: what can we do for you something you always wanted
Speaker 3: to do? She said, you know, I always wanted to
Speaker 3: go to Africa, And she went to Africa. We were
Speaker 3: able to the community get her and get her to
Speaker 3: Africa with her little brother, Hughes van Ellis. She went
Speaker 3: over to Africa one hundred and seven years old, spent
Speaker 3: two and a half weeks. The lady was amazing. What
Speaker 3: on one hundred and eleventh birthday, which was last May tenth,
Speaker 3: we sang Happy Birthday to her and we were in
Speaker 3: this pack restaurant, one hundred people there. We seen the
Speaker 3: heavy birthday, the black version of course, and at the
Speaker 3: end we just started clapping. But she grabbed my shoulder,
Speaker 3: my arm. I said, you forgot to say it many
Speaker 3: more to say this lady was full of energy. I
Speaker 3: was with her. She died on Monday the twenty third.
Speaker 3: I was with her Friday night already before at the hospital,
Speaker 3: right next to a hospital bed, and she was engaged.
Speaker 3: She was talking, and she was someone that was still
Speaker 3: wanting to see justice toward dying Dae. So you know,
Speaker 3: that's our charger. If nothing else, we want to make
Speaker 3: sure that we continue to push forward because we got
Speaker 3: all the fletchers all over this country. Yes, we have
Speaker 3: all the fletchers in our families. We need to continue
Speaker 3: to fight for them. And that's what it means the
Speaker 3: redeem a nation. That's what it means to think greenwood.
Speaker 3: That's what it means to fight for paratory justice.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's so important in this work
Speaker 1: to just deepen into the humanity for a second. You
Speaker 1: said something that I never really considered. You've been working
Speaker 1: on restorative and reparative justice for the survivors and the
Speaker 1: descendants of Black Wall Street for as long as I
Speaker 1: can remember, and I've known you since law school. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about how many people you've lost in this
Speaker 1: fight and what that feels like to you knowing that, Yes,
Speaker 1: there's been a local solve, and we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a moment, but there's not been this federal recognition.
Speaker 1: You heard from the former president that he was going
Speaker 1: to do something about it that didn't happen. I want
Speaker 1: you to talk about, just for a moment, the humanity.
Speaker 1: Like I already know your rage. You know, you and
Speaker 1: I can go toe to toe at the rage level,
Speaker 1: but just like what that impact is like when you
Speaker 1: think about all the people you've come to knowing this work,
Speaker 1: they're gone, they didn't get to see justice before they passed.
Speaker 2: What does that feel like to you?
Speaker 3: Wow? Man? Powerful question? And you know, something I talk
Speaker 3: about in the book a lot is the human side
Speaker 3: of it, because you know, being out front, being the
Speaker 3: leader and all that, you always want to project and
Speaker 3: be strength and beyond beyond, but you're right, I mean
Speaker 3: so many people just come to mind outside with one
Speaker 3: of our mentors, Charles Overtry. You know, he wasn't a
Speaker 3: survivor or decendent, but he was someone who poured his
Speaker 3: last fifteen years of his professional life. He poured into
Speaker 3: this work, you know, and I poured into us so much,
Speaker 3: and you know he's gone. You think about people like
Speaker 3: Otis Clark, who was one hundred and nine when he
Speaker 3: died back in two thousand and seven, and the doctor
Speaker 3: Olivia Hooker who was over one hundred and four I
Speaker 3: think when she died, and the first African American female
Speaker 3: in the Coastguard. And just I traveled with these folks
Speaker 3: so much, I mean, Wes Young. It's to so many
Speaker 3: names and to know that they all died without justice.
Speaker 3: And as you know, Angela, when I grew up here
Speaker 3: in told So, I went to middle school on Greenwood Avenue,
Speaker 3: never heard about the mask, I didn't learn about the
Speaker 3: mass couch. I went to University of Clones playing football
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven, and so at that point it sparked
Speaker 3: something to me to say, Okay, we're going to make
Speaker 3: sure people never forget about this. But also for our survivors.
Speaker 3: They all thought very strongly that once the conspiracy of
Speaker 3: silence was broken, that now that the world would know
Speaker 3: what actually happened, understand that fifteen hundred and fifty homes
Speaker 3: was burnt down, that over a billion dollars in property damage,
Speaker 3: that eight thousand people were main homeless, that three thousand
Speaker 3: people disappeared, etc. They believe strongly, Angela that justice will come,
Speaker 3: and it didn't, and that really hurts me deeply because
Speaker 3: they deserve that. And it also says what does it
Speaker 3: say about our standing as black people in this country
Speaker 3: that you can have the worst ever race massacre that's
Speaker 3: on video, that has hundreds of pictures, that has hundreds
Speaker 3: of insurance claims, that no one dispute to happen, and
Speaker 3: yet the local state and the federal government said we're
Speaker 3: not going to do anything about it. What does that
Speaker 3: say about our standing as full citizens?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: The Equal Protection Clause, the fourteenth Amendment that's trying to
Speaker 3: be repealed, What does that say about us right now?
Speaker 3: And those things are it's difficult and hurtful on a
Speaker 3: personal level, but when I think about our people, we
Speaker 3: got such a long way to go, and that's why
Speaker 3: I say, preparatory justice is it's the barometer if America
Speaker 3: can actually be a democracy, can actually be what it
Speaker 3: says on paper.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing that comes to mind now is
Speaker 1: the number of folks who say, why would you continue
Speaker 1: in this fight?
Speaker 2: They're never going to do this. And it's not white
Speaker 2: people saying this.
Speaker 1: It's not Latino people saying this, it's not indigenous folks
Speaker 1: saying this. These are black folks who say, you know,
Speaker 1: we're wasting your time. There's no reason for us to be,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to get reparations. We need to move
Speaker 1: beyond it. It's time to go past this, right What
Speaker 1: do you say to people who say that ignorant? You
Speaker 1: know what, I'm not going to cuss because you don't.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be on my best behavior today. But
Speaker 1: I want to know what you say to people who
Speaker 1: really don't think that we have we should have a
Speaker 1: dog in this fight anymore, even though it is absolutely
Speaker 1: rightfully ours.
Speaker 3: I would say a couple of things. One, they don't
Speaker 3: know their own history and they don't respect their ancestors.
Speaker 3: I mean, our people from the day we got on
Speaker 3: this continent. Be it if we were indigenous folks like
Speaker 3: black and Dish, and as folks who were enslaved, or
Speaker 3: if folks coming from Africa with slave From day one,
Speaker 3: we've been fighting for our humanity, were fighting for our
Speaker 3: dignity and fighting for our just compensation. So if you're
Speaker 3: willing to say I don't care about what my ancestors
Speaker 3: fault for, I don't care about what's old to us,
Speaker 3: then you know I really don't know. We don't. We're
Speaker 3: not the same. We're not the same. Secondly, it is
Speaker 3: a very function again, are we equal underneath the law
Speaker 3: or not. If we're equal underneath the law, then we
Speaker 3: are old conversation for what happened to us, not just
Speaker 3: the physical labor, but what was taken from us, the
Speaker 3: narratives that were taking from us, the spiritual breakdown from us.
Speaker 3: I explained it like this, the every you know, people
Speaker 3: that love the NFL, Right, I'm a football guy, the
Speaker 3: NFL believe I.
Speaker 2: Have never guessed. With those two footballs sitting behind you, d.
Speaker 3: I talk about things. The NFL believes in reparations. Jerry
Speaker 3: Jones believes very strongly in reparations. If Jerry Jones, let
Speaker 3: me explain what I mean. In the NFL. If you
Speaker 3: are the best team, you pick last in the draft.
Speaker 3: The next year, if you're the worst team, you pick
Speaker 3: what pick person in the draft. It's reparations. So if
Speaker 3: Jerry Jones and these billionaire NFL owners can care about reparations,
Speaker 3: you don't want to care about reparations for your people,
Speaker 3: your community. That's actually old. And then, thirdly, reparations sometimes
Speaker 3: gets so esoteric. I think people don't realize it's just
Speaker 3: as simple as someone hitting your car from behind and
Speaker 3: damaging your car, breaking your leg, causing you to miss
Speaker 3: time for work. But obviously they got to pay to
Speaker 3: fix your car o Reusly they need to pay a fix,
Speaker 3: you get your leg fixed, oriusly need to pay for
Speaker 3: the time off for work, and the need to pay
Speaker 3: some pain and suffering. It's just that simple. So if
Speaker 3: you're saying you don't believe that we deserve reparations or
Speaker 3: we should fight reparations, you don't believe that black folks
Speaker 3: are full a citizens in the United States of America.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: I don't like the devil, but I'm gonna be his
Speaker 1: advocate for one second, because I do believe this is
Speaker 1: the devil speaking when they do this. What about the
Speaker 1: folks who are like, okay, but you're talking about if
Speaker 1: your car was hit and you were injured, but we're
Speaker 1: talking about your great great grandparent who was injured.
Speaker 2: Why do you deserve to receive what they.
Speaker 3: Didn't Because the injury is a continuing harm. And this
Speaker 3: is exactly what we talked about in on litigation for
Speaker 3: four years, a continuing harm. So again, if we've used
Speaker 3: the massacre as an example, the massacre, it's just the
Speaker 3: event that started the harm. Let me use another impetus, right,
Speaker 3: let me use another example. You remember back during the
Speaker 3: Environment administration, I think it was twenty eleven where we
Speaker 3: had that big explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the
Speaker 3: BP explosion, and all that oil was just shooting out
Speaker 3: underneath the war billions of millions of gallons of oil.
Speaker 3: So that's the impetus. That's like the massacre hadened, that's
Speaker 3: the injuring event. But that oil, even though they plugged
Speaker 3: that hole within you know, a couple of weeks, but
Speaker 3: that oil continued to teraminate, continue to kill wildlife, continue
Speaker 3: to contaminate the air, they can continue to contaminate the water,
Speaker 3: continue to cause people to miss and lose their livelihood.
Speaker 3: And it continued for years and years and years, and
Speaker 3: guess what, it's still continued. And it's the same thing
Speaker 3: with the master, it's the same thing with enslavement. It's
Speaker 3: the same thing with any of these issues ever renewed
Speaker 3: that destroy families, stop wealth, broke up communities. That harm
Speaker 3: is ongoing until you repair the harm. The harm is ongoing.
Speaker 3: And I think we don't have to really understand sometimes
Speaker 3: what that harm is, or we don't want to accept
Speaker 3: that we are still a harmed people. I know some
Speaker 3: people say stop being a victim. Well I was victimized. Yeah,
Speaker 3: my parents were victimized. My grandparents were victimizds. So it's
Speaker 3: not like we're gonna stop doing what we're doing. Look,
Speaker 3: we're still fighting every day, but you still owe us
Speaker 3: last thing. I would say, do you know, well two things. One,
Speaker 3: when the massurpation of proclamation came out at first they
Speaker 3: did in eighteen sixty two they made enslavement illegal and
Speaker 3: washed in DC and they paid reparations to the enslavers
Speaker 3: in Washington, right, But you know in England when they
Speaker 3: outlawed enslavement, they passed the bill I think was eighteen
Speaker 3: thirty three, eighteen thirty two. I talk about this in
Speaker 3: the book. They actually paid reparations to enslavers, and that
Speaker 3: payment lasted up to like twenty fifteen, until the last
Speaker 3: payments were paid out. Okay, I'm saying that again, from
Speaker 3: eight thousand to twenty fifteen, so they understand what it means.
Speaker 3: Look at Haiti. Haiti had to pay reparations for getting
Speaker 3: their own their own freedom from the eighteen hundreds all
Speaker 3: the way up to like nineteen forty. So I want
Speaker 3: what everybody else in the world. I want four justice.
Speaker 3: I want equal protection underneath the law.
Speaker 1: And recognition, like if you can apologize, certainly you can
Speaker 1: repair that.
Speaker 2: This country not ready for that? Oh man, what else
Speaker 2: did they say? I reject that?
Speaker 1: Actually in many Sorry sorry, no, no, no, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm mumbling. I'm saying, like David say, the country's not
Speaker 1: ready for it. But I reject that.
Speaker 3: Actually, Oh, this country's ready for US. Countries pay reparations
Speaker 3: to Japanese Americans, the country pay reparations to Native Americans.
Speaker 3: That was old. This country's pay reparations to the state,
Speaker 3: this country's pay reparations all around. It just becomes the
Speaker 3: black folks that is a problem. And I think more
Speaker 3: of black folks are glad you asked the question and
Speaker 3: we're addressing our own community. More of us would make
Speaker 3: uncompromised and stands that preparatory justice is due and make
Speaker 3: that one of our top issues. Is not saying we're
Speaker 3: not going to vote if you don't do this preparatory justice,
Speaker 3: but make it one of our top issues that we
Speaker 3: push and push and be uncompromising, that we're old like
Speaker 3: these other people groups across the world and in this country.
Speaker 1: So this year there was as a result of a
Speaker 1: historic election in Tulsa, you saw a sea change for
Speaker 1: the first time that went beyond recognition, beyond an apology,
Speaker 1: beyond a committee that is, you know, smoking mirrors.
Speaker 2: You saw some actual shifts happening.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about your work with
Speaker 1: the mayor of Tulsa and what happened as a result
Speaker 1: of his election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first African American
Speaker 3: mayor in the city of Tulsa history. We had been
Speaker 3: working for a long time, known him a long time
Speaker 3: as a state legislator, and campaign for him, pushed him
Speaker 3: to get elected. But I told him every step of
Speaker 3: the way, Hey, as soon as as soon as you
Speaker 3: get into the mayor's office, I'm gonna be at your doorstep.
Speaker 3: And I was. And we presented to him what was
Speaker 3: called Project Greenwood, which you could learn more about in
Speaker 3: the book, but also at Justice Foragreen with dot org
Speaker 3: Project Greenwood, which was our thirteen point plan for a
Speaker 3: comprehensive reparations. We worked on that with him for a
Speaker 3: number of months. He didn't accept everything we wanted, but
Speaker 3: he did accept about six of our proposals, including making
Speaker 3: Tulsa June first, Tulsa Race Mask of Reparation Commemorates day,
Speaker 3: which Angel you said something very interested in your acknowledgement.
Speaker 3: One thing I found out in this work is that
Speaker 3: as much as people want to be compensated, for sure,
Speaker 3: they also want to be acknowledged for what happened. And
Speaker 3: so to have in law that this day will be
Speaker 3: a citywide holiday to commemorate the masker, particularly in this
Speaker 3: time of a rasure of black history, is huge. He
Speaker 3: also put forward one hundred and five million dollar private
Speaker 3: trust that will provide scholarships to massacre descendants. It will
Speaker 3: provide a business grant, a grant to our surviving entities.
Speaker 3: We had twelve surviving entities of the massacre, so they
Speaker 3: would be eligible for these grants. They will also provide
Speaker 3: grants for business owners who are descendants. Also, twenty four
Speaker 3: million dollars in there is going to be provided for
Speaker 3: housing in the Greenwood community. And there's some other aspect.
Speaker 3: He released over forty five thousand documents that we have
Speaker 3: been suing the city for years to receive, and so
Speaker 3: you know, we made a lot of progress, and we
Speaker 3: really appreciate Mayor Nichols for his leadership and stepping out
Speaker 3: as we continue to push him to do more. We
Speaker 3: still want for those outstanding claims over two hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars worth of claims to be paid. We still want
Speaker 3: for those who suffered the harm that we know were
Speaker 3: math killed, like doctor A. C. Jackson. We still want
Speaker 3: conversation for those things, and we will do both things
Speaker 3: at the same time. We can. We can advocate while
Speaker 3: working with someone at the same time, and I encourage
Speaker 3: all of our listeners, all of your listeners, to remember
Speaker 3: that be steadfast, but it's okay to also work with
Speaker 3: someone and continue to push them.
Speaker 1: And that I think is so important we've gotten to
Speaker 1: the place.
Speaker 2: I don't know when this shift happened.
Speaker 1: I'm argue maybe two thousand and eight, when people started
Speaker 1: becoming fans of politicians rather than the folks who pay them,
Speaker 1: you know. I think of President Obama, who you know,
Speaker 1: was in the limelight, had a ton of fanfare. Folks
Speaker 1: were so excited, including me, about electing the first black president.
Speaker 1: But in that excitement, I think we lost our ability
Speaker 1: to truly hold our elected officials feet to the fire
Speaker 1: and require something from their service. And so to that point,
Speaker 1: there's another elected official from state of California, Governor Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: who has received a ton of fanfare because he has
Speaker 1: been one of Donald Trump's chief trolls.
Speaker 2: But he's also trolling.
Speaker 1: Us to Mario because he vetoed several bills that were
Speaker 1: part of a rep reparations package earlier this year. I
Speaker 1: talked about it on the podcast two days after the veto,
Speaker 1: and Yoka's was hot.
Speaker 2: They were so.
Speaker 1: Mad at me because they think that I should not
Speaker 1: criticize Donald Trump's chief troll. But if somebody is not
Speaker 1: doing right by black people, I don't care if they green, white,
Speaker 1: purple Democrat, Republican Liberty or Jill Stein Green Party, like
Speaker 1: I got equal heat for you. So I just I'm
Speaker 1: curious to know when you consider Gavin Newsom's veto of
Speaker 1: preferential you know, admission. They have legacy admissions, but that
Speaker 1: is still in effect housing like, there were so many
Speaker 1: programs that would have been beneficial and additive to black
Speaker 1: people who are the descendants of enslaved people in this country.
Speaker 2: He vetoed those very tactical clear.
Speaker 1: Programs, some of them didn't cost anything, like that preferential
Speaker 1: admission piece to California state colleges.
Speaker 2: And then you look at Gavin.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sorry, Wes Moore in the state of Maryland,
Speaker 1: Maryland's first black governor who veto to study. And so
Speaker 1: I want to know if you've contrasted between the two
Speaker 1: vetos and or a package of ve those and a
Speaker 1: veto over here, and whether or not there's something for
Speaker 1: us to learn in our approach and challenging those two
Speaker 1: governors who are also likely to be twenty twenty eight contenders.
Speaker 3: Well, first I'll start by saying you absolutely right that
Speaker 3: people don't understand that politicians are tools. They're not our friends.
Speaker 3: I talk about this essentially in the book that politics
Speaker 3: in general is about who gets what when we're and
Speaker 3: how how much. And so when you understand that and
Speaker 3: understand that politicians are not our friends, they are tools,
Speaker 3: they are delivery mechanisms. So we should be able to
Speaker 3: criticize them anytime we feel like they're not giving us
Speaker 3: the resources that we deserve. And so the fact that
Speaker 3: Gavin newso veto those bills, I mean I was very disappointed.
Speaker 3: Like you said, these bills didn't cost me, didn't cost anything.
Speaker 3: You talked about the preferential treatment, I mean preferential admission,
Speaker 3: also a bill to give preferential professional licenses people who
Speaker 3: are from enslaved background. These are things that should happen
Speaker 3: because the damage was done we already talked about as
Speaker 3: a continuing harm. And if you can document that you
Speaker 3: are from some family who has suffered this harm, you
Speaker 3: deserve to have preparatory justice. And so I think it's
Speaker 3: inexcusable that he vetoed those bills. It's very disappointed. The
Speaker 3: one bill he did go through is a six million
Speaker 3: dollar package to study who could be eligible for the reparations. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean we study who could be eligible, Well, what
Speaker 3: are they going to get and to be honest, that's
Speaker 3: something that we are still working with the mayor here
Speaker 3: in Tulsa to make sure that we understand who's eligible
Speaker 3: to receive and make sure the right people receive it.
Speaker 3: So I absolutely wish should continue to push Gaven Newson.
Speaker 3: I'm like everybody else, I like to see how he's
Speaker 3: you know, trolling the administration continue to do that.
Speaker 1: And Nicki Minaj, by the way, I'm just like the
Speaker 1: trolling is is one thing, but like showing us that
Speaker 1: you're with us is something completely different.
Speaker 3: You know, natural policy that's gonna move our community. That's
Speaker 3: right in a in a comprehensive way. That's what we're
Speaker 3: talking about here. We're talking about We're not talking about
Speaker 3: geting a few people a few jobs. We're not trying
Speaker 3: to put some black faces and high places. We're not
Speaker 3: talking about just the leader of us having opportune were
Speaker 3: trying to get something that's going to break up the
Speaker 3: entirety of our community. Because again we talked about Greenwood,
Speaker 3: it was about the entirety of the community. As to
Speaker 3: rest more, I think it was very interesting and I
Speaker 3: don't want to step on the toes of those some
Speaker 3: friends of mine who are working very hard in the
Speaker 3: state of Maryland, and how they feel about the veto.
Speaker 3: But what I thought was very interesting, and I don't
Speaker 3: think people picked up on it. Wes Moore said he
Speaker 3: veatoed the bill because we already know what to do,
Speaker 3: all right, That's what he said. So my point with
Speaker 3: the NB if I was in Maryland, I would say, Okay,
Speaker 3: since you said we already know what to do, I
Speaker 3: would provide him legislation, specific legislation and the veto that yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: you don't want to do that, you don't want to
Speaker 3: do the study. You said, we already have this information. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's the bills, just like just like in California, they
Speaker 3: had a list of bills the newsom veto give Gavin,
Speaker 3: give wes Moore a list of bills and see. Is
Speaker 3: it really true that he said I want to do
Speaker 3: the work. That's what he said. I'm gonna take a
Speaker 3: brother from his work. He said, I want to do
Speaker 3: the work. I want to do more study. So I
Speaker 3: would love to see. And we have huge majorities. I
Speaker 3: understand the Democratic majorities in Maryland, and I don't know
Speaker 3: if they're in session as soon as they get in session.
Speaker 3: I would bring those reparations bills one by one and
Speaker 3: send them to Wes Moore and say, brother, we heard
Speaker 3: you say you didn't want to study. Here's the work,
Speaker 3: signed the bill, and then let's have a conversation after that.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is so important again because
Speaker 1: to your point, systemic, historic, and ongoing harm has been
Speaker 1: our story in this country. And it has not just
Speaker 1: been at the federal level. It has not just been
Speaker 1: at the state level. It has also been at the
Speaker 1: local level. So I appreciate your work, dear brother, at
Speaker 1: every level of government, all of your advocacy.
Speaker 2: It's it just it means the world.
Speaker 1: And so I want you to let people know how
Speaker 1: they can support your work with justice for Greenwood and beyond.
Speaker 2: Especially in this holiday season.
Speaker 1: Y'all can't spend all your money at the Nike store,
Speaker 1: and y'all still supposed to be out of target, so
Speaker 1: hopefully you got some money for just.
Speaker 3: Say that target. We've been out of it been hurting Meal,
Speaker 3: but she's been still, she's been staying strong. Job said listen.
Speaker 3: I would say three things real quickly. If we're about
Speaker 3: about the wrap, support uh redeemer, nationbook dot com. Pick
Speaker 3: that up as a holiday gift. Go to Justicefrogreenwood dot org.
Speaker 3: You know, make a donation to the word, sign up
Speaker 3: for our newsletter, and thoroughly I'm asking everybody that's listening
Speaker 3: if we talked about mother Fletcher when we when she
Speaker 3: passed away, we you know, we lost so much. You
Speaker 3: have mother inflectors in your own family. I want you
Speaker 3: to right now make a plan for the holidays when
Speaker 3: you're gonna be with your elders, make a plan to
Speaker 3: get their or history. Make a plan to sit down
Speaker 3: with them, turn on the phone and record them. And
Speaker 3: these are the five questions, and you can go. You
Speaker 3: can go to j Justice agree with We do genealogy.
Speaker 3: We can support We have seminars on there. These are
Speaker 3: the five questions. Though who are we? You know? What
Speaker 3: is our what is our names? Sometimes our names have changed,
Speaker 3: it's spelled a different way. We don't understand all our
Speaker 3: family lines. We don't know where we migrated from. So
Speaker 3: number one, who are we? Number two? Where did we?
Speaker 3: Where all have we lived? And why? Find out when
Speaker 3: you were living in Georgia or Mississippi or or Oklahoma?
Speaker 3: And then why did you move and work parts of
Speaker 3: the family win. Number three, what did we build and
Speaker 3: what have we lost? You know, you never know that
Speaker 3: business owner, that church that I mean, I found out
Speaker 3: my family, my father's family that I didn't know very
Speaker 3: well until I got grown built. We built churches in
Speaker 3: the nineteen teen that still stand, that still has the
Speaker 3: name on it, Jake Simmons, the Simmons Chapel. Right, So
Speaker 3: find out and then find out number four, what have
Speaker 3: we survived as a family? You know, is it a hurricane,
Speaker 3: is it a tornado? Was a family member lynch? We
Speaker 3: somebody laid off? Will we homeless at one point? Get
Speaker 3: your history and number five from your elders. Find out
Speaker 3: what do they want the future generations of your family
Speaker 3: to know? What values are important to them, what lessons
Speaker 3: are important to them? What unfinished work do they want
Speaker 3: to make sure that the great nieces and the great
Speaker 3: grandsons continue. So if you don't do anything else from
Speaker 3: this conversation today, I just encourage you to capture your
Speaker 3: own history and keep that for your own family, because
Speaker 3: our history and our families are the most important thing,
Speaker 3: and it's the only thing that we have that we
Speaker 3: can control, and it's what has sustained us over five
Speaker 3: hundred years here in the United States or what is
Speaker 3: now known in the United States.
Speaker 1: For absolutely Attorney de Mario Solomon Simmons, my brother and friend,
Speaker 1: reparations advocate, true teller and now author, So make sure.
Speaker 2: You go order that book. Mag deem a nation.
Speaker 1: The happy holidays to you, my dear sister Mia, and
Speaker 1: happy Kwanza. Shout out to those Kwanza principles to think green.
Speaker 2: Will y'all get into it. Welcome home y'all.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
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