Speaker 1: Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Reason Choice Media. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home. Everyone,
Speaker 1: it has been a little while I missed you. It's
Speaker 1: been a lot going on. I have been working diligently
Speaker 1: with some amazing, amazing partners on the local, state and
Speaker 1: national level on our State of the People Power Tour,
Speaker 1: and that has made it so my travel days of
Speaker 1: interview interfere with this podcast is solo Pod, and I
Speaker 1: just really appea, I appreciate your patience. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about something that I've learned a lot more about from
Speaker 1: being on the ground and from working with some amazing people.
Speaker 1: One of them is Pastor Mike McBride, who has become
Speaker 1: a fast brother to me. He runs an organization called
Speaker 1: Live Free USA. He's the executive director, partnering with folks
Speaker 1: all over the country on community violence intervention programs, and
Speaker 1: just the other day we were in Detroit, Michigan, at
Speaker 1: a juvenile detention center facility where we got to speak
Speaker 1: to some young folks who have been impacted by programs
Speaker 1: just like Pastor Mike's, and I know that they could
Speaker 1: certainly benefit from access to resources like the ones that
Speaker 1: Pastor Mike and Liftfree provide every single day. So I
Speaker 1: am doing this elongated intro because I am waiting to
Speaker 1: see his face and I'm wondering if there's a technical
Speaker 1: issue there. He is, Hey, Pastor Mike, how are you brother?
Speaker 2: You know? Glad to be talking to the Northwest wonder?
Speaker 1: Oh? You guys, just know that I thought that I
Speaker 1: was bad at geography. I really did, and then I
Speaker 1: met Pastor Mike. For some reason, he doesn't believe that
Speaker 1: I get to throw my doves up and I don't
Speaker 1: underd why. And my gums have to be up north.
Speaker 2: You gotta put it, you gotta put it.
Speaker 1: I don't know either way. I'm not a y n
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna wrap the Northwest Coast or the Pacific,
Speaker 1: this West Coast all day, baby. And since he's deal
Speaker 1: in Hope, I know he's not gonna troll me with that.
Speaker 2: Today it's to talk to the West Coast wonder w
Speaker 2: c W.
Speaker 1: I'll take it. But we have gotten to do so
Speaker 1: much more together, and I just feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: every time I see my good brother, I'm like he
Speaker 1: been all my life, But he's been busy doing the
Speaker 1: work of the Lord in the streets beyond the four
Speaker 1: walls of the sanctuary, and it is it is really,
Speaker 1: really a pleasure to have gotten the journey with you
Speaker 1: thus far. I can I can't wait to see what
Speaker 1: else God has in store. But first we're gonna fight
Speaker 1: for these programs. So this is what I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about. I saw, as the Bible would say,
Speaker 1: your counting is drop.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: I think we were in were we in New Orleans?
Speaker 1: When did you first learn? Okay, so we learned about
Speaker 1: these cuts in New Orleans, and Pastor Mike, I want
Speaker 1: you to help people understand community violence. Intervention work is
Speaker 1: the thing that saves our young people more than any
Speaker 1: law enforcement officer ever could nine point five I say
Speaker 1: nine point nine times out of ten. It is the
Speaker 1: work that puts, you know, the Ray Lewis's and the
Speaker 1: skills and the tefts in front of whatever was going
Speaker 1: to come between one young person and another. It is
Speaker 1: conflict resolution. It is telling people your own heroing stories.
Speaker 1: It is helping people to understand the importance that life does,
Speaker 1: in fact matter. We have young people nowadays, even in
Speaker 1: my own community of Seattle, Sewer Park is we have
Speaker 1: the loop. Some kids just got shot at Sewer Park
Speaker 1: the other day, so this work is so important. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about the work that you all have been
Speaker 1: getting funded through the federal government and how you plan
Speaker 1: to pivot now.
Speaker 2: Well, it's great to be with you, Angela, and thanks
Speaker 2: so much for the opportunity to hang out with you
Speaker 2: and the homies as part of your Native Land podcast Family.
Speaker 2: I'll just quickly say that the scripture says blessed are
Speaker 2: the peacemakers, where they shall be called the children of God.
Speaker 2: And often we think of peace as the absence of
Speaker 2: conflict or violence, but it is also has to be
Speaker 2: considered the presence of justice. Both of them have to
Speaker 2: be together. People want safety and they want justice. People
Speaker 2: don't want to be criminalized in their own communities as
Speaker 2: a price to pay to achieve some false sense of safety,
Speaker 2: which has largely been the experience of most black folks
Speaker 2: in this country. What has now become known as community
Speaker 2: violence intervention. In the past, it may have been known
Speaker 2: in Shorthand as ceasefire, as focused atturrens, as cure violence.
Speaker 2: It has now kind of largely been described as community
Speaker 2: violence intervention, and it is a menu if you will,
Speaker 2: a rising sector, a rising labor force and workforce of
Speaker 2: trained individuals who are skilled in public health interventions that
Speaker 2: interrupt lethal conflicts that are a result of interpersonal violence,
Speaker 2: largely with guns. And this has become now in our
Speaker 2: say third or fourth decade of or working and organizing,
Speaker 2: one of the best, if not the best evaluated public
Speaker 2: safety community safety set of interventions. And thankfully in the
Speaker 2: last four or five six years, they started to scale
Speaker 2: all across the country. It is our life's work when
Speaker 2: I say, I'm talking about all of the peacemakers, all
Speaker 2: the violence interrupters, all of the community based organization senior executives,
Speaker 2: folks who've been doing this work for decades large without
Speaker 2: renunration or public appreciation. Community vised intervention is here to
Speaker 2: stay if we can organize to keep it so. And
Speaker 2: it's righteous work for sure.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this because I think so
Speaker 1: often on the policy making side, and I think you've
Speaker 1: heard me talk about this on the tour. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's something that happens where your advocacy could be fierce.
Speaker 1: You can be so intentional about you know, what you're
Speaker 1: doing every single day, but there's a disconnect that happens
Speaker 1: along the road of strategy between strategy and like the
Speaker 1: folks on the ground, And this tour has brought me
Speaker 1: a lot closer to that. I'm like, oh, I did
Speaker 1: have some gaps, I did have some blind spots. I
Speaker 1: know these programs need to be funded, but there's something
Speaker 1: I think that happens when a policy maker or a
Speaker 1: strategist or even like a bill author has to come
Speaker 1: face to face with some of the victims or the
Speaker 1: victim's family member. So can you talk about how you
Speaker 1: got into this work and why it's so important to
Speaker 1: you now? Like what keeps you rooted and grounded in
Speaker 1: this work?
Speaker 2: Pastor Mike two quick stories. I was a youth pastor
Speaker 2: in San Jose, California, in the ninety nine two thousand era.
Speaker 2: I got beat up by some cops while I was
Speaker 2: a youth pastor down there, physically sexually assaulted in the
Speaker 2: course of an arrest. A number of my young people
Speaker 2: said to me, you know, Pastor Mike, this happens to
Speaker 2: us all the time. I said, why you never said
Speaker 2: anything to me? They said, because we didn't expect the
Speaker 2: church to respond to this. And I heard God speak
Speaker 2: to me and say, what is it about the ministry
Speaker 2: you're creating where these children and their families will trust
Speaker 2: you with the salvation of their souls but not the
Speaker 2: safety of their bodies. These children were experiencing violence at
Speaker 2: the hands of police and in their own communities, and
Speaker 2: the church was not being responsive. I went to Douke,
Speaker 2: came home, started to do more community work, particularly around
Speaker 2: this I was introduced to this work by you, Jean Rivers,
Speaker 2: Reverend Jeff Brown, Tenny Gross, folks who came out of
Speaker 2: the Boston experience of this work and began to do
Speaker 2: some of this work here in Berkeley, Oakland, and had
Speaker 2: to bury a teenager. Over five hundred young people attended
Speaker 2: the funeral. I asked, how many if you've been to
Speaker 2: more than one funeral? All of the young people raise
Speaker 2: their hands. These are teenagers. Five funerals. All the young
Speaker 2: people still had their hands up. I got as high
Speaker 2: as ten, asking how many have been to ten funerals?
Speaker 2: Half of their children had their hands lifted while they
Speaker 2: were weeping, and I was reminded that whatever work I'm
Speaker 2: doing is not adequate. If the young people in my
Speaker 2: community are teenagers and they've been to more than ten funerals.
Speaker 2: Whatever I'm doing, whether it's preaching, whether it's volunteering in
Speaker 2: the schools, whether it's getting people jobs, is not adequate
Speaker 2: because our children are not safe. Either they're dying or
Speaker 2: they're dealing with perpetual grief. And I found myself being
Speaker 2: challenged to not only be a proclaimer of peace, but
Speaker 2: also as much as I can, a maker, a creator
Speaker 2: of peace. And these strategies were the best way to
Speaker 2: do so in a structured manner. And it forced us
Speaker 2: to organize people like the Larry's and the others all
Speaker 2: across the country, in my own neighborhood, to be face
Speaker 2: to face with elected officials, law enforcement leaders, preachers, and
Speaker 2: respectable black people in every city across the country where
Speaker 2: we work, and declare that our story of violence and
Speaker 2: trauma is not something that can be solved by arrest alone,
Speaker 2: that we need a radical intervention that is public health driven,
Speaker 2: that is people centered, and more importantly, that is results based.
Speaker 2: And this is the strategy. There is no strategy that
Speaker 2: comes close to these menu of strategies. We have found
Speaker 2: a lot of elected officials and a lot of law
Speaker 2: enforcement leaders at the time were not familiar with these strategies,
Speaker 2: and we had to do organizing filling community centers, churches,
Speaker 2: mayor's offices, and congressional representatives offices. We had to build
Speaker 2: organizing power to push our leaders to champion resource scale
Speaker 2: these strategies, and that work is still ongoing quite frankly,
Speaker 2: but we're in a good place historically. Now we just
Speaker 2: got to keep it cooking.
Speaker 1: So CBI funding was cut by this administration one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars in federal grants right through the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice. What was the grant program program I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the.
Speaker 2: Grand well, it was all in the Office of Justice
Speaker 2: programs and a lot of those were the Burns, the
Speaker 2: Burns Justice grants, you know, things that we were able
Speaker 2: to through lots of organizing advocacy our whole field get
Speaker 2: resources that were put into the Safer Communities Act, which
Speaker 2: the Biden administration champion and signed. That those dollars were
Speaker 2: cut and it's been devastating, and it's it's important to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that that was just our little part of the cuts,
Speaker 2: but all the other kind of resources in the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice that deal with victims services and juvenile justice,
Speaker 2: and child protection and substance abuse. That all comes to
Speaker 2: evaluation of almost eight hundred and twenty million dollars were cut,
Speaker 2: and it's devastating. It's devastating to all those who care
Speaker 2: about safety and justice.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to bring in Wesley Moore, who runs
Speaker 1: an organization called Our Brothers Keepers and High West.
Speaker 3: How are you pretty good by yourself?
Speaker 1: Very good? Thank you. You look like you're ready for
Speaker 1: customer service. That's good. That's the field y'all are in.
Speaker 1: Let's go. So I want to I want to ask
Speaker 1: you what the impacts of these federal cuts have meant
Speaker 1: to your program? Because so often we talk about this,
Speaker 1: at least for me, let me own my stuff. I
Speaker 1: talk about this in numbers and data and the names
Speaker 1: of the programs, but we don't necessarily see the direct impact.
Speaker 1: What did these cuts mean to your programs like yours,
Speaker 1: Our Brothers Keepers?
Speaker 3: It affected our program tremendously, from US housing over fifty
Speaker 3: to sixty homeless use. I was a victim of homeless
Speaker 3: use that got me into drugs and violence, and so
Speaker 3: I know that the direction that it can take you,
Speaker 3: and also it affects us by every summer that we
Speaker 3: are if ages fourteen to seventeen years old jobs opportunity
Speaker 3: and teach them some type of job work skill that
Speaker 3: they can grab on and still grabbing a gun, grabbing drugs,
Speaker 3: stay in survival mode. So this year we're not able
Speaker 3: to give out that type of service. We just paying
Speaker 3: on fifteen dollars an hour to keep them away from
Speaker 3: the street. We all know that if these kids came
Speaker 3: get into a program to give them a better outcome
Speaker 3: in life, they gonna tend to go to the left
Speaker 3: side to where somebody else can put something in their
Speaker 3: hands to help feed their family, help take care of bills.
Speaker 3: We noticed last year a lot of our students have
Speaker 3: not committed a crime in eighteen months. They had the
Speaker 3: group down here called Kia Boys on christ shores around
Speaker 3: the whole United States, but we had seven in our
Speaker 3: program have not stole a car in eighteen months because
Speaker 3: we gave them an outlook in life to point their
Speaker 3: directions towards something that can help make them a productive
Speaker 3: person into life.
Speaker 1: How did you get into involved in this work was
Speaker 1: what was your story attached to this.
Speaker 3: I've been homeless all my life started at the age
Speaker 3: of twelve thirteen years old. My mom was on drugs,
Speaker 3: my father was in and out my life. And I'm
Speaker 3: the oldest of my brothers and sister forty nine years old.
Speaker 3: So I was forced to be a father at thirteen
Speaker 3: years old, taking care of my brothers and sisters and stuff.
Speaker 3: And I tended to the streets and stuff to be
Speaker 3: able to keep our lives on. Give some food onto
Speaker 3: my brothers and sisters and stuff, and my young My
Speaker 3: other brother underneath me, who helped me, also started this program.
Speaker 3: He's assistant director, Mark Moore. We hit the streets and
Speaker 3: next thing you know, I was able to take care
Speaker 3: of my family. But I also was hurting my family
Speaker 3: because at age eighteen years old, I was sentenced to
Speaker 3: twenty years. I was sentenced to twenty years and then
Speaker 3: I came back home when I was thirty three years old,
Speaker 3: did fifteen years and stuff. So when I got out,
Speaker 3: I vowed to come back to my community to give
Speaker 3: them an opportunity to don't go down the road I
Speaker 3: went to, and I'm doing that. Of course, I learned
Speaker 3: how to start remodeling homes, doing electric plummies and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. And me and my brother had bought this
Speaker 3: property and we was rehaving it. Our whole goal was
Speaker 3: to rehab it and put it back on to the
Speaker 3: market and sell it. But we know we had a
Speaker 3: lot of at risk use. And I don't like to
Speaker 3: call him at risk us. I like to say we
Speaker 3: don't want this at risk and not loving them and
Speaker 3: showing them the right direction. But we noticed they was
Speaker 3: homeless and stuff, so we start teaching them the type
Speaker 3: of trade and start paying them. They were the age fourteen, fifteen,
Speaker 3: sixteen years old. So as that went, we end up
Speaker 3: start opening up the program which became Our Brother's Keeper,
Speaker 3: the Game of Outlook and life to take a different direction.
Speaker 3: And I noticed by looking at them saying kids, it
Speaker 3: was a reflection of myself, and I seen that they
Speaker 3: had no parents inside the house. One had a child
Speaker 3: when he was fourteen old, which I had my first
Speaker 3: son when I was fourteen years old. So I seen
Speaker 3: the reflection of where they head into. And now it's
Speaker 3: five years later and with this funding's being cut. I
Speaker 3: just noticed over the weekend we have our city was
Speaker 3: praising how the violence is down. Within this month we
Speaker 3: done had ten to twelve homicides. Over the weekend, we
Speaker 3: just had some more homicide last night we just had
Speaker 3: another homicide. But these is now the schools is getting out,
Speaker 3: so now we really about to see the risks of homicide, robberies,
Speaker 3: breaking in cars, still in cars, and stuff like that
Speaker 3: because they cutting so many of these programs funding, these
Speaker 3: kids don't have nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious to know. And we actually got a
Speaker 1: question in from Adrian Jordan. Pastor mac, I want to
Speaker 1: come to you on this first. You know, when this
Speaker 1: we first heard about this, my natural default is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do we fix this? And so we talked about
Speaker 1: city funding and state funding, but someone named Adrian Jordan
Speaker 1: asked if these can be privately funded, if you all
Speaker 1: could raise your own resources to be able to make
Speaker 1: an impact, to have the similar impact that you've been having,
Speaker 1: and then the type of impact I know you want
Speaker 1: to see, Pastor right, you talked about all those hands
Speaker 1: going up at a funeral. I know you wish that
Speaker 1: there were no hands that could go up and hopefully
Speaker 1: not even be at the funeral. So what types of
Speaker 1: resources can you raise privately? What do you need to
Speaker 1: see from the state and local government to be able
Speaker 1: to make up for this huge gap?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me let me just try to contextualize it,
Speaker 2: like it's super important for people to understand that in
Speaker 2: your city, all the data research has shown us that
Speaker 2: less than one percent some cities numbers are less than
Speaker 2: half of one percent of your whole city's population is
Speaker 2: driving or caught up in about sixty to seventy percent
Speaker 2: of the lethal gun violence conflicts. Which just is to say,
Speaker 2: if you have one hundred shootings in your city, it's
Speaker 2: not because of one hundred people shooting each other. It's
Speaker 2: likely a small number of individuals who are caught in
Speaker 2: lethal conflicts and they are repeat their volume of fits.
Speaker 2: Those individuals are the individuals the lion's share of these
Speaker 2: resources from the federal, state and local should be targeting
Speaker 2: when we're talking about reducing gun violence. These strategies CBI
Speaker 2: aren't necessarily attempting to reduce everything else. Although you will
Speaker 2: find that a number of folks who are engaged in robberies,
Speaker 2: who are engaged in other kind of violent offenses are
Speaker 2: also some of these individuals. Why is that important. It's
Speaker 2: important to say that because these are targeted resources that
Speaker 2: should impact targeted individuals or networks in our communities. And
Speaker 2: I often find that we think the problem is much
Speaker 2: bigger than it is, so our brains can't get wrapped
Speaker 2: around how vitally important this kind of investment is. Now,
Speaker 2: there's several things that we have to acknowledge. First of all,
Speaker 2: the federal dollars were so important to us because many
Speaker 2: local mayor city council members, county boards of of supervisors,
Speaker 2: or governors, their state legislatures would not fund these strategies
Speaker 2: with the tax base of the local or the state,
Speaker 2: and so we had to go to the federal to
Speaker 2: almost be an innovation like catalyst for these strategies. Now,
Speaker 2: we've always depended on philanthropy to kind of bridge some
Speaker 2: of our gaps. But just like a police department would
Speaker 2: never ask philanthropy to fund their police budgets, we're trying
Speaker 2: to get to a place in a moment where no
Speaker 2: philanthropy is being expected to fund public safety and community safety.
Speaker 2: This should be a bill a cost that the local
Speaker 2: municipality and the state legislatures should fund themselves. And so
Speaker 2: yes to your person's question, we got to organize locally
Speaker 2: now that we know for well over a decade, particularly
Speaker 2: with the federal dollars that were infused into this post COVID.
Speaker 2: Now we know these strategies, we now need local mayors
Speaker 2: and local city council members to take local dollars and
Speaker 2: fund the local ecosystems of these strategies. It would be
Speaker 2: great to continue to have federal funding, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: keep working to have federal funding, but every municipality is
Speaker 2: the richest institution in every city. More than philanthropy, more
Speaker 2: than a fortune five hundred company. Every local municipality can
Speaker 2: support these strategies. What we have to do is organize people,
Speaker 2: organize the stories, the ideas, and we have to push
Speaker 2: in their local municipal budgets to fund it. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: if you're a philanthropic partner, if you are an individually
Speaker 2: wealthy person, someone with high resources, and you're trying to
Speaker 2: put dollars on the ground now to make our summers
Speaker 2: less bloody and less lethal, then yes, you should find
Speaker 2: an organization like our good brother here on the call,
Speaker 2: or you can visit us and live for USA. We
Speaker 2: can plug you into all kinds of organizations locally that
Speaker 2: you can support in every city we're talking about all
Speaker 2: across the country. But resources are needed, and they're needed now.
Speaker 1: What is the number. And I'm going to come to
Speaker 1: you too, Wes, But like, what is the number? You're like,
Speaker 1: in order to get through this summer, this is what
Speaker 1: we need, whether it's from you know, well, let's wait
Speaker 1: on city and state, but let's say that, like if
Speaker 1: people could donate, Like, what's the number that you're like,
Speaker 1: this is what I know we need.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I mean I think you have to go
Speaker 2: city by city. If you imagine that half of five
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars were cut, you know, I think that
Speaker 2: that number is a real number.
Speaker 3: I mean, man, and.
Speaker 2: That's over forty fifty cities. We're talking about two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty organizations we're receiving those dollars. Let me just
Speaker 2: use Oakland as an example, because I know I have
Speaker 2: my hands wrapped around that number. We're serving well over
Speaker 2: two hundred individuals in Oakland who are at the highest
Speaker 2: risk of shooting or being shot, extending to them about
Speaker 2: forty to fifty thousand dollars worth of services for mental
Speaker 2: health support. They all have a case manager, an individual
Speaker 2: person who literally case manages them so they do not
Speaker 2: fall back into lethal conflicts. They get some resources on
Speaker 2: the side to help them with some job training and reintegration.
Speaker 2: And so in Oakland, if your times that by two hundred,
Speaker 2: that's about four to five six million dollars just for
Speaker 2: a quarter, right, And so it's just really important to
Speaker 2: appreciate that the tax base has to fund this individually.
Speaker 2: Wealthy people can help provide gaps and bridges for individual organizations.
Speaker 2: But if you really care about this work, and you
Speaker 2: care about anchoring this work, then we need everybody I'm
Speaker 2: talking about from the pastor to the CEO, to the teacher,
Speaker 2: to the nurse, to the parent, to the elected official
Speaker 2: to the police. Everybody has to get on one accord
Speaker 2: and and insistent. We will invest in peace making in
Speaker 2: our communities. We will fund peace We will make sure
Speaker 2: that the resources needed for brothers programs, but also case
Speaker 2: managers and intervention specialists and violence interruptors that work will
Speaker 2: not be shortened because of an administration change at the local,
Speaker 2: state and federal level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good, Wes. I want to ask you for
Speaker 1: your organization and the network of organizations that you're connected
Speaker 1: to in Columbus, Ohio, what do you see as the
Speaker 1: most immediate need. You talked about twelve homicides just over
Speaker 1: the weekend over a Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 3: I want to touch back what the pastor said, and
Speaker 3: I truly agree one hundred percent Withding. It is a
Speaker 3: city by city base, but I know, speaking for our organization,
Speaker 3: we've predominantly been getting three hundred thousand dollars throughout the
Speaker 3: summer and that's what intervention prevention, mental health, housing, wrap
Speaker 3: around service for the parents, jobs, training skills and everything.
Speaker 3: And it seemed like it might be a lot of money,
Speaker 3: but it goes so fast when you're putting kids through
Speaker 3: job training service and then they working for twelve weeks
Speaker 3: throughout the summer program making fifteen dollars an hour, so
Speaker 3: the money adds up pretty quick. And then the professionals
Speaker 3: that you got around them to keep them stable mentally
Speaker 3: more than anything, to be able to understand their job
Speaker 3: training skills that they're about to get ready to learn,
Speaker 3: or just to note that they're in the safe environment
Speaker 3: to where they don't got to wear by toting a
Speaker 3: gun or anything else and stuff, as well as the
Speaker 3: staff and let them know that they okay. But we
Speaker 3: are getting support now because we partner up with one
Speaker 3: of our church's City of Grace down here in Columbus
Speaker 3: seeing the good work that we've been doing. And Pastor
Speaker 3: Mike Young, a great man, he seeing what he was
Speaker 3: doing and he unders stay what the outcome would be
Speaker 3: by us not being evolved around the summertime with these youths.
Speaker 3: You can have a program, but if you if you
Speaker 3: don't have the staff to understand what they are about
Speaker 3: to receive, it's just gonna be a program. But if
Speaker 3: you have a staff to understand what they're about to receive,
Speaker 3: and they see this every day and they living in this,
Speaker 3: and they know the aunties, the grandma's and stuff that
Speaker 3: to prevent, and if we start preventing, we won't have
Speaker 3: to be doing an intervention. So right then, doing all
Speaker 3: these cuts, now we gotta do the intervention of what's
Speaker 3: about to get ready happen. You know it's already happening summertime,
Speaker 3: having any start already, and because of the budgets being cut,
Speaker 3: we know the homicide because we also work inside the schools,
Speaker 3: we know what's about to get ready happened. Within these
Speaker 3: next couple of weeks. My team is working at three schools,
Speaker 3: the most violent schools to be honest, with the gangs
Speaker 3: and stuff. So we got an opportunity to understand this
Speaker 3: is going to happen to this day when they had
Speaker 3: this event over the weekend. They just had the talk
Speaker 3: ovent but were working inside the school. We already reading
Speaker 3: the text message the social media. They meeting at this
Speaker 3: time to go do fight and stuff. They actually met
Speaker 3: up at that time. When I made phone calls, hey
Speaker 3: make sure you try to get this prevented. Though two
Speaker 3: people end up getting shot, it was already on social media.
Speaker 3: What they're gonna do. So programs like myself and other
Speaker 3: programs around the city. Revenue it's gonna go up and down.
Speaker 3: But I know personally for our program, which is really low,
Speaker 3: that have sixty kids come in every day from nine
Speaker 3: to five o'clock, and have we got ten staffs on
Speaker 3: their LSI w's mental health specialists and our ns. It's
Speaker 3: really not no money, but you're saving a life and
Speaker 3: that's meaning more to us. It's some money, absolutely, Wes.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you coming on. We're gonna finish up
Speaker 1: with pastor Mike, but I thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being here today, and I'm definitely sending prayers, love and
Speaker 1: urging people to support the work you're doing. In Columbus.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2: Strong my friend you too as well.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: So Pastor Mike. There are a couple of questions that
Speaker 1: came in. One was about the church, and I thought
Speaker 1: this was particularly important for you given the role that
Speaker 1: you play. The question for Marina Taylor is how much
Speaker 1: churches are investing in city programs like are they Are
Speaker 1: you seeing a shift? I know you talked about feeling
Speaker 1: particularly called are you seeing that same type of urgency
Speaker 1: and shift from clergy from the church folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. So the Live Free USA
Speaker 2: network is a largely faith based network of thousands of
Speaker 2: faith leaders who are working at the intersection of gun
Speaker 2: virus prevention, criminal justice reform, and civic engagement. We also
Speaker 2: have an extended network called the Black Church Freedom Fund,
Speaker 2: Black Church Pack Again, Pastors, faith leaders, people of faith
Speaker 2: who are working to leverage our political infrastructure and influence
Speaker 2: to scale up the support for these strategies. And so
Speaker 2: what I will say is that yes, you have. And
Speaker 2: this is our fifteenth year. Live for USA is our
Speaker 2: fifteenth year of training pastors and congregation members to either
Speaker 2: provide programs to influence policies or to use their voices
Speaker 2: through prophetic proclamations to raise up peacemaking congregations. Of course,
Speaker 2: we could always use more, but we have as many
Speaker 2: pastors and faith leaders working on this as the number
Speaker 2: of pastors and faith leaders supporting Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 2: at the height of SELC. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: a condemnation or something to celebrate, but it is worth
Speaker 2: saying that.
Speaker 1: I'm condemn it. Where are y'all at Church of today?
Speaker 2: Church could go to live FORUSA dot org and just
Speaker 2: sign up your church, right Bishop, Yeah, yeah, And we
Speaker 2: worked with Kojikup in our earliest years. All the all
Speaker 2: the pentalcost nominations is cooking with us on this now.
Speaker 2: It's important to say a couple of things though. A
Speaker 2: lot of our pastors youth pastors, but whether they be
Speaker 2: our brothers or sisters, et cetera, their role is not
Speaker 2: necessarily to be on the front lines, because in every
Speaker 2: city there are already frontline workers, all right, So some
Speaker 2: of this work is the work of individuals like our
Speaker 2: dear brother from Columbus who was just on the church
Speaker 2: should not be replicating any new programs we ought to
Speaker 2: be supplementing through advocacy and organizing. A pastor would do more,
Speaker 2: helped to organize his congregation and the surrounding neighborhoods and
Speaker 2: show up at a city council meeting, a county board
Speaker 2: of supervisors meeting, or the state legislature and demand that
Speaker 2: the local and state tax base be leveraged and invested
Speaker 2: in these strategies. I would have say, we got to
Speaker 2: bring organizing back because a lot of our work has
Speaker 2: walked away from organizing and power building and moved into
Speaker 2: a lot of services. And while services are important, the
Speaker 2: systems have to be restructured. The powers have to be challenged.
Speaker 2: And that's what I would put the challenge out to
Speaker 2: every pastor and faith leader. Let's organize our congregations to
Speaker 2: be peacemakers through our voices, through the programmatic supports of
Speaker 2: these CBI efforts, and through the ways in which we
Speaker 2: challenge the systems.
Speaker 1: I want to know if you have a recent example
Speaker 1: of why this work matters. And I think I keep
Speaker 1: getting into this because again, I think my challenge point
Speaker 1: was like, for me, the data is enough, Right for me,
Speaker 1: the cuts are enough, But that's not true for everybody. Brother, right,
Speaker 1: we know there are some folks who need to know, Like,
Speaker 1: if I contribute my one hundred dollars that I have
Speaker 1: for this month to this entity, even if it's not
Speaker 1: the four to five million it takes quarterly, but if
Speaker 1: I can make a little bit of a difference, this
Speaker 1: is how I know this work is making a difference.
Speaker 2: No, that's a great question. So I'll my plug is
Speaker 2: going to be to let's support the organizing work that
Speaker 2: makes the power building in each city, leverage and get
Speaker 2: the local mayors and cities to release those dollars. So
Speaker 2: I'll use Oakland and Indianapolis as two great examples. We've
Speaker 2: been able, through the local funding of an organizers seventy
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars a year round about to unlock tens
Speaker 2: of millions tens of millions of dollars in both Oakland
Speaker 2: and Indianapolis, just two examples of many that literally fund
Speaker 2: dozens of organizations to do this work. And what does
Speaker 2: it require. It requires us to have a person on
Speaker 2: the ground who is able to connect both the individuals
Speaker 2: directly impacted by this work, help them develop their stories,
Speaker 2: help them to kind of get in touch with the
Speaker 2: healing they need, but also be prepared to show up publicly,
Speaker 2: to speak out to elected officials in public meetings, to
Speaker 2: get hundreds of individuals to show up at a city
Speaker 2: council meeting, to get a hundreds of individuals to show
Speaker 2: up in perhaps on a prayer vigil or a peace vigil,
Speaker 2: to get hundreds of individuals to support the programs that
Speaker 2: we've just heard from, like the one in Columbus. That
Speaker 2: kind of work is an investment of one hundred dollars
Speaker 2: a month. By seventy five folks could literally get us
Speaker 2: an organizer in each city, which then unlocks tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars in that city's municipal budget. Indianapolis has
Speaker 2: done an amazing work of getting that kind of stuff
Speaker 2: funded across multiple mayoral administrations. Oakland has done the same thing.
Speaker 2: Orlando has gone six seven eight months without a homicide
Speaker 2: in their city because of this kind of work. It's
Speaker 2: no accident that when the organizing and advocacy of this stuff,
Speaker 2: spite the federal and some local state dollars, infused resources
Speaker 2: into our city and we saw historic drop in the
Speaker 2: last three years. So I want to say, if we
Speaker 2: fund organizing, if we support advocacy, then that pushes the
Speaker 2: systems to reimagine the way they use their local tax dollars,
Speaker 2: and that in turn puts a battery pack in the
Speaker 2: local peacemaking organizations so they can wake up every day,
Speaker 2: just like law enforcement wakes up every day to do
Speaker 2: this the police fighting and crime fighting work. Now we
Speaker 2: have individuals, some of whom are directly impacted, some of
Speaker 2: whom who've been trained in conflict resolution behavioral cognitive therapy,
Speaker 2: Folks who are being coached at our CVII Leadership Academy
Speaker 2: at the University of Chicago that doctor Chico and doctor
Speaker 2: Marcus are leading, David Muhammad, de Vone Bogan, Erica Ford.
Speaker 2: I can just keep naming names of individual who are
Speaker 2: training folks every day to execute the strategies. We need
Speaker 2: the dollars at the local level to fund the strategies,
Speaker 2: and that happens through organizing and pushing people to do so.
Speaker 1: I love this and I love you. I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that you're doing this work. I want to say to
Speaker 1: y'all again from getting to know Pastor Mike just a
Speaker 1: little bit during this tour, his heart is for our people, y'all,
Speaker 1: Like in real, real ways, I've seen how these cuts
Speaker 1: have impacted him personally, and I'm probably gonna tell all
Speaker 1: your business. I'm sorry, but just like watching how it's
Speaker 1: impacted him, his spirit and the pain from this, I
Speaker 1: just really want us to surround him. He is a shepherd, right,
Speaker 1: He's got a congregation and the flock he leads, and
Speaker 1: he's leading this work too. But it takes a toll
Speaker 1: on you when your life's work and the thing that
Speaker 1: you know you feel called to do has been hit.
Speaker 1: It feels like, you know, a failure, even when you
Speaker 1: didn't facilitate set failure. You know there are a lot
Speaker 1: of young people whose lives are going to be lost
Speaker 1: because of this very selfish, sick cut. And so I
Speaker 1: want us selfishly to surround my brother. For the mayors,
Speaker 1: state elected officials, county elected officials, those of you who
Speaker 1: know you can help to impact this work.
Speaker 3: Do this.
Speaker 1: For those of you who have one hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: give every month towards this. He talked about if seventy
Speaker 1: five of us just give one hundred dollars a month,
Speaker 1: we help to put someone who's boots on the ground
Speaker 1: and helps to organize and convene and facilitate millions of
Speaker 1: dollars of impact in this work. We've got to do it, y'all,
Speaker 1: because one thing we're learning on this tour, we all
Speaker 1: we got so when they listen, So when the people
Speaker 1: forget about how to protect the lease of these, that's
Speaker 1: where the pastor mics of the world come in. And
Speaker 1: so I just want to publicly thank you for all
Speaker 1: you do above and beyond this, but certainly in this work,
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that you use something so traumatic, several traumas,
Speaker 1: to utilize it for good so that other young people
Speaker 1: don't have to have to have the same experience you had,
Speaker 1: or all of those young folks who raise their hands
Speaker 1: in that funeral. I am praying that you can continue
Speaker 1: to work to do the work to prevent funerals like
Speaker 1: these from going forward. And most of all, I pray
Speaker 1: that in this work that you take care of yourself
Speaker 1: and know that here at Native Lampid you are always
Speaker 1: welcome home. But we're going to help welcome some of
Speaker 1: these dollars. Y'all. We didn't put out the buckets. The
Speaker 1: buckets we have the offering. We need the love offering
Speaker 1: to be These young people got to survive. Make sure
Speaker 1: y'all follow Pastor Mike McBride on socials. Where can they
Speaker 1: find you?
Speaker 2: Pastor mic I am Pastor Mike Underscore. I'm Pastor Mike Underscore.
Speaker 2: I'm on let's see Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Haven't
Speaker 2: made it to the other ones yet. I'm on Blue
Speaker 2: Scott too. I think that's the new one.
Speaker 1: Everybody's own. So yeah, right now, yes, I gotta figure
Speaker 1: out way and are to account.
Speaker 2: Appreciate there are local people who you could literally connect
Speaker 2: with today. They're not hiding. If you need any help,
Speaker 2: can it connected with a local person. This is not
Speaker 2: a one man show. This is not a you know,
Speaker 2: a savior complex. There's hundreds of us working every day
Speaker 2: doing this and we love to have more supporters and
Speaker 2: more people just to ask us questions, learn about how
Speaker 2: violence shows up in your own city. Just like me
Speaker 2: and Angela were at the UH the Juvenile Hall with
Speaker 2: Jalen and a whole host Michael Eric Dyson last week.
Speaker 2: Everybody should be connected to these young people. What did
Speaker 2: they say, Angela? They all wanted two things. They wanted
Speaker 2: guidance and support. We asked them, what are the two
Speaker 2: things you want? They didn't say more money? They didn't
Speaker 2: say a house or car. These young people in juvenile
Speaker 2: Hall told us the two things they wanted was guidance
Speaker 2: and support. That is free, right, that's just availability. Let's
Speaker 2: show up for our young people. Let's save their lives.
Speaker 2: Let's make sure they can live free from violence and incarceration.
Speaker 2: And thanks again, Angel for having me.
Speaker 1: I love you, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, y'all.
Speaker 1: Make sure you support I know he said it's not
Speaker 1: a savior complex, but he is one of my greatest teachers.
Speaker 1: I hope y'all follow Pastor Mike and definitely let's live free.
Speaker 1: So I'm pledging my support. Y'all joined me. I'm about
Speaker 1: to spend all my money trying to help the people
Speaker 1: right now. But that's what we gotta do, all right,
Speaker 1: Love you, brother, Thank you, Welcome y'all. Native Lampard is
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