Speaker 1: I'm Tamika D.
Speaker 2: Mallory and the ship Boy my Son in general.
Speaker 1: We are your host of t M I.
Speaker 3: Tamika my Son's Information, Truth, motivation and inspiration.
Speaker 1: New Name, New Energy. What's up, my son, Lennon?
Speaker 2: What's up? Timika Mallory?
Speaker 1: That's me.
Speaker 2: That's who you be.
Speaker 4: You know to me, I'll be making him change that
Speaker 4: on like checks and you make sure that D is
Speaker 4: this because that's my name.
Speaker 2: You made sure that you ain't gonna miss the D.
Speaker 4: I'm dead to you. I'm just saying, I mean, are
Speaker 4: y'all serious about.
Speaker 2: It's the thing? People do it? Why?
Speaker 3: Because it's just it's a nature. You don't want to
Speaker 3: get caught saying.
Speaker 4: But what if you're a grown person that's gonna be
Speaker 4: fifty years old into you?
Speaker 3: Grown people is the ones who've been doing it. It's
Speaker 3: started with the grown people.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And Dame das.
Speaker 4: Odule styles to do it right because she's saying it.
Speaker 4: But like I was going to get ice cream, Paul,
Speaker 4: He's like, that is not what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Useful.
Speaker 2: That ain't it. I love you, but that ain't it.
Speaker 3: Speaking of ice cream, I ain't been eating no ice cream.
Speaker 3: You know, my workout like it's gonna be tough this summer.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, because I'm back. I'm tired
Speaker 3: of the dad bought. I had the dad buy for
Speaker 3: about two three years. I couldn't really see my six pack. Yeah,
Speaker 3: my six pack wasn't it wasn't right, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. I felt my stomach over my pants. It
Speaker 3: was like, nah, this ain't me. So you know, the
Speaker 3: last few months, been getting it right. I see my
Speaker 3: six pack again. It's tough. I'm down about ten pounds,
Speaker 3: almost eleven pounds. You know, Ramadant helped me get on
Speaker 3: that that road. You know what I'm saying, So that
Speaker 3: that exercise. Man, y'all be trying to cheat. Everybody want
Speaker 3: to cheat the ground to me, like I want to.
Speaker 3: Don't don't cheat the ground. You don't really cheat. First,
Speaker 3: you have been working out. I have to admit, and.
Speaker 4: I have curved a lot of my bad habits in
Speaker 4: terms of eating.
Speaker 1: I need to do better.
Speaker 4: I realized that sugar is my addiction, like I have really,
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't listen. I have traded in other
Speaker 4: addictions for sugar. And it's serious, Like I now am
Speaker 4: beginning to see that if I don't have sugar, or
Speaker 4: if if I don't have something sweet, I get agitated,
Speaker 4: and that is a problem. So now apple slices is
Speaker 4: my new thing, or you know, some type of fruit
Speaker 4: to try to help me. And then you know what
Speaker 4: I also eat, y'all know, because I keep them around
Speaker 4: all the time.
Speaker 1: Crab babies. Baby. I got to have me a crib baby.
Speaker 1: That's my that's my job. I was eating.
Speaker 4: Let me tell you, Let me tell y'all this story.
Speaker 4: So I used to keep a bag of double bubble gum.
Speaker 4: Double bubble, yes, the individual double bubble gums. First I
Speaker 4: used to have bazooka gum, but them joints to just
Speaker 4: be too stale, like they I don't maybe people don't
Speaker 4: eat eat them as much as they used to, so
Speaker 4: they just leave you. Just buy you a box of
Speaker 4: rocks and soil, you know, come on, can't do that.
Speaker 4: By the way, eating gum, I don't think it's healthy anyway,
Speaker 4: But eating gum.
Speaker 1: See eating gum, that's why this is how I chew gum.
Speaker 1: I eat them. So then I went to double bubble
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 4: Got somehow I lucked up and out of the CBS store.
Speaker 4: I found a bag of double bubble gums, but it
Speaker 4: also had the hard ones that you buy from because
Speaker 4: I'm one of those people, as you know, because y'all
Speaker 4: have seen me.
Speaker 1: We could be.
Speaker 4: One time we were in like the back roads of
Speaker 4: I don't know where the hell we were, and my
Speaker 4: ass was running all around trying to collect twenty five
Speaker 4: cent to get one of them gums out of all you know,
Speaker 4: that was something we wouldn't talk about here, but it
Speaker 4: was like a thing going on in the community, and
Speaker 4: they wanted to inform us, but they didn't want to
Speaker 4: talk out in public, so we and I'm running around
Speaker 4: instead of the meeting, I'm out here trying to get
Speaker 4: twenty five cent to get some bubblegum out of that
Speaker 4: dirty machine that never gets cleaned.
Speaker 1: And the inside I like bubblegum. So when I got
Speaker 1: the bag with the double Bubbles in it, it had
Speaker 1: the cry Babies was in there too.
Speaker 4: It was Crybabies and a few of the little other
Speaker 4: hard ones. So then I took the whole bag of
Speaker 4: double Bubbles and took it to the hand salon and
Speaker 4: say I can't have this no more. Ordered me some
Speaker 4: cry babies and now I'm just loving a bag of crimebait.
Speaker 1: I know, I gotta get I know this is a lot.
Speaker 2: I was told with my six pack and you went
Speaker 2: to crabbabies.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just saying sugar.
Speaker 2: Sugar is a problem.
Speaker 3: Listen, man, Health is wealth for real, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's it's and I'm just enjoying my health journey again.
Speaker 3: I'm back like inspired with my workout and just being healthy,
Speaker 3: eating healthy. Well I'm still fast and technically because I
Speaker 3: do intimate.
Speaker 1: And faster than anyway you lived like that, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know, and I just feel I feel, I feel myself
Speaker 2: being a lot more stronger.
Speaker 4: Y'all don't really eat like the girls eat. I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna lie like men. Do not eat like women. Because
Speaker 4: being on the road with y'all, Linda and I can
Speaker 4: put down.
Speaker 2: Some I don't even know how. Listen to me.
Speaker 3: I don't even know where Linda fit the food. She
Speaker 3: she gets a plate. See the thing about you is
Speaker 3: you pick off your pate. But I order me order
Speaker 3: four places, four main plates, entrees. She ordered steak, she
Speaker 3: ordered ribs, and then she orders shrimp in this and
Speaker 3: it be with mashed potatoes on here. Like vegetables on
Speaker 3: here did she goes two spikes, two bites to each
Speaker 3: of them, and then she just keep going around and she'll.
Speaker 2: Pack it up.
Speaker 1: So don't think people that I don't.
Speaker 3: Linda will ordered the whole entree with like to a
Speaker 3: double eat the surf and turf, what what do the.
Speaker 2: Fries and all the stuff? Finish that?
Speaker 3: And then start picking on to me get school because
Speaker 3: she knows she ain't gonna eat it. And I'd be like,
Speaker 3: how did she eat all that? I couldn't eat all that?
Speaker 4: We do eat, but we but we are better and
Speaker 4: this is so this behavior ended as of December of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, and now we're getting two meals, not
Speaker 4: four vegetables, not a lot of carbs at all. I
Speaker 4: have cut back carbs and it's killing me. I had
Speaker 4: carbs today. But they and they say you can still
Speaker 4: eat certain things, but you really do have to work out.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of people that's out here on the zimpee.
Speaker 2: The zimbi, and I'm with them.
Speaker 4: I don't zip harrold they on the ZIMPI I feel you,
Speaker 4: but you have to work out because you're looking a
Speaker 4: little weird.
Speaker 2: If you ain't still getting that work out of you,
Speaker 2: just on that zimpie you.
Speaker 4: Looking, you got that look that it's a look got
Speaker 4: to work out. So I mean, I literally have had
Speaker 4: a full lifestyle change, but I don't drink soda at all, juice,
Speaker 4: none of that stuff. So you know, it's a new thing,
Speaker 4: but I do. I can't tell the difference. I can
Speaker 4: tell the difference. So anyway, it is.
Speaker 2: What it is.
Speaker 1: My thought of the day.
Speaker 4: I saw Donald Trump Junior and he made a very
Speaker 4: very powerful statement. He said, the Republican Party that we
Speaker 4: once knew is no longer. He said, the last step
Speaker 4: is for MAGA to take over the rn C, which
Speaker 4: is the Republican National Convention where he's he's talking about
Speaker 4: going there and overthrowing the whole joint and them taking
Speaker 4: over right, And he said, once we accomplish that, it
Speaker 4: is going to be the MAGA Party. This man said
Speaker 4: this himself. So when people start going back and forth
Speaker 4: we arguing Republicans versus Democrats, we're not even really arguing
Speaker 4: Republicans versus Democrats anymore. We're arguing Republicans versus I mean,
Speaker 4: Democrats versus MAGA.
Speaker 1: That's really what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Independent even some Republicans, some moderate Republicans, because the way
Speaker 4: that Marjorie Taylor Green and the rest of those right
Speaker 4: wing Republicans it's his name, Mark Gatz, he's from she's
Speaker 4: from Georgia, and he's from Florida. The way in which
Speaker 4: they are they super maga. They're not even a little maga.
Speaker 4: The way that they are pulling, the way that they
Speaker 4: are pulling and shifting the Republican Party towards this extremist mindset.
Speaker 4: It is not the same Republican Party that you could
Speaker 4: play with and be like, oh, we could kind of
Speaker 4: possibly work with them. There's no working with them. They
Speaker 4: do not They vote against everything that has to do
Speaker 4: with us and a little bit of what we deserve.
Speaker 4: We can't even get everything that we need from the Democrats, right,
Speaker 4: we don't even have them in there one hundred percent
Speaker 4: advocating for like real substantive change. It's only a few
Speaker 4: people within the Democratic Party that's going to do that.
Speaker 4: These maga folks at every single angle, they are turning
Speaker 4: it down, They are pushing.
Speaker 1: Back against anything.
Speaker 4: Then in fact, they want to roll it all back,
Speaker 4: and unfortunately our people sit up there and support it. So,
Speaker 4: you know, some of our people. Let me be careful
Speaker 4: with absolutes. So my thought of the day is that
Speaker 4: I hope people understand that we're not sitting up here.
Speaker 4: I'm not because you have your own mindset around this.
Speaker 4: I am not arguing that it's the Democrats are better
Speaker 4: than the Republicans. I'm saying that I will never support MAGA.
Speaker 4: And when Donald Trump's own son says that the Republican
Speaker 4: Party is becoming that and that they intend to take
Speaker 4: over and make sure that MAGA is the order of
Speaker 4: the day, that bullshit make America great again, which ultimately
Speaker 4: means going back to a time when black people had
Speaker 4: even less rights than we have now. I can never
Speaker 4: align with that. And their party leader is his father,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. So no, I don't support them. What does
Speaker 4: that mean? Does that mean I'm puking on myself about
Speaker 4: having to continuously be involved with a party that I
Speaker 4: also does not feel like. I also don't feel that
Speaker 4: this party deserves my vote, my energy. Absolutely, absolutely. It
Speaker 4: makes me sick to my stomach. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: I realize that whatever comes out of not just this election,
Speaker 4: but every single election, you got Congressman Jamal Bowman and
Speaker 4: Corey Bush, Congresswoman Corey Bush, Angela Asselbrooks running for Senate
Speaker 4: in Maryland.
Speaker 1: You have Hill Harper running for office.
Speaker 4: I mean, you've got people that are under attack by
Speaker 4: MAGA and a PAK, which MAGA and APAK are aligned
Speaker 4: in many ways. Okay, this is some serious shit, and
Speaker 4: I know that my granddaughter's future is directly connected to
Speaker 4: the decisions that we made, so we could talk all
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 1: Don't care, don't matter. I'm not I get I hear you,
Speaker 1: I feel you.
Speaker 4: But I'm just telling you that these people have a
Speaker 4: plan and a design and a strategy that includes the courts,
Speaker 4: whether they be federal courts, state courts. They try they
Speaker 4: are attempting to take back everything that anybody you respect for.
Speaker 2: For that's a fact.
Speaker 3: I can't even that's not even something that's even worth
Speaker 3: I mean, it's even arguable. Nobody can't argue that. The
Speaker 3: only thing what they try to say is well, we
Speaker 3: don't need that. We don't need Brown Personal or the
Speaker 3: Boyd Edge Game. We don't need we don't need Roe
Speaker 3: versus Weight, we don't need de Ei Like it's just stupid. Look,
Speaker 3: what do you mean the reason why we got it?
Speaker 3: Is because we needed it, have to fucking the people
Speaker 3: that you do. You celebrate our imposition that have been
Speaker 3: able to change the future, I mean change and make
Speaker 3: change and create a better future for us because they
Speaker 3: were forced to put them in. They didn't never want
Speaker 3: to put us in a position of power or anything like,
Speaker 3: they were forced to do it. So you just giving
Speaker 3: them the opportunity to say, you know what, We're just
Speaker 3: gonna make this company one hundred percent white again. We're
Speaker 3: gonna make sure these schools is one hundred percent white again.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe one if you got an Ivy League
Speaker 3: black kid that grew up that actually had access to wealth,
Speaker 3: then maybe we'll get them in. But we don't have
Speaker 3: to do none of that shit.
Speaker 1: You know what DEI is. D I is women.
Speaker 4: Having the opportunity to really make money, to take care
Speaker 4: of themselves and their families and create and and and
Speaker 4: have businesses. Right, that's de I. You know what else
Speaker 4: de I is, let's go back beyond that. Oh, actually
Speaker 4: it would be in the same time, voting rights was
Speaker 4: de I. That was us having the ability for the
Speaker 4: for the voting pool to be diverse, where white people
Speaker 4: did not control everything. They might have called it d
Speaker 4: I at the time, but that's what the language developed
Speaker 4: to be later on.
Speaker 1: D I is a lot of things.
Speaker 4: D I is even our ability to get on certain
Speaker 4: college campuses, to get to get the resources that our
Speaker 4: schools deserved.
Speaker 1: I is so much bigger than this.
Speaker 4: Now, this this thing that people keep talking about, it
Speaker 4: means that you aren't qualified. Like what like, we're we're
Speaker 4: more qualified. And I'm gonna keep saying this. We're more qualified,
Speaker 4: you know, And I and and and and the sad
Speaker 4: part is and I and.
Speaker 1: I will leave it here. One of the things we
Speaker 1: talk about all the time.
Speaker 4: And I said this when I was addressing Daniel Cameron
Speaker 4: after he did not do justice by Brianna Taylor, her family,
Speaker 4: and the community of Louisville, Kentucky, and Kentucky overall and
Speaker 4: ultimately America by allowing those offices not to be prosecuted
Speaker 4: for murdering that young beautiful girl. Okay, I said this
Speaker 4: to him, You just like the ones who were a
Speaker 4: part of selling us into enslavement, even because you are ignorant,
Speaker 4: for real, willfully ignorant whatever they've offered you, you believe
Speaker 4: that somehow, if you align with you have the proximity
Speaker 4: to whatever they have, their wealth, their power, their whiteness.
Speaker 4: So you go get married to them and then try
Speaker 4: to work alongside them and throw your own family, your
Speaker 4: own people away, You are complicit. So I'm saying that
Speaker 4: while we sit here.
Speaker 1: And and and and and.
Speaker 4: Own the talking points of those who want to be
Speaker 4: our oppressors, we are in the process of selling ourselves
Speaker 4: right back into the same loop that we have fought
Speaker 4: so hard to get out of. So I just hope
Speaker 4: that black men who hear that know that love me
Speaker 4: for real, don't love me just in the bed, don't
Speaker 4: love me just you know.
Speaker 1: We cool and you you support me?
Speaker 4: And yeah, sis, No, our bodies, our rights, everything about us,
Speaker 4: everything that you claim you love is under attack. And
Speaker 4: you out here talking about we were not qualified enough
Speaker 4: to get the job.
Speaker 1: Brothers. Let's be for real.
Speaker 2: That's a word there.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what this is, but I feel
Speaker 3: a little bad to bring some music after that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, we we deserve the balance of a
Speaker 4: little musical Little music might lighten it up.
Speaker 3: What you got artist from Philadelphia og like, this is
Speaker 3: what I call real og Like somebody sent it to
Speaker 3: me and it just touched me. This brother is lyrically dope.
Speaker 3: His message is really trying to wake up the youth.
Speaker 3: Reminds me of pretty much my message. His name is
Speaker 3: Saint Basil. He's dope. He's a dope artist. And he
Speaker 3: has this song that he released the video for where
Speaker 3: he took the Somehow some Way jay Z and Beanie
Speaker 3: song that one of my favorite songs. He took the
Speaker 3: beat and he made it into his own, and it's
Speaker 3: just it's him schooling these young boys and just talking
Speaker 3: to them about the streets and the reality and just
Speaker 3: trying to inspire and motivate him.
Speaker 2: And it's lyrically crazy.
Speaker 1: Sot Basil, Saint Basil Basil. So it's somebody. It's like
Speaker 1: my speed. It's you love it, the old speed, you
Speaker 1: love it. You know who I like as an artist,
Speaker 1: Lola Brook.
Speaker 3: Lola shout out the way she come out. Lola is
Speaker 3: shout out to my main eighty, who is she signed to?
Speaker 3: Eighty is one of to main, of those best friends.
Speaker 3: And eighty got shot a while ago. He's been in
Speaker 3: the wheelchair, but he's always been like my heart. And
Speaker 3: he started his own company. He signed Lola and they've
Speaker 3: been doing anything, So shout out to eighty, Shout out
Speaker 3: to Lola, you know the first time, like I've always
Speaker 3: been a fan of HRS. When I first met her
Speaker 3: at Yankee Stadium when they did the concert, she gave
Speaker 3: me a.
Speaker 2: Big hugs, like, yo, all love it? What do you do?
Speaker 2: So her and her energy.
Speaker 4: She came out on the stage for the uh what
Speaker 4: was it? She's a cold concert? Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And scarlet scarlet. I love scarlet.
Speaker 4: I happened to see her not long ago, and I
Speaker 4: was she was with og Bar at Brooklyn chop House
Speaker 4: one night. And in Brooklyn Chophouse is a black man's
Speaker 4: restaurant that is in the middle of Times Square and
Speaker 4: it's several floors and it's very fabulous.
Speaker 1: And she don pooh, that's right.
Speaker 4: And she was at a table sitting down with og Barr,
Speaker 4: who's like the uncle to us all. And you know
Speaker 4: you could tell O g was you know, yes, you know,
Speaker 4: he was schooling U, telling them what it is. And
Speaker 4: I just walked over to him. I was like, you
Speaker 4: are beautiful. Don't letting anybody make you feel like you
Speaker 4: have to defend your beauty. You just beautiful. And she
Speaker 4: was so beautiful in person, just a beautiful spirit, so
Speaker 4: sweet and kind. But that Internet has you feeling like
Speaker 4: you gotta get on there and be like stop stop
Speaker 4: saying how I look, and stop saying you know, because
Speaker 4: she was going through that for a while.
Speaker 1: But it looks like the.
Speaker 4: Bar probably sat down and say, don't get there, explain
Speaker 4: yourself another get well, listen, don't fuck our kids, Okay,
Speaker 4: don't over our children.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: We're about to talk about education in New York State,
Speaker 4: which should be what we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 4: needs to be all over the nation and ultimately all
Speaker 4: over the world.
Speaker 3: Yes, a brother's doing something very revolutionary, so stay tuned.
Speaker 1: Let's bring him on.
Speaker 3: So today our guests is a friend of mine, another friend,
Speaker 3: you know, a brother that for the last couple of
Speaker 3: years that I've worked closely with, watched him do so
Speaker 3: many things, you know, within the educational system and just
Speaker 3: in the community period, like just watching him be very
Speaker 3: hands on and supporting everybody that's doing anything from hip
Speaker 3: hop artists to elected officials, and also inside education because
Speaker 3: that's where his background is. You know, my brother, Dennis
Speaker 3: Makizi is an experienced educator who's worked every level of
Speaker 3: education from daycare to college and most recently because people
Speaker 3: will say think that this all he's done, but most
Speaker 3: recently he is the founder of OSG, which is short
Speaker 3: for off school Grounds, you know, and it's a revolutionary organization.
Speaker 2: And I want to thank you and welcome you to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 5: My pleasure, family, my pleasure. Yes, yes, yes, I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: Obviously my brother might sign up known for what.
Speaker 5: And it's funny to me, I've been meeting I've been
Speaker 5: wanting to meet you, or to at least talk to
Speaker 5: you for so long because we we we have, you know,
Speaker 5: mutual friends like Jamility Davis.
Speaker 6: Of course, and you know this is truly.
Speaker 1: Davis is all my friend's friends exactly exactly.
Speaker 6: So it's honor to be here.
Speaker 1: Most certainly, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: So give us a background, let us know what it
Speaker 3: is you're doing. Because serial educated from daykid all the
Speaker 3: way to that's a life. So give us like a background.
Speaker 5: My entire family we're postal workers, right, So my grandfather,
Speaker 5: my mother, my father, my sister, my twin brother and
Speaker 5: I all worked at the post office at one time
Speaker 5: or another. And you know, just getting up every night
Speaker 5: going to work. Man, it just you know, to make
Speaker 5: a dollar. It just wasn't fulfilling enough for me. And
Speaker 5: then one night, you know, I just say, you know what,
Speaker 5: this is probably this is probably not the move I'm
Speaker 5: gonna make, and I'm going to make a career switch.
Speaker 5: So the next morning I got up looking the newspaper
Speaker 5: and I saw an opportunity to work at a school
Speaker 5: in Westchester, you know, because I grew up in Mount Vernon,
Speaker 5: and I said, you know what, let me, let me,
Speaker 5: let me try that. I left the post office making
Speaker 5: eighteen dollars an hour to make it seven dollars and
Speaker 5: thirty seven cent at the school because I believed in
Speaker 5: it so much, you know, I felt that that was
Speaker 5: my passion. That's what I what I was going to do.
Speaker 5: And so I remember when I made that jump, my
Speaker 5: mom bugged out on me. She was like, yo, you buggin,
Speaker 5: Like how you gonna do that? Because at that time
Speaker 5: I became a father. When I was seventeen years old,
Speaker 5: I had my first son, who's now thirty three. I
Speaker 5: had him my last year in high school.
Speaker 6: And so to be.
Speaker 5: Able to do that and then say you know what
Speaker 5: I'm want to make a career shift. You know, he
Speaker 5: probably been two or three years old. It was truly
Speaker 5: a leap of faith for me to do so, you know,
Speaker 5: so being able to say to myself, I wanted more.
Speaker 5: I wanted to do more than what my family were
Speaker 5: able to do. I look back now, almost thirty years later,
Speaker 5: and I feel like it was a dope move for
Speaker 5: myself because from May I went from the daycare to
Speaker 5: school aid to teacher, to assist in principal, the principal
Speaker 5: to executive director of an all male school in Brooklyn,
Speaker 5: and then most recently, for the past twelve years, I've
Speaker 5: been running my own consultant firm. Why I support school
Speaker 5: leaders across the nation, so you know, I mean I'm
Speaker 5: supporting principles from New York all the way to Compton
Speaker 5: and everywhere in between, and then also to for the
Speaker 5: past two years, I've.
Speaker 6: Been an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
Speaker 5: So really I've done it almost from creative all the
Speaker 5: way through through college at this point in terms of
Speaker 5: my career, so it is, it has been one heck
Speaker 5: of a journey. You know, I'm only fifty fifty years
Speaker 5: old and you know, but to say that I've run
Speaker 5: the gamut when it comes to education as an understatement,
Speaker 5: and I'm just really, you know, really blessed to have
Speaker 5: said that I can, I can speak about education in
Speaker 5: the most scholarly fashion, that I could also tell you
Speaker 5: what it means on a street level as well.
Speaker 4: It's funny that you say your mom was like, what
Speaker 4: are you doing? Because you know, black folks, it's like,
Speaker 4: you ain't gonna give up that good job.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, that good city job, stable job.
Speaker 4: So seven dollars in yes, yeah, that's that's taking a
Speaker 4: cut for sure. And it's funny that we just interviewed
Speaker 4: not long ago Congressman Jamal Bowman who was talking about
Speaker 4: how the federal minimum wage is still seven dollars is
Speaker 4: some change seven twenty fives or whatever, right, So we still.
Speaker 1: Have not it hasn't changed much.
Speaker 4: In fact, at that time it probably was five dollars
Speaker 4: or four dollars in change, and you were making a premium.
Speaker 6: And you know what to be I forgot to tell
Speaker 6: you it was part time.
Speaker 1: Oh lord, oh my, So I was.
Speaker 5: At that time going to I was working at that
Speaker 5: school in the morning for seven dollars and thirty seven
Speaker 5: cent and then I would take the train down to
Speaker 5: Halem and work at Harbor morning Side daycare for I
Speaker 5: think another five dollars and something. So I literally working
Speaker 5: two jobs in the profession that I loved, for basically
Speaker 5: a total of thirteen dollars, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So it was I would basically work in the morning
Speaker 5: to basically pay because at that time it wasn't driving
Speaker 5: to pay the commute to get down to Harlem to
Speaker 5: work at the daycare, so I forgot to. I left
Speaker 5: that part of it out because it wasn't a full time,
Speaker 5: full time job.
Speaker 3: So when did you realize that you had a love
Speaker 3: for education like women?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: It was funny my son, I always felt like I
Speaker 5: had a passion for people, right, And I remember at
Speaker 5: that moment my brother and I, my brother and I
Speaker 5: we went to Hopstu University. We went to Hopstra for
Speaker 5: a semester. Right, But because at that time I had
Speaker 5: my son, you know, going to Hopshire playing football and
Speaker 5: stuff like that, I just felt awkward about leaving my
Speaker 5: son to go to school, to go away to college
Speaker 5: because we stayed on campus. So then I came back,
Speaker 5: I said, you know what, the same for me to
Speaker 5: be away. So I came back to Mount Vernon. And
Speaker 5: in Mount Vernon they had just opened an extension site
Speaker 5: for Mercy College. Was in the basement of an elementary
Speaker 5: school at night, so from six to nine o'clock I
Speaker 5: would go to school in this extension site. And I
Speaker 5: remember there was this big, broadly white guy who's my counselor.
Speaker 5: He said, I think you should really consider working not
Speaker 5: only with people, but with children. And because he saw me,
Speaker 5: you know, he spent so much time with me as
Speaker 5: my counselor, he was like, I think you should give
Speaker 5: it a shot. And I trusted him, and I guess
Speaker 5: from that point the rest is history. Because I've also
Speaker 5: had great experiences in school, right. I had Miss Shannon,
Speaker 5: who's my third grade teacher. Miss Bracy was my fourth
Speaker 5: grade teacher.
Speaker 2: Ms.
Speaker 5: Joffrion who's my fifth grade teacher. I remember black educators
Speaker 5: poured into me. In addition to my father being from
Speaker 5: Jamaica and my mother from being from Belize. They had
Speaker 5: a you know, it was a high respect for education.
Speaker 5: So that in conjunction with you know, great teachers when
Speaker 5: I grew up, really pushed me in that area. But
Speaker 5: I think Jim McGowan is his name. He was the
Speaker 5: one who really told me that I would be good
Speaker 5: at this, and I can honestly tell you he was right.
Speaker 5: He was the first one to tell me that. And
Speaker 5: you know, like I said, I owe a lot to
Speaker 5: him and people like him who saw something in me
Speaker 5: that I didn't even see in myself. Right, because from
Speaker 5: our communities, it's tough sometimes because all we see is
Speaker 5: what we see. We saw hip hop, you know, we
Speaker 5: saw we saw hip hop, we saw app you know, sports,
Speaker 5: we saw those type of things, and we looked at
Speaker 5: a teacher or principal and we was like, I don't
Speaker 5: know if I want to do that. They don't look
Speaker 5: like they making no money. I look at when I'm
Speaker 5: coming to school. Their cars don't look fly. So I
Speaker 5: don't know if I want to do that. So it
Speaker 5: really pushed me in that space after hearing hearing my
Speaker 5: counselor giving me that advice.
Speaker 4: Wow, So you tell me you said your mother was Jamaican.
Speaker 6: No, my mother was from Belize.
Speaker 4: Your mother's from Belize and your father from jama It's
Speaker 4: from Jamaica. We did a show not long ago when
Speaker 4: we were talking about how all most of my friends
Speaker 4: that are from whether they are Haitian or Jamaican or whatever,
Speaker 4: there is such a focus on education.
Speaker 1: What do you think that is?
Speaker 5: You know what I think because for them they realized that,
Speaker 5: you know, and to go to a great school in
Speaker 5: those areas, you have to pay for it. And I
Speaker 5: think my father in particular would say, you know, for us,
Speaker 5: not to take it for granted, because in order to
Speaker 5: get the kind of education we'll get here in America,
Speaker 5: people have to pay for it in other.
Speaker 6: Areas of the world. So I think that was the thing.
Speaker 5: But I also feel like, just like most parents, you
Speaker 5: want more for your children than you.
Speaker 6: Had for yourself.
Speaker 5: Like I think he was, he was so much ingrained
Speaker 5: that education was it was ingrained in the education was important.
Speaker 5: But I also felt deep down inside that he just
Speaker 5: wanted more for us, and so that's where the push
Speaker 5: was when it came to that. I don't think it
Speaker 5: was much more than that to me. I don't think
Speaker 5: it was something where we you know, he had this,
Speaker 5: he had this vision that education would taken me this far.
Speaker 5: Because my father, who passed away six years ago, didn't
Speaker 5: never really seem didn't know the work that I did.
Speaker 5: He didn't understand that I was already doing some revolutionary
Speaker 5: stuff and education had no idea my mother, which was crazy.
Speaker 6: My mother from Belize. She had a really unique.
Speaker 5: Way of saying how she felt about us as her children.
Speaker 5: I defended my dissertation for my doctorate two and a
Speaker 5: half years ago. My mother and I did it virtually.
Speaker 5: My mom and about ninety other people were on their
Speaker 5: zoom after the zoom call for and they and they
Speaker 5: announced me as a recipient doctoral degree. My mom said
Speaker 5: to me, I didn't know you was that smart, and
Speaker 5: it was. And I had to take what she said.
Speaker 2: It understood that she just hadn't been engaged.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that was a crazy part because again I
Speaker 5: never took it as I never took it as she
Speaker 5: was trying. Yeah, she wasn't trying to play me. It
Speaker 5: was just her saying like, yo, I'm proud of you son,
Speaker 5: you know. And on that particular and on that particular zoom,
Speaker 5: I had Mayor Sean Patterson from Mount Vernion where I'm from,
Speaker 5: who was there also to to support Dame Dash was
Speaker 5: on it. And you know, you're talking about only ninety
Speaker 5: educators to see me do this. But she was like, man,
Speaker 5: like I didn't know you was that smart? Like I didn't.
Speaker 5: But neither one of them, I think, really had the
Speaker 5: opportunity to understand what I was doing in the world.
Speaker 6: They had no idea.
Speaker 5: It's recently, mind you, my twin brother doesn't really understand
Speaker 5: what I'm doing. My sister the other day was scrolling
Speaker 5: through Instagram and realized, like, wow, bro, you doing it?
Speaker 5: Like can I get some oeg year? Like can I
Speaker 5: get thatype of stuff?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: No, I got you, I got you. I got something
Speaker 6: for both of y'all.
Speaker 5: But it's crazy that when people staying that close to
Speaker 5: you they kind of take you for.
Speaker 6: Granted and said they have no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 1: But like I'm a big deal out here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And but you know what's funny, Thank God that
Speaker 5: I'm reminded of it every day and I don't ever
Speaker 5: get big headed about it, but I most certainly, you know,
Speaker 5: periodically because both my parents have passed. Now, I would
Speaker 5: go to the cemetery and have those conversations. Now right,
Speaker 5: just even three weeks ago, I was in a space
Speaker 5: and I say, yo, let me just go pull up
Speaker 5: on my parents and save us up and just tell
Speaker 5: them thank you for giving me this opportunity to be
Speaker 5: out here making this difference in the world.
Speaker 6: So I truly can tell you.
Speaker 5: That it's the people that staying close to you, closest
Speaker 5: to you, that have no idea as to what it
Speaker 5: is that you accomplished. So my parents, most certainly, I
Speaker 5: think had a great you know, they knew they were
Speaker 5: doing something. I don't think they had a clue as
Speaker 5: to the type of battery they put in my back
Speaker 5: and the influence that they made on my life because
Speaker 5: you know, when it was happened and they were still
Speaker 5: a bit detached from from from my world.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's common most people, like you said,
Speaker 3: most people closer you don't realize you know exactly what
Speaker 3: it is. Because my mother used to say that to
Speaker 3: me all the time. She used to really look at
Speaker 3: me and people we we walked somewhere and people are like, hey,
Speaker 3: that's mine and they want to take pictures on it.
Speaker 3: She just be looking like you really somebody.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: But let me tell you that.
Speaker 5: But let me tell you a quick story about that though.
Speaker 5: So after after so I got my doctorate in February.
Speaker 5: My mom in April, probably the last week in April,
Speaker 5: was in Mount Vernon and she was going to the
Speaker 5: store and she saw Mayor Sewan Patterson and she stopped
Speaker 5: Maya Seawan Patterson and.
Speaker 6: Say, hey, are you doing?
Speaker 5: This is Dennis's Dennis Dennis's mom, I met you on
Speaker 5: a zoom and stuff like that, and she already knew
Speaker 5: who my mom was.
Speaker 6: My mom didn't know she knew who she was.
Speaker 5: And what was so dope is that my mom was
Speaker 5: really bragging on me to Mayor Seawan Patterson.
Speaker 6: She that was her.
Speaker 5: That was her moment to say how proud I am
Speaker 5: of my son because may Ha told me. But unfortunately,
Speaker 5: the very next day, my mom had a massive massive stroke.
Speaker 5: The next day after meeting Mayor Patterson and saying that
Speaker 5: to her, she had a massive stroke and have never
Speaker 5: recovered from it and unfortunately passed away a few weeks later.
Speaker 5: But I but what was so dope about that is
Speaker 5: that I had the mayor able to tell me what
Speaker 5: my mother said about me, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And then she came and spoke at my mother's funeral
Speaker 5: and all that stuff as well. So it was dope
Speaker 5: to know that even as she was departing this earth,
Speaker 5: she was willing to tell somebody like, I'm proud of
Speaker 5: my son, even if she wasn't willing to tell me
Speaker 5: you no, nothing.
Speaker 1: Like a Caribbean mother.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's there's such a it's so it's just so
Speaker 4: hard felt as beautiful.
Speaker 1: We have a friend. His name is Michael Blake, you know,
Speaker 1: Michael Blake.
Speaker 4: Okay, so his mother obviously a Jamaican woman, and when
Speaker 4: she talks about how proud she is she loves her son,
Speaker 4: and it's just a beautiful sound it is.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful So tell us about OSG like it.
Speaker 3: First of all, what made you just say?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: You went through every level of education you teach, Like
Speaker 3: who wakes up and says, I'm going to create an
Speaker 3: organization that I pretty much deal with educator like pretty
Speaker 3: much actually teach educators like, yeah, So.
Speaker 2: Explain to us what it is because I guess I
Speaker 2: gave a little bit of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, no, no problem. So so OEG was birked
Speaker 5: out of a labor of love. Let me just start there,
Speaker 5: like there is there is nothing else to be said
Speaker 5: as to why what happened was Like I said, for
Speaker 5: the past twelve almost thirteen years now, I've been running
Speaker 5: my own consultant firm while I'm supporting school.
Speaker 6: Leaders across the nation.
Speaker 5: So when COVID hit those people that I was traveling
Speaker 5: across the country to go and see and spend time
Speaker 5: with and help them to transform their community and transform
Speaker 5: their schools. Unfortunately, nobody was moving at that time in
Speaker 5: the world in.
Speaker 6: History.
Speaker 5: This is the first anybody's ever experienced something like this
Speaker 5: where legit, you know, superstars in the educational field was
Speaker 5: out there on silos, was out there on islands by themselves,
Speaker 5: and they were like, yow do I how do I.
Speaker 6: Stay connected to the people that I helped build?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: I helped build many of them to the space that
Speaker 5: they were in. So being able to say what can
Speaker 5: I do? What can I do to bring them together?
Speaker 5: It was something simple. My sort is like, Okay, let's
Speaker 5: put them on a virtual virtual call every single week
Speaker 5: leadership development, but give them a safe space to actually
Speaker 5: share best practice and their emotions.
Speaker 6: And stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Like I said, what it turned into four years later
Speaker 5: was what wasn't what I expected that. Really, I just
Speaker 5: wanted to give them a space every week to be
Speaker 5: part of a group of other leaders across the nation
Speaker 5: that was feeling the same thing that they was feeling,
Speaker 5: the same hurt, the same pain as fear, all that
Speaker 5: was going.
Speaker 4: On at describe the pain, the fear and what's it
Speaker 4: like dealing with parents.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think the thing about, you know, the
Speaker 5: fear and the hurt and all those things. You got
Speaker 5: to remember people were dying around school leaders every day,
Speaker 5: whether it was their staff members, whether it was their
Speaker 5: the children, the children's parents, the people in the community,
Speaker 5: their own family. So you have to say, you know,
Speaker 5: as a school leader, people were still expecting you to
Speaker 5: come to work and do what you got to do.
Speaker 1: So people were dying during COVID. I just want to
Speaker 1: know nothing.
Speaker 4: The world said, not the world, But there were people
Speaker 4: who said, nah, this is not that. It's not it's
Speaker 4: not different from the flu, it's the same thing.
Speaker 5: It's real to me that that we're talking about communities
Speaker 5: ravaged by COVID. And where it's funny there was a
Speaker 5: point whereas churches were the hub of the community, and
Speaker 5: during COVID, even they were shut down, even they were closed.
Speaker 5: The one place that remained opened on COVID with schools.
Speaker 5: People made sure that kids ate during that time that
Speaker 5: principles had to go to schools sometimes to make sure
Speaker 5: that the that the technology the kids needed for remote
Speaker 5: learning was happening, but at the same time leaving their
Speaker 5: own family at home. So you can imagine the fear
Speaker 5: you didn't know if you walk outside, that that COVID
Speaker 5: was gonna jump on you the moment.
Speaker 6: You step out the door.
Speaker 5: But that's what people had to deal with, and so
Speaker 5: the fear of them catching COVID leaving their house was
Speaker 5: something that they were fearful of.
Speaker 6: But the more and more.
Speaker 5: You realized that you weren't dealing with this by yourself,
Speaker 5: when you was dealing with it with a collective other
Speaker 5: group of people. Then we can cry together, we can
Speaker 5: laugh together, we can talk about this stuff together, we
Speaker 5: can share best practice on things we're doing. But I
Speaker 5: think what really tell what's the teller, the telltale, the
Speaker 5: telltale of this right now is when I think.
Speaker 6: About why it was necessary.
Speaker 5: It was necessary because nobody else was doing nothing for them.
Speaker 5: They was expected to go to work, they were essential workers,
Speaker 5: and nobody called them a say workers.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Remember this not only were kids expected to learn, but
Speaker 5: kids were expected to eat. Many of our students were
Speaker 5: coming to school every day if nothing else to eat.
Speaker 5: Now you got COVID that shut it down for eighteen months.
Speaker 5: Somebody got to go make sure that door is open.
Speaker 5: Somebody got to go make sure that, you know, the
Speaker 5: the kitchen staff is preparing lunch and breakfast for kids
Speaker 5: who may not be able to eat. So during those times,
Speaker 5: it was a space where school leaders just didn't have
Speaker 5: they didn't have a support group. Everybody had a support
Speaker 5: group with them, and I just felt like, you know what,
Speaker 5: I have to do something about it. And that's the
Speaker 5: you know, the idea of off school grounds is to
Speaker 5: think about it this way. All the problems that we
Speaker 5: were dealing with in the schools, where did it happened
Speaker 5: off school grounds. We talk about food and securities all
Speaker 5: school grounds, tech gap off school grounds, financial literacy issues
Speaker 5: all school grounds. So it was it was I think
Speaker 5: a fitting a fitting name for an organization because during
Speaker 5: the pandemic, everything that was done was done off school grounds,
Speaker 5: and the principals needed a space in which to come
Speaker 5: and actually share their best practices and stuff like that
Speaker 5: as well. So that's where it came from the whole
Speaker 5: the whole concept of off school grounds.
Speaker 2: So so, so explain to what is what is it? Now?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm it's now it's a it's actually a
Speaker 5: non for profit organization right now, that focus is on
Speaker 5: leadership development, with the focus being on school leaders leading
Speaker 5: communities now, right, because again, during the time of the
Speaker 5: one of the one of the biggest tragedies of this
Speaker 5: of this of this country's history, who was there doing it?
Speaker 5: You know, everybody talked about leading communities. But the one period,
Speaker 5: one group of people I was always leading communities were
Speaker 5: school leaders, right, And so I felt like I needed
Speaker 5: to do something more after the pandemic, which was let
Speaker 5: me allow.
Speaker 6: For people to start learning from school leaders.
Speaker 5: Now, So if you were if you were mayor if
Speaker 5: you are if you're a city council, if you a senator,
Speaker 5: instead of thinking that you have the answer, why don't
Speaker 5: you sit down and talk to a principal and allow
Speaker 5: principal to provide the leadership development that you need to
Speaker 5: understand how to run a community. Right, The greatest intel
Speaker 5: about what's happening in the community is coming from schools
Speaker 5: and school leaders. So why if we're going to change communities,
Speaker 5: don't you have school leaders at the table.
Speaker 6: It makes no sense to me exactly.
Speaker 5: And so now we've had we've gotten to that place
Speaker 5: now where I'm saying that there are now when when
Speaker 5: mayors and chancellors and everybody else, before they go into office,
Speaker 5: most of them come on my weekly zoom meeting with
Speaker 5: the principles.
Speaker 6: Why because they need to know what they need to.
Speaker 5: Do when they get in office. You know, I had
Speaker 5: a conference at Columbia University this weekend to begin It
Speaker 5: was I mean, well over five hundred leaders from across
Speaker 5: the nation. And one of the thank you, and one
Speaker 5: of my one of my brothers, who's now mayor of Gary, Indiana,
Speaker 5: Eddie Melton, was an attendance. He came all the way
Speaker 5: from Gary to learn from these these leaders, and he said,
Speaker 5: I put him on a panel with four other school
Speaker 5: leaders to teach him and to tell him how to now.
Speaker 6: Do that stuff in his school district.
Speaker 5: And so the leadership, I felt like it needed to
Speaker 5: be done by way of what's happening with the schools.
Speaker 5: And I think the school leaders themselves are the true
Speaker 5: community leaders now, not saying that they're not that that
Speaker 5: other people aren't there, other leaders aren't trying and aren't
Speaker 5: doing great things. I just say that most of what
Speaker 5: we're trying to fix, you can be it can be
Speaker 5: found in schools.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: If we say there's issues around poverty, how do you
Speaker 5: see that?
Speaker 6: Where do you see that? Mostly you see it in
Speaker 6: school and their families.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So that's why I think the concept of off school
Speaker 5: grounds is a not for profit organization is now to
Speaker 5: create the space where educational leaders are the ones teaching
Speaker 5: other leaders throughout the community how to lead, how to
Speaker 5: lead young people and things like that.
Speaker 6: And so that's what that's what it's, you know, it's
Speaker 6: what it has become. That has become.
Speaker 1: So how important first of all, do you engage parents?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: And how important would you say parent participation is in
Speaker 4: the process, Like do you believe I know some parents
Speaker 4: that their kids are doing really well and they're not active.
Speaker 4: It's not they don't have time, they got two jobs, this,
Speaker 4: and that they may or may not be a dad
Speaker 4: or mom, more than likely not a dad, and they
Speaker 4: just don't have the time. But they tell their kids
Speaker 4: don't have that damn school, call me about anything. And
Speaker 4: that's when they get involved the point that the phone
Speaker 4: r yes. So what would you say about parent involvement?
Speaker 4: Is it parent involvement or is it just having a
Speaker 4: good household?
Speaker 5: Like, Yeah, I think it's I think it's both. I think,
Speaker 5: you know, parent engagement is important. I think having a
Speaker 5: you know, a solid household is important. However, in many
Speaker 5: instances that's not the case, right, And that's why I
Speaker 5: say schools have become the hub. Schools have become in
Speaker 5: some instances, parents have become the family, have become that personally.
Speaker 6: I was experienced.
Speaker 5: I experienced something about two weeks ago in a school
Speaker 5: where there was a young lady who came to school
Speaker 5: and she began to ask the staff members and then
Speaker 5: ended up with the principal and ask could they adopt
Speaker 5: her because she was being bounced from foster care to
Speaker 5: foster care and she wanted something more stable. That she
Speaker 5: got to the point, at thirteen fourteen years old, of
Speaker 5: feeling comfortable of asking them to be her parent. And
Speaker 5: so I think, I think parents do as good of
Speaker 5: a job as they can in many instances, and I
Speaker 5: think we should hold them account. But I also know
Speaker 5: that if a person's working two jobs, if a person
Speaker 5: is doing their very best. I think as a school
Speaker 5: we can do a little bit more and we can't
Speaker 5: look at it from the traditional sense of what parent
Speaker 5: engagement is. Coming to a PTA meeting isn't always about
Speaker 5: parent engagement, you know what I mean? Sometimes you got
Speaker 5: to say to yourself, if that parent just again drops
Speaker 5: their child off in the morning and you say good morning,
Speaker 5: they say good morning, that's engagement, right. It don't have
Speaker 5: to be let's go sit down at a bake sale
Speaker 5: and cookies and all that stuff like that. But I
Speaker 5: am saying that the schools I put great I put
Speaker 5: a great emphasis on school leaders stepping in in areas
Speaker 5: that there are there are these voids because our community
Speaker 5: has been this way.
Speaker 6: Forever, right, anybody the girl, you know.
Speaker 5: What, it's funny. And I actually had somebody in another
Speaker 5: borough reach out to the principal and they were looking
Speaker 5: to place a girl and in this new household. So yeah,
Speaker 5: so it was it's one of those things, you know,
Speaker 5: family that we got to get to the understanding that
Speaker 5: what things used to look like and be it's not
Speaker 5: the same no more. It's not the same that when
Speaker 5: we say again, parent engagement again, if a mom is
Speaker 5: doing the very best she can as a single mom
Speaker 5: or dad as a single dad, and you and their
Speaker 5: child is having difficulties right with the mental anguish that
Speaker 5: many of our kids are going through. A parent can't
Speaker 5: help that all the time.
Speaker 6: What are you gonna do? Beat them?
Speaker 5: Like, you got to say to yourself, the way the
Speaker 5: world has changed over the past three to four years,
Speaker 5: and they people talk about learning.
Speaker 6: Laws, guess who else experienced learning laws? Parents?
Speaker 5: A parent is now expected to do things that they
Speaker 5: didn't expect, didn't know how to do. You set that
Speaker 5: kid on for eighteen months and you tell this parent
Speaker 5: to now teach.
Speaker 1: That's how long we were out of school.
Speaker 6: And eighteen months.
Speaker 5: And so you got to say, if we talk about
Speaker 5: learning loss for children, we got to think about learning
Speaker 5: loss for every adult that was responsible for working with
Speaker 5: children as well. Again, a kid is home with one
Speaker 5: hot spot and four siblings and a mom and a
Speaker 5: dad who is trying to just you know, pay bills.
Speaker 5: You know, it's a very difficult concept to understand and grasp.
Speaker 5: And we got to become honest about that that the
Speaker 5: majority parents out here that are doing the best that
Speaker 5: they can need to be acknowledged for that and in
Speaker 5: the schools we got a lot of resources.
Speaker 6: We got a lot of money in schools.
Speaker 5: People say we don't, but there's enough money for us
Speaker 5: to think about ways to support families and communities. And
Speaker 5: so I say that parent engagement is one of them.
Speaker 5: I also think when another thing that is evolved and
Speaker 5: changed is how children are learning. There is this new generation.
Speaker 5: It's out for generation of young people. This is a
Speaker 5: new generation. They were born with iPads and iPhones in
Speaker 5: their hands. And what happened was we send them for
Speaker 5: eighteen months they use iPhones and iPads and laptops. Now
Speaker 5: they come back to school, you take away the laptops,
Speaker 5: the iPhones and iPads, and kids are expected to learn
Speaker 5: through textbooks again.
Speaker 6: So they're in lies again. A need for us to
Speaker 6: have those conversations with people.
Speaker 5: That are making the real decisions for our children, because
Speaker 5: if you're not an educated don't know this, If you
Speaker 5: don't see this every day, you don't understand that. So
Speaker 5: the evolution of education has gotten to a point where
Speaker 5: we have to become really radical about our approach. Now,
Speaker 5: and let's stop blaming people for that stuff. Let's stop
Speaker 5: diagnosing the problem and saying, well, you know, parents aren't involved.
Speaker 5: We've been saying that for as long as I've been,
Speaker 5: as long as I've been alive. Right, Oh, parents aren't involved.
Speaker 5: Parents aren't involved. But there's still people who are successful
Speaker 5: as a result of it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So at one time, it was because the church helped,
Speaker 5: it was because of basketball programs helped, the YMCA's help.
Speaker 5: And when those things went away, the one thing that
Speaker 5: say constant was a school.
Speaker 3: I'm just amazingming because I remember during COVID when you know,
Speaker 3: I first met you and I came on to the
Speaker 3: zoom yeah you know, and that's when I had my
Speaker 3: first book, Yes you know, I know my rights and
Speaker 3: it was all these educators on it and it was
Speaker 3: just and I was like wow, and everybody was engaging.
Speaker 2: It was deemed dash.
Speaker 3: It was so many different people and the experience was
Speaker 3: just amazed, just experience, And a lot of people reached
Speaker 3: out to me. A lot of principles reached out to me.
Speaker 3: I built relationships with them. They brought me when school
Speaker 3: got back in, they brought me this.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It created a network. So just watching Full Circle, going
Speaker 3: to the conference and being in the room with all
Speaker 3: these educators and the dope educators black and mainly black
Speaker 3: and Hispanic educators that come from where we come from,
Speaker 3: and the brilliant individuals, and it got swag, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, And it's like understanding, this is this
Speaker 3: is the education that our kids are going to respect.
Speaker 3: And then when you go into you brought me into
Speaker 3: each of the rooms where the educators are teaching their
Speaker 3: classes or they're having their seminars in each room and
Speaker 3: each breakout session, and one is talking about how you
Speaker 3: engage the kids and about understanding that they're gonna be
Speaker 3: people that push back. And then one is giving you
Speaker 3: methods and strategies to understand on how the when of
Speaker 3: the kids learning and what needs to be present. And
Speaker 3: then there's one talking about how do you use the
Speaker 3: internet and hip hop to teach the kids? And it's
Speaker 3: just like wow, this is innovative ways of thinking that
Speaker 3: I've always understood, especially young Black boys, because they say
Speaker 3: that we are the ones that are not engaged.
Speaker 2: What do you say about that that?
Speaker 5: Well, you know what, again, I think that's where you
Speaker 5: break down the silos and that's when you allow other
Speaker 5: you know, other professions such as hip hop and and
Speaker 5: you know, politics and other things in the room. Right,
Speaker 5: because young people, especially boys, what they they gonna be
Speaker 5: what they see and if they don't see themselves as
Speaker 5: anything other.
Speaker 6: Than basketball players, drug dealers, or rappers, that's all they
Speaker 6: gonna be.
Speaker 5: One of the things I wanted to make happen is
Speaker 5: I want you to understand that being a principal is cool.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying. Being a school leader is cool.
Speaker 5: Like running your own educational culture consulting firm is cool.
Speaker 5: And I'm gonna do it in Jordan's and I'm gonna
Speaker 5: do it in air Max and I'm gonna make sure
Speaker 5: that I'm I'm you know, swagged out with it. But
Speaker 5: I think I want to keep pushing the narrative. Is
Speaker 5: that what we thought principals and school leaders were like,
Speaker 5: that's not the real that's not the real deal. When
Speaker 5: people say that educators there's only two or three percent
Speaker 5: of educators that are black males, that might be true
Speaker 5: until you put the two percent in a room like
Speaker 5: you saw at the conference. When you see two hundred
Speaker 5: black male educators in the room, that changes the narrative now, right,
Speaker 5: But it also means if we all pull up to
Speaker 5: somebody's school as black educators, that kid who was saying,
Speaker 5: you know what, what do y'all do, He's not gonna
Speaker 5: look at me as homicide. He's not gonna look at
Speaker 5: me as a detective because I'm now telling him, no,
Speaker 5: I was a principal for ten years. I've been in
Speaker 5: education for thirty years. So now he aspires.
Speaker 6: To be that.
Speaker 5: And so I think one of the things that I
Speaker 5: talked about at the conference was us in us stopping
Speaker 5: this this reputation bashing around education. Right, we keep passing
Speaker 5: this dirty needle about education being a bad thing. We
Speaker 5: don't get enough money, it's just stressful job, it's challenging,
Speaker 5: all that stuff like that. I'm like, why would a
Speaker 5: kid didn't want to be me? Why would a kid
Speaker 5: want to be me when he just heard you say
Speaker 5: how bad of a professionist is? So I'm saying, let's
Speaker 5: be real about it now. Let's talk about education from
Speaker 5: the perspective of real being game changers and us being
Speaker 5: able to do it and say be our authentic selves
Speaker 5: and doing so. But when you see it for yourself
Speaker 5: as you did this weekend, and have you been seeing
Speaker 5: and again, Tomika, you've been in You've been in a
Speaker 5: lot of schools too, of course.
Speaker 2: And you see it.
Speaker 6: You see a lot of black educators.
Speaker 4: I see a lot of black but I do not
Speaker 4: see a lot of black male educators. Yes, and certainly
Speaker 4: not a lot of black male principles, although I probably
Speaker 4: know more male black male principles than I do black
Speaker 4: mail teachers.
Speaker 5: Yes, but you see, that's the thing, right, because we
Speaker 5: are out here. It's just that we just don't have
Speaker 5: a platform to be showcased. Hence, that's why I have
Speaker 5: a conference, That's why I do my weekly zooms. That's
Speaker 5: why I do my best to bring hip hop and
Speaker 5: advocacy and everything into the into this space because we
Speaker 5: need your voices to amplify that they are out here,
Speaker 5: you know, because when my song can, I mean every
Speaker 5: Friday in New Jersey with our boy Ocball Cook principle
Speaker 5: of Westside High. You've met Principal Rod from Compton, one
Speaker 5: of my other principal friends who's a principal at a
Speaker 5: jail in Chicago mcgron. But we don't see it right.
Speaker 4: And and no one is going to exploit it. If
Speaker 4: you will, They're not going to promote it. They don't
Speaker 4: want that. I mean, how does that work in favor
Speaker 4: of those who don't want to see black men succeed?
Speaker 1: And you know, just speaking of that as.
Speaker 4: We wind down, were talking or you mentioned politics several times,
Speaker 4: and during our recent interview with Congressman Bowman, who was
Speaker 4: also a principal, he talked about wanting to run for
Speaker 4: office because he understood from a policy perspective that everything
Speaker 4: happening within the school, whether it's the children that needs
Speaker 4: to eat to your point, whether it's the you know,
Speaker 4: the abuse that kids are suffering, or families that are
Speaker 4: not secure, housing insecurities, all of that is directly connected
Speaker 4: to policy decisions at the local, state, and federal level.
Speaker 4: So how does your organization consider that as part of
Speaker 4: you know, your advocacy and what you're attempting to do.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, so again, I'll mention that at our conference, we
Speaker 5: actually had the we had the New York State Border
Speaker 5: Regions Chancellor Lester Young, doctor Lester Young, who was our
Speaker 5: keynote speaker, and one of the things that he and
Speaker 5: I are working on currently is to is to get
Speaker 5: OSG and principles from across the nation to actually come
Speaker 5: up to Albany more frequently to lobby.
Speaker 6: For what needs, what the needs are in our community.
Speaker 5: And so I use him as an as an example
Speaker 5: because we do have people in those places. Right, you know,
Speaker 5: we're talking about the border regions of New York State.
Speaker 5: That man is over every city, every school pretty much
Speaker 5: in New York State. So in conversing with him, he
Speaker 5: sees this and he says, I didn't even know this
Speaker 5: existed this way. So that means mean when I have
Speaker 5: something that needs to be lobbied for, I can call
Speaker 5: on always g to come up and to be a
Speaker 5: part of that. And I said, absolutely yes. But because
Speaker 5: we're you know Tomika, we we talked about a minute ago,
Speaker 5: because we're not seen in that space.
Speaker 6: They don't know we exist.
Speaker 5: So needing you all and other you know, that's where
Speaker 5: the hip hop, you know, that's where the hip hop
Speaker 5: you know, family comes into play. Is because somebody's gonna
Speaker 5: listen to my song as he stands close to me
Speaker 5: a little different than I'm standing by myself. Right, They're
Speaker 5: gonna stand They're gonna listen to Freeway and Dame and
Speaker 5: Jada and all those other people if they stand next
Speaker 5: to me about education, and so I think in terms
Speaker 5: of politics, I'm also engaging and that's why the conversations
Speaker 5: around leadership and that if a if a mayor or
Speaker 5: for an elected official are speaking to principles now and
Speaker 5: they ask us, well, what's the problems, and we tell
Speaker 5: you what the problems are, and they said, we just
Speaker 5: need y'all to come and lobby for it, and we
Speaker 5: take a picture.
Speaker 6: Then let's go do that.
Speaker 5: So I do think that politics and education actually go
Speaker 5: hand in hand. I think again, we make people run
Speaker 5: away from politics because of some of the politicians that
Speaker 5: we see that have you know, been in the history
Speaker 5: of this country. We don't want our kids to get
Speaker 5: into it. But we got to make it cool again, right,
Speaker 5: you know, we got to make everything that we do cool,
Speaker 5: you know, from again being a politician to being an educator,
Speaker 5: we have to be able to make it look cool.
Speaker 5: So I do push this narrative once again that as
Speaker 5: an educator, what works for me is to be able
Speaker 5: to say, you know what to me. I mean, I've
Speaker 5: been in space with you and Yandy, you know, coming
Speaker 5: to the schools and doing some dope things with children.
Speaker 5: But as an educator, that makes me proud because I
Speaker 5: know they didn't come on the strength of them just themselves.
Speaker 5: They came to be a part of a community, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. They were part of the whole
Speaker 5: hub of the school at that moment. So I just
Speaker 5: I just think in terms of politics, I just try
Speaker 5: keep things real simple. You know, a lot of times
Speaker 5: things aren't happening because people don't really know what's happening.
Speaker 5: And I do have a thing that I tell people.
Speaker 5: There's an inner city and there's an inner inner city. Right,
Speaker 5: most people never know what's happening on the inner inner city.
Speaker 5: You don't really know what's happening in Brownsville, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. Do you know what happened in Ocean Hill?
Speaker 5: You don't really know what's happening in the South Bronx.
Speaker 5: You know what's happening in the North Bronx by White
Speaker 5: Plains Road. You don't always know what's happening in Mount
Speaker 5: Vernon because you think it's west Chester and you don't
Speaker 5: understand that, you know, we would we were transformed from
Speaker 5: money earning Mount Vernon to Murderville, you know, during that time,
Speaker 5: So people don't quite get it. And I don't expect
Speaker 5: them to. But then that's when we all collectively have
Speaker 5: to tell them.
Speaker 6: Tell a story.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Tell the real story, and
Speaker 5: that the things that are being wrapped about or talked
Speaker 5: about in conjunction with us standing alongside of you said,
Speaker 5: that's real.
Speaker 6: You know, we got one of.
Speaker 5: Our principles just two days ago, was dealing with a
Speaker 5: shooting outside of his school, and that got some local press.
Speaker 5: But it's not the same as if they if this
Speaker 5: was a shooting in some other community, like it's almost normal,
Speaker 5: they normalize it, or when they do it, they bring
Speaker 5: they when they bring the media there is to tear
Speaker 5: him down. It's not to tell the story of the
Speaker 5: gun violence and the community that they have to he
Speaker 5: has to fight through every day just to educate children.
Speaker 5: So I do think that there has to be a
Speaker 5: stronger emphasis on us partnering with all the everybody who
Speaker 5: makes up our community, our black community, and you all
Speaker 5: are most certainly the people that we turn to to
Speaker 5: help us to do that. Because my conference was dope,
Speaker 5: But my conference was dope because my song came, and
Speaker 5: Earn Your Leisure came, and Dame Dash came and Freeway
Speaker 5: came and Graft came because they no one has ever
Speaker 5: seen a collective group of people like this doing what
Speaker 5: we did for young people. So that's really, you know,
Speaker 5: my story about this is that this is you know,
Speaker 5: a conversation about how we've got to be more inclusive
Speaker 5: about the changes needed.
Speaker 3: Contributor to what you think that conference dope because y'allays did.
Speaker 3: We was looking like wow, and and all of us
Speaker 3: and your leaders like, yo, this is dope. Just seeing
Speaker 3: educators in the room like that have that much energy
Speaker 3: and really wanted to learn, like they were sitting there.
Speaker 3: They want to be able to You can look and
Speaker 3: see these people that just got a job and they're like, yo,
Speaker 3: I got to go to this, No, we wanted to.
Speaker 3: We want to educate our kids. And I've seen them
Speaker 3: taking notes and I've seen when they heard something good
Speaker 3: and it was writing it down like that.
Speaker 2: That's what I want to see for educators.
Speaker 5: But I want you guys also to ass as artists
Speaker 5: to understand too that we have been transformed because of
Speaker 5: what y'all did for us too, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So that's what I'm saying that let's not get into
Speaker 5: that into the habit of believing that art in competition
Speaker 5: of who Yes, exactly, because I know as a principle,
Speaker 5: I'm driving to work listening to the hip hop and
Speaker 5: I know principles are still doing that.
Speaker 6: So you all are part of who we've become.
Speaker 5: And so you all look at us and all we
Speaker 5: look at y'all and all, and everybody's like, Yo, this
Speaker 5: is dope.
Speaker 6: And that's this. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So I want to say I appreciate you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Let them know where to find you. Absolutely, give them
Speaker 2: all your socials.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So is it a nonprofit?
Speaker 6: Yes, nonprofit.
Speaker 1: People can send you money.
Speaker 5: They can they can. So go to the Official Off
Speaker 5: school Grounds Official OSG on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 6: You can find it. Dennis mckezy on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4: Here's a brother right here, Dennis mckeesy, who is doing
Speaker 4: something about our young people. And and and you can't
Speaker 4: help anyone if you if you can't.
Speaker 1: Heal, if you are not healed.
Speaker 4: And so to provide a space for educators to go
Speaker 4: and leaders to go so that they can pour out
Speaker 4: all the things and the ideas and the creativity and
Speaker 4: the pain and frustration and then be poured back into
Speaker 4: so that they can go and pour into our children.
Speaker 4: I think this is critical work. You're doing critical work.
Speaker 4: We support you one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: Thank y'all. Family.
Speaker 5: I appreciate y'all. Thank you, thank you, my pleasure, thank y'all,
Speaker 5: thank y'all.
Speaker 2: Shout out to my boy Jennis mackezie.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: The work he's doing is evolutionary, revolutionary.
Speaker 1: You get tell he's passionate about it.
Speaker 2: Listen, man, like you got to see him in his mold.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: He's in the schools, he's mentoring, and he's dealing with
Speaker 3: the teachers and the principles, and they engaged.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: You could tell he actually loves what he does many
Speaker 3: and they just recently celebrated four years. So that's it's
Speaker 3: been four years since COVID because that's when it started
Speaker 3: during COVID, and that's when I was first on the episode.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that he has helped to dispel the.
Speaker 2: Myth that ain't no black men teaching, no well.
Speaker 4: Also the COVID thing. But you know, I think it's
Speaker 4: important to mention again. And I didn't want to cut
Speaker 4: him off, but that a lot of people didn't die
Speaker 4: because they had COVID. They died because America and our
Speaker 4: systems are incompetent.
Speaker 1: Someone said to me the other day, let us.
Speaker 4: Have aspirational language versus having using language that is always
Speaker 4: so so much of an indictment. So, yes, there are
Speaker 4: many things that are done properly within the healthcare system.
Speaker 4: People's lives have been saved. Healthcare workers are doing an
Speaker 4: incredible job with a little bit they have.
Speaker 1: When I say the system, I am.
Speaker 4: Not talking about nurse and even doctor so and so,
Speaker 4: I'm saying that America, fundamentally the systems the way it
Speaker 4: is designed.
Speaker 1: There is so much racism.
Speaker 4: There is so much just inequity that exists that even
Speaker 4: if you are nurse or a doctor that is attempting
Speaker 4: to do the right thing, you don't always have the
Speaker 4: tools that you need, or the support that you need,
Speaker 4: the resources that you need, and the research that you
Speaker 4: need to work, especially in certain communities.
Speaker 1: And so hopefully what we learn earned from a pandemic.
Speaker 4: And by the way, everybody's oh, you know Trump, it
Speaker 4: was better because we got a check with his signature
Speaker 4: on it. Well, guess what other checks he cashed While
Speaker 4: he was or sent out to people while he was
Speaker 4: in office. He sent the check out of delaying the
Speaker 4: process for people to even get the healthcare support that
Speaker 4: they needed.
Speaker 1: So there were people who he wouldn't send masks.
Speaker 4: And by the way, the Republican Party voted against even
Speaker 4: giving people checks. As much as I can challenge Nancy
Speaker 4: Pelosi and all of these folks, I will tell you.
Speaker 1: That they were the ones that fought to get checks
Speaker 1: into the.
Speaker 4: Pockets the bank account true and the pockets of American citizens.
Speaker 4: And that was because Donald Trump was either ignoring the
Speaker 4: crisis and his administration and or they were trying to
Speaker 4: cover it up because they did not want during a
Speaker 4: political season for his legacy to be impacted by COVID.
Speaker 4: And so it's so much that can be said about that.
Speaker 4: But I guess we got to close the show.
Speaker 1: Gave you the PPP, but not.
Speaker 2: You got the pop. That's dope. That was a good one.
Speaker 2: But that brings me to my I don't get it.
Speaker 1: What don't you get mister Linnon?
Speaker 2: I want to know what is the infatuation that the
Speaker 2: world has with who someone's fucking.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Why do you care about who somebody else is having
Speaker 3: sex with. What is the infatuation with other people in
Speaker 3: their sex life? That this world like everywhere you go,
Speaker 3: somebody's telling you, oh, such and such as having sex,
Speaker 3: and this person's like, why do people kids so much?
Speaker 4: Most people who are highly successful and busy or trying
Speaker 4: to be successful don't. They might hear about it in
Speaker 4: passing and laugh about it and maybe share mean with
Speaker 4: a friend, but they don't. They don't really care that much.
Speaker 4: So it's just certain types of people that are so
Speaker 4: into other people's lives.
Speaker 1: And I don't really know because it isn't.
Speaker 4: Really the way that I see it in life is
Speaker 4: that everybody, unless you are abstinent, is sleeping with somebody
Speaker 4: hopefully are engaged in consensual behavior.
Speaker 1: Let's please God, please.
Speaker 4: But I don't know why people care so much. I
Speaker 4: don't know why people care so much about who's gay.
Speaker 4: It's like the most it's just so I don't I
Speaker 4: wouldn't at first of all, I don't believe in outing
Speaker 4: people or trying to force people to say who they
Speaker 4: sleep with.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 4: I would like to know that if you are in
Speaker 4: a relationship with me, you know, or with a person,
Speaker 4: that you do your due diligence to let them know
Speaker 4: about your lifestyle choices.
Speaker 1: But I don't know why it's such a big deal.
Speaker 1: So and so it's gay and such and such, like
Speaker 1: why why do you want to out people in that
Speaker 1: I never I'm never understood that.
Speaker 2: I think. I think in that term, it's that people
Speaker 2: not being honest. Well, nobody else but you.
Speaker 3: The thing is, if you, if you're around, even if you,
Speaker 3: if you're not in a sexual relationship with somebody, and
Speaker 3: you in somebody's face commonly, and that's something that people
Speaker 3: should want to know.
Speaker 1: No, it's not, it is.
Speaker 4: I don't agree with that. If first of all it
Speaker 4: is it is sexist. Let me tell you why it's sexist.
Speaker 4: And in this case, I'm gonna say it's sexist for
Speaker 4: men against men, because most men do not care who
Speaker 4: a woman sleeps with. In a group of friends, a
Speaker 4: group of friends, I'm hanging out with you, Janus Anastasia,
Speaker 4: I'll crewe everybody, and I sleep with women as a woman,
Speaker 4: and I'm telling you that nobody is going to.
Speaker 2: I would feel weird, like why would you worry about it?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 4: So now let me turn that I don't get it
Speaker 4: back on you. Why are you infatuated with who I'm
Speaker 4: noting with?
Speaker 1: That's my business. It like Tabitha Brown said, that's my business.
Speaker 2: If we close proximity, we call ourselves friends.
Speaker 1: So I gotta tell you what if you got.
Speaker 2: To tell me? But I'm just thinking if you didn't
Speaker 2: tell me, then that would make me wonder why.
Speaker 4: Maybe because I'm a private person and I just don't
Speaker 4: want anybody to know what I do. But at that point,
Speaker 4: then the only time that I need friendship the only No,
Speaker 4: it's not, because friendship doesn't mean that you have to
Speaker 4: know every single thing about me. The only time that
Speaker 4: I need to tell you that I'm sleeping with anybody
Speaker 4: or whatever, whatever my situation, My preferences are my. Whatever
Speaker 4: it is is if now I'm about to sleep with you,
Speaker 4: but if long as you and I are not together,
Speaker 4: who I'm sleeping with should not be your concern.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it shouldn't. I hate what you're saying.
Speaker 4: I just think, and I think it's sexist towards men
Speaker 4: because what usually what generally happen is that men who
Speaker 4: are around other men feel that they should know that
Speaker 4: one of the guys is gay.
Speaker 2: Because what happens is.
Speaker 3: It's also because it's also perception right right, Because if
Speaker 3: I'm hanging with somebody that's gay and everybody else knows
Speaker 3: they're gay except me, then what happens is there can
Speaker 3: be some people can draw a conclusion about something that
Speaker 3: might not be there.
Speaker 4: Okay, so but what if the person doesn't talk to
Speaker 4: people period about what they do. They do their thing
Speaker 4: with whoever they people are, but they're not a person
Speaker 4: like most people around.
Speaker 3: Don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm saying people should until a person is actually sexual
Speaker 4: or in an intimate relationship with you, they should be
Speaker 4: able to.
Speaker 3: I think it's different from Yeah, I know it is.
Speaker 3: I think it's different for men. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's sexist. I just think there's a reality that's based
Speaker 3: on society, that reality that.
Speaker 2: We deal with right now.
Speaker 4: Answering your own question, well, the question you have asked
Speaker 4: and answer the question that society places different values.
Speaker 3: But on we are somebody else on the internet or celebrito,
Speaker 3: that's a different thing than somebody said it's that's inclosed
Speaker 3: to It's.
Speaker 4: The same mindset that people have decided that they have
Speaker 4: a right to know about someone's personal thing that they
Speaker 4: might want to keep to themselves, right that they shouldn't
Speaker 4: want to the only time you should want to know
Speaker 4: about somebody.
Speaker 2: I don't agree with that.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you it's different from it's different from men.
Speaker 3: If the reality that we live with in America is
Speaker 3: if a straight man hangs up with a gay man
Speaker 3: on a daily basis, nobody believes that they're not there's
Speaker 3: not something going on. That's just the reality. Unfortunately, that's
Speaker 3: just the fact. If you see a straight man hang
Speaker 3: out with a gay man.
Speaker 1: We don't use the term straight.
Speaker 3: Okay, if you see a heterosexual man hang out with
Speaker 3: a gay man, then there's an assumption that there's some
Speaker 3: level of a relationship there.
Speaker 2: That's just the reality that we deal with.
Speaker 3: So standing in that reality, I think a man who
Speaker 3: understands that he's gay and likes man should give you
Speaker 3: the opportunity or.
Speaker 2: To know that.
Speaker 4: I just all I would say to the is sexist brothers.
Speaker 4: Fight for yourselves. Don't let these people make y'all feel
Speaker 4: like y'all got to tell people stuff. But don't be
Speaker 4: out here having sex with people and not telling people.
Speaker 1: Who you are and.
Speaker 4: What you are, what your preferences are. Because that ship
Speaker 4: is dangerous. So that's that's it. So you answered your
Speaker 4: own question.
Speaker 2: I don't think I answered. I answered another question. It
Speaker 2: wasn't my own question.
Speaker 6: No you did.
Speaker 4: That's why people are infatuated, because people place value on
Speaker 4: certain things.
Speaker 1: They want to know who you sleep with, They want
Speaker 1: to know how much money you are.
Speaker 2: I guess if you say so. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: the same thing.
Speaker 3: But another episode in the books, shout out to Dennis
Speaker 3: mckezey brother OSG. Make sure you follow him. He's doing
Speaker 3: great work. Invest in his organization.
Speaker 2: Do that. It's about kids, about and they're doing the work.
Speaker 3: They're empowering our community, our educators who don't get the
Speaker 3: light and aren't even paid the way they should. But
Speaker 3: he has a group of incredible educators and his program
Speaker 3: is amazing.
Speaker 2: So shout out to him. And another episode down the books.
Speaker 3: You know t M I the number one podcast in
Speaker 3: the world to beget my songs, information, truth, motivation and inspiration.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna always be right ms Mathvey's not gonna
Speaker 3: always be wrong, but we will both always and I
Speaker 3: mean always, be authentic. Check out the video version of
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Speaker 1: Every single Wednesday on Iwoman dot TV.