Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2: Everybody is Steve j Envy, Charlamagne, the Goud We are
Speaker 2: the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building.
Speaker 2: In the front of the room, we have Miss Erica Ford.
Speaker 3: Welcome Speeds.
Speaker 4: How are you feeling that paper Planes had is very fresh?
Speaker 3: Yes, and hopefully you got to get choice the hat.
Speaker 2: Let's give them the right, she says, she sent it
Speaker 2: up here, but we just haven't received it yet or
Speaker 2: we checked the mail.
Speaker 1: Either the custom Life Camp hats.
Speaker 3: Paper Planes Life Camp. Great.
Speaker 5: This is a process coming together with pieces of lifestyle,
Speaker 5: you know, so that we can help elevate and change lives.
Speaker 6: I love that now.
Speaker 2: If you don't know, Erica Ford is doing something very
Speaker 2: specialist weekend at not met Life stated at.
Speaker 6: Yank Shastafield.
Speaker 1: Stum.
Speaker 2: I was used to call Shastadium a city field. I've
Speaker 2: seen you practicing. Because you're throwing out the first pitch,
Speaker 2: you ain't look too good. But I know y'all seen
Speaker 2: you practice.
Speaker 1: You just got to do better than Steven. You gotta
Speaker 1: do better than Steven.
Speaker 5: Yes, I will I will represent, I will represent. I've
Speaker 5: been practicing. I'm gonna get it to the plate. And
Speaker 5: Emery from Paper Planes is a catcher, and so I'm
Speaker 5: the picture. He's a catcher, and we'll bring it together,
Speaker 5: this movement so that we can help change more young
Speaker 5: people's lives.
Speaker 1: Dope. So what is party? We can't play.
Speaker 5: It's coming out tomorrow to the Mets game and not
Speaker 5: only enjoying the fun and helping to build this move
Speaker 5: because a lot of times people look at joining movements
Speaker 5: and peace as corny, and I don't want to do that.
Speaker 5: That's not for me, that's not them people over there
Speaker 5: to preachy people, right, and so we want to show
Speaker 5: them you could have fun, you could be fly, you
Speaker 5: could be part of of doing something positive and having
Speaker 5: fun and all of that at the same time. And
Speaker 5: so we're telling people to come out. We're having DJ Booth,
Speaker 5: Breezy Lynn and a lot of other folks are coming
Speaker 5: out and participate in the tailgate party in the parking
Speaker 5: lot of City Field, and then I'm throwing out the
Speaker 5: first pitch at six o'clock and then we'll be there
Speaker 5: for the game. But it's launching a whole movement, you know,
Speaker 5: bringing together those two slogans visions missions of greatness as
Speaker 5: a process and pieces of lifestyle.
Speaker 1: How do you connect with rock and em So.
Speaker 5: We've been working with Shaka. We worked with Shaka years
Speaker 5: then connected from Shaka this young man named Teddy and
Speaker 5: the fan fam group that they have, they do our
Speaker 5: college tours, so they do scholarships for our kids.
Speaker 3: And we've been working together.
Speaker 5: Teddy came and threw the hat on my tables, like
Speaker 5: you like this, and I was like, get them out.
Speaker 3: Of here, you know, and the rest is history.
Speaker 5: It just brought it together, and it's it's doing the work,
Speaker 5: you know, when you're consistently out there doing the work.
Speaker 5: Then I remember I said to Shaka years ago, right
Speaker 5: when I was just arrogant, right, like why.
Speaker 7: Can't jay Z support me? Why can't jay Z's brought
Speaker 7: me right? And she was like, do your work right,
Speaker 7: and when you do your work then things align with you.
Speaker 7: But don't beg for some to support you. And I
Speaker 7: just kept doing my.
Speaker 1: Work at Chaco. Go always give it to your screen. Shaka.
Speaker 1: I love Shaka so much, man, I do too.
Speaker 2: Now you've been doing this for such a long time, right,
Speaker 2: somebody posted a picture.
Speaker 6: Of me and you, I mean back in Queens this
Speaker 6: was a long time ago.
Speaker 2: I mean, you were doing the work for the long
Speaker 2: time and you decided to slow down a little bit.
Speaker 2: And what does slow down mean for you? Because there's
Speaker 2: no slowdown for you. So what does that mean for
Speaker 2: Erica Ford?
Speaker 5: So I want to go back to why I had
Speaker 5: to slow down, right, And a lot of times when
Speaker 5: we run to the fire, run to the trauma, it
Speaker 5: depletes us, right, And so I got sick, like I
Speaker 5: would be in at night choking, trying to breathe, and
Speaker 5: my whole nervous system was depleted, and so I had
Speaker 5: to like physically stop And so I physically stopped doing
Speaker 5: nothing for three months, right. And so now I'm coming
Speaker 5: back just as the CEO. I will not be running
Speaker 5: the day to day operation of Life Camp. I won't
Speaker 5: be out there running and you know, fighting with the
Speaker 5: police and interrupting shit and taking guns out of people's hands,
Speaker 5: none of that stuff, no more, but at an elevated
Speaker 5: place of showing up at events and organizing raising money
Speaker 5: for Life Camp and doing teaching, teaching, teaching, because I've
Speaker 5: learned a lot in these thirty years and I want
Speaker 5: to teach and get back to young people who are
Speaker 5: stepping into this field.
Speaker 4: You know, it's scary about that though. They always say
Speaker 4: older people for counsel, young people for war. But the
Speaker 4: problem is a lot of people in this generation they're
Speaker 4: not ready for war. Right, you still built for it,
Speaker 4: like you've done, fought wars, You've been in wards, You're
Speaker 4: still ready to fight.
Speaker 1: Now, who are you going to pass the torch to.
Speaker 3: It's just so funny that this young lady who came
Speaker 3: with me to Sniffany.
Speaker 5: Lamella is actually the INTRAM executive director and who I'll
Speaker 5: be passing the torch too if she passes that process.
Speaker 5: But we have a group of good young people who
Speaker 5: are ready, and we have a training academy that we
Speaker 5: launched with the University of Chicago two weeks ago where
Speaker 5: we're actually training folks from around the United States to
Speaker 5: do this work. So, as you know, the last time
Speaker 5: I was here, we talked about Buiden bringing down money,
Speaker 5: and so some of this money that has been brought
Speaker 5: down is to do the training to prepare people to
Speaker 5: do this work effectively and efficiently, and so that's what
Speaker 5: we've been doing. I'm part of a national group called
Speaker 5: the Black and Brown Peace Coalition, and from that work.
Speaker 5: We've opened up this training academy and the first cohort
Speaker 5: has been launched and it's a six months program and
Speaker 5: so hopefully from not hopefully from this training, they will
Speaker 5: learn how to effectively lead and do this work on
Speaker 5: the front line.
Speaker 4: You was just at the White House, right were you
Speaker 4: there when Cuavo was something?
Speaker 5: I wasn't there for when Quavo was there, but I
Speaker 5: was there when we opened up the off White House
Speaker 5: Office of Gun Violence Prevention. So last Friday, the White
Speaker 5: House launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention,
Speaker 5: first ever, and this will allow real support to come
Speaker 5: to the ground continually for the work that we're doing.
Speaker 5: My good ment son, I call him my son. Greg
Speaker 5: Jackson got one of the jobs as a deputy director
Speaker 5: and another young man, Robert.
Speaker 3: Got the other job.
Speaker 5: And so they did a deputy directors and a lady
Speaker 5: named Stephanie is the director. Under the leadership of Kamala Harris,
Speaker 5: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: The White House been keeping promises because I know they
Speaker 4: pledged some money.
Speaker 1: They did, did they did?
Speaker 3: They did?
Speaker 5: They have been keeping their promises. The Republicans have been
Speaker 5: blocking as much as they can, but That's why President
Speaker 5: Biden has doing executive orders now to just override a
Speaker 5: lot of that stuff. And so they have been as
Speaker 5: much as they can putting down funding, changing where money
Speaker 5: used to go to other places so that it can
Speaker 5: hit the ground of CBR workers across the nation. And
Speaker 5: so they have been in that lane put the most
Speaker 5: money in this work.
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask with New York, right, you know,
Speaker 2: Charlamagne and myself talk about New York and how much
Speaker 2: has changed?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: How much we see and hear more and more violence,
Speaker 2: whether it's you know, in the subway, or it's shooting
Speaker 2: or its mental illness. Since the new mayor has come in,
Speaker 2: has it been more, has it been worse? Has he
Speaker 2: been more helpful? What have we seen because on the
Speaker 2: outside and even you know, it doesn't look any better
Speaker 2: at all, and even reading the paper every day and
Speaker 2: just hearing the stories, it just seems like it's getting worse.
Speaker 5: So it is in the area, and so it's it's
Speaker 5: a it's a it's a multi prong question. Right in
Speaker 5: particular areas it's getting better, right the areas in which
Speaker 5: we're are, you know, our collective New York City Crisis
Speaker 5: Management system is doing the work. It's getting better as
Speaker 5: it relates to gun violence. Gun violence is down, but
Speaker 5: now as we see around the city, there's different kind
Speaker 5: of crimes. Right there's people going in looting stores and
Speaker 5: you know, robbing people and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And so as we continue.
Speaker 5: To grow the work that we're doing, and it's we
Speaker 5: have a problem in New York City. There's been an
Speaker 5: influx folks coming into the New York and it and
Speaker 5: they're not being able to be placed in proper.
Speaker 3: Homes and have the ability to live. And so what
Speaker 3: are they going to do?
Speaker 5: Right, They're going to come into the community and try
Speaker 5: to live the best way they know how, and so
Speaker 5: we can't have that, you know. And so I know
Speaker 5: with our team, we work to make sure that that
Speaker 5: pieces are lifestyle in the real sense. And so we
Speaker 5: have peacekeepers, we have our interrupters, we have our special
Speaker 5: Ops team, we have brothers and sisters that we put
Speaker 5: throughout our target area and make sure that those things
Speaker 5: don't happen. And so hopefully it'll continue to grow and
Speaker 5: hire new people to do this type of work without
Speaker 5: the spork.
Speaker 4: I feel like the solutions have always been there right
Speaker 4: way before the migrants came, but you're not even taking
Speaker 4: care of the people who are here and implementing those
Speaker 4: solutions with them, So of course you're not gonna be
Speaker 4: able to take care of migrants either.
Speaker 3: That's what he said.
Speaker 4: That what's the cannabis injunction that's going on?
Speaker 5: So rich white folks who have these big MSOs, multi
Speaker 5: state operations basically put a lawsuit in using the veterans.
Speaker 5: They did many different lawsuits on this last one. They
Speaker 5: used the veterans, and they blocked the card holders, which
Speaker 5: is the brothers and sisters who got falsely arrested for
Speaker 5: selling cannabis back in the day. And so they were
Speaker 5: allocated license or organizations like ours who work with those individuals,
Speaker 5: and everybody was given license, and they put an injunction
Speaker 5: in and it caused to stop the freeze of our
Speaker 5: ability to do anything, and so we couldn't open up,
Speaker 5: we couldn't move forward in our process to you know,
Speaker 5: get the full license, because it's actually in order to
Speaker 5: get the full license, there's things you gotta do. So
Speaker 5: we weren't able to finish the process October fourth. It's
Speaker 5: all not but what they wanted to do when they
Speaker 5: were successful at doing was slowing the process down so
Speaker 5: that there's a few amount of people who can come
Speaker 5: into the game before they come into the game. And
Speaker 5: so now on October fourth, it's open to everybody. Anybody
Speaker 5: could apply, right, And so it's really unfair because you
Speaker 5: already had a head start. That's like we in a marathon.
Speaker 5: You twenty miles ahead, you gonna come back to trick
Speaker 5: the person behind you because they catching up, Like what like,
Speaker 5: are you that greedy?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 5: Ye know they So that's what's happening in the cannabis
Speaker 5: and so when we see them open, like we we
Speaker 5: should not support these stores, you know, we should not
Speaker 5: support these big MSOs that come into our community and
Speaker 5: try to act like they've down with us, you know,
Speaker 5: and have you come into their store to buy their product.
Speaker 5: But they're in the back room stopping people who really
Speaker 5: need equity in their community from getting access to equity.
Speaker 2: I always had a problem with that because you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of times what they would do is, like
Speaker 2: you said, they will find somebody that's wrongfully arrested, right,
Speaker 2: use them to get the license. Because most of the
Speaker 2: people that are wrongly accused or arrested nine times out
Speaker 2: of ten don't have the bank to actually support a dispensary, right,
Speaker 2: because it takes a lot of money architectural and everything.
Speaker 2: So what they usually do is they usually back them
Speaker 2: and then after two years you can get rid of them, right,
Speaker 2: And that's what's happening in a lot of these different states.
Speaker 2: And they have to find a way to fix that,
Speaker 2: and they also have to find a way to make
Speaker 2: it not that expensive because it sounds right, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: gonna give you the first and this, that and the other.
Speaker 2: But who has that amount of bank to actually be
Speaker 2: able to do the architecture, to do the research, to
Speaker 2: get the actual licenses and all that. It's almost it's
Speaker 2: almost impossible.
Speaker 5: So they gave the individual's two point five million dollars
Speaker 5: or an allocation of two point five million dollars and
Speaker 5: a space. But like you said, they'd a landlord, right,
Speaker 5: and so at any point in time they can't take
Speaker 5: the space, they just change their name put somebody else in. Right,
Speaker 5: if you can't pay up, right.
Speaker 2: And I think it's after three years or something like that,
Speaker 2: or they can say, okay, you can do it, but
Speaker 2: now you can't afford the growing equipment.
Speaker 6: You can't.
Speaker 5: You know, and so there needs to be real equity
Speaker 5: definitely in this and and cannabis as we see because
Speaker 5: when you talk about there's a bunch of illegal cannabis
Speaker 5: stores all over New York City, all over and they're
Speaker 5: not closing those, they're not putting up injunctions to stop those,
Speaker 5: they're not going out. But the brothers and sisters who
Speaker 5: you know, went through the process the legal way and
Speaker 5: you know, spend time in jail, lost money, lost family.
Speaker 3: Interrupted their whole process.
Speaker 5: You're going to come at them like it's just you know,
Speaker 5: it's a typical American way.
Speaker 3: Now we got to continue to change it.
Speaker 6: We got to talk about the Spirit Award.
Speaker 4: Now you're doing the Spirit Awards before the game, that's right,
Speaker 4: The Spirit Awards for people who don't know.
Speaker 5: So the Spirit Awards is awards that we're giving out
Speaker 5: at the Medic Game tomorrow to individuals organized stations that
Speaker 5: have really, you know, been a critical part in helping
Speaker 5: people achieve their goals and aspirational just bringing up peace,
Speaker 5: bringing up the vision and mission of what we stand
Speaker 5: for for life. Camp supported us for years and so
Speaker 5: we wanted to give it to the Breakfast Club because
Speaker 5: of the years that y'all have been supporting us.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: So and I got to ask, so I'm looking at
Speaker 2: the weather and says rain tomorrow.
Speaker 6: Is there a rain date?
Speaker 3: That's that mess?
Speaker 4: That's all right everything in New York.
Speaker 3: You know, hopefully it starts raining after later.
Speaker 2: Well, we appreciate you for always coming up, and you
Speaker 2: know you always have an open door policy here. Anytime
Speaker 2: you want to come by, you know the address to
Speaker 2: swing on by and whatever you need and as far
Speaker 2: as us to support you, whatever we can do, we
Speaker 2: are absolutely positiving.
Speaker 1: Any other thing we need to be looking out for
Speaker 1: from Life Camp.
Speaker 3: I'm sure we're doing a pop up next week.
Speaker 6: Come on help it if help we.
Speaker 5: Got ye yes, yes, yes, yes, we have our So
Speaker 5: it was our twentieth anniversary gala, but I got six
Speaker 5: so we had to postpone it. And so now it's
Speaker 5: our twenty third year anniversary gala we have coming up
Speaker 5: in April. But we have a lot This academy that
Speaker 5: we're doing and the office with the White House and
Speaker 5: helping make that a success is really where we're going
Speaker 5: to put our energy, as well as making sure that
Speaker 5: the one hundred and thirteen percent that we work in
Speaker 5: is the safest precinct in the United States of America.
Speaker 5: And we're going to use our precint to be the
Speaker 5: example of what we can do because, as you say,
Speaker 5: you're absolutely right when you invest in what works, When
Speaker 5: you invest in what works, then it's allowed to grow
Speaker 5: and enforce. And so the city would already be at
Speaker 5: a space where we you know, people coming in would
Speaker 5: fit into our structure, but the structure wasn't built, you know,
Speaker 5: And so we're going to build destruction in Southeast Queens.
Speaker 6: There we go.
Speaker 3: People want to volunteer. What is that? One hundred and thirteen.
Speaker 4: P thirteenth and life Caem's always taking donations, by the way, always.
Speaker 5: Take can donate the website Lifecampinc dot com. Always taking donation.
Speaker 5: Get your paper planes hat, it's live on the website.
Speaker 5: It's live on paper planes. Support the work, support the movement.
Speaker 5: Let's do this all.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, it's the Breakfast Club. Is Erika Ford?
Speaker 3: Wake that answer up?
Speaker 1: In the morning club? Breakfast Club