Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cichher. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Ramsey's Jah.
Speaker 2: I go by the name q Ward, except sometimes when
Speaker 2: Ramses and my mom get emotional, they call my full
Speaker 2: name and over pronounced. Oh that comes after the tea,
Speaker 2: So it's Quinn con not Quentin, which a lot of
Speaker 2: people kind of default to.
Speaker 3: But we can talk about that later.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, back up in you one more time to
Speaker 1: make this happen. Stick around because we've got a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about today.
Speaker 3: Of course, a.
Speaker 1: Lot of things happening that are relevant to all of us,
Speaker 1: especially as black folks. Definitely going to talk about a
Speaker 1: few stories that were following up with. One of them
Speaker 1: is the black teenager who was in a hotel and
Speaker 1: this was a couple of years ago. There was a
Speaker 1: woman who was saying that he stole her cell phone
Speaker 1: and she's kind of assaulted the teenager, so we got
Speaker 1: to follow up for that story. We're also going to
Speaker 1: follow up with the story from Buffalo Buffalo, New York
Speaker 1: where an elderly man was put to the ground by
Speaker 1: the police. We're going to find out what's slaves with that,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about what it means to
Speaker 1: be Black and seek housing in this country a little
Speaker 1: later on in the show, So you definitely want to
Speaker 1: stick around for that one as well. I know, and
Speaker 1: I do want to say this right now, Patrick Leoya,
Speaker 1: there's a story there. It was killed by the police,
Speaker 1: shot in the back of the head. We are going
Speaker 1: to wait a little bit before we cover that story,
Speaker 1: but we acknowledge that that's something that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about, so just bear with us. We're not going
Speaker 1: to do that this week. We are going to follow
Speaker 1: up with that one very soon. But yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: to stick around for this show. We just need to
Speaker 1: kind of pace ourselves with certain things, and so this
Speaker 1: is what we're going to do. Now. We like to
Speaker 1: start things off around here on a positive note with
Speaker 1: the feature we call Ebony Excellence, and if you're ready
Speaker 1: for that, Q, let's jump into it, shall we We shall?
Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about a man named
Speaker 1: Christian Smalls. This comes from ABC News and I'll read it.
Speaker 1: Christian Smalls was fired from his Amazon warehouse job in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty after leading a protest over fears working conditions
Speaker 1: could lead to a coronavirus outbreak at the Staten Island
Speaker 1: New York facility. Now Smalls has a new job, president
Speaker 1: of the Amazon Labor Union. Smalls's Amazon story begins in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen when he says he helped open the New
Speaker 1: York warehouse while employed as a supervisor for the online retailer.
Speaker 1: That's when you founded the ALU, bringing together a scrappy
Speaker 1: group of former and current warehouse workers. It was that
Speaker 1: Staten Island group that made history on April first, after
Speaker 1: going head to head with Amazon in a union boat
Speaker 1: and winning. This marked the first successful US organizing effort
Speaker 1: in the retail giant's history. Now, for those that don't know,
Speaker 1: Amazon is famously anti union, And if you don't know, unions,
Speaker 1: for the most part, exist to protect the workers. It's
Speaker 1: basically a union of the workers and they use their
Speaker 1: collective bargaining power to convince the company to provide better
Speaker 1: working conditions or you know, higher pay, or you know
Speaker 1: things like this. You know, we're greater than the sum
Speaker 1: of our parts, and that's sort of the mentality behind
Speaker 1: a union. Well, this man, Christian Smalls, is a black man.
Speaker 1: I've seen his interviews. He wears a bandana sometimes he
Speaker 1: looks not too dissimilar from me. And from Q and
Speaker 1: he has taken on this huge retail giant and lobbied
Speaker 1: on behalf of the workers and one so far. And
Speaker 1: if that's not ebony excellence, I don't know what is.
Speaker 1: And so we will take this moment to shout out
Speaker 1: the man named Christian Smalls for riving out there in
Speaker 1: the corporate world.
Speaker 3: That's next level corporate bravery.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, yes, indeed.
Speaker 3: It doesn't go in your favor.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, like all that one. No, he's he's
Speaker 1: making it happen. So shout out to him. Now, we
Speaker 1: got some stories to follow up with. As I mentioned, Uh,
Speaker 1: there once was a teenager. We covered this story on
Speaker 1: the show Teenager who was accused by a white woman
Speaker 1: in a hotel lobby of stealing a cell phone. Right,
Speaker 1: and this was filmed and so we all saw it.
Speaker 1: We saw the the Karen esque breakdown in the hotel lobby.
Speaker 1: We discussed this sense of entitlement, this sense of uh,
Speaker 1: this perceived sense of authority over black and brown bodies
Speaker 1: and in black and brown agency that often comes from
Speaker 1: a Karen in the midst of her breakdown and other
Speaker 1: non melanated individuals as well. But you know, for that episode,
Speaker 1: we were talking about this and sort of what it
Speaker 1: feels like to be on the other end of that,
Speaker 1: because that's a tough thing to kind of navigate. You know,
Speaker 1: all the women in the movies are blonde haired, blue eyed.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone's coming to rescue or find a bad guy,
Speaker 1: you know, so we're taught that this is the this
Speaker 1: is this is the type of person that society loves
Speaker 1: the most, and it is definitely not us. So we
Speaker 1: have to kind of know where we stand in those
Speaker 1: type of situations, and therefore they can be very intimidating
Speaker 1: to be a black person being accused. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you did it or not, but being accused of
Speaker 1: violating to one degree or another a white woman.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: We love white women, We love all women here, and
Speaker 1: we're not trying to pick on anyone, but it is
Speaker 1: something that we have to be aware of. On another episode, Kean,
Speaker 1: I remember this, we talked about what it feels like
Speaker 1: to walk down the street at night in my own
Speaker 1: neighborhood and there might be a white woman out taking
Speaker 1: a walk at the same time, and I'll cross the
Speaker 1: street just to give her the whole side of the street,
Speaker 1: so she doesn't feel threatened, because if she feels threatened,
Speaker 1: there's a very real chance that I could be in
Speaker 1: danger just because she feels a certain type of way.
Speaker 1: So I'm saying this to establish exactly how we many
Speaker 1: of us, I should say, not not all of us,
Speaker 1: but exactly how many of us have come to deal
Speaker 1: with Karens. You know or would be Karens.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So let me bring you up to speed with this story.
Speaker 1: This comes from CNN. The California woman who falsely accused
Speaker 1: a black teenager of stealing her cell phone and then
Speaker 1: attacking him in a New York City hotel pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: to unlawful imprisonment in the second degree as a hate
Speaker 1: crime the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. And now in December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty Maya Poncetto was seen on video attacking a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old Kean Harold Junior, who was with his father,
Speaker 1: a musician, in the Arlow Hotel. Poncetto said she thought
Speaker 1: he had her phone, but investigators later determined he did not.
Speaker 1: Oh that was so satisfying. I remember that video of
Speaker 1: the incident quickly went viral, with many accusing Poncetto of
Speaker 1: racially profiling the team, an accusation that she has denied.
Speaker 1: The incident also occurred as continued calls for racial justice
Speaker 1: and police reform were the highest they'd been in years
Speaker 1: due to the deaths of black people like George Floyd
Speaker 1: and Breonna Taylor at the hands of law enforcement officials.
Speaker 1: Now here's the part that I think you need to
Speaker 1: hear about, Q. The plea deal requires Poncetto, who's twenty
Speaker 1: three years old, to follow the probation terms for a
Speaker 1: separate case in California, attend counseling, and avoid further criminal incidents.
Speaker 1: If she doesn't comply, Ponsetto could go to prison for
Speaker 1: up to four years, prosecutor said. But if she successfully
Speaker 1: follows those terms, she can replead the felony charge to
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor charge of aggravated harassment in the second degree.
Speaker 1: Now around here we call that a slap on the wrist, right,
Speaker 1: and around here we like to reframe the conversation or
Speaker 1: the scenario around Okay, what if the perpetrator was black
Speaker 1: and the victim was white. Now with that said, Q,
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to jump in and tell us
Speaker 1: what we already know you're gonna say.
Speaker 3: So, having done no research at all, I cannot say
Speaker 3: straight faced and with my chest puffed out that if
Speaker 3: she were say Ramses, that the plea deal would not
Speaker 3: have would not only have not been offered, definitely wouldn't
Speaker 3: have included a portion of the plea where if you
Speaker 3: comply with the probation terms from another case, you can
Speaker 3: replead this one down to it. Okay, I'll stop and
Speaker 3: see how confusing that got real fast. Our plea deals
Speaker 3: are often ah almost legal entrapment. Right. I need you
Speaker 3: to agree that you did this crime that you're saying
Speaker 3: you didn't do, and we'll make sure you don't go
Speaker 3: to prison for as long cool cool not say you
Speaker 3: did this, and then we're going to give you the
Speaker 3: charges from this other thing that you also did. And
Speaker 3: if very thing is cool in a little bit of time,
Speaker 3: we're just like you ain't do either one of them.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about that? Rams?
Speaker 1: Now? Watch this? That kind of reminds me a bit
Speaker 1: of the sentence handed down to Kim Potter. For those
Speaker 1: that don't know or don't remember, Kim Potter is the
Speaker 1: officer former officer I should say, who was convicted to
Speaker 1: be fair for killing Daunte Wright. We saw the video.
Speaker 1: She was the officer that pulled out her gun, you know, taser, taser, taser,
Speaker 1: and then ended Dante Wright's life. And you know, Q
Speaker 1: makes an excellent point. You know, if you listening to
Speaker 1: us today, or me talking into this microphone, or anyone
Speaker 1: we know accidentally takes someone's life, there is a degree
Speaker 1: of accountability that comes into question immediately. But oftentimes with
Speaker 1: police officers, you know, their the leniency is it's asinine,
Speaker 1: and it's so unfair and it's so hurtful. So we
Speaker 1: mentioned last week that I went through and I tried
Speaker 1: to compile a list of officers who had been convicted
Speaker 1: of an on duty killing going all the way back
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty five. And I believe that I know
Speaker 1: for a fact, we came up with less than one hundred.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to say that on one list,
Speaker 1: we found thirty eight and that was an exhaustive list.
Speaker 1: On another list, we found somewhere in the neighborhood of
Speaker 1: maybe forty five.
Speaker 3: Time period for.
Speaker 1: That one of them was from nineteen sixty five to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and so and then bear in mind
Speaker 1: that certainly in recent years, the number of police shootings
Speaker 1: has hovered at around one thousand per year. So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about thirty to we'll call it fifty if
Speaker 1: I'm being generous, convictions for on duty killings of police officers.
Speaker 1: And in total of all the years, you know that
Speaker 1: it's we're thirty to fifty somewhere in there, if I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: But last year there was I think eleven hundred, year
Speaker 1: before that, nine eighty, you know, and so forth and
Speaker 1: so on. Going all the way back, you begin to
Speaker 1: see very easily that that number easily gets into the
Speaker 1: five digits, maybe even into six digits of police killing.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about less than one hundred of people convicted.
Speaker 1: This means that every single human being that police execute
Speaker 1: is that's done justifiably. And if that is the case,
Speaker 1: then we really need to rethink what policing means, and
Speaker 1: what public safety means, and what criminal justice means, because
Speaker 1: that margin of error is entirely unacceptable. I'm saying that because,
Speaker 1: as we know, the majority, or rather a significant amount
Speaker 1: more than what is a reflection of the population. So
Speaker 1: what am I trying to say comparatively speaking, it disproportionately
Speaker 1: affects black people, So a lot of those bodies are
Speaker 1: black and brown bodies. People just getting executed by the police. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a news story for us around here,
Speaker 1: but this might be something that's new for you. Now,
Speaker 1: I digress. Following up with this story, I wish that
Speaker 1: there was a little bit more to it than just
Speaker 1: to slap on the wrist and her admitting that it
Speaker 1: was a hate crime. Granted is documented publicly. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that as sort of the silver lining with the Kim
Speaker 1: Potter case. You know, it's documented that she was wrong,
Speaker 1: but in terms of actual punishment or justice or whatever,
Speaker 1: it feels very hollow.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, you, I mean, before I could even interject,
Speaker 3: you said it, it feels completely hollow, especially because there's
Speaker 3: this kicker there for her. Right. If you can just
Speaker 3: behave for a little while, we'll even pretend like this,
Speaker 3: this thing that you're pleading guilty to didn't happen, right,
Speaker 3: and we'll downgrade it to some misdemeanor that will never
Speaker 3: come up again. Essentially, you know, it's not like we
Speaker 3: made a celebrity of her, or if she walked past
Speaker 3: us to this. She came in the studio and interviewed
Speaker 3: under a different name, like for some other topic that
Speaker 3: she was supporting our show. We'd interview the lady, have
Speaker 3: a whole show, probably give her a hug, you know,
Speaker 3: take her around the corner to the spot where I
Speaker 3: get my cucumber lemonades, and have no idea who she
Speaker 3: was es. So she kind of lived in the anonymity
Speaker 3: of that and have her record essentially as sponged of
Speaker 3: it as well. It just seems really, really unfair.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Now let's turn it up a bit more. We
Speaker 1: saw a video a couple of years ago. Two Buffalo
Speaker 1: police officers pushed an elderly man down. He hit his head,
Speaker 1: hit the sidewalk, and he started bleeding out of his ear.
Speaker 1: We saw this on video too, right, this is a
Speaker 1: crazy thing about these things. We see them happening. How
Speaker 1: can you say that it's not what it is when
Speaker 1: we see it, you know, like.
Speaker 3: When they're wearing a badge, it's not what we saw.
Speaker 1: You didn't see that.
Speaker 3: I'll continue called the Jedi mind trick. I think.
Speaker 1: That must only work.
Speaker 3: Oh, you pushed that man down, sirs, Well you didn't, Okay,
Speaker 3: maybe I didn't.
Speaker 1: Well, this story comes from the New York Times and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it. So and the author here is
Speaker 1: Eduardo Medina. This came out April eleven, and it's entitled
Speaker 1: the officers cleared of wrongdoing all Right. Two Buffalo police
Speaker 1: officers who shoved a seventy five year old man to
Speaker 1: the brown during a protest in twenty twenty have been
Speaker 1: cleared by an arbitrator who said the use of force
Speaker 1: was quote absolutely legitimate, legitimate end quote, because the man
Speaker 1: who was hospitalized with the head injury was quote not
Speaker 1: an innocent bystander end quote. The forty one page ruling
Speaker 1: from the arbitrator, Jeffrey Shellick or Celchik Sorry, was issued
Speaker 1: on Friday. It came nearly two years after a widely
Speaker 1: viewed video taken by WBFO local radio station, showed the
Speaker 1: two officers, Robert McCabe and Aaron Turgalski, shoving the man,
Speaker 1: Martin Gugino, who was attending a protest in June twenty
Speaker 1: twenty after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The video,
Speaker 1: which fueled outrage during the summer of unrest over police violence,
Speaker 1: shows mister Gugino stagger backwards and land hard on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk with blood immediately leaking from behind his right ear.
Speaker 1: His lawyer, Melissa d. Weisserath, said he was hospitalized for
Speaker 1: about a month and suffered a fractured skull, a brain injury,
Speaker 1: and hearing loss. Mister Seltchik based his findings on a
Speaker 1: three day hearing in November. Mister Gugino, he wrote, did
Speaker 1: not respond to a subpoena to appear at the hearing,
Speaker 1: and quote in effect refused to testify end quote on
Speaker 1: his own behalf all right, here we go.
Speaker 3: Ready, No, I'm not ready because I'm ringing along with you,
Speaker 3: and there's so much stuff I want to call bs
Speaker 3: on already.
Speaker 1: Hold on, let me get to it.
Speaker 3: Just get worse, sir.
Speaker 1: Well listen, buckle up, because here we go. The officers
Speaker 1: had not violated the department's guidelines, mister Selchik wrote, and
Speaker 1: there was no evidence that they quote had any other
Speaker 1: viable options other than to move Gugino out of the
Speaker 1: way of their forward movement and quote Mister Gugino, he added,
Speaker 1: had not complied with in order to quote move back
Speaker 1: and was making odd physical gestures within a foot end
Speaker 1: quote of the officers.
Speaker 3: So that.
Speaker 1: Effectually is how you're able to say you didn't see
Speaker 1: what you saw on video, because you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of us saw the video, and if you haven't, it's
Speaker 1: certainly something that you can find online. You know, there
Speaker 1: is certainly a trigger warning if you're sensitive to violence
Speaker 1: against humans, violence against older people, or you just have
Speaker 1: a beating heart and a degree of empathy. It's tough
Speaker 1: to watch, but you know, he there was nothing aggressive.
Speaker 1: There was you know what I mean. Was the only
Speaker 1: thing aggressive in the video was the officers. It was
Speaker 1: the only thing. They're militarizers, wearing uniforms, they have weapons,
Speaker 1: they have batons, they have shields, and all dressed in black.
Speaker 1: There's a line of a marching and a man standing
Speaker 1: there with his phone and granted he's in front of them,
Speaker 1: and it looks like he's trying to either ask a
Speaker 1: question or you know, you know, whatever whatever he's trying
Speaker 1: to do, but it's not aggressive at all. And then
Speaker 1: the guy just pushes him out of the way. He
Speaker 1: falls backwards and he hits his head and then blood
Speaker 1: comes out of his ear. It's so sad to watch.
Speaker 1: And then they're saying, no, that's that's totally fine. It's
Speaker 1: his fault and we see with our own eyes and
Speaker 1: they're able to determine that. All right, go ahead, cue,
Speaker 1: what are you go?
Speaker 3: It's odd how they I'm guessing, how the journalist has
Speaker 3: to report about this because they say that his lawyers
Speaker 3: says he was hospitalized, Like that's not extremely easy to prove.
Speaker 3: Like they're saying that, like that's his lawyer's opinion that
Speaker 3: his soul was fractured and he had a brain injury.
Speaker 3: Like I'm sure there's medical documents that prove these things
Speaker 3: to be true. So it's intentional that they say it
Speaker 3: like it's his lawyer's opinion that these things happened. And
Speaker 3: I thought it very simultaneously maddening and hilarious that part
Speaker 3: of the justification was and I quote, and I'm laughing
Speaker 3: because I'm so angry. I would rather laugh than punch
Speaker 3: through my computer screen. He made odd physical gestures within
Speaker 3: a foot of the officers, And if you rewatch the video,
Speaker 3: you'll find yourself trying to figure out what in this
Speaker 3: case is being classified as an odd physical gesture. I
Speaker 3: am a single, singular person being approached by an army
Speaker 3: of officers that are in essence about to assault me.
Speaker 3: But I'm the one being accused of doing something odd,
Speaker 3: Like I said, Man, it's like the Jedi mind trick, like, hey,
Speaker 3: you guys just shove that.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: No, we didn't. Maybe you didn't.
Speaker 1: You know. It's weird because there seems to be especially
Speaker 1: on the right, that overly patriotic you know, support the troops,
Speaker 1: you know, support our first line defenders. Then blue line
Speaker 1: flagsticker wearing people that, you know, it's like they don't
Speaker 1: realize that they're they could be classified as boot lickers. Now,
Speaker 1: far be it for me to knock anyone who's supporting
Speaker 1: the police, supporting the troops, you know, anything like that.
Speaker 1: That's not my way. You know, everybody you know does
Speaker 1: what they do. In fact, I'm supportive of police. I
Speaker 1: just support the police in a very different way. I
Speaker 1: support them by charging them with doing better do it
Speaker 1: all the time. I think that we all can be better.
Speaker 1: Ramses can be better. I can be a better father,
Speaker 1: can be a better friend, I can be a better brother,
Speaker 1: you know, And I charge everyone around me with the same,
Speaker 1: especially when I pay all this money in taxes, I
Speaker 1: kind of you know, it goes to the police force.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's just interesting how folks don't realize, well,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot the police really do a lot
Speaker 1: more harm in black and brown communities than they do
Speaker 1: in other communities, and so maybe folks can justify that. Now,
Speaker 1: I do want to follow up with one more story
Speaker 1: before we move on. This one came from Sean King.
Speaker 1: This is compliments of Qus shared the video with me.
Speaker 1: There was a video that we saw on Instagram of
Speaker 1: police officers opening the doors to their vehicles as they
Speaker 1: were interacting with the suspect or whatever the case is.
Speaker 1: They were blasting Disney music very loudly, and the reason
Speaker 1: for that was so that the Disney music would trigger
Speaker 1: a copyright violation on social media, which would prevent the
Speaker 1: videos that people who are the onlookers and recording on
Speaker 1: their phones making sure to keep the police honest, making
Speaker 1: sure that those videos would not go viral. This was
Speaker 1: the point, and they admitted it in the videos. It's
Speaker 1: interesting now. We did an episode, you know a while back,
Speaker 1: where we talked about how police will move their vehicle
Speaker 1: in the line of sight of folks filming police encounters,
Speaker 1: or will physically stand put place their bodies in the
Speaker 1: way of folks filming the interaction. And they'll say, you know,
Speaker 1: I need this space to conduct my investigation or you
Speaker 1: know whatever. But we can see that they're physically doing
Speaker 1: that to prevent someone from getting a good angle of
Speaker 1: the engaging officers interaction with a suspect, you know, And
Speaker 1: those things also feel very unfair, and it feels like
Speaker 1: very sinister, underhanded. You know, why blast Disney music in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night in a neighborhood when everyone's sleeping.
Speaker 1: They all came out. It was like, yo, can you
Speaker 1: turn your music down? If you're not hiding anything. I
Speaker 1: would it's we are trying to keep everyone honest. And
Speaker 1: it's never lost on us that the police are the
Speaker 1: ones with the guns. All of them have guns. We
Speaker 1: have cell phones. You win, right, But this posturing and
Speaker 1: this you want to talk about odd movements, odd physical gestures,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Those are the sorts of
Speaker 1: things I'm gonna put my body in the line of
Speaker 1: the camera and so forth. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: follow up with that one as well. So yeah, right,
Speaker 1: there are a few follow up stories for us, just
Speaker 1: to bring everyone up to speed.
Speaker 3: They don't even try to pretend, right
Speaker 1: But this is good enough time for us to take
Speaker 1: a pause for the cause, so stick around with coming
Speaker 1: back with more civic sidher right after this