Speaker 1: I'm Tamika D.
Speaker 2: Mallory and it shit Boy my son in general.
Speaker 1: We are your host of TMI.
Speaker 2: Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, Motivation and Inspiration.
Speaker 1: New name, new energy. What's going on, my son, Lennon?
Speaker 2: I am blessed, black and Holly favored, Tamika D. Mallory.
Speaker 2: How you feeling today?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm still I'm on vacation. I'm only here
Speaker 4: because I love doing the show. You know, I think
Speaker 4: since we have rebranded, I love to street politicians too,
Speaker 4: And in fact, sometimes I wish we didn't change the name.
Speaker 4: But that's a whole, different, whole different conversation. Yes, but
Speaker 4: I understand why we needed to evolve. We've been doing
Speaker 4: that for a while and it certainly had put up
Speaker 4: some robot blocks for us. But I have had a
Speaker 4: renewed excitement around coming to this studio and beautiful studio
Speaker 4: and being here and filming the show, and so I
Speaker 4: don't mind doing that. But this is like the only thing.
Speaker 4: And I say that, and then I do sixteen different things.
Speaker 4: Go I say I'm only doing the show, and then
Speaker 4: I go to Newark to a city council hear and
Speaker 4: now I say I'm not going to do this, and
Speaker 4: then I got to go to somebody else's event and
Speaker 4: do this and that. But I'm really It's after Thanksgiving,
Speaker 4: and you know, I don't go back to work until
Speaker 4: second week of January. All these people calling me talking
Speaker 4: about are planning meeting and this and that, and I'm
Speaker 4: doing it.
Speaker 1: I don't know why though I don't want to. I'm
Speaker 1: on vacation.
Speaker 2: Listen, the work don't stop. Man. We had to give
Speaker 2: out turkeys, you know, Shout out to unfriendly Baptists. Shout
Speaker 2: out to Vanessa Gibson, Kevin Raley who donated turkeys, my
Speaker 2: little young Kings who was out there giving out. Shout
Speaker 2: out to Bronx logo. My boy was with me. We
Speaker 2: had to bust full of turkeys, hundreds of turkeys that
Speaker 2: we drove and we picked them up and we went
Speaker 2: to the store by ourselves. They picked up them turkeys. Man,
Speaker 2: So shout out to everybody. Miss Tea over there.
Speaker 4: Mil Walker, who's a hard legend, my friend Jessica Walker's father.
Speaker 4: He is I don't know exactly what his title is
Speaker 4: for the State Office building in Harlem, but he runs
Speaker 4: it and he's been there a long long.
Speaker 1: Long time.
Speaker 4: But I'm sure he has a title chairman or something
Speaker 4: like that. I don't know exactly what it is, but
Speaker 4: mister Walker is a Harlem legend, okay, and he made
Speaker 4: sure to send some turkeys.
Speaker 2: Definitely shut up to him.
Speaker 1: You got a long line of people out there.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that line was long, and it was over
Speaker 2: so fast that this probably was like the fastest. I
Speaker 2: think we were a lot more organized. Yeah, we and
Speaker 2: we had and it was a lot of more people
Speaker 2: that but it was more people than we've ever usually
Speaker 2: at the end of our turkey drives, like we'll be
Speaker 2: having about thirty more turkeys that we have to stop
Speaker 2: cars that's driving by me, like, hey, you want a turkey.
Speaker 2: They was on that line in about thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: They got their turkeys and that was.
Speaker 2: Gone, two three hundred turkeys going in a matter of
Speaker 2: thirty minutes. Yeah, So shout out to everybody came out.
Speaker 2: You know, there's something that I want to make sure
Speaker 2: that we do. I try to give back to the
Speaker 2: community because you know, it's hard, Like you said, people
Speaker 2: can't afford you know, eggs and milks, so I definitely
Speaker 2: can't afford turkey. So you know, we made sure that
Speaker 2: we do for the community.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: They always appreciative, you know. Once again, shout out to
Speaker 2: mis t Shout out to to my cousin James, you
Speaker 2: know over there at Fronty Baptist Daycare Center for always
Speaker 2: housing all of our events.
Speaker 4: When I was at the city council meeting for in Newark,
Speaker 4: they said I heard one or two people say, you know,
Speaker 4: sometimes I'll be thinking to myself, Wow, black people black,
Speaker 4: not even black people. I take that back. I always
Speaker 4: say black people. Everything for me is about black people.
Speaker 4: But older people can be so rude and crazy, like
Speaker 4: how the hell please don't let me be the real
Speaker 4: crazy person. I think about like how our mothers can
Speaker 4: be when they want to be, how they can be,
Speaker 4: you know, and imagine that with people being upset about
Speaker 4: their communities and dealing with trauma. That So it was
Speaker 4: like times ten in these in this council meeting with
Speaker 4: people saying all kinds of things, and I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 4: the young people that are watching the older people, you
Speaker 4: can't possibly expect that the younger people are going to
Speaker 4: act right when they go outside when we're inside of
Speaker 4: a actual courtroom. Really, I mean, well, I don't know
Speaker 4: if it's a courtroom, but the council, that the chambers,
Speaker 4: the chambers, and I mean Jesus, but one thing I
Speaker 4: can say is that they keep you honest. Dumb people
Speaker 4: over there, they keep you honest. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that I did, because what I tried to do,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of abrasive conversation and a lot
Speaker 4: it was whoa at times, because people feel they got
Speaker 4: their issues. They bringing it to the forefront. It's how
Speaker 4: I feel, right, And I said, okay, let me stop
Speaker 4: watching and and and you know, and being influenced if
Speaker 4: you will, or whatever triggered by the tone, and listen
Speaker 4: to exactly the words. And there was a woman who said,
Speaker 4: we don't we don't have jobs, or no, they don't
Speaker 4: have jobs. She didn't say we maybe she has a job.
Speaker 4: They don't have jobs. But they got a turkey. And
Speaker 4: I was like, damn, like for a person who gave
Speaker 4: out turkeys and who worked to get them to pick
Speaker 4: them up, to bring it to your community, to get
Speaker 4: boxes of turkeys. So because you want to help a family,
Speaker 4: that that's one thing that they don't have to deal
Speaker 4: with this holiday. They know for a fact that every
Speaker 4: year two days three two to three days before Thanksgiving,
Speaker 4: my son is going to give out turkeys. And that
Speaker 4: makes people be like, Okay, I don't got to worry
Speaker 4: about that. I can get all my other things, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, next year our plan is to have
Speaker 4: all the other things and the turkey. But a shout
Speaker 4: out to country cooking Auntie sad out in Philadelphia. I
Speaker 4: was looking at some of what she gave out and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, this is exactly what I want
Speaker 4: to do, you know, not no envy, but like learning
Speaker 4: from influenced by right, and you do something so good,
Speaker 4: and then to hear someone say, oh, I ain't got
Speaker 4: a job, but I got a turkey, it's so deflating
Speaker 4: because it's.
Speaker 2: Like, damn, we're just dealing with so much trauma.
Speaker 4: Right, Because then I was gonna say, but I feel
Speaker 4: you though. I feel you though, like you don't have
Speaker 4: a way to buy your own so you got to
Speaker 4: depend on somebody else to give you one, when really
Speaker 4: all you want is a job.
Speaker 2: Reality is the person that's giving you a turkey don't
Speaker 2: have a job for you, so they trying to compensate
Speaker 2: for whatever they can because they understand that you don't
Speaker 2: have a job or you don't have the resources, right,
Speaker 2: so you kind of villainizing the person that's trying to
Speaker 2: do the best that they can because they probably barely
Speaker 2: got a job for themselves. But they saying, I got
Speaker 2: a little more what somebody else does, so let me
Speaker 2: try to give back a little more. And we don't
Speaker 2: understand that we do more harm to our own people
Speaker 2: when we criticize them for trying to help than anything.
Speaker 4: But I guess I want to feel like and understand
Speaker 4: that it wasn't meant for the person who gave out
Speaker 4: the turkey, but it was really a message to the city,
Speaker 4: to the city council people like yeah, we've got all
Speaker 4: of these things, these trinkets being done, but the central
Speaker 4: issue is that so many of our people don't have jobs.
Speaker 4: And it's not a newer thing by itself because newerk
Speaker 4: you know, from what I can see and just you know,
Speaker 4: talking to Keisha Yuri, who is the Deputy mayor for
Speaker 4: Violence in Intervention, Uh she and I probably got that
Speaker 4: tight wrong, but she's definitely over the Office of Violence Prevention.
Speaker 4: There you go, she's a deputy mayor. She was really
Speaker 4: showing me like this is what we've done. These are
Speaker 4: the jobs, This is what we have been able to
Speaker 4: do for the community, for grassroots organizers around this issue
Speaker 4: of violence interruption, and we have the data to prove
Speaker 4: that it's working. It may not have solved the problem,
Speaker 4: but it's working, and it's working in a lot of
Speaker 4: places in Newark that used to be like popping all
Speaker 4: the time. You see the violence calming down, and so
Speaker 4: there are people who are really working hard. But it's
Speaker 4: not a Newark problem. People speaking in the New York
Speaker 4: City Council meeting are responding also to what's happening in Alabama,
Speaker 4: what's happening in Saint Louis, what's happening in DC and
Speaker 4: New York City across the bridge. Folks are just feeling suffocated,
Speaker 4: They're feeling strained, they're feeling suffocated. So you know, it's
Speaker 4: a good place to be because I always put myself
Speaker 4: in the middle of listening hearing from people who are frustrated,
Speaker 4: because that informs for me and reminds me, humbles me,
Speaker 4: to remind me that you're doing a little bit of stuff.
Speaker 4: You're doing a little bit of stuff, but you're not
Speaker 4: even comparing to what it really is. Going to take
Speaker 4: to actually heal our communities. So don't you get yourself
Speaker 4: all feeling big and high fluting because you gave out turkeys,
Speaker 4: or because you gave out whatever, because you did any
Speaker 4: None of it is the solve.
Speaker 1: We're just trying to do our part.
Speaker 2: It's hard. It's hard, but that's that's a that's a
Speaker 2: tough pill to swallow for a lot of people, right
Speaker 2: because we asked, we ask our people to give back,
Speaker 2: We ask our people to look out for the communities.
Speaker 2: And then when you feel like you're being villainized for helping, yeah,
Speaker 2: the average person doesn't know how to take that. Right.
Speaker 2: So when we look at we hear the quote unquote
Speaker 2: sellout and the people that left the community because they've
Speaker 2: been beat down by the people they're actually trying to help.
Speaker 2: And it's and it's it's trauma. And if you don't
Speaker 2: understand that, if you don't really understand where we're coming
Speaker 2: from and what goes on in our communities and how
Speaker 2: that trauma has affected them to where a lot of
Speaker 2: people hurt people actually hurt people. If you don't do
Speaker 2: that and you internalize that, then it sours you. You know,
Speaker 2: I feel like people man, fuck y'all can start. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be good me and I'm worried about me and
Speaker 2: my family because I hear that all the time, or
Speaker 2: I gotta worry about me and I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: have that mindster, and I refuse to have that mindster.
Speaker 2: So regardless of whatever it is, it's never always just positive.
Speaker 2: It's there's a lot of negative feedback that I get.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, for me, when
Speaker 2: when I see those people and they take them turkeys
Speaker 2: and they smile and they hug you and they say
Speaker 2: thank you, and they know Thanksgiving is coming in three
Speaker 2: or four days before we give out the turkeys, they
Speaker 2: called me, Hey, are you giving turkey this year?
Speaker 4: They call you about the community day doing?
Speaker 1: What's today doing?
Speaker 2: You know we're giving y'all giving out book bags, you
Speaker 2: got school supper. So I know that they there's a need,
Speaker 2: they appreciated, they need.
Speaker 4: And it's it's sometimes the squeak, the what you call
Speaker 4: the squeaky wheel gets the oil. So the person who
Speaker 4: might be speaking the loudest is making you feel like damn,
Speaker 4: like what you know, why did I do it? If
Speaker 4: it's gonna be met with this type of fear. But
Speaker 4: actually those people are in the small majority. And I
Speaker 4: think that's something for us to say to all those
Speaker 4: people who are out there trying to do things, not
Speaker 4: just in the holiday season, but all the time, to
Speaker 4: keep going, you know, keep going because the majority of
Speaker 4: people they appreciate it, they see it, they're thankful, and
Speaker 4: they speak highly of you when they're not around you.
Speaker 4: And I'm not talking about just you. I was thinking
Speaker 4: about you know, Maya Baraka, and I stick it to him.
Speaker 4: It's got to be hard because we know him. He's
Speaker 4: one of the most authentic elected officials in the entire country,
Speaker 4: like he truly is that not just him, but also
Speaker 4: may and Lamamba in Lord in miss Jackson, Mississippi. Also,
Speaker 4: I believe you know, Oh, I know who I want
Speaker 4: to say. I'm talking about black men right now, Wes Moore,
Speaker 4: the governor of Maryland. These are people that I know them,
Speaker 4: I know their hearts, and I could probably go on
Speaker 4: with a list. It ain't that long of a list,
Speaker 4: but it's a list of black elected officials are outgoing
Speaker 4: Congressman Jamal Bowman.
Speaker 1: There are people out there. I was trying.
Speaker 4: To I know, I know, I was trying to find
Speaker 4: choquait la Mamba, but got it?
Speaker 1: Does he know? He know he's my brother?
Speaker 4: These I have to wonder what these people feel when
Speaker 4: they go home and they sit with all of this stuff.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to be authentic. I'm out here giving of myself.
Speaker 4: I'm up against y'all don't even know, Like when I
Speaker 4: walk out of this room talking to you, and you
Speaker 4: done beat me down and told me I ain't shit
Speaker 4: and cussed me out and said you ain't got this,
Speaker 4: and you ain't got that, and this ain't right and
Speaker 4: that ain't right. With some of that stuff, I acknowledge,
Speaker 4: and I'm trying to figure out a way, But you
Speaker 4: don't even know that when I turn my back and
Speaker 4: I go this way, the people that I have to
Speaker 4: deal with to fight for the little bit of resources
Speaker 4: that I am.
Speaker 1: Able to bring to the community, it's no joke.
Speaker 4: Like it's hard and it's a struggle. And so I
Speaker 4: just I thought about may and Baraka while I sat there,
Speaker 4: and I said to myself.
Speaker 1: These people have every right to speak for their truth.
Speaker 1: They do. They have every right. They were talking to
Speaker 1: the council members.
Speaker 4: It's a little different, but nonetheless it has to be
Speaker 4: a heavy burden as a black person who's in a
Speaker 4: position of power, especially as an elected official, to hear
Speaker 4: people just beat you down and down and down and down,
Speaker 4: and you did everything wrong all the time. No matter what,
Speaker 4: we're still all human, you know. So anyway, shout out
Speaker 4: to May and Barroca because he is doing a really
Speaker 4: really good job of trying to turn a city from
Speaker 4: hell to getting closer to heaven. He definitely is doing that.
Speaker 4: Just real quick on my thought of the day, so
Speaker 4: last week, so this is really true in true black
Speaker 4: women mine in our business fashion. Something happened last week
Speaker 4: and I just watched to see what people would say,
Speaker 4: who was going to be out there. I saw a
Speaker 4: few people speak on this issue, but not many. Walmart
Speaker 4: decides to close its DEI initiatives down. They shut down
Speaker 4: all that stuff, and they closed some other department that
Speaker 4: has to do with black folks and LGBTQIA communities and
Speaker 4: so on and so forth. So basically all that stuff
Speaker 4: that they have been involved in for many years, they
Speaker 4: decided they're not doing those things anymore.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: First of all, I worked with and no Walmart, right,
Speaker 4: it was a struggle to get it in the first place.
Speaker 4: So just be clear that Walmart did not just pop
Speaker 4: up out of nowhere, like we love black people and
Speaker 4: we want to have initiatives for other marginalized communities. No, no, no,
Speaker 4: people fought Walmart and they had to open up their
Speaker 4: board of directors and their advisory board and other initiatives
Speaker 4: within the company because they were losing support from black people.
Speaker 4: Black people were speaking out against them, Black civil rights
Speaker 4: organizations were holding them accountable. I think, I think, and
Speaker 4: so if I'm wrong, I can be corrected. But I
Speaker 4: think they had made it to a list at some
Speaker 4: point of corporations that are not doing good in the diversity,
Speaker 4: equity and inclusion space, and so they were not. This
Speaker 4: stuff did not just happen because Walmart was just this
Speaker 4: good company. This happened over time, and since they've been
Speaker 4: in this position with DEI programs, there still has been problems.
Speaker 4: It's not like they just went and got straight and
Speaker 4: they were just these great stewards. No, they still still
Speaker 4: still had community issues. Just thinking about John Crawford, the
Speaker 4: man had a toy gun in Walmart and they shot
Speaker 4: him to death, right, And Walmart's response at first was
Speaker 4: kind of shaky. People had to like beyond them, and
Speaker 4: then their response got a little bit better. And I
Speaker 4: don't even know where it ended up, because you know,
Speaker 4: with these corporations, one day they'll be over here saying
Speaker 4: like were that this happened, and then the other day
Speaker 4: they won't change the policy. Though that actually created the
Speaker 4: situation in the first place. You got Walmart being a
Speaker 4: place that actually sells weapons. Right two people, you can
Speaker 4: go walk up in Walmart in certain places because of
Speaker 4: the state.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that this is Walmart's doing it.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, because of the laws of the state,
Speaker 4: you can walk in there and get a gun, and
Speaker 4: meanwhile the police are able to come in there and
Speaker 4: shoot a man down over a toy gun in the
Speaker 4: damn store. So don't let's not get it twisted. They're
Speaker 4: not closing down their DEI stuff now because of Trump.
Speaker 1: That is a lie. It is a lie.
Speaker 4: So anybody who's out there like, oh my god, Trump
Speaker 4: and so no, no, no, the environment calls for a moment.
Speaker 4: Prior to even Donald Trump and him now being elected.
Speaker 4: This has been going on since the summer of twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: when corporations acted like they were so excited to get it.
Speaker 1: Involved with DEI.
Speaker 4: By the next year, most of the commitments that they
Speaker 4: made they never actually.
Speaker 1: Followed through with.
Speaker 4: And so for me, I just a black woman mind
Speaker 4: of her business. I just sat there and looked at
Speaker 4: it and said to myself, so what you you posting it?
Speaker 4: You are in the comments section. I see all these
Speaker 4: people like, oh my god, you see you see Trump's coming.
Speaker 4: And now what you're gonna do about it? What you're
Speaker 4: gonna do about it?
Speaker 2: People ain't gonna do nothing but talk, because when you
Speaker 2: explain to them that these things were happening, that we
Speaker 2: already for saw all these things coming, forecasted exactly, we've
Speaker 2: seen it coming before it even happened. And we explained
Speaker 2: to them, look, they're setting the stage for this. What
Speaker 2: they did with the feels is fun, right. They told
Speaker 2: us that we can't even support our own people. So
Speaker 2: we if we can't support our own people, you know
Speaker 2: that they wasn't gonna support our people. So and then
Speaker 2: people say, and then the thing about it is that
Speaker 2: we like, once again we have our own people telling
Speaker 2: us that, well we don't need d I, you know,
Speaker 2: and we made d I into a cur But then.
Speaker 4: They say it, would it not be dee I When
Speaker 4: you say, what exactly is Kamala Harris or Joe Biden
Speaker 4: whomever gonna do for black people?
Speaker 1: Is that not de I?
Speaker 2: I think it's o d I think. But I'm just
Speaker 2: trying to tell you the narrative, right, the narrative is.
Speaker 2: And the thing is the others they never asked the
Speaker 2: other side what they're gonna do for black people because
Speaker 2: they don't care. You understand, they don't really want they
Speaker 2: You are just trying to tell you that this is
Speaker 2: a strategy that they use all the time because they
Speaker 2: don't really want those answers, right. They want to ask
Speaker 2: a black person. They want to ask people that support
Speaker 2: black people, what are you gonna do for black people?
Speaker 2: So that the other side could block you anyway because
Speaker 2: they never gonna do nothing. So they want you to
Speaker 2: publicly say, yea, I'm gonna be for reparations, so the
Speaker 2: Republicans give reparation, You're gonna get them people. It just
Speaker 2: don't make sense. It's so counter productive if we do
Speaker 2: it all the time to ourselves, and I watch I
Speaker 2: watch us do the same, you know, in a barrel
Speaker 2: song and dance bullshit all the time. So we are
Speaker 2: where we are. So now you ain't got d I.
Speaker 2: So now these major corporations that take all your money,
Speaker 2: that that you know, that feed off black people, that
Speaker 2: feed off the one trillion, the ten trillion dollars that
Speaker 2: we one whatever it is, it's ten trillion, should be
Speaker 2: up to about ten trillion by now. But whatever it is,
Speaker 2: we are the biggest consumers in the world. And now
Speaker 2: we don't even call the people who we consume from
Speaker 2: to hire us anymore, to give us positions in these
Speaker 2: corporations and in these companies. So now they don't kind
Speaker 2: of give you ship. They can keep hiring their cousins,
Speaker 2: their brothers and their sisters that don't have any qualifications,
Speaker 2: and you can graduate the top of your class, and
Speaker 2: you can go in there with your resume and they
Speaker 2: can say we don't want nothing to do with you
Speaker 2: because you're not doing d I no more. Because you
Speaker 2: the d I hired just because you're black. You are
Speaker 2: you smarter than everybody. You don't graduate top of your class,
Speaker 2: you did all the ship, you don't beat them in
Speaker 2: every other area in the world. And now you come
Speaker 2: to get a job for the corporation, they tell you, now,
Speaker 2: we don't do it, not.
Speaker 4: Just the job, because they will let let you clean
Speaker 4: the floors, and they will let position and they right,
Speaker 4: and they will let you do some front office stuff.
Speaker 4: You can answer telephones maybe because if white women decide
Speaker 4: that they want to go to work, then you might
Speaker 4: not even be able to answer the telephone. But you
Speaker 4: will not be in a senior level position. You will
Speaker 4: not be as we for on the boards and this
Speaker 4: and this and that. So you know, and they will
Speaker 4: have some black people there, but there will be black
Speaker 4: people who agree with their position, black people who support them,
Speaker 4: black people who have their same mindset or at least
Speaker 4: act like they do to be able to get in
Speaker 4: the room. And you know, I was sitting there thinking
Speaker 4: to myself, I was saying, no, they will, they'll have.
Speaker 1: Well, but they did just what they.
Speaker 4: Did, just put them a black person in the department
Speaker 4: of huts. Well, but I'm just saying there will be
Speaker 4: a black because the reason why these companies will put
Speaker 4: a black person in charge of some thing or put
Speaker 4: them somewhere in a position within a company is because
Speaker 4: they do want When you go on their website and
Speaker 4: you look them up and you're making a decision about
Speaker 4: who you want to buy certain things from. They do
Speaker 4: want you to have the illusion that these people of
Speaker 4: the illusion of inclusion.
Speaker 1: That's a very good.
Speaker 4: That's good. That was great, my son. You get this
Speaker 4: snigger the finger snaps for that. However, when I see
Speaker 4: people saying, oh, Walmart, Oh Walmart, Walmamart, Walmart, you know
Speaker 4: what I say. I don't wear Nike. I found some
Speaker 4: I was going through boots this weekend and I found
Speaker 4: some Gucci boots. That's bad to the bone. I pulled
Speaker 4: them out, said, damn, these boots to fly. I forgot
Speaker 4: I had them. I might have got those boots probably
Speaker 4: six months or so before we decided we weren't wearing
Speaker 4: Gucci anymore. After they fashionably a black face sweater. I
Speaker 4: don't wear them anymore. I looked at the boots. I said, oh, well,
Speaker 4: somebody can have these. I had some snow boots though
Speaker 4: that's school treet that. I'm like, only time I would
Speaker 4: ever really put them on my feet is to go
Speaker 4: outside and shovel the snow.
Speaker 1: So that's okay.
Speaker 4: Then they can make it for that, and I don't
Speaker 4: have I just don't. I don't wear them.
Speaker 1: I don't wear them.
Speaker 4: It's somebody else I don't wear. It's some other brand
Speaker 4: that I don't wear, and it's certain stores I won't
Speaker 4: go in. So I'm already on the boycott stuff train.
Speaker 4: I don't So you don't worry about sending me Walmart,
Speaker 4: because once they said they canceled d I I already
Speaker 4: knew I wasn't going back to Walmart again in my life.
Speaker 4: I could be in the middle and my family members
Speaker 4: that live down South.
Speaker 1: All they have is a Walmart.
Speaker 4: So I understand that that is all literally Walmart in
Speaker 4: the city in Alabama that my family is from. Walmart
Speaker 4: is the mall. It is literally the mall. So I
Speaker 4: understand in their situation. But I promise you that me
Speaker 4: when I go down there to visit them, I'm coming
Speaker 4: from Atlanta from a different store with the stuff in
Speaker 4: my car because I will not walk in Walmart for
Speaker 4: any reason.
Speaker 1: Anything I have to have.
Speaker 4: I'm not going in Walmart to get unless it's life
Speaker 4: or death. I don't eat. I don't eat waffle House.
Speaker 4: I don't do nothing all of this Shakisha Clemens waffle House.
Speaker 4: I don't eat waffle I don't care. I have I
Speaker 4: have arrived in Ohio some years ago. It was late
Speaker 4: at night. There was nothing open Walmart, I mean, waffle
Speaker 4: house was the only thing open. My entire family looked
Speaker 4: at me and said, it's sad that you're gonna really
Speaker 4: be hungry, because we getting ready to go over there
Speaker 4: and get us some waffle house. I said, well, I
Speaker 4: won't be eating it, and you know what ended up happening.
Speaker 4: They was like, we can't even go in here because
Speaker 4: of this, and we went to my aunt's house and
Speaker 4: pulled out the grits from the cabinet and made our
Speaker 4: own damn food. I won't be going to Walmart. That's
Speaker 4: just my position on it.
Speaker 1: Our guess to coming up.
Speaker 4: We got to reset and we'll be right back. So
Speaker 4: we're super excited today to be joined at the same time.
Speaker 4: Usually we'll have one or the other, but today we
Speaker 4: have two of our friends, you know, my sisters, our sisters,
Speaker 4: two women that I respect so much. You know, I
Speaker 4: was looking at something the other day where a person
Speaker 4: said I love you to a woman and then they
Speaker 4: said I respect you, and it struck me because that
Speaker 4: second sentence sometimes is even more important than the first.
Speaker 4: Everybody loves everybody, but to say I respect you. It's
Speaker 4: so deep, and I truly respect the two of you
Speaker 4: and so excited that y'all are joining us today so
Speaker 4: we could talk. You know, anytime all three of us
Speaker 4: get together in one place, people get worried about what
Speaker 4: we might be getting ready to say, and you should
Speaker 4: be worried, because we have plenty to say. But we
Speaker 4: wanted to have an authentic conversation post election to catch
Speaker 4: up to, you know, just kind of kick it and
Speaker 4: talk about where we are, where we stand, and make
Speaker 4: sure that the world continues to see that while people
Speaker 4: may be hurting and folks have all types of feelings,
Speaker 4: that folks who've been together must stay together more now
Speaker 4: than ever before. So I'm excited to have Linda Sarsour
Speaker 4: and Carmen Perez.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, three fourths of the Women's March coach here.
Speaker 1: Three four You know, he ain't gonna never let Bob
Speaker 1: be on Bob.
Speaker 5: Bob is Bob.
Speaker 6: But you actually it's a three fifths because technically you were.
Speaker 2: Like the fifth coaches.
Speaker 1: Of the Women's March, Yes.
Speaker 2: The honorary fifth coach here, because you know, I had
Speaker 2: to make sure everybody was safe. So that's that's a
Speaker 2: coach here in itself. So you know, I'm just glad
Speaker 2: to see you guys like I always do. You know,
Speaker 2: these people run my life.
Speaker 1: But you know that's the best.
Speaker 2: Always because we love and respect you the same way.
Speaker 4: Respect I say guys all the time. We all say it,
Speaker 4: but to stop saying. Tyson was in a room with
Speaker 4: a bunch of women, and when a young lady who
Speaker 4: was one of the speakers, got up to the podium,
Speaker 4: she said, yeah, guys, you guys, you guys, you guys,
Speaker 4: and sisterly Tyson stood up in the audience and started yelling,
Speaker 4: where do you see guys in this room?
Speaker 1: Hold which one guy? Stand up? Guys? And there was no.
Speaker 4: As she said, these are not guys. Why do you
Speaker 4: use that? And everyone whenever I've said it to other people,
Speaker 4: they are like, that's I mean, it's just a regular thing.
Speaker 4: But oftentimes we don't think about how we've been conditioned
Speaker 4: to say things like I'm not a guy, You're not
Speaker 4: a guy.
Speaker 1: You're not a guy. We're ladies, right, and so.
Speaker 2: You ladies, ladies and one guy.
Speaker 1: But I say guys.
Speaker 6: Sisters and sisters Linda's favor line, sisters and brothers, sisters,
Speaker 6: and brothers.
Speaker 2: We are here to.
Speaker 1: Well. I asked the two of you to come. My
Speaker 1: son said, you asked who to do?
Speaker 2: What I said.
Speaker 4: I wanted to have Linda and Carmen to come so
Speaker 4: we could talk about a lot of things, and particularly
Speaker 4: the Women's March. I think it's important because we now
Speaker 4: see that the Women's March, those who are there as
Speaker 4: organized as within I guess the Women's March organization, they
Speaker 4: have called for another march and there's a whole lot
Speaker 4: of talk about it. In fact, there is someone who
Speaker 4: works within the Women's March name Tamika m who's black.
Speaker 4: I don't know her full last name, who has been
Speaker 4: soliciting people for different reasons for a while doing her work.
Speaker 4: I've been told she's a great young lady. I don't
Speaker 4: know her, but it makes people call me and say
Speaker 4: to me, will you back at the No, not me, sorry,
Speaker 4: and so wanted to talk about that. But before we
Speaker 4: get there, Before we get there, I think that it's important.
Speaker 4: You know, as I said, we've been together, we will
Speaker 4: always be together. And when over the last few weeks
Speaker 4: since the election, I've been in conversation and in fact,
Speaker 4: even before the election, there were black women who would
Speaker 4: say to me, I swear to you, if people don't
Speaker 4: vote right in this election and they let Donald Trump
Speaker 4: become president, I will never talk to so and so.
Speaker 4: I will never march with so and so. I don't
Speaker 4: care whatever they were, you know that concerned, and you know,
Speaker 4: of course, sometimes I have the energy to push back.
Speaker 4: Other times, depending on who it is, it's somebody who's like,
Speaker 4: you weren't gonna fight no way. So it really is
Speaker 4: an important and I know there's some people who it
Speaker 4: is their literal excuse to get out of having to
Speaker 4: stand up and speak out against things that are pretty dangerous,
Speaker 4: like the.
Speaker 1: Stuff we get involved in.
Speaker 4: It is not I don't know why we can't find
Speaker 4: like scholarships to give out like something. Now we get
Speaker 4: involved in all these controversial things. Some people they just
Speaker 4: really never wanted to be involved in the first phase.
Speaker 4: But then there are people who really.
Speaker 1: Have been engaged.
Speaker 4: They've put their reputations on the line, their organizations on
Speaker 4: the line, even when they were afraid or just didn't know.
Speaker 1: I'msure we pulled them along.
Speaker 4: Some of them jumped in front to say, hey, I
Speaker 4: don't like what's happening in Gaza. Or you know, I
Speaker 4: feel immigrants need to be protected or whatever, and they
Speaker 4: are feeling very bruised by the election. By the numbers. Now,
Speaker 4: I think it's important for us to always be careful
Speaker 4: about exit polls because as I've been studying, it's like,
Speaker 4: it's no way that the polls that came out the
Speaker 4: first few days could be correct when you still have
Speaker 4: more numbers being dropped every single day. So you got to, like,
Speaker 4: you know, look at those numbers and really analyze it.
Speaker 4: But I do I hear women and men, but particularly
Speaker 4: in the ninety two percent of black women saying that
Speaker 4: they are tired of standing up for everybody, and that
Speaker 4: includes black men sometimes, you know, and they are now
Speaker 4: deciding to retreat and to not be engaged in any
Speaker 4: movement at all. I know, I don't have that luxury, right, Like,
Speaker 4: that's a to me, that's a luxury to decide you're
Speaker 4: not going to continue to be engaged in intersectional movement building.
Speaker 1: I don't have that luxury, nor do I want it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I love where I sit in a place where the
Speaker 4: people around me are not all the same, and that
Speaker 4: means that when.
Speaker 5: I'm tired, you pick it up.
Speaker 1: You pick it up. We fight together, but it's a
Speaker 1: difficult place.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I set all of that just to set
Speaker 4: the tone for talking about coalition building, because we are
Speaker 4: the big rainbow. Like everybody, we're in the second phase
Speaker 4: of the rainbow coalition. Reverend Jesse Jackson started the Rainbow
Speaker 4: Coalition and then we came and we have actualized it
Speaker 4: as a true coalition that is a rainbow, including you,
Speaker 4: mister CoA chair of They're Women's March. So how do
Speaker 4: you all feel like just after the election?
Speaker 1: In general?
Speaker 4: We talk, but every day the feelings change, you know,
Speaker 4: So I just wonder whoever wants to start on how
Speaker 4: you feeling in this moment, I let you start.
Speaker 5: I feel I feel the same.
Speaker 6: I knew we was going to fight regardless of who
Speaker 6: went to the White House. We were already prepared. We
Speaker 6: were having the discussions about whether or not if it
Speaker 6: was going to be Kamala Harris, what kind of fight
Speaker 6: we were about to have, if it was going to
Speaker 6: be Donald Trump, what kind of fight we were about
Speaker 6: to have. And you know, as someone who's Palestinian like unfortunately,
Speaker 6: you know, we knew that regardless of who went to
Speaker 6: the White House, the genocide is probably going to continue,
Speaker 6: that the conditions are going to be the same. But
Speaker 6: I want to say to many of those black women,
Speaker 6: some of whom I know myself personally because of the
Speaker 6: work that I do with you and the friendships that
Speaker 6: I've made through you and through your networks, is that
Speaker 6: it's okay to feel all those things, and in fact,
Speaker 6: it's tolkay to chill, like, you know, take some times
Speaker 6: off of the holidays, relax, like a lot of people
Speaker 6: were really working hard during this election, Like people were
Speaker 6: really spending time away from their family, They were traveling
Speaker 6: to other states. There were people that were on the
Speaker 6: phone constantly all day every day. I was witching the
Speaker 6: car many times during our own work, And I know
Speaker 6: people were working hard. And of course you feel disappointed,
Speaker 6: you feel frustrated, and we also know who Donald Trump is,
Speaker 6: so that also is part of it. It wasn't that
Speaker 6: Kamala lost an election to like a regular moderate Republican.
Speaker 6: We lost an election to a fascist authoritorian Like this
Speaker 6: is not a joke, and we understand that. So I
Speaker 6: really haven't taken anything personally. I think people should be
Speaker 6: able to feel what they want to feel. But I
Speaker 6: want to offer a perspective in ways that I think
Speaker 6: about this election. A lot of people who were outraged
Speaker 6: that Kamala Harris lost the election, and they were saying,
Speaker 6: you know, how could they, you know, how could some people,
Speaker 6: you know vote for Donald Trump? How could some people
Speaker 6: look past you know, the racism, the bigotry, you know,
Speaker 6: all of that and vote for Donald Trump. And as
Speaker 6: we know, a lot of folks chose things that were
Speaker 6: personal to them, whether it was economic reasons that they
Speaker 6: voted for Donald Trump, etc. And I say to people,
Speaker 6: it's the same thing that people wanted people to do
Speaker 6: to vote for Kamala Harris. People wanted people to look,
Speaker 6: for example, past the genocide. They wanted us to look
Speaker 6: past the genocide, to forget that this Democratic Party just
Speaker 6: aided a better a genocide and that Kamala was part
Speaker 6: of an administration that did that. And we were supposed
Speaker 6: to do that because it was still somehow the right
Speaker 6: thing to do. And it's not about whether I agree
Speaker 6: with that perspective or not, but that's how a lot
Speaker 6: of voters thought about it. Like in both cases, we
Speaker 6: had to overlook major outrageousness in order to make those choices. Now,
Speaker 6: for me and all of us we organized under Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: I know who Donald Trump is, I know the people
Speaker 6: personally around him are absolutely outrageous. And so I sit
Speaker 6: in this weird place where I'm like, I get it,
Speaker 6: I get what you are saying. But now I'm more
Speaker 6: self reflective and I'm more like, Okay, we could be frustrated,
Speaker 6: we could be disappointed, but maybe we just got to
Speaker 6: sit and ask ourselves a question, why and how did
Speaker 6: we get to this place.
Speaker 5: We're the What were the.
Speaker 6: Deficiencies of us as a movement? What were the deficiency
Speaker 6: of a democratic party? And stop blaming the opposition for everything.
Speaker 6: Everything can't be because of them, Maybe it's because of
Speaker 6: us sometimes. And that's kind of where I'm at right now.
Speaker 6: So I'm not I want people to you know, take
Speaker 6: this holiday time, this, you know, before the end of
Speaker 6: the year. And people I've seen women saying that they're
Speaker 6: taking you know, vacation, they're taking time off. That's nothing
Speaker 6: wrong with that, because guess what, the fight is still
Speaker 6: going to be here. What I'm hoping is by the
Speaker 6: time you get back here after the new year, you
Speaker 6: got your mind right and you're back outside where we're.
Speaker 5: All supposed to be well.
Speaker 3: I think for me, I pivoted, first of all, like,
Speaker 3: I'm so happy to be with you all and really
Speaker 3: engage in a conversation about this, because y'all are like
Speaker 3: the people who I go back to when I'm dealing
Speaker 3: with various things, and especially the movement and this very
Speaker 3: purest mentality, because clearly that's not the way we live
Speaker 3: our lives. Right, We're still representing a community that we
Speaker 3: are from.
Speaker 7: And so I think Linda's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 3: You know, a couple of things happen for me is
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, there were numbers that were released about
Speaker 3: Latino voters and although they favored Democrats, that were beginning
Speaker 3: to lean Republican. And so what I learned in twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen December of twenty nineteen was that there was a
Speaker 3: confidence gap when it came to Latina voters and they
Speaker 3: were going to be the largest majority block that were
Speaker 3: grown into the largest minority block when it came to voting.
Speaker 3: And so I pivoted, and I started building with other
Speaker 3: latinas a group called Boderistas, and really trying to educate
Speaker 3: our young women through lifestyle, trying to get them civically engaged.
Speaker 3: What didn't happen is we didn't get the Latino men right.
Speaker 3: So I focused on women because that's where we saw
Speaker 3: the confidence gap, and so we were able to see
Speaker 3: Latina show up and vote. But when I was out
Speaker 3: there voting or knocking on doors in Pennsylvania or in
Speaker 3: Arizona or even in California, Latinos were saying that nobody
Speaker 3: came and knocked on their door, or that they were
Speaker 3: not being spoken to or outreached.
Speaker 7: To by the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: That it was really Trump that was out there making
Speaker 3: these announcements. And also I think various things were happening
Speaker 3: in the Latino community. The church plays a huge role
Speaker 3: as well as economics plays a huge role, and then
Speaker 3: Latinos are not a monolith, right.
Speaker 7: So for me, I think the first night, I think.
Speaker 3: I was one of those people that felt I had
Speaker 3: gone out there and put it all on the line
Speaker 3: and leaving the comfort of my home and leaving my
Speaker 3: children to go knock on doors.
Speaker 7: But I'm even more so fired up, and I.
Speaker 3: Think even though I work in the field of criminal
Speaker 3: justice and police accountability, I'm.
Speaker 7: All hands on deck. Still. What I will say, I
Speaker 7: think that we all.
Speaker 3: An immense gratitude to black women as a Latina and
Speaker 3: being a friend of yours and a sister of yours,
Speaker 3: and even growing up in a Chicano Black community. Black
Speaker 3: people have always paved the way for those of us
Speaker 3: that have been in this community, and so I'm really
Speaker 3: grateful for that. And like Linda said, it's okay to
Speaker 3: feel the way that you do. But I will say
Speaker 3: for you, Tamika, I know you don't stop because I
Speaker 3: know your heart and I know that everything really affects
Speaker 3: you and everybody's.
Speaker 7: Reaching out to you for answers.
Speaker 3: And I hope that you do get the rest that
Speaker 3: you deserve, that you do get the protection that you deserve,
Speaker 3: because it is difficult as and I know we're going
Speaker 3: to be talking about the Women's March, but what we've
Speaker 3: been through together and also separate, has really done.
Speaker 4: Something to us. It was damaging, Yeah, to us, it
Speaker 4: was in a lot of ways.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was having a conversation with somebody today and we
Speaker 4: were talking about a woman who has a very powerful
Speaker 4: position in the movement. And I'll just leave it there
Speaker 4: because if I say you know what they what their
Speaker 4: power is, it'll be given away and that person has
Speaker 4: said very nasty things about me, and they all of
Speaker 4: a sudden called me one day like, hey, Okay, you know,
Speaker 4: I know that stuff happened, but now I want you
Speaker 4: to help me do something different.
Speaker 1: And I think God probably wanted me.
Speaker 4: To do it because it probably probably would have been
Speaker 4: the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: But then I forgot.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, God, if you wanted me to do
Speaker 4: it, you should have put it back on my mind because
Speaker 4: I forgot, Like you were supposed to remind me. A
Speaker 4: few days later, I've totally you know, the text messages
Speaker 4: and the emails come through like wildfire.
Speaker 1: So I forgot. I literally forgot until today.
Speaker 4: I was having a conversation with another person who's going
Speaker 4: through some stuff and just feeling like people beating them
Speaker 4: up while they're trying to do the right thing, and
Speaker 4: I was like, let me just tell you this story.
Speaker 1: So I'm tell them about this other thing.
Speaker 4: But despite whatever God may or may not have wanted
Speaker 4: me to do, hopefully give me another opportunity to get
Speaker 4: it right. I was saying that it wasn't that what
Speaker 4: they did just hurt my feelings. It was reputational damage
Speaker 4: that was caused as well, because people around the world
Speaker 4: who may not have come back for my response or
Speaker 4: for the second half of the show only heard the
Speaker 4: first part, which was that I did X y Z
Speaker 4: thing to hurt them that wasn't true. And I just
Speaker 4: find it really difficult to see how people will approach
Speaker 4: you as if something didn't happen, like you said you
Speaker 4: were talking about this last week entitlement and won't even.
Speaker 1: Say I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: And no one has apologized to us, No one, no, no,
Speaker 4: what we've been through.
Speaker 2: No no, So you know what it is for me
Speaker 2: just watching just knowing the love that we have. People
Speaker 2: don't understand it. We have a lot of contentious conversations
Speaker 2: all the time, like everything is just not peaches, and
Speaker 2: sometimes we disagree about that is an understatement, you like,
Speaker 2: really like, you know, so when we look at all
Speaker 2: of our communities in this moment, we're all facing a
Speaker 2: lot of different things. Right when we look at the
Speaker 2: election and we look at the presidency, we look at
Speaker 2: we look at mass deportation, we look at immigration that
Speaker 2: that's going to affect Carmen. We look at the genocide
Speaker 2: going on in Gaza, right, we look at black women
Speaker 2: feeling like this was their opportunity to be in a
Speaker 2: position of power and feeling betrayed. And each one of
Speaker 2: those things has a place right and each one of
Speaker 2: those things had an intersection, especially in this moment, that
Speaker 2: everybody had their point of view it and it was
Speaker 2: contentious conversations to have to be able to say, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: I can't support the genocide. I don't care who's what
Speaker 2: administration it is. Right. Then there was a then it
Speaker 2: was black women like, listen, we're gonna have to figure
Speaker 2: this out because because I believe the black women is
Speaker 2: gonna figure this out and we're gonna let us get
Speaker 2: to there. And then it was those conversations where it
Speaker 2: was button heads like and those things still exist, right,
Speaker 2: So that's why it's hard for us to move. So
Speaker 2: how what is that process like? Because when you have
Speaker 2: a conversation with black women and they know that Linda
Speaker 2: is one of your best friends, and then you like,
Speaker 2: we're gonna keep fighting, they're like, well, the Muslim lady said,
Speaker 2: and the Palastinian said, they wasn't doing all this, so
Speaker 2: I hear you, and you can go do that, but
Speaker 2: I can't do that. Or you know, the people said
Speaker 2: immigration that you know the the Hispanics voted this way,
Speaker 2: and I know calm in and I know y'all love
Speaker 2: these people, but you can do that by yourself. Like,
Speaker 2: how does that conversation?
Speaker 4: Well, I just would say one thing on that. Every
Speaker 4: single person that I've talked to who has said things
Speaker 4: to me like so and so could be on fire before.
Speaker 4: I mean they are when I say her and feeling betrayed.
Speaker 1: Its deep.
Speaker 4: The conversations are tough like and like I said, some
Speaker 4: days I have the energy. Other days I just sit
Speaker 4: and listen. And some things I just cry because I
Speaker 4: know that that that feeling. I'm not even judging them
Speaker 4: for it, but I know that they must be going
Speaker 4: through some deep hurt to feel that that strongly that
Speaker 4: I wouldn't even piss on such and such if they
Speaker 4: was dying, they was on fire like this, that's a
Speaker 4: lot of energy. But every single time they go. But
Speaker 4: I still love Linda, So you know, they all say
Speaker 4: that they like but Linda, she's still invited to the barbecue,
Speaker 4: but she better not bring anybody from her community with
Speaker 4: her right now. And that's just a real thing. And
Speaker 4: we talk about it. We talk about it. I don't
Speaker 4: I don't I don't hide it. I might not say, oh,
Speaker 4: it's this person and this person, because your memory bank
Speaker 4: can't let go of things that you know. So if
Speaker 4: you if I tell you, well, you know, Tutu's the
Speaker 4: one who said it, you may get past it, but
Speaker 4: your memory bank will always hold that this is how
Speaker 4: this person fell when you were in the midst of
Speaker 4: a genocide. Right, So I may not say that because
Speaker 4: that person don't mean That's the thing. People feel like
Speaker 4: they mean it, they really really feel like they mean
Speaker 4: it until the deportations are happening and it's going on
Speaker 4: in your community as well, and then some black person
Speaker 4: is caught up in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: Because when ICE is moving.
Speaker 4: That was the reason why we fought so hard against
Speaker 4: ICE some time ago. I don't even know that wasn't
Speaker 4: even in the Obama administration. That was I mean in
Speaker 4: the Trump it was no, no, no, no no. Obama
Speaker 4: administration at that time, he had deported more immigrants than
Speaker 4: any other administration. Right in the Obama administration, we were
Speaker 4: in a full blown fight. During that time, I was
Speaker 4: working at National Action Network and other coalitions to come together,
Speaker 4: not so much because I won't I don't want to
Speaker 4: speak on behalf of anybody else's organization. But my recollection
Speaker 4: wasn't even the deportations, which was horrible, but it was
Speaker 4: also the use of ice and the way in which
Speaker 4: ice was entering our community. It was putting black folks
Speaker 4: in danger as well. And so people who believe that
Speaker 4: you can separate yourself from these issues, I'm not even
Speaker 4: gonna argue with you. I just know you're gonna see
Speaker 4: it and say wait a minute, because you must think
Speaker 4: that they know the particular zip code address and they're
Speaker 4: gonna just be precise with rolling up on Wan Carlo.
Speaker 1: That's not how it works.
Speaker 6: And even some of the laws are arbitrary, like for example,
Speaker 6: you know CBP, which is Customs of Border Patrol, can
Speaker 6: operate one hundred miles from the border, right, so when
Speaker 6: you talk in the northern border, that's the whole state
Speaker 6: of Michigan.
Speaker 5: So if you in Detroit, you part of one hundred miles.
Speaker 6: And as we know, and you remember this during the
Speaker 6: Biden administration, when we rolled up to Del Rio in Texas,
Speaker 6: the migrants that were there were not Latinos or Central Americans.
Speaker 6: They were in fact as black as black and being
Speaker 6: they were mostly Haitians, a lot of Panamanians, people who
Speaker 6: are very dark skinned, who if we're walking around the
Speaker 6: streets of Brooklyn or the streets of Harlem, you really
Speaker 6: wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they were
Speaker 6: African American or African or a Caribbean, and whether or
Speaker 6: not they were US citizens or not, Like you wouldn't
Speaker 6: be able to tell that just by looking at them.
Speaker 6: And so we went down there, and you know, and
Speaker 6: the thing that I think is important at that time
Speaker 6: also another reflection that I have about our movements is
Speaker 6: something I've held with me. If you remember that time
Speaker 6: when we went to Del Rio, Texas black migrants.
Speaker 5: I remember I looked around, where were the people? We
Speaker 5: were the only ones out there? It was us.
Speaker 6: It was Girleen Joseph from Haitian Bridge Alliance with like
Speaker 6: two of her staff. I remember, there was another two
Speaker 6: people from Alita Garcia who's a friend of ours.
Speaker 5: Her team were out there.
Speaker 1: And national actually that work was there the day before.
Speaker 5: But from a movement from an image, yeah perspective, the
Speaker 5: people weren't outside.
Speaker 4: But that's how people feel about our movements, like people
Speaker 4: feel like when black folks are killed. And I have
Speaker 4: to always run because, as my son said, we do
Speaker 4: have contentious conversation. We was having one the other day
Speaker 4: on text message. Everybody's going back about back and forth
Speaker 4: about how we feel and people black folks feel like.
Speaker 4: I think this is also what they're responding to, is
Speaker 4: something that has been tucked away in their pocket that
Speaker 4: they never felt like anybody else really cares about our issues.
Speaker 4: Seeing you and maybe ten people who look like you
Speaker 4: at a rally, even a hundred people who look like
Speaker 4: you at a rally, seeing you, know, not understanding the shades,
Speaker 4: the different physical shades of black people, so Afro Latino
Speaker 4: and all of the different groups, not knowing that and
Speaker 4: just looking for the light skin like close to white
Speaker 4: skin individuals in the midst of a rally you may
Speaker 4: or may not ever find them. In fact, they are
Speaker 4: more white people that show up for black folks, which
Speaker 4: they should a data cause of the problem, or at
Speaker 4: least their their lineage.
Speaker 1: Is the cause of the problem.
Speaker 4: But people feel like, we don't see any other community anyway,
Speaker 4: So why is it that we have the key showing
Speaker 4: up and that I think that's a part of it.
Speaker 4: They just pulling out the handkerchief that's been stuck in
Speaker 4: their pocket. Like you know, now I'm raised and I'm
Speaker 4: swinging afect. Excuse me, what is it called when you
Speaker 4: flo flag? But it's something anyway, waving the flag.
Speaker 3: I think what's really interesting about what we're all talking
Speaker 3: about is that there are different shades of folks.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: When I went to the border with you, we were
Speaker 7: in Alfaso.
Speaker 3: And I ended up going to Gattis to go visit
Speaker 3: one of my aunts, and my aunt was housing Afro Cubans,
Speaker 3: so it was actually black women in her home who
Speaker 3: she was providing you know, mutual aid for. And when
Speaker 3: I think about that, like we just had gone to
Speaker 3: the border, and I was like, I have the luxury
Speaker 3: of them going and crossing and meeting the people that
Speaker 3: are being impacted by this. And then you know, and
Speaker 3: then I think about the criminal legal system, like my
Speaker 3: fight has always been because when I go into the prisons,
Speaker 3: it's black and brown folks, right, and we use black
Speaker 3: and brown as a talking point. Meanwhile, there aren't a
Speaker 3: lot of Latinos that are sitting in leadership when it
Speaker 3: comes to the criminal legal system right movement. But what
Speaker 3: I also will say is recently working on a project
Speaker 3: called the Latine Police Accountability Network. We were looking at
Speaker 3: state sanctioned violence and policing and the parallels between I
Speaker 3: would say Chicano's Mexicans and African Americans and the lynchings
Speaker 3: that have happened, right. But what happens is that we're
Speaker 3: not able to continuously tell that story. There's no real
Speaker 3: books that allow us as Latinos to see what has
Speaker 3: happened in our community. And so we start a movement,
Speaker 3: will be in it for twenty years, and then we
Speaker 3: focus on immigration. And a lot of it has to
Speaker 3: do with where the funding comes from. Right, So foundations
Speaker 3: are pitying Latinos in one category. And I remember going
Speaker 3: to a solidarity summit and one of the foundation women
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, Carmen, what you know, So.
Speaker 7: What immigration organization do you work for? And I was like,
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 3: I work on criminal justice because on my Chicano side,
Speaker 3: my family has been impacted by incarceration.
Speaker 7: But what we found was that people like a zeal.
Speaker 3: Ford Filando Castile, we're all Afro Mexicanos, right or Afro
Speaker 3: Puerto Ricans, and we need to do better when it
Speaker 3: comes to our solidarity. And I know folks are saying,
Speaker 3: you know, f solidarity, like we're tired, We're tired of
Speaker 3: asking you to show up for us. But I know
Speaker 3: for me, I try to organize within the Latino community
Speaker 3: to educate them about the parallels, to educate them that
Speaker 3: this is our issue too, and to disrupt this linear
Speaker 3: issue area that we keep getting funneled into, because not
Speaker 3: all of us are impacted by that. Like when you're
Speaker 3: talking about this policy that is coming up on mass deportations,
Speaker 3: in the first first hundred hours, we're not talking about
Speaker 3: the first hundred days.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the first.
Speaker 7: One hundred hours.
Speaker 3: Educate they're going to be doing mass deportation and it's
Speaker 3: going to include citizens. In nineteen twenty nine, the Repatriation
Speaker 3: Act deported my Chicano family that was from here before
Speaker 3: it became the United States. They were sent to a
Speaker 3: country they had never been to. They had never been
Speaker 3: to the other side of the border. And what that
Speaker 3: did to my family. It took away our land, it
Speaker 3: took away our business, and empovered my family. My Chicano
Speaker 3: family comes back to the United States. My dad can't
Speaker 3: even cross the border legally because he has no documentation
Speaker 3: that he was born in the United States, so he
Speaker 3: had across the river grand and unfortunately my family faced
Speaker 3: extreme poverty because of that. But there were two point
Speaker 3: one million citizens that were deported under the repatrioti Repatriation
Speaker 3: Act because of the scapegoating of white people who said
Speaker 3: that Mexicans were taking their jobs right and there was
Speaker 3: no due process. We also know operation what back happened
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties. I think you recently posted something
Speaker 3: about that. Again, mass deportations without any due process that
Speaker 3: continues to sweep up citizens of the United States. And
Speaker 3: so if you don't think it impacts you, if you think, well,
Speaker 3: I'm born here, my grandmother's born here, my mother's born
Speaker 3: you're wrong.
Speaker 7: It's going to impact you.
Speaker 3: And it also, like you said, people don't know your citizenship,
Speaker 3: so they don't need to have a due process. They're
Speaker 3: going to continue to funnel back folks and they're deporting.
Speaker 7: Them to Mexico.
Speaker 3: Mexico has been trying to work with the United States
Speaker 3: in order to make sure that they have the capacity
Speaker 3: to receive the people that are trying to come through
Speaker 3: the through Mexico into the US, but the US doesn't
Speaker 3: want to work with them. There's just so much education
Speaker 3: that really need to do, and I think there's an
Speaker 3: opportunity for us. Like I said, for me, I'm looking
Speaker 3: at pivoting, especially because I know that if it doesn't
Speaker 3: personally affect me, it's going to personally affects something that
Speaker 3: I love and that I know.
Speaker 6: Right, And so I'm all hands on, I think, and
Speaker 6: everything that Carmen said, And I think it's again the
Speaker 6: lack of knowledge and people understanding history that that sometimes
Speaker 6: we don't think a country's capable of something if you
Speaker 6: don't know that they.
Speaker 5: Actually did it before.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I will say this, you know, absolutely people
Speaker 6: are gonna get caught up in it. They're gonna lots
Speaker 6: of legal You're gonna need lawyers, you know, again, having
Speaker 6: to prove your citizenship because your burden of proof is
Speaker 6: on you, not on the government.
Speaker 1: May they carrying your passport. You think that's going to.
Speaker 5: Be a thing. That might be a thing.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know me, I've been carried since seven
Speaker 6: since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5: That passport. I literally got it in my bag right now.
Speaker 6: But what I will say to folks, and I hope
Speaker 6: that we get to this place, maybe it won't affect you,
Speaker 6: but it's still wrong. And I want people to get
Speaker 6: to the point in life where if you're sitting at
Speaker 6: home and you watch your undocumented neighbors being stripped from
Speaker 6: their children, or you watch ice vands raiding a community,
Speaker 6: or street vendors in the street, or the local you know,
Speaker 6: deli or the supermarket where some of these undocumented people are,
Speaker 6: I just want you to be like, no, this is
Speaker 6: not okay. I don't care if you have impacted or not.
Speaker 6: You might be impacted, but you might not be and
Speaker 6: that still makes the thing wrong. And what I will
Speaker 6: say to Meka, we have to sometimes tell the truth.
Speaker 6: And this is why I love watching your podcast and
Speaker 6: you and Mices, because you just say what needs to
Speaker 6: be said, and it's gonna lay wherever it lays. The
Speaker 6: bottom line is true. Our community's got to do better
Speaker 6: at solidarity. That's just the bottom line. Like I'm not
Speaker 6: going to sit here and say that. You know, Arab
Speaker 6: American or Palestinian American communities have done this like massive
Speaker 6: wave of solidarity.
Speaker 5: Over the years.
Speaker 6: Yes, of course there are key Palestinian Americans in this
Speaker 6: country who are outside been outside. There is a long
Speaker 6: trajectory and history of Black Palestinian solidarity that dates back
Speaker 6: to even before the Malcolm x'es and the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 6: But the bottom line is that's just key individuals that
Speaker 6: you could pout to say that our entire communities are
Speaker 6: coming out and the droves to stand with black people.
Speaker 5: It's not true.
Speaker 6: And that's a lot of work that we got to
Speaker 6: do on our part. And I will also say, you know,
Speaker 6: as you know in the Muslim community, you know many
Speaker 6: of them, A third of Muslim Americans are African American,
Speaker 6: They're black people. And so this idea that the Muslims
Speaker 6: are the quote like you said, the light skin or
Speaker 6: the Arab or the South Asian, No, a third of
Speaker 6: our my community is your community. Those are your people too,
Speaker 6: because they also have to figure out how to be
Speaker 6: black and Muslim in America. And the solidarity is also
Speaker 6: sometimes not there within our own community. And so I
Speaker 6: just want people to know if you're not in the community,
Speaker 6: I'm letting you know this is the hard conversations that
Speaker 6: we have within our own community. We got to step
Speaker 6: up better for each other first within our Muslim community.
Speaker 6: That then helps us develop the type of solidarity that
Speaker 6: we can give to folks that are not exactly from
Speaker 6: our Muslim communities. But it's a struggle, and I've been
Speaker 6: struggling with it for twenty five years.
Speaker 2: It really is. It's really a struggle, and I didn't
Speaker 2: see it until this moment, right because I've seen it
Speaker 2: during the Woman's March, and I know it for y'all,
Speaker 2: especially like I watched Tamika have to deal with it
Speaker 2: a lot, right because every time she does intersectionality work,
Speaker 2: black women say what are you doing? Right? Every time
Speaker 2: the Women's March, right when everything started to me, it
Speaker 2: was the first one targeting black women said, I told
Speaker 2: you not to do this. Right when we look at
Speaker 2: this this election, and black women are saying, look again,
Speaker 2: you still out there. But you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And the reality is, I understand everybody's point of view,
Speaker 2: but I do I understand that the Palacinians said, well, listen,
Speaker 2: I understand that's a black woman, but this person is
Speaker 2: complicit in genocide. And I can't. I can't say, I
Speaker 2: can't of sound mind for my people and my own
Speaker 2: sanity say that I'm just gonna overlook that because of
Speaker 2: the black woman. As much as I love you, and
Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying. So I understand everybody's point of view.
Speaker 2: I understand that everything is true, just like I understand
Speaker 2: that I don't really understand that the Latino men that
Speaker 2: Trump because I just think that's just a misogynistic bullshit.
Speaker 2: But but but it's a reality because some of them
Speaker 2: is thinking about their pockets, they thinking, some of them
Speaker 2: think that they have proximity to whiteness. Whatever it is.
Speaker 2: This is damn reality, and what it forces us to
Speaker 2: do as real leadership, right is we have to take
Speaker 2: our personal emotions out and lead with the reality that
Speaker 2: we actually have to deal with. And that's what it's
Speaker 2: forced me to do because I'm not gonna lie. I
Speaker 2: I've been pissed off for a couple like I checked out, Like, Yo,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't think this. I just don't
Speaker 2: think this is it. I just don't see it. I
Speaker 2: don't feel that. I don't have the energy. And then
Speaker 2: I have to say, that's not really leadership, right, It's
Speaker 2: not really leadership to say because it don't go the
Speaker 2: way I wanted to or doesn't go the way I
Speaker 2: think it should go, that I should just lead. So
Speaker 2: I have to understand everybody's perspective, and I have to
Speaker 2: figure out a way to relay it to other people
Speaker 2: who might not get it right and show and lead
Speaker 2: through example and say, despite what you might think is
Speaker 2: going on, despite how we might feel at this moment,
Speaker 2: the only way that we actually can win is actually
Speaker 2: do this together. It's no other way. And they know
Speaker 2: that they understand. By dividing us and disenfranchising us, this
Speaker 2: is what they've done all the time. And I was
Speaker 2: having this conversation and you kind of brought me back
Speaker 2: to it because I was like, I don't see it work.
Speaker 2: I just don't see us doing this. I think right now,
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do is disenfranchise a movement they watch.
Speaker 2: Even even though the Democratic Party has a lot of bullshit,
Speaker 2: it's not destroy the Democratic Party, right because there's so
Speaker 2: many We have Blacks, we have Latinos, we have Palacenians,
Speaker 2: we have muslim we have all of the shit in here.
Speaker 2: We just gotta figure out how do we make it
Speaker 2: move the way we.
Speaker 1: Want, right, because this is what leadership, that's what it is.
Speaker 2: It's like, Yo, I'm not gonna leave my foundation. They said, Yo,
Speaker 2: we need to all go be repulbed. Why the fuck
Speaker 2: would I go somewhere where it's only five people that look.
Speaker 1: Like me and they value none of.
Speaker 2: This fit me? Why would I move my whole town
Speaker 2: to go. No, I'm gonna fix my town up because
Speaker 2: this is where our found that we built this ship,
Speaker 2: and they know that we built it, and they seen
Speaker 2: it and they said, we just gotta fit. We gotta
Speaker 2: divide this ship. And it's just like black Walls. It's
Speaker 2: the same. It's the same strategy and tactic. They blew
Speaker 2: it up last time. They just blew it up. They
Speaker 2: timp bombs. Did y'all building too much here? We're just
Speaker 2: gonna blow it up. They did the same thing even
Speaker 2: when we was when they say the Republican Party was
Speaker 2: for blacks. Before they made us say okay, we're not
Speaker 2: doing that shit no more, and we switch a part.
Speaker 2: And what they keep doing is making us switch and
Speaker 2: have to migrate to different ship when we gotta be
Speaker 2: strategic enough to say, nah, I'm not switching. I got
Speaker 2: we got this. We're gonna build. We're gonna build this
Speaker 2: shit right. We're not leaving our people. We're not leaving
Speaker 2: the ship we built because it didn't go right for us?
Speaker 2: What's hill? So this is the moment for us to
Speaker 2: be strategic to understand what our enemy is doing. They
Speaker 2: want you to believe when I sit there and say, Okay,
Speaker 2: we got sixty we just got sixty one black people
Speaker 2: on the judges that just got put into it, and
Speaker 2: who gives a fuck about that? We don't care about that. No,
Speaker 2: we do. We actually these things are very important. When
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there talking about but we got democrats. I
Speaker 2: got over three hundred people that's elected that I know.
Speaker 2: I know about fifty elected officials that I can go
Speaker 2: to and you can come to me because I'm in
Speaker 2: your community and I can go to them and we
Speaker 2: can actually make change. I'm not gonna leave that because
Speaker 2: it didn't go right for me.
Speaker 4: I mean, but I am interested in what it looks like.
Speaker 4: I do think and Angelo said this the other day
Speaker 4: that black people have to be able to build because
Speaker 4: if what we say is true, that black folks will
Speaker 4: not that other communities cannot get free until black people
Speaker 4: are free. That means that there has to be some
Speaker 4: real intentionality around black people getting free, because we can't
Speaker 4: as long as our foundation is shaky, then then no
Speaker 4: one else will be able to be whole if you will, right,
Speaker 4: And so there has to be some intentionality. I think
Speaker 4: that black people are in a position many of us
Speaker 4: who are on the same page, there are others who
Speaker 4: are not to build something that allows us to have
Speaker 4: political leverage. Right, Like, I'm still I still don't know
Speaker 4: that we're at then. I don't think I'm saying anything
Speaker 4: different from you. I'm just adding I think that we
Speaker 4: may still choose to vote Democrat, workers, family Party, whatever
Speaker 4: those things are, but we still need an organizing base,
Speaker 4: right So, the Black Party or whatever people want to
Speaker 4: call it, you still need an organizing base, a place
Speaker 4: where we can get ourselves together so that we can
Speaker 4: set the tone for what is happening inside the party
Speaker 4: or which whoever we decide to vote for. Right now,
Speaker 4: it's not that I think we're and this is something
Speaker 4: that people may not be able to articulate properly, but
Speaker 4: it is something they are feeling that we're so mixed
Speaker 4: with so much that therefore is chaotic.
Speaker 1: That's right, because the Democratic.
Speaker 4: Party is a little chaotic, it's a lot chaotic, right,
Speaker 4: I will say.
Speaker 6: I mean you started the show with this, and my
Speaker 6: song was trying to take us here, and I actually
Speaker 6: think that it goes with what you're saying.
Speaker 5: So we could get into the elephant in the room conversation.
Speaker 4: Well, I want to say one thing before you go
Speaker 4: to that, but go ahead and then you go into
Speaker 4: the Okay, let me say what upsets me is not
Speaker 4: people who didn't vote for a Kamala or that voted
Speaker 4: for Donald Trump because they were upset about Gaza. It's
Speaker 4: not people who say they are dealing with economic challenges
Speaker 4: and perhaps being closer or having proximity to Trump and
Speaker 4: what they believe to be money in power might make
Speaker 4: it better for them. Their economy was different or better
Speaker 4: during the pandemic when their grandmother was dying in order
Speaker 4: for them to get the twelve hundred dollars check. But
Speaker 4: that's going down in the rabbit home. What I'm upset
Speaker 4: about and what I have to get past in terms
Speaker 4: of what's giving me a emotional block for being in
Speaker 4: coalition with anybody, is that I know that many Arab men,
Speaker 4: Latino men, and Black men and others who chose not
Speaker 4: to vote for a Kamala or voted for Donald Trump
Speaker 4: did it because they don't like black women. That for me,
Speaker 4: the massogyny is more danger to me then people who
Speaker 4: made a decision based upon their pockets or their political
Speaker 4: views or their morals or whatever. That part I can
Speaker 4: work on, right, But there's no way that I can
Speaker 4: get past the idea that you would look at this
Speaker 4: woman who's highly qualified.
Speaker 1: Know it in your mind too.
Speaker 4: It's not that you don't know it, but you know it,
Speaker 4: you acknowledge it, but refuse because you just can't. Your
Speaker 4: racism and your sexism, even more than racism, says that
Speaker 4: you cannot vote for a woman, because that right there
Speaker 4: is not just about Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: It's about me, and.
Speaker 4: That becomes way more personal to me than just not
Speaker 4: voting for somebody because of genocide, which is obviously important,
Speaker 4: or these other things are important. We were talking, we
Speaker 4: debated about this the other day. Eggs and milk and bread,
Speaker 4: that's important. Gas is important, you know, well, all these
Speaker 4: things important. People feeling like in their community they have immigrants,
Speaker 4: there are migrants there who have harmed them.
Speaker 1: That's important. Safety is important.
Speaker 4: But just making a decision that she as a woman,
Speaker 4: you can call her names and disrespect her and all
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 1: That for me, I can't get with.
Speaker 2: But I think my personal position in this is that
Speaker 2: all of those things feed into the same thing, right,
Speaker 2: Because when you're having a conversation and somebody is explaining
Speaker 2: to you that Donald Trump is better for the economy,
Speaker 2: that's not factual, right, It's never been factual that the
Speaker 2: facts that tell you that that's not true. When you
Speaker 2: having a conversation they say that immigrants are killing people
Speaker 2: in the hood. I've been living in the hood. Those
Speaker 2: things aren't really happening, right, So what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: say it feeds in to the narrative of the racism
Speaker 2: and the sexist anyway, because they want to believe that
Speaker 2: shit anyway so that they can justify everything else. Because
Speaker 2: when you have conversations with the average person that said that,
Speaker 2: because there's very few, there might be a couple that
Speaker 2: actually say, Okay, these things right, here are things that
Speaker 2: I believe, and they come with opinion based on facts
Speaker 2: and they've done some research. But the average person that
Speaker 2: says it, I'm saying, where do you get that from?
Speaker 2: What information proves that? Because nine out of ten people
Speaker 2: say that Donald Trump is not gonna be better for
Speaker 2: the economy, right, where do you get the information from
Speaker 2: what community are you from where the immigrants or the
Speaker 2: migrants are coming in there taking jobs or killing and
Speaker 2: raven people. Where is this actually happening? And they don't
Speaker 2: have any facts to support those things. So most of
Speaker 2: these people just using these same talking points to justify
Speaker 2: the old bias that they have inside themselves.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's that's what we were seeing in the
Speaker 3: Latino community, is that a lot of the men were
Speaker 3: repeating Fox News talking points, which is an opinion news, right.
Speaker 3: We were hearing things like you know, and I've seen
Speaker 3: it when I was watching football Monday night football, there
Speaker 3: were advertisements about trans kids, that Kamala was converting children
Speaker 3: and elementary into trans you know, there was just all
Speaker 3: this stuff and all the these advertisements were being paid
Speaker 3: by Trump and people started repeating it or yes, and
Speaker 3: you know, people who were undecided were saying to me,
Speaker 3: we're doing research, you know, to see if she's qualified.
Speaker 3: And she they would say to me, you know, under
Speaker 3: her current administration, under her leadership, they've allowed eleven million
Speaker 3: immigrants to come here and kill and rape people. I'm
Speaker 3: just kind of like, I was so appalled, but it's
Speaker 3: exactly to your point.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: One. We can't dismiss what Tonika saying is that there
Speaker 3: is racism, there's sexism. We're not ready for a woman president,
Speaker 3: particularly a black women president, right and there is a
Speaker 3: lot of anti blackness in these communities.
Speaker 7: And the fact that a lot of the people who.
Speaker 3: We were knocking on doors are talking to were repeating
Speaker 3: the same things that Fox News.
Speaker 7: And it's because it's on a cycle.
Speaker 3: If you turn on your TV, the first channel that
Speaker 3: it goes to is Fox, you kind of stay there
Speaker 3: because it's you know, it's compelling.
Speaker 7: But if you don't know this information, you're gonna keep
Speaker 7: repeating it and keep believing it.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: Y all made the very points that I wanted to make.
Speaker 6: So I'm going to move us along here on my
Speaker 6: you know, one thing that I'll say before I get
Speaker 6: us into the elephant in the room, because I think
Speaker 6: a lot of people are trying to figure out what
Speaker 6: to do. And as we kind of move into the
Speaker 6: new administration, I mean, January is right around the corner.
Speaker 6: We're going to close our eyes and open them. It's
Speaker 6: going to be January twentieth, which will be the day
Speaker 6: that Donald Trump will be inaugurated against in the White House.
Speaker 6: But before I get to that, I wanted to share
Speaker 6: something that doctor John Powell, who is the leader of
Speaker 6: the Othering and Belonging Institute in California, who's someone that
Speaker 6: I'm in a cohort with, and me and him go
Speaker 6: back and forth all the time. I'm kind of like
Speaker 6: a little more hot headed, a little younger, you know,
Speaker 6: And me and him for many years have went back
Speaker 6: and forth on this idea of like righteous rage and
Speaker 6: what does it look like in the movement and when
Speaker 6: do we get to the point where we really start
Speaker 6: being a little quiet and listening to the people around us,
Speaker 6: even those that we don't agree with. And this election
Speaker 6: kind of re affirmed what he had said to me
Speaker 6: many times before, where he says, let's be soft on
Speaker 6: people and hard on systems. And I think what his
Speaker 6: point is to say is, like, even the people you're
Speaker 6: talking about, the Latino men, the black men, the Muslim
Speaker 6: men in our communities, those that we believed were part
Speaker 6: of our coalition who kind of walked away from us.
Speaker 6: The question is why is it about them personally? Is
Speaker 6: that really the conversation or is there something more deeply
Speaker 6: systematic that caused those people to believe that we were
Speaker 6: not the party for them, or that our movements were
Speaker 6: not for them. Is there something about what they were
Speaker 6: saying that we didn't take seriously where they really had
Speaker 6: deep concerns, some of it that comes from the misinformation
Speaker 6: and disinformation campaigns, But.
Speaker 5: We never leaned in. We were more like you just ignorant,
Speaker 5: You just don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 5: Maybe there was something deeper there.
Speaker 6: And I think doctor John Powell's point is to say,
Speaker 6: sometimes you just got to lean in and listen. You
Speaker 6: don't got to agree with people, but you got to
Speaker 6: hear where they're coming from, because everybody comes from somewhere,
Speaker 6: and positions come from somewhere. And so I wanted to
Speaker 6: say that because I think it's been something that has
Speaker 6: been very compelled for me, and I've really been leaning
Speaker 6: in and been listening to people in my own community,
Speaker 6: like let's talk about it, like what happened, Like what's this?
Speaker 6: Let's talk about the conversations. And there was a lot
Speaker 6: of what Carmen talked about, you know, culture wars. The
Speaker 6: Republicans were leaning into culture wars. They were, you know,
Speaker 6: leveraging sensitivities around social issues. And some of our more
Speaker 6: religious elements of our community. You know this in the
Speaker 6: Black community, this exists as well as in the Muslim community,
Speaker 6: around issues of abortion, around the issues of LGBTQIA. Issues
Speaker 6: like these are real things that we have to talk
Speaker 6: about within our communities. And so anyhow, and that brings
Speaker 6: me now to you know, where we go from here,
Speaker 6: because a lot of people keep, as you know, Tamika,
Speaker 6: calling us, emailing us, you know, asking us all these questions.
Speaker 5: I got the media in my inboxes, as you all
Speaker 5: do as well.
Speaker 1: I don't interestingly.
Speaker 4: That's why when y'all was talking about it on the
Speaker 4: text thread, I didn't say anything. Nobody from the media
Speaker 4: reached out to ask me what I think.
Speaker 7: That lady, they I know.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you I didn't get it.
Speaker 6: I mean, I got a few, and I have chosen
Speaker 6: probably getting them, and she's probably.
Speaker 5: Getting them, exactly.
Speaker 6: I mean, I've gotten a few, and of course just
Speaker 6: organizers in general and people that are leaders of some
Speaker 6: organizations around the Women's March which is happening that week
Speaker 6: which weekend, which will be two days before the inauguration
Speaker 6: of Donald Trump, and people keep kind of asking us,
Speaker 6: you know, are we involved.
Speaker 5: The first To make it simple, no.
Speaker 6: We are not involved in the twenty twenty five Women's March.
Speaker 6: Just want to make sure that we put that out there.
Speaker 6: And I think everyone's going to do what everybody wants
Speaker 6: to do, and everybody's free to make whatever decision that
Speaker 6: they want to make on whether they want to participate
Speaker 6: in marches right now or participate in this particular march
Speaker 6: that's being dubbed the People's March. And it's interesting enough,
Speaker 6: about a year and a half ago, I already you know,
Speaker 6: we got permits. We have our own permits because we
Speaker 6: didn't know how this was going to go. We didn't
Speaker 6: understand where we were going to be. We didn't even
Speaker 6: understand at that time who was going to be the
Speaker 6: Republican nominee. We did this way before it was clear
Speaker 6: that Donald Trump was the nominee, and so we.
Speaker 1: Had certainly didn't think that Biden was going.
Speaker 5: To be out that too.
Speaker 6: We were actually the real perspective that we had was
Speaker 6: that we was going outside for Biden.
Speaker 5: Actually we thought we was going to go back.
Speaker 6: Outside for him, because you were there for four years
Speaker 6: and now all this is happening. We went to get
Speaker 6: those permits believing that we were going to show you
Speaker 6: in your next term, like we are outside all the
Speaker 6: way outside right now, because this is going to be
Speaker 6: your second term and you ain't got nothing to lose,
Speaker 6: And that's kind of how we.
Speaker 5: Were thinking about it.
Speaker 6: But I just say to people right now, like, as
Speaker 6: strategic OG organizers who've been around for a long time,
Speaker 6: people have to understand that the way we organize marches
Speaker 6: and how we think about organizing the things that we
Speaker 6: do is based on the political condition we find ourselves in,
Speaker 6: and not every minute, and not every month, and not
Speaker 6: every year is the same as the year before that
Speaker 6: or the year before that. We have watched violence from people,
Speaker 6: not all the people who voted for Donald Trump, but
Speaker 6: elements of the movements that support Donald Trump. And for
Speaker 6: me personally, I think about a lot of things with
Speaker 6: all these marginalized people, with these threats of deportation, with
Speaker 6: the ways in which law enforcement had came out unequivocally
Speaker 6: for Donald tr Trump. We know that the unions from
Speaker 6: the national to the local unions that endorse Donald Trump, Like,
Speaker 6: do you want to bring people in the same weekend
Speaker 6: where we know there's going to be an inauguration with
Speaker 6: potentially tens of thousands of people who are supporters of
Speaker 6: this administrative, this next administration for me personally, in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 6: we had no choice. Donald Trump was a new politician.
Speaker 6: We weren't sure yet if he was actually going to
Speaker 6: commit or fulfill the things that he promised. So the
Speaker 6: idea was we going outside, because we want to make
Speaker 6: sure that you know that we're not sitting at home
Speaker 6: and letting you just go outside and do whatever you want.
Speaker 6: Although he did do many of the things that he said,
Speaker 6: So we had to make a point to Donald Trump
Speaker 6: and his administration that we were going to make sure
Speaker 6: you know where we stand as a movement. Do we
Speaker 6: got to make that same point again? Do we not
Speaker 6: believe that Donald Trump doesn't think that the movement still
Speaker 6: don't agree with the things that he is proposing to do.
Speaker 6: That's kind of where I'm at right now. I think
Speaker 6: there's a point that was already made and doesn't have
Speaker 6: to be made at the beginning of his administration. I
Speaker 6: think and Carmen alluded to this earlier. I think where
Speaker 6: I am right now is you got to go internal,
Speaker 6: you got to go on the ground, You got to
Speaker 6: be figuring out where do we then start appropriating resources
Speaker 6: to the community organizations that they need the most resources.
Speaker 5: How do we develop the deep relationships.
Speaker 6: To try to heal some of what has happened over
Speaker 6: the last few months, because we're going to need each
Speaker 6: other to protect our people. What are the mechanisms What
Speaker 6: does it look like for us to protect ourselves from
Speaker 6: ice raids in our community? Do we need to train
Speaker 6: more people instead of cop watch, ice watch? And there
Speaker 6: are people that are already doing that, Like you know
Speaker 6: what happens if you're next door building right and you're
Speaker 6: in the window and you're watching this whole thing go down?
Speaker 6: What are your rights? Can you come outside? Can you
Speaker 6: record ice agents? What are the repercussions of that? The
Speaker 6: other thing that we know is that with this Hr.
Speaker 6: Nine four nine five, which people have seen all of
Speaker 6: us talk about, it passed in Congress, it's going to
Speaker 6: come up in the next Senate, which remember they have
Speaker 6: the Republican Senate, Republican House, and Republican White House.
Speaker 5: That's a bill that's going to pass and it's.
Speaker 6: Going to go after organizations who are going to be
Speaker 6: in opposition to the administration's agenda.
Speaker 5: So that's something we got to worry about.
Speaker 6: There's also this other thing that we'll talk about on
Speaker 6: a different show that comes from the Heritage Foundation also
Speaker 6: in some of these other conservative groups called Project Esther
Speaker 6: and Project Esther specifically a project that is going to
Speaker 6: focus on, you know, any groups that they believe to
Speaker 6: be supporting quote unquote terrorist organizations, which.
Speaker 5: Is similar to the bill four h nine four nine five.
Speaker 6: And the thing that people have to understand about four
Speaker 6: hr nine four nine five is that if the government
Speaker 6: says that you are a terrorist supporting organization, remember blacked
Speaker 6: identity extremists, climate people have been called domestic terrorists in
Speaker 6: the past. I mean Cop City people were charged with
Speaker 6: reco charges just like a year and a half ago.
Speaker 6: So this is real life things that happen. The burden
Speaker 6: of proof is on you, not the government. So the
Speaker 6: government could just say so and so and so and
Speaker 6: so are terrorist supporting organizations. They're under investigation, we're going
Speaker 6: to shut them down and potentially worse charge their leaders
Speaker 6: or whatever. Yeah, they don't have to have evidence. Their
Speaker 6: government just could say it. It's just a statement that
Speaker 6: it's made, and it is. The burden of proof is
Speaker 6: on us to prove that what the government is saying
Speaker 6: is wrong. And mind you, ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 6: of the organizations and leaders will be able to prove
Speaker 6: that they're not what the government says they are. But
Speaker 6: after how much hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal
Speaker 6: services that people are going to have to put up
Speaker 6: lawyers and do all of that, because the in order
Speaker 6: to prove that you are not what the government says you.
Speaker 5: Are requires a certain type of lawyer. It can't be like.
Speaker 6: Our friend, you know down the block that helps us
Speaker 6: every once in a while with some paperwork. You need
Speaker 6: national security type folks that know how the government works
Speaker 6: on these materials support to terrorism type of cases. So
Speaker 6: the point is back to the women's arbitrary.
Speaker 4: It's arbitrary and and there's a language in it that
Speaker 4: is not just about terrorism either. So it's it's it's
Speaker 4: it's very broad, and it really makes me feel. I
Speaker 4: know people are not gonna like this what I'm about
Speaker 4: to say, but it scares me that folks can be
Speaker 4: so clueless to write comments that asks me, well, why
Speaker 4: should we care about it? I mean, if you're supporting
Speaker 4: a terror and they really mean it. If you're supporting
Speaker 4: a terrorist organization, then there's something should be done about it.
Speaker 4: Their mind doesn't even expand far enough to understand that
Speaker 4: you can be labeled that way whether you're doing it
Speaker 4: or not, just because you're dealing with a vindictive presidency
Speaker 4: and government that can choose to say just because you
Speaker 4: out here talking about free Palace. First of all, I've
Speaker 4: had people tell me that my clothing a sweatshirt that
Speaker 4: has a watermelon on it, which, by the way, black
Speaker 4: people eat watermelon too, so it might not even manit
Speaker 4: I'm saying free.
Speaker 1: Palestine, but it is. That's what that's what it's for.
Speaker 4: People have said, oh, that scares me, or that makes
Speaker 4: me feel like you're saying death to Israelis or to
Speaker 4: Jewish people. Right, so, how they will make the decision
Speaker 4: of who they label one way or the other, it's
Speaker 4: gonna be very much. It's gonna be very broad, right,
Speaker 4: and so you have to expand your thinking beyond believing.
Speaker 4: And black folks, a lot of black people suffer with
Speaker 4: this because, you know, especially if you are from a
Speaker 4: family where mother, grandmother, grandfather, whatever, were people who told
Speaker 4: you you do what them folks tell.
Speaker 2: You to do.
Speaker 1: Follow the rules are the rules.
Speaker 4: Don't be getting into nothing with mister Johnny them down
Speaker 4: there downtown. You already know they don't like us. You
Speaker 4: too black to go certain places at certain times, and
Speaker 4: it is trauma and fear. That's not who they want
Speaker 4: to be, but that's their reality. And so when there
Speaker 4: those are people who pretty much believe whatever they hear
Speaker 4: in the news, on in the newspaper, whatever the media says.
Speaker 4: How people say, they can't be saying. They can't be
Speaker 4: telling you one thing on the news if it's not
Speaker 4: really true, that's right, right, Like there's no way they can.
Speaker 6: But also black people are saying that for other good reasons,
Speaker 6: right because they know when these types of laws and
Speaker 6: the things that happen, when law enforcement comes, they always
Speaker 6: come for the black people.
Speaker 4: Well no, but I'm talking about people who who are
Speaker 4: looking at me. I get those folks who are just like,
Speaker 4: don't just stay out of trouble. But that mindset often always,
Speaker 4: i mean often leads to if that's what they said,
Speaker 4: then it must be true because they won't lie like
Speaker 4: they just believe, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm saying, I'm.
Speaker 4: Just I'm putting.
Speaker 1: All that out there. Let me just say how I
Speaker 1: feel about the women's marketing.
Speaker 5: That's what you say.
Speaker 6: Well, I just want to end my point by saying
Speaker 6: all this that I said is to say that it's
Speaker 6: a dangerous time and we have to be very intentional
Speaker 6: about who we're putting outside and how we're bringing marginalized
Speaker 6: people to the street, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: as organizers, at least we do feel this way, we're
Speaker 6: responsible for people, and I don't want to be in
Speaker 6: a place responsibility for people's safety.
Speaker 5: And also for the government to start deciding.
Speaker 6: Now who are the people that are in opposition to yal.
Speaker 4: I think that it should be called the women the
Speaker 4: white women's March. I think that white women should ask
Speaker 4: black and brown women to stand down.
Speaker 1: You protect yourself, don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: We're gonna go out here and we're gonna put ourselves
Speaker 4: in harm's way and in danger's eye, and we're gonna
Speaker 4: do the work for at least the next several months,
Speaker 4: at least for the next two years.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the time period is.
Speaker 4: And not put black and brown folks and small black
Speaker 4: and brown organizations in harms way. I don't think anybody
Speaker 4: would have been I got people sending me all types
Speaker 4: of things. They're sending me letters where they're calling for
Speaker 4: the Women's March not to do this march. I've got
Speaker 4: people sending me petitions, and people will send me all
Speaker 4: types of stuff where they're trying to say that this
Speaker 4: should not happen. I'm saying that it should happen, but
Speaker 4: it should be a c full of white women. Yes,
Speaker 4: that's what I think it should be. That's my advice
Speaker 4: to the WAU.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad we're having this conversation, and I know
Speaker 3: we've been texting about different things. And I think, first
Speaker 3: of all, just to reiterate what Linda was saying, we
Speaker 3: are not part of the Women's March, and so I
Speaker 3: love all of you who have been reaching out, but
Speaker 3: we are not going to be march.
Speaker 1: It's been five years. You're telling me people don't pay
Speaker 1: attention for five years ago.
Speaker 6: Well, I think people think major mobilization, you pop back up,
Speaker 6: you pop back up. But also they know that we're
Speaker 6: the ones capable of actually doing the mass mobilization.
Speaker 5: Because people know us.
Speaker 3: And I'm hoping that they do outdo what we were
Speaker 3: able to accomplie.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, you know there.
Speaker 8: Should be over twenty million, twenty million, white millions and millions,
Speaker 8: and white women, yes, and their white husband's, white fathers,
Speaker 8: white sons.
Speaker 3: Right, I personally feel it is it is a waste
Speaker 3: of money. As people who have organized marches at that caliber,
Speaker 3: we know how much it costs. And our communities right
Speaker 3: now are suffering a lot of organizations are needing money
Speaker 3: for education, needing money for security, needing money for trying
Speaker 3: all these I know, and so there's just a lot
Speaker 3: that we need. And if if I know, we had
Speaker 3: created a five O one C four so that we
Speaker 3: could get people civically engaged, and we should have been
Speaker 3: organizing these last four years.
Speaker 7: We should have been getting out the vote.
Speaker 3: We should have been civically getting women civically engaged, and
Speaker 3: we should have been actually turning those white women around
Speaker 3: that voted for Trump in twenty sixteen. We should have
Speaker 3: been reaching out to them. But that didn't happen. And
Speaker 3: I know it's not my responsibility, it's not your responsibility
Speaker 3: ability or Linda's, but I do feel that we should
Speaker 3: be doing something different, and that money that all these
Speaker 3: folks have should be going to the most marginalized communities.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if on January eighteenth we're going
Speaker 3: to be seeing the same numbers that we did January
Speaker 3: twenty first of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, first of all, I just want to
Speaker 2: say that I love and respect all of you. You know,
Speaker 2: I was there when the Women's March started, when you
Speaker 2: women put your lives on the line and took a
Speaker 2: lot of heat, and you know, I think that you
Speaker 2: can't recreate that. You know, I don't think anybody can
Speaker 2: recreate that. I think the energy around that march was
Speaker 2: way different. I think, you know, like you said, Linda,
Speaker 2: we understood that we wanted to make sure that people
Speaker 2: knew that Donald Trump knew where we stood and that
Speaker 2: we were against him in the world made that statement.
Speaker 2: I think at this point that we have evolved into
Speaker 2: different levels of leadership and strategies, and we understand now
Speaker 2: who we're fighting against, and the best way to fight
Speaker 2: him is to organize internally and actually not as broad
Speaker 2: and invisible, because they're making laws that actually target us now,
Speaker 2: that can actually take us out. So we have to
Speaker 2: be a lot more strategic as the way we strategize,
Speaker 2: Like you said, if the white women want to go
Speaker 2: out there and organize the march go right along. We
Speaker 2: need allies, we need accomplices. So we need the white
Speaker 2: women to actually understand this moment. If you want to
Speaker 2: go the lie and be, you know, in solidarity with us,
Speaker 2: and we appreciate that, but at this moment, the level
Speaker 2: of strategy and organizing that we have to do has
Speaker 2: to be very different and has to be very intentional.
Speaker 2: So I just want to say that I appreciate you
Speaker 2: and I love you guys. I mean you ladies, because
Speaker 2: you know, because she said there's no guys, I got.
Speaker 6: To say something on the record though, yes the Women's March,
Speaker 6: because then I feel like I didn't say my part.
Speaker 6: I will just say personally, over the last fifteen months,
Speaker 6: I have been so disappointed with the Women's March itself.
Speaker 6: As someone who is one of the original co founders
Speaker 6: and cultures of the march, you would believe that a
Speaker 6: women's march that was founded by one Palestinian American woman
Speaker 6: who was in unequivocal solidarity with all marginalized people, where
Speaker 6: we were outside putting our bodies aligned for others, You
Speaker 6: would think at some point the Women's March would say
Speaker 6: we are women with power, and we are going to
Speaker 6: say the things that need to be said. The Women's
Speaker 6: March in fifteen months set ceasefire one time. There's one
Speaker 6: post on their whole social media for fifteen months that
Speaker 6: says ceasefire, and that's all it says. It just says
Speaker 6: the word cees fire. Then last week, I think because
Speaker 6: of the criticism that they were receiving about the march,
Speaker 6: they came out in addition to hundreds of other organizations
Speaker 6: calling on people to call their members of the United
Speaker 6: States Senate to support the Senator of Arnie Sanders, a
Speaker 6: blocking aid to Israel that was fifteen months after a
Speaker 6: genocide began, and even an organization that claims to support
Speaker 6: reproductive rights, women's rights, gender justice. You would think that
Speaker 6: someone along the way would say, wait a minute, there
Speaker 6: are fifty thousand pregnant women in Gaza and we as
Speaker 6: the people, are bombing the hell out of them and
Speaker 6: making and that they have no access to healthcare. In fact,
Speaker 6: women were delivering babies without anesthesia and having sea section.
Speaker 6: So just want to say to people personally, and this
Speaker 6: has my personal position, should not interfere in what you
Speaker 6: believe or what you think about women's March. But I
Speaker 6: just want people to know from the perspective of someone
Speaker 6: who was part of the original group of the Women's March,
Speaker 6: that's how I felt over the last fifteen months. And
Speaker 6: I now know which organizations truly stand for all people
Speaker 6: and who in the movement is willing to say and
Speaker 6: be fully and unequivocally in solidarity with.
Speaker 5: Marginalized people around the world.
Speaker 6: And I kind of figured out what their space is
Speaker 6: and what they've decided and what positions that they decided.
Speaker 6: Because most of the women that we organized with that
Speaker 6: the Women's March, who are no longer at the Women's March,
Speaker 6: have been outside. I've seen them. I've been seeing a
Speaker 6: lot even some of the white women Bob, a lot
Speaker 6: of the original women from the Women's March, like Bob
Speaker 6: Bob Revival Chorus, whatever, they come outside with the Kafias.
Speaker 6: They're out at the pro Palestine rallies, really publicly out there.
Speaker 6: So I just wanted to say that because it's something
Speaker 6: that has been sitting with me, as you said, to
Speaker 6: make it in my back pocket, that I've kind of
Speaker 6: wanted to say, and like like we're like just to
Speaker 6: wrap this.
Speaker 5: Up that you know, people do whatever people want to do.
Speaker 6: But if we were just here to share our perspective
Speaker 6: about where we are and me personally, people are looking
Speaker 6: for me.
Speaker 5: I'm down underground.
Speaker 6: Like you know, there's a meetings coming up with major
Speaker 6: immigrant rights leaders, folks that are on the front line
Speaker 6: to decide what.
Speaker 5: It's going to look like to protect our communities. Who
Speaker 5: needs resources.
Speaker 6: Mapping also looking nationally, let's map the cities, which ones
Speaker 6: are not sanctuary cities, the cities where we know law
Speaker 6: enforcement will immediately cooperate with the Donald Trump administration. Because
Speaker 6: there are some governors and some mayors that have said,
Speaker 6: not us, We're not going to play that in our city.
Speaker 5: But there are others that are like, we ready, we
Speaker 5: please pick us number one. We're over here. We just
Speaker 5: got to make sure that we are helping well.
Speaker 4: And then you also have you have you have a
Speaker 4: layered It's just layered. We could go on all day.
Speaker 4: I'm not even going to I just want to make
Speaker 4: sure to mention that you know, there are also people
Speaker 4: out here who are calling for all women's organizations to
Speaker 4: speak up about what's happening in the Sudan and in
Speaker 4: the Congo to African women, and we don't see anything
Speaker 4: on that either, So there's lots of work to go
Speaker 4: around that requires us doing more than having a public
Speaker 4: and not us them people from having a public march.
Speaker 3: I just want to say one last thing if I may,
Speaker 3: and I know I don't really say this publicly, but
Speaker 3: I have felt betrayed by the Women's March, and so
Speaker 3: I'm also very angry that they're calling it the People's
Speaker 3: March because of how we were organizing in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: and people wanting us.
Speaker 7: To call it the People's March.
Speaker 3: But it was precisely that reason that we called it
Speaker 3: the Women's March, because we needed to galvanize women and
Speaker 3: we needed women in leadership.
Speaker 7: It needed to be women led.
Speaker 5: But I feel.
Speaker 7: Betrayed by them because we weren't.
Speaker 3: Protected when we were being falsely accused of certain things,
Speaker 3: and it really has.
Speaker 7: Harmed many of us.
Speaker 3: And I know we have different levels of healing, and
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm now just kind of like at
Speaker 3: that point where I'm talking more about it. I'm still angry,
Speaker 3: and I know Linda has said, Okay, we got to
Speaker 3: get over it, we got to move forward, but I
Speaker 3: feel like they they turned their backs on us, the
Speaker 3: current leadership that is talking about women's rights, that is
Speaker 3: talking about people protecting people, turn their backs on the
Speaker 3: very people that had organized the Women's March, and that
Speaker 3: was myself, you and Linda and as well as Bob.
Speaker 5: Right and others.
Speaker 4: But I would say, and I want to say, I
Speaker 4: thank you ladies so much for being here, for being vulnerable.
Speaker 4: And I think that it's important for us to acknowledge
Speaker 4: that when you say they abandoned us and they did this,
Speaker 4: and that they some of them are the ones who
Speaker 4: actually did the damage.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the turning your.
Speaker 4: Back, it's that they were part of organizing against us.
Speaker 4: We knew it, didn't know it as much at the time,
Speaker 4: but we learned it. And in my book I Live
Speaker 4: to Tell the Story, which is going to be released
Speaker 4: on February eleventh, there is a place where I say,
Speaker 4: when I get old and gray, I'm going to tell
Speaker 4: people about a black woman who was part of those
Speaker 4: organizing against us. And I said, but I can't tell
Speaker 4: you who to be at t ch was now because
Speaker 4: you can't handle it.
Speaker 1: It's too it's too deep, it's too deep.
Speaker 6: But let's also just not end this beautiful conversation. By
Speaker 6: the way, thank you so much for having us here.
Speaker 6: In my sentiment, the truth of the matter is, there
Speaker 6: was a lot of things that happened to us, but
Speaker 6: God said.
Speaker 1: Oh God, still, we still still. That's why I live
Speaker 1: to tell the story.
Speaker 6: That's why I just want to know that, you know,
Speaker 6: sometimes and this is what I believe in. And it's
Speaker 6: interesting because the people of gods that believe this too.
Speaker 6: Sometimes you got to go through the worst shit. And
Speaker 6: of course nothing we've experienced is even close to what
Speaker 6: people God's experience to be where we are right now.
Speaker 5: To get to a better place. So I feel grateful.
Speaker 6: I just want people to know that, you know, to
Speaker 6: Meeka got a second book coming out since we got
Speaker 6: to remember this, we're talking about something from seven years ago,
Speaker 6: you know, six years ago. Whatever, the things we've accomplished,
Speaker 6: the things we've been able to get you babies now, personally,
Speaker 6: professionally like we I'm just so grateful to God. And
Speaker 6: the other thing is this is this right here is
Speaker 6: also a demonstration of what's feeling, what's not. This is
Speaker 6: still here right because we could have just been like cool,
Speaker 6: we was at the women's Mare. I mean we obviously
Speaker 6: knew each other before that, and we're still together and.
Speaker 1: We will stay together.
Speaker 2: We're still together fifture.
Speaker 5: It's still the fifth Culture.
Speaker 1: And my friend, that's what we love you, Bob Blad.
Speaker 2: We love you, Bob Dope interview.
Speaker 5: We appreciate y'all, love your peace.
Speaker 2: It's always a beautiful moment when all three of you
Speaker 2: were in here and just listening to you, just reminis's
Speaker 2: so many, so many years of camaraderie and sisterhood and brotherhood,
Speaker 2: you know, just being a fly I called myself the
Speaker 2: fly on the wall at the Women's march, you know,
Speaker 2: and just seeing how you evolved from that, how theys
Speaker 2: evolved from that, and then we find ourselves in another
Speaker 2: pivotabal moment in history, you know, and just having that conversation.
Speaker 2: So I just love, I love what we have as
Speaker 2: a family, you know, and just listening to your talk.
Speaker 2: So sometimes I just get caught enamored in the moments
Speaker 2: to listen to y'all talk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's you know, we talk to each
Speaker 4: other every day and we are one another's peace. We
Speaker 4: keep one another calm. I think all of us do. Angelo, yourself, me, Carmen,
Speaker 4: Jay ra mean. I mean the list goes on with
Speaker 4: a family that we've created that you know, we know
Speaker 4: that we know one another struggles even when one of
Speaker 4: us is not expressing it, you know, And so I
Speaker 4: thought that it was important that you know, not have
Speaker 4: people asking you, asking me, you ask her, and then
Speaker 4: everybody and we all given different perspectives. You can get
Speaker 4: it from us in one place, how we feel where
Speaker 4: we are at this time. And I truly do believe
Speaker 4: what I said that in this moment, the white community
Speaker 4: needs to take a look at what has happened here
Speaker 4: and understand that they also have a serious problem. Black folks,
Speaker 4: mainly black black women, and black men are pretty much
Speaker 4: on the same page. There's some who didn't vote at all,
Speaker 4: but for those people who actually bought themselves to the polls,
Speaker 4: they knew the assignment.
Speaker 1: We knew the assignment, and.
Speaker 4: So we pretty much have shown over and over again
Speaker 4: that we are willing to protect everybody while also trying
Speaker 4: to protect ourselves. That is not the case with our
Speaker 4: white brethren and sistern. They need to have many more
Speaker 4: opportunities to allow people of color to rest, to figure
Speaker 4: out our conditions, our situations, what we're going to have
Speaker 4: to face what it's going to look like to live
Speaker 4: under a regime, if you will or want to be,
Speaker 4: regime that is in many ways fascist and of course
Speaker 4: a dictatorship. We need to be able to figure that out.
Speaker 4: And people shouldn't even be asking us to march. And
Speaker 4: I know there's some folks out there who will say, well,
Speaker 4: no one asks you specifically to me go, or you Linda,
Speaker 4: or you Carmena, you my sign. But there are people
Speaker 4: asking us because we're getting the phone calls, we're getting
Speaker 4: the questions about well, can't we do this together, can't
Speaker 4: we come together? Well why don't we look past the
Speaker 4: things of the past and fight? And we have people
Speaker 4: asking us all of that, And I don't I think
Speaker 4: that the way to protect those people who you claim
Speaker 4: you're supposed to be so much for is to just
Speaker 4: say we got this. We're gonna go, We're gonna organize
Speaker 4: our people, and we're going to make sure that white
Speaker 4: women put ourselves in the line of and I don't
Speaker 4: want to say fire, but the line of the lion's eye.
Speaker 4: Go out there and do that. Don't even bother just
Speaker 4: say dis march. Ain't even four people of color it's
Speaker 4: white people who are calling on white people to show
Speaker 4: up and do not shift that burden on other communities.
Speaker 2: I one agree with you, that's right. So for my
Speaker 2: I don't get it today. You know, I've been having
Speaker 2: dialogue just over and over just trying to you know,
Speaker 2: just the moment we're in. It's like, I'm first of all,
Speaker 2: I just don't understand the people like I think that
Speaker 2: was my I don't get it last week that I
Speaker 2: don't understand the people that think now because you know,
Speaker 2: Trump was elected president, that people are just supposed to
Speaker 2: be quiet and just you know, all right, it's over. No,
Speaker 2: now the work actually begins now. I was having a conversation,
Speaker 2: you know, I seen a post that actually been Crumpet
Speaker 2: posted and he was talking about how President Biden had
Speaker 2: just put sixty one new judges, black judges on you know,
Speaker 2: the benches, on the benches, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: that makes sense, they said, And he has over two
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven black judges that he's put on
Speaker 2: benches since he's been in office. And I thought that
Speaker 2: made sense. And then people say, oh, nobody, kids, what
Speaker 2: have those people done in black faces and high places
Speaker 2: don't do anything for black people, and that's nothing, it's
Speaker 2: nothing in that concept. I just don't get right. I
Speaker 2: just don't I understand that there are there are going
Speaker 2: to be some black judges that don't do things that
Speaker 2: we need. There are gonna be some people that don't
Speaker 2: do anything. But to just believe that we don't need
Speaker 2: black representation, right, that we don't need black people that
Speaker 2: come from our community to be in positions of power,
Speaker 2: to be able to interpret law, to dictate, to handle sentences,
Speaker 2: and that understand our culture, to understand where we come from.
Speaker 2: That we don't need none of them in any position
Speaker 2: of power. It's just it's so confusing to me that
Speaker 2: people have that that, you know, that notion, that they
Speaker 2: believe that, like, what are we telling our kids? Were
Speaker 2: telling our kids to go to school, be smart, you
Speaker 2: can be a lawyer, you can be a doctor, and
Speaker 2: then actually when they actually get to those places, we're
Speaker 2: telling them that they have no value to us anymore. Right,
Speaker 2: It's confusing to me. We send these kids to school,
Speaker 2: you're paying tuition, you're paying all this thing. They scholarly,
Speaker 2: they studying the law, they've been through the reality, they've
Speaker 2: probably seen their uncles go to jail. They've seen their
Speaker 2: mothers be you abused by the system, and they want
Speaker 2: to be getting the positions to actually change those things.
Speaker 2: And we're telling them that when they get there that
Speaker 2: they don't matter that now they're so they sold out
Speaker 2: because now they've actually done the things that we've told
Speaker 2: them to do. It's just that I really am so
Speaker 2: confused with this mind stake, and I'm confused that how
Speaker 2: they tricked us into believing that because they are in
Speaker 2: positions of power all the time, and we watch them
Speaker 2: abuse the white people have been in the position of
Speaker 2: power for since we came here, and we watch how
Speaker 2: they've abused it, they've negatively impacted us. How when a
Speaker 2: young white boy goes before a white judge he's able
Speaker 2: to get probation for shit that they give us five
Speaker 2: and ten years for. We watch it work for them.
Speaker 2: So why how did they convince us to believe that
Speaker 2: none of us care enough about us to be able
Speaker 2: to implement those same, you know, levels of empathy and
Speaker 2: understanding for our own people, Like why why do we
Speaker 2: think this way? Well?
Speaker 4: I have so many different I have different points that
Speaker 4: are coming up as you're speaking. First, of all, who
Speaker 4: is the day on our side that or we we
Speaker 4: that you're talking about, because those people who have actually
Speaker 4: been engaged in struggle, for the most part, don't feel
Speaker 4: the way that you're talking about right or the way
Speaker 4: that you're what you're saying. I believe that one of
Speaker 4: the biggest issues here and why you get confused about
Speaker 4: things is because of the people you're talking to and
Speaker 4: listening to. You are spending time communicating with and accepting
Speaker 4: the rationale of a lot of stupid ass people that's
Speaker 4: on the Internet, and that's why you're in this fish
Speaker 4: bowl of listening to people say very ignorant things. That's
Speaker 4: why I don't spend my time there. I don't spend
Speaker 4: my time there. It has become a very much so
Speaker 4: an entertainment tool for me and a messaging tool to
Speaker 4: get out things that I care about. Sometimes I might
Speaker 4: learn a little bit, but I am spending less of
Speaker 4: my time. I've actually been training myself to say a
Speaker 4: thing if I decide to make a comment on the
Speaker 4: shade room or make a comment wherever, I might respond
Speaker 4: one time. Other than that, I have decided that many
Speaker 4: of these people are trolls, so they are deliberately, even
Speaker 4: if they are trolls that have a real profile, because
Speaker 4: as we learn, I have the evidence in my phone
Speaker 4: that during this presidential cycle, this election cycle, there was
Speaker 4: a way that you could be paid to use your
Speaker 4: page to respond to things that you know, to respond
Speaker 4: in my comments, your common whoever. I'm not saying us
Speaker 4: we were being targeted. I'm saying in general, you could
Speaker 4: pay to you would be paid to use your real
Speaker 4: profile to communicate with people. Because the trolling that used
Speaker 4: to be very prominent, or much of it, was people
Speaker 4: who have no page, no profile, and it's just like
Speaker 4: bots and they're talking and then you go on their pages,
Speaker 4: either it's either blocked or it is one picture or
Speaker 4: two pictures or whatever, and that was a clear giveaway
Speaker 4: that these people are fake. So they are now actually
Speaker 4: paying real live people to use their social media accounts
Speaker 4: to be out there with the same talking points. So
Speaker 4: you could literally go up there and say the most sensible,
Speaker 4: sensible things, and you're going to be met with people
Speaker 4: who are going to tell you that it doesn't matter
Speaker 4: that they're black judges out there, you're gonna be That's
Speaker 4: what you're gonna be met with. I don't even know
Speaker 4: why you waste your time, because what you're doing is
Speaker 4: expending energy talking to people who don't even.
Speaker 1: They don't want.
Speaker 2: I don't actually wait, I might respond, I respond to
Speaker 2: one or two people that I know at this point,
Speaker 2: I really you might get one or two comments out
Speaker 2: of me. But still the mind stay because I go
Speaker 2: down the line and I see a bunch of people
Speaker 2: having these conversations and they be and there's people that go,
Speaker 2: I don't have to do it because they're very much
Speaker 2: trained a shout out to Aya, Aya is gonna tear
Speaker 2: you up. She gonna tear you up from the beginning.
Speaker 2: And then there's a couple more people that I know
Speaker 2: that immediately when somebody says, they go to it. So
Speaker 2: I watched the dialogue between them and then I see,
Speaker 2: you know, fifty or sixty other people saying this, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, what, who tricked you into believing this?
Speaker 4: Dumb strung Well, you also have black people who have
Speaker 4: encountered a black judge that was the worst, the absolute worst,
Speaker 4: you prefer When I went in the when I went
Speaker 4: to vote, there was several judges, names of judges, right,
Speaker 4: I think it was like six or seven of them
Speaker 4: and up for election.
Speaker 1: I looked at the names and I.
Speaker 4: Literally did like place in a bet, because unfortunately I
Speaker 4: did not know all of those people. I knew the
Speaker 4: black woman, and I think I knew one more person.
Speaker 4: But I looked at those people and I literally chose
Speaker 4: the white man, saying to myself, sometimes you could get
Speaker 4: a white male judge that actually makes sense. They are
Speaker 4: a little more sensible by the law, by the rules.
Speaker 4: But there was some other people that was on there.
Speaker 4: I literally was like, I'm not going to vote for you,
Speaker 4: because I have encountered. Of course, I voted for black women,
Speaker 4: but I've encountered oftentimes people from all different types of
Speaker 4: backgrounds that feel that they have a responsibility to do
Speaker 4: you as dirty as possible just so they can continue
Speaker 4: to prove themselves and be invited to the white people's thanksgiving.
Speaker 4: So I I understand that some people their response is
Speaker 4: coming from a place of trauma, But there are a
Speaker 4: large majority of people.
Speaker 1: Who are really, really, really ignorant.
Speaker 4: They're stupid, They're ignorant, and you be up there entertaining
Speaker 4: them and giving them your time, And this is why
Speaker 4: you over here confused as super.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with people who tricked you into believing.
Speaker 4: Because if you walk, you walk away from the Internet
Speaker 4: right now, and you just go up and down the street,
Speaker 4: and if you stood on the corner of this block
Speaker 4: and started to say exactly what you're saying, that Biden
Speaker 4: puts sixty one judges in place, and black judges and
Speaker 4: he has over two hundred and something and blah blah
Speaker 4: blah and da da, and you explain to people, the
Speaker 4: average person, regular person that you are seeing in person,
Speaker 4: is gonna say to you, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: That that's actually great.
Speaker 4: Or they're gonna say, well, I've had a black judge
Speaker 4: who's who did X Y Z to me?
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 4: But almost no one that you meet in person is
Speaker 4: going to tell you that it doesn't matter that this
Speaker 4: man puts sixty one black judges in just in the
Speaker 4: last couple of weeks or months or whatever on on
Speaker 4: the federal bench.
Speaker 1: It is not gonna happen. Those are people in a
Speaker 1: bubble on this stupid shit. I'm telling you. I am
Speaker 1: telling you, well.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to say that there's a couple of them
Speaker 2: that I know, and they not just on there, and
Speaker 2: they will literally argue you down with this same talking point,
Speaker 2: and it's just like, I don't know how we got there.
Speaker 2: And it's confusing because, like you said, for the most part,
Speaker 2: it's people that I don't know, that I've never seen
Speaker 2: and they but there are people on there that I
Speaker 2: literally know, And when they have this conversation, they keep
Speaker 2: on saying these same things, and I'm like, why do
Speaker 2: y'all believe that? Like, what makes you believe that this
Speaker 2: even makes sense? You know? So I just asked the
Speaker 2: question because and they keep trying to tell you the
Speaker 2: same thing. Oh, you know, this is what Malcolm said, This.
Speaker 4: Is what this is Malcolm Martin, Stokely Carmichael, Marcus Garvey,
Speaker 4: Coretascott King, doctor Dorothy Hyde, who else maya Angelou. I'm
Speaker 4: just trying to think of the whole everybody that people
Speaker 4: might love, right, all of these Dorothy Cotton, all of
Speaker 4: these people, Reverend Jesse Jackson, not nearly, not one of
Speaker 4: them ever said that white people's ice is better, it's colder.
Speaker 4: None of them said it is better to put white
Speaker 4: people in charge of everything and they're gonna make it
Speaker 4: all right for you because white people have been in charge.
Speaker 4: And guess what we have the highest levels of mass
Speaker 4: incarceration of any community. While there were white judges at
Speaker 4: some point, all white judges, we didn't start becoming judges
Speaker 4: until much later, after the courts had already been designed
Speaker 4: to be the catch place, the holding place for us,
Speaker 4: the kangaroo court. That's where that came from, right, So
Speaker 4: it is I'm just telling you just if you I'll
Speaker 4: give I'm.
Speaker 1: Giving you some advice today.
Speaker 4: If you want real life responses and real life and
Speaker 4: meaningful dialogue, you should go to a street corner and
Speaker 4: just say your thing that you feel that you would
Speaker 4: say on social media on the street corner and have
Speaker 4: conversation with the people.
Speaker 2: The reason why I'm having this conversation because I literally
Speaker 2: just did a podcast three days ago with two people
Speaker 2: that sat there and had these conversations, two black men,
Speaker 2: and they was literally arguing me down, saying the same
Speaker 2: dumb shit. So it's not it's not like in a bubble.
Speaker 2: It's not. If it was just on the internet with
Speaker 2: people I didn't see, I would be like, Okay, you're right,
Speaker 2: But listening to these black men regurgitate the same shit
Speaker 2: is it was. It was frustrating. And then when the
Speaker 2: podcast was over and I'm reading the comments. It's people
Speaker 2: that are agreeing with me, like, yo, do how are
Speaker 2: y'all that ignorant? Who told you? How the shit that
Speaker 2: you're saying? Like, why y'all this ignorance? So it gave
Speaker 2: me some hope. It's like, Okay, at all is not lost.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a bubble a place where these people exist.
Speaker 2: But I don't even know how they exist. I don't
Speaker 2: even know how that mind frame exists, you know, because
Speaker 2: they've really made us believe that, you know, that's one
Speaker 2: of the thing Michael said, who told you to hate yourself?
Speaker 2: Like what made you believe that the white people are
Speaker 2: going to do more for you than black people? Why?
Speaker 2: Why have you convinced yourself for that?
Speaker 4: Well, because black people in positions of power, people don't
Speaker 4: feel like they've done enough for them.
Speaker 2: But I understand why they don't feel like they've done
Speaker 2: enough because a lot of them can't do enough. A
Speaker 2: lot of them, like you said, a lot of them
Speaker 2: don't have the position of power, and then a lot
Speaker 2: of them are trying to appease people. So but I
Speaker 2: want to believe. I want to believe that given the
Speaker 2: opportunity right if we continue to change the narrative, and
Speaker 2: we continue to reshape with America is, and we continue
Speaker 2: to put our culture in positions of power, I want
Speaker 2: to believe that ultimately we empower them to make those
Speaker 2: changes that they feel comfortable in them, they feel enough
Speaker 2: of us back them. They don't have they don't need
Speaker 2: white validation, they don't need none of that. And when
Speaker 2: we start to do that, then you'll see the shift.
Speaker 2: But as long as we keep acting like our people
Speaker 2: don't matter, then we do nothing but a disservice to
Speaker 2: our own well.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know how I feel about it.
Speaker 2: So that brings us to the end of another episode
Speaker 2: of TMI. We appreciate y'all for making us a number
Speaker 2: one podcast in the world. Like we always uh TDM,
Speaker 2: we did oury thing. Shout out to our sisters Linda
Speaker 2: Sarsaw and Carmen Perez joining our show today. We love them.
Speaker 2: Make sure you follow them on social media's they are
Speaker 2: part of our organization. Linda is one of the co
Speaker 2: founders of Until Freedom and Carmen Perez is the president
Speaker 2: of the Gathering for Justice hier Badfont his organization. One
Speaker 2: of our great leaders. Rip to him. We appreciate y'all. Look,
Speaker 2: make sure that you follow us on subscribe to our
Speaker 2: channel on YouTube. We need you to watch all of
Speaker 2: the shows and let us know what you love to,
Speaker 2: let us know who you want to see, let us
Speaker 2: know who you want to interview, let us know, give
Speaker 2: us all of your critiques, your criticism, and your love.
Speaker 2: We love you. We're gonna continue to do what we do.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna always be right, Tamika d marriages and
Speaker 2: I can always be wrong, but we will both always
Speaker 2: and I mean always, be authentic. That's