Speaker 1: Native Lamb Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with Resent Choice Media. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hey, fam You're about to hear a replay of
Speaker 2: one of our interviews from our live stream at the
Speaker 2: Democratic National Convention. If you want to listen to or
Speaker 2: watch the full stream, check out the links in the
Speaker 2: episode description. You can also find a full list of
Speaker 2: all the guests we interviewed. Welcome home, y'all to help
Speaker 2: us talk about that future and how we continue to
Speaker 2: to not just honor, but to support and to build
Speaker 2: infrastructure in communities of color and to the rising majority.
Speaker 2: As Tivany Cross always says, is Latasha Brown matter.
Speaker 3: We would love beautiful.
Speaker 2: Of Native Lampid. We are thrilled to have Latasha Brown joining.
Speaker 4: You hear.
Speaker 1: As if you watch news, if you follow policies closely,
Speaker 1: you know Latasha very well. She has an amazing voice.
Speaker 1: But what I love about Latasha is you cannot tell
Speaker 1: the story of America without talking about Latasha Brown and
Speaker 1: the work that she does. We don't want to leave
Speaker 1: out Cliff Albright as well as her partner and co
Speaker 1: founder of Black Voters Matter, but Latasha you show up
Speaker 1: when nobody calls.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: When Hurricane Katrina happened, nobody asked you. You just sprung
Speaker 1: into action and you love everybody. But you love black
Speaker 1: folks like you love yourself.
Speaker 2: And it is just amazing to be the ancestors spirit.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, but in a young that's missionary.
Speaker 1: Ethereal to the spirits. She's an impact, she's our deity.
Speaker 3: She's definitely yes herself and an evangelist, warrior, shaman, things
Speaker 3: the things only.
Speaker 5: Welcome Sys, Thank you.
Speaker 4: I am at the Native Pod. I'm just happy to
Speaker 4: be here in Native This is our land, this is
Speaker 4: out and I feel that, I feel the spirit. I'm
Speaker 4: so proud of y'all. I love each and every one
Speaker 4: of you. Like every week I'm listening because I was like, listen,
Speaker 4: let me get grounded, let me get right. I was like,
Speaker 4: Angela gonna bring some fire and some spice on it.
Speaker 4: Typically gonna like, look, well, I'm just saying, and literally,
Speaker 4: my brother is always I'm gonna be the voice of
Speaker 4: reason until I I.
Speaker 2: Love that you are doing the people's work. And it
Speaker 2: is always our honor not only to lift you up
Speaker 2: and to encourage you, but anytime you call on us,
Speaker 2: we want to be there with you. I'll never forget
Speaker 2: and t If, I hope you don't mind me telling
Speaker 2: this story. We're on the other side of you know
Speaker 2: what MSNBC Digitif and we knew there was no other
Speaker 2: place we should be, but in Atlanta, next to you,
Speaker 2: working with you, and I remember like the people that
Speaker 2: you pour into, pouring back into Tiffany talk about why
Speaker 2: the work of black voters matter is so critical, especially
Speaker 2: in a moment like this.
Speaker 4: You know, I think that it's important for us to
Speaker 4: recognize that if change is to happen, if we're going
Speaker 4: to have the nation that we desire, we deserve and
Speaker 4: we're going to have to create it. So we've got
Speaker 4: to generate it. And the way that we generated, we're
Speaker 4: gonna have to generate it. Really, it has to be strategy.
Speaker 4: We need strategy, right, But it's not just been strategy
Speaker 4: that's moved us forward. It's been spirit. It's been strategy
Speaker 4: and the spirit, the spirit and the ancestors, the spirit
Speaker 4: of resistance, the spirit of freedom, the spirit of love,
Speaker 4: like loving each other when we haven't had anything else,
Speaker 4: when we didn't have money, when we didn't have land,
Speaker 4: when we didn't have kind of the politics. What we
Speaker 4: had is we had this sense of self and the
Speaker 4: love of each other that would actually take us through.
Speaker 4: And so for us with Black Voters Matter, we wanted
Speaker 4: to create an organization that was unapologetic about being black.
Speaker 4: Right we ride around in a big bus, a fifty
Speaker 4: eight foot bus and say we're in the blackest bus
Speaker 4: in America. We wanted to own and affirm that and
Speaker 4: not just say that we're participating in the election, because
Speaker 4: we're really not in election group. We're a power building group.
Speaker 4: We're real clear that all the work that we're doing
Speaker 4: is really about how do we build power for black folks.
Speaker 4: And when people are talking about voting, yes, voting is
Speaker 4: one key, you know, and is a very very powerful tool,
Speaker 4: but it's also a space of when you own your agency.
Speaker 4: There's something about voting that's really about owning your agency
Speaker 4: that if a decision is being made about me and mine,
Speaker 4: I need to be a part of that process, right
Speaker 4: that that's fundamentally you know. And also we've got to
Speaker 4: have this space around when people are actually hurting and
Speaker 4: harming our communities, there has to be a consequence. So
Speaker 4: you can't continue to serve in the office and hurt
Speaker 4: and harm us. We've got to send a message loud
Speaker 4: and clear like this, this ain't going down like that, right.
Speaker 4: But also to create space, create space if there's nothing
Speaker 4: else for harm reduction, to reduce the harm happening to us,
Speaker 4: to actually work collectively together and really move towards a vision,
Speaker 4: a collective vision. So that's the work that we do
Speaker 4: and that's why we do it. You know, if you
Speaker 4: want to the three things, I call it three ms.
Speaker 4: The three things we do is money, it's movement building,
Speaker 4: and it's message. In the last seven years, we've really
Speaker 4: been blessed. One of the things that we always would
Speaker 4: sitting around and were like, how could we invest in
Speaker 4: black communities. We've invested over forty I think as of now,
Speaker 4: I think it's over forty one million dollars and black
Speaker 4: leg grassroot groups in the last six years. In the
Speaker 4: last six years to do power building. That's everything from reparations,
Speaker 4: organizing around reparations, to organizing around police accountability, to actually
Speaker 4: do an election work to referendums. At the end of
Speaker 4: the day, how black communities define what power building is
Speaker 4: for them. We want to be in alignment with them
Speaker 4: and support them around that. In addition that we also
Speaker 4: know that the message matters. That's why I'm so happy
Speaker 4: you all are doing this podcast. We need black media,
Speaker 4: We need places like this. I want if I had
Speaker 4: all the money in the world right when I hear
Speaker 4: the lottery, I promise y'all that my first investment is
Speaker 4: going to be this podcast right here, right because the
Speaker 4: world needs to hear your voices. I have clarity, and
Speaker 4: I'm just really really grateful to be in relationship with you.
Speaker 5: You know what. I just first of all, everything you
Speaker 5: said cosan, love love, love, that whole investment piece at
Speaker 5: the end, they're true. Yeah, yeah, But I have to
Speaker 5: tell you I am in all of your mission vision
Speaker 5: and the fact that you're defining yourself outside of any
Speaker 5: election cycle. So often donors and media and others like
Speaker 5: to put organizing in the black community and the bucket
Speaker 5: of election turnout and what's happening with the black vote
Speaker 5: and the da da da da da, And you're saying, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: that's not the box that we're We're not in an
Speaker 5: any box. And what I have to say, as a
Speaker 5: person who had run for office and have gone to
Speaker 5: the communities where we have felt really disempowered, really not
Speaker 5: invested in, really not seen. It's groups and efforts like
Speaker 5: yours who were there before the election after the election,
Speaker 5: putting pieces back together and renewing in people a belief
Speaker 5: a system that they're not some commodity to be traded
Speaker 5: on that right, but rather we're an investment to be made.
Speaker 5: We are a community that gives, we feel, we love,
Speaker 5: we breathe, we have disappointments, we have ups, we have downs.
Speaker 5: And what you're doing is you're helping. You're helping to
Speaker 5: give that greater credibility, and hopefully what it will do
Speaker 5: is recruit greater investment in our community that is there
Speaker 5: outside of anybody's election cycle. Because if we do that
Speaker 5: work and people start to believe that that's how change
Speaker 5: gets created, that this is an element of the change
Speaker 5: that we're trying to see, then I have to believe
Speaker 5: that we won't need the investment of these short term
Speaker 5: voter registration turn out projects why because the work will
Speaker 5: be there three sixty five. And I'm just curious, before
Speaker 5: we go to our other bad age over here, is
Speaker 5: that how are you experiencing the donor class as it
Speaker 5: relates to investing in that kind of move.
Speaker 1: Largely white male donor.
Speaker 4: Part of what we actually decided that when we started
Speaker 4: the organization, I just want to be honest, Cliff and
Speaker 4: I we always tell the story we quit our jobs
Speaker 4: and we started the organizationation. We had the idea that
Speaker 4: we wanted to create. The name is actually Black Voters
Speaker 4: Matter Fund. We were very intentional from the beginning that
Speaker 4: has organized us for multiple decades. That part of the
Speaker 4: challenge we had sometimes when there was an election or
Speaker 4: there wasn't There was an election happening, but if the
Speaker 4: candidate did not invest in the campaign or a party,
Speaker 4: there were no resources, but it mattered, It mattered who
Speaker 4: was kount of commissioner, it mattered who the sheriff was,
Speaker 4: but there were no resources available if the party or
Speaker 4: candidate wasn't put it in there. And we were like,
Speaker 4: our power should not be tied into whether a candidate
Speaker 4: believes that that is important enough. We've got to find
Speaker 4: a way that the candidate that we're running for, the
Speaker 4: candidate that we're doing our work for, the candidate that
Speaker 4: is ongoing is black power. We wanted to be very
Speaker 4: intentional about being black. That's what our colors are our
Speaker 4: colors ain't red, white and blue. I know that this
Speaker 4: is pretty around, is pretty right, but our colors are red, black,
Speaker 4: and green.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: That we wanted to literally lift up and have a
Speaker 4: foundation around black liberation and be unapologetic with it, so
Speaker 4: that our alignment wasn't with a political party or political candidate.
Speaker 4: Our alignment was really around how do we help black
Speaker 4: folks as they define build power in their local communities.
Speaker 4: And if we do that enough and we're connecting that enough,
Speaker 4: and we get black folks just to believe in their
Speaker 4: own power just that point black period. If black people
Speaker 4: believe in our own power, what we have shown is
Speaker 4: we will change this nation. We have everything that we
Speaker 4: have stood in the space of our power, even whether
Speaker 4: whether we had the majority of numbers or not, we
Speaker 4: have created change. And so that's what we wanted to
Speaker 4: literally build off the rich history of that, the real
Speaker 4: history of struggle, a spirit, a strategy, and putting those
Speaker 4: things together really to advance not just black liberation for us,
Speaker 4: because I actually fundamentally to believe that all people will
Speaker 4: actually benefit from black liberation if you lift up those
Speaker 4: communities that are on the fringes, those communities that have
Speaker 4: been marginalized. Then it has always made life better for
Speaker 4: all of us. When black folks fight for housing white
Speaker 4: acount of parts. Everybody benefits from housing. So that's what
Speaker 4: I mentioned, is that's our dream. And we're just really
Speaker 4: grateful to be in service of the ancestors. We are
Speaker 4: grateful to be in service of our people. We are
Speaker 4: grateful to go around and say in this space right now,
Speaker 4: baby be clear, we'll be bowl beautiful and.
Speaker 2: Black on the road with you. Let's have some work
Speaker 2: to do, including always building black house.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for listening, you guys, Please please please
Speaker 1: remember to rate, review, subscribe, and tune into our regular
Speaker 1: episode on Thursdays. Welcome Home, y'all.
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