Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civicsacker. I'm your host, Rams's Ja.
Speaker 2: He is Ramsy's Jah. I am Q ward Man. You
Speaker 2: guys are now tuned in Pacific.
Speaker 1: Second hashtag side Flack. Let's get to it. Stick around.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of show in store for you
Speaker 1: this week. We're going to spend the first part of
Speaker 1: the show talking about news. You know, for those that
Speaker 1: listen regularly, you might hear a constant complaint that we
Speaker 1: have that we often don't have enough show for the
Speaker 1: news that we have to cover. This is something that
Speaker 1: Q has said consistently on the show since we started
Speaker 1: doing it. And so while we're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to cover all of the goings on, there's certainly
Speaker 1: some notable stories in the news this week, so we're
Speaker 1: going to spend a little bit of time about each
Speaker 1: of them. Our final story is going to kind of
Speaker 1: give us a precursor into the second half of the show,
Speaker 1: where we're going to be examining a report the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan Law School detailing race and wrongful convictions in
Speaker 1: the United States as of twenty twenty two. This is
Speaker 1: something we've been wanting to get to and so it's
Speaker 1: a perfect opportunity to get into that and peel back
Speaker 1: some layers there, So that'll be the second half of
Speaker 1: the show. On top of that, we are going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the Black Codes for our Way Black
Speaker 1: History Fact and some of you may be familiar with
Speaker 1: black codes, but I don't believe that we've covered the
Speaker 1: Black codes in depth on this show just yet, and
Speaker 1: in short, just so you know what's worth sticking around.
Speaker 1: Black codes are basically bogus laws that were I guess
Speaker 1: they were valid, but they're you know, the mean spirited laws,
Speaker 1: and they were enacted to they were actual law. Actual
Speaker 1: that's the word. I don't know if valid is the
Speaker 1: right word, but they were actual laws. Definitely the right
Speaker 1: intended to imprison black people after slavery to continue to
Speaker 1: get free labor out of them. So stick around for that.
Speaker 1: But first and foremost, I think it's time for some
Speaker 1: ebony excellence, shall we we shall? I like this one.
Speaker 1: This is another story that we wanted to cover. So
Speaker 1: this one comes from Essence magazine and it's sponsored by
Speaker 1: Hip Hop Weekly Media. So I'll read. The Yale School
Speaker 1: of Public Health recently honored a nine year old black
Speaker 1: girl from New Jersey for her efforts to help curb
Speaker 1: the presence of an invasive species known as the spotted
Speaker 1: lantern fly in her hometown of Caldwell. Bobby Wilson was
Speaker 1: awarded the title of Donor Scientist after donating her personal
Speaker 1: lantern fly collection to Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Speaker 1: According to the university, the collection is available for public
Speaker 1: viewing in the museum's database. Bobby created a TikTok inspired
Speaker 1: insect repellent out of dishwater soap and apple cider vinegar
Speaker 1: after learning about the bugs that ecologists have urged the
Speaker 1: public to squash on site. The fourth grader, affectionately known
Speaker 1: as Bobby Wonder among her family and friends, was spraying
Speaker 1: the lantern flies that she saw near her home last
Speaker 1: October when she was approached by a police officer and questioned.
Speaker 1: The encounter that Bobby had with the police officer was
Speaker 1: due to the fact that her neighbor and former town
Speaker 1: council member Gordon Lauche I believe that's how I pronounced
Speaker 1: had it called to make a report about seeing a
Speaker 1: suspicious person. There's a little black woman walking spraying stuff
Speaker 1: on sidewalks in trees on Elizabeth and Florence. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the she's doing. Scares me, though, Las, she
Speaker 1: said to dispatchers. According to footage obtained by CNN, Ijoma
Speaker 1: Opara believe that's how I say that, who is an
Speaker 1: assistant professor of public health at Yale, invited Bobby and
Speaker 1: her family to the school to meet other black female
Speaker 1: scientists and to the university shortly after the incident. Quote,
Speaker 1: the whole science community got together and said, she's one
Speaker 1: of us. We're not going to let her lose steam
Speaker 1: for stem. We're going to support the family, and we're
Speaker 1: going to support this girl. She said, so again, shout
Speaker 1: out to Yale and shout out to little Bobby for
Speaker 1: being an example of ebony excellence. Now that's not the
Speaker 1: only thing in the news, but that certainly is one
Speaker 1: of the brighter things we'll be talking about. First and foremost,
Speaker 1: I do want to take a moment and before we
Speaker 1: get into the stories that we actually have earmark for today,
Speaker 1: I do want to mention that at the last minute,
Speaker 1: some additional information came out about the shooting, the shooting
Speaker 1: in Michigan, the college, and it just it just didn't
Speaker 1: time out right for us to include all that and
Speaker 1: do it justice. But you know, we did see the
Speaker 1: three victims. We were toward the show before you hear it.
Speaker 1: That's just kind of the way syndication works. So we're
Speaker 1: not keeping secrets here. And uh, that was heartbreaking to
Speaker 1: see the students that lost their lives and uh there
Speaker 1: that we just need we need to get a little
Speaker 1: bit more before we're able to cover that and do
Speaker 1: it justice. But I don't want you to think that
Speaker 1: that's not something that made its way to us. So
Speaker 1: when the time is right and when we can do
Speaker 1: it justice, if we can do a justice, we certainly
Speaker 1: we'll cover that. That was tough though to see see
Speaker 1: those to me their children, you know, so and then
Speaker 1: they're writing the articles. She was this, he was that.
Speaker 1: It's like very sad because the photos, you know, they
Speaker 1: seem I don't know, weird moment. So let's pivot to
Speaker 1: uh separate weird moment. This story comes from binnews dot com.
Speaker 1: Peyton Gendrin, the shooter who killed ten black people at
Speaker 1: the Top supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last year, has
Speaker 1: been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole,
Speaker 1: per CBS News so you some of you may remember
Speaker 1: us covering this story. This was very heavy for all
Speaker 1: of us, but Civic Cipher had existed long before that
Speaker 1: shooting had taken place, and obviously we're still here now,
Speaker 1: and so this was kind of a thing where all
Speaker 1: eyes were on us at a time when we were
Speaker 1: us saying this, I want to share something me. It's
Speaker 1: very difficult. Oh, I don't want to say I got
Speaker 1: to make sure I say this right. I believe that
Speaker 1: we process these stories a bit differently than we used to.
Speaker 1: And I'm speaking for you, but just because I've known
Speaker 1: you for forever, so follow me here. They're sad, and
Speaker 1: then there's sad coupled with a responsibility to not succumb
Speaker 1: to your emotions, responsibility to be coherent, and to process
Speaker 1: every single detail. We cannot look away because we now
Speaker 1: have a responsibility to help other people through these things
Speaker 1: in a way that we didn't before. Once upon a time,
Speaker 1: when we were doing our regular radio show, we could
Speaker 1: you know, mention things like this and you know, thoughts
Speaker 1: and prayers, that sort of thing, and then get right
Speaker 1: back to the latest CARDI B record or you know,
Speaker 1: hit some little baby or whatever we were doing in
Speaker 1: the studio and now these stories, we realize this is
Speaker 1: kind of everyone's looking at us to give it context
Speaker 1: and to give it perspective, and where we could normally
Speaker 1: have our moments in private, I guess and put on
Speaker 1: a brave face and then share thirty seconds with our listeners.
Speaker 1: You know, when something like this happened in Upstate New York,
Speaker 1: we're like, Okay, we're going to have to talk about
Speaker 1: this for like fifteen minutes. This isn't a thirty second clip.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to go through every detail of it.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to I remember this one. Remember
Speaker 1: we had to read the things that that guy wrote
Speaker 1: on that gun, and we had to kind of articulate
Speaker 1: for folks who like reporters almost you know, we have
Speaker 1: to articulate the hatred, perhaps the source of the hatred,
Speaker 1: and even deeper sources than that. You know, we're we're
Speaker 1: now we're looking at online chat rooms and doing research
Speaker 1: and there's communities of people who wake up early to
Speaker 1: just share hatred about us, you know, and it's just
Speaker 1: a different it's a different thing now doing this show
Speaker 1: than it was ever in my life. And I'm speaking
Speaker 1: for you because I know that we take turns watching
Speaker 1: the videos. Lately, we haven't been taking turns because we
Speaker 1: had to watch the Tyree Nichols video together at the
Speaker 1: same time and go ahead. It seems like.
Speaker 2: It's different, and it's different in multiple ways. It's there
Speaker 2: used to be a shock to seeing things like this,
Speaker 2: and I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that it's become
Speaker 2: something that we're unfortunately getting used to. It never stops
Speaker 2: making me upset, It never stops making me angry, It
Speaker 2: never stops breaking my heart. But before I press play now,
Speaker 2: my heart and my mind kind of braced for what
Speaker 2: they know is coming, rather than being jarred and caught
Speaker 2: off guard. The responsibility to our listeners and to our
Speaker 2: culture for doing this show weighs heavy. I think in
Speaker 2: the wake of Tyran Nicholas, you and I were talking
Speaker 2: about how difficult that was for me, more so than
Speaker 2: really all of the other videos that we've seen, because
Speaker 2: the nature of the stop being fraudulent, the fact that
Speaker 2: the kid actually didn't do anything, and not that he
Speaker 2: didn't do anything worth dying for, but he didn't do
Speaker 2: anything at all, Like even the stop itself had no basis.
Speaker 2: He didn't run a red light. He didn't get over
Speaker 2: without signaling. He didn't you know, he wasn't reckless driving,
Speaker 2: he wasn't drunk, he wasn't under the influence he how
Speaker 2: they would usually find all of the things this person
Speaker 2: has done wrong to put in front of you and
Speaker 2: make them less human and less worthy of your empathy,
Speaker 2: and less worthy of your sorrow, and really less worthy
Speaker 2: of your outrage. In this case, that couldn't even do that,
Speaker 2: even in the wake of his family putting out videos
Speaker 2: of him skateboarding and you know, photos of him helping people,
Speaker 2: and there's a picture of him handing something to a
Speaker 2: little girl who I'm not even sure he knew. He
Speaker 2: was just being kind. Usually to combat that, someone would
Speaker 2: try to give you the other side of it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: In the past, we've seen Cannice owned go out of
Speaker 2: her way to dehumanize someone's humanize, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: so that you won't feel sorry for them. Even people
Speaker 2: like her couldn't find things to make up about this kid.
Speaker 2: And that was the thing that I think troubled me
Speaker 2: the most. When I was driving home and a cop
Speaker 2: got behind me, and I got tense and started sweating,
Speaker 2: and my heart started beating, and I started feeling anxious
Speaker 2: and had to take the next day off of work
Speaker 2: because I was so upset and so uncomfortable. So there's, yes,
Speaker 2: it's way different watching these videos now than it was before,
Speaker 2: but it's that's not singular. It's different in a spider
Speaker 2: web of different ways.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's been tough, Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I'm trying to say. You obviously
Speaker 1: are more articulate than I am, so I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But you know where we end up is, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing this thing unfold, we know that the best case
Speaker 1: scenario is that because remember, he was taken in a
Speaker 1: live I think we did a whole show dedicated to
Speaker 1: that one singular element of this, that that shooter was
Speaker 1: taken in alive. Right, the best case scenario, the best
Speaker 1: possible outcome, is that everybody gets a nice funeral and
Speaker 1: this guy is you know, goes to prison forever. Right,
Speaker 1: And it feels hollow, but it's it doesn't even feel
Speaker 1: like enough to say it's not nothing, it's what happened.
Speaker 1: So I'll finish reading this news story because we have
Speaker 1: a duty to inform you, and these stories don't often
Speaker 1: we haven't been able to cover things like this just
Speaker 1: because there's been so many, so much death and strange behavior.
Speaker 1: But I'll continue reading. Here's a quote from the judge.
Speaker 1: She says, there can be no mercy for you, no understanding,
Speaker 1: no second chances. Her name is Judge Susan Egan, and
Speaker 1: she said this as she delivered the sentence during a
Speaker 1: court hearing on February fifteenth. She goes on to say,
Speaker 1: the damage you have caused is too great, and the
Speaker 1: people you have hurt are too valuable to this community.
Speaker 1: I appreciated her saying that that is akin to say
Speaker 1: black lives matter. You know, the people are too valuable
Speaker 1: to this community. So you know. She goes on to say,
Speaker 1: you will never see the light of day as a
Speaker 1: free man ever again. And so you got to be
Speaker 1: careful with stuff like this because I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that that's good, and of course I don't want
Speaker 1: to say that it's bad. It's just what happened. And
Speaker 1: so this is the outcome that this.
Speaker 2: Is the best case scenario, I guess, And I think
Speaker 2: what you're trying not to do is make it feel
Speaker 2: like a celebratory moment. There's something that's this, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of vile. But it's not a celebration of this
Speaker 2: man's life being turned into perpetual captivity as much as
Speaker 2: it is the idea of there being a such thing
Speaker 2: as justice. And at the very least, if there's no justice,
Speaker 2: there's accountability here when we've seen so many cases where
Speaker 2: there's not.
Speaker 1: Well, let me let me tell you what would feel
Speaker 1: better than this. I know this is wishful thinking, I
Speaker 1: know this is bying the sky. But what would feel
Speaker 1: better than this is if the powers that be are
Speaker 1: elected officials, the billionaires that you know have these little
Speaker 1: pockets of the Internet that they own, in control or whatever.
Speaker 1: If those people shut down these cess pools where these
Speaker 1: types of individuals can you know, network and share ideas,
Speaker 1: These real extreme, hateful white supremacists where they're compelled by
Speaker 1: each other to get out there and get the high score,
Speaker 1: meaning get out there and shoot the most number of people.
Speaker 1: And these guys are often as a term's called in
Speaker 1: cells and voluntarily celibate. And I mean we know that.
Speaker 1: I think it's like forty percent of men never father children, right.
Speaker 1: These guys are often those types, but they don't have
Speaker 1: access to women really nothing. Nothing about their lives they
Speaker 1: feel is they don't feel like any part of their
Speaker 1: lives makes them happy. So they are, in my belief,
Speaker 1: often suicidal, you know, and in that last minute, when
Speaker 1: that adrenal is pumping, some will surrender, some will take
Speaker 1: their own lives. We saw that in Michigan this past week.
Speaker 1: And you know, some of them will you know, surrender
Speaker 1: and go to prison and just be there and be
Speaker 1: celebrated in prison as whatever of neo Nazi or you know,
Speaker 1: Aryan whatever. They'll have their status in the prison with
Speaker 1: the Aryan Brotherhood or whatever it's called in prison. So
Speaker 1: not having access to women is not like a deal
Speaker 1: breaker for these guys. So these communities on the internet
Speaker 1: continue to breed these hateful people and point their hatred
Speaker 1: in the direction of black people, brown people. We saw
Speaker 1: that in El Paso at the Walmart and then the
Speaker 1: country as a whole, you know, is really upset with
Speaker 1: Mexico for no reason.
Speaker 2: But it's not for no reason, right, Yeah, they had
Speaker 2: reasons created and taught to them. So sure they think
Speaker 2: that they're fully justified in their fears and their fake
Speaker 2: concerns for this monster that's coming to get us. That
Speaker 2: doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: So what I would have liked to see is a
Speaker 1: crackdown on that type of terrorism. Let's be honest, That's
Speaker 1: what it is, and not just this one individual being sentenced.
Speaker 1: But this is news. In our job is to you know,
Speaker 1: cover stories like this so that you know, we're not
Speaker 1: leaving everything on the you know, the cutting room floor
Speaker 1: every single week. So that happened. Moving on, this also
Speaker 1: comes from the Black Information Network. Six North Carolina officers
Speaker 1: have been put on leave after video showed the deadly
Speaker 1: tasing of a black man who complained of heart problems.
Speaker 1: Thirty two year old Darryl Tyree Williams died in a
Speaker 1: Rally hospital on January seventeenth after police taste him multiple
Speaker 1: times during its attempted arrest for alleged drug possession. For
Speaker 1: The New York Post. In the newly released footage, Williams
Speaker 1: can be heard questioning why he is being arrested. Officers
Speaker 1: told Williams that if he didn't put his hands behind
Speaker 1: his back, they would use a taser. Police ultimately taste
Speaker 1: Williams three times despite his pleas for them to stop
Speaker 1: due to his heart problems. And that one is another
Speaker 1: one that is really sad because I think that I'm
Speaker 1: starting to appreciate the fact that tasers aren't strictly speaking,
Speaker 1: non lethal. You know, people get shot and survive, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean shot.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of things that have no lead
Speaker 2: the intentions that can kill you. You can drink too
Speaker 2: much water and die, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 2: the point, it's it's that these things are being used
Speaker 2: in excess. Yeah, and scapegoaded and the together are they're
Speaker 2: yelling taser, They're yelling stop resisting. They yell all these
Speaker 2: things out loud to teach you how to feel well.
Speaker 2: See he yelled taser. He you know, he wasn't trying
Speaker 2: to well if he tased them one hundred times, you know,
Speaker 2: or for ten twenty minutes or whatever. You know, there
Speaker 2: is a limit to which you can do anything, and
Speaker 2: it can be harmful. So all these billions of dollars
Speaker 2: that are being spent on training, I'm sure someone knows that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they you know, they crossed that line anyway in
Speaker 2: most cases with impunity. And you know, thus the cycle
Speaker 2: that has us, you know, all these years later, still
Speaker 2: covering the same stories. The names are just different, you know.
Speaker 1: Over the last weekend. We so where we live in Arizon,
Speaker 1: So we had the Super Bowl here in Phoenix, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of moving around. And you may not know,
Speaker 1: but I have a couple of nightclubs here in downtown Phoenix,
Speaker 1: and there were some people. I'm not sure if they
Speaker 1: were from my club or just in the entertainment district there.
Speaker 1: But I was walking in an alley behind my business
Speaker 1: and I was headed inside and I heard the sound
Speaker 1: of a taser from like a security guard. There was
Speaker 1: like some commotion. I couldn't see it, but I heard
Speaker 1: the sound of a taser, and then I heard a
Speaker 1: woman screaming, like a blood curdling scream. And then I
Speaker 1: believe it was her that was getting tasted. She got
Speaker 1: tased two more times and the scream again. I didn't
Speaker 1: see who was tasing. I didn't see who was being tased.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that just because there was a wall there,
Speaker 1: but I could just hear it over the top of
Speaker 1: the wall. But that let me know that those things
Speaker 1: are intense. I never heard somebody scream like that, like
Speaker 1: screaming in pain. So yeah, I've never come face to
Speaker 1: face with the taser, fortunately, But you know the fact
Speaker 1: that people are dying consistently, People are dying asking what
Speaker 1: they did wrong, and people are dying because of the
Speaker 1: overuse of you know, taser, indeed, any police tactic. You know,
Speaker 1: you can overuse the you know, the chokehold, you can
Speaker 1: over use the punch, you can overuse the gun, you
Speaker 1: can over use any of this stuff. The point is
Speaker 1: that this police violence leads to death often enough. It's
Speaker 1: black and brown people. And again, now we have to
Speaker 1: talk to you about the now deceased thirty two year
Speaker 1: old Darryl Tyree Williams. So that happened as well. Forgive
Speaker 1: us for not going into more detail, but you have
Speaker 1: to Below this is going to be a precursor to
Speaker 1: the next part of the show. So we're just going
Speaker 1: to kind of read this you with it. This also
Speaker 1: comes from the Black Information Network. A Missouri man who
Speaker 1: spent the last twenty seven years in prison for murder
Speaker 1: walked free on February fourteenth after a judge declared his
Speaker 1: innocence and vacated his convictions. Per CNN, Lamar Johnson was
Speaker 1: sentenced in nineteen ninety five. Sure, hey, that was when
Speaker 1: California Love came out to life in prison without parole
Speaker 1: in connection to the death of Marcus Boyd. Police said
Speaker 1: Johnson and another man, Philip Campbell, fatally shot Boyd. Last year,
Speaker 1: Saint Louis Circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner filed a motion for
Speaker 1: a new hearing, arguing that Johnson's murder conviction was based
Speaker 1: on false eyewitness testimony and misconduct sounds familiar by investigators
Speaker 1: and prosecutors. Johnson was granted the hearing, and on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Missouri Circuit Court Judge David Mason said his initial trial
Speaker 1: included constitutional error, as he vacated the murder conviction quote
Speaker 1: there is clear and convincing evidence of Lamar Johnson's actual innocence.
Speaker 1: Mason ruled Gardner's request to vacate Johnson's convicting Johnson's conviction
Speaker 1: came after James Elkin, the sole eye witness of the
Speaker 1: initial trial, recanted. Another man, James Howard, also testified in
Speaker 1: December that he and Campbell, who has since died, shot
Speaker 1: Boyd over a drug dispute. According to Mason's ruling, Johnson
Speaker 1: had an alibi on the night of Boyd's murder and
Speaker 1: no physical evidence linked him to the killing, and so
Speaker 1: I know that you probably get your news from whatever
Speaker 1: news sources you get it from, and we appreciate you
Speaker 1: taking a little bit extra time to get your news
Speaker 1: from us as well. But it suffice it to say
Speaker 1: that this is a pretty big deal in black news circles,
Speaker 1: and so we thought that we would mention it, and
Speaker 1: that would give us an excellent opportunity to discuss what
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss next.