Speaker 1: I'm Tamika d. Mallory and the.
Speaker 2: Ship Boy my Son in general.
Speaker 1: We are your host of TMI.
Speaker 2: Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, Motivation.
Speaker 1: And Inspiration, New Energy.
Speaker 3: What's going on, my son, Lennon, how you ma? I'm
Speaker 3: doing good? Drum road, drum roll. I'm just laughing because
Speaker 3: I'm so tired, so tired that it's just trying to.
Speaker 1: Hold it together.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the season has begun where it's time
Speaker 3: to travel around this country and were just saying, God,
Speaker 3: shit to work with, Like honestly, like it's really really
Speaker 3: hard because well, and I think that what we do
Speaker 3: have and the only thing we have is the issues
Speaker 3: that matter to our communities, Like we really have to
Speaker 3: be focused on local people, local issues, and then how
Speaker 3: those local issues play into the larger narrative in terms
Speaker 3: of what's happening in our communities because every which way
Speaker 3: we turn, there are I mean, these folks that we
Speaker 3: fight against every day are extremely strategic and so every
Speaker 3: city around this country there's some type of dynamic where
Speaker 3: they have begun to make shifts in the politics on
Speaker 3: the ground, whether it be inserting there is a new
Speaker 3: it's not new in terms of it's never happened before,
Speaker 3: but there's a reignited effort to bring black people who
Speaker 3: don't align with our issues and put them in position
Speaker 3: in communities. And so what we're dealing with now is
Speaker 3: combating the Daniel Cameron effect. That is the Attorney General
Speaker 3: was the Attorney general of Louis I mean of Kentucky
Speaker 3: who tried to become governor black man, and we had
Speaker 3: to sit him down. And so we have you know,
Speaker 3: this is a situation where all around the nation we're
Speaker 3: seeing these types of black people popping up, and it's
Speaker 3: it's it's a trying time because at the same time
Speaker 3: trying to sell people that we still can do this,
Speaker 3: like we still can continue to fight, we have we
Speaker 3: don't need to give up that there is in fact
Speaker 3: so much possibility in us like staying together and staying
Speaker 3: on the wall and continuing to do the work.
Speaker 1: It's really hard right now. People not interested.
Speaker 4: People.
Speaker 1: Let me not say people. It's just some people.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people who are very interested, but
Speaker 3: there are some who and they are it's the ones.
Speaker 5: That contact with the people that we've seen that have
Speaker 5: really put blood, sweat and tears into trying to fight
Speaker 5: for our people, right, and they just sometimes you just
Speaker 5: get deflated.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: You see certain things and you feel like you're making
Speaker 5: strides and you feel like you're going forward, and then
Speaker 5: there are certain things that just take wind out of yourselves.
Speaker 5: And you know, and I say that all the time.
Speaker 5: I see what happened to a lot of our elders
Speaker 5: and our ancestors that fought and just got tired. You know,
Speaker 5: there were some of them that made history and continued.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I was watching Harry Belafonte's one of the movies that
Speaker 5: they put out of following Harry and just looking what
Speaker 5: he went through in different generations, right, Like I watched
Speaker 5: him as a young man fighting with Doctor King, right,
Speaker 5: and he was there, and he was he was funding
Speaker 5: the movement.
Speaker 2: He was right with him.
Speaker 5: And then doctor King told him, I feared that, you know,
Speaker 5: I've integrated our people into a burning building. Hearing Doctor
Speaker 5: King say that, right, and then he's still fighting. He's
Speaker 5: he was confused, like what do you mean? And then
Speaker 5: as he started to continue, he started to see that, right.
Speaker 5: I seen him having conversations with you. I see them
Speaker 5: having a conversation with the dream defenders. I see them
Speaker 5: having conversations with March for Our Lives, like different generations
Speaker 5: of freedom fighters and him explaining to what is happening,
Speaker 5: like this moment is for now, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 5: And each one of them like we're gonna fight, We're
Speaker 5: gonna fight, And then you just see another and him
Speaker 5: constantly explaining to you that they're trying to dismantle this,
Speaker 5: They're gonna do everything to dismantle this. And then you
Speaker 5: see it play out in each one.
Speaker 2: Of those movies.
Speaker 5: They're gonna attack you, they're gonna do these things, and
Speaker 5: then watching it continue to play out. So when you
Speaker 5: see that and that man died right, still trying to
Speaker 5: give that knowledge and still trying to fight for those things.
Speaker 2: But you could tell that there.
Speaker 5: Was this this this feeling of are we actually gonna
Speaker 5: see freedom?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 5: Like We're still gonna fight. I'm going to fight and
Speaker 5: I'm going to give you this energy and I'm going
Speaker 5: to talk. But you've seen the vigor, right that you've
Speaker 5: seen it vigor. Now it was just an elder who
Speaker 5: was knowledgeable just giving it to you, saying hopefully you
Speaker 5: could take this information and do.
Speaker 2: What we haven't been able to do.
Speaker 5: Right, you know, And I understand how that happens, because
Speaker 5: you just fight so long and you just feel like,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, you dig in a hole
Speaker 5: and you don't find the bottom, you know, but you
Speaker 5: when you're a fighter, you just keep digging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's exactly what we have to spread.
Speaker 3: But when you're on is this beginning of the summer,
Speaker 3: at least three days, I've been in a loop of
Speaker 3: canceled flights and delays and six hours in this airport
Speaker 3: and whatever. And I don't know that people understand the
Speaker 3: tire tracks on your back when you're trying to get
Speaker 3: this work done. And then when you're talking to people
Speaker 3: who are like, don't come over here with that. I
Speaker 3: don't want to hear it, and you want to be frustrated,
Speaker 3: like man I traveled, you know. I'm trying to really
Speaker 3: get us to be under to be sold not on candidates,
Speaker 3: not even on any of that, but to be sold
Speaker 3: on our possibility that even you could run, like Killer
Speaker 3: Mike said at the BET Awards, if you could run, Like,
Speaker 3: how can we use this energy to set it up.
Speaker 1: For you to run?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And and and and then you.
Speaker 3: Just and you have to deal with people who are
Speaker 3: so frustrated you can't even get upset with them, because
Speaker 3: I understand.
Speaker 1: I feel that way.
Speaker 3: So today is one of those days where I'm just
Speaker 3: like pulling the train along. But tomorrow I'll be back
Speaker 3: in there doing what I have to do.
Speaker 5: I'm with you, man, you know some days I get
Speaker 5: that and you gotta. That's why we got each other, right,
Speaker 5: That's what we got in this movement. We feed off
Speaker 5: each other's energy. Some days you're gonna have more energy
Speaker 5: than I have. Some days I'm gonna have it for you.
Speaker 5: So today I'm gonna you know, but you shout out
Speaker 5: to my black print. You know what I'm saying. See
Speaker 5: what it said, You see what to say. Run run
Speaker 5: us ode reparations. Man, shout out to them for the
Speaker 5: shirt I got one for you, got one for you too.
Speaker 5: And that's what I feel like. We gotta fight for
Speaker 5: our reparations. We're gonna have to. They're not gonna give
Speaker 5: us our reparations. Every every day is a fight for
Speaker 5: our reparations. And that's what our people got to understand.
Speaker 5: We deserve certain things. You know what I'm saying. We
Speaker 5: were denied certain things, and we built this back, this country.
Speaker 2: On our back with our for free, for free, so
Speaker 2: run outside reparations.
Speaker 1: I know that's right. So let's see my thought of
Speaker 1: the day today.
Speaker 3: You know, last week awful, awful, awful, awful debate, and
Speaker 3: you know some people that want to jump to awful
Speaker 3: debate because Biden his performance was not at all where
Speaker 3: it should be. Well, his performance is not where most
Speaker 3: people would want it to be, but it actually is
Speaker 3: where it should be for eighty something year old man
Speaker 3: who has been in public service for a long time,
Speaker 3: dealing with extreme stress, and also he has a stuttering disability,
Speaker 3: and therefore he has some you know, a trifecta of challenges.
Speaker 3: So no, it's not where people want it to be,
Speaker 3: but he's actually not that far off from most eighty
Speaker 3: year old people that you put them on the stage
Speaker 3: and tell them that they need to debate.
Speaker 1: At nine o'clock at night.
Speaker 3: So, and I'm not even making excuses for it's not
Speaker 3: my point, let me get to it. I'm just saying
Speaker 3: people want to say that that's the only reason why
Speaker 3: the debate was so terrible. But I'm also not into
Speaker 3: listening to somebody who's.
Speaker 1: Real quick with lies.
Speaker 3: So and By the way, there's been some fact checkers,
Speaker 3: even President Biden a few times, some of the things
Speaker 3: they he said it's not one hundred percent accurate. So
Speaker 3: it's not that one person that every that the president
Speaker 3: was this great on this great moral standing, and then
Speaker 3: Trump wasn't. Trump just is an habitual liar and a
Speaker 3: very dangerous individual, and then you have him up against
Speaker 3: a man who I believe there's some issues that President
Speaker 3: Biden has, some blind spots that he has and in
Speaker 3: some areas that he's committed to that I just don't
Speaker 3: agree with and could never ever, ever ever comfortably say like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm for Biden because of some of his decisions and
Speaker 3: the ways in which his administration has carried out their duties.
Speaker 3: But in addition to that, I also know he's an
Speaker 3: older man. So what it basically says to me is
Speaker 3: the whole shit is a mess. Like it's a mess.
Speaker 3: You got, lion, You've got a person who needs rest
Speaker 3: and relaxation. That's what people at eighty years old, people
Speaker 3: should be resting from working their entire lives trying to
Speaker 3: get up there, and everybody's putting this pressure on you
Speaker 3: that your responsibility is to save democracy and all of
Speaker 3: this and that, and yet the democracy that you are
Speaker 3: engaged or supposed to be engaged with across the seas
Speaker 3: in the Middle East, you are part of destroying that
Speaker 3: little piece of whatever slither of democracy those folks may
Speaker 3: have had.
Speaker 1: So it's just all of it is.
Speaker 3: I can't find super positive things anywhere, right, But here's
Speaker 3: what I was going to talk about. Because then, of course,
Speaker 3: the first thing that happened, which is also disingenuous, All
Speaker 3: these newspapers and op eds came out quickly saying that
Speaker 3: Joe Biden needs to resign. I mean, he needs to
Speaker 3: step aside. And I don't know exactly what that means.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've read a few articles. Some of it
Speaker 3: means just go to the convention with a different candidate
Speaker 3: as the as the nominee for president, or allow the
Speaker 3: process to take place where there is another candidate can emerge.
Speaker 3: Some people want him to he that they believe he's
Speaker 3: in such bad shape at this moment that he should
Speaker 3: not even be able to to he should not be
Speaker 3: able to continue to be the president, which we know
Speaker 3: is not going to happen. And also, you know, we
Speaker 3: know people that work in a white House, people who
Speaker 3: have audience with President Biden all the time, and they
Speaker 3: say there's literally nothing wrong with him. And I'm talking
Speaker 3: about people that's my friends that would tell me, girl lord.
Speaker 1: They've told me other things, but they they say.
Speaker 3: There's literally nothing wrong with him, like you could sit
Speaker 3: down and have a conversation with him.
Speaker 1: But when a person.
Speaker 3: Stutters, and they're older, and again the stress of the
Speaker 3: job when they are when they are speaking, sometimes they
Speaker 3: need extra time to process, remember and then be able
Speaker 3: to have the conversation. That that's just a natural thing
Speaker 3: that happens to you as you start to get older.
Speaker 3: So so with that being said, no, he should not
Speaker 3: be the nominee, not now. Now we're all the way
Speaker 3: far down the road before with what he said when
Speaker 3: he ran the first time was that he would not
Speaker 3: run for reelection. And that's what they should have stuck
Speaker 3: to because at that time he was a little bit younger.
Speaker 3: He was a he was an older white man up
Speaker 3: against an older white man, which probably was a good man,
Speaker 3: I mean obviously because he won. But now he was
Speaker 3: he's too he is too much in his senior years
Speaker 3: and it is too much of a stress on his
Speaker 3: whole system to try to stand up there and have
Speaker 3: the type of debate with a man who is a
Speaker 3: straight lunatic like you gotta be on your lunatic to
Speaker 3: talk to the lunatic for real and not and not
Speaker 3: for nothing. This this is my real thought of the
Speaker 3: day about what I want to say. I'm not you know,
Speaker 3: I want to focus on black folks right in our issues.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 3: People are talking about third party candidates. So first of all,
Speaker 3: the way the system is set up, they have long
Speaker 3: time ago rigged it to where trying to get a
Speaker 3: third party candidate elected at this point they already know
Speaker 3: is damn there impossible because you have the Democratic Convention
Speaker 3: coming up. You also, and I get it, some people
Speaker 3: will say, well, I'm gonna still vote for them. That's fine,
Speaker 3: But the third party candidate nine times out of ten,
Speaker 3: unless we can move an exodus of people, and it
Speaker 3: ain't just black people, it's not just black people. You
Speaker 3: need people from all races, everybody to come together. And
Speaker 3: if we already divided within the black community because you
Speaker 3: have people who are saying we don't want Donald Trump
Speaker 3: so much that we cannot afford to take the shot.
Speaker 1: Now I'm with it. I'm with it.
Speaker 3: If we had, if cornell Us was.
Speaker 1: A real, real, real, real real.
Speaker 3: Shot for us to win, not only would I be
Speaker 3: behind him. And I'm still willing to listen to somebody
Speaker 3: tell me on what we can do to get Cornell
Speaker 3: on the stage at the Democratic Convention and figure out
Speaker 3: how we can support him and move votes in his direction.
Speaker 3: I'm with it, But I also sit around and talk
Speaker 3: to our people, and I realized that in conversations with us,
Speaker 3: we still need a lot of work to get to
Speaker 3: the point where all of us and then some other
Speaker 3: folks make that shift.
Speaker 1: And this was done to us, and it's wrong. It
Speaker 1: is wrong that we live in.
Speaker 3: America in a place where we cannot look at the
Speaker 3: two top candidates and say I don't want them. I mean, right, like,
Speaker 3: I'm sure we can talk about that later on or
Speaker 3: another day. But here's the thing, the reason why I
Speaker 3: know about the challenge that.
Speaker 1: We face as a people.
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris is the vice president, which means that in
Speaker 3: the proper world, she would advance because of if the
Speaker 3: president was incapacitated or decides that he does not want
Speaker 3: to run again, she would have quite And it's supposed
Speaker 3: to naturally advance to being at the head of the ticket.
Speaker 3: Here's the issue if the Democratic Party and the white
Speaker 3: folks that's over there, and the black and brown people
Speaker 3: and other people that go along with white folks who
Speaker 3: are in charge of every damn thing, if they go
Speaker 3: along with this process.
Speaker 1: Of them needing a new candidate.
Speaker 3: At first those articles was coming out, they weren't even
Speaker 3: mentioning Kamala as the person. So what they would attempt
Speaker 3: to do is find some other person, which Gavin Newsom
Speaker 3: couldn't really necessarily be it because he's from California and
Speaker 3: so is Kamala, and that never works in any scenario
Speaker 3: that there's two people at the top and second on
Speaker 3: the ticket from the same state. Right, But if they
Speaker 3: go and find some other person, more than likely a
Speaker 3: white person to put over Kamala, black people will most
Speaker 3: a lot of black people, a lot of large majority
Speaker 3: of black people would lose our minds that you have
Speaker 3: disrespected a black woman. And again it would be race.
Speaker 3: And then, as I have said a million times, when
Speaker 3: you take race and couple it with sex and sexism,
Speaker 3: that sexism piece can be even more damning because we
Speaker 3: already had a black president. So we know almost any
Speaker 3: kind of man can win, right, almost any kind of man,
Speaker 3: but a woman, any race, number one, definitely black. It
Speaker 3: is very it is very difficult. Do I think that
Speaker 3: she could have debated Donald Trump and kicked his butt?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Do I think that she could run the country and
Speaker 3: do the thing and and and and really be a
Speaker 3: strong powerful voice around this world.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think that she's educated, she's talented, she has all
Speaker 3: the things. But do I understand the challenges of a
Speaker 3: black woman being at the top of the ticket?
Speaker 1: Of course, and so do they know that.
Speaker 3: Within the party, which is why they would attempt out
Speaker 3: of sexism also and racism, but ultimately just practicality, they
Speaker 3: would attempt to put somebody over her.
Speaker 1: So you know what would happen.
Speaker 3: The Black people would be like, this is disrespectful and
Speaker 3: go crazy about how Kammala is being disrespected. But then
Speaker 3: if they did put her at the top of the ticket,
Speaker 3: you know what some of them saying, Black people say,
Speaker 3: she's not black enough. She was a prosecutor and she
Speaker 3: put black people in jail.
Speaker 1: She did this, she did that, She's not enough of this.
Speaker 3: She don't know how to dance properly, she know she
Speaker 3: looked like she never danced before.
Speaker 1: She's married to a white man.
Speaker 3: So no matter which way you start trying to go
Speaker 3: and which which way you start shifting, we will find
Speaker 3: a reason to try to discredit that black woman. Which
Speaker 3: is why right out of ego they are ill advised.
Speaker 3: Some of it is disrespect, other parts of it is
Speaker 3: an attempt to preserve the dignity of the current president
Speaker 3: and also the dignity of the United States, because when
Speaker 3: these things happen, it's it's it's history forever.
Speaker 1: People will be saying they had to remove or President
Speaker 1: Biden had.
Speaker 3: To step down or whatever, and out of their ego,
Speaker 3: and again some of it being the disrespect for black women,
Speaker 3: some of it being just made. It just ill advised,
Speaker 3: and they made a bad decision to allow him to
Speaker 3: run for president again.
Speaker 1: They I don't believe.
Speaker 3: I believe that that makes them feel that they have
Speaker 3: no choice but to take this man all the way
Speaker 3: to the end and hell Mary that he wins while
Speaker 3: killing babies in Palestine. While people have serious questions over
Speaker 3: especially the marketing, of what they have been able to
Speaker 3: accomplish in a time when inflation is killing people, I
Speaker 3: don't care what they say. They keep saying jobs is
Speaker 3: at the highest number I know at least twenty people
Speaker 3: that have been and continue to search for work. They
Speaker 3: are struggling, people are homeless, people are hurting. So you
Speaker 3: got all that happening, and then you got a liar
Speaker 3: who knows how to market and twist and say crazy
Speaker 3: things that makes people feel like, well maybe, and then
Speaker 3: and then people get so frustrated about either one of
Speaker 3: them that they start talking about taking their votes and
Speaker 3: splitting them and going to another place. It's a hot
Speaker 3: ass mess. And I don't care if people could get
Speaker 3: mad at me. They can say whatever they want. But
Speaker 3: part of why we are here is because when Joe
Speaker 3: Biden said he would not run for reelection, that's what
Speaker 3: he should have done. We should have figured this out
Speaker 3: from four four years ago when he became president. They
Speaker 3: should have decided how they were going to make sure
Speaker 3: that Kamala was able to get to the end and
Speaker 3: become the nominee with people really behind her. That's what
Speaker 3: we should have done, because that's who they chose for
Speaker 3: vice president. And if they weren't gonna do it with Kamala,
Speaker 3: which by I support one hundred percent, that a black
Speaker 3: woman be at.
Speaker 1: The head of the ticket.
Speaker 3: But if they weren't gonna do it with Kamala, it
Speaker 3: should have been somebody else. This should have been the
Speaker 3: plan since even before he became president, and they did
Speaker 3: not do that. And now we are in a situation
Speaker 3: where we're dealing with a man who has the court
Speaker 3: stack in his favor to be able to do the
Speaker 3: most unconscionable criminal bullshit ever and we're sitting up here
Speaker 3: with another man over here that is in charge, that
Speaker 3: is not in charge of excuse me, that is helping
Speaker 3: to fund a genocide.
Speaker 1: It's too much for me.
Speaker 5: I said from the beginning, we're not choosing, We're not
Speaker 5: picking an ally. Were picking an opponent, right who we
Speaker 5: got to battle against. So our whole mind state with
Speaker 5: this president and he should have been building up for
Speaker 5: the next four years, who do we actually want to
Speaker 5: see in president? When they said he was only going
Speaker 5: to do four years, then we should have been making
Speaker 5: sure that if we wanted Kamala to be the president,
Speaker 5: that people supposed to get behind Kamalin. We're supposed to
Speaker 5: demand that she had more of a president were supposed
Speaker 5: to be. You know, we're supposed to demand that she
Speaker 5: she did things that led to people to believe that
Speaker 5: she was prepared to be the president.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: People see right now, like you see her talking here
Speaker 5: and there, and she's very smart. But since she's been
Speaker 5: vice president, she has not been vocal. She has not
Speaker 5: been She hasn't been. I mean, she hasn't been exactly.
Speaker 5: She doesn't get she doesn't have the presence, right, she
Speaker 5: doesn't have the presidence that that she once had. And
Speaker 5: she doesn't and she's not speaking in a manner in
Speaker 5: which she once spoke because now as the vice president,
Speaker 5: you have to speak, you have to be a lot
Speaker 5: more careful.
Speaker 3: So, right, Joe Biden saying, yeah, she used to talk
Speaker 3: stuff about the president.
Speaker 5: She like, she was very vocal. So, you know, a
Speaker 5: lot of people don't have faith in it. The system,
Speaker 5: the structure that we have right now, people don't have
Speaker 5: faith in And that's why I said we need something different.
Speaker 5: We were supposed to go from state to state and
Speaker 5: build up our network and build up what we wanted
Speaker 5: to see in our next president, what we wanted exactly
Speaker 5: what we wanted, right, and we were supposed to find
Speaker 5: that candidate that you know, that embodied everything that we wanted,
Speaker 5: you know, or for.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 5: But I'm saying that embodied the most we have because
Speaker 5: we understood. Now we got a ship show, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. It's literally a ship show.
Speaker 3: And everybody is admitting that now, which before people wouldn't
Speaker 3: say we have a ship show.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: It's really.
Speaker 5: It's more than mess ups. It's actually horrible because when
Speaker 5: you look at what you have to, like you said,
Speaker 5: we have to choose between you know, genocide, you know,
Speaker 5: and what's going on in guys that we have to
Speaker 5: choose between that, and then we have to choose between
Speaker 5: a fascist dictator who pretty much had said that he's
Speaker 5: going to get in office and rewrite the constitution that
Speaker 5: pretty so it benefits him that he's pretty much above
Speaker 5: the law and put police above law. So this is
Speaker 5: what this is what we're faced with. These are you
Speaker 5: know what we have to sit here and say, you know,
Speaker 5: I gotta choose.
Speaker 1: I gotta contend with these.
Speaker 3: But I know one thing, Donald Trump, if I have
Speaker 3: anything to do with it, he can't be the president
Speaker 3: of the United States, not not for me. From my position,
Speaker 3: I'm making it very clear. You know, I've struggled, I
Speaker 3: have struggled.
Speaker 1: I have cried.
Speaker 3: It hurts a lot that we're in this situation that
Speaker 3: we're in, and I see that now the rest of
Speaker 3: the world's coming to the place where we were because
Speaker 3: we were saying that the same stuff about Biden, not
Speaker 3: we us, not wanting Joe Biden to continue on and
Speaker 3: become president.
Speaker 1: We were saying all of that, and people were like,
Speaker 1: how can y'all do this?
Speaker 3: You know, you you're gonna get You're gonna mess around
Speaker 3: and make Donald Trump the president. You know, y'all are
Speaker 3: being traders basically to our community because you you're so
Speaker 3: worried about a war that's happening over there, and now
Speaker 3: we're watching because again, as Senator Nina Turner said, what
Speaker 3: happens over there happens over here. So if you're taking
Speaker 3: our money and you're invested in a war that it's
Speaker 3: not even a war, an assault that is happening over there,
Speaker 3: and then not doing what needs to be done for
Speaker 3: the people over here.
Speaker 1: That is where the connection is made. And we have
Speaker 1: been sounding me along.
Speaker 3: We are always ahead of our time because we were
Speaker 3: always calling out the State of Israel. We were always
Speaker 3: doing that and been punished greatly for talking about the
Speaker 3: occupation that we know is happening there in Gaza because
Speaker 3: we were there and in the West Bank and what's
Speaker 3: happening to the Palestinian people. But we were punished greatly
Speaker 3: for that, and now the rest of the world, people
Speaker 3: you would never even imagine, are saying the same thing
Speaker 3: because they can see it now that it's on mainstream media,
Speaker 3: playing out right before our eyes and of course on
Speaker 3: your cell phone. And it's the same thing with Joe
Speaker 3: Biden before the war. But certainly since since October seventh,
Speaker 3: we have been saying he is not the right person
Speaker 3: to lead us through something like this, because yes, he
Speaker 3: has an allegiance to Israel, he has an allegiance to
Speaker 3: Jewish constituents that you know, need safety as well. And
Speaker 3: we haven't argued that Jewish people need safety. We have
Speaker 3: not argued that. What we've argued is that safety comes
Speaker 3: from everybody being safe, not.
Speaker 1: Just one group of people.
Speaker 3: And his commitment and his Zionism and all the things
Speaker 3: that he said, we always knew that it was going
Speaker 3: to lead us to this place, and now here we
Speaker 3: are with age plus the support for genocide coming together,
Speaker 3: and it is it is, it's destructive, It's dangerous, and
Speaker 3: I just don't know what's gonna happen. But I do
Speaker 3: know that I've made a very conscious decision within myself
Speaker 3: that I cannot allow for my granddaughter's benefit, Joe, I mean,
Speaker 3: excuse me, for my rand daughter's benefit. Trump cannot be
Speaker 3: the president of the United States of America. Where we
Speaker 3: go from there, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe
Speaker 3: the convention will be broken and somehow a leader will emerge.
Speaker 3: Of course, they still probably will support genocide, which is horrible.
Speaker 1: But even the Muslim community.
Speaker 3: Is saying if Joe Biden steps aside, they ready to
Speaker 3: get in line. That's literally what some Jewish I mean,
Speaker 3: excuse me, that is literally what some Muslim organizations have
Speaker 3: been putting out there.
Speaker 1: We're ready to get in line, but not behind Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a mess.
Speaker 3: All right, Look, well, we should get into our guests.
Speaker 3: I'm excited about these two beautiful young ladies who are
Speaker 3: joining us today. They're doing something really, really incredible.
Speaker 2: Childhood you.
Speaker 1: All right, so new friends to me, friends of yours?
Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes absolutely, I've been blown away by the experience
Speaker 3: when you asked me to accompany you to a program
Speaker 3: with these beautiful women and learning more about what is
Speaker 3: happening with this program that they have.
Speaker 1: I wonder where in the world was it when I
Speaker 1: was like cut in school.
Speaker 3: I needed somebody to come get me and bring me
Speaker 3: to class and help me with so many of the challenges,
Speaker 3: especially when I got pregnant. I mean, the story goes
Speaker 3: on and on, and so I'm really really excited to
Speaker 3: have here these two powerful, powerful black women, Tiffany Law
Speaker 3: and Tijuana Butler bats And they have a program called
Speaker 3: Learning and it's excuse me, it is a business called
Speaker 3: Learning and Educational Solutions, Inc.
Speaker 1: Which is l EES.
Speaker 3: And I think for the purpose of folks really understanding
Speaker 3: what you all do, is better for you to talk
Speaker 3: about it so that our audience can really understand what
Speaker 3: Learning and Educational Solutions is is and what powerful work
Speaker 3: you all do.
Speaker 1: In the community.
Speaker 4: Well, Learning and Educational Solutions, Inc. Started off to solve
Speaker 4: the dropout rates throughout New York City, and then we
Speaker 4: extended it to solve the dropout rates across the world,
Speaker 4: one student, one school, one community at a time. So
Speaker 4: when we started doing it, originally we started off from
Speaker 4: one program we had which was called our Roads program,
Speaker 4: which was removing obstacles and achieving dreams role to graduation students
Speaker 4: who were struggling to come to school and they were
Speaker 4: about to graduate, but something was going on and the
Speaker 4: schools just did not have the capacity to figure out
Speaker 4: what was going on with them, so they would just
Speaker 4: fail them and they won't graduate, and then you never
Speaker 4: hear about the student. So when I tested the pilot,
Speaker 4: it was just about me seeing what was hindering these students.
Speaker 4: I got my own child together. It was my personal experience,
Speaker 4: and I asked the Department of Education, what can you
Speaker 4: do to help me? Like I need an educational crisis
Speaker 4: management team? And they laughed and said there's no such thing.
Speaker 4: Did you make that up? They was like, we don't
Speaker 4: even have the capacity for that. So I thought, I said,
Speaker 4: you know what will my credentials after I get my
Speaker 4: child on point. I will definitely be an advocate for
Speaker 4: other parents going through what I'm going through. So that's
Speaker 4: what I did. A principal gave me an opportunity. She said,
Speaker 4: I have some students they are not going to graduate.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on with them. She said,
Speaker 4: I'm going to give you these students, if you can
Speaker 4: help them by any means necessary, let me know and
Speaker 4: then we'll be on to something. And what I did
Speaker 4: was I worked with each individual student and I made
Speaker 4: a lot of discoveries. Some students wasn't coming to school
Speaker 4: because they were homeless. Some students was pregnant and needed
Speaker 4: a babysitter. Some students just didn't feel like coming to
Speaker 4: school because they had some drama or something in the
Speaker 4: school and they didn't feel like, you know, they were
Speaker 4: getting the attention they needed somewhat in gang related activities.
Speaker 4: The list goes on. So what I did was what
Speaker 4: we call our roles, removing obstacles and achieving dreams. I
Speaker 4: worked with each one of their families because I had
Speaker 4: to connect the school with the family, and I worked
Speaker 4: with them. I mean, I had parents who was like,
Speaker 4: if you could give me a section eight listing with
Speaker 4: apartments and then you could focus on my child, that
Speaker 4: would be great. And that's what I did. I did
Speaker 4: whatever I had to do to bring that student back
Speaker 4: to school. Some students couldn't graduate from the school they
Speaker 4: was in because they couldn't read, or they had other challenges.
Speaker 4: Social and emotional factors played the role I had to
Speaker 4: figure out what it was. And then I partnered with
Speaker 4: transfer schools that had great programs, accelerated courses, and I
Speaker 4: went with the family to the interviews, helped them get
Speaker 4: into the school. And next thing, you know, every last
Speaker 4: one of those students graduated. If they didn't graduate from
Speaker 4: her school, they graduated from a school. And then that's
Speaker 4: when we were like, oh, we got something big here,
Speaker 4: this is what's needed. And then city council got wind
Speaker 4: of it and they say, hey, wonder what you could
Speaker 4: do with a team, and then that's when I started
Speaker 4: to panic. And then here comes Tiffany. So it started
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen. I even did it before I had
Speaker 4: the name. Maybe it was like towards the beginning of
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, and I said, L yes, L yes, I
Speaker 4: think that sounds good. But yes, it started around that time.
Speaker 4: And then after the year of doing good, because we
Speaker 4: were bringing this particular school came from one point to
Speaker 4: the next. Everybody wanted to know, like, how could you
Speaker 4: be a school on watch list? And you just jumped
Speaker 4: so fast, so it had to be explained. How So
Speaker 4: once it was explained that, you know, the methods, that
Speaker 4: was usual to make this happen. They was like, let's
Speaker 4: see what you can do with a team, and then
Speaker 4: after that it was about getting helped with findings. And
Speaker 4: then that's why I always tell my story, because Tiffany
Speaker 4: came on board simply to just help me with the
Speaker 4: finance part, so when I have a team, I'll be
Speaker 4: able to manage it. And then I said, Tiffany, I
Speaker 4: want to pay you to do finance with me, and
Speaker 4: she said, oh, I don't know if you could fod me,
Speaker 4: but I can help you. I like what you got
Speaker 4: going on here. And next thing you know, you know,
Speaker 4: she loved it so much she came on board and
Speaker 4: we just the sky was not the limit because this
Speaker 4: footprints on the moon. She said, let's do two, three, four, five,
Speaker 4: six schools. Now we're in over twenty five schools wearing
Speaker 4: all the burrows, and we worked directly with superintendents and
Speaker 4: the Chancellor's office, and now it's just time for us
Speaker 4: to really expand to the point where everybody knows who's
Speaker 4: behind all of what's going on.
Speaker 5: You have a background in finance, what made you want
Speaker 5: to be a part of this education?
Speaker 6: For me, obviously, just a little black girl from the Bronx.
Speaker 1: I always felt like Aybridge.
Speaker 6: I've been in finance for a long time, and specifically
Speaker 6: education operations on the university level since I was out
Speaker 6: of college, and I always felt like I'm over here
Speaker 6: managing two hundred million dollar budgets, right, but it's for
Speaker 6: causes that I just didn't believe in. But I had
Speaker 6: to feed my kids, right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 6: do this job. I'm gonna take these benefits. So when
Speaker 6: Tawana came to me with the idea, I just it
Speaker 6: just it just filled my soul, Like I just was like,
Speaker 6: where was this when my brothers needed it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm one of five and I'm I'm the
Speaker 6: only one that went to college and make it through,
Speaker 6: but the other four didn't. So it's like we needed
Speaker 6: some help. We needed this, My cousins needed this help.
Speaker 6: So I don't know, it just filled me. Even though
Speaker 6: she couldn't afford to pay me, we did it anyway.
Speaker 6: I just I knew it was more than it just
Speaker 6: it mattered to me more than money did. So I
Speaker 6: was able to come in and kind of take Tauanta's ideas,
Speaker 6: which were great, right, and turn this into a business. Honestly,
Speaker 6: that's what That's what I was able to come in
Speaker 6: here and do. I mean, and I think it takes
Speaker 6: two people, like two different kinds of people. We are
Speaker 6: very different to Wanta is like ideas through the moon,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, how much that's gonna cost? You know,
Speaker 6: how much is that gonna cost? How do we make
Speaker 6: that happen? How do we make it profitable? Right? But
Speaker 6: how do we serve our communities? So yeah, that's how
Speaker 6: I started. We took that one program, she was calling
Speaker 6: it one program. I think I've I've expanded that to
Speaker 6: about seven to ten programs. That's not one program. She
Speaker 6: was given that away for one. You know, that's one thing. Said, girl,
Speaker 6: that's not one, this is ten things. This is how
Speaker 6: we're going to do this. I was able to digitize
Speaker 6: these things she was doing on paper, you know, flip
Speaker 6: some time, and I said, we got to be able
Speaker 6: to allow people to work from Zoom, allow people to
Speaker 6: work from Georgia like wherever we can hire people from.
Speaker 6: But we need to digitize this. We need to make
Speaker 6: this computerized. So that's what I've been able to do,
Speaker 6: is to help expand l e s and to honestly
Speaker 6: make it profitable because we are doing great work, but
Speaker 6: now we thankfully are being pig to do it as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And I would just like to add also
Speaker 4: creating a team. I would go do our dropout prevention
Speaker 4: services by myself, and it was also about safety, so
Speaker 4: I would literally go to these students' homes, sit down
Speaker 4: with their parents, talk to them and figure out a
Speaker 4: plan on how they can get back to a school
Speaker 4: and what they needed. But then Tiffany was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: we gotta be safe when we're doing this. We got
Speaker 4: to get a team out there, two people. Let's do
Speaker 4: this because we want to. We don't know how everybody's
Speaker 4: house is. And I guess I was just so I'm like, listen, passionate.
Speaker 4: Everybody's gonna do what I say to do because they
Speaker 4: know I love them and I'm gonna make this happen.
Speaker 4: But I had to make sure. I mean, it's times
Speaker 4: I was running up the hill and hells from a
Speaker 4: dog and she says, see, you can't be doing this.
Speaker 3: So that's I mean, a story is beautiful and I
Speaker 3: want to hear more about like just that, like what
Speaker 3: it felt like for you to have another black woman,
Speaker 3: not there to take away, talk it down, tell you
Speaker 3: what it can't work, but instead to invest in it
Speaker 3: before you get to that. Though, would love to hear
Speaker 3: about your own child because one of the things that
Speaker 3: I find interesting, and I'm the mother of a twenty
Speaker 3: five year old son, and my son obviously has his children,
Speaker 3: it's really hard sometimes to get your own child together
Speaker 3: while working with so many other people's children. So I
Speaker 3: find it interesting that you said first you had to
Speaker 3: focus on that and you were successful.
Speaker 4: Yes, So what happened was it was two things I
Speaker 4: want to talk about. One with my child. It was
Speaker 4: about me having social and emotional role factors that played
Speaker 4: a role in my life. I had just I was
Speaker 4: with her father from pretty much my teenage years to adulthood,
Speaker 4: and the transition was a lot for her, and with
Speaker 4: us bickering back and forth, everybody's thinking about themselves and
Speaker 4: not really what's happening with her. So it became a
Speaker 4: shock when she wasn't doing well in school, and I
Speaker 4: felt so horrible about I felt like I neglected, you know,
Speaker 4: her education, because it was like the focus was us
Speaker 4: tuggle warning her, and I felt like there was had
Speaker 4: to be something in some way that I can get
Speaker 4: her back on track. And then I just assumed that
Speaker 4: there was schools that would be able to just say,
Speaker 4: you know what, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm
Speaker 4: going to monitor her, handhold her through these classes, and
Speaker 4: then men she does have a little panic attack or
Speaker 4: a breakdown, we'll pull her out and see what's going
Speaker 4: on and see what we can do. And the reason
Speaker 4: why I thought that is because let's go back to
Speaker 4: when I was younger. I messed up in school and
Speaker 4: my mom put me in a transfer school. And I
Speaker 4: sat in that transfer school with my arms crossed and
Speaker 4: I said, I'm only coming to school because you're making
Speaker 4: me and my mother was like, well, it's okay. You
Speaker 4: still got to come to school. And the people did
Speaker 4: not judge me so much that they allowed me into
Speaker 4: their school and I was an honor roll and it
Speaker 4: changed my life. So I was like, I got a chance.
Speaker 4: Do they still have these chances, because now fast forward
Speaker 4: years later, I'm going through this with my own child.
Speaker 4: So I just assumed the help that they sort of
Speaker 4: gave my mom with me, and it changed my life.
Speaker 4: I was the child who said I wasn't going back
Speaker 4: to school. Not only did I graduate, but I went
Speaker 4: to college. And then I told my mom and I'm
Speaker 4: getting my master's and I did. And she was like,
Speaker 4: the girl who don't want to go to school is
Speaker 4: going to get her bachelor's and masters And I did
Speaker 4: it all. So I said, maybe, you know, but the
Speaker 4: times have changed and it just wasn't like that, Just
Speaker 4: like it wasn't like people back in the days, remember
Speaker 4: when when the they'll come with the car and make
Speaker 4: you go to school and pick you up, chew and see.
Speaker 4: So I was just taking it back and they was like,
Speaker 4: we don't even do any of that. So I was like,
Speaker 4: what like so if.
Speaker 6: She yeah, we did, I do?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 6: Yeah wow with the age ten, eighteen and twenty three.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so you have big yeahs too, so you
Speaker 3: know all about what needs to be done. So talk
Speaker 3: about that as women, like how this came together and
Speaker 3: you know, and just what for you has been you know,
Speaker 3: sort of like the most heartwarming part of having this
Speaker 3: other black woman to help you expand and I guess
Speaker 3: the same for you.
Speaker 4: Having Tiffany come in and give in and work with me.
Speaker 4: I feel it was a blessing. I gave my husband
Speaker 4: a hard time because I felt like I had someone
Speaker 4: that I was going to work with, and you know,
Speaker 4: they it just didn't work the way that I wanted
Speaker 4: it to. And I was so invested and I needed
Speaker 4: someone that can believe in this, like I did, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. So when my husband introduced me
Speaker 4: to Tiffany and said, no, listen, she's about her business
Speaker 4: and she's very strategic. She's gonna be able to break
Speaker 4: this all down for you. She's gonna be able to
Speaker 4: help you, I was like, all right, you know, But
Speaker 4: when she moved forward and started doing it and then
Speaker 4: telling me that you selling this program for this when
Speaker 4: you should have seven, and started you know, getting into
Speaker 4: the logistics of things and the details, it was. It
Speaker 4: was a great fit. It was a great fit. It worked,
Speaker 4: and we were able to expand so much so that
Speaker 4: we went on to a whole nother level. We became
Speaker 4: part of the four percent minorities. I think it's probably
Speaker 4: under four percent now that actually has an m TAC,
Speaker 4: which is which is what's it? A multiple task award
Speaker 4: contract contracts? Yeah, for New York City right now.
Speaker 1: If you don't have that, you can only get one
Speaker 1: contract at a time.
Speaker 6: You can get more than one contract at a time,
Speaker 6: but the cap you at twenty five K per school, right,
Speaker 6: per program, And that's what we had for five years straight. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just hustling, you know, trying to make that happen in
Speaker 6: multiple schools. But now once you have that MTACH, you
Speaker 6: can charge whatever you want. A school can have all
Speaker 6: ten of your programs. There's no ceiling anymore.
Speaker 2: And what exactly all the programs that you guys offer
Speaker 2: to the school.
Speaker 6: So we have the role to graduation that Tawana talked about.
Speaker 6: We also have the role to alternative, which is like,
Speaker 6: if this program isn't working for you, right, let us
Speaker 6: find an alternative for you. So it's not really like
Speaker 6: we know, we have so many different things. We do
Speaker 6: whatever is necessary. You might need an online school right
Speaker 6: in New York City. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 6: know that, but post pandemic, they banned the online schools.
Speaker 6: So we had to be strategic, right. I do a
Speaker 6: lot of reading all at night. I do a lot
Speaker 6: of reading of the Chancellor's regulations, the Mayor's initiatives, and
Speaker 6: I find loopholes in almost anything. So I found several
Speaker 6: loopholes to make these things work. So we have kids
Speaker 6: that are in the online schools now, even though we
Speaker 6: don't have much support from the districts to do this.
Speaker 6: But we just had our first graduate.
Speaker 1: I think I.
Speaker 6: Discovered this back in November. We had in March. I
Speaker 6: think I started to enroll. I think I enrolled about
Speaker 6: sixty kids into the online school. It's very expensive. Also,
Speaker 6: this isn't free, y'all. We took the money out of
Speaker 6: our parkt to do this. But I wanted to pilot it.
Speaker 6: I wanted to see what we could do. And we
Speaker 6: just had our first graduate June twenty eighth. This boy
Speaker 6: hadn't been in school for two years.
Speaker 3: Wow, okay, he finished Generally black and brown, these are.
Speaker 6: Black and brown children, these are our children. And in
Speaker 6: sixty days he got a high school diploma.
Speaker 4: Yes, he did a high school diploma.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Just so that's some of what we do.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 6: We transfer to transfer schools depending on what you like.
Speaker 6: We might have kids who want to dance, who want
Speaker 6: a filmmate. We connect you with schools that are going
Speaker 6: to give you what you need, not just a school
Speaker 6: just to go to, just because we really want to
Speaker 6: see these kids be sustainable citizens, right, do whatever it
Speaker 6: is that you want to do. We encourage them.
Speaker 4: We have our attendance program. We have schools that have
Speaker 4: very low attendance, so they hire an LS team to
Speaker 4: bring their students back to school because they can do well,
Speaker 4: they just need to come into the school. So a
Speaker 4: lot of times we go to the homes and discover
Speaker 4: they move, they don't even live here anymore. So we
Speaker 4: do a lot of coal heart cleaning up for the
Speaker 4: schools to where if the schools, if the student is
Speaker 4: no longer there, they can come off the court, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. They just need an address. So
Speaker 4: we do all of that. They call us investigators. We
Speaker 4: have our safe and secure hallways to where we have
Speaker 4: mentoring on a goal. The mentoring on a Goal program
Speaker 4: is a major hit because it all started with to
Speaker 4: be in supportive of school safety. Just you guys haven't noticed.
Speaker 4: Didn't know this about me, but I used to be
Speaker 4: school safety for years. I transferred to become a cop
Speaker 4: and then I was like, this is not for me.
Speaker 4: I took the teacher's test and became a teacher. So
Speaker 4: I had many different careers, yes that led me into this.
Speaker 4: So I went back into school safety mode. And I
Speaker 4: discovered that school safety, they don't have them doing the
Speaker 4: things they used to have us doing. So with the mentoring,
Speaker 4: I noticed that the students wanted someone that looks like them,
Speaker 4: the auntie, the uncle that can relate to them, and
Speaker 4: we created that and we were able to make sure
Speaker 4: that the mentoring on a goal was getting to know
Speaker 4: the students in transition to class, making sure that Johnny
Speaker 4: who's always late, you're not late because I'm walking you.
Speaker 4: This is how we're doing it, and it's so great
Speaker 4: to the point where they actually tell the principles will say, oh,
Speaker 4: the teacher's coming to you because you know today about
Speaker 4: what happened.
Speaker 6: What I love the most is that these are just
Speaker 6: like they're big brothers and sisters. We're literally taking people
Speaker 6: out of the community and bringing them in like we
Speaker 6: have open houses in the community. We have people that say, oh,
Speaker 6: I haven't worked before, Oh I don't know if I
Speaker 6: have the tools. It's like, we give you the tools
Speaker 6: you do if you have a passion, if you want
Speaker 6: to help kids, we'll help.
Speaker 1: You get to that next figure it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, of course, there's some hindrances with New York
Speaker 6: City that we tend to phase because again, if you
Speaker 6: have ever been convicted of a crime, you can't work
Speaker 6: in New York City.
Speaker 1: I ever been convicted.
Speaker 6: I've ever been convicted, even if you had a misdemeanor,
Speaker 6: So we have to then deal with that. So it's
Speaker 6: an investigative side on the other hand, where I have
Speaker 6: to write these letters and get these people clear, which
Speaker 6: takes a really long time. It's like it feels like,
Speaker 6: I mean, we do our best, but there's several like
Speaker 6: hindrances I think within the system that could be fixed.
Speaker 5: I'm just so proud of Tiffany, like know, since she
Speaker 5: was like in elementary school like four and five years old,
Speaker 5: we went to the same like knowing has growing up
Speaker 5: and just seeing her growing to this this is just who.
Speaker 3: Do Yeah, it's amazing. I Mean, the entire program to
Speaker 3: me is precisely what we need. And one of the
Speaker 3: reasons why we wanted to have you all on the
Speaker 3: show so quickly after visiting the graduation ceremony is that
Speaker 3: around the country, we're in a time where everybody is
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what do we do while we're
Speaker 3: under attack?
Speaker 1: Right, Like we as black people, as black.
Speaker 3: And brown and vulnerable communities, even white communities are suffering
Speaker 3: and are at the cross section of real attacks against
Speaker 3: our education, attacks against our health, everything, our economics, everything,
Speaker 3: and models that people can use in their particular cities
Speaker 3: that will help to keep afloat. And this has happened
Speaker 3: throughout history, if we you know, if you think back
Speaker 3: through history, there've always been times when there was a
Speaker 3: recession and people had to figure out how to feed themselves,
Speaker 3: or how to travel and spend less money to get
Speaker 3: to work, or you've always had to have models pop
Speaker 3: up that would give folks hope that we can do it.
Speaker 3: And I think l Ees is one of those models.
Speaker 3: You know, I really truly think that. And so so
Speaker 3: talk about what does it take on the financial side
Speaker 3: to keep a program like this going.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's expensive.
Speaker 6: It's very expensive, extremely expensive. It's very expensive because we
Speaker 6: don't have just one person right on the ground for
Speaker 6: one program. Like we said, we have the team that's out.
Speaker 6: They have to be out in a duo. That was
Speaker 6: something that we had to implement two people time. We
Speaker 6: also have to have attendance people who are like analysts
Speaker 6: they say, behind a computer, but they're calling constantly excuse me.
Speaker 6: We were literally searching for these kids. We find kids
Speaker 6: in Texas, we find kids in yeahmen, we find kids
Speaker 6: in Africa.
Speaker 1: Here supposed to be here, and they went wherever.
Speaker 6: So that's also helping to decrease that drop off.
Speaker 3: What was some of the worst stories that you found, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, give me a story of something
Speaker 3: that you all had to work through that was really
Speaker 3: really challenging.
Speaker 4: So a lot of the families during the pandemic did
Speaker 4: not know how to work the Google classrooms, so we
Speaker 4: had to put our team in place to make sure
Speaker 4: that they went to some of the houses. Could you
Speaker 4: imagine they had to suit up and do all types
Speaker 4: of zooms to help families. We discovered a lot of
Speaker 4: kids were raised by their grandparents, so the grandparents was
Speaker 4: like on the Tyler Prairie, I don't know about that
Speaker 4: algio what you're talking about. So we had to figure
Speaker 4: it out to help them. And I remember this one
Speaker 4: specific story that there was a student who was he
Speaker 4: was pretty much an a student, and the school called
Speaker 4: us and said he was not coming to school. They
Speaker 4: don't know what was going on, and we was like,
Speaker 4: we gotta find him. So I remember I didn't have
Speaker 4: a partner to go with me in the field at
Speaker 4: that time, and Tiffany was busy doing a lot of
Speaker 4: the other stuff with the staff behind the scenes. So
Speaker 4: I made my husband go with me and we put
Speaker 4: on our out offense. He helped me. We geared up
Speaker 4: and he said, put your mask on. We put our
Speaker 4: mask on. We put everything we needed to and we
Speaker 4: went to the house and we asked him what happened,
Speaker 4: and he said, my mother lost her jobs during the
Speaker 4: pandemic and I have to help her and I have
Speaker 4: to help her some way. And then I was like, okay,
Speaker 4: where's your mom. The mom came down, she was crying,
Speaker 4: and I said, mom, he only has a few more
Speaker 4: months to go. I said, what is it we need
Speaker 4: to do to help? Because he has a promising career
Speaker 4: and at this particular time, he was up for internship
Speaker 4: with BMW and Mercedes Bens because he's a mechanic. He
Speaker 4: grew up being a mechanic and fixing cards with his grandfather.
Speaker 4: So the mom was like, I don't know, I'm just
Speaker 4: you know, I don't want him to quit school. He's
Speaker 4: just depressed. Here with me. So I said the first
Speaker 4: things first, that you have all your basic necessities, and
Speaker 4: she says she didn't have really a lot. So my
Speaker 4: husband and I we took a list what do you need?
Speaker 4: We went and we got the list of stuff and
Speaker 4: we went and bought everything for her. And then Tiffany
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, we could swing a couple of dollars too.
Speaker 4: Let's give them something. Try to hold them over because
Speaker 4: he's graduating. And that's what we did. We came back
Speaker 4: and they cried and they hugged us, and I said, listen,
Speaker 4: I need you to go and log on. He logged
Speaker 4: on to school and he graduated. I mean, he was
Speaker 4: a successful graduate. And I think that was a great
Speaker 4: story because we had to get up no matter what.
Speaker 4: We didn't even care. Everybody was scared in the house,
Speaker 4: like we was like, no, we gotta go there.
Speaker 5: I love this because it intercepts the school of prison pipeline, right.
Speaker 5: This completely gives our kids an opportunity because I remember
Speaker 5: when I went to school in king I remember that
Speaker 5: there was a day that all the kids that didn't
Speaker 5: go to school, they just kicked you out the school,
Speaker 5: Like that's how it is. Literally, it was one day
Speaker 5: like you be going and we be having fun. And
Speaker 5: the next thing you know, they just had made a
Speaker 5: bigger announcement and told you to come to the office
Speaker 5: and said you're no longer in this school, no more,
Speaker 5: and they sent you to one of those schools that
Speaker 5: nobody went to. Like it was like the fifty or
Speaker 5: sixty of my friends just completely got kicked out of
Speaker 5: the school. So when you look at programs like this
Speaker 5: and you see that these opportunities, it could have saved
Speaker 5: a lot of a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Not here, a lot of them.
Speaker 5: In prison, you know what I'm saying, because they just
Speaker 5: threw them out in the street and there was nobody
Speaker 5: there that really kid enough. So when I look at
Speaker 5: your program, it's really going to make real change.
Speaker 4: And the kids that come from prison, oh, we get
Speaker 4: them soon as they And when we find out that
Speaker 4: there's a student that may have gotten locked up, we
Speaker 4: tell the school please keep us posted, and then we
Speaker 4: reach out to the family let us know, especially if
Speaker 4: it's a student that we know. Have a couple of months,
Speaker 4: we keep them on our list and then we revisited
Speaker 4: again and as soon as they get out, we're right
Speaker 4: there to get them back acclimated with a school. And
Speaker 4: what's going on. Now the school that they were in
Speaker 4: may not work for them, but we find a school
Speaker 4: and sometimes you have kids, We have kids we worked with.
Speaker 4: We had to meet them where they were, meaning at
Speaker 4: their house, like they were not trying to come out
Speaker 4: for whatever reason or something that happened. So we had
Speaker 4: to send a tutor to the home and we was like,
Speaker 4: help us get this work now, Tiffany. Find loopholes and
Speaker 4: that's the problem when we find those loopholes all the time.
Speaker 4: They Department of Education seems to forget that they have
Speaker 4: that loophole. Butt like, where did you find this? Who
Speaker 4: said like we have to use this? And we're like
Speaker 4: really pressing them and pressing them, like you said this,
Speaker 4: you created this. We just went to a press release recently.
Speaker 4: Were one of the loopholes we found that they said
Speaker 4: they were rescinding and not using which is the online school.
Speaker 4: They just announced that they're going to do it. So
Speaker 4: we were very confused because they do.
Speaker 1: Listen, people watch you eat.
Speaker 3: You don't think that they do, but they watch you
Speaker 3: and they watch your work and then they start saying
Speaker 3: they want to implement things that you're doing. Yes, do
Speaker 3: you all have a relationship at all with the Chancellor directly, or.
Speaker 6: I think it's indirectly. We work with Project Pivot, which
Speaker 6: is the Chancellor's initiative, so we work with his team,
Speaker 6: which are some great ten black men who are like
Speaker 6: on the ground with us every day. So it's an
Speaker 6: indirect relationship. But I think because we do have a
Speaker 6: black mayor and a black chancellor, I think they need
Speaker 6: to know about this. They need to definitely invest in
Speaker 6: this because what I find is the most horrible thing
Speaker 6: is that these programs that this program is great, right,
Speaker 6: but there's not a lot of programs that you can
Speaker 6: give for these teenage students. It's kind of like they
Speaker 6: want to help them until they get to be about
Speaker 6: thirteen is and then when you get to high school,
Speaker 6: there's nothing. There are no programs for them. Why not
Speaker 6: these are tomorrow's leaders. Why are we not investing in them?
Speaker 6: Why are we just they're just like letting them drop out.
Speaker 6: I mean to be honest, there's a lot of principles
Speaker 6: that will give us a list and they will be like, oh, here,
Speaker 6: work with these five. That's another thing that started when
Speaker 6: I got here. They were like these seven of these
Speaker 6: five and town is like, yes, great, and I had
Speaker 6: to dissect that and say, let me see your data.
Speaker 6: So I require the data.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: I want to see how many kids on this that
Speaker 6: are enrolled in this school are not coming to school,
Speaker 6: and I want to know what.
Speaker 4: You give me your.
Speaker 6: Seven because what happened to the other and I always
Speaker 6: having the kids, they're like, oh, he doesn't come. Oh
Speaker 6: he's just all these excuses, and I'm like, no, in
Speaker 6: order to work with us, you have to give me
Speaker 6: all fourteen of them.
Speaker 1: That's what that's the one I want.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how exactly when we do our organizing
Speaker 3: work in communities around the nation, we always are like, okay,
Speaker 3: where they you said they shooting and killing over there?
Speaker 3: That take us over there and drop us off and
Speaker 3: we'll see. We're gonna we're gonna work with our own people.
Speaker 3: And we have to find the people who because if
Speaker 3: there is violence or you know, some sign of like
Speaker 3: a real uh, what's the word I'm looking and for,
Speaker 3: if there's violence, or if the community seems like it's
Speaker 3: really really like a stress depressed neighborhood, we know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of promise there because that means that people
Speaker 3: are hurting. So we don't look at violence as it's
Speaker 3: just criminals. We look at violence as somebody's in pain
Speaker 3: and therefore they need the resources we actually.
Speaker 1: Should be focusing on that.
Speaker 3: It's funny that so many elected officials and otherwise. Is
Speaker 3: one of the kind of the challenges that I had
Speaker 3: with Bernie Sander's my son that was his candidate. It
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't mine. Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren was my candidate.
Speaker 3: But one of the issues that I had with Bernie
Speaker 3: was this idea that if we start at the bottom,
Speaker 3: like if you know, we just like kind of like
Speaker 3: what do they say, all rods and tides raises, all
Speaker 3: ships or something like that. So that's cool, that sounds great,
Speaker 3: but he would never identify the who was at the
Speaker 3: bottom by saying black folks, because we are the one
Speaker 3: that no matter how you you could take the data,
Speaker 3: flip it upside down, shake it out iron it is
Speaker 3: always going to come back that our communities are the
Speaker 3: ones that are suffering the most in every single category.
Speaker 3: And so I do believe that that strategy can work.
Speaker 3: But then that means that you have to be able
Speaker 3: to name our people, you know.
Speaker 6: You have to be able to be one of our
Speaker 6: people well too.
Speaker 4: That's that too.
Speaker 3: And I only bring that up because, you know, I
Speaker 3: feel like, then I need to talk to Poky Pooky Pooky,
Speaker 3: not just Pooky because Pooky.
Speaker 1: Might just be a nickname for Robert, who has.
Speaker 3: A good job, who's doing I'm talking about Pooky Pooky's
Speaker 3: Pooky Pooky right. You might not even have a house.
Speaker 3: He's living from the house. That's where we have to go.
Speaker 3: And that's what my song does every day is work
Speaker 3: with the ones that I see them, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: who this this is tough? G until Freedom run programs
Speaker 3: in Newark, and I was watching the kids the other
Speaker 3: day and then listening to what the instructors were saying,
Speaker 3: and they were like they started looking for him, those kids,
Speaker 3: those same kids that would have seen him coming before
Speaker 3: or probably did like I'm not doing this, so you
Speaker 3: know whatever. But then because he was consistent, they were like,
Speaker 3: well where.
Speaker 4: Is he at?
Speaker 2: Like how young boys?
Speaker 5: You know, they they are able to see you, right,
Speaker 5: because I remember being a young boy, and that's why
Speaker 5: I mentor from that position. I don't mentor from where
Speaker 5: I am. My mentor from where I was, and what
Speaker 5: would it have taken for me to identify with somebody,
Speaker 5: or trust somebody, or change the direction that I was
Speaker 5: going to for somebody. Right, it would have to be consistency,
Speaker 5: it would have to be that you earn respect, it
Speaker 5: would have to be honesty, it would have to be
Speaker 5: that I sense all of those things in you. Right,
Speaker 5: So that's how I try to mentor. And I think
Speaker 5: this is what this program is like. When you when
Speaker 5: I listen to you, it's not you didn't say we
Speaker 5: try to figure out how to make some money. No,
Speaker 5: you you've seen in this necessity out of something that
Speaker 5: you actually were dealing with, and said, people really need
Speaker 5: these things, right, and then y'all connected those dots and said, well,
Speaker 5: while we're doing this, we still have to survive, and
Speaker 5: we got to make sure and while we survive, and
Speaker 5: we got to be able to provide for the people
Speaker 5: that were helping because a lot of these things are financial.
Speaker 2: I say all the time, poverty is violence.
Speaker 5: And when we look at we're dealing with levels of
Speaker 5: violence on so many different levels. It's not just physical violence,
Speaker 5: it's emotional is you know, it's help all of these things.
Speaker 5: So when you when you start tearing back the layers
Speaker 5: and you talking to these parents, you realize, like, damn,
Speaker 5: it's deeper than just a kid don't want to go
Speaker 5: to school. Like it's way deeper because I remember when
Speaker 5: I wasn't going I remember the things that was going
Speaker 5: on in my house. I was an age, I was
Speaker 5: a top student, and then the things that was going
Speaker 5: on in my house stopped me from going to school.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to focus on you all. I
Speaker 2: gotta survive, Like it's just me and my sister. What
Speaker 2: do I gotta do? How? You know, so it takes
Speaker 2: you out of it.
Speaker 5: And if I'd had somebody that could come and gave
Speaker 5: me resources and help my mother go through what she
Speaker 5: had to go through, like I's no telling where I
Speaker 5: would have been. I wanted to be the president. I
Speaker 5: wanted to be one of the best lawyers, Like I
Speaker 5: went to is. I was one of the best mock
Speaker 5: attorneys in my school, like when they when we had
Speaker 5: those attorneys and we had those mock trials, yea King,
Speaker 5: and man, I was what, Yeah, she went to King.
Speaker 5: So what I'm saying, like I really was one of
Speaker 5: the best of those. Then I went to John Jay
Speaker 5: and I was doing mock trials and writing up closing arguments.
Speaker 5: My teachers was like, Yo, it's nobody better than you
Speaker 5: with this. But life was calling the things that was
Speaker 5: going on in my household and me trying to survive.
Speaker 2: I was like, I can't even get to school no more.
Speaker 4: And that's what we go through with the students and
Speaker 4: their families. A lot of times they will say things like,
Speaker 4: you don't know what I'm going through. So because I
Speaker 4: always like to say every single part of every single
Speaker 4: program we have of l S, I've actually done it myself.
Speaker 4: So when I love when they tell me that because
Speaker 4: I know person, I always tell them I have personal experience.
Speaker 4: When they go, oh, you don't know it's hard to
Speaker 4: have a child. That's this, I'm like, what I tell
Speaker 4: them my story or the children. The children always say
Speaker 4: to me, you don't know how it feels when you
Speaker 4: go to a new school. I tell them my story.
Speaker 4: And when I tell them my story about what happened
Speaker 4: when I went to that new high school, they said,
Speaker 4: and now you work for L E s Smiss, I say,
Speaker 4: now I own L E S. They say, sign me
Speaker 4: up a man. So it's always a story that I'm
Speaker 4: telling them and they're like, wow, oh this happened because
Speaker 4: they want you. They want to know that you know,
Speaker 4: you're not just talking.
Speaker 6: We make sure that we hire genuine people who want
Speaker 6: to be a part of this cause. I mean, you
Speaker 6: can have all the degrees in the world, and we're like,
Speaker 6: we've turned away so many people and I'm like, they
Speaker 6: just don't fit, or is like they don't fit and.
Speaker 1: We want so you too have to agree.
Speaker 6: We agree on people, we do because we look for
Speaker 6: different things and we just want to make sure that
Speaker 6: people are out here who understand the mission and who
Speaker 6: are here not just to get pad because we understand
Speaker 6: everybody has to be paid, but really want to help
Speaker 6: these kids.
Speaker 1: Do y'all hire family members?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, did it work? It does?
Speaker 6: Sometimes it doesn't. It's harder obviously with your family members
Speaker 6: because I can't separate the fact that, you know, to
Speaker 6: be honest, our husbands work for the company.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right, they're invested.
Speaker 6: They invested, but they get on our nurves too, Okay, right.
Speaker 1: Different, it's a different, but you have to feeling.
Speaker 6: You got to go lay down with them to night
Speaker 6: and you're like, I just had to tell you to
Speaker 6: go do this, and I know you didn't like it,
Speaker 6: but you know, let's separate it, so it gets hard.
Speaker 6: My sister is one of the people who's been with
Speaker 6: us since day one, Right, She's been a loyal employee.
Speaker 6: I don't do day to day with her on purpose,
Speaker 6: so we also make sure that we're not directly involved
Speaker 6: with our family to Wanta takes on her more. But
Speaker 6: she's been amazing, right, And I think just for us,
Speaker 6: our mother came from public service and worked for Social
Speaker 6: Security and HRRA her whole life.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: My mother always she worked at a local community center.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: My mother was everybody's mom. She just are growing up.
Speaker 6: So I think it's just natural for us to feel
Speaker 6: like this is where we belong.
Speaker 4: And I forgot to mention. I got to shout out
Speaker 4: my Queens. I'm from jam I'm from Okay. So I
Speaker 4: was raised in South Jamaica, Queens by way of Queensbridge Projects. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 4: So you know out there, yes there?
Speaker 1: So what do you need? How can people help and
Speaker 1: where can they find you?
Speaker 6: I think we need awareness, We need to We just
Speaker 6: want people to know what l E S is. We
Speaker 6: need people like you guys who allow us on your platforms.
Speaker 6: I know, mice talk to me about just like joining
Speaker 6: we need ambassador, our ambassadors in every borough. Like, so, Mike,
Speaker 6: you helped my ambassador for the Bronx I got. Cameron
Speaker 6: reached out to me the other day. He wants to
Speaker 6: be the ambassador for Harlem.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: He's excited about doing a back to school event with
Speaker 6: us immediately, like he wants to do it this summer.
Speaker 6: I have Jada Kiss reached out. He wants to do
Speaker 6: you because he's like, I know y'all do New York City,
Speaker 6: but I'm like, we do wherever. You know, we got
Speaker 6: people reaching out in Philly. My friend, one of my
Speaker 6: best friends, lives in Philly, so she's she has a
Speaker 6: hair salon, so she has a lot of teachers and
Speaker 6: principals who have been reaching out. So we definitely want
Speaker 6: to make it there. But I think our goal right
Speaker 6: now is to con New York. We want to get
Speaker 6: ambassadors for all of the burroughs. We want to get
Speaker 6: the Chancellor's ear, the Mayor's ear. Yeah, we want to.
Speaker 6: We're working on RFPs this summer. You guys know what
Speaker 6: those are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we need to really get the Mayor's air,
Speaker 4: meaning that I've been going to a lot of them.
Speaker 4: We're MWBE right. So I've been going to the MWBE
Speaker 4: events they have and I see them all. I mean
Speaker 4: it's times where the chancellor have seen me and he's
Speaker 4: telling the mayor come over here. I want to hear.
Speaker 4: I want you to hear what they have going. But
Speaker 4: then they get so busy after they hear it, and
Speaker 4: then they give you all these numbers and say let's
Speaker 4: set up meetings, and we.
Speaker 6: Know that, and they send other people.
Speaker 4: And then they send other people and then it's like,
Speaker 4: but they don't realize that the numbers that they're getting
Speaker 4: is because of people like us. We find hundreds of
Speaker 4: students who have dropped out of school and bring them
Speaker 4: back in. They're coming, They're not just going back. We're
Speaker 4: getting that.
Speaker 5: Specifically me and we can have a little bit of
Speaker 5: connection here and there that we might be able to
Speaker 5: do something. So I really want what y'all do to
Speaker 5: be implemented in every school Like this is really important,
Speaker 5: you know, and I just want to commend y'all for
Speaker 5: the work that you do. You know, it's amazing, and
Speaker 5: it started out of necessity. It started out of you
Speaker 5: seeing what was missing, and that's what I tell these
Speaker 5: kids all the time, if you want to do something
Speaker 5: to find out what's missing, when you see that something
Speaker 5: that's missing, fill that void, you know. And this is
Speaker 5: a void that definitely needs to be filled, especially in
Speaker 5: our community. So I want to commend y'all and thank
Speaker 5: y'all for joining us. Tell them where to find y'all.
Speaker 4: Email us at NFO at l E sink dot org,
Speaker 4: or you can go to ww dot l E sinc
Speaker 4: dot org.
Speaker 6: I'm at just Tiffany twenty five, and you are and
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 4: I am Coco bats, but I would rather them go
Speaker 4: to Hey, let me follow that. Please follow Learning Underscore,
Speaker 4: Educational Underscore Solution and Twitter, which is learning Edu.
Speaker 1: Thank y'all so.
Speaker 4: Much for having whatever.
Speaker 2: We could do. I like Elliot, I love Elliott.
Speaker 3: I like young ladies. I'm so grateful to you for
Speaker 3: introducing me to them. I feel I always feel so
Speaker 3: excited when I know I could do something to help
Speaker 3: somebody really.
Speaker 2: Like it's it's you know.
Speaker 5: As soon as I heard the program and then I
Speaker 5: knew I know, Like I said, I know Tiffany since
Speaker 5: she was a baby, like literally and just knowing how
Speaker 5: she's always been focused, been driven, she was the girl
Speaker 5: that was never into none of the bull stuff, always
Speaker 5: smart and all of that. And just when I heard
Speaker 5: her name involved and we got to pay attention to this,
Speaker 5: you know, and her husband is my friend, shout out
Speaker 5: to j T. So these is like brothers and sisters
Speaker 5: to me. So just and then seeing that what they're doing,
Speaker 5: it's just amazing.
Speaker 2: Man. We need this. We definitely need this kind of program.
Speaker 5: This. This is what I've been talking about when we're
Speaker 5: talking about community doing things for the community and community
Speaker 5: like policing the community, taking care of the community, entrepreneurship,
Speaker 5: educating the community.
Speaker 2: That's what it is.
Speaker 5: Is they've created an ecosystem that you each level of education,
Speaker 5: they are able to do something for, you know, when
Speaker 5: it's public safety, you know, getting.
Speaker 2: The kids back.
Speaker 1: I don't use the word policing in our community.
Speaker 5: Most publicly, Okay, I'll change the word, you know, public
Speaker 5: safety in our community.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, the more that we help
Speaker 3: them to get the awareness out there, I think that
Speaker 3: they can go that other people in other states can
Speaker 3: really look at their model and people are already doing it.
Speaker 2: It was done.
Speaker 5: We just taken back, they took or this is why
Speaker 5: I had this conversation shout out to may Adams that
Speaker 5: we had because I know that it was there. Like
Speaker 5: me and her were talking about, there was a program
Speaker 5: in our community called the Mosaic in which they had
Speaker 5: every level. They had entertainment, they had mentorship, they had sports,
Speaker 5: they had education, they had after school on programs where
Speaker 5: the kids, there were daycare centers, that everything that the
Speaker 5: community needed was in there, and they hired everybody from
Speaker 5: the community to work in this. So it was a
Speaker 5: beautiful thing. And then they just cut the funding and
Speaker 5: now it's not even it's a shell of what it
Speaker 5: want was.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not even thinking so much about the programs.
Speaker 3: I think the programs are important, and you have programs
Speaker 3: all around the country, specifically their road removing obstacles achieving dreams.
Speaker 3: That is what I'm talking about. The idea that they
Speaker 3: literally go find a kid. They say they found kids
Speaker 3: in Yemen in Africa, and you know, probably in the
Speaker 3: school building, right and then you find out that these
Speaker 3: kids have a variety of problems or issues they're dealing
Speaker 3: with their family members, and now here they are working
Speaker 3: to try to solve problems so that the young person
Speaker 3: can get back in school. We know of a few
Speaker 3: programs like that. I know certainly Erika Ford at Life Camp.
Speaker 3: That's something that I that they definitely they figured out
Speaker 3: through years and years of research that you can't even
Speaker 3: help the child until you help the mother. You can't
Speaker 3: help the mother and not the father. You can't help
Speaker 3: the mother and father, and the grandmother is living there
Speaker 3: and doesn't have the medical needs that they may have,
Speaker 3: or other children in the home, so incarceration can become
Speaker 3: an issue. So there's so many barriers, and I think
Speaker 3: what they're doing is something that if you are a
Speaker 3: person who's in you know, I don't know Alabama right now,
Speaker 3: and you're like, wow, the dropout rate is so high,
Speaker 3: because you know the stats are in New York that
Speaker 3: since the pandemic, there's a real struggle to get young
Speaker 3: black boys to go back to school. And so if
Speaker 3: you're in Alabama, you're in North Carolina, you're in Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: you're in Michigan, you're wherever, and you realize that that's
Speaker 3: an issue, then perhaps looking at l Ees and the
Speaker 3: model and then using your own spice, because every local
Speaker 3: community has its own issue someplace. New York it's buildings,
Speaker 3: so we have a different strategy. Some places his houses,
Speaker 3: some places trailer parks. I mean, everywhere has something different.
Speaker 3: I think Lis and what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Is brilliant, brilliant man, brilliant for sure.
Speaker 5: I appreciate him, love him. That brings me to my
Speaker 5: I don't get it. We're talking about children and we're
Speaker 5: talking about parents. Lebron James, who is arguably too many
Speaker 5: the goat greatest of all time basketball. Not really my goal,
Speaker 5: but he's he's up there, he's in the top five
Speaker 5: to me. His son, Ronnie James, you know, just got
Speaker 5: drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, and there is this
Speaker 5: big uproard. Oh you know, he's he doesn't deserve it.
Speaker 5: It's people that deserve that spot. They just got him
Speaker 5: there because it's Lebron's son and this and that, and
Speaker 5: I say, that's right, right, that's and that's.
Speaker 2: What they should like.
Speaker 1: You don't think he deserves.
Speaker 5: It, No, I think he deserves it. But I think
Speaker 5: that he's Lebron's son, and that's why he got on
Speaker 5: the team because Lebron said, I want my son to
Speaker 5: play with.
Speaker 1: Me and Lebron if if he was good.
Speaker 5: No, he is good, you know what I'm saying. He's
Speaker 5: not no better than anybody, no worse than at fifty
Speaker 5: threet went. He went at fifty five, the fifty fifth pick,
Speaker 5: Like that's like barely making the team. But the fact
Speaker 5: is that people, yeah, that's what And the thing was
Speaker 5: he was a Mcdonaldhall American. He was he like he
Speaker 5: was at the toppest level, you know, in basketball. And
Speaker 5: then he got an injury in which you know, he
Speaker 5: had a heart injury in which you know, Lebron didn't
Speaker 5: even know if his son was going to survive, let
Speaker 5: alone play basketball. And to ignore what he did to
Speaker 5: rehab hisself, to work himself back in the position to
Speaker 5: be able to play on the NBA team, to ignore that,
Speaker 5: just that in itself, like forget everything else, the fact
Speaker 5: that you were on to the point where you thought
Speaker 5: you would probably never played basketball again, and you defied that.
Speaker 5: You work hard, you practice, you exercise, you did everything necessary.
Speaker 5: Then you went to those combines and you impressed those
Speaker 5: people and people seeing you you played hard, you did
Speaker 5: all those things. You know, what else should a father do?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: If I tell my son all the time, I just
Speaker 5: if you want me to help you just show me
Speaker 5: the initiative, because if you show me that you wanted
Speaker 5: like that, And I heard Lebron say, Lebron James said,
Speaker 5: he asked his son, what do you want this?
Speaker 2: What do you want with this?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: What do you want to do? An m MEA He said,
Speaker 2: I wanted to play in the pros. That's what I want.
Speaker 5: And he said, he said that and then he showed
Speaker 5: me that. So as a father, that's what you're supposed
Speaker 5: to do for your kids when they put the work in.
Speaker 5: You supposed to be able to if you are in
Speaker 5: a position to make things easier after they put the
Speaker 5: work in and put them the doors to where.
Speaker 2: When they get in there, and that was up to you.
Speaker 2: I can get you in the door. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 5: You showed me that you're willing to do it, and
Speaker 5: I'm willing to put my name, my everything on the
Speaker 5: line because you worked hard enough. That's what we're supposed
Speaker 5: to do as parents. You know, I heard Stephen Stephen Jackson,
Speaker 5: Stephen jacks he said, black privilege. Black privilege.
Speaker 2: I love it. You know.
Speaker 5: We put yourself in a position because that's what's been
Speaker 5: happening in these leagues for years, the white people, I
Speaker 5: mean just everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 3: Peoples department, the elected officials passing down a seat to
Speaker 3: their child. Corporate leaders, they you know, their their kid
Speaker 3: or their nephew or someone becomes the new CEO once
Speaker 3: they get, you know, to a certain point. And so
Speaker 3: I think that I personally don't think it's that it's
Speaker 3: not that I don't think it's that big of a
Speaker 3: because you and like some of y'all on social media
Speaker 3: that then got upset about them, are the only people
Speaker 3: that's talking about it around me.
Speaker 1: Around me, they saying.
Speaker 2: I mean around you.
Speaker 5: But I'm saying, if you go through the sports world,
Speaker 5: they got people in the lists on you know, on
Speaker 5: ESPN and all the sports world. You got people they
Speaker 5: can't know, they ain't gonna get him nowhere. And I
Speaker 5: shout out to the bron shot out to Bronnie James,
Speaker 5: and you know, and I hope this right here gives
Speaker 5: us to understand that what we should be doing right,
Speaker 5: We should be we should be creating generations, setting up
Speaker 5: our own foundations. Give everybody else a chance. But I'm
Speaker 5: I'm going I'm not going to act like if my
Speaker 5: son or my family member is qualified to do a job,
Speaker 5: just as qualified as somebody else that I'm not gonna
Speaker 5: give them that opportunity. And that's how we create generational wealth.
Speaker 1: If we don't own nothing well but talented.
Speaker 5: They do need to be talented, because the thing is,
Speaker 5: you can only get him somewhere talent. The rest of
Speaker 5: that got to take him somewhere.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: I can get you to the interview, I can get
Speaker 5: you to try out, but your skill is gonna get
Speaker 5: you in the game. If Ronnie James don't perform, you know,
Speaker 5: they say, they talk about it now, they talking about
Speaker 5: what's his name?
Speaker 2: Giannis Gianni's brother is on the team.
Speaker 5: He don't play at all, but he get paid a
Speaker 5: check and for five or six years, however long he
Speaker 5: been on that team, his brother got a check because
Speaker 5: he made sure that his brother got a check in
Speaker 5: order for me to sign.
Speaker 2: You gonna sign my brother.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not against making sure your family members and
Speaker 3: other people, friends or whomever, or just someone you met,
Speaker 3: that they are taken care of.
Speaker 1: But I do think that the person should.
Speaker 3: Be qualified for the job, and or at least on
Speaker 3: a trajectory to become qualified. Because I do believe I
Speaker 3: don't think that people should be surpassed that have skills
Speaker 3: so that you can make a space for your lazy
Speaker 3: nephew or oh yeah, madic daughter. That I don't. I
Speaker 3: don't agree with that. They need to have a benefit. So,
Speaker 3: like you said, even if he's not playing, perhaps there's
Speaker 3: something that he's doing behind the scenes. I don't know
Speaker 3: what they I mean, I'm assuming that what has people that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he hugs.
Speaker 5: His brother up, he gets on. He has this energy
Speaker 5: that comes up whenever he's in a huddle.
Speaker 2: You see him.
Speaker 5: He's more energetic, and that provides something for the team.
Speaker 5: People need that. They want that.
Speaker 3: So Lebron, you have that on all teams, like people
Speaker 3: that don't play.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's certain people on the team that you don't like.
Speaker 5: They rally around inside the locker rooms. They the voice
Speaker 5: in the locker rooms. He might be the best practice player.
Speaker 5: You know he out there filing hard. You know he
Speaker 5: gonna bring everything. So every team has someone that other
Speaker 5: people might not think it's good enough or but they
Speaker 5: provide something for the team.
Speaker 3: But I've been on teams before where children or family
Speaker 3: member or associates have been problematic, you know, messy and problematic,
Speaker 3: and then you and then you know if they're there
Speaker 3: because it's a part of like your contract or it's
Speaker 3: a part of the relationship that you have with the boss,
Speaker 3: that's problematic. And I never wanted that. In fact, I'm against,
Speaker 3: you know, as we just finished talking to these two
Speaker 3: sisters about hiring family members, I have been against.
Speaker 1: Having people who work for me, I mean people who are.
Speaker 3: In my family work for me, and or suggesting them
Speaker 3: for other jobs. It's not so much against, but very reluctant,
Speaker 3: because everybody that walks in the door with my name
Speaker 3: on them, I want my name to be held just
Speaker 3: the same way that I try to perform in jobs.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying that I've always done the great jobs.
Speaker 3: There's been some places I'm like, wow, I remember that
Speaker 3: I was going through man problems, or my kid didn't
Speaker 3: really have the right childcare, or babyfather died or this happened,
Speaker 3: or I was just outside, and I know I didn't
Speaker 3: really really really focus on that opportunity the way that
Speaker 3: I should have.
Speaker 1: We all have to be able to admit that.
Speaker 3: But I also know that whoever helps me get it,
Speaker 3: I become an extension of them. So I think we
Speaker 3: should not be asking people to hook us up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want the one to hook up.
Speaker 5: If you come to me and you got the you know,
Speaker 5: you have the right requirements, if you got the resume
Speaker 5: and it shows that you can do something, and I'm
Speaker 5: able to utilize a resource that I have or know
Speaker 5: somebody that can put you in a position that you
Speaker 5: can you can apply the skill set that you have,
Speaker 5: you know, to the fullest of your ability, and I
Speaker 5: know that you're going to maximize on that situation, then
Speaker 5: by all means, that's that's what we have related.
Speaker 2: They say all the time, it's not what you know,
Speaker 2: it's who you know. You know, that's a fact. That's
Speaker 2: a fact.
Speaker 1: That's the one.
Speaker 5: Nobody else gonna help us. Man, And what that said
Speaker 5: brings us to the end of another beautiful episode. Shout
Speaker 5: out to Twyna and Tiffany from l E S. The
Speaker 5: work they're doing is amazing. Make sure you follow them, Mayor.
Speaker 5: We need to make sure that this is everywhere. We
Speaker 5: got to make sure we get these people in.
Speaker 2: This is what it is. This is what I was
Speaker 2: talking about right here.
Speaker 5: Make sure that you hit us up d m us
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Speaker 5: d m us. Let us know what you like, what
Speaker 5: you don't like. Give us some people you want us
Speaker 5: to interview, give us some shows, let us know some
Speaker 5: topics we want to hear from you. We appreciate you
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Speaker 5: the world, the best show in the world. Tm I
Speaker 5: were doing our thing tmb tm I And.
Speaker 2: With that said, I'm not gonna always be right. Tamika D.
Speaker 5: Malory's not gonna always be wrong, but we will both
Speaker 5: always and I mean always, be a thing.
Speaker 2: So we check out the video version of tm.
Speaker 1: I every single Wednesday on Iwoman dot TV.
Speaker 3: That's how we