Speaker 1: You are now listening to Waiting on Reparation A production.
Speaker 1: I heart radio A. What is going on? Might check?
Speaker 1: The mic sounds nice, the mic sounds nice, and I
Speaker 1: got some lights that's may have been true at some
Speaker 1: point in my life. Let's be a dope of knife
Speaker 1: and he's the dope of knife and I'm drinking some
Speaker 1: wine that didn't want that didn't rhyme at all. Are
Speaker 1: you doing? Are you doing? I'm good, I'm good. What's
Speaker 1: going on? Everybody? You're listening to Waiting on Reparations? The
Speaker 1: show where we talk about hip hop, politics and the
Speaker 1: things in between, ship that connects them, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: You know the whole drill. You know the whole drill.
Speaker 1: So it has been quite a week going. And I
Speaker 1: woke up on I think it was like Saturday or Friday,
Speaker 1: might even been Sunday. But I woke up one of
Speaker 1: these days and I looked on Twitter. The fucking World
Speaker 1: War three was trended. So I was just like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: and what the hell is going on? And it's kind
Speaker 1: of is it the water Wars? I mean, finally fighting
Speaker 1: over you know, basic human rights and resources? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's no, that's not it yet,
Speaker 1: that that's gonna be Damn, that's crazy, that like kind
Speaker 1: of on the brink. But it ain't even about it said,
Speaker 1: it's not even the resource wars yet. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: long story short for Lehman's uh, that's all I am.
Speaker 1: But um, Russia is building up it's true presence with
Speaker 1: over a hundred thousand troops on the border of the Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and it's got a lot of international figures pretty much
Speaker 1: expecting that Russia is going to invade the Ukraine. The
Speaker 1: Ukrainian president recently, just like I think a few hours ago,
Speaker 1: gave a speech to the citizens of the Ukraine just
Speaker 1: kind of trying to calm their fears and let them
Speaker 1: he's he's telling the Ukrainians that the invasion is not imminent,
Speaker 1: so you know, he's doing his due diligence of calming down.
Speaker 1: As here's President Biden um had a press conference recently
Speaker 1: where he was explaining the situation and what he says
Speaker 1: the US stances, and people were saying it was kind
Speaker 1: of a blunder, but I didn't really I didn't really
Speaker 1: see it that way. But pretty much what Biden was
Speaker 1: saying is Look, there's parts of Ukraine that consider themselves
Speaker 1: to be Russian, you know what I mean, and they
Speaker 1: actually want the Russians so department. So you know, he's
Speaker 1: saying if if what Russia does is they go in
Speaker 1: and they like annexed those parts. I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not what the US wants. But what are
Speaker 1: you supposed to do? You're gonna like start, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like that's what he called like a
Speaker 1: minor incursion. When I get, I get, I understand what
Speaker 1: he means in that, I don't understand what is about
Speaker 1: that is like what we it's supposed to be like, no,
Speaker 1: whatever they do, we're going to war? Like is that
Speaker 1: supposed to be so? Like? So, I mean pretty much.
Speaker 1: You know the Hawks are trying to get Biden too,
Speaker 1: you know, go all in with ridiculous sanctions that I
Speaker 1: guess you know, if you read it a certain way,
Speaker 1: would mean war or would baccarush into a corner. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like that's what the White House policy is,
Speaker 1: but either way, it's It's got enough people tweeting about
Speaker 1: World War three and the start of World War three
Speaker 1: that I kind of wanted to know what your thoughts
Speaker 1: were just on that general issue, because we didn't get
Speaker 1: to touch on it last week, but we wanted to.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I'm so caught up trying to
Speaker 1: stay alive in this bitch man, this this is crazy.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into a lot this week. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't actually know. I mean, I guess I was
Speaker 1: vaguely familiar of the fact that there were portions of
Speaker 1: the Ukraine that do consider themselves to be Russian, and
Speaker 1: I think that does raise really interesting implications for what's happening,
Speaker 1: particularly with regards to the US's involvement and really trying
Speaker 1: to protect their interests potentially in the region more so
Speaker 1: than like necessarily m advancing the interests of the people
Speaker 1: who live in those regions of the Ukraine. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: something I think, Well, well, it's kind of a given
Speaker 1: given US foreign policy, but like, I mean, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those situations that I feel is
Speaker 1: like actually quite nuanced, you know what I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what the perception of it is in
Speaker 1: leftist circles, but you know, I know there is a
Speaker 1: school of thought that you know, people kind of have
Speaker 1: like World War two brain where it's just automatically assumed, well,
Speaker 1: if Vladimir Putin takes over these parts of the Ukraine
Speaker 1: or even goes into the parts of Ukraine that definitely
Speaker 1: don't want them in there, that it's a definite sign
Speaker 1: of like expansionists ambitions, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: that if you let him do this, then what's gonna
Speaker 1: stop him? But I don't necessarily know if that's the case,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I mean, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a given. Yeah, I don't think everybody
Speaker 1: is like on a world domination Hitler tip, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: like China and Ukraine and Russia like running war game simulations,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, on some on some real
Speaker 1: like set in the stage ship there is there is
Speaker 1: the big you know, the elephant in the room, which
Speaker 1: is like in the modern world, are two superpowers actually
Speaker 1: gonna go to war over the Ukraine? I personally don't
Speaker 1: see it, you know what I'm saying. I mean, they
Speaker 1: shot my fucking friends Ferdinand. Yeah, but that was back
Speaker 1: in so much. This is so much because I mean, look, man,
Speaker 1: if if if we were. If things improved, I would
Speaker 1: if anything, the military industrial complex has been become far more.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say things have improved, but much more. Or
Speaker 1: is at steak, And that's what a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't consider, Like you know, even eys gonna even in
Speaker 1: fucking drones and kill all their children, like you, first
Speaker 1: of all, this is like, I mean, it's steak for us.
Speaker 1: After all, our troops are safe, God bless you. There's
Speaker 1: eleven year old fire bomb, you know, So first you
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta take it from the standpoint of let's
Speaker 1: say that the nukes are off the table, right, which
Speaker 1: if if two superpowered nuclear powers got into a war,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like mutually assured destruction if we're talking nukes.
Speaker 1: But even if we're not talking nukes, let's say, let's
Speaker 1: just say there's like a general agreement, Hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go in the war and no one's gonna use nukes.
Speaker 1: Are not going to turn this into a cold war situation.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna have a conventional war with each other
Speaker 1: and ship like that. Like that's the end of the
Speaker 1: world too, you know what I mean, Like, and you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't know if you've seen don't look
Speaker 1: up yet. There's been a lot of don't look up discourse. Okay,
Speaker 1: So like it can apply to so many scenarios. So
Speaker 1: you know, motherfucking Lockheed Martin and rape Theon and Haliburton
Speaker 1: are like, you know, like slobbering and chopping up the
Speaker 1: bit like, oh, yeah, we pulled out of Afghanistan. All
Speaker 1: these private contractors and Blackwater motherfucker's are like my stock
Speaker 1: prices are falling, so they're like super stock that we
Speaker 1: might go into another war to just to benefit their
Speaker 1: goddamn bottom line, sacrificing the lives of our you know,
Speaker 1: military service people, um you know how many countless casualties,
Speaker 1: but in the Ukraine and other regions, you know, because
Speaker 1: like oh we can't, you know, we can't. We can't
Speaker 1: avert disaster. We gotta make sure, like our shareholders. If
Speaker 1: this was like the usual type of war scenarios that
Speaker 1: we've been doing for the last thirty years, where it's
Speaker 1: with countries that don't stand a chance of like bringing
Speaker 1: that shipped to our shores, then yeah, like yeah, the
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin guys, yeah, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 1: a war with Russia and like China and ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like people don't. I literally don't think they care. I
Speaker 1: they could. I think they could even be like in
Speaker 1: their private boardroom meeting, uh you know, doing cocaine off
Speaker 1: of a glass table or whatever, like well you know
Speaker 1: there is a chance of mutually a destruction. They were like,
Speaker 1: but I could become a trillionaire. Yeah, but that's that's
Speaker 1: like they don't give a fun. I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: I agree, they don't give a fuck. Like I don't
Speaker 1: know if I don't. I'm not putting the I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that they don't wouldn't want this because they're like
Speaker 1: good guys and they give a fuck. But just like
Speaker 1: that creates a scenario where there's nowhere to spend your money,
Speaker 1: you know what. I'm like, people don't even even world
Speaker 1: left exactly, even if you even if we want to
Speaker 1: bring it home and let's like take the Russia element
Speaker 1: out of this and just like focus on our own
Speaker 1: domestic ship. You know how we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: January six stuff and talk of civil war and civil insurrection.
Speaker 1: Even if America itself were to like experience some like
Speaker 1: like serious extreme widespread political violence that like toward the
Speaker 1: country apart. The world is fun. America provides most of
Speaker 1: the world's food, you know what I mean, like these
Speaker 1: like like like like like the when the superpowers are
Speaker 1: getting into it, I'm gonna need to see your research
Speaker 1: on that. Let's let's look that up. Let's look that up. Bro.
Speaker 1: If like a fucking nuke drops in the middle of Montana,
Speaker 1: they're just gonna use that as an opportunity for disaster capitalism,
Speaker 1: privatize all the services, like leave people to you know,
Speaker 1: just you know, be languishing on rooftops trying to wave
Speaker 1: down helicopters while their skin melts up from radio action,
Speaker 1: radioactivity pulsing through their bloodstreams, and some guy's gonna make
Speaker 1: money off of it, and like, oh, we'll have a
Speaker 1: national day of morning and like you know, there's a
Speaker 1: hashtag will trend and let just leave everyone to die for.
Speaker 1: So the four country the four countries that produce the
Speaker 1: most food are China, India, the US, and Brazil. Bro.
Speaker 1: So yeah, China, India, come on now, I'm come on,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I'm saying, Okay, we're in the top five.
Speaker 1: All right, we in the top five that I will
Speaker 1: concede I mean, I mean, all I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: this this particular situation in the Ukraine. The reason that
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna get hot personally, and like, okay,
Speaker 1: so we're even we're jumping the gun on this, you
Speaker 1: don't even think it's gonna get like that. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna get to I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just stating the reasons why I don't think
Speaker 1: it's gonna get hot, because like if it were to
Speaker 1: get hot between the players that are involved in this,
Speaker 1: it's like game set match, Like everything's done, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like everything's done. Everything that everybody's fighting for,
Speaker 1: everybody's individual issues that everybody's over. That ships out the window.
Speaker 1: But you know what I mean, and I don't and
Speaker 1: that goes for everybody, whether you're on the right side
Speaker 1: of ship or the left side of ship or in between.
Speaker 1: Like everybody's ship is done. The world has like a
Speaker 1: whole new thing to deal with. If that's the case.
Speaker 1: And with that, that's why I don't think the the
Speaker 1: usual powers that be necessarily want that to go down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like that's that's a bit too,
Speaker 1: Cobra commander, like the world will be destroyed. It will
Speaker 1: be that's just imagining. I'm just imagining if like yeah,
Speaker 1: like I was saying, like a new drop in the
Speaker 1: middle of like Sam Sacramento, Like what fucking Jinsaki would say, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, just hit the gym, have a mark, you know,
Speaker 1: place the whortle. It'll be okay, get back to work on.
Speaker 1: What do you say do kickboxing? Kickboxing? Alright, so what
Speaker 1: do you what are we talking about? What I just
Speaker 1: wanted to touch on that. So this so this week,
Speaker 1: my Twitter followers, what we're called that, I made a
Speaker 1: pack to unleash my un sense tweet folder um and
Speaker 1: a cathartic move to sort of process some of what
Speaker 1: has been happening in the local political scene. And so,
Speaker 1: in lieu of trying to adhere to the character limit
Speaker 1: on Twitter to tell you about some of the function
Speaker 1: that's been happening behind the scenes in local politics, I've
Speaker 1: decided to unload a lot of those um fun reminiscences
Speaker 1: on this week's episode of the podcast, and as well
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about what the broader implications are
Speaker 1: for these things in politics generally and what kind of
Speaker 1: the questions it raises that we can consider in a
Speaker 1: variety of context. Okay, yeah, so we're gonna be back
Speaker 1: with that after the jump. Okay, so we are back
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get into this. So Mariah, you know
Speaker 1: we're you're talking about the unset tweets and you know
Speaker 1: that people who've been following you on Twitter, they know
Speaker 1: what's up. So why don't you explain to the listeners
Speaker 1: exactly what the set up for the scenario and what
Speaker 1: we're about to do. Is sure, I'll give a you know,
Speaker 1: a brief introduction into how we even got to where
Speaker 1: we are to today with the current political turmoil around redistricting,
Speaker 1: which you know, let's start nationally and kind of zoom
Speaker 1: in so you know, with the denial census count, it
Speaker 1: then requires us to UM shift around what our districts
Speaker 1: look like at the federal, state, local level UM in
Speaker 1: order to ensure that one vote for one person, you know,
Speaker 1: equal representation, etcetera. So as you under as you imagine
Speaker 1: as a part of UM, you know, the fascist attempts
Speaker 1: at taking over and consolidating their power and government. A
Speaker 1: lot of places that are currently Republican held that are
Speaker 1: trending blue places like Georgia. They're attempting to you know,
Speaker 1: dilute progressive voting power by using gerrymandering to um create
Speaker 1: district maps that ensure them you know, black folks, young
Speaker 1: folks really, you know, high highly compacted urban areas you
Speaker 1: know don't have the same say as folks in rural areas.
Speaker 1: And so you know it comes around every ten years.
Speaker 1: So we ourselves here in Athens have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: recommend a map of the local county commissions districts to
Speaker 1: the Stay House Legislature for approval UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we have some guidelines that we had to adhere to,
Speaker 1: trying to get it within a certain um distribution so
Speaker 1: that you know, no district has too many more, too
Speaker 1: too many less voters in another district to ensure that
Speaker 1: you know, one person, one vote, principal um. You know,
Speaker 1: basic fairness. You know, no UM, no cracking or packing
Speaker 1: of um of communities of color, So you can't like
Speaker 1: split the community of color in half in order to
Speaker 1: divalute their vote, or pack communities of color together to
Speaker 1: ensure that they don't influence surrounding districts and then risk
Speaker 1: getting representation that is fair for them, um you know,
Speaker 1: passed with a subsequent election. So make sure you know,
Speaker 1: communities of interests and communities of color are kept together
Speaker 1: as well. Another basic guiding principle is that you don't
Speaker 1: you know, you don't. You want to have minimal disruption
Speaker 1: to sitting in company. So the folks that were Democratic
Speaker 1: elected in the last voting cycle kind of wanna leave
Speaker 1: them alone, leave them in their districts, kind of build
Speaker 1: it around, right. So we worked with our local Board
Speaker 1: of Elections office to create maps that did all of
Speaker 1: these things, and they did. They did an excellent job
Speaker 1: on a very tight timeline. A part of the Republican
Speaker 1: strategy in order to send everything into chaos was releasing
Speaker 1: our census data like five months late, so that we
Speaker 1: didn't even have the numbers on how the population had
Speaker 1: changed to make maps until like two or three months
Speaker 1: before we had to get it to the state House legislature.
Speaker 1: So on a very tight turnaround, our Board of Elections
Speaker 1: office and our mapping staff you know, came together with
Speaker 1: the maps. But they were great, and they were pretty good.
Speaker 1: You know, like, hey, they ain't you know, shipsh it
Speaker 1: around too much. Got that distribution protected those communities like
Speaker 1: they were supposed to according to principles, but in order
Speaker 1: for it to be considered by the Republican state legislature,
Speaker 1: it had to have the unanimous consent, the unanimous approval
Speaker 1: of the local county commission. Right. So a couple of
Speaker 1: like sleeper self Republicans on the commission, Democrats formerly including
Speaker 1: the former interim executive director of the Georgia Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: just like wordlessly or with very little cover, just voted
Speaker 1: against the map, effectively showing that they're in full collusion
Speaker 1: with you know, Republicans. These new districts of the Republicans
Speaker 1: had drawn consolidate their power such that getting them out
Speaker 1: of office would be incredibly difficult. Um. And so they
Speaker 1: sitting back, sitting pretty feeling good about the fact that
Speaker 1: the progressives who have come in and you served, their
Speaker 1: power are going to be out soon, and that they
Speaker 1: themselves have protected from you know, the will of the
Speaker 1: people out seeing them for naturally representing or trying to
Speaker 1: fight for what the people need. So that's where we're
Speaker 1: at right now. It's um, it's been it's been a lot,
Speaker 1: been a lot down here, a lot of turmoil, and
Speaker 1: so that caused me to then revisit my unsent weep
Speaker 1: folder on Twitter and pick out some of the spicy
Speaker 1: stories that I wanted so much to tell people about,
Speaker 1: but I've kept to myself in the name of you know,
Speaker 1: getting along and you know, seeing Kumbaya, etcetera. But you know,
Speaker 1: I got nothing for smoke with these people now, so
Speaker 1: I'm excited to reveal to the world some of the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes stuff that um I have zipped my
Speaker 1: lips about over the years. And once started with one
Speaker 1: of my favorite stories of Alison right um so back
Speaker 1: might have even been Honestly, some of her only black
Speaker 1: constituents came to me for help getting their street name
Speaker 1: changed after Ariel thump Acalaway, young woman think four years
Speaker 1: old when she was shot and killed, also eight months
Speaker 1: pregnant back in the summer of two thousand nineteen. So
Speaker 1: they wanted to change the street to thumb Ab in
Speaker 1: honor of her. Um So I helped out, you know,
Speaker 1: like help me get the process started with the petition
Speaker 1: and working with the planning department, et cetera. And when
Speaker 1: Alison found out, she was super pissed because once again
Speaker 1: I usurped her authority and Um straight up asked. He.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, why do you think your black
Speaker 1: instituents are coming to me and not you, which did
Speaker 1: not make her any happier. But it makes sense to
Speaker 1: me now because as a part of that process, she
Speaker 1: at some point along the way decided that dumb app
Speaker 1: was not an appropriate name to change the street too,
Speaker 1: and so she made an alternate suggestion against the wishes
Speaker 1: of the deceased woman's mother, who like, literally I was
Speaker 1: out of it. I saw her. She like grabbed me
Speaker 1: by the shirt and was like, you gotta make a
Speaker 1: thumb app right, We gotta make that happen, despite the
Speaker 1: fact Alison was trying to push this ship through against
Speaker 1: her wishes and Um at the one point I was
Speaker 1: out to, you know, dinner drinks with one of the
Speaker 1: organizers evolved and he said to me, Allison would probably
Speaker 1: like something have better if it had hard arm and Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the new district takes all those black people out of
Speaker 1: her district. It's now something white, which I'm sure she
Speaker 1: is incredibly glad about. And this lady like Jesus so
Speaker 1: like she she. Um was really pissed also late late
Speaker 1: last year about the fact that the commissioners had requested,
Speaker 1: um a raise for ourselves. Could we only make like
Speaker 1: fifteen grand a year? I end up spending like thirty
Speaker 1: forty hours a week on this. Um, I've just been
Speaker 1: incredibly broke um since I left my job at the
Speaker 1: University Georgia. So like, whatever, you know, just bring it
Speaker 1: up to a living wage. We gave everybody else a
Speaker 1: living wage, only people in the government not making living wage.
Speaker 1: Let's just bring it up to something fair, right. So
Speaker 1: she was upset about this because she's rich and doesn't care,
Speaker 1: and so she went to like a bridebart adjacent like
Speaker 1: state newspaper and was complaining to them like, wham a landlord,
Speaker 1: my job so hard, I exploit unners for passive income. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so busy being a mother, Like her son isn't
Speaker 1: a whole ass adult. And she even told us that
Speaker 1: he was downtown on May thirty one when the cops
Speaker 1: tear gas the folks peacefully occupying College Square. So her
Speaker 1: being somewhat of a raggedy back the blue as person, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much about time they really spend together. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, not great, not a great person in general.
Speaker 1: And then we got my campy who people don't know
Speaker 1: this about a year and a half ago killed our
Speaker 1: attempts to buy an apartment building for the homeless behind
Speaker 1: closed doors, UM just complaining about how expensive it was
Speaker 1: gonna be, and then the following summer last summer just
Speaker 1: walked out of discussions about homelessness out of retreat, didn't
Speaker 1: even bother to you know, sit there and listen to
Speaker 1: staff discuss our options for what we can do to
Speaker 1: deal with the fact that like two hundred people in
Speaker 1: the city are sleeping outside, not to mention the easily
Speaker 1: thousands that are sleeping on couches like hotels. We've been
Speaker 1: in the cars that like, you know, they're not unsheltered entirely,
Speaker 1: but they still don't have a house place to live. So,
Speaker 1: you know, last year, my colleague and I, Jessie who
Speaker 1: put together this resolution calling for all sorts of UM
Speaker 1: interventions to help people get and stay housed, including the
Speaker 1: creation of UM sanction homeless encampment. First step, that's got
Speaker 1: a bunch of wrapping around services, got like you know,
Speaker 1: medical folks and social worker folks, etcetera that come there
Speaker 1: and help people and they'll give you a tent. There's
Speaker 1: like you know, a little warming things and all that.
Speaker 1: Um So, even after killing our attempt to get a hotel,
Speaker 1: not participating in discussions about homelessness at our treats, not
Speaker 1: showing up to the retreats at all, or most of
Speaker 1: the meetings. Frankly, one time Allison and him got caught
Speaker 1: coming out of mellow mushroom as the rest of us
Speaker 1: left City Hall after a meeting. So after just all
Speaker 1: that negligence and abandonment of you know, dereliction of duty
Speaker 1: when it came to the meeting we're supposed to approve
Speaker 1: the encampment, he wanted to buy hotel rooms for the
Speaker 1: homeless instead just completely made it up on the spot
Speaker 1: in bad faith, which would have been more expensive and
Speaker 1: temporary compared to just getting the building in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty. Bro. So, I mean his opposition to
Speaker 1: building the encampment with bullshit like what else were we
Speaker 1: supposed to do? Like you know this? And I think, okay,
Speaker 1: all of this speaks to a couple of things. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get back to the idea of us housing his
Speaker 1: healthcare in a little bit, but I first want to
Speaker 1: start off by identifying that Mike Hammy was the former
Speaker 1: interim executive director of the DEMS, voted against the map,
Speaker 1: and because he has lost prominence, he is no longer
Speaker 1: considered a progressive on the commission because new ideas of
Speaker 1: what progressive and what left means haven't merged in his
Speaker 1: twelve years in office, where he is mermaid's stagnant, and
Speaker 1: he just really is in this job because he wants
Speaker 1: people to listen to him and feel important and feel powerful,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't right now, and so he's fought against
Speaker 1: everything that we've tried to do, including getting homeless people
Speaker 1: some former shelter and including maps that would honor the
Speaker 1: will of the voters and allowing our current democratically elected
Speaker 1: representatives to give a you know, give a shot of
Speaker 1: remaining in office. And I think it's also mirrors national
Speaker 1: trends and that it's coming back to housing. Mike Allison
Speaker 1: and Vida Thornton, who I have not had smoke for
Speaker 1: yet in this conversation, but I'm about to come for,
Speaker 1: also delayed our eviction defense program that you know, Tim
Speaker 1: Denson and myself and Jessie Pool have been working on
Speaker 1: since like the like December of UM just like for
Speaker 1: months and months and months and just creating reasons not
Speaker 1: to do it, and so finally we get passage for
Speaker 1: approval of it. Um. And this whole time, like constituents
Speaker 1: of minor getting evicted straight up getting put out on
Speaker 1: the street in the rain, don't even have enough money
Speaker 1: for you haul to get their stuff moved anywhere. UM.
Speaker 1: And one such woman, UM was like in her seventies,
Speaker 1: she got evicted of her home, from her home of
Speaker 1: forty years. In late November, Um was found sleeping on
Speaker 1: her former porch by some of her neighbors, who also
Speaker 1: told me that she was still collecting Social Security checks,
Speaker 1: but without a place to live, she'd just been drinking
Speaker 1: her all of the money away. Such was her abject suffering.
Speaker 1: And then in early December, after having you know, reached
Speaker 1: out today but as asking people to look for reached
Speaker 1: out to homeless service providers asking her to you know,
Speaker 1: asking um if they had seen her turn out finally
Speaker 1: home one of the one of my homies that works
Speaker 1: with a homeless out of that she died. She had
Speaker 1: been found dead. And so it's not just like a
Speaker 1: petty oh I don't like this person, I don't like
Speaker 1: that person. So that you know, I'm influencing these decisions
Speaker 1: that ultimately don't matter. Take it around the edges, like
Speaker 1: literally their obstruction as caused people to die. I think
Speaker 1: also off you know, I talked a lot about this
Speaker 1: program called Cure Violence on the show, which I've been
Speaker 1: you know, researching and reaching out of stakeholders about and
Speaker 1: sending emails about for months, and like, I don't, I don't, like,
Speaker 1: kids are out here dying, and no one, like no
Speaker 1: one will even respond to my emails about it. Like, um,
Speaker 1: I got a HOMEI that was working with last summer,
Speaker 1: you know, kitting kids jobs at this little car wash
Speaker 1: so they have like something productive to do that it's
Speaker 1: not running the streets. And he told me last weekend
Speaker 1: the two of the kids that we've been working with,
Speaker 1: one of them have been shot and killed. The other
Speaker 1: one was in jail. And so the impacts of this
Speaker 1: are very, very real. And I don't think that folks
Speaker 1: who you know, are wealthy, you know, who like are older,
Speaker 1: who are whiter, who don't really have to like live
Speaker 1: this pain, in this trauma of seeing what's happening to
Speaker 1: people out here, don't realize how they're this shittiness just
Speaker 1: being like just being sticks in the mud is killing
Speaker 1: a people. But um, I also want to come back
Speaker 1: to a recurrent theme and some of the stories here.
Speaker 1: We talked about a big sham, and we talked about
Speaker 1: chronic calmlessness, and an idea that has become mainstreamed in
Speaker 1: the pandemic is how housing is healthcare or else get back.
Speaker 1: I thought that heart was good. I want to also
Speaker 1: come back to Wi Bea Thornton for a second. Chris Um,
Speaker 1: my friend I Ramy State from Pong Bought brought up
Speaker 1: into thousand eighteen when she was first running for office,
Speaker 1: how we understood how people could like her and support her.
Speaker 1: But she's really good at evading accountability. And I think
Speaker 1: that is incredibly true of the ways that she has
Speaker 1: sud lee, slowed down, interrupted, or just otherwise it on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of a lot of what we've tried
Speaker 1: to get done. She'll do things like motion to approve
Speaker 1: something and then vote against it um or say hey, I, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vote for this, but I don't really like it,
Speaker 1: or um you know, I like, I respect what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do, and then voting like vote against it,
Speaker 1: like just utter chaos. But in a way such that
Speaker 1: it's hard to pin down why she is terrible. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, as I said before, I
Speaker 1: think so. I think that she's one of those I
Speaker 1: think that she's one of those folks that like materially
Speaker 1: shows up for people. She's the one that will bring
Speaker 1: your kids Easter baskets or pop open the trunk of
Speaker 1: her car and give you cold cold weather clothes in
Speaker 1: the winter. But like she has no like cohesive vision
Speaker 1: or idea or like interest in advancing concrete proposals her
Speaker 1: how to address the very serious suffering in our communities.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason why I think this is
Speaker 1: true and honest, honestly kind of empathize with her, even
Speaker 1: though I like, deeply, deeply dislike and distrust her and
Speaker 1: always have UM, is that she's met so before that
Speaker 1: she was on the school board for sixteen years, right,
Speaker 1: and has probably her whole life had to like fight um,
Speaker 1: white people about getting things for our communities in the
Speaker 1: halls of power, and which she has sat, where she
Speaker 1: has oftentimes been without allies, UM, let alone people other
Speaker 1: people of color. And so even in instances where she
Speaker 1: has allies, the most progressive supported her in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen. And even when she had these allies, she
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to do anything but fight. She doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to do anything but complain. She doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: know anything but how to obstruct UM. And so she
Speaker 1: doesn't realize that she is getting in the way of
Speaker 1: the things that she wants. I believe that she wants
Speaker 1: people to stay house. I believe that she wants criminal
Speaker 1: justice perform. And as far as you know, those things
Speaker 1: are auxiliary to her importance, her sense of self importance
Speaker 1: and like importance to her to keep power and feel
Speaker 1: powerful and feel important like all of these guys I'm
Speaker 1: talking about UM. And so I find that very interesting
Speaker 1: and very sad. UM. But you know, for example of
Speaker 1: like her just not having a coherent politics at all,
Speaker 1: you know, jump back in my mind two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: when we were trying to pass them in town resolution,
Speaker 1: which I've spoken of often UM on this Okay, let
Speaker 1: me actually let me go back. So I think that
Speaker 1: it's an underappreciated thing, the way that trauma influences UM,
Speaker 1: the ways that the black miss leadership class UM gets
Speaker 1: in the way of our own agenda. UM, and that
Speaker 1: like when you get beat up and beat down and
Speaker 1: shoot on for so long it's really hard to like
Speaker 1: advance like a Coe so vision of how to improve
Speaker 1: things when you all you know how to do is
Speaker 1: how to fight. And as well, we got a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, black leaders of the community that are
Speaker 1: stroyed up Republicans that the Republicans have always been in
Speaker 1: power in this state and have cash in on our
Speaker 1: community's poverty in order to secure their seats in the
Speaker 1: political hierarchy. Um. And so you've got those people out
Speaker 1: here who are middle class, completely detached from like the
Speaker 1: root causes of issues in our communities. Um, talking about
Speaker 1: like how financial literacy is gonna save the people. It's like,
Speaker 1: you can't budget if you ain't got no budget money,
Speaker 1: you ain't got money to budgets or excuse me. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you have people like a Vita who just
Speaker 1: like I've never had a plan, Who've never ever had
Speaker 1: a plan for how to fix things, but will show
Speaker 1: up at your church and like bring all the kids
Speaker 1: candy and so like people trust her, people like her, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And as well, I think her Raelian against the government
Speaker 1: in an interesting way, UM also increases their popularity among
Speaker 1: people who do not trust the government. It so saying like, well,
Speaker 1: y'all are standing it my way, and I don't only
Speaker 1: like what you're trying to do, and y'all don't do this,
Speaker 1: and y'all don't do that, even though y'all concludes you ma'am, Um,
Speaker 1: you could advance piece of policy, not anymore because nobody
Speaker 1: trusts you and nobody likes you because you've blown it utterly.
Speaker 1: But um, rather than do that, she fights against us
Speaker 1: as a way to like consolidate her power in in
Speaker 1: communities where there is deep distrust of the government. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we've got all these issues out here, um,
Speaker 1: and no real vision for how to fix things or
Speaker 1: change things. Um. For example, Um, people don't know this.
Speaker 1: But when we were fighting for the Lindontown Resolution to
Speaker 1: you know, get redress and recognition of the harms of
Speaker 1: the displacement of black communities, specifically the Lindtown community in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, in a close warm meeting with staff
Speaker 1: and activists about trying to pass this resolution, Peta Thornton
Speaker 1: said that she would never sign on to a document
Speaker 1: condemning white supremacy. Now, I I've heard from people since
Speaker 1: then who just think that she didn't know what supremacy meant. UM.
Speaker 1: But this is, this is what I'm talking about. When
Speaker 1: pressed by the people to take action, she just gets
Speaker 1: incredibly defensive and shuts down rather than like engage in
Speaker 1: good faith with with what people are trying to say. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me jump let me jump back actually and talk
Speaker 1: about my candy. So I think the situation I can
Speaker 1: be UM has national parallels in that age is just
Speaker 1: a moderating force. I feel um he was one of
Speaker 1: the left most folks on the Commission early in his tenure,
Speaker 1: and now he's become a moderate qua conservative UM. And
Speaker 1: so you see the way. Similarly, what happened in Nevada
Speaker 1: with the State Democratic Party when UM Democratic Socialists won
Speaker 1: elections and took over leadershi ship of the party, the
Speaker 1: exist you know, the existing um UM folks in power
Speaker 1: just all Quinn transferred all their money out of the
Speaker 1: account because even Democrats don't like having their power challenged.
Speaker 1: It's two thousand twenty two. In like another ten years,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be the majority of this bitch. Like I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you just gotta get with the fucking program. Like we
Speaker 1: out here, we we you represent these people don't be
Speaker 1: out here telling a woman whose daughter died, like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's like, you know appropriate, shut
Speaker 1: the funk up and been to the will of people.
Speaker 1: That's our job. But yeah, I mean it's really interesting because, um,
Speaker 1: so we tried to pass like raises for ourselves this
Speaker 1: year and not ourselves in the sense of like me directly,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't kick in until next year. But we make
Speaker 1: like fifteen thou dollars years. This is a part time job,
Speaker 1: even though we manage a budget of hundreds of millions,
Speaker 1: tens of their yeah, tens of thousand of people. I
Speaker 1: put you know, like I put in like thirty hours
Speaker 1: a week every week because like fucking care. But then Alison, right,
Speaker 1: my candy, Um, we're like, I don't know they went
Speaker 1: to this right part adjacent local outlet to like decry
Speaker 1: are like wanting to get racist for ourselves, And in
Speaker 1: this article she was like, I'm a landlord and I'm
Speaker 1: a mother. You know, I have more important things that
Speaker 1: I have to do, and so I don't put a
Speaker 1: lot of time into this job. So like, I don't
Speaker 1: see why other people have to. So a couple of points, bro,
Speaker 1: like that that is not that is a reason. That
Speaker 1: is effectively what she said. Yeah, she's a landlord and
Speaker 1: a mother, so like and you know, I couldn't have
Speaker 1: possibly imagined, you know why I'm not parents or anything
Speaker 1: and not finding a way to like put in the
Speaker 1: work that people deserve. All right, Yeah, like what do
Speaker 1: you think you don't think the people deserve the most
Speaker 1: energy that you could put into making this making nobody
Speaker 1: made you run. Nobody made you run. Nobody, you know,
Speaker 1: helping me held a gun to your hand, made you
Speaker 1: run a ship. But like she's all be like wham
Speaker 1: a lay in lam a job so hard, like sploit
Speaker 1: renters for passive income when I'm so busy being a mother.
Speaker 1: Your son is a whole ass adult. He's like years old,
Speaker 1: so people don't know that. Who is so Mike Canby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's been a commissioner for like twelve years, former
Speaker 1: interim executive director for the Georgia Democratic Party. He owns
Speaker 1: like a cleaning business. Like you know, he's like a
Speaker 1: very I mean, I would describe him as like a
Speaker 1: pretty bland white dude. He has somewhat of some charisma,
Speaker 1: but you also sort of like a bull in a
Speaker 1: China shop, just getting real aggaro if you don't like,
Speaker 1: you know, like care for his pets like low key.
Speaker 1: But what people don't know is that so Mike Hamby,
Speaker 1: So we attempted like a year and a half ago
Speaker 1: to buy an apartment building for the homeless, so like
Speaker 1: have a place where they can all have their own
Speaker 1: apartment UM and have like wrap around services so like
Speaker 1: mental health folks and folks help them with job applications
Speaker 1: and all that ship. It would all be combined in
Speaker 1: one place to help get people up street UM, and
Speaker 1: my can be killed. Our attempts to buy that building
Speaker 1: UM in behind closed doors came up with some excuse
Speaker 1: about what I was too expensive or like something like that.
Speaker 1: And then you later, like the last summer walked out
Speaker 1: of our discussion about homelessness out of retreat. He didn't
Speaker 1: even bother to hear from staffs about our options for
Speaker 1: like dealing with with you know what, like how do
Speaker 1: how do we address the situation homelessness summer community in
Speaker 1: our community? And then this motherfucker like so we were
Speaker 1: like what do we do what? Like we got people
Speaker 1: living outdoors, we got people overdosing and killing themselves throwing
Speaker 1: themselves in the river. We got sexual assaults happening, and
Speaker 1: robberies and all this stuff. Like these people need supports
Speaker 1: because they're suffering like incredible, incredible, just levels of desperation
Speaker 1: out here. So myself and my colleague Jesse Whol trying
Speaker 1: to put together this resolution to lay out what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do, and it included creating an encampment. I think
Speaker 1: I'll talk about the still on the show before where
Speaker 1: people could like have their we provide them with tents,
Speaker 1: give him a warming center, you know, give him a
Speaker 1: place to cook, give him WiFi in places to charge
Speaker 1: their phones, and then have the service providers come there
Speaker 1: to help like support them and the you know the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Make sure they get job up TRANSI
Speaker 1: transition out of it. Yeah, as an interim stat because
Speaker 1: our attempts to buy a place that we could like
Speaker 1: help them live in, like a physical home building like
Speaker 1: got shot down. So this sniveling little bitch came into
Speaker 1: the like you opposed it the whole time. Opposed it.
Speaker 1: Opposed it a post and a post it would prefer
Speaker 1: for the homeless people to keep you know, shooting up
Speaker 1: and dying and jumping in the river to kill themselves,
Speaker 1: I guess. And at that meeting where we voted to
Speaker 1: finally approve this ship, he tried to make like a
Speaker 1: substitute of medment, asked thing too um like put him
Speaker 1: in hotels or something like where It's like, you ain't
Speaker 1: never cared about this, you ain't never once actually engaged
Speaker 1: in good faith around these issues. I don't see you
Speaker 1: out here talking to people like maybe I go above
Speaker 1: and beyond and I do. I'm not trying to say
Speaker 1: that you know he should because do you do you
Speaker 1: think do you think it? Do you think there's like
Speaker 1: a chance that could make him have a change of
Speaker 1: heart if he saw it firsthand? Or no, he's called
Speaker 1: hiss called desires nah nah nah. I'm I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't want to say I'm shocked, but
Speaker 1: it's like the biggest sense that I'm getting is how
Speaker 1: And maybe it's because you know, like you're you're my homie,
Speaker 1: and I've known you so long and I've lived with
Speaker 1: you and seen like how much work that you put
Speaker 1: into the ship and how much you care. It's just
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like I'm taking it back, you know,
Speaker 1: by the lack of urgency that it seems that these
Speaker 1: motherfuckers have, you know what I mean, even when you
Speaker 1: try to deal with things urgently in this ship. This
Speaker 1: is the other thing that maybe has brought her implications
Speaker 1: for government in our expectations, etcetera. And the need for urgency,
Speaker 1: the need for people to apply constant pressure, because even
Speaker 1: when you are going full fire and all cylinders trying
Speaker 1: to push it through, it's gonna take a year minimum
Speaker 1: to get something done to every people have been out here, yeah,
Speaker 1: suffering for like a year since we first started our
Speaker 1: discussions about creating this encampment, and like we're still trying
Speaker 1: to make it happen still. It's like so it's like
Speaker 1: every day that passes that y'all aren't doing something on
Speaker 1: y'all's end, it's just extending the time that when you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sustending the time that it's gonna take
Speaker 1: for ship to eventually get done. When stuff don't you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, people do start moving on it, right,
Speaker 1: And if that's what happens with stuff that we're regarding
Speaker 1: incredibly urgently, like say goodbye to your hopes. So ship
Speaker 1: that like nobody is building a movement around or applying
Speaker 1: political pressure for you know, we saw that. I mean, like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's move a little bit faster than some things that
Speaker 1: I've described here in the local government. But think about
Speaker 1: the COVID tests. People had to bully the ship out
Speaker 1: of Jen Psaki and President Biden and ordered for them
Speaker 1: to even take seriously that they should send test to
Speaker 1: people in their homes. And even with that relentless heckling,
Speaker 1: they only said they're only sending like forward tests to everybody,
Speaker 1: did they you know, took a while for them to
Speaker 1: roll out. People in dorms, apartment buildings, other sorts of
Speaker 1: like shared housing aren't able to get them because of
Speaker 1: the way the system is set up. So like even
Speaker 1: when you pound the door screaming at the top of
Speaker 1: your lungs to do something, you end up getting a
Speaker 1: half ass response. You end up it's delayed response. Like
Speaker 1: and so I just I really grapple a lot with
Speaker 1: like the the lumbering nature of governments. Because they are
Speaker 1: such large institutions, there's always institutional inertia where they're so
Speaker 1: used to doing things the same way that shifting course
Speaker 1: is so difficult for them, um not to mention like
Speaker 1: entrenched political power where it's really hard to like cry
Speaker 1: out that people who have always been making these decisions
Speaker 1: and never taking seriously the needs of the people, and
Speaker 1: so like, you know, I want to give people hope.
Speaker 1: I want to give people hope. I do believe that
Speaker 1: we've got done good things through government, but I'm losing
Speaker 1: faith sometimes when I see ship like this bad actors
Speaker 1: who like just refused to take seriously the urgency of
Speaker 1: the concerns of people in the community, and then just
Speaker 1: like the grimingly slow, sand filled gears that churn and
Speaker 1: churn like snails pace to address these like incredibly urgent
Speaker 1: issues that we other than other than they're just being
Speaker 1: like a fucking rennists and ship of progressive or even
Speaker 1: just like passionate people, you know what I mean, just
Speaker 1: completely taking over the ship. What are some things that
Speaker 1: that people can do in their local governments or you know,
Speaker 1: or even in in in more national government, but just like, what,
Speaker 1: what are some things that people can do to maybe
Speaker 1: spurn along some of these gears and get them moving faster?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it really just applying pressure with things
Speaker 1: like calling before Yes, it's absolutely so. Before Progressive took
Speaker 1: power here, there was a very strong, mobilized United Left
Speaker 1: movement to push for things like in a non discrimination ordinance,
Speaker 1: to push just push for a variety of things and
Speaker 1: apply such pressure that folks couldn't ignore it. They had
Speaker 1: to they had to address it. They couldn't turn away,
Speaker 1: they couldn't you know, put on their earbuds or whatever
Speaker 1: and listen to some you know, donkey brain but um.
Speaker 1: And so we've us that. And now that progressives have
Speaker 1: taken power, people like, hey, y'all got it from here,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, we don't got it. We need
Speaker 1: you all to show up and continue to put pressure
Speaker 1: on folks because there's so many plates spinning that sometimes
Speaker 1: people just forget what's important. Sometimes people just lose sight
Speaker 1: of like the suffering that people are living through. And
Speaker 1: so I mean, ultimately that's what's needed. That's always been
Speaker 1: what's needed. Anything astounding that we have accomplished, we have
Speaker 1: only accomplished with intense community pressure to get done. And
Speaker 1: so I've been really reflecting a lot on the need
Speaker 1: for us to not only like mobilize people like existing
Speaker 1: political actors in the community, but like lift up folks
Speaker 1: that are really suffering directly from the housing crisis, from
Speaker 1: the gun violence epidemic, um from underemployment and like wage
Speaker 1: exploitation to be like, Yo, let's go hop in the car,
Speaker 1: like Yo, we'll snag some zack s fees on the way.
Speaker 1: Come to the commission meeting and tell them yourself what
Speaker 1: the fuss is going on out here? Because like people
Speaker 1: like they just don't even know how to engage and
Speaker 1: nor why why would they believe in it if no
Speaker 1: one has ever supported them in doing so and they
Speaker 1: have never seen government, They've never seen Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: what has gotten back to me with the whole voting
Speaker 1: rights thing, is that like for somebody who has never
Speaker 1: voted anyway, because Republican presidents, democratic presidence, they've always been poor,
Speaker 1: they have always been in and out of jail, they
Speaker 1: have always been losing loved ones to gone violence. They
Speaker 1: have they're hungry day after day, like without actual material
Speaker 1: investment and like the people's needs. I don't, I genuinely
Speaker 1: don't think that voting rights, the passage of like photographs,
Speaker 1: other's legislation, it's gonna matter enough to like really really
Speaker 1: boost turned out to a degree where like the will
Speaker 1: of the people is truly represented, like in Biden canceled
Speaker 1: student debt, or if he just like with the stroke
Speaker 1: of a pen, like expunged marijuana. I guess he can't
Speaker 1: do that with strongly pen, but he can reschedule marijuana
Speaker 1: from a class A you know, prohibitive sus sence stroke
Speaker 1: of a pen. You know it's directly after the d
Speaker 1: a boom um, and you know, work to exponde people's
Speaker 1: records something that they can feel, people would believe and
Speaker 1: people would engage, but instead like so um, just moving
Speaker 1: along a little bit. So I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about, you know, the entrenched like black I guess
Speaker 1: ruling class or black political class. So let's how much
Speaker 1: support do how much support or lack thereof do you
Speaker 1: get from them on the things that you work on,
Speaker 1: and then how does that extend a lot of these
Speaker 1: A lot of these black leaders in the community are
Speaker 1: Republicans or like crypto Republicans collude with them a ton, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: because they have cash in on the community's poverty in
Speaker 1: exchange for their place in the political hierarchy for decades.
Speaker 1: Like they're comfortable, they're middle class, they're good they're separated
Speaker 1: from the experience of like the truly down in the
Speaker 1: dirt people that they claim to one help, and so
Speaker 1: like they don't Yeah, they don't trust me because I'm
Speaker 1: out here talking about the radical ship like setting people free,
Speaker 1: like for real, not just performed, not just equity, not progress,
Speaker 1: but like liberating people and bringing forward ideas that are
Speaker 1: kind of scary and also usurping their authority because like
Speaker 1: I ain't come and ask for their permission. I ain't
Speaker 1: come and like you know, bend the knee and kiss
Speaker 1: the ring about that ship, you find that that's like
Speaker 1: something that they expect that they want, is the bending
Speaker 1: of the absolutely hey, your dues, and it's like ship
Speaker 1: like nah. So and this gets back to what I
Speaker 1: was just saying about showing up for people materially. So
Speaker 1: folks like the person I am about to talk about
Speaker 1: next via Thornton, is this bitch who will like bring
Speaker 1: you Eastern baskets like for your kids and like you know,
Speaker 1: you pull up pop the trunk and like make sure
Speaker 1: your kids have sweaters and ship like that, like showing
Speaker 1: up for people materially in such a way that like
Speaker 1: she has a lot of trust in the community, people
Speaker 1: like you know, really think that she's somebody that you know,
Speaker 1: she's a fighter, someone you can believe in because, like
Speaker 1: you know, you will materially show up for you, but
Speaker 1: not in systemic ways. She has no coherent like agenda
Speaker 1: for how to fix any of the problems that she
Speaker 1: like she has seen she is seeing, you know, is
Speaker 1: more like putting band aids um things. And also something
Speaker 1: I've realized about Elvita Thornton recently is that she was
Speaker 1: on school board for sixteen years before she became a commissioner,
Speaker 1: and so as like a black face in a high
Speaker 1: in a high place, she has probably always been in
Speaker 1: rooms that are majority white people and has had and
Speaker 1: has legitimately had to rail against um like the function
Speaker 1: that like the white you know, white supremacist power structure
Speaker 1: has dealts the blows they have dealt on the community.
Speaker 1: But this has then given rise to like a fucking
Speaker 1: neurosis of hers where even when she is allied with folks,
Speaker 1: because a bunch of progressives supported her when she ran
Speaker 1: like pretty much like all my homies like thought she
Speaker 1: was the ship. So yeah, a lot of people supported her,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of white progressives in this town
Speaker 1: supported her in two thousand eighteen. This is gonna be
Speaker 1: hard for people to hear, but um, because of like
Speaker 1: white progressives, like white guilt about not actually knowing any
Speaker 1: Black people and having no means by which to like
Speaker 1: put roots down in the black community and actually get
Speaker 1: to know people. Um. Like Vida Thornton came on the
Speaker 1: scene and everybody supported her because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: see him racist, even though it was abundantly claire that
Speaker 1: she didn't have a coherent agenda, even though she did
Speaker 1: things like get so drunk at Assets and Harmony, which
Speaker 1: was like a music event that all the candidates were at,
Speaker 1: you know, she had to be carried out and loaded
Speaker 1: into a car. She couldn't walk. Um. And so I mean,
Speaker 1: like these people, these people who were just like, oh,
Speaker 1: black face in a high place, let's get behind them
Speaker 1: so that we don't see him racist because we're so
Speaker 1: scared and feel so guilty about white supremacy. Like you
Speaker 1: have to get out into the community and actually get
Speaker 1: to know black people, um, in order to like like
Speaker 1: develop uh cohesive like political analysis of what's going on
Speaker 1: and really understand what the needs are and also help
Speaker 1: elevate leadership that will do the same. Um, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what it's like for white people. Actually I can,
Speaker 1: and I don't have any like empathy for the fact
Speaker 1: that I mean, I've had to begin rooms where nobody
Speaker 1: looked like me my entire fucking life. So if you're
Speaker 1: white and like you're nervous about going out on the
Speaker 1: block and like dapping people up and giving out waters
Speaker 1: or showing up at the food distro or going to
Speaker 1: the churches, like fucking get it together, I'm sorry, go
Speaker 1: to these places and get to know these people. Um,
Speaker 1: because you know folks who say, like, oh, well, we
Speaker 1: have to support her, She's the only one. It's like, Well,
Speaker 1: if you collaborate with communities to uplift leadership, like the
Speaker 1: Black the Ascendant Black Miss Leadership class won't be the
Speaker 1: only option on the table. We could have a diversity
Speaker 1: of political thought represented in the kinds of leaders and
Speaker 1: the kinds of candidates that we have to choose from.
Speaker 1: But because white progressives, I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons why not. But my smoke for the folks
Speaker 1: that supported her in two thousand and eighteen, even though
Speaker 1: I tried to warn people that she was shipped. I
Speaker 1: saw through her the entire time. UM. The thing that
Speaker 1: they need to understand as well, if that do a
Speaker 1: little bit smoke for them, is that like you can't
Speaker 1: be scared. You gotta get out there and talk to people.
Speaker 1: You gotta get out there and talk to people. I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's all I really got. I don't know
Speaker 1: I got more ship. A lot of it was decontextualized
Speaker 1: when I went back to my draftweets, where I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just like this could be this could have been
Speaker 1: about anything, just like bishing about how much these people stuck.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to bring up some concrete examples of
Speaker 1: like the dirt they have done our community they're continuing
Speaker 1: to do through colluding with um the Republicans. On January six,
Speaker 1: they literally drop those maps in January like on some
Speaker 1: anniversary ship Like, I mean, the thing is coincidence. They
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing. What they literally for one
Speaker 1: of the progressives they tried to oust, they literally drew
Speaker 1: the border of his map to look like a dick,
Speaker 1: to like poke into his poke into it like a
Speaker 1: like another district, as like like a literal fuck you,
Speaker 1: like we are fucking you here's the dick. Yeah, see this,
Speaker 1: this is again. They know that they're playing three dimensional
Speaker 1: chess man four dimensional seven. I don't know, man, They're
Speaker 1: playing like they're trying to win, Like they don't give
Speaker 1: a funk what the other side is gonna say. It's
Speaker 1: that's twis really important to me. That's why I was
Speaker 1: really important me to come like forward about a bunch
Speaker 1: of the ship because like, I'm tired of like y'all
Speaker 1: didn't realize I was playing nice before, I was playing
Speaker 1: nice before. Those days are over. I ain't got nothing
Speaker 1: but smoke for you. Like alright, So to close it off,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do something a little bit different on this episode.
Speaker 1: We are not going to just do the same old
Speaker 1: rappi rap thing that we normally do because me and Mariah,
Speaker 1: you know, our music as that goes, we we do
Speaker 1: a lot more than just freestyle on the mic. At
Speaker 1: the end of the show. We're both actually, you know,
Speaker 1: working recording artists. So, Mariah, what do you got coming up?
Speaker 1: So I'm very excited to announce that yesterday we told
Speaker 1: the world that my new album Bell Ringer is coming
Speaker 1: out on April, and we dropped the first music video
Speaker 1: first single for the album. It's called Work. It is
Speaker 1: um what I hope will be like the modern day
Speaker 1: labor anthem. And so um we're gonna play that for
Speaker 1: y'all as we close out today. Um, you know, go
Speaker 1: check it out if you follow me on socials. Who
Speaker 1: produced it? So this is produced by my homie Reindeer
Speaker 1: games Um, who has been my DJ for many years
Speaker 1: and um pretty much executively produced album. So yeah, give
Speaker 1: a listen to this. This is work. Go check out
Speaker 1: the music video. The link to it's going to be
Speaker 1: in the the episode description. And yeah, hopefully this will
Speaker 1: give you some inspiration to keep fighting because, like I said,
Speaker 1: and we need mass movements of organized people of the
Speaker 1: multi racial working class in order to fight this ship.
Speaker 1: No matter what happens, you know, my homies might get
Speaker 1: kicked out of office, I might get kicked out office, whatever,
Speaker 1: Fascist takeover whatever, we gotta be ready to fight. And
Speaker 1: so I hope this gets you all ready to fight.
Speaker 1: Let's right in a communication, Workers of America, hen the
Speaker 1: campus workers in Georgia three two six five, Big, it's
Speaker 1: sire you won't people, Which sire you won't? Which side
Speaker 1: you won't? Deepoo? Which side are you? Oh, which sire
Speaker 1: you won't? My people? Which side are you won't? Which
Speaker 1: side are you won't? People? Wich side? Are you won't?
Speaker 1: Working ship? The boxes they swipper renne mopping ship, but
Speaker 1: we're never talking and whipping the shopping cut They packed
Speaker 1: the beer in the walkings and stick the weird little boxes,
Speaker 1: keep kitching for just stopping the financial marketself. And they're
Speaker 1: talking for over fifty fifty bucks and bear the cup
Speaker 1: in the like sixty thrifty huts and get spent on
Speaker 1: like sitting ducks, so they get sicker getting buck. So
Speaker 1: you ever wanted to honor them? He's my ask for
Speaker 1: all Mohammed and collected bargaining and mazonna target and fede
Speaker 1: to walm Martin into parking hole food to we all
Speaker 1: give what we are to get it workers one of
Speaker 1: the company that rising in the arguments. So are you
Speaker 1: with them? Are you lay loof you? Need Ham said,
Speaker 1: I haven't see though, and play loof you need th
Speaker 1: Ham said I've be't see though, and play hoof you.
Speaker 1: Need Ham said I haven't see though. Ha My said
Speaker 1: I haven't see though. Ham said, I haven't seedo. Which
Speaker 1: side you are? My people? Which side you oh, which
Speaker 1: side you won't? People? Which sire you all? Which side
Speaker 1: are you o? People? Which side a you won't? Which
Speaker 1: side are you won't? My people? Which side are you all?
Speaker 1: Imagine a minute money into badverage. Women and men in
Speaker 1: the tragic position of bringing and patrick and wages in't
Speaker 1: count to the shackle by capitalism. Imagine a minute money
Speaker 1: into badvers. Citizens planned in this vineage and watching the
Speaker 1: kitchens and stack in the linen's called packers and windings
Speaker 1: and tend it's a labor extracted for pettis or if
Speaker 1: they're coordinated to address the sort of statement of it
Speaker 1: an organization because sucking what that's what organized but does
Speaker 1: and not even sort of its work. The cards taking
Speaker 1: the power from horders of bucks, but bankers off showing
Speaker 1: they because we're turning the value away, but of those
Speaker 1: who created the blainess. So if you're data then telling
Speaker 1: about waking up or leader earning back, if you sat
Speaker 1: about burning, if you gotta curious turn and you had
Speaker 1: it with passively like it, we got your back and
Speaker 1: were happy to have you out on the picking line,
Speaker 1: actively work and go way which side you need? Said,
Speaker 1: I've been seen no help with you said you need,
Speaker 1: said I've been seen help time said I've been seen.
Speaker 1: Help you need, said, I've been seen, help you need, said,
Speaker 1: I've been z side. Are you yo? That ship was fire.
Speaker 1: You guys got to make sure that you go watch that,
Speaker 1: press the light button, comment on that ship, and be
Speaker 1: sure to look out for Mariah's new album, Bell Ringer
Speaker 1: when that ship comes out in April one. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're gonna we're gonna keep talking about this between
Speaker 1: now and then. I'm sure she's gonna be dropping some
Speaker 1: more stuff. I know. I know I'm on there too,
Speaker 1: So you know, next town, next time I'm in town,
Speaker 1: we might want to like shoot a little some video
Speaker 1: things for that. Yeah, we might need to. We might
Speaker 1: need to. Yeah. Alright, my name is Dope Knife, and
Speaker 1: you have been listening to Waiting on Reparations. We are
Speaker 1: out and we will see you guys next week. Peace.
Speaker 1: Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app,
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