Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, y'all. Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Rams this jah.
Speaker 2: You know, usually I'm Q Ward, but today I am
Speaker 2: Grayson's father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stick around your radios because we have a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about, a lot of which will bring some
Speaker 1: context to that statement Q just made. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: it is now a week and some change since the shooting,
Speaker 1: the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, they claim the lives of
Speaker 1: nineteen school children, and we have a lot more information
Speaker 1: for those that listened to the last week's episode, you know,
Speaker 1: we we had limited information going into that, but we
Speaker 1: have a lot more that we need to break down
Speaker 1: and really re examined. Uh, And we're going to take
Speaker 1: the second half of the show and really take a
Speaker 1: medical look at what public safety means, and what our
Speaker 1: values are and what our priorities are as a society,
Speaker 1: as a people as you know, you know, different tribes
Speaker 1: with different concerns and so forth, and of course this
Speaker 1: is a place to have those conversations, so definitely be
Speaker 1: sure to stick around for that. We're also going to
Speaker 1: breathe some life into Memorial Day. We know it's passed,
Speaker 1: but because of the way the scheduling of the show works.
Speaker 1: We didn't want to just not you know, give any
Speaker 1: shine to it. So we're going to take some time
Speaker 1: to over to dig into the overlooked black history of
Speaker 1: Memorial Days. So forgive us for being tardy on that.
Speaker 1: But as you know, sometimes we have to respond to
Speaker 1: things that are timely in the news, which makes us
Speaker 1: have to adjust what we talk about. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the adjustments means that the things we've adjusted
Speaker 1: are less important. So again, a lot to stick around
Speaker 1: for the first and foremost, let's talk about some ebony excellence.
Speaker 1: Let's start off on a high. How you feeling you shall?
Speaker 2: We?
Speaker 1: We shall? So this one comes from Black Enterprise, the
Speaker 1: founder of Slutty Vegan Restaurant gifts LLCs to entire Clark
Speaker 1: Atlanta's class of twenty twenty two. Now let me bring
Speaker 1: you up to speed. For those that don't know what
Speaker 1: Clark Atlanta is, it is a historically Black college and
Speaker 1: we shorten that to HBCU, which stands for historically Black
Speaker 1: college or university. So again, the restaurant owner, Aisha Pinky Cole,
Speaker 1: surprised over eight hundred graduates of our alma mater Clark
Speaker 1: Atlanta University with a kickstart to launch their own businesses.
Speaker 1: The Slutty Vegan CEO spoke to the class of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two during their commencement ceremony on Saturday and gifted
Speaker 1: the entirety of the class a limited liability company or LLC.
Speaker 1: This is according to Fox five reports. They're based in
Speaker 1: Atlanta as well. Here's a quote. I have partnered with
Speaker 1: Vobank to provide every single graduate in this attendance with
Speaker 1: a new LLC and a path to entrepreneurship. And quote
Speaker 1: Cole said before the uproar of the clause, and she
Speaker 1: resumes every single graduate in this audience will leave this
Speaker 1: stadium as a business owner, she proclaimed for a press
Speaker 1: release from the university. Cole graduated in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine with the major in Mass Communications slash Media Studies.
Speaker 1: She was clowned Miss Clark Atlanta during her undergrad in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight and initiated into Delta Sigma Theta
Speaker 1: Sorority Sigma chapter. So we wanted to take a moment
Speaker 1: to shout out some Ebony excellence and some black entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: and of course this is the place to do it
Speaker 1: and so once again we're shouting out Ayisha Pinky Cole,
Speaker 1: aka the founder of Slutty Vegan Restaurant, and we definitely
Speaker 1: want to see that now. As we mentioned last week,
Speaker 1: we had to have a very difficult conversation about gun
Speaker 1: violence in this country. I personally invited my child, my
Speaker 1: seven year old, to sit in with us. The reason
Speaker 1: for that is he is approximately the age of the
Speaker 1: students that lost their lives in Texas and I had
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with my son. I felt like
Speaker 1: doing it on the air might help some folks who
Speaker 1: might have some difficulty broaching that subject with their own children.
Speaker 1: And I talked to my son, who lives in a
Speaker 1: care free world. You know, these things, these problems don't
Speaker 1: exist in his mind. As you remember it too, and
Speaker 1: as you were deeply troubled by. You know, the first
Speaker 1: question I asked him was, baby, do you know that
Speaker 1: sometimes people get guns and go into schools and shoot children,
Speaker 1: to which he replied no. And I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I was not trouble that these things don't exist in
Speaker 1: his world. I was troubled because they have to thank
Speaker 1: you for them. Well, that is, if we boil it
Speaker 1: down that is a Ramses problem, right. I wanted to
Speaker 1: share that with everyone, But you know, if you could
Speaker 1: make a case for that being a problem, that is
Speaker 1: just my problem that I have to deal with with
Speaker 1: my children and my home, and everyone else has to
Speaker 1: have that conversation on their own, and that's the way
Speaker 1: it goes. Well, today we're going to have a conversation
Speaker 1: about what is decidedly the US problem. It involves all
Speaker 1: of us. It involves our votes, it involves our voices,
Speaker 1: it involves us putting pressure on our elected officials. It's
Speaker 1: about us taking a stand and changing the culture, changing
Speaker 1: the narrative in our day to day lives in our communities,
Speaker 1: in our cities, and in our countries. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think may serve as a catalyst
Speaker 1: to this is what we now know happen in Texas,
Speaker 1: where when you say catalysts expound a bit. I know
Speaker 1: that I'm an optimist, so catalyst might be a strong word.
Speaker 1: But on this show, if you're a longtime listener to
Speaker 1: this show, you know that we bring light to a
Speaker 1: lot of myths that are associated with policing in this country.
Speaker 1: More police officers makes us safer, right, very much? A myth.
Speaker 1: You know, the only thing that can stop a good
Speaker 1: guy with a gun is a bad or sorry, the
Speaker 1: only thing that can stop a bad guy with a
Speaker 1: gun is a good guy with a gun. Myth. Police
Speaker 1: are heroes largely a myth with some examples that actually do.
Speaker 1: They are heroic, and we've talked about them on this show.
Speaker 1: They have some people are heroes. Some people there we go,
Speaker 1: they just will happen to be officers. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: great way. Occupation itself does not make you inherently heroic.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Again.
Speaker 1: If you're a longtime listener of this show, you know
Speaker 1: that we shed light on a lot of the terror
Speaker 1: that is endured by black and brown communities at the
Speaker 1: hands of police. A lot of it is unfair, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is unfounded, a lot of it is unnecessary.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say that all people in all
Speaker 1: black and brown communities or other marginalized communities are innocent.
Speaker 1: I would never say that. But on this show we
Speaker 1: look at things from often a societal point of view.
Speaker 1: We look at systemic issues. Granted, we use specific examples
Speaker 1: to bring those issues to light. But the fact remains
Speaker 1: is that we deal with numbers, we deal with statistics
Speaker 1: and so forth, and so in Texas, we learned that
Speaker 1: there were conflicting reports, but we learned that the police
Speaker 1: took some time to engage the shooter. MS. You are
Speaker 1: the most kind.
Speaker 2: I'm setting you up, gracious human I've ever encountered. I
Speaker 2: just want to say that out loud so people can
Speaker 2: hear it again. And I'm setting you up because I
Speaker 2: know that you have some thoughts here.
Speaker 1: But yes, that seems to be the most what's the
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for, alarming unsettling element. We know there
Speaker 1: are several. That's the most alarming because you have a
Speaker 1: police force, right, you know, the people that get all
Speaker 1: the support from the right and from the you know,
Speaker 1: all the trucks with the flags on and everybody with
Speaker 1: the flags, and that flag that is an abomination and
Speaker 1: goes against flag code. If you have a gray and
Speaker 1: black flag with a blue stripe that looks like the
Speaker 1: American flag bat actually goes against the US flag code.
Speaker 1: I'll say it as often as I can for all
Speaker 1: you patriots out there. But yeah, we have a police
Speaker 1: force here who in twenty eighteen were outfitted with bulletproof vest.
Speaker 1: They got more money, not just vest, good body armored,
Speaker 1: body army. That's what I wanted to say, rifle stopping
Speaker 1: body armor to be specific. So they that police force
Speaker 1: was funded, not defunded. That police force was funded. That
Speaker 1: city's budget budget, the police force.
Speaker 2: There you go, Okay, of the whole budget for the
Speaker 2: whole city went to the police officers.
Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that, and goodn'ts gracious? They had
Speaker 1: an active shooter in the school, multiple nine one one
Speaker 1: calls made. I've read reports that said they stood outside
Speaker 1: of the school as long as ninety minutes. I've read
Speaker 1: reports just said parents actually jumped the fence escape police
Speaker 1: custody because police were arresting parents for trying to motivate
Speaker 1: them to go in and stop the shooter as he
Speaker 1: was executing their children. And what it boiled down to
Speaker 1: is the police were afraid, you know, they weren't kicking
Speaker 1: in the door of guns blazing, where's the bad guys
Speaker 1: shoot them up? Risking their own lives, you know, heroic stuff.
Speaker 1: They were being humans, and they were you know, probably
Speaker 1: had ninety minutes to debate their own mortality, right as
Speaker 1: you do when there's someone with a semi automatic rifle
Speaker 1: and you know, on the other side of a fence
Speaker 1: executing children. And what we learn is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of these stories that have
Speaker 1: come out really cut police down the sides. Police as
Speaker 1: a as a concept. All the training in the world,
Speaker 1: all of the you know, all this sort of stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't prevent you from being human, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: from being afraid, right, And you don't get to be
Speaker 1: a hero and wait outside while children are getting murdered.
Speaker 2: That's like the opposite of a hero. That's like, that's
Speaker 2: the most extreme case of the opposite. Yeah, exactly. You
Speaker 2: can hear and see.
Speaker 1: And you're stopping the people from going getting their own children.
Speaker 2: And it's important to point out third graders because some
Speaker 2: people hear children and think teenagers and that would still
Speaker 2: be awful, but we're talking about eight year olds again,
Speaker 2: very very close to at Anya's age. Yeah, babies steal.
Speaker 2: Now back to blue, right. There are people who will.
Speaker 1: Say, well, that's one police force underneath one chief, under
Speaker 1: one department, and not all police forces are like that.
Speaker 1: There are going to be more hero examples, and I
Speaker 1: would challenge that because what we're seeing is it's a
Speaker 1: testament to the opposite. You know, anyone who subscribes to
Speaker 1: a detached, separate reality from the one that we're all
Speaker 1: living in is writing a story for their own purposes.
Speaker 1: There's confirmation bias, or it's not even confirmation bias. It
Speaker 1: is a I forget what it's called. When when you're
Speaker 1: you're confronted with the truth and your brain cannot allow
Speaker 1: you to receive it because it goes against what your
Speaker 1: truth already is. Right, you're confronted with new information that's
Speaker 1: that flies in the face of what you know, you
Speaker 1: have known to be true up until that point. There's
Speaker 1: a term for it, but it escapes me right now.
Speaker 1: But the long and the short of it is that
Speaker 1: what we have to do now is examine. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what does this mean? What is the point of a
Speaker 1: police department? But really, what is the point of a
Speaker 1: police department if not to stop people from shooting babies? Right,
Speaker 1: to run into a school? You know, fire fire department? Right,
Speaker 1: we know what the point of a fire department is.
Speaker 1: They run into a burning building, right, they put the
Speaker 1: fire out, They save your property, they save lives, they
Speaker 1: do whatever they can, right, but it's immediate. You have
Speaker 1: to be on top of it. You can't sit outside
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, you know, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: little hot in there. I'm gonna just wait out here
Speaker 1: for a few minutes until it's a little bit more,
Speaker 1: you know, comfortable, till till my blood has become acclimatized.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't work that way. If that were
Speaker 1: the case, then everyone would be fired and we would
Speaker 1: really think, rethink what fire safety meant. Right, But we
Speaker 1: have this sort of binary mentality in this country where
Speaker 1: and I'll be honest and I'll be to the point
Speaker 1: this time because I do like to speak in co
Speaker 1: sometimes or be cryptic because I don't want to offend anybody.
Speaker 1: But what I've learned in my nearly forty years of
Speaker 1: living on this planet is that and I've seen this
Speaker 1: about history because I've had to obviously, I've studied a
Speaker 1: lot of history, not just during the show, but just
Speaker 1: being me that there is oftentimes in this binary society
Speaker 1: that we live in, there is a progressive group of people,
Speaker 1: people that feel like we can be better, we can
Speaker 1: move forward, we can aspire to do more, we can
Speaker 1: grow a lot of times black folks and people who
Speaker 1: empathize and sympathize with the plight of black and other
Speaker 1: marginalized folks fall into that category. And then there is
Speaker 1: just opposition. Right, some folks would say, no, that's conservative.
Speaker 1: They want to keep things as they are, no actively
Speaker 1: opposing anything that changes the way that things are right
Speaker 1: now right, and as you mentioned quite often Q, even
Speaker 1: if it goes against their own interest. And I think
Speaker 1: that nowadays we see it more than ever because we
Speaker 1: saw to be fair. I just saw clips and watch
Speaker 1: the whole thing. But at the nra A convention, you know,
Speaker 1: people like Ted Kruz, who you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: folks hung this most recent shooting on him and his
Speaker 1: policies and his beliefs. He's one of the biggest recipients
Speaker 1: of funds, campaign funds from the gun lobby. Mitch McCollum,
Speaker 1: of course, the former president. All these folks, right, these
Speaker 1: people oppose everything it is asamine. So here watch this.
Speaker 1: This is something that has troubled me on the news,
Speaker 1: especially right wing media, which is where a lot of
Speaker 1: these right wing folks have a chance to say what
Speaker 1: they would have done or what the country needs to do. Right,
Speaker 1: You hear me out. I've heard that they want to
Speaker 1: make school's single entrance, single exit, right. They want to
Speaker 1: make schools. They want to arm teachers. Of course, teachers
Speaker 1: have guns now they have to be certified and go
Speaker 1: to gun training, as if their jobs aren't already tough.
Speaker 1: They want public resource resource officers, armed resource officers on
Speaker 1: every campus in the school, which, by the way, there
Speaker 1: was an armed resource officer on the campus in While Day,
Speaker 1: Texas at the time the shooter broke in and shot
Speaker 1: up all the kids and those teachers as well. They
Speaker 1: want man traps, I've heard that one, which is basically
Speaker 1: like an alarm code or an alarm that traps an
Speaker 1: active shooter in a school. They want to outfit all
Speaker 1: the schools in this country, you know, so that they
Speaker 1: can address this problem. They'll do anything except say it's
Speaker 1: a gun problem. Let's address the guns, right. And then
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of other ones. There's some lady talking
Speaker 1: about ballistic blankets. They are colorful. Hang on, hang on,
Speaker 1: I'm making the point right here. But just a week
Speaker 1: before that, he was a guy that walked into it
Speaker 1: a grocery store. So all of that stuff in terms
Speaker 1: of public safety flies out the window. So you're going
Speaker 1: to spend all this billions of dollars to outfit every
Speaker 1: school in the country to ensure public safety, and you
Speaker 1: completely forgot about the grocery store. What do you mean
Speaker 1: about churches? What are you because you know people get
Speaker 1: shot in churches too, Right, What do we do about concerts?
Speaker 1: I was in Vegas when all those people got shot
Speaker 1: at that that concert. I was in Vegas too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so an ambulance, every no one could go anywhere. It's
Speaker 1: stuck in the hotel. That's it. It was across the
Speaker 1: street from the concert. They had no idea that it
Speaker 1: had happened until afterward. But you know, I.
Speaker 2: Actually stayed in the same hotel hotel shooter was.
Speaker 1: I wasn't in the uh. I was in the What
Speaker 1: is that man? Anyway? So?
Speaker 3: Yeah, these people have every they say everything they like
Speaker 3: shift the narrative, right, so instead of it being a
Speaker 3: mass shooting, it's a school shooting.
Speaker 1: Right, So how do we fix school shootings? Now? How
Speaker 1: do we fix mass shootings? Right? Because this is the
Speaker 1: problem that we're all dealing with. And then they have
Speaker 1: all these statistics, all gun violences that and the other
Speaker 1: handguns do most of the problem. Okay, Well, does that
Speaker 1: mean you can do nothing? And that's fine. Now, I
Speaker 1: know I've been talking, and I know you wanted to
Speaker 1: jump in, so let me allow you some space to
Speaker 1: say what you were wanting to say. Good.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's tough because I don't have specific speaking points.
Speaker 2: You spoke earlier about cognitive dissonance. That's it, Like this
Speaker 2: idea we're in the face when faced with new facts
Speaker 2: that contradict whatever truth we have.
Speaker 1: There can't be a new truth.
Speaker 2: There are now two separate truths, and we dismiss one
Speaker 2: of them. Profit above everything, even the lives of our children.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a really, really tough pill to swallow.
Speaker 2: And it's gotten to a point where the divisiveness with
Speaker 2: the people in our country has caused us to nobody
Speaker 2: can even say my bad anymore.
Speaker 1: Not only was I not wrong, but let me double
Speaker 1: and triple down on my wrong.
Speaker 2: Because I could never just admit, Okay, we've been doing
Speaker 2: this wrong the whole time.
Speaker 1: Right, guns are not the problem. We need more.
Speaker 2: More armor, more guns, more of whatever is going to
Speaker 2: help my constituents make more money, not what's gonna make
Speaker 2: our people, more specifically our children more safe. How can
Speaker 2: I make the people who give me money more money?
Speaker 2: It's very, very troubling. And you know, in our next segment,
Speaker 2: I want us to actually read some of these details
Speaker 2: so people can that don't know, can hear some of
Speaker 2: the things that actually went on that day at that
Speaker 2: school while these children were being murdered. They were present
Speaker 2: while these children were being murdered and actively doing nothing
Speaker 2: to stop it.
Speaker 1: And I heard you.
Speaker 2: I laugh in jest when Ramses interjects hope into stories
Speaker 2: and situations that have shown us enough times by now
Speaker 2: that they are completely hopeless.
Speaker 1: These people do not care about us.
Speaker 2: They only care about themselves, because even if they cared
Speaker 2: about their own children, this would be an issue. Their
Speaker 2: children go to school, they go to private schools, you know,
Speaker 2: and communities that they think are safer, right because these
Speaker 2: shootings at these grocery stores and these schools, in these
Speaker 2: last most recent cases, the victims look like us. But
Speaker 2: we have and shown even when the victims look like them,
Speaker 2: that they don't care, right because those victims are probably
Speaker 2: less fortunate than them. It's not just our minorities that
Speaker 2: get stomped on. It is our poor, no matter how
Speaker 2: they look but they've done such a masterful job at
Speaker 2: the divide that the poor that look like them think,
Speaker 2: vote and act like them, as you said, against their
Speaker 2: own best interest, even when all the statistics and all
Speaker 2: the data and all the stories and all the videos
Speaker 2: show them they don't care about you either. They've just
Speaker 2: done such a good job convincing you that they do
Speaker 2: that you'll fight to continue to support the world that
Speaker 2: they've created for themselves as their boot continues to step
Speaker 2: on you and us.
Speaker 1: I don't think any thing illuminates that point any better
Speaker 1: than a man saying we need to install traps at
Speaker 1: the school to catch active shooters. We need to install
Speaker 1: traps at every school to catch the active shooters. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: this is asamine. This is we're not sharing the same
Speaker 1: reality because kids walk out of schools. Right, Families go
Speaker 1: to grocery stores, right, families go to worship, Right, people
Speaker 1: go to concerts. Right people go to Pulset nightclub? Right?
Speaker 1: Have you? Are we going to install man traps in
Speaker 1: every You see what I'm saying. So the people that
Speaker 1: lap that up and say, yeah, that's a great idea,
Speaker 1: Yeah we need that. You know, those folks, those good
Speaker 1: accent of those folks. Those are the people we need
Speaker 1: to have important conversations with, and it is now your
Speaker 1: responsibility to have that conversation. But we're going to move on.