Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Czicker. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: rams Is joh I go by the name q Ward,
Speaker 1: but most of the kind of.
Speaker 2: I'm working on it, I might stick with that, I
Speaker 2: might go with something different.
Speaker 3: Listen, man, times already change that. My entertainment PERSONA game up.
Speaker 2: I don't know I'm coming up, but it's because of y'all.
Speaker 3: Y'all can't see me, Lane, Lane, It's because of y'all.
Speaker 3: Uh yes, And we are back up and you one.
Speaker 1: We'll again to talk about some of the goings on
Speaker 1: in Black America. A lot of important things happening in
Speaker 1: the news that we need to talk about. And we
Speaker 1: appreciate your audience. We appreciate your ears, and we appreciate
Speaker 1: your empathy, sympathy, support, you know, cheerleading, et cetera. So yeah,
Speaker 1: stick around. We got a lot to share with you today.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're going to talk about the verdict from
Speaker 1: the Kim Potter trial. If you don't know, Kim Potter
Speaker 1: is the officer that was attempting to grab a taser allegedly,
Speaker 1: no we saw it, well, I guess you have to
Speaker 1: say allegedly, but she was attempting to grab a taser
Speaker 1: and instead pulled out a gun and took the life
Speaker 1: of John tay Wright, a young black man. Also, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about, in the opposite side of things,
Speaker 1: the verdict from the Ahmad Aubrey trial, where there was
Speaker 1: perhaps a bit more satisfactory outcome. So we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some good and some bad today. We also
Speaker 1: got a few other things to discuss our way black history. Fact,
Speaker 1: we're going to breathe some life into the name Thomas Fuller,
Speaker 1: who was often called the Virginia Calculator, born in the
Speaker 1: slave coast of West Africa in seventeen ten. But a
Speaker 1: story you need to stick around for, trust me. But
Speaker 1: like we always do at this time, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: we like to start off with some ebony excellence. How
Speaker 1: does that resound? Yes we do, Yes, sir, so, yes
Speaker 1: we do. Today's story comes from Black Enterprise dot Com
Speaker 1: and I will share. A black woman is now the
Speaker 1: majority owner of a new multimillion dollar film and television
Speaker 1: studio in Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports Tammy Williams
Speaker 1: has over twenty five years of experience in the film
Speaker 1: and television industry. She has written and produced a plethora
Speaker 1: of projects such as films, biographies, documentaries, entertainment, and network news.
Speaker 1: According to her biography, Williams owned her first digital production
Speaker 1: company called Tammy Dell Film in twenty sixteen and is
Speaker 1: now the first black woman to own a one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five million dollar studio and post production fill
Speaker 1: that post production facility space in Atlanta, Georgia. Let's give
Speaker 1: it a one time for some black girl magic. Please
Speaker 1: for the black girl I will continue. Williams and her
Speaker 1: business partner Gary Guidry, who's an investor in CEOG Squared
Speaker 1: Events and Black Promoters collective funded Cinema South Studios. There's
Speaker 1: a quote from him. He says, We've been patient. This
Speaker 1: has not been an overnight thing. This vision for us,
Speaker 1: and Williams has worked toward making her dream a reality
Speaker 1: for twelve years. They'll begin to break around in March
Speaker 1: for Cinema South Studios, located north of Fayette County. The
Speaker 1: studio will occupy sixty acres and intends to have eleven
Speaker 1: sound stages of back prop house, wardrobe rental facility, and
Speaker 1: a lighting grip rental house. Production facility will include a
Speaker 1: transportation company and an office building to house theater and
Speaker 1: prost production facilities. Now, Tyler Perry is not the only
Speaker 1: game in town. Now we have a black woman and
Speaker 1: as we stated, we are big fans of black girl
Speaker 1: magic around here. So one more time, some ebony excellence
Speaker 1: going out to Tammy Williams in Atlanta, Georgia, occupying a
Speaker 1: little bit more room in the media space which we desperately,
Speaker 1: desperately need.
Speaker 3: Keep going, miss Tammy.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, now let's get down to business.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about this, so Kim Potter, did you expect?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: First off, let me let me let me share a
Speaker 1: little bit about if you haven't been keeping up with
Speaker 1: the Kim Potter story, I got a little blurb from
Speaker 1: TMZ again. She was the officer convicted of or accused
Speaker 1: I guess that's the word of killing Dante Wright intending
Speaker 1: to pull out her taser and using her gun instead. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: what happened is she is the ex Minnesota cop who
Speaker 1: was pulled over Dante Wright for an expired tag and
Speaker 1: an illegal air freshener. They attempted to arrest him when
Speaker 1: they learned he had a warrant, and he tried to flee.
Speaker 1: That's when Potter pulled out a gun and shot him.
Speaker 1: She's the one who says after she shoots, or as
Speaker 1: she's shooting, she's yelling taser, Taser, taser, and then moments
Speaker 1: later she says, holy, yes word, I just shot him.
Speaker 1: And she broke down crying, and the officer went ticks
Speaker 1: and sold her. So this is who we're talking about
Speaker 1: today now. Of course this she gets charged with I
Speaker 1: believe manslaughter. Yeah it says manslaughter here and goes to trial.
Speaker 1: And what did you expect the outcome to be?
Speaker 2: For those of you that follow us, I guess I'm
Speaker 2: kind of the show pessimist realist.
Speaker 3: I call you a realist the right word.
Speaker 2: I'm not shocked when there's no charges, and when there
Speaker 2: are charges, I'm not shocked and there's no conviction, and
Speaker 2: when there is a conviction, I'm not shocked when the
Speaker 2: sentencing is extremely weak. So my shocked absolutely not. Does
Speaker 2: it further my sense of quote unquote realism?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like my hope dwindles with every incident with this
Speaker 3: type of result. Sure that's fair. So yeah, that's that. Well.
Speaker 1: I I try to look at things and have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a positive spin, right, this one is
Speaker 1: very challenging for me. But what I would in theory
Speaker 1: say is, well, there is a conviction and there is
Speaker 1: a sentence, right, and that's not nothing, because there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people that would for her to have
Speaker 1: no sentence at all. These people are blindly supportive of police.
Speaker 1: These are the people that subscribe to the notion that
Speaker 1: police have like the most dangerous job of all time,
Speaker 1: which I'm not saying it's not a dangerous job, but
Speaker 1: if you look up the numbers, delivering postmates is a
Speaker 1: more dangerous job than being a police officer. You can
Speaker 1: look those up yourself, right. So these people that have
Speaker 1: this idea that police should be revered and held to
Speaker 1: a standard that the rest of us mere mortals. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's unfair to I guess, afford police
Speaker 1: almost infinite forgiveness. They don't even they're not even held
Speaker 1: to the same type of stand They're given the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt to the nth degree in every single circumstance.
Speaker 1: And then when the victim is black, they often try
Speaker 1: to criminalize the victim as much as they possibly can
Speaker 1: to further frame and further justify the black person's death right.
Speaker 1: So because there are so many people who feel that way.
Speaker 1: It's not nothing when there is a conviction, right, this
Speaker 1: is what I would say in theory, but for this
Speaker 1: one specifically, we said it on the show. You and
Speaker 1: iq I said, I really really we took turns, but
Speaker 1: this video we both had to watch, right.
Speaker 3: You remember that I.
Speaker 2: Said you provided her a lot more grace, yeah than
Speaker 2: I then and then I will now, yeah, but that's that.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm the optimist, yo, So I says, you
Speaker 1: know what, I really do think that was an accident
Speaker 1: that really honestly looks like an accident. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: now that everything has come out in the wash, a
Speaker 1: lot of people perhaps have come around to the idea that, yes,
Speaker 1: that she did not mean to take his life. She
Speaker 1: meant to taze him and it just didn't work out
Speaker 1: that way. But as you pointed out on that episode
Speaker 1: when we first discussed this, or maybe it's the second
Speaker 1: time we discussed this, but as you pointed out on
Speaker 1: that episode, there are consequences even when there are accidents
Speaker 1: if you're just a regular person and you didn't expect
Speaker 1: there to be consequences. Because she's not a regular person,
Speaker 1: she's a police officer and therefore given the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt to the nth degree, and not held to
Speaker 1: the same standards as the rest of us people in
Speaker 1: this society. Somehow they're given more grace or more leniency,
Speaker 1: as we've seen in her sentencing. Now, the reason we're
Speaker 1: talking today we haven't touched on it yet is her
Speaker 1: sentence was two years, and that is insulting by itself,
Speaker 1: because she ended the life of a young man who
Speaker 1: he was a father, he was you know, he's on
Speaker 1: his way.
Speaker 2: And she will only serve this part sixteen months of
Speaker 2: actual incarceration that part. So she was convicted and found
Speaker 2: guilty of these charges. By the way, first and second
Speaker 2: degree manslaughter, she will do sixteen months.
Speaker 1: So remember when I said it was insulting for two years,
Speaker 1: that makes it It's like the twisting of the knife.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, so what was his life worth? Is
Speaker 1: that all his life was worth? You know, let's switch
Speaker 1: it around. What if the officer was black and the
Speaker 1: victim was a white woman. Oh, we may have seen
Speaker 1: such an example.
Speaker 3: I know we have. I know we have.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm asking for our listeners to ponder
Speaker 1: this to understand how it feels when things like this
Speaker 1: come back, and then we have to absorb them and
Speaker 1: we have to make sense of them, and we have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to not be so paranoid. We
Speaker 1: as black men, you and are both black men, we
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to not be so paranoid
Speaker 1: in our interactions with the world. You know, I hear
Speaker 1: a lot of the times, you know, there are white
Speaker 1: folks and non black people that say, you know, black
Speaker 1: people and Hispanic people, and where they always talk about race. Right,
Speaker 1: But here's another example of how race further defines our
Speaker 1: reality because race shapes our outcomes and ways that you
Speaker 1: may have not even conceived of, and it's normal for us.
Speaker 1: You said yourself to that you were not surprised by
Speaker 1: the sentence right now.
Speaker 2: On the heels of the even the reduction of the sentence,
Speaker 2: because I think that was a sentence reduction, a light sentence,
Speaker 2: and then that sentence being reduced for less time. I
Speaker 2: wasn't shocked by any of it. I think there's another
Speaker 2: point here. As the judge was reading the sentence, you know,
Speaker 2: she echoed that, you know, there's a lot of it's
Speaker 2: called copaganda, right. I think this started like in the
Speaker 2: seventies where or maybe a little bit earlier no dragnet,
Speaker 2: So maybe it was like the sixties or something. I
Speaker 2: saw this recently where.
Speaker 1: What happens is the police sort of got in cahoots
Speaker 1: with the film industry because the film industry wanted some realism, right,
Speaker 1: so they leaned on the police to help us make
Speaker 1: these stories feel real. Give us some stories that we
Speaker 1: can tell, you know, that sort of thing, give us
Speaker 1: intimate details that will captivate and grip our viewers, right.
Speaker 1: And in exchange, the police wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: approve scripts and approve you know, visuals and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing before they made it their way to air.
Speaker 1: And so what you have is this relationship early on
Speaker 1: that morphed into what ultimately has come to influence the
Speaker 1: way many people view the police, certainly people that don't
Speaker 1: have to interact with the police. I read a statistic
Speaker 1: the other day that seventy five percent of people have
Speaker 1: zero police interaction on it in a given year. Right now,
Speaker 1: Of that twenty five percent, how many do you think
Speaker 1: of those folks are black? Of that seventy five percent,
Speaker 1: how many do you think are non black?
Speaker 3: Do you see that? Math is easy?
Speaker 1: By the way, right, and so I'll continue. So when
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people whose only interaction with
Speaker 1: police is what they see on TV, and a smaller
Speaker 1: amount of people whose interactions with police is largely in
Speaker 1: real time, and the people in their environment, you know
Speaker 1: that they're oh, such and such got beat up by
Speaker 1: the cops or such and such, you know, dirty cops,
Speaker 1: or you know cops shooting at people, cops you know,
Speaker 1: abusing and bullying and victimizing or whatever it is the
Speaker 1: police do. You have two different views of police, and
Speaker 1: so you end up with a divided America where a
Speaker 1: lot of people are really pro police.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I was talking about the judge as she read the
Speaker 1: sentence for Kim Potter, she broke down. You could hear
Speaker 1: it in her voice. That was bizarre, Yeah, And she
Speaker 1: was trying to echo that sentiment that that copaganda. The
Speaker 1: police have such a tough time and they have to
Speaker 1: make split second decisions. But listen, if I'm driving a car, right,
Speaker 1: and I have to make a split second decision and
Speaker 1: I make the wrong one and I end up crack
Speaker 1: wishing and someone loses a life, you know, they might
Speaker 1: say reckless endangerment. They might say man, slider and man
Speaker 1: for someone to give me, you know, a sentence like this,
Speaker 1: for ending a life of a human being. He didn't
Speaker 1: get to live his full life. It was taken. He
Speaker 1: has no more days. His story ended. He's forever going
Speaker 1: to be a I believe he was twenty four years old,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get to see his grandchildren, doesn't have more children,
Speaker 1: he doesn't get to see his dreams come true. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have the chance over taser, taser, taser, bam, bam.
Speaker 2: Dead, death permanent. There wouldn't have been multiple trigger pulls
Speaker 2: for a taser, folks. Just by the way, in case
Speaker 2: anybody was wondering.
Speaker 3: But watch this.
Speaker 1: Oh and did you know she was the person responsible
Speaker 1: for training the other police officers. Yes, I think we
Speaker 1: talked about it with the taser and a gun sit
Speaker 1: on opposite. But it's okay. It was a mistake. She
Speaker 1: didn't mean to kill the guy. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that say all lives matter, right, and
Speaker 1: of course they're not wrong. I think the intent behind
Speaker 1: that message, I just wish they meant it, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: and I wish the intent behind that message was you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit less adversarial, and you know whatever, I
Speaker 1: don't mind.
Speaker 3: That you're saying it. I just wish you meant it
Speaker 3: instead of never mind.
Speaker 1: But if you're one of those people or you know
Speaker 1: those people, those people often say all lives matter in
Speaker 1: response to people like us saying black lives matter. Right,
Speaker 1: they feel like we don't need to say that because
Speaker 1: naturally all lives matter. This is an argument that they
Speaker 1: make right. But the reason that we say black lives matter,
Speaker 1: a new reason is this story we're talking about now.
Speaker 1: How can you tell me that in a society where
Speaker 1: manslaughter is a punishable offense right and a judge has
Speaker 1: to consider the circumstances and so forth, that the judge
Speaker 1: would cry while sentencing this woman and then take her
Speaker 1: two year sentence and reduce it further insulting while the
Speaker 1: mother stood there. Mother's white too, but the.
Speaker 3: Son was black.
Speaker 2: Let me cry for them, or the person who not
Speaker 2: for the mother, for the officer, but for the officer
Speaker 2: that killed the mother's son. Let me cry for her right,
Speaker 2: because man, she must be going through so much, you see.
Speaker 1: And this is why we say black lives matter. And
Speaker 1: the size of the smile on officer Potter's face. If
Speaker 1: you guys see her in her in her prison orange
Speaker 1: with this big, lovely smile on her face. If you
Speaker 1: were if you saw that picture and you were wondering
Speaker 1: why she appeared to be so happy, she just learned
Speaker 1: she's not even doing a year and a half for
Speaker 1: killing someone. Now, far be it from us to intentionally
Speaker 1: make something sound more sinister or more intentional that it is.
Speaker 1: We are stating facts, and of course we have the
Speaker 1: filter of feelings and emotions, you know, so we have
Speaker 1: to absorb this. But that's not something that we can
Speaker 1: really ignore. That smile is like the last you know,
Speaker 1: I get it in her world, and from her perspective,
Speaker 1: she really feels it was an accident. She really feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, she resigned from being a cop. She's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that, you know, whatever. She says,
Speaker 1: she was really sorry. I'd imagine that's true. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be a human and see the human right.
Speaker 1: But that smile is hurtful, That judge crying is hurtful,
Speaker 1: that sentence is hurtful. And then how in the world
Speaker 1: do we grow up ourselves and raise our children in
Speaker 1: the world where black lives matter if everything tells us
Speaker 1: that they don't.
Speaker 3: If all the evidence is to the contrary.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's why we have to say we seem
Speaker 1: like liars listening talking to our sons.
Speaker 3: There's a I have.
Speaker 1: One of those huge vinyl banners in my garage and
Speaker 1: it says black Lives Matter on it, and whenever I
Speaker 1: come home into my garage, it says it right there,
Speaker 1: black like huge, right, And I see it every day,
Speaker 1: and my.
Speaker 3: Son see it every day. Right.
Speaker 1: And if they never hear it, and they never you know,
Speaker 1: nothing ever comes their way where they know, in fact,
Speaker 1: if the whole world tells them otherwise, when they come
Speaker 1: here to Daddy's home. I also have another sign. This
Speaker 1: says Daddy's home in the garage, but when they come here,
Speaker 1: it'll say black lives matter. And for those of you
Speaker 1: who you know, support, you know, the efforts in the
Speaker 1: plight of black and brown people and who understand that
Speaker 1: black lives matter. Is not meant to be antagonistic. It's
Speaker 1: not meant to suggest a black lives matter more or
Speaker 1: less than anyone else. It's just meant to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know we our lives have value, and we're entitled
Speaker 1: to some dignity, and we should not be allowed to
Speaker 1: be slaughtered in the street for no reason, or certainly
Speaker 1: before we had our day in court with impunity.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: For those of you who understand that and have not
Speaker 1: hidden behind, you know, a false into patriotism in a
Speaker 1: thin veneer of you know, humanitarianism or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: We salute you and we thank you because we recognize
Speaker 1: that a lot of those other people really just we
Speaker 1: see it. We know it's racism, and they just have
Speaker 1: a way to be racist and have it not appeared
Speaker 1: outwardly racist by saying things like, well, you know, all
Speaker 1: lives matter, we know what it really is.
Speaker 3: Come on now, stop.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say black people can't do that too,
Speaker 1: because there are black people that don't like black people,
Speaker 1: and there are black people that try their best to
Speaker 1: separate themselves and create some distance from their actual blackness socially,
Speaker 1: and so they will say things that are very much
Speaker 1: anti black because they feel like it gets them closer
Speaker 1: to being non black. A lot of times you'll find
Speaker 1: a lot of self hatred in those people, and that's
Speaker 1: also sad. Sometimes they know, sometimes they don't know. But
Speaker 1: we've talked about a lot of those folks on the
Speaker 1: show too, So let me continue here. Yeah, so she's
Speaker 1: going to spend sixteen months behind bars. The remaining time
Speaker 1: will be on supervised release. I forgot about this. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, she's going to have to pay
Speaker 1: a one thousand dollars fine.
Speaker 3: I'd rather there be no fine at all.
Speaker 2: That hurts, right, it's insult or rather it be no
Speaker 2: fine at all, one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And then again, according to the article here, the sentence
Speaker 1: is significantly less than the seven years prosecutors had suggested.
Speaker 1: Now we talked about Derek, we talked about the killer
Speaker 1: of George Floyd and his sentence. I don't want to
Speaker 1: give these killers too much in the way of recognition
Speaker 1: on this show because we try to uplift black name.
Speaker 1: We like to say their names, and we like to
Speaker 1: get it right and that sort of thing. So the
Speaker 1: man who kneeled on the neck of George Floyd, I
Speaker 1: believe his sentence was like twenty two and a half years, right,
Speaker 1: which again a lot of people wanted more, right, because
Speaker 1: he killed that man slowly, intentionally, it was deliberate, and
Speaker 1: it was at no point did he looked like he
Speaker 1: was taking pleasure in it. You know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: do something for eight minutes that's physical unless you enjoy
Speaker 1: it to some degree, especially when we don't have to
Speaker 1: do it. I don't exercise because it's whack. But there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people that wanted him to have
Speaker 1: a much longer sentence. And I remember saying on that day, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people wanted. But let's be honest.
Speaker 1: Let's be fair. Twenty two and a half years is
Speaker 1: not zero. It might not be the win that we wanted,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly not a loss because we knew how
Speaker 1: this could have gone. He could have just walked out
Speaker 1: of there, right, And so I will say again this one,
Speaker 1: admittedly is a lot more difficult to say, but there
Speaker 1: was a conviction, and for better or worse, it is
Speaker 1: forever documented in the annals of history in this country
Speaker 1: that for this woman taking the life of this black man,
Speaker 1: the courts agreed that it was wrong for her to
Speaker 1: do that, because she could have walked away. They said
Speaker 1: it was wrong, and they did punish her. And listen, man,
Speaker 1: I have a son who will be twenty four soon.
Speaker 1: Doesn't look too dissimilar from Dante. You know that that's
Speaker 1: something that I can feel. I was twenty four not
Speaker 1: too long ago myself. So they said it was wrong,
Speaker 1: and they did punish her. So, but that sentence for
Speaker 1: that crime is almost not punishment. Well that's a fair
Speaker 1: statement to make. But here we are and we have
Speaker 1: to deal with it, and we I appreciate you for listening,
Speaker 1: So I guess we'll just leave it right there.
Speaker 3: Stick around your radios.
Speaker 1: We're coming back with more cific cipher right after this