Speaker 1: Welcome to Street Politicians, and I'm Tamika D. Mallory and
Speaker 1: this is the place where the streets and politics meet.
Speaker 1: There's so much happening in the country. It's been a
Speaker 1: crazy week. Thank you so much for joining us for
Speaker 1: another episode of Street Politicians. And let's get into it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about a bunch of things today. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, just thinking about the environment that we're
Speaker 1: in where all of this is just it's a lot happening.
Speaker 1: People are definitely feeling a lot of weight. You've got
Speaker 1: the president who's been impeached in there is you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a trial going on right now. A lot happening
Speaker 1: with that. You know, I try not to watch it
Speaker 1: because it's a lot of trauma. Um. But there is
Speaker 1: a real impeachment situation happening in our country and that
Speaker 1: has a lot of implications. UM. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: virus that's spreading across the world. We were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about this virus that's coming out of China. It's now
Speaker 1: in the US, UM and you know, just trying to
Speaker 1: learn more about it. I think it's the Corona virus
Speaker 1: is the appropriate name. UM. So that's a lot then
Speaker 1: we see no, that's it's just way serious. Like it's
Speaker 1: way serious I mean, it's it's spreading and serious now
Speaker 1: and people are dying, particularly in Asian countries and here.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, like I said, it's here now. So
Speaker 1: there are people in the United States that actually have
Speaker 1: the virus and they've been quarantined, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: happening there. And then you know, sex trafficking. I talked
Speaker 1: about it on all of our shows and we will
Speaker 1: continue to talk about it. We're actually working on some
Speaker 1: things throughout organization Until Freedom just to help educate people
Speaker 1: on missing women and girls, particularly black, Latino and Native
Speaker 1: American people don't often talk about the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of Native American women go missing from reservations and
Speaker 1: there you know, not a lot of focus on it.
Speaker 1: So we're doing some work to try to really bring
Speaker 1: a spotlight to that. Uh, there are cases of police
Speaker 1: brutality happening across the country. You know, I've been watching,
Speaker 1: Like we've been so busy working on other things with
Speaker 1: Until Freedom, but I still try to keep up with
Speaker 1: Attorney Lee Merritt, obviously, Shaun King and his platform, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Benjamin Crump and just attorneys across the country,
Speaker 1: and every single day they're posting about people who are
Speaker 1: being killed. So it's not on the news like it was.
Speaker 1: And I think, honestly, you know, I'm into some conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: I'm almost certain that like, at some point the energy
Speaker 1: with Black Lives Matter was so big and so hot
Speaker 1: that the media decided to stop playing so many stories
Speaker 1: of people who have been killed. And so now you
Speaker 1: don't see it as much, but it's still happening, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and of course there's a lot of It's
Speaker 1: like you have all of that happened, and I guess
Speaker 1: just a black experience, like we have all those things happening,
Speaker 1: and then black excellence is popping, like you see so
Speaker 1: much beauty and so many black folks doing great, amazing things.
Speaker 1: I know at some point we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: Grammys and the whole weekend, the Rock Nation Brunch, and
Speaker 1: so there's a lot happening. But I will say that,
Speaker 1: you know, in the Bible, when you read people who
Speaker 1: actually study and not, you know, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: you believe in and who you call God. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you really look at the Bible, it shows where
Speaker 1: there would be these types of situations where you would
Speaker 1: see earthquakes. Look at what's happening in Puerto Rico. It
Speaker 1: is so sad to see that they keep getting hit
Speaker 1: by very serious, serious weather conditions in these earthquakes, and
Speaker 1: that's happening all over the world. But that's again Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico is right here in the US. There are earthquakes,
Speaker 1: and I know that when you walk outside in New
Speaker 1: York and other places around the country, one day it's
Speaker 1: fifty degrees one day it's eleven degrees one. Climate change
Speaker 1: is a real serious thing. So there's so much that
Speaker 1: again is going on, and I know people are feeling
Speaker 1: very weight like heavy right. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we see a lot of beauty coming out of our
Speaker 1: communities too, And we're just resilient people for real, to
Speaker 1: go through all of that and still look good. I
Speaker 1: don't know how we're doing it, but we are. It is,
Speaker 1: so we'll try to cover some of it today. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was talking about the trauma, and
Speaker 1: obviously Kobe Bryant is what has happened, his death and
Speaker 1: his daughter's death, and the deaths of all the other
Speaker 1: individuals who were on that flight. Um, yesterday. It's traumatic,
Speaker 1: Like it is heartbreaking, so heartbreaking, and you have to
Speaker 1: ask yourself, like, how do we just deal with so
Speaker 1: much trauma in our lives every day, especially with people
Speaker 1: who we don't even know, Like, you know, we're experiencing
Speaker 1: trauma with people we don't even know. I just think,
Speaker 1: um um sleeping peace to Kobe Bryant. Man. I was
Speaker 1: in the movie theater with my sons and we went
Speaker 1: to see it, you know, we went to see um
Speaker 1: Dr Doolittle. So and they were enjoying the movie, and
Speaker 1: I got a call saying that, you know, Kobe Bryant
Speaker 1: had died, and I'm like what. I grant out the
Speaker 1: movie and started making some calls and you know, to
Speaker 1: actually found out that it was true, and I just
Speaker 1: was so confused. And it's so crazy that Lebron just
Speaker 1: passed his scoring you know, he just passed him and
Speaker 1: scoring the night before, you know. And so when the
Speaker 1: people who like me, who don't understand a lot about
Speaker 1: sports and basketball, that means that Kobe Bryant had one
Speaker 1: scoring record, right, he was he was because he was
Speaker 1: more points, he got more points. He had passed him
Speaker 1: in amount of points collectively throughout his career and Lebron
Speaker 1: had just passed him on the list. And when you
Speaker 1: when you understand how much of a competitive Kobe is,
Speaker 1: it's just like crazy that the minute somebody passes him
Speaker 1: and beats him, he would lose his life. Like his
Speaker 1: his spirit was competitive, you know. And when I think
Speaker 1: when I sat there and I thought about that, then
Speaker 1: I thought about when I found out that he was
Speaker 1: on his plane with his daughter, just understanding the type
Speaker 1: of man that he is, and understanding that I find
Speaker 1: so much simililarities in the way that we compete and
Speaker 1: the drive that we have, and just imagining what he
Speaker 1: was probably going through on that helicopter when his daughter
Speaker 1: he couldn't save his daughter just because he probably wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about it. So I wouldn't have been thinking about
Speaker 1: myself going through that, and here my daughter cried and
Speaker 1: met everything in me would be trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how do I save my daughter. I'll give my life
Speaker 1: forget me, for my daughter needs to be saved. So
Speaker 1: I thought about all of those things at one time,
Speaker 1: and it made me emotional. Started texting people, calling friends,
Speaker 1: telling him I love him, getting Texas from people. I
Speaker 1: think it made you really just reflect on your life
Speaker 1: and what life means. And that's the thing like today.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it was happening all night, but today,
Speaker 1: when I woke up and started going through my social
Speaker 1: media feed, I saw so many people talking about hugging
Speaker 1: your loved ones and telling your loved ones that you
Speaker 1: care about them. And you know, you always have to
Speaker 1: ask yourself, is it that just in these moments we
Speaker 1: start doing that, and then we get back to regular
Speaker 1: life and we forget about the little things, just the
Speaker 1: little conversations. I read something on Felicia Butterfield Jones, my
Speaker 1: our good friend, on her social media page where she said, um,
Speaker 1: that people, and I'm not going to quote it exactly,
Speaker 1: but that somebody who was on that flight had a
Speaker 1: plan for today or the next day and they but
Speaker 1: they say God is the only planner. That's right. You
Speaker 1: want to make God laugh? Then you're telling you But
Speaker 1: I do want to make sure I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: cut you up, but I do want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we mentioned that again. There were other families there,
Speaker 1: and there was a mother and father with their daughter,
Speaker 1: and then a mother with her daughter. The pilot. So
Speaker 1: many people lost their lives yeah, man, So we just
Speaker 1: want to send out our condolences to them, to Vanessa Nasa,
Speaker 1: her husband, and her daughter. You know, so I couldn't
Speaker 1: even imagine what she's going through right now, I think,
Speaker 1: and anybody in her circumference was able, you know, to
Speaker 1: lift her, to hold on to her, to hug her,
Speaker 1: because she's definitely going through a lot right now. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna findest thing while you're talking that someone wrote
Speaker 1: on Facebook that I thought was so powerful in such
Speaker 1: an example of as women what we experience, and it
Speaker 1: talks about strength, the strength of a woman, and of
Speaker 1: course it doesn't want to pull up at this moment,
Speaker 1: but basically it starts out by saying that this today,
Speaker 1: Vanessa learned about a strength that she didn't know she
Speaker 1: had yesterday. You know that we go through things and
Speaker 1: you say I could never deal with that until it
Speaker 1: happens to you, and then there's a strength that you
Speaker 1: draw from that you never know you had. We constantly
Speaker 1: see women like that, when Trayvonn's mother, you know, Lucia
Speaker 1: Macbeth Jordan, people that we've seen walk into their own
Speaker 1: own mothers who have walked into their greatness after the
Speaker 1: biggest tragedies that they've had exactly deal with. Man. But
Speaker 1: I also I don't want to. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: want to even bring this up. I really don't. But
Speaker 1: you have to bring this up, you know, because somehow
Speaker 1: racism always sense. It's like, you can't, we can't just
Speaker 1: be centered in a conversation. Something else has to happen
Speaker 1: that just gets people off the point and on to
Speaker 1: a racist issue. Because I didn't even I didn't even
Speaker 1: want to bring it up. You know, it was all
Speaker 1: over my timeline. A bunch of people were tweeting it,
Speaker 1: and it was this combinator. Commentator is that combinator? You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying common haater, That's that's common kind
Speaker 1: of like what it means anyway. But there was a
Speaker 1: comment you just did the same thing that she is
Speaker 1: being accused. But no, but listen when you can hear
Speaker 1: the words I said. Because I said what I said, commentator,
Speaker 1: I ain't saying I said something different, you know. So,
Speaker 1: but there's definitely there's a there's a balance. Some people
Speaker 1: believe that she didn't. But when I listened to it
Speaker 1: over a hundred times, you know, and said that she
Speaker 1: the commentator was she was reported on the death of
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant, and the context of the sentence didn't even
Speaker 1: really make sense to me. That's like the kind of
Speaker 1: star that was perfectly cast on the Los Angeles Niggers,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, like if I could ask you to stay
Speaker 1: with us for gonna you know, she said, Kobe Bryant
Speaker 1: was perfectly cast it on the l a Niggers mhm,
Speaker 1: and just said I mean Lakers. And when you listen,
Speaker 1: why was he perfectly casted? Like what made him perfectly
Speaker 1: sit on the thing? This is a black man, told
Speaker 1: what made him perfectly casting on this team that never existed?
Speaker 1: She says that she was she was saying she was
Speaker 1: trying to say Lakers and thinking of Nix at the
Speaker 1: same time, and that why would be New Yorker. I
Speaker 1: don't know who she is, even if you're a New Yorker, right,
Speaker 1: you know that Kobe Bryant never played for the Nick.
Speaker 1: The Knicks weren't playing, but she might not be a
Speaker 1: sports person. Here's the thing. But I listened to it,
Speaker 1: and it sounds to me like she said nigger. That's
Speaker 1: what I heard. And almost everyone that I know that's black,
Speaker 1: and particularly black people who actually use the word, and
Speaker 1: by the way, on social media, even white folks who
Speaker 1: probably use it and don't want nobody to know they
Speaker 1: use it. They said they heard n that's what I heard.
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to join the cancel culture on her though,
Speaker 1: I'm not ready? Why do why this is what I wanted?
Speaker 1: Why are we constantly being asked not to join cancel
Speaker 1: culture when we can do things we can be They
Speaker 1: can say we said or did things that nobody ever
Speaker 1: heard and cancel us. But we can literally see and
Speaker 1: hear things with our own is, in our own eyes,
Speaker 1: and we shouldn't join the cancelase. At what point do
Speaker 1: we say that certain things have to be respected? When
Speaker 1: they called Martin Luther king, mort Luther coon and these things,
Speaker 1: they say, we made a mistake, Like why does it always?
Speaker 1: Why don't we make mistakes and say something about the
Speaker 1: cracker or why don't why don't we accidentally say honky
Speaker 1: or things like that that are derogative? Why do we
Speaker 1: never you never see that happen? Well, some people deliberately say,
Speaker 1: but that's what we and they deliberately say it, and
Speaker 1: you know that it's being said deliberately. But why don't
Speaker 1: we ever make that mistake with other words? Why why
Speaker 1: do when we speaking about other people these words. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, I don't know about words, but I know
Speaker 1: we make mistakes, right, We make mistakes, and and that
Speaker 1: really kind of leads us into another conversation about Kobe.
Speaker 1: But we do make mistakes in life, and there should
Speaker 1: be some rooms, some grace um given to every individual.
Speaker 1: Racism is a little bit different. We have to be
Speaker 1: able to challenge that. And I particularly don't appreciate somebody
Speaker 1: telling me that they didn't say something when I I
Speaker 1: believe that they did. But you know, again, I'm not
Speaker 1: an expert. And my good friend Tony Lindsay argued me
Speaker 1: down that he heard nakers and he actually does audio
Speaker 1: and he's like, he's in the film industry, right, so
Speaker 1: he's a producer, and he said this is what he heard.
Speaker 1: So us, there are different people coming from different perspectives.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we can be like them. The they,
Speaker 1: the they that is constantly challenging us, judging us, and
Speaker 1: trying to condemn us. I think that the beauty and
Speaker 1: maybe you'll say that's probably our issue. That's probably one
Speaker 1: of the things about black folks in particular. That's problematic.
Speaker 1: We always forget we want to hug the cop that
Speaker 1: killed both of them exact, And that's the problem for me.
Speaker 1: It's like we we sit here and we take abuse,
Speaker 1: We see things that are blatant, and we figure out
Speaker 1: ways to to shure them and ignore the facts. And
Speaker 1: and for me, you know, I don't. I'm not a
Speaker 1: show of anything when it comes to that situation. But
Speaker 1: I know what I heard. I know what I heard.
Speaker 1: If somebody else heard something different and they have the
Speaker 1: ability to make that decision and that determination based on
Speaker 1: what they heard, then cool. But I know what I heard.
Speaker 1: I know. I mean, I feel like I heard the
Speaker 1: same thing. But again, I'm not ready to join the
Speaker 1: cancel culture that says that's it forever. I think that
Speaker 1: if in fact, she did say it, your racism real,
Speaker 1: it is dirty head, and you better like figure out
Speaker 1: how not to allow that to happen again. But that's
Speaker 1: another day. It's a lot of debate around that. But
Speaker 1: talking about mistakes and evolving, um, you know there there
Speaker 1: there is another debate online and it seems like this
Speaker 1: happens all the time, when that's because there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as a perfect individual right, where people are talking
Speaker 1: about where people are talking about Kobe's past, right and
Speaker 1: in discretions, things that happen, you know, extramarital affairs. And
Speaker 1: particularly the major concern or issue that I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of people basically women speaking about, is the woman
Speaker 1: who accused him of rape. Right, Um, people want to
Speaker 1: talk about that right now, in the midst of and
Speaker 1: and and Do I think that yesterday was the right
Speaker 1: day to talk about that. I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable with us having to go directly to
Speaker 1: the negatives on folks when some one blows up in
Speaker 1: a plane with their child, That to me is a
Speaker 1: little out of place. But I do have to reconcile
Speaker 1: the fact that women, specifically women who have been sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: it is triggering for them when they see someone who
Speaker 1: they believe, they believe to be a perpetrator of sexual
Speaker 1: violence being celebrated in such a way. Well, I have
Speaker 1: I have two different points of views. First of all,
Speaker 1: you know, I definitely don't think yesterday was the day
Speaker 1: of bringing it up, because we have it with a conversation.
Speaker 1: How long ago was it that these allegations came up?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's been a long quite a
Speaker 1: long time, and they haven't came up since then. And
Speaker 1: and and we actually we asked ourselves, at what point
Speaker 1: does allegations that have been the charges have been dismissed.
Speaker 1: At what point does does hit the allegations not have
Speaker 1: the same level of validity or do we just completely
Speaker 1: somebody who's been exonerated of charges. Are we going to
Speaker 1: completely continue to condemn him and call him these names
Speaker 1: and call him a rapists and things like that. We
Speaker 1: at what point do you say, Okay, the charges will dropped.
Speaker 1: Like I want everybody to understand, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: very clear, I am not a rape apologist anyone who's
Speaker 1: raped a woman, anyone who has done something to a
Speaker 1: woman that is against her will when she said no,
Speaker 1: whether whatever it is. I believe that you need to
Speaker 1: deal with the consequences of or acts. But I also
Speaker 1: want to know where is the line drawing If a
Speaker 1: person has been accused or something and those accusations have
Speaker 1: been deemed not valid or they have been dismissed, when
Speaker 1: do we give that persons back their reality, give them
Speaker 1: back their humanity. Because once you've been accused of that
Speaker 1: is it hasn't been any You know, no one has
Speaker 1: dropped the charge. Once you've been accused and you guilty
Speaker 1: of you lost your humanity as a man, right, I
Speaker 1: mean when when, if those charges have been dismissed, do
Speaker 1: we give that person back his humanity? Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: but then also there are some people who would argue,
Speaker 1: what about the humanity of a person who may have
Speaker 1: filed claims? And because of the way in which the
Speaker 1: world just operated at one point, and particularly during the
Speaker 1: time when Kobe was accused of this, the athlete, the
Speaker 1: star athlete, the celebrity, those types of individuals really were
Speaker 1: they weren't They were like slapped on the wrist. That's
Speaker 1: just the truth. We're in the meto era now, where
Speaker 1: there's been a shift in terms of accountability for sexual
Speaker 1: assault and sexual violence. This is a new day that
Speaker 1: we're living in this moment, living in in this moment.
Speaker 1: How do you think that someone like a Bill Cosby
Speaker 1: and Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly and the list goes
Speaker 1: on and on, the Jeff Epstein's of the world, how
Speaker 1: were they able to get away with all that has happened?
Speaker 1: How did that? How did that continue? How did they
Speaker 1: continue to be able to abuse individuals. But even like
Speaker 1: you see, I believe wholeheartedly that everything that R. Kelly
Speaker 1: has been accused of, that he is responsible for. That's
Speaker 1: what I believe. That's my position right. And he was
Speaker 1: doing that at a time when he kept getting slapped
Speaker 1: on the wrist. But today under this new me too
Speaker 1: movement where women are really coming forward and feeling powerful
Speaker 1: and organized and fighting. Shout out to my sister Toronno Burke,
Speaker 1: who started the me too movement about twelve or thirteen
Speaker 1: years ago. And again she started at twelve or thirteen
Speaker 1: years ago, and it took this long for her to
Speaker 1: get the type of a tension and and and to
Speaker 1: be able to have the success with her campaign that
Speaker 1: she has now. So we're living in two different eras
Speaker 1: and now our Kelly is finally in prison, which we
Speaker 1: know he should have been in jail, or at least
Speaker 1: I know. I'm not going to speak for you. I
Speaker 1: think that we agree, we've talked about it, but are
Speaker 1: Kelly he should have been in prison? Then he should
Speaker 1: have been in prison for peeing on a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old girl. He should have been in prison for what
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of things that happened, but he's
Speaker 1: just there now. So I just think that we don't know,
Speaker 1: and Kobe Bryant is no longer with us, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to relive or relitigate something that, as you said,
Speaker 1: it was thrown out. We haven't heard from this woman
Speaker 1: in a long time. You know. If if what she
Speaker 1: says did happen to her, then I hope that you
Speaker 1: know she her healing process continues. I really do. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I'm not I am
Speaker 1: not personally prepared to discuss anything. I mean, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about when you know, the dog walking, whatever may have
Speaker 1: gone wrong in your life, when you and your daughter
Speaker 1: blow up in a plane, I think that has to
Speaker 1: be some humanity has to be. Humanity is that when
Speaker 1: a person dies, like when we just think about Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: you know, and then somebody coming out with these allegations
Speaker 1: in the whole movie, when a man is passed, like
Speaker 1: I think for me, it's like some some your death
Speaker 1: should be sacred, you know, if if your situation, whatever
Speaker 1: you were dealing with in your life. See it's hard
Speaker 1: to say, because life should be My life should have
Speaker 1: been sacred. So if in fact, you abuse me, that's
Speaker 1: sacred as well. I mean, I think that it's hard
Speaker 1: for us because at this point I can't argue back
Speaker 1: for me when I'm no longer here, and you make
Speaker 1: an accusation and you you bet, you gather evidence, and
Speaker 1: you grather all your people that's against me. I I
Speaker 1: don't have an opportunity to fight for myself. So what
Speaker 1: you're doing now, you you you were or you didn't.
Speaker 1: You didn't come make these claims, so well, no claims.
Speaker 1: I'm saying you were not able to validate these claims
Speaker 1: during my life. So you utilize my death to validate
Speaker 1: your claims and you destroy my legacy, and you and
Speaker 1: and you, but then my life has been destroyed. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we could argue this all day, and we
Speaker 1: got to move on because you know, it's a sticky situation.
Speaker 1: I think the best way for us to be able
Speaker 1: to do, because we can't tell victims how to address
Speaker 1: being victimized. I think what we have to be able
Speaker 1: to do, though, is draw some lines around a box
Speaker 1: and say a man and his daughter blow up in
Speaker 1: a plane. Let us have twenty four hours forty eight
Speaker 1: hours before we began to go back and dig up
Speaker 1: everything that a person and then the wife who's also
Speaker 1: a husband, and her daughters. Now you so do you it?
Speaker 1: Do you care about what she understand that because she's
Speaker 1: a victim. But my argument, no, no, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: victimizing her. Your husband or whomever it is may have
Speaker 1: victimized all of us, well, but everybody, but everybody's experienced.
Speaker 1: You can't tell me to be silent in my pain. Pain.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that, here's a deal. It's like this,
Speaker 1: this is what there's a level. There has to be
Speaker 1: a level of statu your libertations or something. Statue when
Speaker 1: you're making up words. Statute, statue, statue, no statue. I
Speaker 1: don't believe it's okay, Well we're gonna look it up.
Speaker 1: I think you might be right. You know i'd be wrong,
Speaker 1: So go ahead on and I'm listening to you anyway.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is, I think when you die, and
Speaker 1: you can't be charged for the crime, because you can't
Speaker 1: charge me for a crime in my death, it is
Speaker 1: impossible for you to do it like you're not. There's
Speaker 1: nothing that you can receive. You can't because I can't
Speaker 1: be tried, I can't be held accountable. I hear. So
Speaker 1: if I can't be held accountable for a crime while
Speaker 1: I'm dead, then you should not be able to bring forth.
Speaker 1: But no, it's not about it's not about bring it
Speaker 1: first of all. But but my son. First of all,
Speaker 1: we haven't heard anything from the woman. So no, no,
Speaker 1: we haven't heard anything from her. So don't say you
Speaker 1: can't try to destroy my legacy because she didn't say anything. Thing.
Speaker 1: This is, this is, and I want us to move on.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal. When you die, people not gonna
Speaker 1: make up a new story. They're gonna talk about who
Speaker 1: you were, and that includes everything about you. That little
Speaker 1: dash between the day you were born and the day
Speaker 1: you die is all that people will know. So if
Speaker 1: you want that dash to look a certain way, you
Speaker 1: gotta live a certain And if you and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I'm not well because well, because if you just
Speaker 1: come out the blue, or you don't come out the blue,
Speaker 1: if you just decide that something happened, and you decide
Speaker 1: today when I'm but don't say, don't who is the
Speaker 1: you because again the victim did not speak on But
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is that when when the news is reporting,
Speaker 1: unfortunately I will live to Mika Mallory will always have
Speaker 1: to deal with the issue of anti Semitism that was
Speaker 1: waged against me. When I die, people are gonna say
Speaker 1: nicely and not so nicely, during her life, this happened.
Speaker 1: That's just the reality. No one is saying today. What
Speaker 1: the bottom line is. I hear what you're saying. They
Speaker 1: can say doing your life, this happened. But the bottom
Speaker 1: line is the validity of what they're saying. But that's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Okay, so that's but that's neither
Speaker 1: had so. But that's all we were talking about. That
Speaker 1: people want to bring it up now, people want to
Speaker 1: bring it up. No, but but that's out what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, because there's no way to further validify or
Speaker 1: not or solidify or whatever words you want to use.
Speaker 1: And I think I'm making up words. There's no way
Speaker 1: to be able to do that, Like you said, when
Speaker 1: there's not two people able you know, that are able
Speaker 1: to discuss the issue. However, I still think that we
Speaker 1: should be able to allow death to be deaf and
Speaker 1: let death to take its course, and then all people
Speaker 1: are gonna do is talk about who you are, what
Speaker 1: you did, and what your story may or may not
Speaker 1: have been. That's just the reality. But we should move on. Okay,
Speaker 1: So listen, we can just agree to this. I agree
Speaker 1: with someone you said some of it. I don't. That's fine,
Speaker 1: we always do. But we can still move because we
Speaker 1: have to. This is a serious topic, very serious time.
Speaker 1: But I just want everybody to see that there's different
Speaker 1: points of view. They are there are. As much as
Speaker 1: I gravitate and identify what my black women struggle with
Speaker 1: all women struggle, I just want you to kind of undergo.
Speaker 1: But still so, Mrs Sippy, we just came back from Mississippi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a major rally, protests against what's going on
Speaker 1: and part in prisons, the whole nboc um. It was
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, it's a lot going on there. And
Speaker 1: I mean even today I received reports of a man
Speaker 1: who may or may not have hung himself yesterday or
Speaker 1: hanging himself yesterday. I don't I don't even know, Like
Speaker 1: you're not sure if everybody's committing suicide, you don't really
Speaker 1: know what's going on that you know, the state is
Speaker 1: responsible for the world being of those persons, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that's what I think. That's what it is. I think
Speaker 1: people get it so misconstrued something more. The people who
Speaker 1: are out there with us, they get that when you
Speaker 1: listen to the governor statements, either governor, you listen to
Speaker 1: the new governor or the old one. They've seem to
Speaker 1: put all the owners on the prison. They and to me,
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy that you put onners on prisoners
Speaker 1: that are housing the facility in which you run. You
Speaker 1: have officers who are put in there to run the facility.
Speaker 1: Awarding exactly. You have Awarding who has officers who run
Speaker 1: these different houses. Me me being formally in cars, ready
Speaker 1: to understand how it goes. You know, understand that we
Speaker 1: don't run the prison. We don't make the rules like
Speaker 1: there are people put in place to enforce the rules.
Speaker 1: So when the rules are not being carried out properly,
Speaker 1: when the facility is not up to standard of human living,
Speaker 1: you know, those things you can't put on the people
Speaker 1: who are under the you know, under the the How
Speaker 1: should I say, who are the people who are inside
Speaker 1: the facility? People are running they have to take that
Speaker 1: level they do. And you know, there was there was
Speaker 1: a video and we talked about it. UM. Actually I
Speaker 1: did an interview UM on when we were there the
Speaker 1: last not just this time that passed on this week,
Speaker 1: but there was another time when we went there. The
Speaker 1: first time we went to Mississippi for this particular issue,
Speaker 1: UM and I did an interview with the family who
Speaker 1: their their child's video had gone viral because he was
Speaker 1: hanging in the cell. Man, they have one moment, they
Speaker 1: have one moment. Who will look about about clad hunger?
Speaker 1: And I say child because that's important to know. It
Speaker 1: was his aunt and his mother and other family members
Speaker 1: who were trying to find someone to help them because
Speaker 1: their loved one was on a video. That's how they
Speaker 1: saw him. Go check out that video on Until Freedom.
Speaker 1: You can go to Until Freedom's instagram and you will
Speaker 1: see it. And the warden is literally standing at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the steps while other prisoners are wrapping up
Speaker 1: his body and then carrying him down. There's no personnel.
Speaker 1: She's not helping, she's standing there. This is a woman
Speaker 1: who I believe to be a warden. The other the
Speaker 1: families have said it's the warden. The person who put
Speaker 1: the video out says it's the warden, So you know,
Speaker 1: they say it's the warden. I believe it's the warden.
Speaker 1: She's standing there watching them doing the work of wrapping
Speaker 1: up a body and then bringing it out, and this
Speaker 1: and the sheet, and this is after he had been
Speaker 1: hanging for they say, somewhere between eight to twelve hours.
Speaker 1: So you see different videos of different time periods where
Speaker 1: he's hanging in the cell. That to me is it's
Speaker 1: it's a humanitarian crime, it's a crime. It's negligent. It's negligence,
Speaker 1: and I think it is. And the governor's position is
Speaker 1: that cell phones, contrabands, cell phones are the problem in
Speaker 1: the jail, and my position is the countrymant cell phones
Speaker 1: are the only reason that we know that these things
Speaker 1: that happened right, the cell phones aided the whistle blowers
Speaker 1: inside the prison. As was said at the rally that
Speaker 1: we held in Mississippi on on Friday, I want to
Speaker 1: shout up before you go. I want to shout out
Speaker 1: people like Big Cred who came out, friends, brothers who
Speaker 1: are in the hip hop community, utilize their voices, who
Speaker 1: want to uplift the local Yeah, Yandy for freedom. Friends.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was so many people that came from
Speaker 1: across the country to be a part of to be
Speaker 1: a part of supporting the local folks, and that's why
Speaker 1: we should do a show on how people should engage
Speaker 1: when they want to help a local community with an issue. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Team Rock Rock Nations Philanthropic arm they were the ones
Speaker 1: to help fund and support the rally, and so they're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of work trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to bring legislation and protests and all of the different
Speaker 1: things that we need together in order to support the movement.
Speaker 1: So shout out to them for that work. Um, But
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't just parachute into Mississippi and say
Speaker 1: we're taking over. We went into Mississippi to find out
Speaker 1: what do the local organizers need and then to help
Speaker 1: uplift them and really sort of bring their voices to
Speaker 1: the forefront. But people are dying every day. The numbers
Speaker 1: that we have that are official numbers coming out are
Speaker 1: twelve deaths, right, whether that be suicide or gang violence
Speaker 1: as they say, or some other way because people have infections.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things were happening there. There's nobody
Speaker 1: speaking about the amount of injuries. We have videos where
Speaker 1: we see um prisoners who have shots from these rubber
Speaker 1: bullets that the officers shoot with jail jail, right, they're
Speaker 1: literally shot with holes and their torsos in their backs
Speaker 1: where they're bleeding. There's no one given them the proper
Speaker 1: medical infections, Like it's just it's just so crazy when
Speaker 1: you really look at this situation to understand that this
Speaker 1: is actually happened, you don't believe because I try to
Speaker 1: tell people being formally incarcerated, there's so many things that
Speaker 1: go on that a person who has never been in
Speaker 1: those situations don't even actually like, there's no way that
Speaker 1: that happens when you're able to see these things on
Speaker 1: these videos. There's another one we've seen you actually witness
Speaker 1: a violence with a fight, you know someone That one
Speaker 1: was really to see a video um where you know,
Speaker 1: where you see a man stabbing another man and they're
Speaker 1: running around the jail the prison and there's no guards,
Speaker 1: like where are the guards? Mike's sperience. I've actually literally
Speaker 1: seen situations like that. I've been on tears with certain
Speaker 1: guards allow things like that to happen because they don't
Speaker 1: like one of the prisoners, or they with the other
Speaker 1: prisoner and they feel like some they leave someone sell
Speaker 1: open on purpose or they leave them well obviously because
Speaker 1: these two guys are running around the prison. You can
Speaker 1: hear other people are inside their cells locked up, so
Speaker 1: it's like, how are they out? What is the protocol?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the whole situations out of control.
Speaker 1: And also, while I was looking at my phone, you're right,
Speaker 1: it's statute, So I was wrong. But I think it's
Speaker 1: important for us to tell people what they can do,
Speaker 1: because everybody's like, what can what can they do? I
Speaker 1: think one you've got to go to the Color of
Speaker 1: Change website. Go to the Color of Change website that's
Speaker 1: color of Change dot org and look for a shutdown parchment,
Speaker 1: shut down parchment, color of Change dot org shut down
Speaker 1: parchment shirt. I'm like you, I was about to get nervous,
Speaker 1: like what happened here? Oh you have your closed parchment
Speaker 1: T shirts? George Jesus look at his closed parchment. But
Speaker 1: I'm here. So for those of you are listening, I
Speaker 1: just showed my closed parchment T shirts. So you know
Speaker 1: you can go to I Woman TV and see my
Speaker 1: closed parchment T shirt again, shout out to Team Rocks
Speaker 1: those T shirts. And we're not we gotta do a
Speaker 1: whole conversation about jay Z because I'm sure there's people
Speaker 1: are gonna be like, oh, now Jay Z is helping
Speaker 1: with this, but then what about Colin Kaepernick in the NFL?
Speaker 1: But we should talk about it another day. But I
Speaker 1: just want to acknowledge so that folks who are listening
Speaker 1: don't feel like we don't understand that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of complications in this work, this movement. I tell people
Speaker 1: all the time, it's very very complex, very calm, so
Speaker 1: many different entry points. And you know, if you look
Speaker 1: at historically, Yeah, if you look at historically, there's a
Speaker 1: few between milcol Me Martin know and how they viewed
Speaker 1: each other, and how Martin Malcolm called Martin certain things,
Speaker 1: and but we know how instrumental both of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things about one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think is important, and I've watched this,
Speaker 1: you know. I worked for a National Action Network National
Speaker 1: Action Network, which is an organist, a civil rights organization
Speaker 1: that's been around for over twenty five years. And while
Speaker 1: sometimes the n DOUBLE, a CP, the Urban League and
Speaker 1: NAN had different positions about different issues, but when it
Speaker 1: came to things that was important, we all found a
Speaker 1: way to come together to address them. And I think
Speaker 1: we've got to figure that out that We're not gonna
Speaker 1: always be on the same page, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be some issues that we don't necessarily work on together.
Speaker 1: But there's gonna be other things that we need the
Speaker 1: force of the entire unit, the entire family, to come
Speaker 1: together on. And I feel like parchment is one of
Speaker 1: those issues. You know, I wrote on my Facebook page,
Speaker 1: I want to know where the rabbis and to eat
Speaker 1: my ms and all the pastors and the pink pussy
Speaker 1: hat folks and the women's march which we built. That
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be an intersectional movement. Um that's what
Speaker 1: we left. That's the legacy that Lenda, Carmen and Bob
Speaker 1: and I left behind, that this is an intersectional movement
Speaker 1: that is supposed to care about all people and particularly
Speaker 1: folks who are at literally in the most vulnerable places
Speaker 1: in our society. Parchment is that you've got people locked
Speaker 1: up that can't just leave the situation. They're locked up
Speaker 1: and they're literally dying. And it's not just parchment. Parchment
Speaker 1: is everywhere. Since we've been going through this everywhere, I
Speaker 1: mean basically, we started out with m d C the
Speaker 1: first part, and then we've been getting Alabama. No. My
Speaker 1: d m s are overflowing with pictures, with text messages,
Speaker 1: with just you know, just drawing out situations that people
Speaker 1: are in prisons that mirror what's going on in partiment
Speaker 1: that we realize that partiments everywhere. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: going to be done. So we talked about the petition.
Speaker 1: That's really important, but also again supporting the local folks.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, you can follow Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition. That's
Speaker 1: Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition all the details about their demands
Speaker 1: because there, you know, folks like to make us feel
Speaker 1: like these movements is just folks yelling and we're just
Speaker 1: protesting and we don't really have substantial demands and a real,
Speaker 1: real movement that is based upon solutions. Well, there are demands.
Speaker 1: Number one, the governor has the ability to commute sentences
Speaker 1: of people who are in prison for non violent offenses,
Speaker 1: or folks who have been in prison for thirty forty
Speaker 1: years there elderly and perhaps they did commit a crime
Speaker 1: at one point that we would see as you know,
Speaker 1: violent crime or something like that, but they they they're
Speaker 1: older and compassionate release. He has the ability to do that. Also,
Speaker 1: there are at least five thousand people because parchment is
Speaker 1: overcrowded and there are at least five thousand people who
Speaker 1: are eligible for parole. Again, low level offenses where folks
Speaker 1: are in prison. I mean, we don't have time to
Speaker 1: talk about Mississippi sentencing law. That's a whole another thing.
Speaker 1: Where people are being locked up for right, small marijuana
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, somehow they got twenty thirty years
Speaker 1: in prison, and people are like, you know, why should
Speaker 1: we care. That's that's what they're saying because they look
Speaker 1: at the situations and in many cases, people believe that
Speaker 1: everyone in prison is one of the most violent, vile
Speaker 1: people that you can see, and it's not everybody's situation.
Speaker 1: Even those who are violent, they still deserve to be
Speaker 1: treated like human beings because the reality situation is we
Speaker 1: there has to be level of humanity, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, because that's what the statue quote, that's what
Speaker 1: rehabilitation is about. And even if you if you put
Speaker 1: them inside this because some of them aren't coming home.
Speaker 1: So the real the reality of rehabilitation is not factual
Speaker 1: and it's not actual. But the bottom line is there's
Speaker 1: a statute and there is a certain level of humanity
Speaker 1: that the facility demands that you. So you have to
Speaker 1: uphold that for everyone that is incarcerated within that facility,
Speaker 1: right because people are like these folks are animals, Why
Speaker 1: should we care about them? But someone like you who
Speaker 1: went to prison for a crime you didn't commit and
Speaker 1: spent seven years there, I mean, and I understand. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people just like that, you know.
Speaker 1: I know people who have been convicted of twenty five
Speaker 1: years for the same for similar situations, for mistaken identity,
Speaker 1: for low level crimes that they classified as violence. Someone
Speaker 1: supposedly stole a pocketbook from a woman who had one
Speaker 1: dollar in the pocketbook, and they said he had on robbery.
Speaker 1: He never had anything, but they never court him with anything,
Speaker 1: but the man ended up doing twenty years or a
Speaker 1: good friend one of my mentors and used to sit
Speaker 1: there and tell me that he thought it was a
Speaker 1: joke when he was going to trials. Him and his
Speaker 1: friends laugh as this elderly white lady said there and said,
Speaker 1: oh she had in Hawaii was one dollar and he
Speaker 1: supposedly took it, and he's like, why would I do that?
Speaker 1: And they thought it was a joke until they sentence
Speaker 1: him to twenty years of life and he just came
Speaker 1: home last year. You know, one of the most brilliant
Speaker 1: individuals I know. He's created his own nonprofit. He's he's
Speaker 1: mentoring young boys. So these situations happened deadly is there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of people inside prison that don't even
Speaker 1: supposed to be there. A different situations've been classified as violence.
Speaker 1: So you look and you and you put this stigma
Speaker 1: on people because they're in this situation and you don't
Speaker 1: know what everybody's going through. You don't know with their reality.
Speaker 1: That's right. It has to be one standard of humane
Speaker 1: treatment for prisons. And also we as taxpayers, we spend
Speaker 1: our money, like we literally are paying for these prisons
Speaker 1: as some people are coming out of there. So would
Speaker 1: you prefer to have someone come out of the prison
Speaker 1: who has been living like an animal inside and now
Speaker 1: they're in society with the rest of us, or do
Speaker 1: you want them to be in there getting the proper
Speaker 1: treatment so that they can mentally and physically and emotionally
Speaker 1: into society just like you and I. You know, so
Speaker 1: I just feel like it creates I'll tell you all
Speaker 1: the time, it creates a mind state of savagery because
Speaker 1: when you when you're surrounded by feces and you're surrounded
Speaker 1: by sub level these people are using the bath, living
Speaker 1: in plastic bags feed that they're using, they're doing a
Speaker 1: number two in plastic bags that don't get picked up immediately,
Speaker 1: hid it up, sitting in corners and waiting for someone
Speaker 1: to come get it. That the mind saying that that
Speaker 1: has to be Just think about it, Like I can
Speaker 1: tell you situations where inside solitary confinement where people have
Speaker 1: put feces in their mouths just to get somebody fitted
Speaker 1: on it. Like the mind state that you have to
Speaker 1: have to do that. So this is what create this,
Speaker 1: This is what these situations have created. And you know,
Speaker 1: I just think that when we look at this parchment
Speaker 1: is everywhere, is everywhere, But you know, you gotta you know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking right here right now at this story that
Speaker 1: just literally broke around Nicki Minaj's brother receiving twenty five
Speaker 1: years for repeatedly raping his stepdaughter who was eleven years old.
Speaker 1: And so you gotta be able to talk to people
Speaker 1: and help them understand because it's hard to reconcile. Why
Speaker 1: I should go and protests and fight for someone who
Speaker 1: committed this type of heinous act against the child. My
Speaker 1: thing is this, I'm not even gonna lie to you.
Speaker 1: You know, I think the worst crimes in the world
Speaker 1: that you can commit is rape in pedophile like to me,
Speaker 1: I don't believe, I personally don't believe that you deserve
Speaker 1: to live. That's just my personal thing, because that's all.
Speaker 1: It's a whole difference, that's a whole another thing, conversation,
Speaker 1: so many topics, topics. But what I say is, if
Speaker 1: there is a statue and there is a common ground
Speaker 1: for a prison, and you are housing that prison, then
Speaker 1: that's what has to happen. So now you're just gonna
Speaker 1: use statute for the rest of the people. Since I
Speaker 1: messed it up and thought I knew something that I
Speaker 1: do that don't even frame. That's what good yoused to like,
Speaker 1: somebody created these works, right, so we got to create
Speaker 1: new language. But but you know, I mean, I understand
Speaker 1: how folks feel like these are violent folks. But I
Speaker 1: just think that if you have one standard, then it
Speaker 1: captures all people. Because you have too many folks who
Speaker 1: are being exonerated. They're coming home from prison doing thirty years,
Speaker 1: twenty years, forty years with d n A is exonerating them.
Speaker 1: And look at the Central Park five. So that means
Speaker 1: that the Central Park five would be in the Saint
Speaker 1: the exonerated five would be in the same prison with
Speaker 1: someone who it may be, you know, Nick Nicki Minaj's brother.
Speaker 1: And then it's okay for them to have six rats
Speaker 1: on the on the rat trap in their room that's
Speaker 1: in their cell. It's water browner than me, and they
Speaker 1: have to drink the water, bathe in the water if
Speaker 1: they get a bath. People in Parchment are saying they
Speaker 1: haven't had a bath in h thirty days, and and
Speaker 1: I think we could just you know, move on from
Speaker 1: this as well. But just to make sure people understand
Speaker 1: the magnitude of what's happening that parchment. Parchment is literally
Speaker 1: sitting on a former plantation, a slave plantation. So at
Speaker 1: the end of slavery, whatever that means, but at the
Speaker 1: end of quote unquote end of slavery, the recognized slavery,
Speaker 1: recorded slavery, they closed the plantation and opened a prison.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know if you can have a
Speaker 1: fixed parchment, because the history is it's too deep. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a possibility to be fixed. I think the facility,
Speaker 1: the history, everything makes it say that we just need
Speaker 1: to start something else. You gotta go it down, you
Speaker 1: gotta shut it down, shut it down, dot org, shut down,
Speaker 1: period point blank. Now, I mean it's like this is
Speaker 1: our experience. We could be talking about hell over here
Speaker 1: and then be like man and then the Grammys happened
Speaker 1: in the rock Nation, Branches was all fly. Beyonce is
Speaker 1: the baddest thing that ever happened. Her level of grace
Speaker 1: and beauty and just class is just unmatched. Just to me, like,
Speaker 1: don't she didn't try anything, but it's such kids. How
Speaker 1: many kids? She asked? Her three kids, just three kids
Speaker 1: and her husband. You gotta try a little bit. Maybe
Speaker 1: she got to try, but I swear guard it just
Speaker 1: looks so natural and just comes across so flow. And
Speaker 1: shout out to Alicia Keys, who had a birthday last
Speaker 1: week and was the host for the Grammys, and she
Speaker 1: did an amazing job of navigating between Kobe Bryant and
Speaker 1: Nipsey Hustle and the tributes there, but then also keeping
Speaker 1: people's spirits up and reminding them that we got to
Speaker 1: be another class. And her energy, her energy and her
Speaker 1: optimism it's all in her face. Like even when she
Speaker 1: you could tell her she might be angry, she just
Speaker 1: looks like it's something positive. It doesn't even in her anger.
Speaker 1: The positivity just exude from her. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: definitely want to salute those black women. He did. He
Speaker 1: stole the show from me, puff sole the show for me.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. He was honored at Clyde
Speaker 1: Davis is event that he does in the night before.
Speaker 1: That's the same night that Whitney died. Man many years,
Speaker 1: it's just you had to bring that up. I know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. You when you every time you hear
Speaker 1: that night you liked him Whitney died. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: So he honored, He gave him a Lifetime Achievement award
Speaker 1: and the performance looked dope. I had I had. I
Speaker 1: didn't really get to see it, but they had a
Speaker 1: big tribute to him, seeing May's come out there just
Speaker 1: because I got a lot of a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends were there. And when he accepted award, his you know,
Speaker 1: his statement was that basically saying that, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: glad to receive this award, but we know that historically
Speaker 1: this institution has not respected our music, has respected our artistry,
Speaker 1: has not celebrated us probably believe you know. And we
Speaker 1: basically created most of everything within this culture, within this
Speaker 1: John and we are able to capitalize off it, and
Speaker 1: you utilize us, but you don't celebrate us properly, you know,
Speaker 1: And we know that. And he said, and he literally
Speaker 1: said that stops today. He said, because everybody who has
Speaker 1: the power is in this room to change that. And
Speaker 1: then you've seen jay Z and you've seen all of
Speaker 1: these big stars stand up. He said, We're gonna change
Speaker 1: that today, he said. You know, we're not going for
Speaker 1: it no more. You got three hundred sixty five days
Speaker 1: to get this right. I don't know who, how do
Speaker 1: you wannder, but I'm willing to help. We gotta figure
Speaker 1: out some diversity. You know, we're gonna have to figure
Speaker 1: this out. But you know, it's a bunch of us
Speaker 1: in here that are willing to sit down with you
Speaker 1: and figure out what we need to do to make
Speaker 1: it right. But somebody got to make it right. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing with the oscars just happened, you know,
Speaker 1: the same thing with the Oscar so white like we
Speaker 1: we hear it all the time. You know. But when
Speaker 1: he made that statement, I wrote on my page, you mother, right,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, right, And of course come on,
Speaker 1: you know ain't know him on my tongue, man, I
Speaker 1: say how I feel because I realized that none they
Speaker 1: know curving my vertebrate straight up. Okay, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm sayin no curving mother. But the bottom line is
Speaker 1: when you look at because for me, when jay Z
Speaker 1: got nominated that, I think that that hurts me more
Speaker 1: than anything. Jay Z was nominated for eight awards for
Speaker 1: four or four or four and that was him celebrating
Speaker 1: and talking about himself, just like Beyonce, you know when
Speaker 1: she was nominated and she didn't get awards when he
Speaker 1: was talking about our culture, when it was talking about
Speaker 1: she didn't get anything for um, what's the what was
Speaker 1: it called the film? What's the film called? Look, they're
Speaker 1: people here, just so y'all know that can help us. No,
Speaker 1: not Leimond, just her HBCUs and home comments like how
Speaker 1: could that be? Because entertainment to celebrate our coaches. See,
Speaker 1: you know they don't do it as Just like another
Speaker 1: person who said Tyler created Tyler created one award in
Speaker 1: a genre that he didn't feel that he even supposed
Speaker 1: to be in you know, he won the award for
Speaker 1: a rap in hip hop and he was like, but
Speaker 1: the song it wasn't hip hop. I bend in the
Speaker 1: gendre we we did something different, and you know, and
Speaker 1: and once again it's classified as urban. Every time that
Speaker 1: somebody that looks like me does anything, it's urban and
Speaker 1: it's put into the rap category. And he's fed and
Speaker 1: he said, basically the term urban to him, which is
Speaker 1: actually a fact. It is cold for the N word.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't he doesn't even want to be classified
Speaker 1: as that. He said, so why can't we be classified
Speaker 1: as pop? Because that's what the music is. It's it's
Speaker 1: something that goes out with the old town he had.
Speaker 1: They said that can't be country until he got Bill Cyrus.
Speaker 1: You know, the same'm saying toil. You get people that
Speaker 1: look like them. What's his name? Little little you know him?
Speaker 1: And Nas just got a new song called Rodeo. I
Speaker 1: was kind of I didn't hear it, but I'm like
Speaker 1: that Nas and not, which I was hating on it
Speaker 1: when it first came out, You jole, what's the other
Speaker 1: guy's name? It's not hating. I don't listen to me.
Speaker 1: The thing is this, it's a song that doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't fit into what is conventional for hip hop for us. Well,
Speaker 1: but let me know. But that's that's okay. Let's not
Speaker 1: get into that exactly right, because evolving sometimes means our
Speaker 1: people get excluded, and there is rich history of hip
Speaker 1: hop that we must put. Evolution to me means getting better.
Speaker 1: So that is so there are different perspectives different definitely
Speaker 1: the perspectives in different viewpoints. We we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: the Nation Brunch alone. Just every time I watched the
Speaker 1: Rock Nation Runch and I get little clips, I go
Speaker 1: to Diddy's page and we happen to be in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: but we weren't at the brunch. But when I look
Speaker 1: at these things and I see all of these powerful
Speaker 1: people in one room, and every every year you see
Speaker 1: them growing and them being making being more intentional about
Speaker 1: building our own every time you see them make a
Speaker 1: bigger stand, you see them grow, and then you know
Speaker 1: their platforms grow. It just really makes me feel good.
Speaker 1: It inspires me. I wake up the next day like yes,
Speaker 1: because I do great, but I think it is great.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful to see. But I just wonder when someone
Speaker 1: says they have three hundred and sixty five days to
Speaker 1: fix it, what does that mean? What are we prepared
Speaker 1: to do? Because your boy Kirk Franklin, when he felt
Speaker 1: that his that all of the statements around sort of
Speaker 1: black lives matter issues were being removed from one of
Speaker 1: those big gospel shows that he was he was being
Speaker 1: he was being honored or or performing one of these
Speaker 1: big gospel shows, and he felt that the parts that
Speaker 1: really expressed black pain and black culture and other issues
Speaker 1: that we deal with and and just how our world
Speaker 1: in general, he felt it was being somehow removed or
Speaker 1: being edited out of the footage by the time he
Speaker 1: saw the show. So he's like, yeah, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: it anymore until that gets fixed. And so that's the
Speaker 1: type of stand that you have to be willing to make.
Speaker 1: So that brings me to my little final, my little knowing.
Speaker 1: It brings me to my little segment, and it's called
Speaker 1: I don't get it. I just don't get it. This
Speaker 1: is so you know, I don't get it. No, I
Speaker 1: don't really don't get it. Y'all don't understand how many
Speaker 1: times this man calls me and says, I don't get it.
Speaker 1: I don't because I really just don't get it. He
Speaker 1: thinks it's stupid. No it's not. I know it's stupid.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Or I'm so confused and
Speaker 1: I need somebody to explain to me because I don't
Speaker 1: know everything, but I know what I know. So what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is when we look at all these situations.
Speaker 1: We look at the Grandmates, we look at the Oscars,
Speaker 1: we look at Kirk Frank's Frankly situation. We literally were
Speaker 1: here Tyler the Creator. We see they don't celebrate homecoming.
Speaker 1: We see jay Z get eight nomination for four or
Speaker 1: four four and never went any We see these things
Speaker 1: constantly happen. We hear somebody go up there and say,
Speaker 1: we need to do this every year. Why do we
Speaker 1: constantly and continuously look for validation from organizations and institutions
Speaker 1: who have never celebrated us. Why don't we create our
Speaker 1: own institutions, our own situations where we are celebrated. Why
Speaker 1: do we constantly keep looking for people to love us
Speaker 1: that don't love us? Why are we looking for it
Speaker 1: because they maybe they just don't get it, and it's
Speaker 1: okay because they we get it. We don't get some
Speaker 1: of the stuff you're talking about. So why do we do?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Why is it that it's
Speaker 1: taken us so long to build our own? Why do
Speaker 1: we keep looking for bad? Why do we need the
Speaker 1: Grand mus to tell us that were great? Why do
Speaker 1: we need the oscars to tell us that we're great? No?
Speaker 1: We when we when you look at these movies, when
Speaker 1: you hear this music, we see how it's touched the culture,
Speaker 1: how it how it shifts the mind state, how it's
Speaker 1: able to shift the world, How we dictate what you wear,
Speaker 1: what you say, how you say it, all these things.
Speaker 1: When are we gonna come together and say we need
Speaker 1: to create our own We're not and and and scary.
Speaker 1: I think that we would have to have uh psychiatrists, psychiologists,
Speaker 1: black historians like This type of show will require us
Speaker 1: having people who understand the mental psyche of four hundred
Speaker 1: years of enslavement that our people experience and then all
Speaker 1: that has happened to date. I think you would have
Speaker 1: to have people here that understand what if it's what
Speaker 1: it's like to be oppressed and to deal with that
Speaker 1: oppression every day and to always and to never just
Speaker 1: be able to reach the above the ceiling, not even
Speaker 1: the ceiling. But we've we constantly here and we watch
Speaker 1: when you look at these people. That's after Rock Nation
Speaker 1: bro right, you could create, You could create your because
Speaker 1: these people have fifty sixty seventy million followers. Like you,
Speaker 1: you pretty much have the world following you, just like
Speaker 1: with j D jay Z decided, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do YouTube, I don't want to do Spotify.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna create. And that's and and I think
Speaker 1: that I think we gotta we gotta go because folks
Speaker 1: probably are like, wow, this is good, but it's I
Speaker 1: gotta get to my kids. I gotta do something else. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that you're right. But they are challenges with
Speaker 1: starting your own But that's what the thing is. And no,
Speaker 1: it's not about it's not it's not about the fear.
Speaker 1: It's not about the fear. It's that, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I guess the fear could be on
Speaker 1: one side that a lot of people have started things
Speaker 1: and they lost a lot trying to do that and
Speaker 1: not getting the support of our people. See, we have
Speaker 1: to work on all different fronts. You and I think
Speaker 1: our work is gonna out there, just like we organize
Speaker 1: people for rallies and other things. We have to have
Speaker 1: the we also, which we do have, and we've been
Speaker 1: talking about and working on an economic development plan that
Speaker 1: helps us understand our one point for trillion spending power
Speaker 1: that we can take and begin to support these things.
Speaker 1: Because what you're not gonna have if you start your
Speaker 1: own show, right, your own Grammy type of show. Puff
Speaker 1: knows because we see what he does with the Revoke
Speaker 1: Music Conference when he has had you know, shows honoring
Speaker 1: people and all of that. The advertising is not there.
Speaker 1: So when the advertising dollars, meaning that these big corporations
Speaker 1: are not purchasing tables and tickets and putting ads in
Speaker 1: your journals and putting branding your stuff, when they're not
Speaker 1: spending those big hundred thousand plus checks, you can't pay
Speaker 1: your staff, you can't pay for the dinners, you can't pay.
Speaker 1: So therefore, if that is in fact the case where
Speaker 1: you know, you're not going to get the advertising dollars,
Speaker 1: because they are going to do everything that they can
Speaker 1: to try to shut down on your ability to celebrate
Speaker 1: black excellence and challenge white supremacy, because that's the thing
Speaker 1: puffy challenging white supremacy. At the same time, you can
Speaker 1: celebrate black excellence and sambo your way across the stage.
Speaker 1: But once you start talking about systemic racism that becomes
Speaker 1: an issue. That's when you lose your advertising dollars. So
Speaker 1: that means that we as a people have got to
Speaker 1: begin to understand it. If we want our people to
Speaker 1: be independent, we want our activist to be independent. We
Speaker 1: want our own media, we want our own shows. We
Speaker 1: gotta fund it, and we have the money. We have
Speaker 1: one dollar when you said that, because everything else you
Speaker 1: said made a lot of sense. But when you look
Speaker 1: when I look at Rock Nation Runs and you see
Speaker 1: Kevin Hard and you see jay Z, you see pub Daddy,
Speaker 1: and you see Callin, and you see all of these
Speaker 1: people who are mega millionaires, he's not little. What would
Speaker 1: it take for all of y'all to sit there. You're saying,
Speaker 1: we were leveling up, y'all every year out here were
Speaker 1: leaving up, and I see you moving a level up
Speaker 1: and you're talking about the issues. But the level of
Speaker 1: now is to create entities that are separate and and
Speaker 1: and separated from what they're doing, you know, so that
Speaker 1: we don't have to continue to say, yo, you're not
Speaker 1: doing us right. We keep asking the people that are
Speaker 1: pressing us to help us, to help us. Why and
Speaker 1: until freedom, we said, unless it's a very special situation,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to take corporate money, right, And then
Speaker 1: we didn't do it at the Women's March. We didn't
Speaker 1: want corporations to control our message. You can't have a
Speaker 1: big banner from some brand on top of your head
Speaker 1: and then be talking stuff about you know whatever. You
Speaker 1: got to be careful. But imagine if we took our
Speaker 1: power in our hands. Imagine if what Puff said, listen,
Speaker 1: you've got three hundred and sixty five days to challenge this,
Speaker 1: and during this time we work on getting our building
Speaker 1: our own and getting people, because then it's not going
Speaker 1: to do it is this, and it's like anything. It's
Speaker 1: like Marta Luther kingson pulling yourself like own bootstraps. And
Speaker 1: he said, it's it's crazy to say that to him,
Speaker 1: man who has no boots, right, joke to a man
Speaker 1: said I believe you should, he said, is a funny,
Speaker 1: it's a sad joke. Joke. So the reality situation is,
Speaker 1: while we into while we're building and enforcing them to
Speaker 1: technology us. We should still be building ours and slowly
Speaker 1: and then we exactly we just switched to a back
Speaker 1: you know, and and and just thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: she probably doesn't want me to say, but my good
Speaker 1: sister Cat Trig, who is the great leader of our
Speaker 1: Woman TV, you know, the producer of this Grand Street
Speaker 1: Politicians podcast. She was saying earlier when we were talking, like,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine if Kobe played for HBCU rather than
Speaker 1: you know what, she didn't play for a white institution,
Speaker 1: but that probably dejectory, but still imagine if he played.
Speaker 1: Would imagine right now if if the top five players
Speaker 1: in the NBA started to advocate for HPCU, if they say, yo,
Speaker 1: we need you have to go to these and they
Speaker 1: utilize their platform and they showcased them and they said, look,
Speaker 1: boom boom, these are the top five players coming out.
Speaker 1: And they utilized and they created their own because people
Speaker 1: coming to you for basketball, they want to know who's
Speaker 1: hot through you. So you utilize your platform and you
Speaker 1: start showcasing these players and then you said, yo, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be at the HCU. We want you to come
Speaker 1: see them play. And they're beating people at fifty points.
Speaker 1: You can't ignore them. They can't they I don't care
Speaker 1: how much. Then the resources would be going to school
Speaker 1: to more House and uh, you know North Carolina Central.
Speaker 1: Then we have to go to schools have been historically Campton.
Speaker 1: I can't say how without saying Hampton, can't say you know,
Speaker 1: more House without saying spell man. So let me not
Speaker 1: get myself in trouble and stop right now. What I
Speaker 1: want to say is before we leave, is that the
Speaker 1: history of of these schools that are the top schools
Speaker 1: in D one divisions are historically racist schools that man
Speaker 1: with your station use after school. Still you can't get in.
Speaker 1: You can pay for your way in, but you can't
Speaker 1: have a brilliant mind as a you, as a white student,
Speaker 1: your parents can pay for you to get an education,
Speaker 1: and then when they get caught, they get twelve and
Speaker 1: fourteen days in jail and whatever in jail. But you,
Speaker 1: as a brilliant mind, a black child whose parents bust
Speaker 1: there behind to put you through school, can't even get in.
Speaker 1: Can't even get in. So when we understand that and
Speaker 1: we see those situations, then we have to we have
Speaker 1: to make real concrete lines in the sand and say.
Speaker 1: You look, I don't know how far it's gonna get,
Speaker 1: but I'm willing to sacrifice to see to create the
Speaker 1: change I might lose, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: that's what Marta Luther King said. I might sacrifice my life.
Speaker 1: I might have to give my life, but I'm willing
Speaker 1: to give that because i want to see something different, right,
Speaker 1: that's right every time. I mean, imagine if Dr King
Speaker 1: saw a Barack Obama, what would that meeting have been like? Listen,
Speaker 1: thank you all for being with us. Yeah, man, it
Speaker 1: was a good show episode, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Talked about a lot of topics, a little debate, a
Speaker 1: little different on this, but for the most part, all right,
Speaker 1: we got some stuff. We gotta keep working. You know,
Speaker 1: we're working through this is listen. We love what we do, man,
Speaker 1: and we do it with passion, learning together. And if
Speaker 1: you have anything that you want to discuss, if any
Speaker 1: topics you want to hear us talk about, anything that's
Speaker 1: in your mind, or some topic that you definitely want
Speaker 1: to hear about on Street Politicians, you can follow us
Speaker 1: on all social media. Street Politicians d m S. Send
Speaker 1: us a message, let us know what you think, give
Speaker 1: us critiques, tell us you hate the show, tell us
Speaker 1: you love the show, whatever we open for, because the
Speaker 1: reality situation is, we don't always agree. We're not always
Speaker 1: gonna be right, and we're not always gonna be wrong,
Speaker 1: but we're always going to be authentic. That's how we
Speaker 1: own it.