Speaker 1: What's Good Family. I'm Tamika d Mallory. This your Boy
Speaker 1: might sell General and we're a host of street politicians.
Speaker 1: The place we got a deep show today. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like as we start focusing on
Speaker 1: certain issues, we travel into these real, real dark spaces,
Speaker 1: and UM, I think the show that we're focusing on
Speaker 1: today is no different. It's like when we got into
Speaker 1: the issue around medical kidnapping, which is a new term
Speaker 1: that I'm just learning about, UM, and also just the
Speaker 1: unjust removal of children from their homes and from their
Speaker 1: families for a variety of reasons. I now we start
Speaker 1: to learn about all these other issues and it's like
Speaker 1: you open up a can of ones. And I think
Speaker 1: the same thing happens in the police accountability movement when
Speaker 1: you start talking about police saying, then mental health issues
Speaker 1: come up, people start asking questions about gun violence. Um,
Speaker 1: the issues around guns come up, issues around driving while black.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many windows and and and rooms
Speaker 1: in the building, and I think that's what we're experiencing
Speaker 1: right now as we sort of focus on racism within
Speaker 1: the healthcare industry, because it's racism everywhere, and these particular systems. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have some real horrible ways that they treat black
Speaker 1: and brown folks, particularly black women, Uh, that we're learning
Speaker 1: so much about. So today's show it's pretty it's deepened.
Speaker 1: For me, it's haunting because, UM, you know, I know
Speaker 1: all about what it is to be a black woman
Speaker 1: whose voice is not listened to. Um, you sound like
Speaker 1: you've got a little that. I've been doing a lot
Speaker 1: of talking m the last few weeks actually, um, and
Speaker 1: so I have lost my voice. But you know, I
Speaker 1: know all about what it is as a as a
Speaker 1: black woman to be um, misunderstood, to be mistreated, UM,
Speaker 1: to be ignored, to have my feelings and and and
Speaker 1: other things ignored, And it is painful. So listening to
Speaker 1: these stories what somebody think is a small thing or
Speaker 1: you're being ignored or nobody, but it translates into so
Speaker 1: many places in our lives. And so today's show is
Speaker 1: gonna focus on that. Yeah. And also we also have
Speaker 1: a male black man who who speaks on the same
Speaker 1: thing on how his voice is ignored and how his
Speaker 1: even place, you know, as his story is crazy as
Speaker 1: a father's it's pretty much you know, So there's so
Speaker 1: much going on, man, I didn't even never really focused
Speaker 1: on the you know, the the medical mortality and things
Speaker 1: of that nature, even though I've heard about it. But
Speaker 1: just you know, just looking at these two individuals who
Speaker 1: we have here and just listening to these stories is
Speaker 1: really deep. So you know, I'm definitely interested and can't
Speaker 1: wait to get into these topics and just inform you know,
Speaker 1: our viewers and our listeners on what's going on. That's
Speaker 1: a and that's the thing I love about what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do with street politicians. It's different. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who focus on the entertainers.
Speaker 1: Maybe they talk about some issues, but their focus is
Speaker 1: very different from ours. And we watch those shows, right,
Speaker 1: we love those shows, funny, um, you know, entertaining. But
Speaker 1: on this show, while we do you know, we cut up,
Speaker 1: we talk stuff, but we are trying to focus on
Speaker 1: serious issues but breaking it down in a way that
Speaker 1: can be translated to the every day person. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it takes us. It's a skill set that
Speaker 1: is required to be able to translate these big words.
Speaker 1: Like today we're learning about the help syndrome, which is
Speaker 1: h G L l P. Obviously, the accre and um
Speaker 1: you know, means helping women and listening to their voices.
Speaker 1: But h G l l P is a longer word
Speaker 1: that describes a particular syndrome and condition and women go
Speaker 1: through when their blood pressure and other issues happen during
Speaker 1: the latter part of their pregnancy, and you can die
Speaker 1: from it. We've learned about uh pre sklenia. Oh lord,
Speaker 1: I gotta get that right. Hold clan, it's clamp women,
Speaker 1: and hold on. We need we need, we need our
Speaker 1: production team to tell us how. I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: how to say it. Pre et clamps here there we
Speaker 1: go there and make sure y'all don't take that out.
Speaker 1: Keep that in there, and yeah, we need that in there.
Speaker 1: That's that's Janice right there, pre claims here her name
Speaker 1: is Janet. But pre eclamps fia, that's a new you
Speaker 1: keep saying one more time, Genie said one more time
Speaker 1: for pre eclamps See, yeah, that's what I said. That's
Speaker 1: exactly so. Um, you know, so that's a new term
Speaker 1: a medical condition that we are We're now learning that
Speaker 1: women are dying and or their babies are dying, um,
Speaker 1: and they're experiencing a lot of of of unfortunate circumstances
Speaker 1: during uh the birth period. So there's it's just there's
Speaker 1: so much to learn. And to your point, not just
Speaker 1: learning it, but now that we know, we got to
Speaker 1: do something with it. Go takes me back to Dick
Speaker 1: Gregory when he said, once you put those glasses on,
Speaker 1: it's like glasses that help you see things that everybody
Speaker 1: else can see. Um and. So as we are learning
Speaker 1: more and more about UH racism and in the health
Speaker 1: care system, um and and and not just racism, but
Speaker 1: as you said something on Lash show, classism because they're
Speaker 1: white women who are uh, you know, most of them
Speaker 1: don't have means, who are experiencing similar situations, particularly around
Speaker 1: the separation of children from their fans, out from their
Speaker 1: from their families. So it's it's a deep dark hole trafficking, sex, trafficking.
Speaker 1: We talk with Tony last week, Tony Rivera, it's a
Speaker 1: deep dark hole. Yeah, it definitely is. Man just hearing
Speaker 1: these stories that That's one thing I love about this,
Speaker 1: you know, our podcast, that it informs me. I learned
Speaker 1: every day, like I'm learning from different individuals. I'm learned
Speaker 1: about things that pretty much a common in our society,
Speaker 1: especially in the black community. That I haven't even been
Speaker 1: privy too. So I know a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: I pride myself on trying to inform myself and reading
Speaker 1: up and being knowledgeable and understand what's going on. So
Speaker 1: I know a lot about people aren't giving getting this
Speaker 1: information prior to even hear an about it. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's I'm proud of that. You know we're actually doing
Speaker 1: a little something good here. Number one ship, number one ship, right,
Speaker 1: we definitely are so my thought of the day because
Speaker 1: I've been thinking because as we've been in this new space,
Speaker 1: learning more about particularly the Child Protective Services, because that's
Speaker 1: what I've been I've been, I mean really, I've been
Speaker 1: doing a lot of reading and engaging myself in a
Speaker 1: real study practice around CPS. And not to demonize all
Speaker 1: CPS workers. We've been saying that every week, right, because
Speaker 1: we know that they're child protective workers out there who
Speaker 1: are doing a damn good job and they have little
Speaker 1: resources to none. In fact, my cousin Raven, who loves
Speaker 1: you dearly, um, she worked for Child Protective Services for
Speaker 1: a while and in the state of Georgia, and then
Speaker 1: the stories you know of the things that she went
Speaker 1: through and she is not able to tell you everything
Speaker 1: that's how happening. But you could see the burden on
Speaker 1: her when she would come home from work and she
Speaker 1: would just be like, you know, there's so much happening,
Speaker 1: There's so many problems. And I know CPS workers just
Speaker 1: like police officers, just like teachers, just like everybody. They
Speaker 1: out there trying their best, trying to damn this to
Speaker 1: save lives. But the systems are so corrupt, the actual system,
Speaker 1: to foundation of the way that they're told to do
Speaker 1: their jobs is so corrupt at the core. And as
Speaker 1: a result of that, UM, we're seeing a situation where
Speaker 1: families are being and people are being harm and so,
Speaker 1: you know, just recently we got tagged, I know, I've
Speaker 1: been being tagged to the story of a woman that
Speaker 1: a woman is telling about an incident that happened in
Speaker 1: the Costco. Um. In the Costco she happened to see
Speaker 1: a family basically for a white people with children, and
Speaker 1: there was a young girl, a young black girl with them.
Speaker 1: UM who told this woman this is what the this
Speaker 1: is the woman's account of this story. She told the
Speaker 1: woman that the people that she was with, this white
Speaker 1: family that she's been placed with that they were sexually
Speaker 1: assaulting her, the wife and the husband, and that the
Speaker 1: husband held her against her will. And uh, now when
Speaker 1: you when you look at the imagery and even the
Speaker 1: video that the woman is taking this advocate, the woman
Speaker 1: who's speaking up for this young girl. You look at
Speaker 1: the video, it's clear that sounds wrong. So this family,
Speaker 1: they're not feeding their adoptive child. She's crying. They're being
Speaker 1: racist towards her daughter. You guys need to we need
Speaker 1: to expose these people, this family. Look at her, she
Speaker 1: looks hungry and they're making her say that she's not hungry.
Speaker 1: And these people are just owning her and they're probably
Speaker 1: using her as a slave like they were back in
Speaker 1: the day. So, yes, the sheriffs are on the way.
Speaker 1: I called the cause because yes, I'm a Catholice as
Speaker 1: person and I'm not about to watch this go by.
Speaker 1: That is very rude and very disgusting of these people.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe to them it's not, but maybe they don't
Speaker 1: even know. Let's just say that they are not actually
Speaker 1: engaged in um any type of uh you know, negligence
Speaker 1: or or even worse than that criminal activity. Right, Let's
Speaker 1: just say they're not, but they might not know that
Speaker 1: to have their their children, the white children look, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty decent, clean up with their clothes on, and then
Speaker 1: to have this young girl with her hair matted and
Speaker 1: her clothes look like mammy. That's exactly how she was dressed,
Speaker 1: like a little mammy, dressed like something from imagery from
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. That's how she's dressed with this family.
Speaker 1: The wife looks like she's suffering with some type of
Speaker 1: mental issue herself. And of course while this video was
Speaker 1: going on, they're standing around and they look to me
Speaker 1: like they know somebody sees them, right, So of course
Speaker 1: the woman can't stop them from taking the child. But
Speaker 1: she gets to the police. She tells the police about
Speaker 1: the situation, and they go to investigate, and of course
Speaker 1: their report is they found no wrong doing, everything is fine,
Speaker 1: and this young girl is off with this family. Someone
Speaker 1: tagged me yesterday to something saying that the family has
Speaker 1: now moved from where they were and they went to
Speaker 1: another state. And this happens often, and so there were
Speaker 1: many people who wanted us to get involved to deal
Speaker 1: with this situation, and it would just so happen that
Speaker 1: I mentioned this in the last and our last week's
Speaker 1: show where we talked with Tony Rivera and we happen
Speaker 1: to mention that this was happening, it was a developing situation,
Speaker 1: and when she said she was dealing with it and
Speaker 1: would get back to me. So my thought of the
Speaker 1: day is, as I look at many people who have
Speaker 1: reached out, even some of them are advocates themselves, and
Speaker 1: they are helping with this situation, why do people feel
Speaker 1: like the right way to address me or us and
Speaker 1: other leaders is to try to either shame us and
Speaker 1: disrespect us in order to make us pay attention to
Speaker 1: an issue. So people are tagging me in the comments.
Speaker 1: Are your trash because you're not helping this girl? You
Speaker 1: haven't done your job? Where are you? How dare you?
Speaker 1: You only get involved in cases when something you know
Speaker 1: benefits you, which, by the way, that's the biggest line
Speaker 1: has ever been told. Because most of the people that
Speaker 1: come to us for support are people who have no name.
Speaker 1: No one really knows what's going on. Maybe their child
Speaker 1: was killed or some incident happened, and maybe there's some
Speaker 1: talk online, but there's no organization around them. They don't
Speaker 1: have really the resources, the financial resources which we have
Speaker 1: to often raise and bring to the families and beyond
Speaker 1: that they have no international name the way that we
Speaker 1: ultimately did for Brianna Taylor. And I've been involved in
Speaker 1: many cases for my career. Over my career twenty five
Speaker 1: plus years, I have been helping to take cases and
Speaker 1: families from one space to the next. We got involved
Speaker 1: in Trayvon Martin, same thing. Trayvon had been dead. People
Speaker 1: were kind of talking about it. But when we got
Speaker 1: there and we put that extra work on and Traybonn
Speaker 1: became an international name. His mother Sabrina folks who will
Speaker 1: tell him that, okay. And again, like I said, same
Speaker 1: thing with Brianna Taylor. So I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: why people feel like they need to shame you and
Speaker 1: talk down on you to make you get involved in
Speaker 1: something when they don't know who you're talking to, they
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening behind the scenes. And also they
Speaker 1: don't understand the process that it takes before people like
Speaker 1: us can go and get involved in certain situations. And
Speaker 1: I think, and I'll let you respond. Then one of
Speaker 1: the problems that folks deal with is not understanding that
Speaker 1: they're they're the fact that they have five hundred followers
Speaker 1: or two thousand followers, and even five thousand followers. They
Speaker 1: don't understand that when they go out and say something,
Speaker 1: the risk is not the same as someone like me
Speaker 1: and like us who have a million plus people and
Speaker 1: major platforms, because guess what, we will get sued if
Speaker 1: we have not done the due diligence of having our
Speaker 1: attorneys get involved in these situations. Imagine us going out
Speaker 1: there and calling this family rapists, kidnappers, all kinds of
Speaker 1: words that we need to We would be using or
Speaker 1: at least implying in order to bring attention to a
Speaker 1: situation without giving our legal team the ability to look
Speaker 1: at the law and what we can say and what
Speaker 1: we can't say. And also, the woman that's telling the story,
Speaker 1: we don't know her. I believe she's doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: and I want to support her, but we don't know her,
Speaker 1: so we can't say a hundred percent that what she's
Speaker 1: telling us is absolutely true. All of this has to
Speaker 1: be dealt with, and there are people out there in
Speaker 1: the world who don't seem to know understand that there
Speaker 1: is a process that we have to go through before
Speaker 1: we get involved. It doesn't mean that we won't take
Speaker 1: on situations. That's difficult because guess what they told us.
Speaker 1: Brianna Taylor's boyfriend was a drug deal Our ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: was a drug dealer. They told us, Oh, Kenny Walker,
Speaker 1: he might have something over here. Brianna's actual boyfriend. They
Speaker 1: told us, well, uh, what's his name? Eric Garner? He
Speaker 1: was selling Lucy's cigarettes. Nicole Bell's man. They tried to
Speaker 1: put off the sparaged up with all types of things
Speaker 1: that Joe Guselan Trump benefield their arrest records from the past.
Speaker 1: Every case we get involved in, Mike Brown, Oh, he
Speaker 1: attacked the man at the store. Every case we get
Speaker 1: involved with, there's a story. There's always a back story.
Speaker 1: I got a backstory. There's some ship. You can come
Speaker 1: right now and say you're gonna help Tamika and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be some ship. Right. Everybody got a story. But
Speaker 1: it takes a process so that you can know what
Speaker 1: your risks are and how you intend to approach a situation.
Speaker 1: So my thought the day is like, what the hell
Speaker 1: a y'all talking about? And why do people who have
Speaker 1: never been in our positions have so much to say
Speaker 1: about things that they don't have to assume the risk
Speaker 1: for well, my assessment of the situation is that there
Speaker 1: are two types of people. Then people who actually just
Speaker 1: don't know, right. And then there's the type of people
Speaker 1: who just want to hate, right. They just want to
Speaker 1: do anything to to make you look negative and vilify you. Right.
Speaker 1: So the people who don't know, they make statements and
Speaker 1: why are you hiring doing anything? And why don't you
Speaker 1: doing this? And what's going on with this? And they
Speaker 1: don't understand exactly high works. And then there are people
Speaker 1: who have unrealistic expectations. Right. They expect you to talk
Speaker 1: about everything that's going on in the world. There's so
Speaker 1: many different things that people were able to see our
Speaker 1: d m s and our emails and see how they're
Speaker 1: flooded with so many different individuals who have an issue, right,
Speaker 1: and and and they will understand that we don't have
Speaker 1: the capacity as organization, let alone individuals, to bring to
Speaker 1: light every issue, every situation that somebody brings to us.
Speaker 1: And everybody feels in the situation that they think is important,
Speaker 1: it's equally as important. There's nobody who doesn't think that
Speaker 1: the boy who was running down the block and he
Speaker 1: got hit with somebody threw a rocket at him, doesn't
Speaker 1: think that's more important than the police that shot him,
Speaker 1: or that the kid that show. Everybody thinks that their
Speaker 1: issue is paramount to everything else. So they're gonna come
Speaker 1: at you. So that's that's why I've taken that. But
Speaker 1: then there's just those people who are actually agent provocateurs, right,
Speaker 1: they sent to try to you know, to defame you
Speaker 1: and make it seem like you're not doing your world.
Speaker 1: They have a little bit more followers. They utilize social media,
Speaker 1: and it's in a in a different plat or a
Speaker 1: different way in which they utilize it to it the
Speaker 1: message that they have is spread all over the place,
Speaker 1: so starts to become a recurrent theme, theme and the
Speaker 1: narrative that people grab onto. So those are two things.
Speaker 1: So what I say is this, we have to continue
Speaker 1: to just do the work right. And I understand how
Speaker 1: it can be demoralizing, and I understand why, like before
Speaker 1: I seeple, like you don't understand why a lot of
Speaker 1: celebrities just don't step up, like you've got a platform
Speaker 1: you to do this and they're vilified, right, and this
Speaker 1: is not their everyday work. Some of them step up
Speaker 1: and just want to say, you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't agree with what happened. Man, let me say
Speaker 1: something about it, and people start tearing them down. Oh
Speaker 1: you don't do this, what are you doing this for?
Speaker 1: Or you you should have been did this? Or nobody
Speaker 1: cares what you're saying. Just shut up and dribble or
Speaker 1: shut up and and wrap or whatever it is. So
Speaker 1: it is it is. You know this, this work that
Speaker 1: we do is an everyday process. It has to be
Speaker 1: God's purpose for you because it is very painful, especially
Speaker 1: when you have you know, when you care about your name,
Speaker 1: you care about how you are portrayed, when your reputation
Speaker 1: is like because for me, my reputation is all I
Speaker 1: ever had, you know, prior to getting involved in this
Speaker 1: in the I mean this work doing a client to
Speaker 1: wrap or anything, I was a respected individual because the
Speaker 1: way I carried myself, in the way that I I
Speaker 1: dealt with integrity. And that's that's one thing throughout my
Speaker 1: history of my life that people were always able to
Speaker 1: say about me. And this was the first time, even
Speaker 1: in hip hop music whatever, my integrity was never in question, right,
Speaker 1: it was my talent, my skill level or did he
Speaker 1: wassh up or nobody kids, and I went through all
Speaker 1: of that, but this space people started to attack my
Speaker 1: integrity as a man and calling you scammers and stealers
Speaker 1: and liars and cloud chases and and all of these names.
Speaker 1: So it takes a lot, and it really takes a lot.
Speaker 1: This has to be your caller, you know, so we
Speaker 1: and we we deal with it very well. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of UM leaders who passed in present who just said,
Speaker 1: fuck it. You know, I'm not doing this, but I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna I'm not saying nothing will let them deal
Speaker 1: with it. They some of them have quote unquote sold
Speaker 1: out because of that, because they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm doing all this fighting for people, and people don't
Speaker 1: give a funk about what I'm doing. They call them
Speaker 1: me all types of names, and I'm not. I haven't
Speaker 1: benefited anywhere, so let me stop benefit. I don't care
Speaker 1: what nobody thinks now because I've lost so much, and
Speaker 1: they attack my own people that I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to help and I'm trying to do all
Speaker 1: these things for are the ones attacking me. So it's
Speaker 1: just so much that goes in that that you know,
Speaker 1: that question that you know your thought of the day
Speaker 1: is very thought provoking. I just asked people, man, just
Speaker 1: to take the time before you write something, before you
Speaker 1: to say something, before you attack somebody for your accused
Speaker 1: somebody solf like somebody wrote today to say you're a scammer,
Speaker 1: And I said, just prove it, show me one person
Speaker 1: I have a scamed or you have to do. Don't
Speaker 1: just don't just go on the internet and just write something,
Speaker 1: you know, just throw something into the atmosphere that you
Speaker 1: have no cluefro you have no knowledge of. You just
Speaker 1: heard a narrative and you grabbed onto it and then
Speaker 1: you're spreading it and you're putting it on people you know.
Speaker 1: And I just asked you know, as individuals, as people,
Speaker 1: as black people, as people in our communities, before you
Speaker 1: attack people that are doing work that you've never done
Speaker 1: and it never will do and don't even understand the
Speaker 1: capacity of which it needs to be done. Just ask yourself,
Speaker 1: do I know what I'm saying? Am I sure about
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? Am I clear? And I it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense that I do my due diligence, that I
Speaker 1: research that I do all of this. Don't understand what
Speaker 1: it takes to do what this individual is doing. You know,
Speaker 1: just just do that, you know, because we were still humans,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're human beings just like you. We
Speaker 1: just happened to have a different calling on our lives
Speaker 1: and we move into different space. So you know, I
Speaker 1: just ask people, please, man, before you write someone the internet,
Speaker 1: before you attack somebody, before you call somebody. And you
Speaker 1: know what, many times brothers have called me names and
Speaker 1: just said names. I'm like, brother, why did you have
Speaker 1: to say that? And I and I said, hey, well
Speaker 1: this what's going on on my fault what I mean?
Speaker 1: But you didn't even take the time out to know
Speaker 1: what you meant. You just got so caught up in
Speaker 1: the Internet and and the you know, the moment and
Speaker 1: attacking somebody and disrespecting the individual. Luckily for you, I'm
Speaker 1: the type of individ you who understand where you're coming from,
Speaker 1: understand that you come from a place of ignorance and
Speaker 1: not understand it. So I'm not trying to meet you
Speaker 1: with the same energy. But imagine if I was. Imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is how misunderstands and everything starts.
Speaker 1: So I just say people just need to take the
Speaker 1: time out, do some research, do some your due diligence
Speaker 1: and research, and this don't attack people, and you don't
Speaker 1: even know what the hell you're talking about. And that
Speaker 1: brings us today's show Man. We have some really special
Speaker 1: guests who have endured so much, you know, and I didn't,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'd even understand what was going on
Speaker 1: in what they called the medical mortality situation, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know about it. I've heard situations, I've heard a
Speaker 1: few things. I've known people who lost their life, but
Speaker 1: just to hear this in this, you know, the facest
Speaker 1: in which they described it and just talked about, I've
Speaker 1: read it up on them and I've heard this story
Speaker 1: and they're really compelling. And both of them are two
Speaker 1: people that I'm definitely are gonna give us some insight
Speaker 1: and be tech as well. Yeah, and what we're talking
Speaker 1: about specifically today is focusing on racism within the healthcare industry. UM.
Speaker 1: And again, we know racism exists everywhere everywhere. Anywhere you go,
Speaker 1: anything you're involved in, you can find the signs of
Speaker 1: where racism UH readers its ugly head, even in spaces
Speaker 1: where people are attempting. White folks too are attempting there
Speaker 1: there there with all their heart and mind, and there
Speaker 1: might they're attempting to uh provide equitable space, they're still
Speaker 1: going to be issued just because of how our systems operate.
Speaker 1: And so today, uh, the individuals that we're hearing from, uh,
Speaker 1: these are two people who experience the unthinkable, real painful.
Speaker 1: Trudy Russell, our first guest, she lost her baby and
Speaker 1: I don't want to preempt her by telling too much
Speaker 1: of her story, but she's teaching us about these new
Speaker 1: terms the help syndrome, as I mentioned, and also, uh,
Speaker 1: how do we say it again? Look it just clins
Speaker 1: via pre e clintens via. I just said it and
Speaker 1: lost it already. But she's teaching us about these new terms.
Speaker 1: And her baby died as a result of it, and
Speaker 1: and and and it just didn't just happen. There was
Speaker 1: serious neglect that got her to this point. And so
Speaker 1: we're gonna hear from Trudy Russell and then Bruce McIntyre.
Speaker 1: So would you all are gonna hear is his story
Speaker 1: which we've read up on, um and that's why we
Speaker 1: had him here today. Um. You know his wife was
Speaker 1: also diagnosed with this syndrome, and so he's dealing with
Speaker 1: a lot and we want to support him. Or he
Speaker 1: started an organization UH named after his wife UH and
Speaker 1: I am just to know that he's out there in
Speaker 1: the world raising this baby without a woman that could
Speaker 1: have been helped. Is it's it's heart wrenching, but it's
Speaker 1: also scary. It's scary, and so we're gonna learn a
Speaker 1: lot today and we're gonna be educating on these issues
Speaker 1: for the next few weeks. So let's get to our guests.
Speaker 1: First up, Trudy Russell. We are so we're as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: we've been joined by an advocate for women UM, Miss
Speaker 1: Trudy Russell, whose story is truly truly heart wrenching. What
Speaker 1: she has gone through we want to hear more about today.
Speaker 1: But as with so many of the guests that come
Speaker 1: on to UH this platform and that our guests on
Speaker 1: street politicians, she's taken her pain and turned it into
Speaker 1: a passion of helping women, supporting the community UM and
Speaker 1: specifically dealing with women who are challenged with the help syndrome.
Speaker 1: That's a new term. We've been learning a lot about
Speaker 1: it today and pre ecleinspia. That is also a new
Speaker 1: term that I'm learning more about today. And so here
Speaker 1: to tell us about these issues is Trudy Russell. Hi,
Speaker 1: Trudy with us. Hi, how are you? Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me so in I was pregnant. I became pregnant
Speaker 1: for the first time, and I was very excited about it. Uh,
Speaker 1: when you are pregnant for the first time, you don't
Speaker 1: know what to expect. There's so many things going on.
Speaker 1: What happened with me was in my sixth month of pregnancy,
Speaker 1: I started getting these very unusual symptoms. UM Bloating is
Speaker 1: normal in pregnancy, but I had bloating and a swelling,
Speaker 1: particularly from my knees to my feet, that were just
Speaker 1: almost like I couldn't walk. I looked like you could
Speaker 1: if you put a pin in me, I would deflate.
Speaker 1: There was something clearly wrong own um, and a girlfriend
Speaker 1: of mine told me, truly, I think you need to
Speaker 1: go to the doctor. Aside from that. Aside from that symptom,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. There was also um vomiting vomiting and my
Speaker 1: sixth uh month of pregnancy that was unusual. I had
Speaker 1: an excruciating headache that would not leave all of these
Speaker 1: were symptoms of what's called pre clincia and help syndrome.
Speaker 1: I go to my doctor under the suggestion, under the
Speaker 1: suggestion of my girlfriend. My doctor is out, I see
Speaker 1: a midwife. I'm from Los Angeles, so I was on
Speaker 1: my way to travel to l a h for the
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving weekend. And I tell her all that's going on
Speaker 1: with me, that I have this nausea. I had a
Speaker 1: headache that was excruciating that just would not leave, and
Speaker 1: I have the swellingness all through my body. She looks
Speaker 1: at me and she tells me that this is normal.
Speaker 1: She doesn't say much about the headache uh or the
Speaker 1: nausea that I was experiencing, and she cleared me to
Speaker 1: go to Los Angeles. I once to Los Angeles. I
Speaker 1: was there for Thanksgiving, and the following day tragedy struck.
Speaker 1: My blood pressure spiked up to about two thirty I
Speaker 1: was about to have a stroke. Um when the paramedics came,
Speaker 1: they couldn't believe how high my blood pressure was. They
Speaker 1: thought that there that their machines were wrong. That's how
Speaker 1: high the blood pressure was, and I could have had
Speaker 1: a stroke at any moment. They rushed me to the hospital.
Speaker 1: And I still did not understand what was going on.
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, my baby's coming early. I don't feel well,
Speaker 1: but my baby's coming early. I get to the hospital.
Speaker 1: I only find out that, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: something serious when I see the staff running and circling
Speaker 1: around me. So we ran through the hospital on a gurney. Right.
Speaker 1: I knew it was even more serious when they all
Speaker 1: circled around me and prayed, Oh my gosh, the nurses
Speaker 1: and the doctors. The nurses and the doctors were around
Speaker 1: me on the gurney, praying. I had no clue of
Speaker 1: what was happening. Okay. I remember going into the operating
Speaker 1: room and the anesthesiologists saying, say Hawaii. I said, ho what?
Speaker 1: And I was out. When I came to, I was
Speaker 1: in a dark I see you room where my mother
Speaker 1: was there. My my family had come, and a nurse
Speaker 1: and doctor had come to explain to me what had happened.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what happened to me. They told
Speaker 1: me you had help syndrome. They told me that your
Speaker 1: baby did not make it. Her name is Journey, and
Speaker 1: that I was also on the brink of death. So
Speaker 1: now to tell me, Well, first, of all, let's just
Speaker 1: stop for a second in that. Um, you know, God
Speaker 1: rests the soul of journey. Obviously, Journey is living through you.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry about what you've been through. It. As
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you speak, I'm first of all thinking
Speaker 1: about the many reasons why I've never had children, But
Speaker 1: one of them is because of how bad the treatment was.
Speaker 1: I was very young pregnant, you know, I was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old. So it's even worse at that age when
Speaker 1: they just shuttle you and shuff shuffle you replaced the
Speaker 1: place no one cares about your issues, your concerns. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it just was a traumatic experience that we
Speaker 1: won't go into too much right now, but I know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. It is so you mean you
Speaker 1: never had any more children because you have you do
Speaker 1: have a sup Sorry, The reason why I never had
Speaker 1: any right a second child, I have more exactly excuse me,
Speaker 1: why I didn't have any more children is because of
Speaker 1: how I had been treated. And so this this, this
Speaker 1: the idea of that the help syndrome. It's so like
Speaker 1: it's so real to me. Yes, so the so the
Speaker 1: help syndrome is an even more exaggerated form of pre
Speaker 1: clempsia what pre clemson is, and many women experienced. Beyonce
Speaker 1: experienced it in her pregnancy with the twins. Um Mariah
Speaker 1: Carey has experienced it. I think j Lo as well.
Speaker 1: What happens is later on in your pregnancy, there's a
Speaker 1: condition that comes on, right, there is no sign of it.
Speaker 1: It just comes on in the pregnancy where your blood
Speaker 1: pressure spikes up. Right. When that happens, they have to
Speaker 1: test you for different things, They have to see if
Speaker 1: protein is in your urine. They have to follow you
Speaker 1: because what can happen is you can end up dying
Speaker 1: on the birthing table. Right, So what was Once I
Speaker 1: processed everything that had happened to me, and it took
Speaker 1: a while, right, I had to go to therapy. It
Speaker 1: was extremely traumatic. One of the questions that I was
Speaker 1: left with and I'm still left with, is why was
Speaker 1: I cleared to get on a plane and go across
Speaker 1: the country. I told a medical provider about my experience
Speaker 1: and my symptoms, and immediately she should have known what
Speaker 1: to do, but she cleared me right. I have since
Speaker 1: had another child, her name is Mahogany. The care that
Speaker 1: I got through Columbia doctors. Because of my medical history,
Speaker 1: I was high risk. These people monitored me from the
Speaker 1: time I let them know that I was pregnant up
Speaker 1: until delivery. But the care that I got was so
Speaker 1: it was vastly different than what I had previously experienced
Speaker 1: in in my second pregnancy, I had a lot of
Speaker 1: trauma in particularly in the six months, because I didn't
Speaker 1: know if it was gonna come on again. Um. I
Speaker 1: had to do things like keep stress levels down. UM,
Speaker 1: I was on bid rest for particular time. UM, if
Speaker 1: there was any symptoms of a headache of anything, I
Speaker 1: had to let them know immediately. I mean they were
Speaker 1: on me like white on rice. So I have there
Speaker 1: was a there's a juxtaposition between the care that I
Speaker 1: got in and the care that I got in extremely different.
Speaker 1: The midwife that I had, it's very it's very very
Speaker 1: involved in black issues with black women. She's not black herself,
Speaker 1: But what made me trust her with me was her awareness,
Speaker 1: her understanding what I went through. Actually, question, I've I've
Speaker 1: heard of this, you know, Um, I have two younger children,
Speaker 1: have three actually children. But and I've actually heard women
Speaker 1: who have been on bed rest for months like they
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything. Literally, for two to three of the
Speaker 1: last months of their pregnancy, they weren't allowed to even
Speaker 1: get out of bed understaid they were that high risk.
Speaker 1: How common is this? Okay? So here's the thing. What
Speaker 1: I've been told is it's very common in women of color,
Speaker 1: particularly the Black community. Mm hmm. So why I have
Speaker 1: become such an advocate of my community for birthing women,
Speaker 1: it's because a lot of us do not know about this.
Speaker 1: Right from my understanding, You're gonna have a guest coming
Speaker 1: up after me. Now the story that you're going to
Speaker 1: hear from him. His girlfriend died from what I had,
Speaker 1: so we went through the exact same thing. But I
Speaker 1: am living and she is not. So it is very
Speaker 1: very serious. So what so what exactly do you do?
Speaker 1: What you do? You know, I see what you I
Speaker 1: see where the motivation comes from, you know. And once again,
Speaker 1: I just want to send my condolencence for the lawsuit
Speaker 1: of your daughter. But like like Tamka says, and we
Speaker 1: always say, we usually find our purpose through our pain
Speaker 1: and our tragedy. You know. So your your daughter inspired
Speaker 1: and motivated you to help hundreds of thousands, maybe even
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people along the way. So what
Speaker 1: exactly is the service that you provide? So the service
Speaker 1: that I provide, I have teamed up with organizations like
Speaker 1: the pre Clincia Foundation. Year after this happened, I've teamed
Speaker 1: up to with them. UM. I have also teamed up
Speaker 1: with the March for Mom's organization. This is a new
Speaker 1: organization that was brought to my attention more recently where
Speaker 1: they wanted me to lend my voice and my story
Speaker 1: to their platform and calling on UH policymakers to change, Um,
Speaker 1: the the what is the word I'm looking for? They
Speaker 1: want they basically want to change the treatment for women
Speaker 1: of color within the health care system. So so they're
Speaker 1: called so they were calling on Congress to see what
Speaker 1: they could do and see if there are any policies
Speaker 1: that can be made so that families can keep their
Speaker 1: dignity in the midst of such tragedy. Right, UM, so
Speaker 1: that women can can can walk away feeling like, you know,
Speaker 1: they did get the best health care that they could,
Speaker 1: that they weren't just ignored you know all these Um,
Speaker 1: the narrative is that black women can can take more,
Speaker 1: that we have a higher tolerance for pain. Uh. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is what's happened, but you'll be okay, right,
Speaker 1: And so at that time, I wasn't aware of all
Speaker 1: of this, But now that I have the knowledge, I
Speaker 1: understand that that's what I experienced, That's what happened to me.
Speaker 1: I told them, this is what's happening, and I was
Speaker 1: brushed off and I could have died. What are we
Speaker 1: doing about younger women? Again, I was eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: So you know the organizations that you work with, the
Speaker 1: pre Eclipsia Foundation and others, are they focused on young
Speaker 1: girls and particularly young girls of color and making sure
Speaker 1: that they get the information. Because you mentioned that Columbia
Speaker 1: did a different you know, did it did it differently
Speaker 1: for you? Right? They did a better job of caring
Speaker 1: for you. But I have to make sure that you
Speaker 1: always acknowledge that you were more educated. So while they
Speaker 1: may have been better, you also were coming to them
Speaker 1: with mahogany in your stomach, knowing what you had gone
Speaker 1: through and being not able to ask the right questions.
Speaker 1: But so many of our young girls we get pregnant
Speaker 1: and we don't even know about pre native vitamins exactly, exactly, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so I think that so with these organizations, I don't
Speaker 1: know that there's so much geared towards younger women. I
Speaker 1: think that the idea is just pregnant women, birthing women,
Speaker 1: UM midwife or even even people who are helping birth
Speaker 1: and women right getting the education that that they need
Speaker 1: to support people in my position. Right, Um. I also
Speaker 1: think that education is key. Aware, this is key. I
Speaker 1: went into my pregnancy with Journey not knowing anything, just
Speaker 1: like you said to me, because we don't even know
Speaker 1: about you know, prenatal vitamins right let alone, you can
Speaker 1: die from giving birth just being pregnant. No one talks
Speaker 1: about that. It's very tabooed, right, So I think that
Speaker 1: you know me lending my story and my voice and
Speaker 1: my passion towards this, um, whether it's young woman, middle
Speaker 1: and age or older, it's something that is necessary and
Speaker 1: it's real, especially in our community. We can act you
Speaker 1: one more thing, um, you you just you broke that
Speaker 1: down so eloquently. Can you give us like some warning
Speaker 1: signs because some people might not And after you give
Speaker 1: us like some warning signs, can you just give it?
Speaker 1: Do you have like a website where can you know
Speaker 1: certain places that young girls or women in general who
Speaker 1: are experiencing this and just want to know some more
Speaker 1: information about can they go to Absolutely so. Like I said,
Speaker 1: in my experience, some of the warning signs with pre
Speaker 1: clumsia that can even lead to help syndrome is if
Speaker 1: you have a headache, say something that is the first thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have a headache later in your pregnancy, you speak up.
Speaker 1: You go to your health provider and you say this
Speaker 1: is happening and I need you to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Monitor me, okay. UM. If you have swelling that seems
Speaker 1: not normal right to the point where if you feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: if you're feeling tight, right, you go to your medical provider.
Speaker 1: You tell them what's happening. UM. If you are vomiting
Speaker 1: in your six months of pregnancy that is not normal,
Speaker 1: go to them and tell them this is what's happening.
Speaker 1: In terms of research, UM, if you want to do
Speaker 1: more research on this, go to the Precumcy Foundation. They
Speaker 1: have all the symptoms and everything, um that you can
Speaker 1: find with regard to this. And if you're on the
Speaker 1: opposite side of it, if you are an expecting mother
Speaker 1: or someone who has been in my position but did
Speaker 1: not survive this, or a loved one did not survive it.
Speaker 1: Go to the March from moms uh dot org foundation
Speaker 1: it is they are the advocates who are going to
Speaker 1: fight for you and go to Congress to make sure
Speaker 1: that something can be done, that this is not swept
Speaker 1: under under the rug and that we don't matter. We
Speaker 1: do absolutely. How can people help you? Give us some
Speaker 1: information for how they can donate support you. So I
Speaker 1: would say you can donate to um the March for
Speaker 1: mom March from moms dot org. You can even donate
Speaker 1: to the pre clumsy of Foundation. UM. My social my
Speaker 1: social media is at journeys dot mother Jo. You are
Speaker 1: in e y s dot mother. UH. That's that is
Speaker 1: my Instagram. I have also written an article with surrounding
Speaker 1: this UH for Women's Health magazine, so you can find
Speaker 1: that in my bio on my Instagram and please just
Speaker 1: just make yourself aware. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Your energy is amazing, your
Speaker 1: story is amazing. Just seeing how you're able to persevere
Speaker 1: and utilize tragedy and just find a purpose and continue
Speaker 1: to help other people and you know and inform people,
Speaker 1: it's just a blessing. So we want to say thank
Speaker 1: you for me thank you, thank you, And I just
Speaker 1: want to say one last thing. When I lost Journey,
Speaker 1: I wanted to leave this earth, right. It was so traumatic,
Speaker 1: so much happened to me, right. I never thought, and
Speaker 1: this is for somebody out there. I never thought that
Speaker 1: what I went through would be my platform to help
Speaker 1: someone else. So if you are going through something and
Speaker 1: you feel like you cannot make it to that next level,
Speaker 1: you will. You know why because I'm here and I'm
Speaker 1: here telling it Trudy Russell. Folks, make sure that you
Speaker 1: all follow her journeys dot mother on Instagram and keep
Speaker 1: up with her work and less support. Trudy, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your certain thank you, thank you, bye bye.
Speaker 1: Before we go to the next segment and have our
Speaker 1: special guests joint, we're gonna take a quick break for
Speaker 1: our sponsors. That's how we are. So just listening to
Speaker 1: Trudy's story, you know, and seeing that she still has
Speaker 1: this energy man losing the door, I couldn't even imagine
Speaker 1: what she was feeling. But seeing how that pain, you know,
Speaker 1: pushed her to a passion to try to save and
Speaker 1: help others and inform others, It's something that's definitely commendable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to drill down with her and others on
Speaker 1: how we really help young girls. I know what she said,
Speaker 1: you know, when I asked her what do we what
Speaker 1: do we do to help get this information to young girls,
Speaker 1: particularly young Black and brown girls who are having children,
Speaker 1: she said that the organizations that she works with they
Speaker 1: deal with women in general, and and I totally understand that,
Speaker 1: but I think that folks don't don't know how important
Speaker 1: it is to drill down on particularly in communities, and
Speaker 1: young girls need a specific way that they reached. Which
Speaker 1: means that some of our celebrities, who we only hear
Speaker 1: Beyonce talking about this all the time, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know, it's truly mentioned that Beyonce experienced a
Speaker 1: similar situation. Well other artists, even people who have children,
Speaker 1: people who don't. They need to be out there talking
Speaker 1: about it. Influencers need to be talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that young girls need to turn to these organizations and
Speaker 1: get help and also be educated. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is I think that the Black Duela movement, the Black Duelers,
Speaker 1: these are these are women, midwives and women who are
Speaker 1: helping people to have children. They can Adula can be
Speaker 1: with you in the hospital and or they can set
Speaker 1: up a home birth right UM, and that we need
Speaker 1: to invest in that because you need an advocate when
Speaker 1: you go to the hospital for any reason, not just
Speaker 1: for having a child. If you go because your toe
Speaker 1: is stuff. If you don't have the right information, if
Speaker 1: you don't have the right help, you can end up
Speaker 1: losing your foot. So you need an advocate. You need
Speaker 1: people that can help us speak for you. So I
Speaker 1: guess that brings us to our next guest. So you
Speaker 1: heard Trudy I mentioned this next young man. We talked
Speaker 1: about him earlier, UM and his story another heart wrenching
Speaker 1: story that unfortunately is something we have to learn more about. UM.
Speaker 1: We are getting into a lot of things within the
Speaker 1: health care system. We've been talking about medical kidnapping, We're
Speaker 1: we've been talking about trafficking and how much of that
Speaker 1: is happening straight from the hospital. And now today we're
Speaker 1: covering this issue of maternal death UM and maternal issues,
Speaker 1: maternal health and the racism that exists within the health
Speaker 1: care system. And right now we're gonna hear from Bruce McIntyre.
Speaker 1: He's gonna tell us more about his story and what
Speaker 1: happened to Um the mother of his child. Unfortunately she's
Speaker 1: not with us anymore. And the story, the journey that
Speaker 1: Bruce has been through has truly been one that we
Speaker 1: should be paying attention to and learning from. He's also
Speaker 1: the founder of Savor Rose Foundation and certainly we want
Speaker 1: to support him. So welcome Bruce. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being with us today. Thank you all for having
Speaker 1: we So Bruce, how are you doing today? Man? Hanging
Speaker 1: in there, my brother hanging in there. But I'm I'm
Speaker 1: always working, I'm always moving and trying to do his
Speaker 1: best for the community and my people. So amen. A
Speaker 1: fellow Bronx native actually from my hood, all the Hybrid
Speaker 1: section into the Bronx Um. I know your father, I
Speaker 1: know a lot of your family members. We've talked, we
Speaker 1: met before, and I'm just to see this work that
Speaker 1: you're doing. You know, it's phenomenal and you know, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: like you know, we just had another guest on them
Speaker 1: on this Truty who work was inspired by you know,
Speaker 1: pain and trauma. You know, unfortunately we have to go
Speaker 1: through something like that's pretty much the story of my life.
Speaker 1: My my incarceration, you know, and falsely imprisonment led me
Speaker 1: to be an advocate against such. So you know, give
Speaker 1: give us uh synopsis of your story and and tell
Speaker 1: us what led you to the Sable Roles Foundation. So
Speaker 1: what let me too finding saver Rose was I lost
Speaker 1: my my wife, my my life partner, my soul made
Speaker 1: ambirose Isaac on April twenty one, two thousand twenty and
Speaker 1: due to medical negligence while she was giving birth, she
Speaker 1: actually passed away while giving birth to my son um,
Speaker 1: so she never even got to meet my son, hold
Speaker 1: my son. Ah. You know, this wasn't something that was
Speaker 1: that happened out of the blue. It was a pregnancy
Speaker 1: that we planned for back in August two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: We found out we were expecting in September two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: Very excited for both of us. We were both doing
Speaker 1: great things. I had just uh secured a position in
Speaker 1: Wall Street. I was a financial loan advisor before the
Speaker 1: pandemic hit. And she was she actually had earned her
Speaker 1: her bachelor's in psychology. She wanted to teach art therapy
Speaker 1: to the youth as a way of self expression. Um
Speaker 1: and then she became on to becoming a an early
Speaker 1: life educator. She was a school teacher. She was the
Speaker 1: head school teacher. UM took care of the youth and
Speaker 1: and was really concerned for the youth in their future. UM.
Speaker 1: She while she was pregnant, she was also earning her
Speaker 1: master's degree in business development. She didn't like the way
Speaker 1: that the schools were operating in Harlem, and she wanted
Speaker 1: to make those changes and she wanted to UM she
Speaker 1: wanted to have programs for these children's with you know,
Speaker 1: extracurricular activities and um you know things and such, so
Speaker 1: these these children can you know, be prepared for their futures.
Speaker 1: So she really wrapped her whole career around the children.
Speaker 1: She believed that by saving the children is how we
Speaker 1: save our future. And UM she was she was a
Speaker 1: firm believer in that. And she was actually expected to
Speaker 1: graduate May two thousand twenty, but she passed away a
Speaker 1: from two thousand twenty. And uh, you know, during this
Speaker 1: whole time while she's pregnant, UM able to be by
Speaker 1: her side. My my job is lenient enough for me
Speaker 1: to go to these um you know, her appointments and
Speaker 1: drive her to her appointments and all that stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: So I was there with her every step of the way,
Speaker 1: as I should be as a bother. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel comfortable with our first visit with the
Speaker 1: O b g y N because you know, the O
Speaker 1: b g y N was more concerned with us having
Speaker 1: a child and our marital status because we weren't married.
Speaker 1: We were having a child and we weren't we weren't married,
Speaker 1: and we were feeling judged immediately. Well, see what they
Speaker 1: actually what was the what was the conversation like about it?
Speaker 1: How did it even come into She was actually Amber's
Speaker 1: O b g y n since uh, since two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: probably a little earlier before then, So she's known Amber
Speaker 1: for a long time. Um, and she knew that Amber
Speaker 1: didn't have any children, and she asked me if I
Speaker 1: had children. So I did have children from a previous
Speaker 1: engagement down south, and you know I told her that
Speaker 1: I have children, uh, and she kind of just give
Speaker 1: me the gave me the screw face. And Um, that
Speaker 1: made me feel really uncomfortable, and that made me feel
Speaker 1: like I was being judged as a black man. And
Speaker 1: basically the O b g Yan was unprofessional. She had
Speaker 1: got her personal feelings involved in the profession that she
Speaker 1: should have been doing her job as a o b
Speaker 1: g y N and she wanted to have her personal
Speaker 1: feelings and world, how you having a kid and she doesn't.
Speaker 1: All these things got involved exactly and we felt like then, Um,
Speaker 1: she wasn't being as attensive to Hamper and it was
Speaker 1: kind of just passing Amber um along to two other
Speaker 1: O b's and um, you know, just not really caring
Speaker 1: for Amper. And you know, skip fast forward, we're coming
Speaker 1: into her second trimester and you know she's feeling and
Speaker 1: she's feeling ill. She you know, her her body and
Speaker 1: her conditioning is weakening, and you know where bringing these
Speaker 1: concerns up to her O B g y N and
Speaker 1: her O B g y and just kept brush her
Speaker 1: all people more, Um wasn't really answering her questions, was
Speaker 1: kind of just giving her the runaround, having her do
Speaker 1: extra things that she didn't necessarily have to do. Um,
Speaker 1: just because I guess they didn't want to fill out
Speaker 1: paperwork or they were just being lazy. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the case was. Um. She Uh, it's it's tough
Speaker 1: to have to relive these things, and but it's it's
Speaker 1: very much necessary because it's it's it's something that does
Speaker 1: need to be told. Uh, you know where we're transitioning
Speaker 1: from the second trimesses to the third. Uh, COVID is
Speaker 1: right around the corner. And I do want to add
Speaker 1: this in there and make sure that it's highlighted. Amber's
Speaker 1: platelet levels actually started deteriorating December two thousand nineteen. COVID
Speaker 1: wasn't announced until late February, and then it wasn't implemented
Speaker 1: in the city until March two thousand twenty. So they're
Speaker 1: trying to use COVID. Is this excuse to why Amber
Speaker 1: was being neglected when she was neglected well before COVID
Speaker 1: was even they had an excuse for her being neglected.
Speaker 1: They said, because of COVID, she didn't receive Wow. Yes,
Speaker 1: the stock market had crashed three times in the span
Speaker 1: of three weeks. That's the first time that this has
Speaker 1: ever happened since the Great Depression. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: my job is preparing me and telling me to get
Speaker 1: everything ready, and um, you know, because we don't know
Speaker 1: how this whole thing is about the playout. So I'm
Speaker 1: letting Amber know. You know, we need to get our
Speaker 1: from l A papers ready. We need to get everything
Speaker 1: ready for this pregnancy. You need to get everything ready
Speaker 1: from from your job. Um, and so she's trying to
Speaker 1: get you know, fm L a job security disability, things
Speaker 1: like that while she's going to be out of work
Speaker 1: during the pregnancy. And you know, she she brings these
Speaker 1: concerns to her O. B g y N because they're
Speaker 1: they're getting ready to to uh to put us in
Speaker 1: um what was it, uh telehealth. They were getting ready
Speaker 1: to set up telehealth. This is the first time they've
Speaker 1: done telethealth where they're gonna do everything from home and
Speaker 1: all this stuff while her platelets a hard deteriorating. But
Speaker 1: we we don't even know this that at this time
Speaker 1: because our O B g y N is not making
Speaker 1: us aware of her conditions. And you know, we we
Speaker 1: end up going in February, late February to get some
Speaker 1: blood work done to see what's going on with Amber's
Speaker 1: body while she's not feeling well. Um, and we don't
Speaker 1: hear anything from the doctors. We don't hear anything from
Speaker 1: the hospital. Uh. You know, they put us on telehealth
Speaker 1: and and all throughout March asked her platelet levels are deteriorating,
Speaker 1: and she her body and you know, her body's weakening.
Speaker 1: They're telling her, oh, here take these iron pills and
Speaker 1: go buy your own blood pressure monitor and keep up
Speaker 1: with your blood pressure. Let us know how you feel
Speaker 1: next week's but not to go to the hospital. But
Speaker 1: not to go to the hospital. You know, she's letting
Speaker 1: them know. They're they're not they're not you know, they're
Speaker 1: not doing anything about it. They're just telling her, oh,
Speaker 1: take take your pills and follow back up with us
Speaker 1: next week. And it was the same thing continuously. It
Speaker 1: was just it was such a perpetuated cycle. And uh,
Speaker 1: we're trying to get everything secure for her fm l A.
Speaker 1: We go to the O. B. G. Y n Um Ambers,
Speaker 1: you know, expressing her concerns because she does work with
Speaker 1: students and she's working around children. There are parents who
Speaker 1: are bringing their their children to school without um. We're
Speaker 1: in the pandemic. There's there's people who are bringing their
Speaker 1: children to school with no doctor's notes, which is not allowed. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know the schools accepting this. There are children coughing, sneezing,
Speaker 1: being saliva all over Amber. Um, she's you know, in
Speaker 1: her second trimester, transitioning to her third. When she goes
Speaker 1: to grab children, um, they're kicking her in the stomach
Speaker 1: for um. You know, her her her health was deteriorating,
Speaker 1: so it was very hard for her to breathe as well.
Speaker 1: But she's compantly having to carry and pick up kids
Speaker 1: up and downstairs um with you know, with no help.
Speaker 1: And she's expressingly to her her O b g y
Speaker 1: M because we're we're do May thirty, two thousand twenty,
Speaker 1: that's how duty. And instead of leaving in May, her
Speaker 1: her due month, she's trying to leave for April instead
Speaker 1: because of how she's feeling. And you know, the O
Speaker 1: b g y N is telling her, you know, well,
Speaker 1: there are other pregnant women who are working in this
Speaker 1: office right now. Why shouldn't you be able to work?
Speaker 1: Why should you have to get off early? Her health
Speaker 1: is deteriorating still at this time, rapidly, and we're still
Speaker 1: kunaware of it. And so rolls Rolls goes into labor
Speaker 1: and she passes away. And what does the O b
Speaker 1: g y N say at this point? Does she ever
Speaker 1: even look you in the face and say, damn, I
Speaker 1: should listen. She's ducking in dodger right now. She's ducking
Speaker 1: in dodging right now. And I'm still dealing with the system.
Speaker 1: But the thing is also is you know, she has people,
Speaker 1: we have family members that are working in this medical
Speaker 1: system as well. And there are white women who whom
Speaker 1: are due after Amber, who are healthy, getting early fim A,
Speaker 1: early em A, getting early disability. But yeah, Amber's health
Speaker 1: is actually deteriorating and she doesn't get granted such options.
Speaker 1: So that's O B G I and a white woman.
Speaker 1: She was actually an Indian woman, actually an Indian woman.
Speaker 1: But there there were some some some white people within
Speaker 1: the within the system that I've done us wrong as well. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, her mother actually worked at Monseifia as well,
Speaker 1: she worked at a different Monts of Fire facility. We
Speaker 1: actually received the same treatment from two different Months of
Speaker 1: Fire facilities, which makes me believe that this is systemic, uh,
Speaker 1: because we we ended up leaving the first Monseifia that
Speaker 1: we were at due to the negligence, and we ended
Speaker 1: up going to Montfire Einstein, where her mother has worked
Speaker 1: for twenty five years out of Amber's twenty six years
Speaker 1: of life. And you still weren't able to get the
Speaker 1: right treatment, not at all. So did she now? Trudy
Speaker 1: Russell told us that pre eclem pre eclemsia um is
Speaker 1: was her health issue. Is that the same thing that
Speaker 1: Rolls had or does she have something different? So Amber
Speaker 1: had help syndrome, which gets mistaken for proclemsia, and I'm
Speaker 1: sorry Amber Rose, Amber Rose, yes, just road but but
Speaker 1: but I think I think Trudy had health syndrome also too.
Speaker 1: She said first that knows and then they said she
Speaker 1: had helped him. Yeah, but they didn't know what what
Speaker 1: Amber had until until the day that they induced her labor.
Speaker 1: So they had all this time to figure it out.
Speaker 1: But they decided that they were gonna wait, and they didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't find what she had until the day that
Speaker 1: she that they induced her labor. UM. We actually went
Speaker 1: um in April. In April UM, we decided that we
Speaker 1: were going to uh. We were facing so much negligence
Speaker 1: from the hospitals. We decided that we're going to hire
Speaker 1: midwives and doulas and we sent our information over to
Speaker 1: a midwife. After finally getting our my child updated, which
Speaker 1: took months to to to complete. UM, we sent that
Speaker 1: stuff over to our midwife and our midwife was the
Speaker 1: one that protected it and she, you know, she told
Speaker 1: us that she couldn't take Amber on as a client
Speaker 1: because Amber was too high risk at that point, so
Speaker 1: she couldn't be seen by uh, you know, a midwife,
Speaker 1: or she couldn't go to a birthing center. We had
Speaker 1: to go to a hospital. We had no other choice. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she was telling us to like, she doesn't understand
Speaker 1: why Amber is not being seen weekly, you know. And
Speaker 1: she was the one that caught it and really explained
Speaker 1: what was going on to us because the O G
Speaker 1: y N wasn't educating us on anything that was going on.
Speaker 1: She was barely even telling us anything that was going
Speaker 1: on with Amber's body. Uh, you know. And uh, two
Speaker 1: weeks later, Amber makes it sweet wanting to write and
Speaker 1: tell all about the incompetence and the negligence that she
Speaker 1: had been facing during her pregnancy, her entire pregnancy, and
Speaker 1: then a few days after that she passed away. So
Speaker 1: can I can of actual question, can you kind of
Speaker 1: you know, I know it's kind of traumatized, but I
Speaker 1: just want you to, like the date of her pregnancy, like,
Speaker 1: what what actually happened? What was you know, how did
Speaker 1: when they got to the doctor they diagnosed it, what
Speaker 1: happened when she actually had the baby? So when when
Speaker 1: actually when when when we went to the hospital because
Speaker 1: she had to get blood work done three times um
Speaker 1: within the span of a month, and they still weren't
Speaker 1: really paying attense to her. They were, you know, mixing
Speaker 1: up her her blood work, not finding her blood work,
Speaker 1: not finding her paperwork, um, just misplacing things and having
Speaker 1: us do all these runarounds. So they called us on
Speaker 1: on April eighteen. They called us the day after she
Speaker 1: she got some more blood work done. The day after that,
Speaker 1: she did she wrote her last tweet that went viral um.
Speaker 1: The day after they called us like a thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning and said that, hey, Amber needs to come
Speaker 1: in for treatment immediately for treatment. So you know, we're uh,
Speaker 1: you know, packing up, getting ready to head out. Amber's
Speaker 1: mother was staying with us at the time because she
Speaker 1: was gonna stay with us, um, you know, to help
Speaker 1: care for Amber while she was pregnant, while I was
Speaker 1: taking care of you know, the household. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: we all rolled out to the hospital together and you know,
Speaker 1: as soon as we get there, I'm speaking to the
Speaker 1: receptionist about what's been going on. And and you know,
Speaker 1: because because of COVID regulations, they're not trying to allow me,
Speaker 1: as her partner, come up with her. They're not trying
Speaker 1: to allow her mother to come up with her. Even
Speaker 1: though her mother has worked here for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: has the proper ppe and has access to the hospital,
Speaker 1: They're still not allowing her to come up. They're not
Speaker 1: allowing us to call our midwife to come or anything.
Speaker 1: They they needed to be alone with Amber by themselves,
Speaker 1: and which is something that she was scared up because
Speaker 1: she was aware of the statistics of of of black
Speaker 1: women in these hospitals. Um So, I'm speaking to the
Speaker 1: reception that's about everything that's going on and how they
Speaker 1: need to make some sort of exception considering the fact
Speaker 1: that this is no mistake of our own. This is
Speaker 1: a mistake clearly that they've made this whole time. Um So,
Speaker 1: security walks up to me and tells me, okay, Mr
Speaker 1: baby Daddy, you need to calm down, go sit in
Speaker 1: the lobby. A matter of fact, we don't want you
Speaker 1: in the lobby. You need to wait outside. So they
Speaker 1: made me wait outside. Um and you know, Amber is
Speaker 1: giving me updates, texting me, calling me, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: she's very nervous and very scared because you know, she
Speaker 1: may have to stay overnight and Amber's. Amber is one
Speaker 1: of the most healthiest people I've ever known in my
Speaker 1: entire life, Pasbyterian, and and held a strict vegan diet
Speaker 1: while she was pregnant. So it was just really confusing.
Speaker 1: And she's never had to stay in a hospital overnight,
Speaker 1: so she was scared, and UM, you know, She's trying
Speaker 1: to make sure that I'm gonna be there for her
Speaker 1: and with her, and they end up telling her that
Speaker 1: she has to stay for the whole weekend because they
Speaker 1: don't know what she has. You know, this whole time
Speaker 1: they're testing her for COVID. They tested her for COVID twice,
Speaker 1: came back negative, and they wanted to test her a
Speaker 1: third time. UM. And you know the high risk doctor
Speaker 1: that never even showed up for Amber was you know, Um,
Speaker 1: they passed Hamber down to a much younger doctor. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if that doctor was was a resident,
Speaker 1: was an undergrad because they were allowing residents and undergrads
Speaker 1: to operate UM during those times. And UM, you know
Speaker 1: that was very nerve wracking for us. UM. And they
Speaker 1: told her, even though you don't have COVID, we're still
Speaker 1: going to treat you as as if you were a
Speaker 1: COVID patient and hearing that, you're you're hearing all of
Speaker 1: this on the phone, yes, from her because at this
Speaker 1: point because my my mom Um, she had a stroke
Speaker 1: during the same time on March tenth of two thousand
Speaker 1: and twenty, and we also were in Monte Theory and
Speaker 1: at some point we unfortunately had to leave the building
Speaker 1: and it was the same thing. And by the way,
Speaker 1: my mother at that time wasn't in her right mind
Speaker 1: right she she was had been in a coma for
Speaker 1: a while, and now she's out of the coma, so
Speaker 1: she's unable to use the phone. She's had she's partially paralyzed,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to communicate and understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: So you're learning all of this on the phone, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And then um, you know, they're they're telling her she's
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna treat heads if she's a COVID patient.
Speaker 1: And when I first heard that, I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm trying not to think negative. So I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe they're gonna wear extra ppe, which is something that
Speaker 1: they should be wearing for a pregnant woman who doesn't
Speaker 1: have COVID and um, but what did it mean, What
Speaker 1: did it ultimately mean? After she passed. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: believe otherwise. Um, because you know, on the twenty on April,
Speaker 1: she called me in the morning and said that she
Speaker 1: had Hope syndrome, sent me a Google review of what
Speaker 1: it was. I had to study what help syndrome was
Speaker 1: before I got to the hospital. They were finally gonna
Speaker 1: allow me to come to the hospital to be with
Speaker 1: her during delivery. Um. After I passed my COVID tests.
Speaker 1: I passed my COVID tests, went straight over there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they wouldn't even let me buy her though.
Speaker 1: They I had to sit in a chair in a corner. Um.
Speaker 1: I couldn't hold her hand. I couldn't you know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't talk to her. I couldn't speak you know, positive,
Speaker 1: positive affirmations to her. Um. You know, I'm really just
Speaker 1: trying to prepare her. And uh, you know, the nurses
Speaker 1: are telling us, m oh, yeah, you can't be close
Speaker 1: to her because we don't know who has COVID. We
Speaker 1: don't even know if we have COVID. We've never been tested,
Speaker 1: so that the nurses at Montifie weren't being tested, which
Speaker 1: is very unsettling. To us, considering the fact that we
Speaker 1: took all of the proper precautions to say, to stay
Speaker 1: safe and to keep our baby safe. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we did all the right things and and so now
Speaker 1: this is the day that they're inducing her and she
Speaker 1: passes and you're there, um, and this happens, and then
Speaker 1: you now have your baby. Thank you. No, they didn't
Speaker 1: give me my baby, um, which is something that that
Speaker 1: fathers have to go through. So after she passed away, Uh,
Speaker 1: there were you know, black nurses who were telling me, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for me to get on my my son's
Speaker 1: birth certificate things, I had to go through this process
Speaker 1: because Amber was no longer alive to attest that I
Speaker 1: was the father, even though that was the only while
Speaker 1: they allowed me to be inside of the hospital is
Speaker 1: because I was the father. So because she was no
Speaker 1: longer alive to attest that I was the father, I
Speaker 1: have spoke to this whole process. So I have a
Speaker 1: team of black nurses telling me to fill out this
Speaker 1: paperwork and give it to the head nurse, which is
Speaker 1: a white woman. Yeah. Yes, So I fill out the paperwork,
Speaker 1: I bring it to the head nurse. The head nurse
Speaker 1: tells me, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you don't
Speaker 1: have to do this here. Um, just whenever you get home,
Speaker 1: send it to this address. Um. You know. So I
Speaker 1: did that, and they couldn't release the baby to me.
Speaker 1: They actually had to release the baby to Amber's mother.
Speaker 1: They couldn't. They couldn't release my child to me. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. Gratefully though, Amber's mother was already staying
Speaker 1: with me, so he was coming home anyways. Um. But
Speaker 1: even till this day, this is something that I'm still
Speaker 1: fighting because I'm still not on my son's birth certificate.
Speaker 1: A year over a year later, he turned He turned
Speaker 1: one in April on April. He turned one on April
Speaker 1: twenty and so they tell me to fill out this
Speaker 1: paperwork send it to this address. I get a decline
Speaker 1: letter four months later, um, saying that they need more
Speaker 1: more information. So I go to Sarah surrogate's court, and
Speaker 1: the representative being a black woman, she says to me
Speaker 1: because she she's very familiar with my story and my
Speaker 1: advocacy work at this time, and she's telling me, hey, Bruce,
Speaker 1: how does Elias have your last name McIntire. Well, that's
Speaker 1: because that's something that Amber and I agreed on and
Speaker 1: that's where Amber put down on the paperwork. Um, you
Speaker 1: know Elias Backe's hire. She tells me, well, Bruce, your
Speaker 1: son has your last name. I don't understand why they're
Speaker 1: why they're making you go through all of this. So
Speaker 1: they're making me go through this process for no reason.
Speaker 1: So so now you have you have just lost your
Speaker 1: soul mate. You have a new child that you have
Speaker 1: to take care of. You have to deal with the
Speaker 1: trauma of that, and now you have to deal with
Speaker 1: all of the red tape and all these things just
Speaker 1: to be acknowledged as the father of your child. How
Speaker 1: much how traumaful is that? How much pain? Like what
Speaker 1: is going through your mind? It's a lot of It's
Speaker 1: a lot of trauma because I I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: at least after Amber passing, there would be some sort
Speaker 1: of safety net for me, some sort of help. There's not.
Speaker 1: There's nothing for us that's going to help us. They've
Speaker 1: they've been trying to really um cover up what happened
Speaker 1: to Amber. They've really been trying to, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: hurt me as well, because because since I'm not all
Speaker 1: my son's birth certificate, I don't get you know, social
Speaker 1: Security for my son. I don't get that that extra
Speaker 1: relief that they're sending parents. I don't get those, you know.
Speaker 1: And and not to mention, I lost my job during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, so having to take care of a household,
Speaker 1: I'm having to help with with Amber's mother, I'm having
Speaker 1: to help, you know, help with my sign and take
Speaker 1: care of all these things. Um. But which is another
Speaker 1: reasons why I'm just going so hard at this system,
Speaker 1: because they won't make any changes until you're taking money
Speaker 1: out there pocket, which is exactly what I've been doing. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, they after Amber's passing, I'm looking at her
Speaker 1: her death certificate, and I'm noticing some red flags. I'm
Speaker 1: noticing under partner or father of child. They left my
Speaker 1: name blank, even though they knew who I was and
Speaker 1: I was there. They left Amber the section for the mother,
Speaker 1: Amber's mother. They knew who Amber's mother was, She's been
Speaker 1: working there for twenty five years. I left her name
Speaker 1: blank as if she was just another black woman, no family.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I'm starting to notice that they're also
Speaker 1: even though she does not have COVID, they are still
Speaker 1: trying to send her body to Heart Island, where they're
Speaker 1: dumping COVID bodies and homes and mask graves. So they're
Speaker 1: they're getting ready to try to put her in the
Speaker 1: back of an ice truck to send her to that island.
Speaker 1: And I'm also noticing that the depth certificate was never
Speaker 1: signed off by a medical examiner, but it was signed
Speaker 1: off an optopsy was performed by the head surgeon that
Speaker 1: was supposed to care for Amber but never showed up,
Speaker 1: so he could kind of just write whatever he felt
Speaker 1: like writing. And that's very that's very problematic. Um. Luckily,
Speaker 1: somebody has seen my advocacy where it at a funeral home,
Speaker 1: and he decided that he wanted to help us, and
Speaker 1: he picked up Amber and and held Amber for us
Speaker 1: until we got her a proper grave site ready, which
Speaker 1: is something that I was great before because I could
Speaker 1: lean on my community to help me with that. UM.
Speaker 1: But there there was just so many, so many red flags.
Speaker 1: And then after Amber's passing, Cuomo jumps on TV and
Speaker 1: he's in a he's in a council meeting and he's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, he's talking about our situation, and UM, how
Speaker 1: heartbreaking our situation is. And and because of our situation,
Speaker 1: now they're starting to allow midwives to be in the
Speaker 1: hospitals again. UM. And you know Cuomo's on TV stating
Speaker 1: that his Maternal Task Force is going to take care
Speaker 1: of it. They've done nothing for us. And in fact,
Speaker 1: after getting into this advocacy work and partnering with with
Speaker 1: birth workers. UM. You know, Cuomos, Cuomo's Maternal Task Force
Speaker 1: was was very problematic as well, and haven't done anything
Speaker 1: for the past eleven years. Um. But Cuomo right turns
Speaker 1: around and creates an executive order trying to block families
Speaker 1: like mine from taking legal action um, and trying to
Speaker 1: protect the doctors over at Montifire granting them medical malpractice
Speaker 1: community um to where we can't take legal action up
Speaker 1: against them. This is just a whole clusterified here. Like
Speaker 1: it's just like this is a real deep rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: You know, we we can have a whole episode on
Speaker 1: this alone. You know, unfortunately, have to go and move on.
Speaker 1: I know you have a lot to do. I know
Speaker 1: you're dealing a single father, just dealing with that man.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, as a father, you know,
Speaker 1: as a black father, I just want to say that
Speaker 1: we appreciate the work that you're doing. You just the
Speaker 1: information that you've just given me is so vital. You know,
Speaker 1: I've I've had three different children and and you know,
Speaker 1: fortunately I've been able to be there for all three
Speaker 1: of them. And there have been a lot of just
Speaker 1: different discrepancies that I also had to deal with as
Speaker 1: a black father. You know, nothing nothing as severe as
Speaker 1: what you you dealt with. But you know, just seeing
Speaker 1: how you're taking this, you know, have inspired you to
Speaker 1: start to Save a Rhodes Foundation. How its inspired to
Speaker 1: you to just educate yourself and others on what's going
Speaker 1: on with you know, our black families and immortality and
Speaker 1: the rate that goes on in the maternal you know
Speaker 1: area with our families. You know, it's something that's commendable. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say, Yo, we thank you. We appreciate
Speaker 1: what you're doing. You know, how how is it can
Speaker 1: we help your foundation? Could you give us some information
Speaker 1: on how to help the foundation? Um? Yeah, while always supporting.
Speaker 1: You can follow me at Bismack the Third on I
Speaker 1: g um B I Z M A C the Third
Speaker 1: and UH or you can follow us at Save a
Speaker 1: Roads Foundation on on Instagram or Facebook. We post a
Speaker 1: lot of updates on there. UM We also have a
Speaker 1: go fund me up as well, because I'm still waiting
Speaker 1: on some stuff to clear through the I r S
Speaker 1: because that's something else that's been prolonged as well. UM,
Speaker 1: So we're just waiting on our website and stuff like
Speaker 1: that to pop. But you know, during the meantime, I
Speaker 1: am educating. I just got back from Boston last month.
Speaker 1: I was teaching a racial bias class to Harvard Medical students.
Speaker 1: Um you know talk classes at Yale and and Columbia
Speaker 1: New York School of Men. I've done you know, trainings
Speaker 1: for midwives and doulas and things of that nature. So
Speaker 1: I've been I've been really working, uh working on a
Speaker 1: on a mental health app as well with my brother,
Speaker 1: with Mark Bishop. He's done he was a programmer for
Speaker 1: things like Black People Meet dot com, Match dot Com,
Speaker 1: things like that. So we're working on a on a
Speaker 1: mental health app that's getting ready to drop called Joyfully
Speaker 1: that should be out next month. So we're really trying
Speaker 1: to help, you know, dedicate our time towards the people
Speaker 1: you know doing this work. Especially in the BRONX. I've
Speaker 1: noticed that you know, over sixty of these women don't
Speaker 1: need C sections, and over sixty percent of these women
Speaker 1: are are dying, and you know it's it's preventable. UM
Speaker 1: and a lot of these privately owned hospitals are being
Speaker 1: so substantially underfunded in our communities, so this is a
Speaker 1: way for them to make up for their budget cuts
Speaker 1: is through c sections because they're you know this, this
Speaker 1: turns into a surgical issue. So every time that they
Speaker 1: cut a black woman open there, they're earning an extra
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars versus what they would have made for
Speaker 1: a natural birth. So they're clearly putting copit over people.
Speaker 1: And I'm just highlighting the highlighting all that stuff that
Speaker 1: they're doing. So I appreciate y'all letting me use our platform,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate the work that y'all do, especially you know,
Speaker 1: seeing you come from the same background as me, and
Speaker 1: come from the same places as me, and and really
Speaker 1: out here doing things for people. So that's that's amazing
Speaker 1: to speak to see and it inspires me truly, So
Speaker 1: thank you, well, thank you man. I'm truly inspired by
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing. Unfortunately, to Maka had to
Speaker 1: drop off to do press. We're doing um A rally
Speaker 1: for the much on Washington rally that we're doing in
Speaker 1: d C. So she had to drop off and handle
Speaker 1: a lot of that. But she says she she wants
Speaker 1: you to say she had apologizes that she couldn't stay
Speaker 1: along with your Your story is so compelling. We actually
Speaker 1: choosed to only do this interview for like ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, but I was like, we can't. We can't
Speaker 1: stop you from saying because this is very important, you know,
Speaker 1: just hearing your insight, hearing your experience and just understanding
Speaker 1: this is important. So we wasn't even able to finish
Speaker 1: the thing because we're supposed to finish earlier. But she
Speaker 1: just wants to say that she's with you, we support you,
Speaker 1: and um, whatever we can do, we're here. Thank you
Speaker 1: Bruce McIntyre for coming on our show. You know, um,
Speaker 1: what what's your what is your You have a son, Yeah,
Speaker 1: my Sonny liars, liars and liars. Mcintime man, blessings to him.
Speaker 1: I know that you're gonna turn him and give him
Speaker 1: all of the energy and jews that he needs to
Speaker 1: be a strong man. So we appreciate you once again
Speaker 1: thanks to coming on the show. Follow um, save the Roads,
Speaker 1: support Stave Roads Foundation. He has to go from me
Speaker 1: as all of those things. Man, thank you. We definitely
Speaker 1: need to support people like you that really doing work
Speaker 1: that's unseen that people don't even realize because I had
Speaker 1: absolutely no idea all these things that happen, and even
Speaker 1: being my father, So I appreciate everything. Everything was going
Speaker 1: viral to we were we were really going viral around
Speaker 1: the world. Um and then uh, you know, George Floyd
Speaker 1: passed away right after and and you know the focus
Speaker 1: need more towards George Floyd versus in the hospitals to
Speaker 1: black women. So hopefully we could get it viral again
Speaker 1: and people start paying attention. Man, we appreciate you. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. Thank you that shout out to Bruce Man,
Speaker 1: Like I said, he's a fellow Bronx native actually from Highbridge, Agin.
Speaker 1: I know his father. You know, we were familiar with
Speaker 1: a lot of people, actually met Bruce before. And just
Speaker 1: hearing story, you know, when Yandy had posted it, it
Speaker 1: was heart felt. It was heartfelt, and just knowing that
Speaker 1: he's from the same community, just hearing him, he seems
Speaker 1: like it's a lot that he's them, a whole lot.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm losing your your woman didn't actually having
Speaker 1: to be a father and didn't having to go through
Speaker 1: all of these issues just a single father exactly has
Speaker 1: to be a single father. Didn't have to go to
Speaker 1: the issue just to have your name putting your son's
Speaker 1: birth certificate. Man, still hasn't been accomplished. Still hasn't been accomplished.
Speaker 1: So you know, I just want to send shouts out
Speaker 1: to him and make sure that you support his foundation,
Speaker 1: Saver Rhodes Foundation, and all the work that he's doing. Man,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot. This is a very heavy show,
Speaker 1: very heavy show, you know, and kind of brings me
Speaker 1: to my I don't get this is a little off topic.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of a lot off topic. It
Speaker 1: brings me because last week when we was talking to
Speaker 1: um Tony, she was explaining to us how she was
Speaker 1: here working as an expert for our Kelly's tribe. Y
Speaker 1: is she's well known for her work around sex traffic. Yes,
Speaker 1: sex traffic. Watch that. If you haven't watched that episode,
Speaker 1: go back and watch. Very informative. Tony is so dope,
Speaker 1: just how she utilized her pain and her passion and
Speaker 1: her skill level to you know, understanding the intricacies of
Speaker 1: what goes on in traffic and utilize it to save
Speaker 1: you know, and rescue quote unquote rescue some of these
Speaker 1: sex workers. Um it brings me to miew. I don't
Speaker 1: get it. Actually they're not. This is different. Sex workers
Speaker 1: are different, but sex different well those being sex traffic. Okay, right, listen,
Speaker 1: you know I'm learning. I'm learning it's different because sex
Speaker 1: work is working, sex working. You supports us, okay, I
Speaker 1: supports sexual We all supported. No, we don't know. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: this show streaked politicians, we support sex workers, so um,
Speaker 1: but but we don't support is our county. And I
Speaker 1: don't understand for the life of me. What I don't
Speaker 1: get is why it's R. Kelly going to trial? Like
Speaker 1: who is the judge, the lawyer? That's our Kelly. We're
Speaker 1: gonna need you to go on to trial. Man, take
Speaker 1: this to travel. You got a chance to win in
Speaker 1: this case, Like as a like someone a smart person
Speaker 1: will sit there and saying, man, what they trying to
Speaker 1: give you? Man, you got all of this against you
Speaker 1: got videos, you got accusations, you got everything in the world.
Speaker 1: Like if if you talk about the deck being stacked,
Speaker 1: there's no more deck stacked against anybody. He doesn't give
Speaker 1: people be um venereal disease. It's it's so much ship
Speaker 1: against all Kelly, that I could not even fathom me
Speaker 1: saying to myself, I'm going to trial, Like I really
Speaker 1: just don't get it, Like, what is what is the
Speaker 1: mind state behind some money that's decides to go to
Speaker 1: trial for this? That's what narcissists do. Someone said that
Speaker 1: to me the other day, that that's what narcissism looks like.
Speaker 1: And also what he is facing in terms of time,
Speaker 1: he could receive life in prison in so many different
Speaker 1: places that he really doesn't have any other option, you know,
Speaker 1: but to kind of throw it at the wall and
Speaker 1: fight and see if they can knock down a few situations,
Speaker 1: a few scenarios where they might be able to get
Speaker 1: a little less time. So instead of him having triple life,
Speaker 1: he might just get, you know, fifty years or something
Speaker 1: like that. That's the goal at this point. But that's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say, to go to go. If
Speaker 1: you go to trial, you leave it on the mercy
Speaker 1: of So if you're trying to get fifty years, right,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get fifty years, what you do
Speaker 1: is try to negotiate prior I don't give. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you what I Well, well, there's there's two things
Speaker 1: to that. First of all, I don't know who's trying
Speaker 1: to negotiate, but so much with him. But the second
Speaker 1: thing is that every detail of everybody's story is not
Speaker 1: gonna be true, and it's also not going to be proven.
Speaker 1: They're not going to be able to prove even stuff
Speaker 1: that is true. So that's what gives them some ability
Speaker 1: to say, you were not able to prove that I
Speaker 1: did X, Y Z and or att. You know, during
Speaker 1: the trial it came out that this person is not credible,
Speaker 1: or she lied because she wasn't even in the place
Speaker 1: at the time, whatever, you do understand I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: that's what they're banking on, is to use that as
Speaker 1: leverage to be able to kind of get him in
Speaker 1: a better situation than what he's in right now, because
Speaker 1: based upon where he's sitting today, it's nothing that I
Speaker 1: can see. But that's what I was trying to say,
Speaker 1: Like the negotiation process would be that, like your lawyer
Speaker 1: would say, look, dear, we we we were looking and
Speaker 1: say these two cases, these ain't gonna the credibility of
Speaker 1: his witnesses. Look at these situations. All right, y'all might
Speaker 1: have these these right here. It's gonna be hard for
Speaker 1: us to prove. And we're willing to make a deal.
Speaker 1: Let's make a deal. You know, my client doesn't need life,
Speaker 1: he doesn't need this. We want to, we want to.
Speaker 1: He definitely realized that he's if you listen to testimony,
Speaker 1: he's dealing with his own abuse. You know, he's that
Speaker 1: he had been abused. So the mentality that he has
Speaker 1: come from somewhere. He's obviously sick. Let's work on getting
Speaker 1: him programs, just put him in a hospital. Let's work
Speaker 1: on all of those things, and let's try to limit
Speaker 1: the amount of jail timp like that. Those are things
Speaker 1: that you negotiate. The dealing with narcissism, you're dealing with stupidism. Well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to call it? Narcissist? Narcissism and
Speaker 1: stupidism can run together, they can be parallel, and and
Speaker 1: you're dealing with that because in his mind, he thinks
Speaker 1: that as he's been able to get away with it before,
Speaker 1: he might be able to get away with it again.
Speaker 1: That's what he thinks. He honestly believes in his mind. Hey,
Speaker 1: you never know and guess why when you talk about negotiations. Oh,
Speaker 1: Jay's ass was going to jail. They didn't know that
Speaker 1: the moment was gonna come up at some point where
Speaker 1: Johnny Cochrane had sat in his he there was one
Speaker 1: that they had to prove his word over and listen
Speaker 1: to what I'm saying. He was going to jail based
Speaker 1: upon a lot of things, including whether or not they
Speaker 1: could prove it or whatever. But he was going to jail, right.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that there was never really no proof that
Speaker 1: there was just always it was. It was all circumstances.
Speaker 1: But this is the thing, But this is my point.
Speaker 1: What was the turning of the tie in ol J's
Speaker 1: situation was if it doesn't fit it, you must SI quit. Period.
Speaker 1: That was a moment that happened within the trial. The
Speaker 1: Johnny Cochrane probably stayed up all day and all night
Speaker 1: thinking about them closing remarks or whatever whatever time he
Speaker 1: said that ship because that ship was good, okay, And
Speaker 1: when he said it, it struck the nerves of all
Speaker 1: the jewels and the court in general to say, we
Speaker 1: really it didn't fit. It didn't fit. But if you did,
Speaker 1: if you take out if you remove Johnny Cochrane's point,
Speaker 1: they were skinned of ship. That entire defense table was afraid.
Speaker 1: They thought O. J Was going to jail, even whether
Speaker 1: he was guilty or not. They thought he was going
Speaker 1: to jail because two white people have been killed and
Speaker 1: he was a nigger, and that's what they thought, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're gonna run nigger, so they
Speaker 1: might make us say he was a negro, Kay, that's
Speaker 1: it right? So what that's what they're waiting on, are
Speaker 1: telling them waiting on if it doesn't, they're waiting on
Speaker 1: a moment that might hit and strike at the right time.
Speaker 1: To be able to get is nasty, sick self off
Speaker 1: because I've been first of all, after I've watched saving
Speaker 1: what was this surviving? R Kelly, those two I know
Speaker 1: you you couldn't watch you well, actually I got you
Speaker 1: to watch like five minutes. I called you. I said,
Speaker 1: got to see you. Guy said you started watching? You said,
Speaker 1: and you called me back and you said, listen, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't even do this. I understand. R. Kelly. It's situation.
Speaker 1: He's done and that's that I cannot. I can't. I
Speaker 1: just can't. And there's a lot of people that said,
Speaker 1: if my mother said she couldn't do it, she couldn't
Speaker 1: do it for many different reasons, and probably her own
Speaker 1: traumling things she's thinking about from her hometown and her childhood.
Speaker 1: She couldn't do it. But I sat and I watched
Speaker 1: it because so many people that I know was trying
Speaker 1: to fight me for R. Kelly, and I said, well, me,
Speaker 1: let me go educate and inform myself because maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know everything. Now. I know the people who put
Speaker 1: the documentary together, and so from what I know about
Speaker 1: their credibility, I don't think that they would have gotten
Speaker 1: that deep into something that they know was just a
Speaker 1: both faced lie. But nonetheless put that to the side.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see for myself. I sat myself and
Speaker 1: I watched every night. In fact, I was live tweeting
Speaker 1: during the show, right ship the stories his wife, his
Speaker 1: ex wife, and all these other people parents, the stories
Speaker 1: that they would tell me. Nah, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: every person was telling the truth, because there's no such thing.
Speaker 1: There's no such things. You get a hundred people that
Speaker 1: say you did something, somebody in the one hundred is
Speaker 1: not telling the full story. You're not telling the truth,
Speaker 1: it's been enhanced. They heard somebody else say some stuff.
Speaker 1: They stole a little bit of that and put a
Speaker 1: little stink on their story. That's always gonna be the case.
Speaker 1: But the crux of the map, like the like, the
Speaker 1: meat of it, right, is that this man is sick
Speaker 1: and he should have been stopped a long time ago.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of other people. There are people
Speaker 1: who work for him. There's families and a lot of
Speaker 1: folks who were around who knew about this stuff, and
Speaker 1: they let their children be around him. They let other
Speaker 1: children get harmed by him, They let other women be
Speaker 1: harmed by him because of money and other things that
Speaker 1: folks wanted that was more important than the lives of
Speaker 1: those women. Now, women who were impacted by this men.
Speaker 1: Even the way he grew up and the things that
Speaker 1: happened to him as a child, somebody should have paid
Speaker 1: for that. So there's a whole lot of blame. But
Speaker 1: nonetheless it's a grown ass man and he's gonna have
Speaker 1: to pay the piper for the ship that he has done,
Speaker 1: and he needs to to be clear. Well, well, that said,
Speaker 1: that brings us to another end and of the show.
Speaker 1: You know, there's another informative show, a dope show, you know.
Speaker 1: Shout out to all of our guests, Bruce McIntyre, Trudy Russell,
Speaker 1: who I'm king here and gave us a out of
Speaker 1: information and share their own personal stories. And I hope
Speaker 1: their information their stories can help somebody else. You know.
Speaker 1: Number one show Man, I tell you we got the
Speaker 1: number one show in the world. It's no there's no
Speaker 1: show like Street Politicians Man on Show on our hearts alright,
Speaker 1: sha Share Share Share, Share telling Share, Let us know
Speaker 1: about any of the topics you wanted to hear about.
Speaker 1: Give us some questions. Put your questions on YouTube. We'll
Speaker 1: try to get to a question every week to you know,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that we're taking our fans serious
Speaker 1: and understanding what they have questions about. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: be here. Man, number one show in the world, in
Speaker 1: our hearts and on the charts. As as she said,
Speaker 1: it's in our hearts, but I'm saying it's in our
Speaker 1: hearts and on the charts. No, you can't tell people
Speaker 1: it's number one on the charts because they might not
Speaker 1: do the work. They gotta go do work to make
Speaker 1: us number one on the est. Thanks for joining the
Speaker 1: street politicians once again. We might not always be right,
Speaker 1: Tamika might not always be wrong. We will both always
Speaker 1: and I mean always, be a them. So that's how
Speaker 1: we own it.