Speaker 1: I'm Tamika D.
Speaker 2: Mallory and it shit Boy my son in general.
Speaker 1: We are your host of TMI.
Speaker 2: Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, motivation and.
Speaker 1: Inspiration name new Energy.
Speaker 3: What's going on, my son, Lennon, I am feeling groovy today.
Speaker 4: Grill Bay Real Bag shout out to save the brand.
Speaker 4: You know my man Boom Boom. This is his sweating.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 3: That's y'all new creations that y'all be making up over there. Listen,
Speaker 3: are you instructing him at the Culture Gallery? Culture's Gallery?
Speaker 2: Yes, the Culture's Gallery.
Speaker 4: That's our store in Westchester eighteen fifty seven Westchester Avenue.
Speaker 2: Please pull up and.
Speaker 3: So at the store, are you guys encouraging boom Boom
Speaker 3: and giving him design direction or is he just pumping
Speaker 3: out what.
Speaker 2: He Boom Boom is a master designer. Just now.
Speaker 4: He has his new shades called the Hater Blockers, so
Speaker 4: you come get you Hated blockers. He has all types
Speaker 4: of shirts, shorts, he has whatever you need.
Speaker 1: Boom Boom does he make stuff for girls?
Speaker 2: He makes all the stuff.
Speaker 3: No, no way, Bronx Logo never sent me a thing,
Speaker 3: so I don't.
Speaker 2: Boom Boom is the man.
Speaker 3: So for people who are listening and watching. Uh, the
Speaker 3: culture's gallery is our friend Bronx Logos store in the
Speaker 3: Bronx and Boom Boom is his son, who is becoming
Speaker 3: quickly the most I don't know, the highest earning entrepreneur
Speaker 3: over there, his brand.
Speaker 4: He's the man, he keeps the lights open over there.
Speaker 4: I'm the silent partner. I just you know, do the stuff,
Speaker 4: but you do.
Speaker 3: I would love to hear about the stuff about it,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't know what's I'm just a.
Speaker 2: Silent partner that does what he's supposed to do.
Speaker 3: What does silent partners do for anybody who wants to
Speaker 3: be a silent partner? No, you didn't just put your
Speaker 3: hand over your silence. But I want to know what
Speaker 3: through silent partners?
Speaker 2: What is ther?
Speaker 3: But give us some advice if we want to be
Speaker 3: a good silent.
Speaker 1: What would you do?
Speaker 2: Invest?
Speaker 1: Invest the.
Speaker 3: And oh that's not being a good silent okay, So
Speaker 3: then and also promotion because you do do a lot
Speaker 3: of the non silent part So are you a silent partner?
Speaker 1: Are not?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Please forget it?
Speaker 3: Tell exactly how this relationship probably works where he's not
Speaker 3: sure from day to day.
Speaker 1: Are you silent or are you not?
Speaker 2: No, I'm definitely a silent part.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, so y'all keeping it going, but I
Speaker 3: appreciate that boom boom.
Speaker 1: Shout out to you for your sis. I've seen.
Speaker 2: Silent.
Speaker 4: We have some silent partners. Nelson like people doing. We
Speaker 4: got a real business going on. Not for the coaches
Speaker 4: gallery is a dope place. The atmosphere is dope. You know,
Speaker 4: we're starting programs for kids and then we were about
Speaker 4: to start doing our raising kings one of our days
Speaker 4: there where we teach the kids how to be entrepreneurs,
Speaker 4: how to use the machines, make their own brands, and
Speaker 4: all of those things. Also teaching them by the emotional intelligence.
Speaker 4: So we're creating something over there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean to keep it going for all
Speaker 3: this time is certainly admirable. Shout out to Bronx Logo
Speaker 3: because this is a young we should have.
Speaker 1: We should interview.
Speaker 2: We got to bring Logo up here, that's right.
Speaker 3: We got we gotta interview him so he could tell
Speaker 3: his story about his life prize.
Speaker 2: He's a Bronx Hero too. He just got his Bronx.
Speaker 3: Hero Yeah, he got his award which I still need
Speaker 3: to post. And uh, he is someone who he had
Speaker 3: already created the what was that logo of the Bronx
Speaker 3: logo that so for folks, Jose but in the Bronx
Speaker 3: logo that he created before going to prison.
Speaker 1: And then he did how many years?
Speaker 2: Then he did five years, five.
Speaker 3: Years, came home, started figuring it out from nothing. He
Speaker 3: literally built it all from the dirt. That's like a
Speaker 3: very true story.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Some people say that and they don't mention that their
Speaker 3: parents lent them ten thousand or what, or they had
Speaker 3: five thousand and the mattress from before they let they
Speaker 3: don't mention, but he didn't have that. He really started
Speaker 3: with nothing created and took his brand, just the Bronx
Speaker 3: logo and started getting that out there.
Speaker 1: Then he went to the truck.
Speaker 2: No, he went to the car. First.
Speaker 4: First he just brought some T shirts. He was selling
Speaker 4: the T shirts. Okay, Then he got his car.
Speaker 1: Was he pressing them up in his house still at
Speaker 1: that time?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Cool?
Speaker 4: And then at that point he got a car and
Speaker 4: he was selling out the car, and he brought the machine.
Speaker 4: Then he started doing his own pressing. And then from
Speaker 4: the mission from the car in the machine. He went
Speaker 4: to the bus.
Speaker 2: The bus the bus was was it hit ye right
Speaker 2: around with the bus.
Speaker 1: So things that off the bus.
Speaker 2: It's bricking mortar.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now there's an actual building. And I'm proud of him.
Speaker 3: And he has a job. So this what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: he really needs to be going to put Bronx logo
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: Kids don't understand.
Speaker 4: It's nothing wrong with having a job as you still
Speaker 4: be an entrepreneur and building.
Speaker 3: Somebody that we know very well told me dead to
Speaker 3: my face, y'all want me to have a job. And
Speaker 3: I ain't trying to have no job because I don't
Speaker 3: need a job.
Speaker 1: But you need a job.
Speaker 3: He said, Well, I'm working on my other stuff, but
Speaker 3: you still need a job. Jobs are important until you
Speaker 3: can get to the next stays. Now, of course, you
Speaker 3: don't want to become complacent, so you have to have
Speaker 3: the energy that I refuse to let this job be
Speaker 3: my final stop, because that does.
Speaker 1: And I'm just too right.
Speaker 4: It's making sure that you have a job that doesn't
Speaker 4: limit you from chasing whatever it is that you try.
Speaker 4: Your archer, no of you, you know you have dreams
Speaker 4: of doing things. You get you a night job right,
Speaker 4: you get your job, well, you get your parts whatever
Speaker 4: it seven to three, Yes, but you got to make
Speaker 4: sure that your financial things are taken care of. You
Speaker 4: got to make sure that the bills is paid. You
Speaker 4: need a phone, you need a place to live, you
Speaker 4: need some food like those things, and that's what your
Speaker 4: job should be for. And you should be able to
Speaker 4: pay your bills. And then whatever you do outside of
Speaker 4: that is everything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's facts. So I agree one thousand percent. I
Speaker 3: have had a job my whole life, in addition to
Speaker 3: my entrepreneurial activities. And yeah, sure there's been times because
Speaker 3: people say balance, and I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I think that's important.
Speaker 3: Those are the skills that if I knew at the time,
Speaker 3: I may have structured my life a little bit differently.
Speaker 3: Where I would go to work from seven to three.
Speaker 3: My problem was I wouldn't get up early enough to
Speaker 3: be out by three o'clock. I'm rolling into the office
Speaker 3: at ten fifteen. So by the time you get there
Speaker 3: ten fifteen, you gotta stay till six o'clock six fifteen
Speaker 3: in order to fulfill a full day's work. But people
Speaker 3: who had that early bird gets the word or the
Speaker 3: late night shift and then you work on whatever your
Speaker 3: passion is. That's a really smart strategy. But the idea
Speaker 3: that a part of your or building your business means
Speaker 3: depending on other people to bail you out, or or
Speaker 3: just going broke struggling by yourself, especially in this economy,
Speaker 3: it's not it's.
Speaker 1: Not a good day. It's an And I can.
Speaker 4: Come to this because I had this mentality at one point.
Speaker 4: It was I was just never gonna work. And and
Speaker 4: it's a struggle, right, And if you don't have some
Speaker 4: money to invest in what you're doing, or you don't
Speaker 4: you haven't built a name or a brand or something,
Speaker 4: you have to figure out how to get financially stable.
Speaker 2: And so I had to figure that out.
Speaker 4: You have to say, damn, I need to Bill still
Speaker 4: got to get paid. I don't care how long working
Speaker 4: on my dream when I want to do these, bill
Speaker 4: still got to get paid. I got to figure how
Speaker 4: do I make enough money.
Speaker 1: To sustain Yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of kids, don't.
Speaker 4: Please don't get into that I'm not working thing, man,
Speaker 4: because everything is a job, and bills are gonna come
Speaker 4: every month.
Speaker 3: Yeah they do, they come every month. I agree with you.
Speaker 3: I mean, bills come every month. You can't let that
Speaker 3: get into your mindset. You do have to be strong
Speaker 3: enough to stick to your passion, because you can easily
Speaker 3: become complacent and just be like, oh, well, the dream
Speaker 3: is not working, so I'm just gonna stick with the job.
Speaker 3: But sometimes you find out that maybe you are meant
Speaker 3: to have a job because you might not have the
Speaker 3: skill set to run a business. A lot of people
Speaker 3: think running a business or running an organization. It's people
Speaker 3: that do not understand the work that goes into running
Speaker 3: the organization. I spent a large part of my morning
Speaker 3: today Linda and me on the phone with our financial
Speaker 3: advisors and our accountants and you know, all the folks
Speaker 3: that handle our financial businesssiness, having a two hour conversation
Speaker 3: while I was at the doctor's office, which brings me
Speaker 3: in a minute to my thought of the day. But
Speaker 3: I was literally in the doctor's office with the thing
Speaker 3: in my ear, listening to the back and forth about
Speaker 3: how our resources are being spent, where new money is
Speaker 3: coming from, looking at all the different line items like.
Speaker 1: This is really serious.
Speaker 3: So I just say all of that to say to
Speaker 3: people that we have to be You gotta especially as
Speaker 3: young people, you got to have a both and strategy
Speaker 3: and a lot of times going to the work on
Speaker 3: the job and learning that discipline of being at work
Speaker 3: at a certain time, having to fill out or submit reports,
Speaker 3: having assignments, and knowing how to conduct yourself in a
Speaker 3: professional space. That's important because part of the reason why
Speaker 3: so many people get into business and they're not doing
Speaker 3: well from a customer service perspective, they're not managing their
Speaker 3: stock and all of their their the products and services
Speaker 3: properly is because they have had no training. They woke
Speaker 3: up one day and now they got a lip gloss
Speaker 3: or a do rag or a restaurant, and they've not
Speaker 3: taken the time to work with anybody else who's been
Speaker 3: able to teach them those skills. Yes, you can go
Speaker 3: to college and courses and you know, trade schools and
Speaker 3: all of that and get some of it, but it
Speaker 3: is nothing like working in a space where every single
Speaker 3: day you are learning the skill set because guess what happens.
Speaker 1: You can you can sit.
Speaker 3: Around and read a book all day long, but when
Speaker 3: that thing hits you in an angle wasn't in the book,
Speaker 3: You'll be trying to figure out what the hell am
Speaker 3: I supposed to do? With this, and you do need
Speaker 3: good mentors to help teach you that, and the best
Speaker 3: way is to watch it while actually while not having
Speaker 3: the responsibility of fixing the problem on your owns, right
Speaker 3: you know, So that's my suggestion. But you know there'll
Speaker 3: be somebody in the comments who's like, oh, no, you're
Speaker 3: encouraging people to go get a job instead of focusing
Speaker 3: on building for self. Yeah, okay, well you know, I
Speaker 3: I mean, if you teach me, most people do not
Speaker 3: have the luxury of not of someone that funds your dream.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: If you don't have somebody funding your dream, and you're
Speaker 4: a grown man and you got kids and all that,
Speaker 4: you realize every day that these bills still they don't
Speaker 4: disappear because you're chasing this dream. So that's that that's
Speaker 4: something that you have to learn. And a lot of
Speaker 4: people don't think that. They think they listen to the
Speaker 4: stories and they watch, you know.
Speaker 3: How they put this person put their lip gloss online
Speaker 3: and the pots, and.
Speaker 2: They don't see that.
Speaker 4: They don't understand that they've been a long process, like
Speaker 4: a lot of artists, that people be seeing it.
Speaker 2: Oh he did once in a while.
Speaker 4: There's something that go overnight, But there's artists that I
Speaker 4: see now that I was like, and they tell you, y'all,
Speaker 4: I was doing this seven eight years ago, and I
Speaker 4: was doing this like the grind that I had to
Speaker 4: build to do certain things. It was a long process,
Speaker 4: and people just.
Speaker 1: Just over and we still grind and were.
Speaker 4: Still grinding every day and we're just building up. Just
Speaker 4: to build your brand takes time, you know. So I
Speaker 4: just I employ everyone to get employed.
Speaker 1: That was a good one.
Speaker 3: Get employed, be employed. So, speaking of my thought of
Speaker 3: the day, women's health. Boy, I had an experience that
Speaker 3: really helps me to understand why so many people are
Speaker 3: not getting the care that they need for certain illnesses.
Speaker 1: And just like your checkups.
Speaker 3: And keeping and making sure that you are monitoring your
Speaker 3: whole body from head to toe so that if something
Speaker 3: comes up, you have the ability to get in front
Speaker 3: of an issue rather than to be behind. Right, I
Speaker 3: see it and it happened to me because so I
Speaker 3: got a mammogram this week, And for anybody who does
Speaker 3: not know what a mammogram is, it is when you
Speaker 3: get your breast checked for breast cancer, any tumors, or
Speaker 3: any issues that may be happening in your breast.
Speaker 1: Your lymph nodes.
Speaker 3: So under your arm they give you a full scan,
Speaker 3: and it is uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, but very necessary because
Speaker 3: predetermination of any issue is better again than finding out later.
Speaker 3: So when I first asked for the appointment, I got
Speaker 3: back all the documentation, or the first thing before they
Speaker 3: sent the documentation, they sent through the mychart system a
Speaker 3: bill for fifty dollars, which cool, copey, I know, fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: I'm used to paying that. But then a few days
Speaker 3: later they sent me a bunch of documents that need
Speaker 3: to be signed. If you sign those documents before you
Speaker 3: get to the facility, it makes your time in the
Speaker 3: waiting area reception shorter.
Speaker 1: So no problem, that's a new thing that I actually like.
Speaker 3: And then well, okay, let me stick with my point,
Speaker 3: because you know, I was getting ready to go off
Speaker 3: into something else. But and so, but embedded in this
Speaker 3: message wasn't just the documents. It was another two hundred
Speaker 3: dollars that I had to pay. Nah, Like, seriously, that's
Speaker 3: crazy to me and I and we have great insurance
Speaker 3: at until Freedom. I mean, it's expensive, but nonetheless we
Speaker 3: have good insurance.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, what the heck?
Speaker 3: So now I'm clicking stuff, and I open up the
Speaker 3: bill to see exactly one thing they do give you. Now,
Speaker 3: back in the days, you did not know the specifics
Speaker 3: of the bill, all right.
Speaker 1: You had to get the.
Speaker 3: Carbon copy at the facility and try to look it
Speaker 3: up and read all of these weird words.
Speaker 1: They don't do that no more online.
Speaker 3: In the march my chart system, it clearly said the
Speaker 3: appointment is fifteen hundred. They're covering thirteen and something something something.
Speaker 1: And then you got your.
Speaker 3: Copay and they added all this stuff up and it
Speaker 3: came to a little more than what the insurance was paying,
Speaker 3: which was two hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, that's not a little more. That's
Speaker 1: a whole lot more.
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking to myself, if I'm somebody who again,
Speaker 3: especially in this economy, but just in general, I'm already struggling.
Speaker 1: I'm making ends meet.
Speaker 3: This two hundred dollars is the difference between me making
Speaker 3: my rent payment and or not, or my groceries or
Speaker 3: daycare or even my enjoyment whatever it is that I
Speaker 3: want to do with my life. Ain't nothing wrong with
Speaker 3: my breast. They're not hurting me, they're not feeling any
Speaker 3: kind of way because you know, we get a lot
Speaker 3: of ignorant things in our minds.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna just rub around myself the way that they
Speaker 3: teach you, because they do teach you at the gyanacologist
Speaker 3: office that if you need to be checking, don't wait
Speaker 3: for the next year. Just make sure if you feel
Speaker 3: anything sore, if you feel any lumps, you need to
Speaker 3: say something. So imagine somebody that knows those things. That's
Speaker 3: gonna be like, I'm not paying two hundred more dollars
Speaker 3: after you already paid fifty. That's two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: dollars that I paid to go get checked for something
Speaker 3: that this country should be giving you for free, because
Speaker 3: we should be making sure that people do not have
Speaker 3: breast cancer and other sicknesses because that's what weighs on
Speaker 3: our medical system.
Speaker 1: Uh duh.
Speaker 3: It's just to Once I saw that, I just started
Speaker 3: to I just and I know there are all these
Speaker 3: programs that give mammograms two folks for free once a year,
Speaker 3: maybe even twice a year.
Speaker 1: They have all these facilities.
Speaker 3: That you can go to in programs. But your but
Speaker 3: but it's I just it begs the question in this country,
Speaker 3: and this is not a Democrat versus Republican or this
Speaker 3: person versus that person. This is just for us as
Speaker 3: a nation. What in the hell are we doing when
Speaker 3: a woman has to spend two hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 3: to go get something that should just be a basic
Speaker 3: right that we just want to make sure your breast
Speaker 3: are good because if you get cancer there, right, and
Speaker 3: understanding that black women are number one, We're number one
Speaker 3: in every damn thing that is harming and killing people, right,
Speaker 3: We're number one killing women. So I would just think
Speaker 3: that we would want that to be a service, knowing
Speaker 3: that breast cancer is something it gets in your body
Speaker 3: and it can spread, and it really kills so.
Speaker 1: Many women, like so many people.
Speaker 3: Why the hell are people paying two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: dollars to get their breast checked it?
Speaker 4: It is a microcosm of what's going wrong with America
Speaker 4: right now, right when we look at just the political
Speaker 4: stance and we look at just how everything and what
Speaker 4: we should be focusing on is health, right, like that
Speaker 4: should be the main thing. It's no way that people
Speaker 4: should have to pay to be healthy. There's no way
Speaker 4: people should have to pay to be educated, right, And
Speaker 4: America is supposed to be this great place, and we
Speaker 4: have people here that tell us that that shouldn't be a.
Speaker 1: Luxury, right.
Speaker 2: That the outside of America, people have free.
Speaker 1: Health care, some of them, someplace, some places.
Speaker 4: I'm saying I'm not saying everywhere, but there are places
Speaker 4: in the world where people have free health care and
Speaker 4: they have free education, and those should be things that
Speaker 4: if we want of the greatest nations in the world,
Speaker 4: why would we not want to make sure that everyone
Speaker 4: is healthy and everyone is.
Speaker 3: Educated, right, and the facilities that they have in other
Speaker 3: nations where there is free health care, the places are
Speaker 3: not shithold no where.
Speaker 1: When you go there, you know.
Speaker 3: People talking to you crazy, and the place is half dirty,
Speaker 3: and you know it's it's unkept. I just don't I
Speaker 3: don't know. America just needs a whole reset because I
Speaker 3: didn't pay two hundred and fifty dollars last year, so
Speaker 3: I don't know, and I don't want to speculate because
Speaker 3: I haven't had time to do some research on why
Speaker 3: this is now a cost. I paid fifty dollars copay
Speaker 3: last year. Now I'm up to two hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: I need somebody to explain to me. But what I
Speaker 3: was going to say, in addition, is that one thing
Speaker 3: about my chart that I appreciate this time is that
Speaker 3: I was able to read all of those consent forms
Speaker 3: that when you are sitting in the doctor's office and
Speaker 3: you got to hurry up because you're trying to go
Speaker 3: with your appointment, you already know if you say no
Speaker 3: to half of that stuff, then you kind of can't
Speaker 3: get the appointment.
Speaker 1: So you're just saying yes, yes, yes, and yes.
Speaker 3: But because I was taking the time while getting my
Speaker 3: little pedicure to read every single form, there was things
Speaker 3: in there to ask whether I would be willing to
Speaker 3: be a part of experiments and research.
Speaker 1: And you get nothing for it, which is crazy, right, And.
Speaker 3: They tell you that you are not expected to receive
Speaker 3: anything for being a part of this experiment, which means
Speaker 3: that they are now about to send my images for
Speaker 3: my breast and whatever they find to all these different
Speaker 3: people for a research and study. And I don't benefit
Speaker 3: if they find something that helps them to go along
Speaker 3: with whatever certain you know, whatever it is that they're doing. Right,
Speaker 3: so that no, damn it, no hell to the now,
Speaker 3: uh no, if I pass away, yes, I will allow
Speaker 3: them to use certain things for research, but no, why
Speaker 3: would I do that? Then there was another form in
Speaker 3: there that said, do I give the consent to all
Speaker 3: of these different people to have access to my records?
Speaker 1: It was like thirty damn things.
Speaker 3: This facility, this people, in and in pee, all of
Speaker 3: these acronyms. And I said, no, I don't give consent
Speaker 3: to all of these people. And they had, but they
Speaker 3: have different things that you can answer. One said no, no,
Speaker 3: The first one said yes, which you mean.
Speaker 1: All these people get to see my boobs?
Speaker 3: Then the next thing or access to the records about
Speaker 3: my health?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Then the next thing said and by the way, it
Speaker 3: didn't just say for the mammogram, It said your health records.
Speaker 3: So maybe they meant for the mammogram, but that's not
Speaker 3: what it's said. Because I went back and read it.
Speaker 3: It's very very you got to read the stuff. You
Speaker 3: got to read it, because where's the word that said
Speaker 3: for the if I want to give consent, where's the
Speaker 3: word that says for the mamma gred It did not
Speaker 3: say that, It's said for the health records. So then
Speaker 3: so one said yes, the next one said no except
Speaker 3: in a medical emergency, and then and then it.
Speaker 1: Went on with a couple other options.
Speaker 3: So I chose no excepting a medical emergency because I
Speaker 3: want to imagine if I have an emergency, something that's
Speaker 3: wrong with me, they don't got to go call Tarique
Speaker 3: or some person find them to get it to such
Speaker 3: as and such.
Speaker 1: Just go and do what you need to do. But
Speaker 1: I don't even know how they're identifying a medical emergency.
Speaker 2: I really don't know exactly.
Speaker 4: And it's so open ended that they can decide. It's
Speaker 4: just like everything else in America. Everything is open ended.
Speaker 4: There's no more checks and balances. It's no due process.
Speaker 4: You don't it ain't no step one two three. This
Speaker 4: is how we identify it is. If we decide that
Speaker 4: it's a medical emergency, we're gonna go on you there exactly. Nah.
Speaker 1: I don't like it.
Speaker 3: So anyway I did choose, I think I did better.
Speaker 3: But it also comes with age. So I think that
Speaker 3: one of the things we have to teach our kids.
Speaker 3: If I was started, if I had what win. My
Speaker 3: granddaughter gets to be a little bit older, and as
Speaker 3: time goes on, I want to encourage her parents as
Speaker 3: well as all of my friends and people who have
Speaker 3: small kids, show them what you're signing on their behalf
Speaker 3: read it to them. Get you know what what is this? Oh,
Speaker 3: we're signing this document for school. Don't just sign because
Speaker 3: that's what we do.
Speaker 1: Come on, I've done that. I've just signed.
Speaker 3: But let's take the time to actually figure out and
Speaker 3: teach a kid that you don't put your signature on
Speaker 3: something until you have an opportunity to review it, scan
Speaker 3: it at least and try to get the basics. So
Speaker 3: that's what I have to say. But just to go
Speaker 3: back to my thought of the day, right, my thought
Speaker 3: of the day today is I don't know if people
Speaker 3: really do care about cutting cost and reducing the amount
Speaker 3: of pressure that's on our systems the way that they
Speaker 3: say they do, right, Because if we cared so much
Speaker 3: about that in the medical world, why would we not
Speaker 3: be giving people free prostate exams, free breast mammograms and
Speaker 3: things of that nature, free cancer screening.
Speaker 1: We should be giving that away.
Speaker 3: As a nation for free, because that is the only
Speaker 3: way to try to prevent the system from collapsing, is
Speaker 3: preventative care.
Speaker 1: And but we don't do that because.
Speaker 2: The pharmaceutical company does not fit from that.
Speaker 1: So you need to have full blown cancer. Are you serious?
Speaker 4: Because the pharmaceutical company wants to be able to benefit.
Speaker 4: They want to sell you medicine that's not gonna work anyway.
Speaker 4: They want to get rich.
Speaker 1: Not all medicine doesn't work. Please don't say that.
Speaker 4: I did just say all medicine for the most part,
Speaker 4: when you if you look at cancer, the medicine that
Speaker 4: they're giving you for cancer is not curing cancer.
Speaker 1: It's not stopping not curing it. But it certainly does
Speaker 1: help some people.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it doesn't.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, for the most part, the ratio of
Speaker 4: people that die from cancer is way higher than medication.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: My mother passed away from cancer, right and the amount
Speaker 4: of money that I was spending for her medication was unreal.
Speaker 4: It was it was unreal, Like it didn't even makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember you complaining that towards the end.
Speaker 2: It just didn't even make sense.
Speaker 4: It was like four hundred dollars, this, five hundred dollars this,
Speaker 4: sometimes it was nine hundred. It's like I didn't even
Speaker 4: understand and it wasn't making her any better. It was
Speaker 4: just like I didn't understand none of it, you know,
Speaker 4: the hospital bills. Like I'm just trying to say, they've
Speaker 4: running a racket. They know what they're doing, they're running
Speaker 4: a racket.
Speaker 3: Well okay, I mean it makes me very sad and
Speaker 3: I really am offended that people have to start organizations
Speaker 3: and start groups and clubs and volunteer operations to do
Speaker 3: something that our tax dollars should be paying for.
Speaker 2: I mean, what else is pay.
Speaker 3: So moving on for the TMI today, people be doing
Speaker 3: too much, but some people might feel like it's not
Speaker 3: doing too much. So we want to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Is it too much or maybe not even enough? So
Speaker 3: Ari Fletcher posted a video where she was talking about
Speaker 3: folks who have found out which gym she uses to
Speaker 3: work out, and people are showing up to the gym
Speaker 3: wanting to show her stuff about their business or wanting
Speaker 3: to take a picture. You know, Oh girl, I saw
Speaker 3: you was at the gym and I ran down here,
Speaker 3: which I thought that that one was massive creepy, but
Speaker 3: I ran down here so I can show you this
Speaker 3: or talk to you or tell you about whatever. I
Speaker 3: personally think that is absolutely out of line and I
Speaker 3: think it's going too far.
Speaker 1: But there are other people who will say, hear me.
Speaker 3: There are other people who will say, you have to
Speaker 3: use every opportunity to get that thing right. So there's
Speaker 3: somebody out there who will run to the restaurant that
Speaker 3: they know that Tyler Perry or Denzel go to every month,
Speaker 3: and they gonna walk in the door and if they
Speaker 3: could sing, they about to blow their lungs down or
Speaker 3: act in the middle of the restaurant.
Speaker 1: And if they get the part because Tyler.
Speaker 3: Dendel or somebody like that is like or fifty cent,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh man, okay, you're really talented.
Speaker 1: Then if it's something that we might.
Speaker 3: Praise, like man, they did everything possible to get to
Speaker 3: the person, But going.
Speaker 1: To try to take a picture, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's still especially for a woman, it's super creepy. So
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do it, and I don't want anyone to
Speaker 3: do it to me. But some people might actually celebrate
Speaker 3: it and say, hey, you going for you know your dream?
Speaker 2: And I think that's what it is, right, it's individuals. Aris.
Speaker 2: Let you know that she don't want it, she ain't
Speaker 2: with it at all.
Speaker 4: You went down and you tried and it ain't work,
Speaker 4: and she tells you it ain't gonna work at all
Speaker 4: because this is where she said, This is her private
Speaker 4: space she come to work out.
Speaker 2: She did with who she would.
Speaker 4: She don't want your business, she don't want your card,
Speaker 4: she don't want to know about your lashes.
Speaker 2: She ain't into it.
Speaker 4: So you're gonna be wasting your time going down there
Speaker 4: with are now there are certain artists that you might
Speaker 4: see someplace and you might create a moment that might
Speaker 4: catapult your career. You might they might become, you know, business,
Speaker 4: part of your business for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: And some people just saying with it, and there are
Speaker 2: artists who are with it.
Speaker 4: You might run into Denzel and you might be able
Speaker 4: to do your best impersonation and he might be like, okay,
Speaker 4: clap and he might give you a recommend. There are
Speaker 4: people who they love that you know they.
Speaker 1: I don't know if people love it mice.
Speaker 2: But there are there are.
Speaker 4: Listen to me, if a certain as an artist, right,
Speaker 4: if a dude could rap really good and he comes
Speaker 4: up to me and he spits, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 4: I will call somebody like you gotta call producers anything
Speaker 4: I know DJ's Yo, listen, this dude right here, he's somebody.
Speaker 3: It depends somebody to say that. I know you get
Speaker 3: your food from the church across the street or the
Speaker 3: sea spot down.
Speaker 4: The butto everything depends, right. It's just you know, it's
Speaker 4: just like the girl who flirts with you or the
Speaker 4: guy who flirts with you. You don't want to be
Speaker 4: for a guy. If you attracted to a guy and
Speaker 4: he comes up to you and he says, yeah.
Speaker 3: But you can't come find me where I work out
Speaker 3: and stuff, that makes me feel like if.
Speaker 2: You've seen a god and he didn't tell you.
Speaker 4: He pulled up and you looked at it, and you looked
Speaker 4: at you, and then later on you found out that
Speaker 4: he pulled up because he knew you worked out there
Speaker 4: and he was attracted to you, and you was attracted
Speaker 4: to him. You wouldn't feel that way, but it was
Speaker 4: a creepy looking dude and you see him coming like
Speaker 4: this dude is a stalker.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 4: It all depends on the circumstances in an individual. With
Speaker 4: certain people. There's some people they just don't give a fuck.
Speaker 4: Already sounds like she is not interested in anybody that's
Speaker 4: outside of her media circle trying to communicate with her and.
Speaker 3: Build any kind of from the gym I'm.
Speaker 2: Talking about in that in that.
Speaker 4: In that atmosphere and that set, she's not She's not
Speaker 4: with it, So you have to respect that. But I'm
Speaker 4: saying there are certain people that see it as damn,
Speaker 4: this person is ambitious. You did all of that to
Speaker 4: come to you. Okay, let me see you gotta have
Speaker 4: some There are certain people I.
Speaker 1: Need you to figure it out.
Speaker 3: Even if you are a guy that I'm attracted to,
Speaker 3: I still don't want you coming to a First of all,
Speaker 3: don't come to the gym when I'm funky and stink
Speaker 3: anyway to come try to have conversation with me. But
Speaker 3: beyond that, I still don't feel comfortable with any person,
Speaker 3: especially a man tracking me down and I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Like we didn't meet here.
Speaker 3: You just happen to see me online working out or
Speaker 3: I'm you know what, you shouldn't get taking videos. You
Speaker 3: shouldn't be really taking videos while you're at a place anyway.
Speaker 3: But let's just say I decide I want to pop
Speaker 3: on my live while I'm sitting here in this studio
Speaker 3: and somebody knows where it is, and then they just
Speaker 3: come over here like, oh, I just wanted to come,
Speaker 3: because you could also be coming for a different reason,
Speaker 3: and so I don't know. I think, Yes, I'm all
Speaker 3: for ambition, I'm all for going for what you want,
Speaker 3: but I don't want you to make me feel uncomfortable
Speaker 3: and nervous or like I need to be ready to
Speaker 3: defend myself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I'm saying She didn't even say it's about
Speaker 4: her feeling uncomfortable. She just basically said, I'm not wooded
Speaker 4: at the gym. I don't gire for how you might
Speaker 4: somebody just want to hand you a car or I
Speaker 4: know you come here and she don't want none of it.
Speaker 2: And you just got to respect to people that don't
Speaker 2: want it at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's an individual thing. You might get your.
Speaker 4: Shot, you might get your shot. It's a lot of
Speaker 4: people who got they shot like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, this now opens the floor to all of
Speaker 3: you who I'm sure have something to say about this.
Speaker 3: Is it doing too much or is it okay? Or
Speaker 3: is it maybe even not enough?
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna go into this interview that we already
Speaker 4: pre recorded, you know, and we're gonna give y'all two
Speaker 4: dope individuals.
Speaker 3: So today we are quite honored, definitely two individuals with
Speaker 3: us who are esteemed pristine, just award winning folks, a couple.
Speaker 1: And I love that, you know.
Speaker 3: I love to see people partnered in families that's also
Speaker 3: doing business together. And so quite excited to introduce to
Speaker 3: our audience Fox and Rob Rich and both of these
Speaker 3: two beautiful black New Orleans. I guess I'm sure they'll
Speaker 3: correct me, because you know, people from New Orleans, you
Speaker 3: got to.
Speaker 1: Say it right right, New Orleanders.
Speaker 3: They are the subject of an Oscar nominated documentary that
Speaker 3: was released in twenty twenty called Time and now there
Speaker 3: is a sequel, a follow up to the first documentary
Speaker 3: that is called Time to Unfinished Business. And this family
Speaker 3: has been through a lot. We're gonna learn about a
Speaker 3: man sentenced to sixty one years in prison after this
Speaker 3: family found their backs up against the wall the way
Speaker 3: so many of us have been in difficult, difficult situations.
Speaker 3: And then he had a wife who never gave up
Speaker 3: and fought for him, and he was released early. And
Speaker 3: instead of them being mad with their lips poked out,
Speaker 3: about who did what to them. They've taken accountability and
Speaker 3: said our responsibility now is to free more folks and
Speaker 3: to ensure that other stories are told. And so I
Speaker 3: am honored and quite humble by for the opportunity to
Speaker 3: interview and talk with and become friends because you know
Speaker 3: us with our friends on the TMI podcast, they.
Speaker 4: Are ready my friends because I've been talking about getting
Speaker 4: some good old New Orleans food so that they about
Speaker 4: to cook for me. So they friends before you even
Speaker 4: did interviews.
Speaker 3: So Fox and Rob, welcome to the TMI Show. We
Speaker 3: appreciate y'all so much. And it just feels like, ooh,
Speaker 3: it's powerful. You know, it's powerful. We watched the film
Speaker 3: and was moved. I had a few tears. This is
Speaker 3: a powerful story. So you know, let's start with the lady,
Speaker 3: because you seem to be a very very outgoing and
Speaker 3: outspoken part of this duo. To tell us what happened
Speaker 3: to you all, how did you find yourselves in the
Speaker 3: sixty one year situation?
Speaker 1: And then we'll kind of go from there.
Speaker 5: Well, Miss Tamika d Mallory, it takes one to know
Speaker 5: one because just over the years, every time I have
Speaker 5: seen your image or your name. I've just been a
Speaker 5: cheerleader in the background saying yes, it's you know, so
Speaker 5: thankful for you using your voice and being convicted for
Speaker 5: the rights of our community at such an early age.
Speaker 5: So thank you so much for that, and thank you
Speaker 5: for having us on TMI.
Speaker 1: Rob, And don't.
Speaker 5: Take that lightly, but I'm gonna actually pass it to
Speaker 5: the gentleman and I'm introduce us on how how did
Speaker 5: all this happen?
Speaker 6: Rob?
Speaker 7: It's your fault, all right, So I guess it will
Speaker 7: probably be important to note that well for your listening
Speaker 7: audience that's basically encountering us for the very first time.
Speaker 6: Collectively. We are Fox and Rob Rich.
Speaker 7: We're a formerly incarcerated couple who spent more than twenty
Speaker 7: one years behind bars before receiving clemency in twenty and eighteen.
Speaker 7: And I would have to venture to say that probably
Speaker 7: one of the biggest takeaways that we have from our
Speaker 7: family's experience through Louisiana's incarceration system is that to be
Speaker 7: free is to free other people. That being said, once
Speaker 7: I came home, Fox and I started a nonprofit with
Speaker 7: its first initiative as pdum NOLA, which is Participatory Defense
Speaker 7: Movement NOLA, where we teach legal awareness as the best
Speaker 7: form of defense to people that are justice involved. We
Speaker 7: chudge the success of that work by the amount of
Speaker 7: time that we saved someone opposed to the amount of
Speaker 7: time that the person has been sanctioned to serve. And
Speaker 7: to date, as an organization here locally, we have saved
Speaker 7: nearly four thousand years of people doing time here in
Speaker 7: the state of Louisiana, and countrywide through our forty organizations,
Speaker 7: we have saved nearly forty thousand years of people doing
Speaker 7: time from behind bars. And I'm a pause for effect
Speaker 7: on that one there, because I think that's a hand clapped.
Speaker 6: Kind of moment.
Speaker 7: But am and probably the other piece of that would
Speaker 7: be is Fox and I also met as a high
Speaker 7: school sweethearts through a mutual friend of ours, And in
Speaker 7: that situation, it turned out that Fox's friend, our mutual friend,
Speaker 7: actually misrepresented the relationship between the two of us and
Speaker 7: had Fox under the impression that she and I had
Speaker 7: something far more deeper going than we.
Speaker 6: Actually had with one another.
Speaker 7: So when I called Fox later on that night trying
Speaker 7: to get my MAC on, she checked me at the door,
Speaker 7: was like, you know, well, you know what you hollering
Speaker 7: at me for aren't you Wanda's friend? And I'm like, no,
Speaker 7: where did you get that from? And she was like,
Speaker 7: well Wanda herself, I said, we need to call Wander.
Speaker 7: So I don't know if your viewers are old enough
Speaker 7: to know when they had start sixty nine. So I'm
Speaker 7: just trying to take here the business up front. So
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, all we go ahead and start sixty
Speaker 7: nine one, and then that way we can get at
Speaker 7: least that part out of the way. And so we
Speaker 7: called Wanda at night and hit her up on three
Speaker 7: Way and she started the small talk, and after she
Speaker 7: realized that I was on the phone as.
Speaker 6: Well, she decided to hang up. That was the moment
Speaker 6: that was the turning moment right there.
Speaker 7: I think when Fox finally when she fell in love
Speaker 7: with me, probably for the first time. I'll give way
Speaker 7: to her on that moment to kind of let y'all
Speaker 7: know how she was feeling in that moment when she
Speaker 7: saw a brother take control like that.
Speaker 5: You know, we celebrate on this week, we'll celebrate twenty
Speaker 5: eight years of marriage and thirty eight years of being together.
Speaker 5: And so I think that sometimes when we have conversations,
Speaker 5: people look at the worst thing that we have done,
Speaker 5: and really want to delve into our greatest loss if
Speaker 5: you would, But Rob and I we like to start
Speaker 5: off with what is our greatest victory, And greatest victory
Speaker 5: is our love that we've been able to sustain even
Speaker 5: in our lowest points in life. That the love of
Speaker 5: each other and the love of our family.
Speaker 1: Which includes six sons.
Speaker 5: So I'll probably just drop that aspect of it in
Speaker 5: right there to Meeka, Okay, so successful.
Speaker 7: But as high school sweethearts, we started adventure to start
Speaker 7: a business of our own in nineteen ninety seven. We
Speaker 7: eloped and got married in April of nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 7: after an invitation to ask Fox's hand in marriage, to
Speaker 7: which she conceded. Wanted to know how soon was I
Speaker 7: talking about getting married, And I told her I'd be
Speaker 7: willing to beild out tonight if we could and go
Speaker 7: take care of that and we can at least get
Speaker 7: this marriage thing going. And she was shocked and all,
Speaker 7: but she responded back the way way Leo Lyon does,
Speaker 7: and she hooked up a getaway for us to go
Speaker 7: to Kassimi, Saint Cloud, Florida, to a small little wedding
Speaker 7: Chapel where we got married there, and then we later
Speaker 7: that night at what was then called Pleasure Island, we
Speaker 7: consummated our marriage by bungee jumping. Bungee jump for us
Speaker 7: was a jump that was into or passed all of
Speaker 7: the negative things that we had run up against in
Speaker 7: the ten uere on again, off again portion of our
Speaker 7: relationship before exchanging nuptials that earlier that day with one another.
Speaker 6: But in that moment, it was a triumphant moment for us,
Speaker 6: when we soared.
Speaker 7: Out over the city of Orlando and knowing that we
Speaker 7: were now taking our lives in our own hands and
Speaker 7: we were gonna make something doing. I've always had a
Speaker 7: high childhood dream of opening up my own hip hop
Speaker 7: clothing store, and Fox shared in my dream, and so
Speaker 7: we as our first business. Once we came back home
Speaker 7: from our Ario Lopeman. We came back home and started
Speaker 7: our family's first business, which was Culture, a hip hop
Speaker 7: clothing store. Got all excited about the fact that we
Speaker 7: had just got married, we just bought a home together,
Speaker 7: and down here we were starting a business together.
Speaker 6: Went out to Vegas.
Speaker 7: To all of the big fashion shows and all that stuff,
Speaker 7: and ordered a gang of clothes, got back only to
Speaker 7: realize that our investor pulled out on us. And in
Speaker 7: addition to that, as they say in this day in time,
Speaker 7: that life be life and well life life in such
Speaker 7: a way.
Speaker 6: Back then, uh, in our little young minds.
Speaker 7: Where our third oldest son took sick with a with
Speaker 7: something that doctors could not diagnose in the moment, and
Speaker 7: I guess I pulled off of John Q in the
Speaker 7: moment as I sought the game, regained financial solvency for
Speaker 7: our family for the loss of our investor on our business.
Speaker 7: As they say, desperate people do desperate things, and I
Speaker 7: take desperate measures. The day that I've walked into a bank,
Speaker 7: brandished the firearm and demanded cash, And that therein I guess,
Speaker 7: began the story of Fox and Rob as most people
Speaker 7: know it.
Speaker 4: Wow, And you know the reality of the situation is
Speaker 4: people coming from our communities can really identify with that reality.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It might not have been your business, but a lot
Speaker 4: of us have done things where we felt our back
Speaker 4: was against the wall. You know, And when I listen
Speaker 4: to it and I hear these you people are good people.
Speaker 4: You know that just found yourself in a situation that
Speaker 4: made you react and say, I can't let my family
Speaker 4: just go. I have to figure something out, you know,
Speaker 4: and you were ultimately sentenced to sixty one years in prison.
Speaker 7: Sixty sixty sixty one years. The crazy part, You guys
Speaker 7: would have to even get the backstory as to how
Speaker 7: it even became a sixty one year sentence. We were
Speaker 7: facing zero five to ninety nine years for the arm
Speaker 7: robbery itself, and because there were two counts, we were
Speaker 7: facing arm robbery five to ninety nine times two. And
Speaker 7: in the process of our trial processes, we ultimately ended
Speaker 7: up committing a jury tampering charge along the way, which
Speaker 7: picked us up yet another five to ninety nine years sentence.
Speaker 7: Hence we were facing two hundred and ninety seven years.
Speaker 7: And subsequently, after going to trial, blowing trial and then
Speaker 7: finally reaching the point of sanctions, the district attorney made
Speaker 7: a recommendation to the judge because he wanted to leave
Speaker 7: a He wanted to leave a mark, much in the
Speaker 7: same way that they used to do slaves back in
Speaker 7: the day, when they brand you and hit you with
Speaker 7: something that you'll never forget.
Speaker 6: The DA hit me with something that I would never forget.
Speaker 7: Because he reminded the court that it was nineteen thirty
Speaker 7: eight that the last time a jury tampering happened in
Speaker 7: the parish in which I was convicted, and it was
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety nine during that year. So he wanted to
Speaker 7: sentence me to sixty one years, which is the amount
Speaker 7: of time that it had been since the last jury
Speaker 7: tampering that happened in their little small town. And he
Speaker 7: wanted me, he wanted he wanted me to stay with
Speaker 7: that for a while, stick sit with it for a while.
Speaker 6: So that's ultimately how it was sentenced to sixty one years.
Speaker 1: So he was clever in the way he did it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he knew what he was doing last And I
Speaker 4: know these things. They wanted to make an example, you know.
Speaker 4: They want you to feel these things, and then they
Speaker 4: also want everyone looking to see. It's just like it's
Speaker 4: like the lynching in front of the people, of the
Speaker 4: whipping in front of the slaves, so they know not
Speaker 4: to get out of line, you know. So ultimately you
Speaker 4: were sentenced to sixty one years, And how much time
Speaker 4: did you do?
Speaker 2: Foks.
Speaker 5: I have took a pleat deal for two seven year
Speaker 5: sentences and one five year sentence to be run together.
Speaker 5: So after giving birth to my twin boys, I went
Speaker 5: and committed myself to the Department of the Corrections and
Speaker 5: served out three and a half years and then did
Speaker 5: three and a half years on parole.
Speaker 3: So did y'all get the money from the bank.
Speaker 6: We held it for a little while, spent it.
Speaker 5: Wow my mind.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm just listening and thinking that. I know
Speaker 3: there are people in our community who are the.
Speaker 1: Purest of the pure.
Speaker 3: They're the most morally sound, do everything rights. Ever, so
Speaker 3: no matter what you tell them them folks robbed the bank,
Speaker 3: I don't have nothing to say to them. You know,
Speaker 3: we don't support them at all. But of course there
Speaker 3: are more of us who understand, uh that sometimes we
Speaker 3: just make bad decisions.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 3: It's not you know, you don't want to argue about
Speaker 3: who and what. We can just say it was a
Speaker 3: bad decision and I had to do the time to
Speaker 3: pay for that. But it doesn't mean that I should
Speaker 3: be committed to a life sentence of conviction and rebuke
Speaker 3: just because of this thing that happened. It seems like
Speaker 3: we get it, but there's some folks out here that
Speaker 3: just don't.
Speaker 1: What do you what is the response that you received from.
Speaker 3: Most people when you are, you know, out in the
Speaker 3: world with your films, when maybe you're talking doing panels,
Speaker 3: do you find that there are people who just feel
Speaker 3: like y'all should just forever be on the fringes and
Speaker 3: you're just wrong for the rest of your lives or not.
Speaker 7: They I would have to say that, yes, you do
Speaker 7: get that group of people that are out there, but
Speaker 7: they make up a minority group of the people that
Speaker 7: we have encountered.
Speaker 6: We have had far more people.
Speaker 7: On our side than we've had against us, and I
Speaker 7: think that is reflective. And in the numbers when you
Speaker 7: look at the numbers. When you look at the numbers,
Speaker 7: one and three of us have a feling in America,
Speaker 7: have a felt any conviction that's not us. When I say,
Speaker 7: that's not black people, that's not black men, that is
Speaker 7: all people, Whites, Asians, you know, everybody that's here included
Speaker 7: that one in three of us have a felony conviction
Speaker 7: and one in two of us have a family member
Speaker 7: that is incarcerated. And then you ask yourself, well, then
Speaker 7: what does that look like due to math? For me, Rob,
Speaker 7: what that looks like is our current president is a
Speaker 7: felon and was convicted of several crimes. Our outgoing president
Speaker 7: is the father of a felon. His son committed committed
Speaker 7: the act of feling with a firearm. In our community,
Speaker 7: people are immediately sentenced to an additional five years just
Speaker 7: for the fits for being a fed a form of
Speaker 7: incarcerated person or feling with a firearm. But yet we
Speaker 7: saw how both in those situations were able to skirt justice,
Speaker 7: but not necessarily able to skirt the branding or the
Speaker 7: marking of the fact that you too now know incarceration
Speaker 7: because you or your family has been impacted from it.
Speaker 7: Garceration is not necessarily a black thing anymore. It is
Speaker 7: not necessarily a poor thing anymore. It is a human
Speaker 7: thing because humans are prone to be and do human stuff.
Speaker 5: We air, you know, and for me, I would like
Speaker 5: to add that it is about the art when you
Speaker 5: talk about making a film. I have seen the impact
Speaker 5: of what art can do in changing the hearts and
Speaker 5: minds of men and women. I would be honest with
Speaker 5: you all on the TMI that the first time I
Speaker 5: ever saw a white male weep was at Sundance when
Speaker 5: we did the premiere of the first film. Time and
Speaker 5: it happened on more than one occasion in Utah at
Speaker 5: Sundance we're doing this screening, they were so overwhelmed that
Speaker 5: they came up to me to share how much impact
Speaker 5: the film that had on them. And so knowing that
Speaker 5: art is activism and that is how we can really
Speaker 5: use it as a tool to change the heart of man,
Speaker 5: that we can begin to change man's mind, and in
Speaker 5: changing mankind's mind, we can change mankind's policies. And that
Speaker 5: is the reason why we decided that even after Time
Speaker 5: one had been so well received, it was such a
Speaker 5: wonderful project in its own right. Me in particular, found
Speaker 5: a need to make sure that I could tell the
Speaker 5: second part of our story one because in the first time,
Speaker 5: I think our community needs to know how did we
Speaker 5: gain freedom for our family as it's like being in
Speaker 5: the criminal justice system. It's like being in a corn
Speaker 5: maze doing Halloween and you never know when and how
Speaker 5: to get out, and it is intentionally designed that way.
Speaker 5: And so one I wanted to make the sequel to
Speaker 5: this documentary so that I can help show families what
Speaker 5: we were able to do to get out. Because if
Speaker 5: it's possible for me and my family who had been
Speaker 5: condemned to diet angola. Then it is also possible for
Speaker 5: you and your family and countless others two point three
Speaker 5: million other families that find themselves trapped in one shape
Speaker 5: form on another in this judicial system, and so being
Speaker 5: able to bring forth his story and use artists activism
Speaker 5: to change mankind's heart and continue to push the message.
Speaker 5: The second reason I found it important to share this
Speaker 5: story was because I wanted folks to see what we
Speaker 5: actually did with freedom.
Speaker 1: What did we do with the freedom.
Speaker 5: That we had been given when my husband returned.
Speaker 8: Yeah, ministry, you need TV shows, and yeah, we need
Speaker 8: to put you on the platform.
Speaker 1: You to the program saince you are here talking right now.
Speaker 3: What to do with freedom once you get free?
Speaker 5: And what we did with freedom is that we used
Speaker 5: it to free other people. Six months after Rob came home,
Speaker 5: we had gotten clemency for him. We took on the
Speaker 5: matter of frame the longest serving woman in our country,
Speaker 5: Gloria Dean Williams, who by the time we got her
Speaker 5: release through clemency, had served fifty two years in prison.
Speaker 5: And she wasn't even the most culpable in her situation.
Speaker 5: And if that wasn't enough we changed policy in Louisiana
Speaker 5: that Rob had been studying law and working on since
Speaker 5: two thousand and five. We thought that policy change would
Speaker 5: help four hundred to six hundred men and women locked
Speaker 5: up in our system in Louisiana, which is the highest
Speaker 5: incarcerator in the world per capita the state of Louisiana.
Speaker 5: And when the policy actually got changed, we discovered family
Speaker 5: that over three thousand families who thought they were going
Speaker 5: to die in prison because they had thirty years or
Speaker 5: more of a sentence but not life, are now given
Speaker 5: an opportunity to go for parole and have a chance
Speaker 5: to return home to their families. So we understand that
Speaker 5: it is our duty to fight for our freedom and
Speaker 5: it is our duty to win. Thank you so much
Speaker 5: for ooh it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Let me just let me cool down because the mic
Speaker 2: on fire. You're done.
Speaker 4: Set the mic on fire real quick. What was what
Speaker 4: made you decide that you wanted to chroniclize this? What
Speaker 4: made you decide that I'm going to chroniclize this and
Speaker 4: turn this into this film.
Speaker 5: Well, for me, when it was resistance here as form.
Speaker 5: When Rob and I got married, we had three children
Speaker 5: between us. We had dated ten years off and on.
Speaker 5: I had come from a family where marriage was not
Speaker 5: an institutional practice in my particular home. Rob had come
Speaker 5: from a home that marriage was a practice. And so
Speaker 5: for us when we when we united in holy matrimony,
Speaker 5: it was like we broke all of the chains and
Speaker 5: all of the dysfunction. And even though we had made
Speaker 5: mistakes here, we were determined to fix it and get
Speaker 5: it right. And so it was it was so important
Speaker 5: to me I started documenting. I wanted to share this
Speaker 5: moment with my family and with others that we.
Speaker 6: Had actually done it.
Speaker 5: I was so happy we married right, find.
Speaker 1: The guy, right, he's married. Now he's married.
Speaker 6: Now you know.
Speaker 1: Time the movie.
Speaker 5: It's on Amazon Prime Video for your viewers that may
Speaker 5: want to check it out. It opens up and it
Speaker 5: says we're the richest. Now what do you think about that?
Speaker 5: But it is about building that brand, that family brand
Speaker 5: together that we can go out into the world and
Speaker 5: elevate and expand. And so I started filming for that purpose.
Speaker 5: And then shortly after that, we found ourselves in the
Speaker 5: criminal justice system to a choice of our own making.
Speaker 5: And so it was nothing more disheartening to me than
Speaker 5: to begin to fully understand what it meant to be free.
Speaker 5: The moment that I had checked not only myself but
Speaker 5: my husband and I had subjected our entire family back
Speaker 5: into slavery. So having understood that, I wanted to at
Speaker 5: that point document this, and even though the judge had
Speaker 5: sentenced him to sixty years, my goal was to make
Speaker 5: sure that if I couldn't, if he couldn't be in
Speaker 5: space with us, that I would document space and time
Speaker 5: and whenever he came home, because every year for twenty
Speaker 5: one years, we believe that this would be the year,
Speaker 5: This is going to be the one. Right here now,
Speaker 5: this Christmas, we're gonna be together as a family. And
Speaker 5: how many families every year are having that same thought
Speaker 5: that they are sharing with, you know, within their family,
Speaker 5: that hoping that this is going to be the year.
Speaker 5: And so I would keep filming and encouraging my children
Speaker 5: because I wanted to share it with him when he
Speaker 5: came home. But by the time we had been in
Speaker 5: the system for ten years.
Speaker 6: But what we had.
Speaker 5: Done, and everybody that I spoke to about the excessive
Speaker 5: sentence that my family had received thought it was god
Speaker 5: awful shame, but absolutely nobody lived at a hand to
Speaker 5: for me in the directional help me. Then I began
Speaker 5: to document because I knew I had a duty, in
Speaker 5: an our obligation to tell this story. And as I
Speaker 5: opened up time too, the trailer opens up and it says,
Speaker 5: if it wouldn't have happened to us, we never would
Speaker 5: have believed it. God got to make us witness bearers.
Speaker 5: Because I was that two time college graduate with my
Speaker 5: master's degree, and I thought that everybody that got in
Speaker 5: trouble with the law, they got exactly what they deserved.
Speaker 5: I went in the voting booth home from college, and
Speaker 5: I voted for three time felons to do to be
Speaker 5: multi bill. I voted for the eighty five percent law.
Speaker 5: If you do a violent crime, then you need to
Speaker 5: serve eighty five for your percent of your time. I
Speaker 5: voted for the Clinton Crime Bill that said we would
Speaker 5: charge children as adults when they're seventeen years old.
Speaker 2: I voted for all of.
Speaker 5: That, and then I entered the system, and then I
Speaker 5: understood how harmful my voting was and continues to be.
Speaker 5: Here we are thirty years later into this system and
Speaker 5: are still being impacted by the Clinton Bill, even though
Speaker 5: the funding for it is all gone, and all of
Speaker 5: the apologies have been spread across the ethos, but nobody
Speaker 5: came back to fix the harm. They calls and undo
Speaker 5: or repeal the Clinton crime beal.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, who's so rob You got a powerful wife.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of women right there saying next to you.
Speaker 3: I can imagine it's just like, go ahead, baby, do
Speaker 3: your thing. What has life been like? I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: twenty one years. Like I know people who have been
Speaker 3: incarcerated who have challenges with too much stimulation. My son
Speaker 3: he needs to get to himself sometimes and just sit
Speaker 3: and not have everybody constantly talking to him or have
Speaker 3: to engage in a million conversations, and everybody's like, what's.
Speaker 1: Wrong with my son?
Speaker 3: And he's just like sometimes I just I just need
Speaker 3: that a break. And it's different between people who need
Speaker 3: that break simply because they just can't be over stimulated
Speaker 3: and someone who had to use that as a mechanism
Speaker 3: to get through seven years of incarceration.
Speaker 1: And we have our other sister, Jamil T. Davis.
Speaker 3: I notice it in her sometimes things that she does,
Speaker 3: and I just wonder for you, what has been the
Speaker 3: lasting effects of doing all of those years and is
Speaker 3: a part of your programming and what you do helping
Speaker 3: folks to break those chains as well after they come
Speaker 3: out of incarceration.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know, some of the things are things that
Speaker 6: you can kind of you can repair up on release.
Speaker 7: But when you consider the fact one that when I
Speaker 7: went into prison, I went into prison two years on
Speaker 7: the other side of windows ninety five.
Speaker 6: By the time I had.
Speaker 7: Come home, my space was a thing and was no
Speaker 7: longer a thing by the time I had come home,
Speaker 7: So you can imagine the technological advances that had happen.
Speaker 7: And you know, at that space and time when I
Speaker 7: left home, people with you know, you only had a
Speaker 7: handful of people that.
Speaker 6: Had a cell phone.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 7: They were basically street chemists and you know, doctors and lawyers, uh,
Speaker 7: separate and apart from them.
Speaker 6: You know, that was pretty much it.
Speaker 7: And phones were just for the purpose of making making
Speaker 7: phone calls. By the time I had come home, you know,
Speaker 7: people couldn't even live without their phones. Their lives were
Speaker 7: connected to that little you know, this little gadget. When
Speaker 7: I left home from from prison the first time I
Speaker 7: whimp uh went left home to prison the first time,
Speaker 7: people were wearing baggy clothes and those kinds of things.
Speaker 7: When I came home, practically everybody was naked. Yes, it
Speaker 7: was an over you know, it was over stimulating because
Speaker 7: I could look. But then they say, you ain't supposed
Speaker 7: to look too long, look, don't say nothing, you know,
Speaker 7: and I'm like, what we're doing? You know, just so
Speaker 7: many different things were different, But it reminded me so
Speaker 7: much of people that had gone through slavery and were
Speaker 7: told that they could not read, that, they were told
Speaker 7: that they could not learn how to write, that, they
Speaker 7: were told that they needed to stay literate because as
Speaker 7: long as you're literate, then I can control you. Well,
Speaker 7: much of the same happens that when you move into
Speaker 7: a technologically advanced world like the one we live in today,
Speaker 7: or the like the one that I entered when I
Speaker 7: got out of prison in twenty eighteen. I'm no different
Speaker 7: than those people. So like, it's like I went from
Speaker 7: slavery to sharecropping. You feel what I'm saying, And I've
Speaker 7: been going through that same process over and over again. Yes,
Speaker 7: but some of the things that are the remnants or
Speaker 7: the lasting effects from incarceration, you can repair, you know,
Speaker 7: you can become educated, you can become tech savvy. You
Speaker 7: can become a lot of those things and kind of
Speaker 7: make up for lost time when it comes.
Speaker 6: To those kinds of things.
Speaker 7: But there are some things that stick with you and
Speaker 7: they stay with you forever. I post traumatic express is real. No,
Speaker 7: It's as real as a person that went off the
Speaker 7: war because I've been in war. Some people, you know,
Speaker 7: when you say that to them, it's like, well, why
Speaker 7: would you Why would you make that comparison that you've
Speaker 7: been in war? And I'm like, come on, dummy, what
Speaker 7: do you not understand it? It's me versus the state
Speaker 7: of Louisiana. It's my brother versus whatever state or federal
Speaker 7: or jurisdiction that he or.
Speaker 6: She was up again. So they made it a war.
Speaker 6: He made them versus me. So this is not me
Speaker 6: just making up something. But you know, same situation is
Speaker 6: that you go through this experience.
Speaker 7: Of living in a violent state for two decades, you know,
Speaker 7: two decades, a year and four days. With that being said,
Speaker 7: you can't live in an environment like that for that
Speaker 7: long period of time and not and come out unscathed.
Speaker 6: So I'm no different.
Speaker 7: You know, I came out, but I've just been learning
Speaker 7: how to manage and work past it. It was probably
Speaker 7: when I gave my first interview when once I got home.
Speaker 7: The first interview national interview that we gave when we
Speaker 7: were out promoting the first film was with CBS Mornings
Speaker 7: and Jureka Duncan, a person who I've been you know,
Speaker 7: watching through the TV, you know, for the last seemed
Speaker 7: like fifteen twenty years or so. Now here it is
Speaker 7: that I'm now being in a situation where this person
Speaker 7: who I've admired her journalistic style and UH contributions and
Speaker 7: all those things, and now this woman.
Speaker 6: Is uh is actually interviewing me.
Speaker 7: You know, Gail King is knowing my name, or she
Speaker 7: is knowing at least my family story. And in that moment,
Speaker 7: you know, once the interview came to a close, I
Speaker 7: started noticing that I started sweating, and my pulse went up,
Speaker 7: and my heart rate went up, and I started shaking,
Speaker 7: and I couldn't figure out like what was happening or
Speaker 7: what was wrong with me. And it was like, you know,
Speaker 7: Fox kind of you know, calmed me down and got
Speaker 7: me back.
Speaker 6: She's like Nigga breathed it just kind of easing me
Speaker 6: back through it or whatever. She's like. He was like,
Speaker 6: I think I need to go to the hospital. I
Speaker 6: was like, nigga, improve.
Speaker 1: It got right. And by the way, we've been through enough,
Speaker 1: get your ass together.
Speaker 6: Right, even old long enough.
Speaker 4: To me, I'm gonna kill you anyway, you need to
Speaker 4: take the DS.
Speaker 7: So those are just some of the things that that
Speaker 7: you know, were difficult for me upon release. Another was
Speaker 7: just the fact that I've been in a prison where
Speaker 7: the population is more than six thousand men incarcerated in
Speaker 7: one space together. Uh, there's twenty five hundred men that
Speaker 7: make up you know, the walk where I live, the
Speaker 7: tier where I live, on on my on my tier,
Speaker 7: there's over five hundred dudes that live in that one pot.
Speaker 7: And then in the set I mean in the in
Speaker 7: the dormitory setting where I live, there are more than
Speaker 7: one hundred men that share my my my birthing, or
Speaker 7: my bed space. And with that being said, we also
Speaker 7: share between one hundred men. We share two telephones, we
Speaker 7: share one tv U, we share one Kiosk machine.
Speaker 6: We say we share six urinals.
Speaker 7: Four toilets, two sinks, four showers, and you can imagine
Speaker 7: the confused and one coffee pot.
Speaker 6: Can you imagine the confusion that exists.
Speaker 7: When when a hundred men, most of them who've been
Speaker 7: sentenced or sanctioned to a life in prison.
Speaker 6: Get in a setting like that. Man, this is like
Speaker 6: a powder keg.
Speaker 7: It's just any moment that it's gonna blow and again,
Speaker 7: like I said, can't live through those moments and not
Speaker 7: come home impacted. When I came home from that situation,
Speaker 7: my wife was ready to, you know, jump in the
Speaker 7: showers together.
Speaker 6: She was ready to hug up at night in the
Speaker 6: bed and all that.
Speaker 7: I'm like, hold up, man, somebody might shake me, like
Speaker 7: you got me held up right here, hold on, I
Speaker 7: need some freedom.
Speaker 6: I didn't want to shower with someone else.
Speaker 7: I wanted to shower by myself because I've been showering
Speaker 7: with other dudes the last two decades. You know, you
Speaker 7: splashing soap and all that other kind of shrug. You know,
Speaker 7: you can't avoid it. I wanted to close the door
Speaker 7: when when I was in the restroom because I could
Speaker 7: you know other than that, I was, you know, in
Speaker 7: a situation where I was total lead. You know, there
Speaker 7: were no doors because people need to be able to
Speaker 7: see because I need to make sure you're still here,
Speaker 7: and you know, just all of those things, Intimacy, We
Speaker 7: had to figure out how many times were a married
Speaker 7: couple supposed to be having sex with each other once?
Speaker 6: Once you were married? And that's me. You know, that
Speaker 6: mess with my ego a little bit. You know.
Speaker 7: I always consider myself, you know, at least above average,
Speaker 7: you know in these matters, right, I mean, six sons
Speaker 7: do say something. But in that moment, though, you know,
Speaker 7: I was like, okay, well they got these new gadgets.
Speaker 7: Let me google how many how many times do people
Speaker 7: actually have sex when they married?
Speaker 6: And you know, I felt relieved afterwards. I was like, okay, shit,
Speaker 6: I'm holding my own up in there. You know. Then
Speaker 6: the average American and boy, I've lapped all the Asians
Speaker 6: over there.
Speaker 7: You know, they barely get it in so but it's
Speaker 7: just all of those kind of things that that we
Speaker 7: had to figure out how to overcome.
Speaker 6: You know, after you know, long suffering.
Speaker 3: Tell us real quick about your kids and then you
Speaker 3: take us up from there. But what about the children?
Speaker 3: How are the children?
Speaker 5: The children are masterpieces. They're absolutely amazing. Eldest son, Elik
Speaker 5: is a Somalia. Our second oldest son, Remington, is a
Speaker 5: or the Donnis here in New Orleans. The third oldest
Speaker 5: Lawrence was one of the first to get married, and
Speaker 5: it's traveling abroad with his wife after serving a tour
Speaker 5: of duty in the Army. Our twin boys' Freedom and Justice.
Speaker 5: Freedom works in Congress as a senior staffer with one
Speaker 5: of our congressmen. Justice has finished a tour of duty
Speaker 5: in the army and it's also living abroad.
Speaker 6: And our baby boy, Robert Jr.
Speaker 5: Is a second year college student at the School of
Speaker 5: the Art Institute of Chicago on a scholarship for photography
Speaker 5: and journalism. So we just can't say enough about how
Speaker 5: well our children are doing, our families Mato doing that
Speaker 5: journey was success is the best revenge. And how do
Speaker 5: we make them pay for what the harm not only
Speaker 5: that we cause, but the harm that the state added
Speaker 5: to what we caused.
Speaker 1: How can we get back?
Speaker 5: And to get back we just succeed anyhow when it
Speaker 5: was intentional about us not succeeding. And so all of
Speaker 5: that being said, we are to be able to invite
Speaker 5: the Tmi family to join us. As we launched the
Speaker 5: sequel to our Oscar nominated documentary, Time to Unfinished Business,
Speaker 5: which is my directorial debut. We will do a streaming
Speaker 5: live here in New Orleans and across the nation through
Speaker 5: a national watch party, as we are encouraging our sisters
Speaker 5: and brought us to put freedom at the forefront of
Speaker 5: June teenth. This June teenth, and let's talk about freedom.
Speaker 5: So I do hope that you all will consider coming
Speaker 5: down and being a part of this amazing opportunity.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we are aiming to get a million people watching
Speaker 5: and talking about freedom this June team.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. So I just wanted this.
Speaker 4: There's two questions I want to ask, so we know
Speaker 4: what the whole theme was behind Time one. It was
Speaker 4: chroniclizing your marriage, chroniclizing everything that happened, and then showing
Speaker 4: how Rob came home and how you all of the
Speaker 4: trials and tribulations that you went through. It's more of
Speaker 4: I would like to say. It's not a story glory
Speaker 4: of just freedom. Is a story of perseverance, right and
Speaker 4: love and perseverance, and it really shows that. So is
Speaker 4: what are we looking at when we look at time too?
Speaker 4: What is the theme?
Speaker 2: What is the whole idea about it?
Speaker 5: If Time one was the cry, then Time two is
Speaker 5: the call the call to action. As the theme of
Speaker 5: the entire movie is to be free is to free others.
Speaker 5: We are excited to be able to show people freedom
Speaker 5: unfolding on multiple occasions in the great state of Louisiana,
Speaker 5: which is the worst incarcerated in the world. We are
Speaker 5: hopeful that people will be inspired and see that they
Speaker 5: too can go back into the belly of this beast
Speaker 5: and reclaim their loved ones. Just because somebody has been
Speaker 5: excessively sentenced doesn't mean that they have to stay that way.
Speaker 1: And so we are just.
Speaker 5: Hoping that people will see the power that family and
Speaker 5: community together, we can achieve anything we set our minds.
Speaker 4: I want to ask one more question before I finished.
Speaker 4: At any time did you doubt that y'all would have
Speaker 4: this moment? Anytime during that year when you were sending
Speaker 4: sixty one years and you was fighting, and I know
Speaker 4: there was ups and downs and there was nose and
Speaker 4: for twenty one years you went through that. Anytime did
Speaker 4: y'all say, you know what I'm giving up?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: No was not an option.
Speaker 5: And that's how we have to be about our freedom
Speaker 5: here in this country. We have to clearly understand that
Speaker 5: no was not an option. Us conceding to the Six
Speaker 5: States sanctions for our family was not an option for us.
Speaker 7: And then if you look at the fact that for
Speaker 7: those that have had an opportunity to watch time the original,
Speaker 7: if you notice that when I came out, when I
Speaker 7: exited the prison, I had a T shirt on that
Speaker 7: says never give up and my zhon, I know you
Speaker 7: know first and foremost, they don't make them kind of
Speaker 7: T shirts in prison. I made that T shirt ten
Speaker 7: years prior to when I was taking the Arts a
Speaker 7: Graphic Arts and Communications class, we were tasked with the
Speaker 7: homeless well with an assignment to create a campaign, and
Speaker 7: so I thought to create a campaign through T shirts
Speaker 7: by putting the words never give up onto the front
Speaker 7: of those T shirts.
Speaker 6: And felt that if I could put people inside.
Speaker 7: Of those T shirts, as I was able to do
Speaker 7: inside of the prison, then it was a way of
Speaker 7: telling all the men that when we approached one another
Speaker 7: or when we saw one another, that we were reminding
Speaker 7: each other that we could never give up despite the
Speaker 7: situation that was ahead of us.
Speaker 6: We owed it to.
Speaker 7: Our ancestors to not give up or not give up
Speaker 7: on them, and to not give up on ourselves. We
Speaker 7: called time to unfinished business because it was some personal
Speaker 7: business that was there to us because our nephew continued
Speaker 7: to be incarcerated after I got out. But truth of
Speaker 7: the matter is is that there was more than four
Speaker 7: hundred years of unfinished business when it comes to the
Speaker 7: fight that our ancestors started many, many years ago. So
Speaker 7: as long as the thirteenth Amendment still has an exception
Speaker 7: clause that allows a gateway into back into slavery through
Speaker 7: one's mistakes or through your air in judgment, through your transgressions,
Speaker 7: then that business is unfinished. And that is what we're
Speaker 7: endeavoring this June team, is to not talk about freedom
Speaker 7: in the way that we traditionally talk about it in
Speaker 7: the rear of how we talk about what happened three
Speaker 7: hundred years ago, two hundred, one hundred years ago, or whatever.
Speaker 7: We're talking about what's happening now in this moment in
Speaker 7: time with them two point three million people that are
Speaker 7: still languishing a way in cars, in systems all across
Speaker 7: this country. So we want to bring that conversation back
Speaker 7: to the forefront and keep it at the forefront until
Speaker 7: we're able to have that exception move. That's not to
Speaker 7: say that we get rid of prisons. I believe people
Speaker 7: that should be punished do me wrong, and yeah, there's
Speaker 7: a sanction that come with it, But at the same time,
Speaker 7: the sanction should be fundamentally fair. And I just think
Speaker 7: that the system has gotten away that its side steps
Speaker 7: fundamental fairness and issues out sentences and sanctions that are
Speaker 7: reflective of what we've seen for hundreds of years now.
Speaker 4: Amen, So time two, the time to campaign is us
Speaker 4: a time to watch campaign?
Speaker 2: Is us watching it on June tenth? Together?
Speaker 5: So the conversation about freedom with the toolkit that you
Speaker 5: will be provided and to mek, I think you all
Speaker 5: will love this my TMA podcast family. Not only do
Speaker 5: you get the film that you will own, it will
Speaker 5: be yours, not a rental. But in addition to that,
Speaker 5: in this freedom toolkit, you will receive a copy of
Speaker 5: the public law that made Juneteenth a federal holiday and
Speaker 5: you will get a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation because
Speaker 5: we as black people, we need both of those posted
Speaker 5: up on our walls in our homes next to the
Speaker 5: picture of the Lord's Supper.
Speaker 3: We're going to host a screening, definitely tea where and
Speaker 3: we will be hosting a screening. We are on the
Speaker 3: state of the People Power Tour, which Juneteenth is going
Speaker 3: to be something very special.
Speaker 5: But that evening. What time does it come on. I
Speaker 5: think it's gonna be about six thirty. We have all
Speaker 5: of the definitives this.
Speaker 1: Week, okay, so we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: And as a part of what we're doing until freedom,
Speaker 3: our organization will host a screening for with and for
Speaker 3: you all. This I'm impressed, and it takes a lot
Speaker 3: to impress me, but I see two extremely powerful people.
Speaker 3: We've all been through a lot in our lives. My son,
Speaker 3: you know, he has a story that is very painful,
Speaker 3: and he's been gone through a lot, but it's and
Speaker 3: I have a book out about all the stuff and
Speaker 3: the bad decisions I made from picking up pills and
Speaker 3: becoming addicted to you know, a lot of things that
Speaker 3: happened to me because of bad decisions.
Speaker 1: But I know for sure and I felt it.
Speaker 3: If I could taste it, it would have filled me
Speaker 3: to know that when God met me in rehab, he
Speaker 3: was not there to rebuke me, but instead to say
Speaker 3: that every single thing you've been through is for the
Speaker 3: purpose of what I need you to go and do now.
Speaker 3: And I am committed to using the challenges that I've
Speaker 3: faced and the things I put myself in. I can't
Speaker 3: sit here toay it was Johnny and Bobby. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: some people who were responsible for breaking my heart and
Speaker 3: making me feel like I was vulnerable and all of that.
Speaker 3: That's true, but I still made decisions that ended up
Speaker 3: really crippling me and put.
Speaker 1: Me in a bad space.
Speaker 3: And I've made the commitment to God that I know
Speaker 3: there are other people who are numbing with pills right
Speaker 3: now or drinking alcohol trying to numb some of their
Speaker 3: past issues and current issues. I know there are people
Speaker 3: who are shopping or having promiscuous sexual moments and all
Speaker 3: of that, trying to cover up things that they don't
Speaker 3: want the world to see.
Speaker 1: And it is my.
Speaker 3: Commitment to God that he bought me out and I
Speaker 3: promised that I would use my platform to do the same.
Speaker 3: So as I'm listening to you all, it has given
Speaker 3: me renewed spirit to go back and do the work
Speaker 3: that I need to do, the work that I know
Speaker 3: God has.
Speaker 1: Called me to do.
Speaker 3: The movement is important, and they're not separated, it's all together,
Speaker 3: but it's there's He gave me the movement, and I've
Speaker 3: done that I've done it for thirty years of my life,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't sure what I would do next, and
Speaker 3: now I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, and
Speaker 3: that is to deal with disparities around addiction and how
Speaker 3: people get help. And it is also to say to folks, yes,
Speaker 3: I was addicted.
Speaker 1: It was me. You see me, I'm cute.
Speaker 3: I'm fixed up, I got you know, nice clothes. But
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, I was taking between twenty to thirty
Speaker 3: pills a day. So if I could tell my story,
Speaker 3: you could tell yours and we can get healed together.
Speaker 1: So there's that. It's a testimony. I've been talk all.
Speaker 2: Day to day. It's a fire.
Speaker 1: Thank you'll, thank you'll.
Speaker 2: Thank y'all.
Speaker 6: No, thank you for having us.
Speaker 5: And when you get to New Orleans, your favorite, our
Speaker 5: favorite restaurant.
Speaker 2: Is on us.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's my teachers.
Speaker 2: Don't threat don't threaten me with a good time. I
Speaker 2: got you king be say.
Speaker 1: Talk to you all. Thank you, thank you, Yeah, keep going,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 4: That was such an amazing interview, like just this story,
Speaker 4: just listening to them, just the way they're in Unison,
Speaker 4: the way they just highly intelligent, and it's just dope.
Speaker 1: Just watching their experience, man, you.
Speaker 4: Know, watching Time one gave me like a glimpse of
Speaker 4: their life, and then just just having that interview with
Speaker 4: them was just was the icing.
Speaker 2: On the cake. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, some people take what was meant for bad
Speaker 3: for good. And just knowing that you have these two
Speaker 3: very powerful, very intellectual, very socially conscious, super black folks
Speaker 3: out here in the world, it makes me feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, one of these days we may be in
Speaker 3: a better place.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad that they're in Louisiana, which is.
Speaker 3: A state that really has significant racial issues in terms
Speaker 3: of disparities within all types of industries but clearly incarceration
Speaker 3: and to have them there working to help people get
Speaker 3: freed or to get their records expunged and all of
Speaker 3: that is really important as well. And again just knowing
Speaker 3: that they are socially conscious and they have a racial
Speaker 3: lens for their work, because a lot of times even
Speaker 3: black people will be like, well, we don't you know, we're.
Speaker 1: Not this is not about this is you know.
Speaker 3: And not to say that they won't work with people
Speaker 3: that are not black, but they still understand the challenges
Speaker 3: that we as black people have and she's out here
Speaker 3: quoting Asada Chakour.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: We have nothing to lose but our change, So we
Speaker 3: have to do the work. We at least have to try.
Speaker 3: So I love Robin Fox and I'm definitely committed as
Speaker 3: you are to our Juneteenth event a screening of their show,
Speaker 3: and it will be on the same day of hopefully
Speaker 3: it happens.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping.
Speaker 3: We're on this tour, the State of the People Power Tour,
Speaker 3: which has been an incredible, incredible gathering of black folks
Speaker 3: organized black folks across the country, and Juneteenth, we're supposed
Speaker 3: to have a special day and hopefully what will be
Speaker 3: in the evening would be this particular screen and so
Speaker 3: we're working on it.
Speaker 2: Yes, the State.
Speaker 3: The State of the People Power Tour is a power
Speaker 3: tour for real. It's powering through my spirit every single day.
Speaker 2: It is definitely powering through my spirit.
Speaker 3: We should absolutely make sure to have some clips included
Speaker 3: in this show and subsequent shows to give people an
Speaker 3: understanding of what has happened from Atlanta to North Carolina
Speaker 3: and then to New Orleans and now we're going to Alabama. Certainly,
Speaker 3: I can't forget Alabama, one of the most incredible gatherings.
Speaker 1: And then we're now headed to Newark, New Jersey.
Speaker 4: Newark it's my home, my second home, Newark, it surely
Speaker 4: is definitely.
Speaker 2: My second Now that brings me to my I don't
Speaker 2: get it now.
Speaker 4: I hate to keep talking about Trump, you know, but
Speaker 4: like the ignorance, the level of ignorance makes me feel
Speaker 4: like I'm ignorant sometimes, right, you ever just pay attention, No, no,
Speaker 4: for real, because you you say it got to be
Speaker 4: me like you get you say to yourself, it's am
Speaker 4: I really crazy? Like am I really seeing what I'm seeing?
Speaker 4: Or am I blind or something?
Speaker 2: So listen.
Speaker 4: They are people online, right that're constantly people I know,
Speaker 4: constantly try to make it seem as if Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: is ignorant, right, I see the post they.
Speaker 1: Say she's ignorant or not intelligence.
Speaker 4: No, no, they make low IQ, not intelligent, whatever you
Speaker 4: want to call whatever you want to call it. I've
Speaker 4: seen a post where they had a picture of her
Speaker 4: and said we dodged a bullet, right, and she was
Speaker 4: talking about she was talking about she said something I
Speaker 4: don't remember exactly what it was. She said there was
Speaker 4: elephants they took a little clip and she was like,
Speaker 4: did y'all see the viral clip of the elephants when
Speaker 4: there was an earthquake? And then they cut it off
Speaker 4: and said, oh, we dodged a bullet. She's so dumb
Speaker 4: and this and that. I'm asking this because maybe I'm crazy.
Speaker 4: Do y'all actually believe that Donald Trump is more intelligent
Speaker 4: than Kamala Harris? Dude?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: Is this like?
Speaker 4: Is this something that when we look and you listen
Speaker 4: to both of them speak and you just hear the
Speaker 4: third grade vernacular vocabulary that Trump has. I have never
Speaker 4: heard him say something that a fifth grader couldn't understand.
Speaker 4: I've never And then I heard him today talking about
Speaker 4: Jasmine Crockett.
Speaker 1: A fifth grader couldn't understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said nothing.
Speaker 4: Anybody with a fifth grade education can understand what he said.
Speaker 2: He doesn't.
Speaker 4: There's nothing intelligent about Donald Trump. So I'm so confused,
Speaker 4: as do people really believe that he was talking about
Speaker 4: Jasmin Crackt. I was about to say saying that she
Speaker 4: has a low IQ, And I'm just really saying to myself,
Speaker 4: is this like a game? Is it like reverse psychology
Speaker 4: that if you say something long enough, right, if you
Speaker 4: so dumb that if you tell people you smart, they
Speaker 4: start to believe that you're smart. And I think that's
Speaker 4: what's happened. Like when they say this cult shit with Trump,
Speaker 4: it's really like a cult to me because there's nobody
Speaker 4: that's listening to Trump. They ask him about the Constitution, right,
Speaker 4: and the Declaration of Independence, and they ask them, they
Speaker 4: ask him questions. He doesn't even know what the fuck
Speaker 4: they are. He says, it's a document. It's a good document,
Speaker 4: you know, it's for freedom. He has no idea about
Speaker 4: the things that actually govern this nation. He has no
Speaker 4: idea about anything. So when I'm listening to people have
Speaker 4: these conversations and people make it seem like these intelligent
Speaker 4: black women are less educated intelligent than this man, it's
Speaker 4: like the weirdest shit I've ever seen it. It really,
Speaker 4: it really shocks me.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess my response is I'm really thinking about it.
Speaker 3: But what I can say is that there are some
Speaker 3: people who will feel like just because you use big
Speaker 3: words that a fifth grader might not be able to understand,
Speaker 3: it doesn't make you more intelligent.
Speaker 1: It just might mean that you know more.
Speaker 4: Words, okay, but even more educated right, when you say
Speaker 4: somebody's low IQ the education at seventy eight years old, right,
Speaker 4: I don't even think that the man has the IQ
Speaker 4: or the education of a tenth grader, Like, for real,
Speaker 4: when I'm listening to him, it's like sometimes I be confused,
Speaker 4: like this is this really?
Speaker 3: Well, we live in the era of trolling, right, and
Speaker 3: a lot of the people they also know big words,
Speaker 3: because I see a lot of people on social media
Speaker 3: that know how to use all kinds of big words
Speaker 3: and write fifteen page paragraphs and still when you really
Speaker 3: listen to what they're saying on a very basic level,
Speaker 3: it's pretty ignorant.
Speaker 1: It's pretty stupid, right, And so I think that.
Speaker 3: Folks are looking Also, what people like to look at
Speaker 3: is how much money you've made and how much success
Speaker 3: you have had, and like where you were able to what.
Speaker 1: You were able to accomplish, where you were able to get.
Speaker 2: And well, money does not have anything to do with education.
Speaker 3: Well, but I know, but I'm just telling you, In
Speaker 3: a lot of people's minds, the mere fact that you
Speaker 3: were able to accomplish these big things like having hotels
Speaker 3: and golf courses and you know, becoming president twice and
Speaker 3: all of that that to them is what that's what
Speaker 3: implies education, pation level, or a level of brilliance or intelligence.
Speaker 3: They don't think, they don't understand that a lot of
Speaker 3: these people, especially white folks, white men, who have been
Speaker 3: able to accomplish these great goals that when you look
Speaker 3: into the background, because this is what the man was
Speaker 3: sued for in New York State alone, stealing, you know,
Speaker 3: mistreating other communities in order to its pretty much scamming
Speaker 3: and harming people, being racist, in order to grow the
Speaker 3: ladder and get to whatever it is that they're trying
Speaker 3: to do. They did not necessarily take the difficult route
Speaker 3: that requires you to like know some stuff and learn
Speaker 3: some things and also consider other people's rights and feelings.
Speaker 3: And so there are a lot of people that will
Speaker 3: never agree with you because when they look at him,
Speaker 3: they see success, and you have.
Speaker 1: They're telling the.
Speaker 4: Success that's in education. It's two different things. They have
Speaker 4: a lot of successful people that's not educated.
Speaker 3: Right, But I but okay, So then I guess, okay,
Speaker 3: so you're saying, I think God int same what you're
Speaker 3: saying that in those situations, you would see a person
Speaker 3: say I don't know all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: I made it from hard work or whatever, whatever.
Speaker 3: But I know my sister is much more educated than me,
Speaker 3: and that's why I rely on her for whatever, or
Speaker 3: my friend or I always keep people around me who
Speaker 3: are smarter than me or whatever.
Speaker 1: So they are they are.
Speaker 3: Making it clear that they know that they are not
Speaker 3: as educated. They would never try to down somebody who
Speaker 3: actually is.
Speaker 2: It's just for me.
Speaker 4: When you talk about IQ level, right, when you talk
Speaker 4: about education level, when you those things are visible, right
Speaker 4: when I'm having a basic conversation, like you might be
Speaker 4: somebody who just has common sense. Like it's a lot
Speaker 4: of people that have good common sense. They're not the
Speaker 4: most like we think about they're not BookSmart, right, like
Speaker 4: you think about our grandparents and all that. My grandmother
Speaker 4: didn't go to school, but she was she had common sense.
Speaker 4: Like she had very good common sense. But when you
Speaker 4: talked to you knew she wasn't highly educated, right, but
Speaker 4: she knew how to give you basic things. She would
Speaker 4: say shit that you when you thought about, like, then
Speaker 4: that made sense. Donald Trump don't even have that, right
Speaker 4: when I'm listening to shit he says, like just just
Speaker 4: he talk about the art of the deal, like you
Speaker 4: nobody thinks that.
Speaker 2: They don't need allies.
Speaker 4: Right if the president of America, right, you're not gonna
Speaker 4: go to war with everybody else and isolate yourself. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's just not even common sense. You're not gonna keep
Speaker 4: lying saying that you're making deals that you're not. You're
Speaker 4: not gonna tell us that you're gonna stop a war
Speaker 4: that you know you have no they playing you.
Speaker 3: But he knows that he has a lot of people.
Speaker 3: He said his sweet spot is.
Speaker 2: Yea, but I understand that.
Speaker 4: So, but my thing is, the poor educated got to
Speaker 4: stop acting like they educated, because you can't look at
Speaker 4: somebody educated. It because when you look when you look
Speaker 4: at when you look at just the resume of both
Speaker 4: of them, when we talk about education, there's not even
Speaker 4: a comparison. Right, This lady has ran the top government officers.
Speaker 4: She's went through the ranks of place, like graduating the
Speaker 4: bargain like, these are things, these are things that require education,
Speaker 4: they require intelligence.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has done none of those things. Right.
Speaker 4: So when we have these conversations and you compare it
Speaker 4: on an education level and intellect level, it's it's like,
Speaker 4: to me, it's mind boggling.
Speaker 2: That there are people that have.
Speaker 4: Now, you don't like her, you think she laughed too much,
Speaker 4: you don't like to you think she's not whatever, whatever
Speaker 4: it is you want to say cool, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2: That's your personal opinion.
Speaker 4: But when we talk about you can have your own opinions,
Speaker 4: you can't have your own facts. Men lie, numbers lie.
Speaker 4: I mean men live, women lie, but numbers don't lie
Speaker 4: in the numbers. Right when we look at the numbers,
Speaker 4: when we look at Jasmine Crockett's jacket and we look
Speaker 4: at her education level, and we just listen to her
Speaker 4: when she is delivering a message, right, you understand that
Speaker 4: this is an educated woman. When I'm watching the president
Speaker 4: inside the White House and the words he says, and
Speaker 4: it's like, damn, man.
Speaker 2: Is this really the president of the United States?
Speaker 6: And I'm.
Speaker 2: Listen to me.
Speaker 4: But I'm not saying you made a decision, but you didn't.
Speaker 4: You didn't vote that man because he's educated and he's
Speaker 4: highly intelligent. You decided that you just going with whatever
Speaker 4: you want. You feel like he's honest to a fault.
Speaker 4: You said he's gonna say this shit nobody else says.
Speaker 4: It's raw.
Speaker 2: It's like, cool, I understand, that's what you voted for.
Speaker 4: But we can't keep doing this this intelligence shit, because
Speaker 4: now you you insult in my intelligence by trying to
Speaker 4: make me believe that this man is more intellien in
Speaker 4: this woman, and it's it's insulting to somebody.
Speaker 3: Maybe they don't know how to express that. What they
Speaker 3: mean is he's just better than her.
Speaker 2: But that I mean, you like her, but there's nothing
Speaker 2: when you.
Speaker 3: Say better, I'm saying. That's what these people are saying.
Speaker 3: I already know.
Speaker 1: In the show y'all got.
Speaker 4: Y'all president, right, and it's cool, But you're not gonna
Speaker 4: keep insulting these people intelligence when you're compaying them to
Speaker 4: somebody who has the intellect of a third and fourth grader.
Speaker 4: We're just not gonna keep doing it. I'm just not'
Speaker 4: I can have any discussion you want. You think he's
Speaker 4: a business man, you think he does this cool, that's
Speaker 4: that's your opinion. I disagree with cool, But it's not
Speaker 4: an opinion that this person is educated.
Speaker 2: That's not even an opinion for so yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4: I just I just don't need y'all to insult my
Speaker 4: intelligence by trying to make me think that that man
Speaker 4: is intelligent and these women are.
Speaker 2: It's just it's I draw the line there.
Speaker 4: Like that's where I draw the line, because you're not
Speaker 4: gonna you can't get play in my face like that.
Speaker 4: You can't tell me you can't pissed my mama. You
Speaker 4: said you ain't gonna be able to piss on me
Speaker 4: and tell me it's raining. And that's what they trying
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, I I captain.
Speaker 4: And with that we come to the end of another
Speaker 4: episode of TM. We appreciate y'all. Tamika. What you gotta say?
Speaker 2: What am I supposed to do? You have something to
Speaker 2: say something?
Speaker 4: Give me a good close and something strong. You ain't
Speaker 4: got nothing to close you with like a good word?
Speaker 4: Come on something, give me a strong word.
Speaker 2: You said words. Well, we appreciate y'all.
Speaker 4: You know, continue to follow us at tam My Underscore
Speaker 4: Show and at TMI Show PC on YouTube. We appreciate y'all.
Speaker 4: Let us know if you love us, let us know
Speaker 4: you hate us. We continue to be the number one
Speaker 4: show in the world. Tam My Truth, Motivation and Inspiration.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna always be right, Tamika the marries and
Speaker 4: I can always be wrong, but we will both always
Speaker 4: and I mean always be authentic