Speaker 1: What up, y'all. Welcome back to episode three of All
Speaker 1: the Smoke Coming to from New York. We've got a
Speaker 1: special guest today that I'm very excited to talk to
Speaker 1: someone that I've just kind of learned so much from,
Speaker 1: uh from social media, someone who was a real leader
Speaker 1: in our community when it comes to social justice. Wipe
Speaker 1: your hands real quick. No, actually today I got you.
Speaker 1: Look yeah, I think you really won one. Washington Line
Speaker 1: of Day. Hey man, we got a special guest, Man
Speaker 1: Shaun king Man, the People's champ. This is pop. I
Speaker 1: can't say enough good things about to do, but kind
Speaker 1: of pop cultures go to guy for social justice, social activism. Um,
Speaker 1: A positive voice, a real voice. It's good to have
Speaker 1: you here. MA appreciate it. Man, Thank you for coming
Speaker 1: to Also also educator. A lot of stuff that go on.
Speaker 1: You educate a lot of people when they don't know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. You know, my first job out
Speaker 1: of college was as a teacher, and so much of
Speaker 1: what I do is still from that training, trying to
Speaker 1: just teach and break stuff down. So that's a lot
Speaker 1: of what I've did. And people need to be susceptible.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know, uh, pretty much what you're about,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get into that the detail, but what
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to tap into. I'm excited personally
Speaker 1: just to kind of get to know Seaun King the
Speaker 1: person you know, not the person that is, you know,
Speaker 1: the social justice fighter that we all know and love,
Speaker 1: but you know your upbringing and and and what got
Speaker 1: you going into this space to tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about Oh man, Yeah, I mean, I you know,
Speaker 1: social media is weird like that because it kind of
Speaker 1: reduces us to little sound bites and tweets, and we're
Speaker 1: all way more nuanced and complicated than our best Instagram post.
Speaker 1: So I grew up in rural Kentucky and we're all
Speaker 1: about the same age. And so I grew up in
Speaker 1: the eighties and a small town right outside of Lexington.
Speaker 1: So I grew up a huge basketball fan, big UK
Speaker 1: fans UK. Right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know there
Speaker 1: were some Louisville fans you know, around, But no, not
Speaker 1: at all, man, No, not. I can't even play a
Speaker 1: game of horse right, right, right. But so I grew up. Man,
Speaker 1: When I think about the way I came up, you know,
Speaker 1: my mother was a single parent, hard working, working class
Speaker 1: white woman who worked in a local factory there in
Speaker 1: the town. And I was a product of an interracial
Speaker 1: relationship and in this town, like that was unheard of. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm born in nineteen seventy nine and in the eighties,
Speaker 1: growing up looking the way I looked from the from
Speaker 1: the relationship I came from, it was weird. Like this
Speaker 1: was before being mixed or by racial. I didn't even
Speaker 1: have that language, Like this was before any of that
Speaker 1: was cool. And so in the town I grew up in,
Speaker 1: I never even saw myself as mixed or multi racial.
Speaker 1: I was black. Like that's interesting. What age did you
Speaker 1: realize you're a black man? Because I'm similar, I'm Italian
Speaker 1: and black. But I knew at seventeen from a particular
Speaker 1: instant that I was looked at as a black man.
Speaker 1: Well here's man, I have a book that comes out
Speaker 1: in April, and I tell this whole story. So in
Speaker 1: my house, my mother never talked to me about race.
Speaker 1: And I try to tell people, like, you know, a
Speaker 1: white household, we had like a very low racial I
Speaker 1: Q like my mom wasn't trying to school me on
Speaker 1: race or racism. So I was in second grade when
Speaker 1: two young black girls in the school who were friends
Speaker 1: of mine for life came up to me and asked
Speaker 1: me if I was mixed. And I remember, like, I've
Speaker 1: played it cool my whole life, but I remember being
Speaker 1: so confused when they were like, are you mixed? And
Speaker 1: they were giggling. What they wanted to know And I
Speaker 1: didn't understand this two years later. Was they wanted to
Speaker 1: know if it was okay for them to think I
Speaker 1: was cute because their parents had taught them don't mess
Speaker 1: with white boys at the school, so they wanted to know,
Speaker 1: are you mixed? And so in second grade, I start
Speaker 1: realizing like, oh, I'm different. And by the time I
Speaker 1: got to middle school, like I went from thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know I'm different too, Oh I'm black, Like I'm
Speaker 1: sitting at the the black table, my girlfriends are black
Speaker 1: or my friends are black. By the time I get
Speaker 1: to high school, I've told this story before, Um, it
Speaker 1: was a whole. It was a whole another monster. Like
Speaker 1: the town was super segregated and there was just major
Speaker 1: racial strife in the high school. And so I mean
Speaker 1: we were being called the N word. I had a
Speaker 1: redneck one time throw a jar tobacco, spit in my face,
Speaker 1: like we were dealing with full on bigotry in nine teen,
Speaker 1: Like this was I was fourteen at the time. I
Speaker 1: got beaten so badly by a group of racist white students.
Speaker 1: I missed my whole sophomore and junior year of high
Speaker 1: school recovery from those injuries, and that shaped the rest
Speaker 1: of my life, Like I don't even know, Like so
Speaker 1: I hate that that happened. I had three spinal surgeries.
Speaker 1: I fought my way back to recovery. But had that
Speaker 1: not happened, I don't even know that you would know me.
Speaker 1: Like I was not on the path to fighting for
Speaker 1: social justice for civil rights, but going through all of
Speaker 1: that impacted me so deeply that this fight for justice
Speaker 1: became a huge part of my life. And so from
Speaker 1: n on, I've always been not just fighting for civil rights,
Speaker 1: but I've always had a huge heart for people that
Speaker 1: are hurting, for people that experienced injustice. But even through
Speaker 1: all of that, I mean, I've always sometimes just been
Speaker 1: at this weird spot when it comes to race. You know,
Speaker 1: in in this country, Uh, we haven't always had the
Speaker 1: nuance for people who operate in multiple worlds. You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because it's a similar upbringing. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm Italian and black. Um, so I was never black
Speaker 1: enough and I was never white enough, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And I went through stuff and elementary school
Speaker 1: where baby calling me nigger, so I would fight him,
Speaker 1: and so I really didn't get a chance to show
Speaker 1: who I was until you know I was. I was
Speaker 1: bigger obviously, but they would never let me play at
Speaker 1: recess and the girls didn't look at me like me
Speaker 1: because I went to my parents. Although I was mixed,
Speaker 1: They've always put me in white schools, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: just for whatever reason may ben. So I would go
Speaker 1: through racial stuff and it was just like okay, and
Speaker 1: I was proud to say, okay, I was always mixed.
Speaker 1: I was always mixed. I was always mixed until my
Speaker 1: senior high school where a kidd spit and my sister's
Speaker 1: hero and Calder and nick girl and actually came up
Speaker 1: and told me after class, I happened to see the
Speaker 1: dude walking by, so I did what a big brother
Speaker 1: does and I ended up getting suspended. And during my suspension,
Speaker 1: the KKK came up to my school and just vandalized it,
Speaker 1: burned down the bathroom, hung my football, a man it
Speaker 1: came with my football jersey on the die knicker swastikas everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it was really at that point where I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: although I'm very proud to be Italian, I'm black and
Speaker 1: people look at me as being black, and I was like,
Speaker 1: the society can't you can't proudly be mixed, and many
Speaker 1: mixed kids as there are like if you have black
Speaker 1: in your you're black, and that's how people look at
Speaker 1: you as black. As you know from It's wild that
Speaker 1: you experienced that, man, because that's one of the first
Speaker 1: times I've heard of a store if somebody experiencing something
Speaker 1: like that. Because in three I got into a same thing.
Speaker 1: We were always in, like horrible racial fights, and um,
Speaker 1: I got into this horrible fight at a football game
Speaker 1: and the next week the school band, the high school
Speaker 1: I went to, banned Confederate flags. And when they banned
Speaker 1: these Confederate flags, there was a huge walkout of white
Speaker 1: students who were who wanted their Confederate flags. Why I
Speaker 1: got suspended because of the fight that I was in
Speaker 1: and when I came back to school after they had
Speaker 1: banned those Confederate flags, like white students at the school
Speaker 1: saw me as the reason they banned those Confederate flags.
Speaker 1: So the heat and the pressure was on me from
Speaker 1: that point forward. And if it force my identity, you know,
Speaker 1: at least in this town, I didn't have the experience
Speaker 1: of not being black enough, Like black folks in this
Speaker 1: small town just accepted me with open arms. And so
Speaker 1: I've seen even with some of my own children, depending
Speaker 1: on on their tone, of sometimes feeling like they don't
Speaker 1: quite fit in. But the beauty of New York is
Speaker 1: that everybody can blend in in New York. And so
Speaker 1: my kids, people don't know if they're Puerto Rican or
Speaker 1: Dominican or whatever, so they all they always fit in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's transition a little in a in a little different
Speaker 1: path with Um. You know, obviously we'll get to the
Speaker 1: Kaepernick situation. But I think as far back as um Cream,
Speaker 1: Abdul Jabbar, Bill Russell, you fast forward to and if
Speaker 1: people that don't get enough credit and spoken about as
Speaker 1: Craig Hodges, mak Mood, ab Dul Rove, guys who lost
Speaker 1: their career and we're pretty much outsted blackball, so to speak.
Speaker 1: From the NBA, two Lebron James really taking athletes platform
Speaker 1: and giving us a voice that traveled worldwide. What are
Speaker 1: your what are your thoughts as far as sports and
Speaker 1: basketball in particular right now? Well, yeah, I think Lebron
Speaker 1: has changed the game for a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: I mean he he went so strong with it that
Speaker 1: it's given a lot of people permission, like in so
Speaker 1: many ways, because he's the FA of the league and
Speaker 1: one of the most known athletes in the world. When
Speaker 1: he stands up for social justice, it makes it easier
Speaker 1: for all the other players to do so. I think
Speaker 1: I thought that was gonna happen with Colin Kaepernick in
Speaker 1: the NFL. Like, I know he was not at the
Speaker 1: peak of his career when he took a knee, but
Speaker 1: I think I thought that when he took that stand,
Speaker 1: that he was a big enough name and have been
Speaker 1: successful enough that it wouldn't cost him his career. Like
Speaker 1: imagine the NBA equivalent of Colin Kaepernick, whatever that we
Speaker 1: could think of, who that is? Yeah, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: a success, super successful player basically being banned from the NBA.
Speaker 1: Well that's that's my mood up due Rove. You know,
Speaker 1: like as progressive as we think the NBA is now
Speaker 1: and it's a lot, it's the best it's ever been.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that way just twenty years ago. Like mostly
Speaker 1: like even when I had to teach my son like son,
Speaker 1: these two guys as Craig Hodges and my Mood up
Speaker 1: du roof that I loved as a kid, Like I
Speaker 1: I watched Chris Jackson played for l s U and
Speaker 1: we love this guy like man. These guys had their
Speaker 1: careers ruined, and it's hard for this new generation to
Speaker 1: realize that in some ways, both of those guys Craig
Speaker 1: Hodges and Myke moved up to rowth, they are still
Speaker 1: kind of actively banned from the league. The league still
Speaker 1: won't touch them. And um, I've talked to both of
Speaker 1: those brothers and it's it's still painful for them. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like there's two streets right now where
Speaker 1: the NBA is super progressive for these current players, but
Speaker 1: you get these former players who still feel very hurt
Speaker 1: and left behind by it, And um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: proud that the NBA has given brothers the space to
Speaker 1: kind of speak their peace, but I mean there's still
Speaker 1: room to grow, for sure. I agree. My Mood is
Speaker 1: still playing in the Big Three, and right has done
Speaker 1: a lot for him. But oh yeah, people that didn't
Speaker 1: know him, they learned a lot about him now from
Speaker 1: from the success he's having a Big Three and then
Speaker 1: they were able to learn his story now, you know.
Speaker 1: And then when a lot of people seen him, that
Speaker 1: was a big thing for the Big Three because a
Speaker 1: lot of people wonder where did he go? What happened
Speaker 1: to him? So to see him still in great shape
Speaker 1: at fifty to still be one of the best shooters
Speaker 1: in the Big Three like it was, it was it
Speaker 1: was refreshing for him to get back on that stage
Speaker 1: and it proved right away. It's like, oh, he definitely
Speaker 1: should have been in the league, like this notion that
Speaker 1: one of the best scores ever. They started making memes
Speaker 1: of Steph Curb before Steph Curry was showing this picture.
Speaker 1: He could have He could have played another ten active
Speaker 1: seasons and you see him in the Big Three, you realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they cut ten years of this. You know, what do
Speaker 1: you think about Lebron being so outspoken? And then Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's not really wanting to take that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that's an individual if you feel comfortable speaking, but
Speaker 1: of your thoughts. When someone such as Jordan has a
Speaker 1: platform and lebron as a platform and we have one
Speaker 1: guy doing it. The one guy not well. You know.
Speaker 1: So I grew up as a kid, just a young kid,
Speaker 1: like a huge super fan of Michael and so like
Speaker 1: when things like the l A Riots and Rodney King
Speaker 1: beating it happened, I didn't understand how pissed people were
Speaker 1: that Jordan wasn't speaking out. But like if there was
Speaker 1: social media back then, there would have been trending topics
Speaker 1: about his silence. Like he he wouldn't touch it. But
Speaker 1: at the same time it was there's a part of me,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say that wants to give him
Speaker 1: a pass, but he was I think he understood, at
Speaker 1: least believed that his calculation was if I speak out
Speaker 1: on this, it could jam up my career. There's another
Speaker 1: part of me that looks at m j and his
Speaker 1: prime and thinks, man, you could have said whenever you
Speaker 1: want on it like he was him. We almost have
Speaker 1: to go back in time. I mean, he was at
Speaker 1: one time the single most popular human being on the planet,
Speaker 1: not just athlete like he was he could do no wrong,
Speaker 1: and so had he spoken out against police brutality, the mity.
Speaker 1: He had just spoken out against police brutality, so he
Speaker 1: could have ushered that in. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: the calculations that caused him to think it was too risky,
Speaker 1: but I remember I remember a few years ago where
Speaker 1: Lebron wasn't speaking out on police brutality and social justice
Speaker 1: like he is now. This young boy in Cleveland, Tamir Rights,
Speaker 1: twelve years old, had just been shot and killed, and
Speaker 1: it took over the whole city of Cleveland, the whole country.
Speaker 1: And this is in at like the height of the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter movement, and they had put a mic
Speaker 1: in front of Lebron's face and asked him what he
Speaker 1: thought about it, and he basically said he didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about the case, which was I thought one of
Speaker 1: two things at the time, and I put him on
Speaker 1: blasts on social media for it. If he really didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about the case, then that's crazy because he
Speaker 1: was right there in his city and it took over
Speaker 1: the whole city. Or he kind of froze in that
Speaker 1: moment and didn't want to see anything. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to say anything, and the pushback that he got from that,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it was the pushback that caused him
Speaker 1: to say, I need to do more but it but
Speaker 1: yeah and the thing I need to do more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think he felt like it. Even Tamir,
Speaker 1: his family was hurt by it, and I think when
Speaker 1: he saw that, I think it's stung. And I've worked
Speaker 1: with hundreds of guys in the NBA and NFL. What
Speaker 1: I know is every day, brothers are making these quick
Speaker 1: calculations about what's okay to say, what's not what's not okay,
Speaker 1: And um, I think whatever Lebron messed up on a
Speaker 1: few years ago, he has more than made up for
Speaker 1: it over these past few years. Like even when I
Speaker 1: see him just after the game loving on young brothers
Speaker 1: and and and showing new players moves and are Like
Speaker 1: even when I look at old school players like Jordan
Speaker 1: even before them, like they weren't even seeing themselves as
Speaker 1: like mentors of the young guys. Yeah, he's different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, old school man, you just you played the
Speaker 1: game and left the court, and so I think, but
Speaker 1: I think Lebron changed that in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: It just now the older generations kind of mentoring the
Speaker 1: younger generation. Song. It's it's a good thing. As athletes
Speaker 1: are kind of people expect Lebron to speak up on stuff,
Speaker 1: and and Steph and Kyrie and the name go on.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered why people don't look at Tom Brady,
Speaker 1: goat status, Hall of Famer, right, best quarterback ever, why
Speaker 1: don't people look to Tom Brady to to speak up
Speaker 1: on stuff like that. That's a good question, man, I
Speaker 1: mean Tom Brady. If you think about it, Tom Brady
Speaker 1: is he is the Michael Jordan's, no question, and in
Speaker 1: terms of his his skills, his titles, and his almost
Speaker 1: near silence on anything social be it be it Donald
Speaker 1: Trump being racism and bigotry, Like you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: really twist that man's arm to get him to even
Speaker 1: hint that he cares about any social issues in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think in a lot of ways, white athletes
Speaker 1: get a major pass on not just issues related to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, but white supremacy itself. And it kind of
Speaker 1: begs this idea that white supremacy is an issue that
Speaker 1: black folks only are supposed to speak out on, and
Speaker 1: the opposite is true, Like if Tom Brady and white
Speaker 1: athletes spoke out more on bigotry and racism and white supremacy.
Speaker 1: They could actually impact the people who are advancing it,
Speaker 1: and those guys are completely silent. Man, so Tom gets
Speaker 1: a complete pass. But there was Kyle Krber about that
Speaker 1: open letter that I thought was amazing. Yeah. Or you
Speaker 1: know there's a guy, the relief pitcher for the Washington Nationals,
Speaker 1: um who just won the World Series, uh Dolittle. Um,
Speaker 1: he was the first guy to say he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to go to the White House when the Nationals were
Speaker 1: invited there. But he pinned this, uh this op ed
Speaker 1: on why he wasn't going to the White House and
Speaker 1: he gave about like fourteen or fifteen reasons on why
Speaker 1: he just couldn't do it and be with his wife
Speaker 1: the next day or be with his family the next day,
Speaker 1: and um, the World Series MVP rendon he didn't go.
Speaker 1: And so you have some white athletes or who are
Speaker 1: doing it and uh Dolittle even said in that op
Speaker 1: ed like he mentioned uh long and others of saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's some other white guys that kind of came before me,
Speaker 1: and so I see it now is my responsibility? But
Speaker 1: Tom Brady is he's a ghost and um, yeah, he
Speaker 1: I mean he could he could do more further the movement,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And to me, to be
Speaker 1: fair to these people, to Mike and Tom and whoever,
Speaker 1: it's always a bit about being comfortable. Just because you
Speaker 1: have a platform, you may not be comfortable. You may
Speaker 1: not be bursting the subject, you may not want to
Speaker 1: say anything for whatever your reasons. But to me, like
Speaker 1: I think there's enough athletes now that are utilizing their platform.
Speaker 1: We can always use as many as possible. We can
Speaker 1: always use more racist uh different races, obviously white and
Speaker 1: whoever else speaking up on it. But to me, it's
Speaker 1: something you have to be embracing something to be comfortable with,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I mean I try to
Speaker 1: see each of these guys and like you said, including
Speaker 1: Tom or others, the people, and you know, it's easy
Speaker 1: for us to to reduce any of these athletes as
Speaker 1: something other than just just a human being. And um
Speaker 1: and some sometimes with a guy like Thomas that he
Speaker 1: might not know, but I I still refuse to give
Speaker 1: him a pass. I mean, there are many issues. Like
Speaker 1: he he said a little bit in defensive Colin Kaepernick,
Speaker 1: but that's about the most I've ever heard him saying.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: being an athlete. I know I reached out to you
Speaker 1: personally a couple of times. Athletes come to you and
Speaker 1: and and discuss obviously this or maybe something they're going
Speaker 1: through and what are some of the messages you give
Speaker 1: to them, and you hope they get from that because
Speaker 1: you say early on you you know you haven't a
Speaker 1: background in education, you know, so you're always educating. What
Speaker 1: it depends. It depends on when it depends on when
Speaker 1: guys come to me. Like there there are probably three
Speaker 1: scenarios where guys come to me from from all sports.
Speaker 1: One is a guy's in trouble and he's he is
Speaker 1: he has said something or done something problematic and he's
Speaker 1: now trending on Twitter and people have said, hey, you
Speaker 1: need to go talk to Shaun King and and he'll
Speaker 1: talk you through this, and I'm okay with that. Like
Speaker 1: that's helped me build trust with guys because they understand
Speaker 1: that if they come to me. If there's a there's
Speaker 1: an NBA player who said something during the height of
Speaker 1: police brutality a few years ago, and he just he
Speaker 1: said something really dumb on Twitter, and uh, he was
Speaker 1: the top turning topic in the country, and we came
Speaker 1: to me and was like, he just didn't understand what
Speaker 1: he said that was wrong. He said something in effect
Speaker 1: of like, you know, if if we handled our situations
Speaker 1: better with police, there wouldn't be as much police brutality
Speaker 1: or something that people were just flaming him on social media.
Speaker 1: So my job is to kind of educate him behind
Speaker 1: the scenes without anybody ever knowing what that conversation is
Speaker 1: about out and trying to say like, here's what you
Speaker 1: said that was wrong, here's why it was wrong, Here's
Speaker 1: why people are pissed. And I get that every few days,
Speaker 1: man of a guy who tried to wait into something
Speaker 1: and just missed the mark in part because nobody schooled
Speaker 1: them or educated them on it. Um. I get guys
Speaker 1: who are asking, like, how do they use their influence
Speaker 1: on an issue to make a difference in there in
Speaker 1: the city they play in, or in their hometown where
Speaker 1: they grew up in. And that's a different situation where
Speaker 1: I'm trying to help brothers understand, like here's how you
Speaker 1: could be a creative foundation away in on social issues
Speaker 1: that matter. And and then one of the things that
Speaker 1: I get that surprises me is I get players who
Speaker 1: often are asking me to introduce them to some other athletes,
Speaker 1: and I think people have this assumption that all athletes
Speaker 1: know each other and pret equally, like I found that
Speaker 1: in in the NFL in particular, of it's a brutal sport,
Speaker 1: and like even in the in the NBA, where you
Speaker 1: guys are on the court seeing each other, talking with
Speaker 1: each other, no helmet, and it's it's competitive, but it's
Speaker 1: not physically as brutal as the NFL. Most NFL guys,
Speaker 1: if you didn't go to college with these guys, you're
Speaker 1: not talking team versus team. So a lot of times
Speaker 1: I'm introducing NBA players NFL players or even guys within
Speaker 1: the league because they don't really know each other, and
Speaker 1: there's not I think people think there's like a directory
Speaker 1: and uh, and there's not. And so sometimes I try
Speaker 1: to be the bridge between players. What about now, I
Speaker 1: mean moving to CAP someone you've obviously been you know,
Speaker 1: become close with and and talked to and to me
Speaker 1: when it first happened, like you said, I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be monumental and all the players are going
Speaker 1: to do it, and it was really pro that for
Speaker 1: a while. But then kind of the trickle down effect
Speaker 1: and possibly people understanding that, Okay, well if I do,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lose my career, I'm not gonna lose
Speaker 1: my livelihood. What what what was your thought on the
Speaker 1: overall situation with that. You know, before, before I knew
Speaker 1: him personally, I was a fan, Like I watched him
Speaker 1: admired and watched them go to the super Bowl. They
Speaker 1: were literally a play away a few yards away from
Speaker 1: winning the Super Bowl, and uh in uh he reached
Speaker 1: out to me when there were several issues of police
Speaker 1: brutality and I saw this was Twitter was even smaller
Speaker 1: back then. This was before Trump's election even and um,
Speaker 1: we just started talking through Twitter d M and he
Speaker 1: would ask me to explain a certain case of police
Speaker 1: brutality or asked me what I thought. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: even really tweeting about it. But this was before before
Speaker 1: he ever took a knee, before people understood what was
Speaker 1: going on in his head. And um, he had had
Speaker 1: several injuries that ended that season, and I think, and
Speaker 1: I know you guys have experienced this, Like during that injury,
Speaker 1: it just was a real reflective period for him, Like
Speaker 1: during the grind of a season. When you're not injured,
Speaker 1: it's hard to think about anything other than the game.
Speaker 1: And he had this period for the first time in
Speaker 1: his whole adult life where he wasn't playing and he
Speaker 1: was just able to kind of think through the issues.
Speaker 1: And that summer there were three different brutal police killings
Speaker 1: of a man named Terence Crutcher in Oklahoma, Philando Castill
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, and then Alton Sterling and bad Rouge and
Speaker 1: we forget it, but then there was in response to that,
Speaker 1: there was a brother in Louisiana and a brother in
Speaker 1: Dallas who started shooting police officers. And that summer was
Speaker 1: so volatile, and Colin and I were were messaging and
Speaker 1: talking several times a day at that point, and he
Speaker 1: was at a preseason game and he didn't tell anybody.
Speaker 1: I don't even think he told his partner anybody he
Speaker 1: was gonna do this. Just when they played the national anthem.
Speaker 1: I think he had just a personal human moment where
Speaker 1: he heard it. It was just like, I'm not standing
Speaker 1: up for that that but all of that stuff was
Speaker 1: going on. It was literally the week that all of
Speaker 1: that was going down, and then he but no one noticed.
Speaker 1: And then he did it the next week where he
Speaker 1: wasn't taking a knee, He just didn't. He was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not standing up for it, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people felt like that, Like the anger in the country
Speaker 1: was high and um. But when people noticed that he
Speaker 1: wasn't standing for the anthem, uh, that then put him
Speaker 1: in an They put him mic in front of his face,
Speaker 1: and I think the country learned, Like Oldest Brothers brilliant,
Speaker 1: he started through and right away he became like an
Speaker 1: instant cult hero for people. And I talked to these families,
Speaker 1: the family of Alton Sterling and Philandolka still and they
Speaker 1: needed somebody like that. So like when they heard Colins
Speaker 1: speak about their issue, like for them it mattered. And
Speaker 1: when the season started and he took a knee in
Speaker 1: an official NBA game, NFL game during the anthem, it
Speaker 1: was a huge deal for families who had experienced police brutality,
Speaker 1: it was and it was a huge deal I think
Speaker 1: for people who were fighting against police brutality and fighting
Speaker 1: for justice. And yet I don't think he did it
Speaker 1: to sparkle, like he did it for himself, like that's
Speaker 1: how he felt. And he had a couple of brothers
Speaker 1: on the team, on the fort who did it with him.
Speaker 1: Those guys were his friends. And yet I think I
Speaker 1: hoped that other guys around the league, we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: I wish they had. If had everybody taken a need
Speaker 1: and yeah, you couldn't do anything. And um, I never
Speaker 1: imagined as he continued to do it throughout the year,
Speaker 1: even as Donald Trump started talking about it, as Fox
Speaker 1: News started talking about it, I didn't imagine it would
Speaker 1: cost him his career, Like I I don't think he
Speaker 1: thought that either. Um, I believe he would have done
Speaker 1: it anyway. Like having talked to him through this, I
Speaker 1: think even if he believed that was the consequence, I
Speaker 1: think he still would have done it. But he didn't
Speaker 1: believe that what's gonna happen. And he was twenty nine
Speaker 1: years old. I mean, this is a guy who had
Speaker 1: up you know. Yeah, this this was a guy who
Speaker 1: who who still has to this day several records in
Speaker 1: the NFL, and the notion that he would basically be
Speaker 1: cut and never allowed back into the league seemed preposterous
Speaker 1: and the price he's paid. I'm a lifelong NFL fan,
Speaker 1: and I just couldn't to this day, I can't bring
Speaker 1: myself to watch it because one, because I know this guy,
Speaker 1: but the notion that this league has effectively ruined his
Speaker 1: career in the prime of in the in his youth,
Speaker 1: in the prime of his life, I can't get over it.
Speaker 1: And so I'm stuck on that. It was frustrating to
Speaker 1: me because when Trump and Fox Movie started getting involved,
Speaker 1: it wasn't he was protesting the flag. That was just
Speaker 1: the vehicle he used to get his message across at
Speaker 1: the time. He was protesting stuff that we all know
Speaker 1: as an issue, but they turned it into you don't
Speaker 1: respect our soldiers and this isn't that, And as many
Speaker 1: people is, you know, they try to say, you know,
Speaker 1: you're distracting. I would see tons of you know, bets
Speaker 1: across social media that are for CAP. Oh yeah, all
Speaker 1: the time, all the time with CAP, you know, and
Speaker 1: we serve so so so so. So it's really frustrating
Speaker 1: me to see that the way the media was able
Speaker 1: to spend that and make it him against Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: they're masterful at that, man. And I think if if
Speaker 1: Trump has one superpower, it's kind of diversion of if
Speaker 1: there's one issue going on, Yeah, he's a slider hand magician. Man,
Speaker 1: he's masterful at it. And I don't think anybody could
Speaker 1: reasonably make the argument that this was him protesting the flag.
Speaker 1: This I mean, but when you get loud voices to
Speaker 1: say that's what it was, people bought it. Man. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think the NFL, the NFL Players Association,
Speaker 1: even I mean, there were a lot of people that
Speaker 1: I thought should have gone harder for him, that pretty
Speaker 1: much yeld on him. And I had several brothers in
Speaker 1: the league, mainly older veterans who had kind of already
Speaker 1: made most of the money. They were gonna make talk
Speaker 1: about the possibility of of doing deeper protests or trying
Speaker 1: to get people to sit out the season, but it
Speaker 1: just never picked up momentum, and um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I think a lot of players are gonna look
Speaker 1: back on how they abandoned Cap at a time where
Speaker 1: they should have stood with him. I don't think they'll
Speaker 1: feel good about oportunity to do something real big. You know,
Speaker 1: we're following steps, but they didn't take it back. And
Speaker 1: you know it's I mean, but here I had, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of guys and I had full on arguments.
Speaker 1: Were brothers in the league when this was going down,
Speaker 1: and I had guys tell me things like listen, just
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, I don't know him. He didn't,
Speaker 1: he didn't talk to me about this before he decided
Speaker 1: to do it. I had guys, as most guys in
Speaker 1: the league don't have any guaranteed money and NFL. So
Speaker 1: when guys saw, particularly in the second season, when he
Speaker 1: was fully banned basically from the league, guys were spooked
Speaker 1: and if they were going to do something, it probably
Speaker 1: needed to be during that first season when he was
Speaker 1: still in the game. But at the moment in which
Speaker 1: players saw, oh, they're gonna ban him, they should have
Speaker 1: responded in mass right away. They they wasn't really, you know,
Speaker 1: And I mean I talked to guys that I felt.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had guys tell me, like Sean, if
Speaker 1: I missed one paycheck, it's gonna jam up my whole
Speaker 1: my whole family, my whole system. And guys when they
Speaker 1: saw a guy of Collins caliber basically get banned, it
Speaker 1: had the effect the NFL wanted it to have. It
Speaker 1: spooked guys from following in those footsteps. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: only guys who did it, we're guys that were just different,
Speaker 1: like Eric read Eric Rea is different, Uh, Marshawn Lynch,
Speaker 1: like the guys are these guys, Kenny Stills, these guys,
Speaker 1: they already were different before they got in the game.
Speaker 1: And so those guys already kind of march to be
Speaker 1: to their own drummer. The rest of the guys just
Speaker 1: looked at him, was like, I can't take that risk.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what the NFL wanted to happen. And uh,
Speaker 1: it was a moment. Had half the league, a third
Speaker 1: of the league just said, listen, we're not playing until
Speaker 1: he comes back, it would have been one of the
Speaker 1: biggest moments in sports history. And instead, brothers just kept
Speaker 1: on playing. And uh, I get it, I understand it,
Speaker 1: but there was a real missed opportunity there. You know,
Speaker 1: what are you what are your thoughts about Jay Z
Speaker 1: and his partnership with the NFL. You know, I was
Speaker 1: someone initially looking in like j has always kind of
Speaker 1: been the voice of the people for me. What I mean,
Speaker 1: He's always been that guy so to me when people
Speaker 1: are not gonna I was first when when it first
Speaker 1: came out, I was saying, you know, we to effect change,
Speaker 1: you have to be a part of change. We needed
Speaker 1: to seat at the table, and to me, what that
Speaker 1: seemed like was Jay had to seat at the table,
Speaker 1: not knowing how much power what is actually actual job
Speaker 1: or objective, was that he had to seat at the
Speaker 1: table and we need to kind of sit back and
Speaker 1: wait to see what happens. What are your thoughts thus
Speaker 1: far on the whole situation, because it's been a while now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I love First off, I love jay Z.
Speaker 1: I love him and just like you, like, I've admired
Speaker 1: him for a very long time. And I've also I've
Speaker 1: been behind closed doors and have seen him support families
Speaker 1: and causes that people never knew about. And I mean
Speaker 1: he raps about generosity being something he does in private,
Speaker 1: and I've seen that. And and I think in any
Speaker 1: other circumstance, had Colin Kaepernick not been currently banned from
Speaker 1: the league, if I saw Jay Z said oh, he's
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna become some type of partner here. If
Speaker 1: if what the NFL did to Colin Kaepernick never happened,
Speaker 1: I would have been like, oh, okay, yeah, but we
Speaker 1: live in real life, Like Colin Kaepernick is currently actively
Speaker 1: banned from this league, and Colin has never spoken out
Speaker 1: about jay Z and that's not his way, but I
Speaker 1: know many of us who are close to Colin felt
Speaker 1: like I felt like jay Z played Colin directly. Jay
Speaker 1: Z and Colin met several times throughout that previous year
Speaker 1: j J Ward a Jersey to a Colin Jersey to
Speaker 1: UH to a concert, and that whole time, he was
Speaker 1: also a meeting with Roger Goodell and was jay Z was.
Speaker 1: Jay Z had at least four meetings with Roger Goodell
Speaker 1: over the year before he struck this deal. And so
Speaker 1: I'm not listen, it's jay Z's business if he wants
Speaker 1: to strike a deal, but that he was kind of
Speaker 1: bargaining with Roger Goodell at the same time while he
Speaker 1: was hanging out with Colin and defending him. It just
Speaker 1: seemed underhanded to me, like I wish he would have
Speaker 1: at Colin never knew about it, He never mentioned it
Speaker 1: to Colin, never talked to him about it, and um,
Speaker 1: I think it wouldn't have hurt the deal had he
Speaker 1: just spoke with Colin and said, man, I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to go inside and impacted from the inside out, and
Speaker 1: when I get there, here's what I hope to do.
Speaker 1: What's your input. But I think Colin was blindsided by it,
Speaker 1: and so like here's here's the thing, Like, even just
Speaker 1: as well as I know the two of you, if
Speaker 1: if a corporation had done you super I mean that's
Speaker 1: in real life, if a corporation had done one of
Speaker 1: you super dirty, I just can't rock with it. Like,
Speaker 1: even as little as we've known each other, I care
Speaker 1: about each of you enough to where if they did
Speaker 1: you wrong, I'm gonna have to think twice about that.
Speaker 1: And no corporation has gonna man worse than what the
Speaker 1: NFL has done to Colin Kaepernet. And I think when
Speaker 1: Jay Z when he had the press conference, I've I
Speaker 1: felt like he it seemed like he hadn't done he
Speaker 1: didn't do any prep for it, like he was surprised
Speaker 1: by basic questions and his like some of his talking
Speaker 1: points bothered me, Like it was like I don't even
Speaker 1: know if he had thought this thing through. And when
Speaker 1: you really look at as much as we know about
Speaker 1: the deal, I don't even think the deal is that deep.
Speaker 1: I think it's a music contract. It's uh, it's an
Speaker 1: entertainment deal. And Jay's seeing Rock Nation get a little
Speaker 1: bit of input on social justice stuff, but I'm not
Speaker 1: seeing the fruits of that. And you know, there's always
Speaker 1: this Tennessee to think, Like I hear people say like
Speaker 1: jay Z's playing chess and we're all playing checkers, like
Speaker 1: he's ten moves ahead of us. And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing what the results are gonna be.
Speaker 1: But I'm not impressed. And I think Colin is the
Speaker 1: loser and all of this, And if jay Z was
Speaker 1: gonna make the deal, I wish it would have been
Speaker 1: contingent upon Colin getting up. At least he hasn't even
Speaker 1: gotten a try out, like anybody who says otherwise it's
Speaker 1: a line. He hasn't gotten an offer or try out
Speaker 1: or anything. But my thing is, how can we even
Speaker 1: go to what's next without Colin? Right? I mean, because
Speaker 1: the truth is there wouldn't There would not even be
Speaker 1: a conversation about social justice, US some police brutality and
Speaker 1: in the NFL without him, And so how I would
Speaker 1: say sports as a whole. He changed the whole, but
Speaker 1: he changed the landscape. And so to move to move
Speaker 1: forward in that without him um is like an ego
Speaker 1: move to And again, I think in any other circumstance,
Speaker 1: I would have nothing but pride that he is now
Speaker 1: a voice at the table. But this, this leaves Colin
Speaker 1: out of a conversation that he should have been a
Speaker 1: central part of. And you know, people say, well, Colin
Speaker 1: sued the NFL. Eric read he sued the NFL. He's
Speaker 1: back in the league. Colin could have a chance right now,
Speaker 1: like he still literally is working out five days a
Speaker 1: week and could still be picked up there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the quarterbacks in the NFL right now, you can't tell
Speaker 1: him even if people want to say he's thirty three, No,
Speaker 1: he just just and thirty or two. You can't tell
Speaker 1: me at least, well, he's de minuted. You can't tell
Speaker 1: me at least he can't be a backup. I think
Speaker 1: he could probably start on some teams. I'm a Nighter fan.
Speaker 1: I followed him and I was I was a huge
Speaker 1: fan of what he was doing on the field. But
Speaker 1: you can't literally look me in my eyes and say
Speaker 1: there's not a spot for him in the league. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't think any credible commentator or athlete would
Speaker 1: say otherwise. And so so, knowing that that's the case,
Speaker 1: this idea that I can still will and deal with
Speaker 1: this league on something different while they banned him. I
Speaker 1: just have a problem with it, and I just I
Speaker 1: think he was shortsighted. Like I think people were proud
Speaker 1: that it seemed like jay Z was rocking with Colin
Speaker 1: and then it just seemed like he took a different turn.
Speaker 1: You know, tell me a little bit about the the
Speaker 1: current situation, which is a very time sensitive Rodney Reid
Speaker 1: and uh for fourteen days and counting. Yeah, he's supposed
Speaker 1: to be. It was a horrible situation. Man. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a man in in Texas outside of Austin, in a
Speaker 1: town called Bastrip, thirty miles to the east of Austin,
Speaker 1: who's been in prison for almost twenty three years. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine six, there was a young woman named
Speaker 1: Stacy States who was sexually assaulted and murdered. Horrible and
Speaker 1: I just want to put that out there, like her
Speaker 1: family suffered tremendously from this loss. And right away people
Speaker 1: believed that it was her fiancee who was a brutal
Speaker 1: man known for domestic violence. And uh, he was a
Speaker 1: police officer named Jimmy Finnel and he was the primary
Speaker 1: suspect and nearly a year after Stacy Stice was killed,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Jimmy Finnel instead Uh was no longer to suspect
Speaker 1: and they arrested Rodney Reid. There was no proof that
Speaker 1: he had anything to do with her murder whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever read the book or here in New
Speaker 1: York seen the play To Kill a Mockingbird, it's kind
Speaker 1: of the same story of of a white woman who
Speaker 1: is brutalized by a white man, but a black man
Speaker 1: takes the fall. And for twenty two plus years, Rodney
Speaker 1: Read has declared his innocence and there's so much evidence
Speaker 1: that exonerates him that the Innocence Project, who is probably
Speaker 1: the most prestigious organization involving this, they turned down of
Speaker 1: the cases that come in their way. When they take
Speaker 1: on a case, they know a man is not guilty
Speaker 1: and typically they have DNA evidence to exonerate that man,
Speaker 1: so that the Innocence Project is on the case. Uh.
Speaker 1: It sounds funny, but Dr Phil mcgrawl, Dr Phil is
Speaker 1: on it, and Dr Phil did two whole episodes on it.
Speaker 1: Dr Phil has declared that he also believes Rodney Read
Speaker 1: is completely innocent and had nothing to do with this
Speaker 1: there are some mechanisms that could potentially free Rodney Read
Speaker 1: or at least delay the execution. The governor of Texas,
Speaker 1: who's a deep conservative, has the power to state the execution.
Speaker 1: There's a board of Parole there that could also at
Speaker 1: least delay it or cancel the execution. His sentence could
Speaker 1: be commuted, and he could just be given life in
Speaker 1: prison and then at least live to be able to
Speaker 1: fight through the appeals process. I think there's a high
Speaker 1: likelihood that Rodney Reed will be executed, and all of
Speaker 1: us are extract at the point in which we're two
Speaker 1: weeks away. Uh, of course there's a high likelihood. We're
Speaker 1: trying not to think about that, but uh, it's an
Speaker 1: urgent situation. We've had over a million people signed a
Speaker 1: petition at free Rodney Read dot com and uh, trying
Speaker 1: to lobby people to intervene anyway they can. But it's
Speaker 1: a who needed to hear this for that to happen
Speaker 1: more in Congress hands now right, you feel, well, it's
Speaker 1: not just Congress, it's of all people who are convicted
Speaker 1: of crimes are convicted on the local and state level.
Speaker 1: And what that means is Congress and even the president
Speaker 1: have very little say in what they can do about
Speaker 1: those cases. So the President of the United States, be
Speaker 1: a Trump or Obama or anybody, they can pardon people
Speaker 1: who have been convicted of federal crimes. But in this case,
Speaker 1: Trump and Congress, the United States Congress, have very little
Speaker 1: say and how they can help Rodney read. It's almost
Speaker 1: all in the hands of officials there in Texas. Their governor,
Speaker 1: their state legislature could at least make a statement or
Speaker 1: do a vote, but even that wouldn't matter. A local
Speaker 1: district attorney there in the county could remove the death
Speaker 1: penalty and say we're calling on the death penalty be removed,
Speaker 1: and just remove it. So it's really in the hands
Speaker 1: of local conservatives in Texas. And in some ways that's
Speaker 1: scary because I don't have a lot of influence with
Speaker 1: conservatives in Texas, and and yet that's who we need
Speaker 1: to influence. And so part of what we try to
Speaker 1: do is just make this story go viral. And so
Speaker 1: we've had people from uh from Rihanna to both of you,
Speaker 1: to to other athletes and entertainers and supermodels. At the
Speaker 1: end of at the end of the day, conservatives have
Speaker 1: to care about it. And they've been saying for years
Speaker 1: that they care about criminal justice reform, and this is
Speaker 1: their opportunity to kind of prove it. And fourteen days
Speaker 1: it's already cutting it way too close. All of his
Speaker 1: appeals are not exhausted, but it's it's a it's in
Speaker 1: a dangerous position right now, for sure. I think that it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take a scientist to see that. You know,
Speaker 1: we live in a race driven country. Oh yeah, for
Speaker 1: good and bad reasons. Um. And so it almost seems
Speaker 1: like what you're doing is obviously a daily thing, Like
Speaker 1: how do you find time? How do you really like
Speaker 1: when you take on all this stuff? I mean, because
Speaker 1: you're you're educating me daily on your post, whether it
Speaker 1: be a continuous post about one thing or one thing
Speaker 1: now and two things later tonight. Like how do you
Speaker 1: find all the time too to do all that? And
Speaker 1: with some My life's a mess, you know when people
Speaker 1: ask me, is that I don't have a pretty answer
Speaker 1: to it, Like I work too much from Like I
Speaker 1: get up a most mornings of four thirty or five
Speaker 1: in the morning, I have my own daily podcast, I
Speaker 1: go to the studio super early. Um. I have a
Speaker 1: few hours each day where I'm just spending time with
Speaker 1: my wife and kids. But outside of those few hours
Speaker 1: and some rest at night, I mean, I'm I'm pushing
Speaker 1: hard something. I'm working twelve or fourteen hours a day
Speaker 1: every day. On most days, I feel disappointed because there's
Speaker 1: somebody who asked me for help and I'm just not
Speaker 1: able to do it. I get, on the average day,
Speaker 1: hundreds of emails of people who said, can you can
Speaker 1: you help my family? Like this week, I've gotten emails
Speaker 1: from people all over the country who said, my father,
Speaker 1: my son is on death row? Can you can you
Speaker 1: look into his case? Can you do for my son
Speaker 1: what you're doing for Rodney Reid? And what breaks my
Speaker 1: heart is I can't. I just I'm only able to
Speaker 1: do but so much in a day. And part of
Speaker 1: what I try to do is build systems and organizations
Speaker 1: that allowed me to impact people the best I can,
Speaker 1: but for me to develop other leaders who can also
Speaker 1: do what I do. So we have an organization called
Speaker 1: Real Justice that helps elect district attorney is all over
Speaker 1: the country. We have an organization called the Action Pack
Speaker 1: that's helping lead this piece with Rodney read So we
Speaker 1: have almost twenty staff members working on this Rodney Reed
Speaker 1: case right now, so you see me, But behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: they're twenty of us and that's it took twenty of
Speaker 1: us working around the clock to force this, you know,
Speaker 1: into the mainstream. But it's hard to manage. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to balance that with family. It's hard to balance
Speaker 1: that with marriage. And when everything is going well in
Speaker 1: my life, it's like it's beautiful and good, but if
Speaker 1: one thing goes wrong, Uh, it could be a mess.
Speaker 1: And I mean I have all the same problems everybody
Speaker 1: else has. My wife and I argue like cass and dogs. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes my kids feel like I'm super present and then
Speaker 1: other days I'm working so hard that I'm not there
Speaker 1: the way they need me to be. So it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to buy. And do you feel pressure, Like you said,
Speaker 1: you're getting a hundred two always have to do something
Speaker 1: like I know that you want to, But do you
Speaker 1: feel the pressure because now you are known as like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, like the go to guy for our
Speaker 1: culture for this. I mean I do feel the pressure. Um,
Speaker 1: I accept I accepted, but I feel the I feel
Speaker 1: the pressure in the sense that there's so much injustice
Speaker 1: and there's only so little I can do about each case.
Speaker 1: I I bumped into a woman a couple of days
Speaker 1: ago who said, and she and broke my heart. You know,
Speaker 1: she said, Sean, I've emailed you forty times, and I
Speaker 1: literally said, just pull up your phone and show you know,
Speaker 1: like I believed her, but I've never seen this even
Speaker 1: and she's sure enough pulled it up, and she had
Speaker 1: emailed me dozens of times asking me to help her
Speaker 1: in this case. And I hate that that's that's how
Speaker 1: we're doing this, that there's so few people to go
Speaker 1: to that we I hate that we don't have the systems.
Speaker 1: I hate that there's so much injustice. Like I have
Speaker 1: kids who tell me all the time they save my
Speaker 1: email address in their phone. I'm talking about yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about strangers who saved my email address and just
Speaker 1: in case they need to send me something hard I've seen.
Speaker 1: I've seen viral videos of police brutality all over the
Speaker 1: country and I'll hear somebody in the background say send
Speaker 1: that to Shaun King and and so all of that.
Speaker 1: It's a it is a degree of pressure. And I
Speaker 1: try my best every day too not to keep up
Speaker 1: with the grind of it. But I I try to
Speaker 1: be as productive as I can. It's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: How do you handle, um, the level of recognition and
Speaker 1: fame that have come with us? You know obviously we
Speaker 1: so you were honored that Rihanna's uh Matt gala um.
Speaker 1: How do you handle because I know, like I said,
Speaker 1: you're doing it for the right reasons. But you know,
Speaker 1: when you do things for the right reasons, stuff happens
Speaker 1: around you, and this happens just to be you know,
Speaker 1: obviously your name continuing to grow, your face being more recognizable.
Speaker 1: How do you handle that? Well, I mean, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about it earlier. I have a
Speaker 1: big fan. I have five kids, and so like my
Speaker 1: family unit is healthy and strong and so as as
Speaker 1: long as that unit, they're like, has my back and
Speaker 1: it's rocking with me, I'm good. Like, say, my wife's
Speaker 1: gonna kill me for saying all our business, but my
Speaker 1: life is so fragile, Like say my wife and I
Speaker 1: have fallen out, then then life gets harder for me
Speaker 1: because it's like I'm already doing all this work and
Speaker 1: it's hard at home and just just I just want
Speaker 1: to be on the record if if life is a mess,
Speaker 1: at home. It's normally my fault. Like, yeah, just to
Speaker 1: be clear, right right, there's rarely a problem in my
Speaker 1: world that my wife calls it's normally me. But um,
Speaker 1: the fame is definitely causes a lot of consequences. It
Speaker 1: puts a lot of pressure on my wife and kids.
Speaker 1: People recognize them in public. I'm a I'm a hermit generally,
Speaker 1: like I'm I don't go out much. I'm in the
Speaker 1: office doing the work at home. Um. You know. I
Speaker 1: also isolate myself from a lot of ugliness, like I
Speaker 1: see you guys sometimes like battling people in the comments. Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I gotta stay out of comments man like. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you do it. Man, Like I can't be
Speaker 1: in the car, I can't even the comments in my
Speaker 1: world are so ugly. I can't even look at him
Speaker 1: man and so, But what I do is I kind
Speaker 1: of protect myself from the ugliness of it all. It's hard, Oh,
Speaker 1: it is, it is. It's it's it's something you learn
Speaker 1: over time. And if I listened, I have enough people
Speaker 1: in my world, my wife included, who tell me the
Speaker 1: ugly truth about myself, Like if I make a mistake,
Speaker 1: I have people who can school me on it and
Speaker 1: tell me about it, that I don't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: listen to strangers and haters and all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: I have people in my world who tell me the good, bad,
Speaker 1: and ugly. Yeah, I get it all. I get it
Speaker 1: from people who actually people who are brutal but love me.
Speaker 1: And so because of that, I'm not super swayed by
Speaker 1: the hate or the anger of people who don't even
Speaker 1: know me. Yeah, well, at least they don't mean anything
Speaker 1: to me, you know. And and you know, it's not
Speaker 1: when people have legitimate critiques of something that I say,
Speaker 1: or that's one thing, but when people are just being ugly.
Speaker 1: I have gotten to the point this isn't even it's
Speaker 1: this isn't even really healthy. But I've gotten to the
Speaker 1: point where I'm kind of numb to it um where
Speaker 1: the ugliness just doesn't impact me at all. It's not
Speaker 1: because I don't care, but I've kind of flipped off
Speaker 1: a switch where I just can't allow that stuff to
Speaker 1: get to me. But I was telling him, like, the
Speaker 1: big problem today is people can't have a conversation and
Speaker 1: disagree without disrespecting each other. That's a big problem. Or
Speaker 1: or online when you disagree with somebody, people immediately perceive
Speaker 1: it as disrespect and then it then it can spiral
Speaker 1: into that and it's like we were just we were
Speaker 1: so sometimes when I like, I hardly even disagree with
Speaker 1: people online publicly anymore because people would take it somewhere where.
Speaker 1: But when I do, I'll have to like it could
Speaker 1: be say it's one of you. I may message you
Speaker 1: privately like I hope you know here's what I'm actually thinking.
Speaker 1: But now we're in a space where it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to disagree. Man, sweet of idiots for voices like Charles
Speaker 1: Berkley says in the social media space, tell me what
Speaker 1: I saw your wife to take over your handle one day,
Speaker 1: um defending you and then also just saying how hard
Speaker 1: all this ship is on the on the family dynamic
Speaker 1: side of it. You know, you're out here being a
Speaker 1: Kate crusader for the for the world, but then, like
Speaker 1: you've touched on, like your family is obviously most important
Speaker 1: to you, Tell me how hard being able to balance
Speaker 1: both is, Because I mean, I was someone who went
Speaker 1: through a public divorce and still had like I said,
Speaker 1: we talked about it on the shows like and you're
Speaker 1: someone to us in the space now as you're kind
Speaker 1: of professional in this field. So when all the ship
Speaker 1: is still going on that's rough at home or family,
Speaker 1: you still have to be you still gotta be on.
Speaker 1: So tell me what that what that dynamic like and
Speaker 1: the weight that brings to your family. You know what
Speaker 1: my my wife and I five years ago, when Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter movement first started, I started getting death threats
Speaker 1: right away, like on the phone, in the mail, like
Speaker 1: we were we were reporting them to the police of
Speaker 1: the FBI. Uh. We were getting people who were coming
Speaker 1: to our home, to our children's school, and and he
Speaker 1: got back quick and so right away, all the way
Speaker 1: back in we decided that my wife would basically disappear
Speaker 1: from social media, that my kids would not be on
Speaker 1: social media, just to protect them. But it unintentionally built
Speaker 1: something that we didn't really see coming. As people began
Speaker 1: criticizing me, they didn't understand the implications that they would
Speaker 1: have for my whole family. And so people be on
Speaker 1: social there two or three lines of people tell about
Speaker 1: me all the time. One is that I'm raising money
Speaker 1: from families and I'm stealing from these families, which is
Speaker 1: a crime, like literally it's a federal crime. There are
Speaker 1: people you may remember, there were these people who claim
Speaker 1: they were raising money on go fund me for this
Speaker 1: homeless man, but on the low kept the money. Those
Speaker 1: two people are imprisoned right like they are. They are imprisoned.
Speaker 1: They each got ten years. And every time I raise
Speaker 1: money for families, I never see it. It doesn't come
Speaker 1: through my accounts. It goes directly to these families every
Speaker 1: time I do it. People I'm talking about real verified
Speaker 1: blue check accounts are saying he's stealing this money. Well,
Speaker 1: what they don't understand is when you say I'm stealing
Speaker 1: the money, people then look at my wife like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're stealing the money. Oh you're aware that he's stealing
Speaker 1: the money. And so she's a professional woman, she's an
Speaker 1: executive here in New York, and people literally start asking
Speaker 1: her about this. And so as people lie about me,
Speaker 1: they just don't understand that my kids get asked about
Speaker 1: this stuff. And we live in this culture where it's
Speaker 1: so easy to just post a random lie on social
Speaker 1: media that they don't understand the ripple effect. And it
Speaker 1: had gotten so bad and had boiled so far out
Speaker 1: of control that my wife, who doesn't who at the time,
Speaker 1: didn't have any social media accounts. Was like, listen, let
Speaker 1: me say what I have to say. And it was
Speaker 1: and it was messy and emotional and all of yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was like, yeah she was. People don't understand that.
Speaker 1: While it's easy for them to get on there and
Speaker 1: say Sean is stealing from families, Sean is a white
Speaker 1: man pretending to be black. As people say these weird things,
Speaker 1: it has real implications with my family, and um, she
Speaker 1: just gotten fed up and so she so now she
Speaker 1: is public. She opened up her own Twitter account, her
Speaker 1: own Instagram account, in part just so people understand, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a real person with my own views and perspectives.
Speaker 1: But it's it's hard man, for sure. Five beautiful children,
Speaker 1: And you touched on it briefly from what are the
Speaker 1: age with the age range from from six to twenty.
Speaker 1: Our oldest is in college and our youngest is in
Speaker 1: elementary school. What are your knowing how out front you
Speaker 1: are with the work you do? What are your some
Speaker 1: of your concerns obviously you know on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis with them. Well, men, so much, so much
Speaker 1: of what I do I do for my kids and
Speaker 1: over these past five years because we had decided like
Speaker 1: we wouldn't post about them so much. Uh. I never
Speaker 1: really shared how much that I do what I do
Speaker 1: to fight for them, to advocate for them, hopefully to
Speaker 1: create a better world for them. Um. But we go
Speaker 1: out of our way, like we don't even post pictures
Speaker 1: of the kids on social media anymore, and in part
Speaker 1: because the threats and all of that remains. So even
Speaker 1: though we talk about them, UM, we do little things
Speaker 1: like don't post full pictures of their face and don't
Speaker 1: say where they go to school. Uh, in part because
Speaker 1: I know I can't be there with them to protect them,
Speaker 1: you know. So we haven't said where our daughter goes
Speaker 1: to college, and so little steps that we've taken to
Speaker 1: kind of protect ourselves. Um. But we have other things
Speaker 1: that we do to keep each other safe. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're we're a close family. But UM, I also try
Speaker 1: to keep the kids off of social media, and I
Speaker 1: tell them, like, please don't search my name on Twitter,
Speaker 1: don't search my name on Google. These are kids, like
Speaker 1: they're gonna do it anyway. And it's to the point
Speaker 1: now where even if they search their own names, they
Speaker 1: see people talking about me mentioning them, even my little kids.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's a it's a weird climate, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. How do you you know something that Jack
Speaker 1: and I as fathers have always had to work on
Speaker 1: as we both came from the streets. You know, I
Speaker 1: got it out the gutter, but our kids will never
Speaker 1: have to. How do you compared to how you're growing
Speaker 1: up now? And then almost the safety environment you have
Speaker 1: to deal with your kids? How do you how because
Speaker 1: they probably can't do things that other kids can do.
Speaker 1: It's tricky, you know, Like I didn't. I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up in the gutter, but I grew up rough. You know,
Speaker 1: we were we were like a half a step above poor,
Speaker 1: and and I didn't even really I never really even
Speaker 1: understood how broke we were coming up. And you don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, and and so I didn't understand that. And
Speaker 1: and then I experienced I experienced a lot of hell
Speaker 1: and trauma growing up. And yet all of that shaped me,
Speaker 1: it shaped you, It shaped you. Like as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I don't even know that you would know who I
Speaker 1: am had I not been through all of that. And
Speaker 1: so now our kids, we protect them from all of that,
Speaker 1: and it has its own implications like, uh, it's you
Speaker 1: often see the children of successful people sometimes lack drive
Speaker 1: or determination. So there are little things that we try
Speaker 1: to do to still help our kids be as determined
Speaker 1: as we were, even though they don't have the same obstacles. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like just making sure that even though they
Speaker 1: they are the children of somebody who is well known,
Speaker 1: that hey, whatever you get, you're gonna have to. Like
Speaker 1: if if my kids interviewed for a job, I'm not
Speaker 1: calling in advance and saying, hey, I'm at Shawn King,
Speaker 1: can you help my daughter get the job? You know,
Speaker 1: like I tell they got an interview for it, Like, um,
Speaker 1: our daughter. We have a daughter who's a senior in
Speaker 1: high school and she's applying for college, and as much
Speaker 1: as possible, I'm trying to see her do it without me.
Speaker 1: I'm there to help with the applications, but I want
Speaker 1: her to know that when she gets there, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I earned this. And so it's hard when you grew
Speaker 1: up rough, it's hard to duplicate the environment that helped
Speaker 1: make us who we are. And so it's it's tricky
Speaker 1: because part of how we became who we are is
Speaker 1: that we had to overcome so many obstacles. Our kids
Speaker 1: will have their own obstacles and uh yeah, so we
Speaker 1: just I'm trying to see them through it. And you know,
Speaker 1: it depends, like even my youngest kids, they don't even
Speaker 1: really know what I do. I try to protect. So
Speaker 1: our daughter who was six, we have a daughter who's ten.
Speaker 1: They I don't I don't even they don't know about
Speaker 1: Rodney Reid. You know, they don't know that I'm fighting
Speaker 1: for this man who might die in two weeks. In part,
Speaker 1: I just don't want them to have that. The child
Speaker 1: brain is not even able to process some of these things.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I try to even protect my kids
Speaker 1: from some of the worst knowledge and information that I
Speaker 1: see every day. What age do you feel with your kids, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, you do have something in college and
Speaker 1: headed to college. Do you share some of what you do? Well? Man,
Speaker 1: We people ask us that all the time because there's
Speaker 1: a there's so much horrible information from videos of police
Speaker 1: brutality and these stories that we're sharing. There's this video
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna share later today of of a shooting
Speaker 1: that and normally when I share a video like that,
Speaker 1: a family has asked me to share it. I'm not
Speaker 1: sharing it because I want you to say, I don't
Speaker 1: even want to see it. I'm not sharing because I
Speaker 1: want you to see it. The family knows that it
Speaker 1: getting seen, it's gonna give them leverage to negotiate with
Speaker 1: police or district attorneys and um, so we kind of
Speaker 1: have a sliding scale. Like our daughters who are twenty
Speaker 1: and seven, team, they're gonna see everything, whether I share
Speaker 1: it with him or not. So I try to. I
Speaker 1: try to explain things to them and break it down.
Speaker 1: My son, who we have four girls and a boy,
Speaker 1: and my son who's in the middle, he's thirteen. He's
Speaker 1: he's a very sensitive boy, and so I may describe
Speaker 1: the basics of a situation to him. But even he's
Speaker 1: in eighth grade going into high school, he just couldn't
Speaker 1: handle seeing these things. And and that's okay. Like my
Speaker 1: wife doesn't look at my wife doesn't My wife doesn't
Speaker 1: read the articles I write. She doesn't look at the
Speaker 1: post that I make because it's too much for her.
Speaker 1: And she supports me. But I know that some of
Speaker 1: this stuff is too much for my son who's thirteen.
Speaker 1: Now my girls who are ten and six. Uh, I
Speaker 1: sheltered them from it all. Every now and then they
Speaker 1: may catch that I'm doing like they know that I'm
Speaker 1: that I fight for people, you know, they know that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to help people, but I try not to.
Speaker 1: Like some people want their kids to see it all,
Speaker 1: and that's dangerous. Actually, kids don't have without explanation every
Speaker 1: step and then, like you said, as a child, it's
Speaker 1: hard to fathom how cold this world really is and
Speaker 1: what happens. Studies show that when young kids see, particularly
Speaker 1: police brutality, they immediately think it's going to happen to them.
Speaker 1: And and I don't want my kids to have It's
Speaker 1: not that I want them to be ignorant of the danger.
Speaker 1: We school our kids the best we can, but I
Speaker 1: don't want them to be having nightmares or unnatural stress
Speaker 1: of the danger. So even with the safety risk against me,
Speaker 1: like when I travel a lot of town, we have
Speaker 1: security at the house. Our older kids know we have
Speaker 1: security outside of the house, but I don't even want
Speaker 1: the younger kids to know that there is a risk here,
Speaker 1: that they that we need somebody standing at the front door.
Speaker 1: And so we we kind of have a age age
Speaker 1: sliding scale where the little kids know next to nothing,
Speaker 1: and depend on how old they are, we share more
Speaker 1: and more. What's the best part about being a dad?
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about the tough side and they
Speaker 1: tell me decided to make you smile. Oh man, I
Speaker 1: love being a dad, you know, I was saying, Jackie,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been a dad my whole adult life,
Speaker 1: and you have to and uh, my wife and I
Speaker 1: were nineteen and twenty years old when we were Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were in college and young and dumb and broke
Speaker 1: and struggling and all of that. But I've been a
Speaker 1: dad my whole adult life. So I literally don't know
Speaker 1: adulthood without being a dad, Like it's all. It's all
Speaker 1: I've ever been. And so, um, I love spending time
Speaker 1: with the kids like one they're you know, before you
Speaker 1: have kids, you assume they're gonna be like you in
Speaker 1: some kind of way. All five of my kids are
Speaker 1: totally different from each other. They're very different than me.
Speaker 1: They have skills that I've never had, gifts that I've
Speaker 1: never had. So it's beautiful just to see them becoming
Speaker 1: their own unique people. Um. They've taken on some of
Speaker 1: the things like I love movies and sports, and they've
Speaker 1: taken on the love of movies and sports. Um, my
Speaker 1: thirteen year old son and I are playing the NBA
Speaker 1: Fantasy League together this year. That's the first time I've
Speaker 1: done fantasy basketball and ten or fifteen years. But I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make sure that we were engaging on
Speaker 1: some kind of level. And so just little things like that. Man,
Speaker 1: But um, they don't see me at all when they
Speaker 1: come home. They don't see me as famous, and they
Speaker 1: they never would like, Yeah, I'm just dad, and so
Speaker 1: home for me is normal. I'm taking out the garbage
Speaker 1: and cleaning the house and and turning on the alarm
Speaker 1: and so home is like the place where there's normalcy
Speaker 1: for all of us. And uh, and it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: So I mean again, I know that no matter how
Speaker 1: crazy the world is, that I got this unit at
Speaker 1: home that has my back and it's gonna rock with
Speaker 1: me no matter what. What do you do? I mean,
Speaker 1: your your job seems to never end. What do you
Speaker 1: do to unplug and decompress? How do you chill out
Speaker 1: or do you I don't chill out much like no
Speaker 1: days or no certain times where I'm not doing nothing
Speaker 1: right now, Well, I do a couple of things, like one,
Speaker 1: I love what I do. As hard as it is,
Speaker 1: as hard as fighting for justice for Rodney Reid, as
Speaker 1: hard as all that stuff is. I do it because
Speaker 1: I love doing it. So even even if I'm doing
Speaker 1: it late, like I was, I pulled even on the
Speaker 1: way over here today, I pulled the car over because
Speaker 1: I had to respond to something. But it's what I
Speaker 1: want to do. I chose this life. It's how I
Speaker 1: want to live my life. So even know the work
Speaker 1: is hard and it's a grind, it doesn't wear me down,
Speaker 1: Like I look forward to being able to to help
Speaker 1: people to tell these stories. So my work it never
Speaker 1: quite feels like work. And people say that, but I
Speaker 1: mean I hope. I hope that for everybody if you
Speaker 1: can love what you're doing in your life, and that's
Speaker 1: true for me, man, Like everybody doesn't get to do that.
Speaker 1: Like my mother made light bulbs for forty years, and
Speaker 1: I talked with her. I mean, she told me that
Speaker 1: there wasn't a day she made a light bulb she
Speaker 1: liked it, you know, like she hated all forty years
Speaker 1: of she said some day she liked the people there.
Speaker 1: She was like, no, I never enjoyed making the light bulbs.
Speaker 1: You know, it was nothing in it. And I hope
Speaker 1: for my kids and other for anybody who's watching, I
Speaker 1: hope that they get to do something that they love.
Speaker 1: But I watched sports. I'm a I'm a huge NBA
Speaker 1: fan everything. I'm a Nets guy. We live in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Some room for the Nets. We're rooting for the Nets
Speaker 1: before they signed Kyrie and k D. And he was
Speaker 1: when I was there. Oh yeah, man, we've been loving
Speaker 1: We've been loving Nets man. No, we love no. We
Speaker 1: We've been here in Brooklyn, were in Brooklyn for almost
Speaker 1: four years now, and uh we love the Nets man,
Speaker 1: and like it's just our hometown team. But I mean
Speaker 1: we have all types of teams that we've moved all
Speaker 1: over the country. So when we lived in California, we
Speaker 1: were rooting for Golden State and rooting for the Lakers.
Speaker 1: We lived in Atlanta for ten years, we were rooting
Speaker 1: for the Hawks. So I'm a homer. Like wherever I live,
Speaker 1: I kind of root for the home team. And uh,
Speaker 1: as I grew up in Kentucky where we didn't have
Speaker 1: a protein and so we go to the movies all
Speaker 1: the time, and the type of movies you like because
Speaker 1: you have a certain line of work that you try
Speaker 1: to get away from that and just or what the
Speaker 1: tricky the hardest thing that sucks is because we have
Speaker 1: a six year old in the house, Like it's hard
Speaker 1: to take the whole family to the movie and see
Speaker 1: something that I actually like, you know, like, um so
Speaker 1: me and my wife go out Like I mean, we
Speaker 1: see it all man. I mean I go to the
Speaker 1: movies three or four times a month, and uh so,
Speaker 1: whatever is out, we try to check it out. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm watching, Uh, I watched a couple of shows on
Speaker 1: iTunes and Netflix. I'm watching this new show, uh yellow Stone.
Speaker 1: It's a like a western with Kevin Costner, and I've
Speaker 1: been checking that out and people ask me, like what
Speaker 1: when do I watch it? Like if I'm on the subway,
Speaker 1: I put my uh put my headphones on and steal
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes there to watch it. But I
Speaker 1: mean I try to. I try to decompress when I can. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we travel as much as we can, Like
Speaker 1: we'll we'll go somewhere during the Christmas holiday. That's at
Speaker 1: least once a year. We take a big family trip
Speaker 1: together and get away and um. Last year we went
Speaker 1: to Hawaii and we go to Jamaica or something like that,
Speaker 1: just to just to go somewhere where the weather is
Speaker 1: warmer than it is here in New York. Now, do
Speaker 1: you are you? Are you off? Are you offline when
Speaker 1: you're on family vacation? Still gotta work? Well? I try
Speaker 1: to be um like we um. This past Christmas, we
Speaker 1: went to Hawaii and my whole family made me promise
Speaker 1: that I would stay offline. And you may remember this
Speaker 1: young girl named Jasmine Barnes, a seven year old girl
Speaker 1: in Houston was shot and killed. And uh, I had
Speaker 1: been away for two or three days and people started
Speaker 1: asking me if I would help find who killed this
Speaker 1: young girl. And my family was like, don't you do that?
Speaker 1: You know, my wife and my kids. And I kept
Speaker 1: my promise for a couple of days, and then finally
Speaker 1: people who were very close to the family reached out
Speaker 1: to me, and I interrupted my vacation and time with
Speaker 1: family to do it. And uh, I wish I hadn't,
Speaker 1: you know, Like that's a dilemma that I'm in all
Speaker 1: the time where my family needed me to just say
Speaker 1: no even though people really wanted and needed me to
Speaker 1: help in that situation. Your heart is so big you
Speaker 1: can't and just only so long. But I jammed myself
Speaker 1: up though, you know, like, um, you know, I ended
Speaker 1: up hurting my family because I basically stopped my My
Speaker 1: family was still on vacation before the final two or
Speaker 1: three days. All I did was throw myself into this case.
Speaker 1: And uh, I learned a lot from that, Like I
Speaker 1: hope this holiday when I go away, I might just
Speaker 1: I might not even take my fund. But I'm plugged
Speaker 1: from the world. You gotta reboot, man, you gotta be
Speaker 1: So where do we go from here? Like what is
Speaker 1: your message? Like we're I mean, obviously, you know, with
Speaker 1: with the presidency and in the in the state of race,
Speaker 1: what it is people bother me when they say it's
Speaker 1: not about everything. A lot of stuff is centered around race.
Speaker 1: Where do you think we go from here as a
Speaker 1: culture as well? And I do. I do have hope,
Speaker 1: And uh, even with all the ugliness that I see
Speaker 1: every day, there are a couple of reasons why I
Speaker 1: have hope. Like no matter how ugly things get in
Speaker 1: the world, and we're talking about the world that can
Speaker 1: that can get deep and dirty and ugly, We're talking
Speaker 1: about the world that had the Holocaust, the world that
Speaker 1: had the Transatlantic slave trade. We're talking about the world
Speaker 1: Like when people say, Sean, can it get worse? My
Speaker 1: answer is always, oh, hell yeah, it can get a
Speaker 1: lot worse. But anytime things have gotten horrible and ugly
Speaker 1: all throughout history, I'm a historian by training. My undergraduate
Speaker 1: and graduate degrees are in history. People always bounce back.
Speaker 1: Societies always recover, no matter how ugly, how dirty, how horrible,
Speaker 1: how desperate things can get. The pendulum it may swing
Speaker 1: one way, but it will always swing the other way. Now,
Speaker 1: what I need to explain to people is that that
Speaker 1: pendulum illustration has limitations. It doesn't people swing get back.
Speaker 1: And so whatever we're gonna see next in this world,
Speaker 1: Like when we think about slavery in America that lasted
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. People fought to end that, Like
Speaker 1: it didn't just end like any just say we're done,
Speaker 1: Like there was a civil war for that. And so
Speaker 1: whatever it is, if it's voting rights, if it's civil rights,
Speaker 1: whatever future it is we want to see in this country,
Speaker 1: we will only see what we fight for. And I
Speaker 1: try to explain to people whatever future it is, that
Speaker 1: we want for this country. We have to organize ourselves
Speaker 1: into it. Otherwise it's just not gonna happen. And I
Speaker 1: wish it. I wish it just things got better naturally,
Speaker 1: but that's just not how it goes. And UM, you
Speaker 1: think we're heading in the right direction. No, No, I don't. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm confident that we're not. I'm actually I'm not an alarmist.
Speaker 1: I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I think these next couple
Speaker 1: of years could be real rough for us. What you're
Speaker 1: gonna see next next month and over the next two
Speaker 1: or three months, the impeachment of the president is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Those proceedings. This isn't theoretical. The the impeachment proceedings are
Speaker 1: going to move forward. I believe the president will be
Speaker 1: impeached in the House, and I think that could get
Speaker 1: real volatile. Um. I think the election could be very
Speaker 1: volatile and dangerous. I I I could imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: where Donald Trump loses the election and decides not to
Speaker 1: leave the office because he thinks it's not official or
Speaker 1: not legitimate. Um. We're already in a scenario where the
Speaker 1: Congress has subpoenaed a llegal subpoena has subpoenaed people to testify,
Speaker 1: and they just said no. Like there are people in
Speaker 1: prison right now for failure to comply to a subpoena.
Speaker 1: You go to jail for that, and so we're already
Speaker 1: at a showdown. I think the United States right now
Speaker 1: is in a much more fragile place than we understand. Um,
Speaker 1: i'm I'm deeply concerned, and I um, I hear not
Speaker 1: just the president but others even talk about civil war
Speaker 1: and violence and that type of stuff. It concerns me, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes me, uh, it makes me concerned
Speaker 1: about what's next. And I don't know, I think, Um,
Speaker 1: I think things will get worse before they get better.
Speaker 1: And I don't think. I don't think all of our
Speaker 1: problems are just solved even by this one election. Um.
Speaker 1: In Donald Trump's defense, many of our greatest problems in
Speaker 1: this country, he didn't create them. And so even if
Speaker 1: he does, even if he does lose, even if he
Speaker 1: does leave the office peacefully, they're still mass incarceration. He
Speaker 1: didn't build that. You know, there's still issues of poverty
Speaker 1: and other things. So now i'm i'm, I'm deeply concerned
Speaker 1: about where we go next. And I say that as
Speaker 1: somebody who studies it day in and day out. Um,
Speaker 1: I think we've grown a bit used to things that
Speaker 1: we probably should never have grown used to. And there's
Speaker 1: some things that have been normalized in this country that
Speaker 1: that are deeply problematic. So I'm worried about these next
Speaker 1: few months. Um, I'm watching carefully, but I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: even quick to get nervous. But it's a it's a
Speaker 1: weird time. Yeah, it's Um, I'm friends with several people
Speaker 1: who are in Congress, and even Congress people understand this.
Speaker 1: We're walking on thin ice right now. Like say, say
Speaker 1: those people who have been subpoenaed, Say Congress then threatens
Speaker 1: to jail those people, but say those people then say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not taking me to jail. What's gonna what's gonna
Speaker 1: happen here? Like how what? What are we then gonna
Speaker 1: force them into in cart? Like I don't know, like
Speaker 1: even people in Congress. No, it's like it's untrued territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean typically you get a subpoena, your show up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, it's simple, you go to jail.
Speaker 1: And so we're testing those norms and and so for
Speaker 1: the first time we realized like, oh, there wasn't really
Speaker 1: a system in place to enforce the rules on the
Speaker 1: presidency and on the administration, and daily Trump in the
Speaker 1: administration are pushing those boundaries in a way that I
Speaker 1: think are gonna be hard to dial back in one
Speaker 1: way or the other. What would be your message to
Speaker 1: the youth to get out there and and you know,
Speaker 1: it's cool to talk about it. I'm not talking about you.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about outside of social media, to talk about
Speaker 1: it and and do that. How can they be What
Speaker 1: would be your message to make them be a part
Speaker 1: of it, you know, really make their voice count. What
Speaker 1: would you say that that? You know what, man, today's
Speaker 1: generation of young people are already way more active than
Speaker 1: we were when we were quit. I was explaining to
Speaker 1: my kids just last night, when I was there were
Speaker 1: no activists at my high school, Like I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that was an option, Like you could care, but
Speaker 1: you there there were no activists at my high school.
Speaker 1: Like that's not how we saw the world. And today,
Speaker 1: even my daughter who was in college or in high school,
Speaker 1: they see themselves as activists and not just because they're
Speaker 1: my children. Like here in New York. My kids, even
Speaker 1: my kids in elementary middle school, have been to marches
Speaker 1: and protests like we didn't. We didn't do that growing up.
Speaker 1: So this generation, I I trust them more than I
Speaker 1: trust our generation. Like I think they understand the danger
Speaker 1: a little more in part because they also and I
Speaker 1: don't even mean this as a knock, because they don't
Speaker 1: have to pay the bills, because they don't have all
Speaker 1: the responsibilities as adults. They get to see the world
Speaker 1: for for all that it is and isn't in a
Speaker 1: way that's just very different. And so like there are
Speaker 1: days where I there might be a protest in the city,
Speaker 1: but because I have a nine to five, I just
Speaker 1: can't go. Well, kids don't have that same burden in
Speaker 1: that sense, and uh, they're laying it on the line
Speaker 1: man like I am on most days more inspired by them.
Speaker 1: And uh I could tell you, I mean there their
Speaker 1: kids fighting for uh, fighting against the climate crisis, fighting
Speaker 1: against police brutality, gun violence. That I would say, are
Speaker 1: they are the ones leading on it. In most rooms
Speaker 1: that I go in, I'm the old man in the room.
Speaker 1: Like I've been in rooms I'm talking about with like
Speaker 1: the best leaders in the country. My in my brain,
Speaker 1: I haven't started thinking of myself as old Jet, and
Speaker 1: I realized right away it's like, oh, they think I'm old,
Speaker 1: like people calling me Mr. King or Uncle Seawn. It's like,
Speaker 1: hold hold on, hold on. And I realized it's like
Speaker 1: you gotta think, how did you see somebody who was
Speaker 1: forty when you were eighteen when you were Yeah, you
Speaker 1: saw And so I realized it's like, listen, these young people.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of them. They in the election, they voted
Speaker 1: more than any young generation in American history. So they're
Speaker 1: not perfect. Um. I used to think when we were kids,
Speaker 1: I used to think that racism would pretty much die
Speaker 1: out when all the old racists died. But so so,
Speaker 1: even though I'm proud of young people, some of the
Speaker 1: worst racists in America now are teenagers and young adults,
Speaker 1: and they full on white supremacists and neo Nazis. Don't
Speaker 1: know why, Yeah, I couldn't couldn't break it down if
Speaker 1: you sat here with him and nothing like why don't
Speaker 1: you like right? Because my mom and dad told me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Well, Shaun King ever feel accomplished? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, you know I'm I'm always pushing it.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, I used to there's a writer of
Speaker 1: TNA He's Coats, and I used to read Tona, He's
Speaker 1: the coat stuff. I used to think he was super pessimistic.
Speaker 1: He used to talk about how things like racism and
Speaker 1: stuff would always be here, and I, as a young optimist,
Speaker 1: I would see that and be like, man, why is
Speaker 1: he so negative? And as I've gotten a little older,
Speaker 1: I've grown to think a lot of the worst parts
Speaker 1: of this country they'll change their shape and form, but
Speaker 1: they'll always be here. So I think, to the day
Speaker 1: I die, I'm gonna always be fighting back against injustice. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there are there are single battles that I
Speaker 1: hope we win. Today is election day around the country.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of candidates that I've been fighting
Speaker 1: for and so I feel accomplished in a sense that, Um,
Speaker 1: there are some battles I hope we win. But one
Speaker 1: of my heroes is Harry Belfonte was now in his
Speaker 1: mid nineties and it's still fighting for justice and change today.
Speaker 1: I hosted a conversation with him last year and he
Speaker 1: showed up with a Trayvon hoodie about a ninety four
Speaker 1: year old man and uh. And I asked him about
Speaker 1: why he had on the hoodie and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: as long as George Zimmerman is walking around, I'm aware
Speaker 1: of this hoodie and it's ninety four year old man.
Speaker 1: And I saw that was like, that's why I want
Speaker 1: to be the ninety four year old man wearing the hoodie.
Speaker 1: You know, I wish, I wish we didn't need to
Speaker 1: wear the hoodie. I wish, I wish, I wish I
Speaker 1: could work myself out of a job. But I'm convinced
Speaker 1: that a lot of our problems are gonna be here
Speaker 1: for a very long time time. So um, it's it's
Speaker 1: a marathon. I know we all love Nipsey, and um,
Speaker 1: I think part of what I think about when I
Speaker 1: think about Nipsey is also saying, hey, there's some things
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fight for today, but there's some things I'm
Speaker 1: fighting for now, knowing we won't see the fruits for ten,
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty years, and and as I get older,
Speaker 1: I'm able to see that a little more clearly. And
Speaker 1: so um, some systems are gonna take a lifetime for
Speaker 1: us to see see the change for sure. Sean appreciate
Speaker 1: you Tell Tell our audience where where they can find
Speaker 1: you at sure, I mean right now, people can go
Speaker 1: to free Rodney Read dot com. And that's where my
Speaker 1: mind is and where my heart is. As soon as
Speaker 1: I leave here, I'm checking on that and seeing what
Speaker 1: progress we've made. We're down to the wire with fourteen
Speaker 1: days to save this man's life. You can check me
Speaker 1: out at Shawn King on every social media platform. Also
Speaker 1: have a daily news podcast called The Breakdown. I'm recording
Speaker 1: that just f y. If anybody ever asked you to
Speaker 1: do a daily news podcast, say no, it's hard, man,
Speaker 1: It's hard. It's a beast. It is a grind and
Speaker 1: so I love it, but it's so hard to do.
Speaker 1: That's on every podcast platform. Check that out. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Rodney Reeves case every day for the next fourteen
Speaker 1: days on their UM. I have a book that's coming out.
Speaker 1: We just released the website today. It doesn't come out
Speaker 1: to April. The books called Make Change, So you can
Speaker 1: go to Make Change book dot com to check that out.
Speaker 1: And Uh, I'm always building, always tinkering, always trying to
Speaker 1: empower people to make a difference. So I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: on pushing. Man. Yeah, if you had last thing, you know,
Speaker 1: a message to the world that would go around on
Speaker 1: the billboard, one word or a sentence, what would be?
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know so much of so much of
Speaker 1: my mind is is about Rodney Reid. But um, I
Speaker 1: would I would probably say do something. Uh so much.
Speaker 1: So much energy has spent thinking about doing something, talking
Speaker 1: about doing something. Um, you learn more from just getting
Speaker 1: out there and actually doing something. And and so I
Speaker 1: tell people all the time, your issue does not have
Speaker 1: to be my issue. My issue doesn't have to be yours.
Speaker 1: So I'm fighting against police brutality and mass incarceration. Your
Speaker 1: thing might be something altogether different, but do something, and
Speaker 1: you're something doesn't have to be mine. But you don't
Speaker 1: want to look back on your life and your good
Speaker 1: years wishing you had done something, So you would say,
Speaker 1: do something, Get out there and do it. That's a
Speaker 1: wrap Episode three, All the smoke. I want to thank
Speaker 1: Sean King for coming through and educating, using and sharing
Speaker 1: his story and uh, you know you guys can find
Speaker 1: us on Showtime Basketball, YouTube channel and all platforms this
Speaker 1: stream podcasts. Jack, you got anything? The boy gave me
Speaker 1: some Malcolm and some more Luther King. Yes, man, I'm
Speaker 1: getting chills from I learned a lot today, so that's
Speaker 1: why I was kind of quiet. I learned a lot today.
Speaker 1: See y'all next time.