Speaker 1: You are listening Waiting on Reparations, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Yo Yo Yo, you are listening to Waiting
Speaker 1: on Reparations. My name is Dope Knife Frank, and we're
Speaker 1: here and we're back in effect another week. It is
Speaker 1: the second week of Black History Month. How are you
Speaker 1: holding up and celebrating? I'm good. So one way I'm
Speaker 1: celebrating is um posting. So the full archives of the
Speaker 1: Black Panther newspaper are available online, and so I've been
Speaker 1: posting just pages of it, you know, with the ones
Speaker 1: with like cool visuals as well as like descriptions of
Speaker 1: what they contain. So today, you know, I've posted the
Speaker 1: Black Panther ten point Program. A couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: i posted about UM Huey Newton UM, one of the
Speaker 1: founders of the Black Panthers, And so I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to my best to like elevate the parts of black
Speaker 1: history that people don't want to talk about because it
Speaker 1: does not serve their political agenda, um and things like that. So, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: what about you. What I have been celebrated. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is kind of like some down the line sort
Speaker 1: of celebration. But one of the things I'm trying to organize.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to put together a little festival in Savannah,
Speaker 1: like a music festival, but have it be like a
Speaker 1: fundraiser for Stacy Abrams. What's up? Yeah, either either Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams or something to do with Georgia voting. One of
Speaker 1: the two things. I'm just gonna focus around. I know,
Speaker 1: I know. That's like I'm planning it to be around
Speaker 1: like four you know, planning it now. So it's technically
Speaker 1: my Black History mont celebration. You know, who's not celebrating
Speaker 1: Black history a lot of it's not only been disinvited
Speaker 1: from the cook out, like he's not even allowed to
Speaker 1: eat barbecue. Wait, it was Joe Rogan ever really invited
Speaker 1: to the cookout this whole that Yeah, when everything was
Speaker 1: going down, it was one of those rare occasions where
Speaker 1: I was on Twitter like to start my day and
Speaker 1: just was kind of vegging out on Twitter for most
Speaker 1: of the most of the night before in the day,
Speaker 1: so like I kind of saw all this ship happening
Speaker 1: in real time and like for real, like first it
Speaker 1: was the Okay, So for anybody who doesn't know, so
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, one of the biggest podcasters in the world.
Speaker 1: He hosts a show called The Joe Rogan Experience. Back
Speaker 1: in it was it was an independent podcast for years,
Speaker 1: crazy millions of listeners and and subscribers, all that whole
Speaker 1: thing you got At this point, I'm just assuming that
Speaker 1: everybody knows who Joe Rogan and what his podcast is. Right.
Speaker 1: So a couple of years ago he gets a deal
Speaker 1: with Spotify for a hundred million dollars, which now makes
Speaker 1: him a mainstream corporate entity. I don't give a funk
Speaker 1: what anybody says, but um, you know, Joe Rogan's had
Speaker 1: He's had problematic instances in things on his show for
Speaker 1: a while, but it's all kind of taken ahead and
Speaker 1: come into public eye with his COVID disinformation that he
Speaker 1: spreads on his show, and that led to this whole
Speaker 1: standoff with Spotify or Spotify standing by their hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar investment. But you've got artists like Neil Young and
Speaker 1: Jody Mitchell and others who were taking their music off
Speaker 1: the platform and effort to not be associated with the
Speaker 1: COVID misinformation. But uh SCAD graduate Savannah College of Art
Speaker 1: and Design graduate and Grammy Award winning artists India Iri
Speaker 1: Sook to her Instagram to kind of point out something
Speaker 1: that I in particular had been pointing out about Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan just amongst my friends and stuff like that in
Speaker 1: personal conversation for years now, which is a lot of
Speaker 1: the racist quasi Nazi ship that goes on on the
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan podcast. It's dispersed enough that you know, you
Speaker 1: could watch ten episodes in a row and not encounter it.
Speaker 1: But when it's there, it's there, and it's they're pretty
Speaker 1: strong and indie. A re started off by running a
Speaker 1: montage Joe Rogan using the N word that was followed
Speaker 1: up by a joke that he told about going to
Speaker 1: a black neighborhood in Philly to see the movie Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes and a commentary about how the all
Speaker 1: black crowd was like the Planet of the Apes, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Joe Rogan issued an apology
Speaker 1: um for all of the cries of cancel culture, there's
Speaker 1: not really any cancelation going on Spotify standing by him
Speaker 1: saying that silencing is not the way to handle it. Um.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, it's it's just illuminated this
Speaker 1: particular aspect of the Joe Rogan Show for the general
Speaker 1: public for normans who weren't really paying attention, whether they
Speaker 1: are supporters of his or detractors. So, um, that is
Speaker 1: the situation as it stands. Like I said, there's not
Speaker 1: really any consequence to be taken out of it except
Speaker 1: for his apology and that, you know, the opinions are
Speaker 1: now you know, it seems like the opinions are now
Speaker 1: solidly formed. You know, you've either got the people who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, I don't think that's a big deal,
Speaker 1: or you've got the people who are like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is what I've been saying. Joe Rogan has been on
Speaker 1: this ship for a long time. And then you've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of regular people who are now either oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know Joe Rogan was like that funk that guy,
Speaker 1: or you know, the opposite swing of that pendulum. I
Speaker 1: didn't know Joe Rogan was like that. Awesome, I'm with it. So, so,
Speaker 1: what have you been thinking of this whole thing, whatever,
Speaker 1: however much of it you've been consuming. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I've long been skeptical of Joe Rogan and like the
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan too like crypto fascist pipeline um sort of
Speaker 1: veiled in the fact that he does have many different
Speaker 1: kinds of people on his show, his platforming of folks
Speaker 1: like Stephen Wilno, like um, even Elon Muskle's just like
Speaker 1: Notisanapolis and only know of him because of It's interesting
Speaker 1: to me that this hadn't come come out earlier, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if people are watching his podcast religiously and
Speaker 1: he has this, you know, a million strong fan base,
Speaker 1: how did no one bring up before now that there
Speaker 1: were a hundred and eleven podcast where he used a
Speaker 1: racial slurn, which I then think, yeah, okay, um, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's all I said right now. Well, I mean, um, okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the biggest reason why I think it's
Speaker 1: not even necessary that people didn't notice, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: like mainstream then as big and popular as his podcast was.
Speaker 1: I think having that Spotify corporate stamp, Fortune five hundred
Speaker 1: stamp on it, it now makes all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, um issue for him because beforehand, I mean,
Speaker 1: for example, the the video of him telling the Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes joke. I saw that shipped back in surprisingly,
Speaker 1: do you know who put that out? Alex Jones was
Speaker 1: the one who first put that out. Him and Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: We're beefing. Alex Jones was like, all right, well, if
Speaker 1: me and Joe Rogan is not gonna have the other show.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks he's so cool, he's got a black daughter,
Speaker 1: and listen to what he says about black people. And
Speaker 1: then that happened in the summer of nineteen, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's something like you see it and you you know,
Speaker 1: a it was getting posted around, but it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter because ultimately it's just this dude's podcast in his
Speaker 1: basement or in a spare room in his house that
Speaker 1: he's doing on his own. So there is no when
Speaker 1: you don't have like when there's no corporate entity to
Speaker 1: pressure you know about it, then I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think it can easily slip through the right you got.
Speaker 1: You gotta go after the money. You can't just criticize
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan for what he does. Anybody in the basement
Speaker 1: can do what he does. You like he has. He
Speaker 1: has the prominence that he does because he has the
Speaker 1: backing of Spotify. It's the backing of huge corporations, right,
Speaker 1: and so you gotta go after the money. That makes
Speaker 1: you think of like with the stop Pop City Um
Speaker 1: struggle down here in Atlanta. Uh, like when they weren't
Speaker 1: getting anywhere at Atlanta City Council, they started going for
Speaker 1: the people that were funding the Atlanta Police Foundation, so um,
Speaker 1: Coca cola, um, other organizations. Or even if you want
Speaker 1: to think about the voter suppression bill that passed in
Speaker 1: the state legislature. Here, I guess sometime last year, folks
Speaker 1: are going after Delta and all of these other corporations
Speaker 1: that were like, oh, black Lives Matter or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then you know, bankrolling Republican campaigns to the tune of
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so another thing that
Speaker 1: rises it raises for me is like how unfortunate it
Speaker 1: is but necessary to like bring their receipts. Like everyone
Speaker 1: knew he was shitty for a long time. It took
Speaker 1: like a comprehensive compilation of all the reasons why and
Speaker 1: like here are the links for people to be like,
Speaker 1: you have a pretty strong case. I see that over
Speaker 1: and over again with like anecdotal evidence versus pulling like
Speaker 1: the actual receipts in a lot of organizing spaces where
Speaker 1: it's like people are telling you something's wrong, but until
Speaker 1: you find like the archival data where like the segregationist
Speaker 1: senator was conspiring to destroy their neighborhood. Like that's when
Speaker 1: you finally like, all right, I guess I'll do something
Speaker 1: about it. So that also strikes me as really funny
Speaker 1: about the circumstances that, right, well, um, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: have to expand on this because it's it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: opened up, you know, further conversation about um censorship and
Speaker 1: what is censorship versus what isn't? Should Joe Rogan be silence?
Speaker 1: Should he be removed from the platform, And I definitely
Speaker 1: do want to dive into this stuff. We were also
Speaker 1: we're supposed to talk about the NFL coaching situation, but
Speaker 1: I think we'll save that for another day too. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, before we go into what we're
Speaker 1: talking about for the day, I do just want to
Speaker 1: touch on that one subject. It's just if the only
Speaker 1: thing that existed in this situation was the compilation of
Speaker 1: the N word, I don't think it would be that
Speaker 1: big of a deal. And just me personally well to
Speaker 1: the problem, I mean, because here's the thing, right, is
Speaker 1: like he gave an explanation for the N word compilation
Speaker 1: in terms of like, oh, well, this was me using
Speaker 1: it as a quote, and I was using I was
Speaker 1: recalling it in the story. Now for me personally, it's
Speaker 1: really not that complicated. There's twenty three n words in there,
Speaker 1: and he gave like three examples of him, you know,
Speaker 1: quoting it that it's like, all right, I'm gonna need
Speaker 1: to see like a detailed breakdown of like how each
Speaker 1: of these was a quote. But besides the point, if
Speaker 1: just for the benefit of doubt, all of those where
Speaker 1: he's quoting a story, he's telling a story or something
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, it makes me still not like
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, but it makes me ultimately not really like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: wasn't listening to that show anyway, you know what I'm saying. Well,
Speaker 1: but I think the aspects of like the jokes, and
Speaker 1: then when you further do even deeper digging and you
Speaker 1: look into the type of people that he's platformed, that
Speaker 1: is that's the aspect and the element of it to me,
Speaker 1: that is like all right, now this is still you know,
Speaker 1: sensor removed, that's still like a subject for discussion, But
Speaker 1: that is the aspect of Joe Rogan that is like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is serious now because like you know, you can,
Speaker 1: you can say whatever should you want. I don't care.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to affect me. I don't have to
Speaker 1: listen to it. But if you're like luring people unsuspecting
Speaker 1: people in by like, hey, we're interviewing m M a guy,
Speaker 1: a comedian, a nuclear physicist, a white supremacist, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, And you're doing that cycle over and
Speaker 1: over again. And I mean I've I've have people personally
Speaker 1: in my life who otherwise are like normal, well adjusted
Speaker 1: left leaning people that have fallen down the Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: crypto fashionst pipeline. It's very easy, it's not difficult at all. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to the fact that the left
Speaker 1: has to get better at its media game. Um, like
Speaker 1: you know, we need to we have to win the conversation.
Speaker 1: We can't just say oh, um, like you, I guess
Speaker 1: to a degree, like you shouldn't have these people on,
Speaker 1: like I like, I don't think he should, but I
Speaker 1: think i'd rather than like sensor him. I think we
Speaker 1: just need to do a better job of convincing people
Speaker 1: and creating our own pipeline to like liberatory ideas because
Speaker 1: otherwise if this is all we have, and it's like
Speaker 1: all you have is Joe Rogan as like a huge
Speaker 1: name in podcasting, like that's partially our failure. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true, but it's not even you know, just personally,
Speaker 1: I don't know what anybody else thinks. For me, it's
Speaker 1: not even the platforming like people that I check out,
Speaker 1: like Vosh who's a YouTuber, YouTube, twitch, political streamer, or
Speaker 1: um even what is Homie's name? Who got fired from
Speaker 1: CNN's Quomo Andrew Quomo, one of the quotma no no,
Speaker 1: no no um black dude, he was a commentation Mark
Speaker 1: Lamont Hill. Mark Lamont Hill on his channel, he's always
Speaker 1: talking to right wingers in like these fringe like you know,
Speaker 1: quasi alt right figures who are spewing their ship. The
Speaker 1: difference is how you go about it. If Mark Lamont
Speaker 1: Hill sits across from somebody and the person says, he,
Speaker 1: you know, black people have an intrinsic violent gene that
Speaker 1: makes them more violent than the other races. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, really, dude, bros, that word dude like that,
Speaker 1: you know that's not gonna be Vosh is going to
Speaker 1: like push back like there's ways that you can do
Speaker 1: it where it becomes a straw man to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you want a silence, you don't want people to be platformed.
Speaker 1: You're afraid of discussion, you're afraid of debate, and it's
Speaker 1: like how you engage with them? Yeah, if you're engaging critically,
Speaker 1: actually have to engage like like like for people to
Speaker 1: want for the Joe Rogan stands out there, a lot
Speaker 1: of whom are straight up Nazis and a lot of
Speaker 1: whom are just like people who don't give a funk
Speaker 1: about issues like this and stuff like that. But if
Speaker 1: they if they don't want people to jump to the
Speaker 1: conclusion of yo, I heard Joe Rogan said this, so
Speaker 1: I think this about him and everything that he is,
Speaker 1: then you know it probably would have behooved Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: over these years if like he could counter with clips
Speaker 1: of him passionately going back at like some of these
Speaker 1: guests that he has has on his show, because he
Speaker 1: shouldn't be interacting with my Unapolis the same way as
Speaker 1: he does with Cornel West if I'm supposed to think
Speaker 1: that he's cool, yeah, or even just yeah, this like
Speaker 1: engaging critically with both of them like instead of just
Speaker 1: being huh, that's interesting, Oh black people skulls are like
Speaker 1: con cave and commend whatever. Commended. But that's not racist.
Speaker 1: I have supported Bernie, supported by you know, yeah you
Speaker 1: said you might vote for him once whatever the other
Speaker 1: thing you want to bring up about Joe Rogan, And
Speaker 1: like I like to be hyperbolic sometimes because it's more entertaining. Um,
Speaker 1: Like there's a level of like almost stochastic terrorism that
Speaker 1: comes with uh, COVID misinformation. Um. And so like just
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago January, a big fan of
Speaker 1: his and friend who was you know, talking about his
Speaker 1: show all the time on his Instagram, UM, comedian Christian
Speaker 1: Cabrera UM died of COVID, you know, and often talked
Speaker 1: in conjunction with you know, loving Joe Rogan about like
Speaker 1: vaccine hesitancy and um it's also you know, spread a
Speaker 1: lot of Joe Rogan's vaccine and misinformation. And now this
Speaker 1: person is dead and so like he's a famous person,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a comedian, but how many other people
Speaker 1: who watched his show also We're like maybe that is
Speaker 1: sketchy and like are dead now we don't know, we
Speaker 1: don't have those numbers, whether you want to call that
Speaker 1: murder or whatever, whatever. I don't think that it's even
Speaker 1: debatable that that has happened. No, it's not even debatable.
Speaker 1: It's just like there's there's no way to know the
Speaker 1: impact negatively in a very literal, concrete way. But um,
Speaker 1: we have a great on about Joe Rogan for a while,
Speaker 1: So why don't we talk about like white people that
Speaker 1: don't suck? So Yeah, this week we had the honor
Speaker 1: to interview Joan and Loki Moholland Um. Joan Um was
Speaker 1: a freedom writer, UM whose mug shot was called one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic and American history. UM. She Um,
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty three, had participated in over
Speaker 1: fifty sent ins and demonstrations like the Freedom Rights the
Speaker 1: Jackson Woolwrith set in the marchin Washington, and Um, you know,
Speaker 1: knew some of the biggest names in the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: from Mega Evans, Mega Evans, Fanny lew Haymer, John Lewis,
Speaker 1: Julian Bond. And so we'll be speaking with her as
Speaker 1: well as her son, who has recently made a documentary
Speaker 1: about her called an Ordinary Hero. Yeah, and he's the
Speaker 1: executive director of the Joan Moholland Foundation. Um has actually
Speaker 1: directed um Sello documentaries and Um wrote a book She
Speaker 1: Stood for Freedom, Um, which was nominated for a war.
Speaker 1: So they're both very involved into this day in civil
Speaker 1: rights struggle in their own different ways. And the somewhat
Speaker 1: details what we're talking about with regards to art and
Speaker 1: the role of you know, shaping the political discourse in
Speaker 1: the sense that, like Joe Rogans over here, it's kind
Speaker 1: as podcast, which itself is a form of media that
Speaker 1: is shaping the political discourse, and Um Loki, especially as
Speaker 1: a filmmaker, is doing the same with his work. And
Speaker 1: we have a lot of discussion in the interview about
Speaker 1: the role of arts in movement making. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's get on into it. We'll be right back with
Speaker 1: that after the jump. So today I am super honored
Speaker 1: to be joined by Joan and Loki Muholland. I will
Speaker 1: let them introduce themselves in their own words, because the
Speaker 1: breadth of experience they bring with them is kind of impressive.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, yeah, there's a lot, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there, but yeah, whoever, like to start
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about yourselves and what y'all do.
Speaker 1: Go on, boy, I was gonna say ladies first, but well,
Speaker 1: my name is Loki maholl Um, I'm Jones's son. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm a filmmaker, activins author, and uh yeah, we see
Speaker 1: you represent over there. Yeah, Joan Mahaland I'm Loki's mama.
Speaker 1: And Loki was after the Norse god of mischief or sidekick,
Speaker 1: and he's lived up to it. Um, I'm a Delta.
Speaker 1: I got into a lot of good trouble back in
Speaker 1: the day, and you know, freedom writer and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Good, Yeah you are. You knew a
Speaker 1: lot of folks that people may recognize when you know
Speaker 1: we're studying the history of the civil rights movement. Um,
Speaker 1: Mr Evers, Danniel Hammer play people like that. It's Fannie
Speaker 1: Hammer Hamer. Oh my god. If I've been saying that
Speaker 1: around my whole life. See, this is what we need
Speaker 1: better civics and lack history education in schools. Because I'm
Speaker 1: growing up, I've taught myself most well. I feel like
Speaker 1: most of what I know as an adult, like you know,
Speaker 1: reading online, reading books, etcetera. Because they don't really teach
Speaker 1: you what you need to know in school. Unfortunately, word was,
Speaker 1: you know, the slaves were happy and the slave masters
Speaker 1: were kind. Yeah. I actually have a friend who is
Speaker 1: a professor at um University in Hartford who studies how
Speaker 1: even back to like slavery texts from like ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: the way that like the happy slave narrative was even
Speaker 1: a thing then, and like how that then, you know,
Speaker 1: factors into the way people sometimes use classics, like in
Speaker 1: white supremacist movements to say like, oh, the purity of
Speaker 1: the Western tradition. But yeah, like unless you unless you
Speaker 1: really teach yourself, um, you can, yeah, get stuck with
Speaker 1: some of these. Oh that's interesting back to the ancient
Speaker 1: Greeks because when we had standardized testing, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty much out now in Virginia. But one of the
Speaker 1: questions for the kids his foot, what did we get
Speaker 1: from the Greeks? And you were supposed to say, you know, democracy,
Speaker 1: voting rights, stuff like that. I said, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's all. We got voting rights for free property
Speaker 1: owning white men. Precisely, we got some highways. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: some like column shapes, you know, like some art, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we're still trying to get voting rise today. And what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, so, um, well, I'm really really excited to
Speaker 1: have you all here today. Particularly I'm super interested in
Speaker 1: the way that movement work manifests in the various different
Speaker 1: kinds of things you do. And also we've got two
Speaker 1: generations of people here. Um, we're doing the good work. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think that like the idea of intergenerational like
Speaker 1: liberation movement struggle is not when we talk about enough
Speaker 1: like they got the young kids out here, like the
Speaker 1: Sunrise Movement or etcetera. And then we study you know,
Speaker 1: civil rights history um as if it you know, would
Speaker 1: happened long ago, and like we don't need to be
Speaker 1: marching um anymore things like that. So, um, how do
Speaker 1: you see your work from two different generations overlapping or
Speaker 1: diverging at certain points? Well, I say my generation got
Speaker 1: rid of the segregation laws underlying racism. It's still there
Speaker 1: and that's what folks need to work on. Now. Um.
Speaker 1: We marched, we sat in, we went to jail, um,
Speaker 1: you know things like that. We could sing real good,
Speaker 1: except for me, I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
Speaker 1: That the Jackson, Mississippi. The joke we had a little
Speaker 1: joke in the movement that if the police were marching
Speaker 1: on us, they just pushed Joan to the front and
Speaker 1: she would sing loudly right in their face and they
Speaker 1: would back off because I say, Okay, what is that? Yeah, yeah, backup,
Speaker 1: But you're a singer two on top of everything logy yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: play guitar on Hey. Well, maybe we'll come back to
Speaker 1: the question about like generational differences, because we're kind of
Speaker 1: starting to talk about art. And that's something that I
Speaker 1: don't understand. I don't know a lot about from my
Speaker 1: studying of like civil rights and like other liberation movements,
Speaker 1: is like what the role of art was during that era? Looky,
Speaker 1: you know, brilliant filmmaker and as I as a hip
Speaker 1: hop artist, see the potential for use of that um
Speaker 1: too spread stories that bring people into the movement and
Speaker 1: educate people, etcetera. UM. But Joan, like, what what role
Speaker 1: did like music and film and art and stuff like
Speaker 1: that play in in your time? Well, film want a
Speaker 1: big deal, except you know, watching the evening news on
Speaker 1: TV and UM singing. That was the backbone of the movement.
Speaker 1: That is what gave us strength and courage to keep
Speaker 1: on keeping on mhm um it was you know, songs
Speaker 1: that were sort of adapted from the church songs and
Speaker 1: it's it's it sounded if you weren't listening to the
Speaker 1: words like you were in church when we had these
Speaker 1: Yankees coming down and you know, they were good people,
Speaker 1: but they sang like they were on a picket line,
Speaker 1: a Union picket line, yeah, which they didn't have a sing. Art. Well,
Speaker 1: you needed art for posters and picket signs and things
Speaker 1: like that. So that was sort of where it was at.
Speaker 1: And so, um, Loki today working in film and you know,
Speaker 1: a variety of media. Honestly, Um, what do you see
Speaker 1: as the role of art in movement making today? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I want to kind of um like
Speaker 1: what my mom says, but roll back a little bit further,
Speaker 1: because obviously art was used even um during the time
Speaker 1: of slavery. Yeah, absolutely used to give direction and how
Speaker 1: to get north. Artistry that went into quilts. Um, the
Speaker 1: literature was a key component. And oh gosh, and the
Speaker 1: abolitionist movement. Yeah, yeah, you know, so those those sort
Speaker 1: of things, and it continued. I mean obviously during my
Speaker 1: mom's time, I mean, film was used as well. Um,
Speaker 1: the a lot of times that was you the documentary.
Speaker 1: It's not like it is today when we have so
Speaker 1: much more access to that. It was more underground. Um.
Speaker 1: But that was that burgeoning movement of art to really
Speaker 1: kind of push forward these ideals, um, and these and
Speaker 1: these alternative narratives to the prescribed history that was taught
Speaker 1: in our textbooks and as what we're seeing today as well, UM,
Speaker 1: and continuously obviously, UM, you know during the eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties in particular, you know, with public Enemy in w
Speaker 1: A and so forth. I mean all of that. Um,
Speaker 1: those scenes were just these narratives that people hadn't heard before.
Speaker 1: You know, when I say people, I mean America. So
Speaker 1: they control the media pretty much. Um, the photographers, with
Speaker 1: the press, they were powerful. I say, you take it
Speaker 1: to the lunch counter, the lawyers take it to the court,
Speaker 1: but the press takes it to the world. And when
Speaker 1: things will start flying, the press was in every bit
Speaker 1: as much danger as the demonstrators, and sometimes they were
Speaker 1: the first ones attacked. So the picture of the Jacks
Speaker 1: and Woolworths sit in which I'm sure you've seen what
Speaker 1: I'm having sugar dumped on my head, as I like
Speaker 1: to say, like I wasn't sweet enough already, but that
Speaker 1: went worldwide. It was colorized. Color was added to the
Speaker 1: black and white. They didn't have color photography and the presdent.
Speaker 1: But in the Paris Match front page above the centerfold,
Speaker 1: the most powerful place in the newspaper. And this was
Speaker 1: the most powerful newspaper in Europe. It was like the
Speaker 1: New York Times. So that you know. Went and when
Speaker 1: I was in South Africa, um a few years ago,
Speaker 1: thinking of the music um down in Cape Town, a
Speaker 1: bunch of US ladies went to um A school for
Speaker 1: a morning of volunteer work and I ended up since
Speaker 1: I used to work in the schools up here. Um well,
Speaker 1: I was up from Georgia. You know, it's still down
Speaker 1: south and Arlington Commany Lee's hometown. But um we told
Speaker 1: the students what we had, what we did back in
Speaker 1: the States. We had Q and A, and then we
Speaker 1: had our closing statement, and I said, back in the
Speaker 1: days of our civil rights movement, we had a song
Speaker 1: we shall overcome. Now. My intention was to say, whatever
Speaker 1: difficulty you're facing in life, tell yourself those three words
Speaker 1: and things will get better. No, I got cut right
Speaker 1: off by the school teacher. This is a room packed
Speaker 1: with fourth graders and he said, oh, we sang that
Speaker 1: song in our partid demonstrations class. Let's all sing it together.
Speaker 1: So there I was, over fifty years since our civil
Speaker 1: rights you know, the student civil rights movement, singing we
Speaker 1: Shall Overcome in Cape Town, South Africa, in the room
Speaker 1: packed with fourth or fifth graders, and it just about
Speaker 1: brought me to tears. So it traveled. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: about that. I think about as I said previously, about
Speaker 1: the public enemy and w A I mean Spike Lee
Speaker 1: Yea works and these messages that were putting forth that uh,
Speaker 1: why America hadn't heard and didn't really to understand or
Speaker 1: want to understand. And if you go back and and
Speaker 1: I mean it was almost it's like a canary in
Speaker 1: the mind sort of thing. I was like, wow, I
Speaker 1: mean all of that has come to pass. And then
Speaker 1: some yeah, aldy today you know what's uh, you know
Speaker 1: the the my mom was talking about the press and
Speaker 1: the cameras and stuff. Obviously the quickest way to censor
Speaker 1: that was his bash a camera. I'm about the film
Speaker 1: which they did, which they did, and today we have
Speaker 1: you know, those those other techniques now of of of
Speaker 1: blocking channels and or streams on social media and so
Speaker 1: forth saying you know this this content is offensive or
Speaker 1: whatever else and being these filters now. Um, so they
Speaker 1: did that with the Evening News and get h Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Difficulties Uh yeah, like ever speech. Um, I
Speaker 1: just think about like, you know, these these new opportunities
Speaker 1: that exist like TikTok and so forth. That's that is
Speaker 1: a very quick way to get the message across and
Speaker 1: how people are learning. Yeah, no, I mean there's still
Speaker 1: space for longer formats and so forth, and obviously the
Speaker 1: tools that are there to share those messages. Probably part
Speaker 1: of the pitfall of that is so much disinformation that
Speaker 1: gets out there, um, the lack of research, the lack
Speaker 1: of study, the lack of understanding and context and so forth.
Speaker 1: So there's and then obviously the immediate feedback that you
Speaker 1: get from people who and the bombing, you know, the
Speaker 1: trolling and so forth that takes place media to just
Speaker 1: kind of discredit and take people down rabbit holes away
Speaker 1: from the core message. Someone I did a post this
Speaker 1: the other day about a mere luck I took nine seconds,
Speaker 1: and someone said, well, it's actually a six second because
Speaker 1: there was a wait for three of them, like Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: right exactly, yeah, yeah, the way people parts details to
Speaker 1: de legitimize, like very real thing. Oh, we used humor
Speaker 1: also in the movement. If your mama ever told you
Speaker 1: not to drink coffee because it would turn you black,
Speaker 1: you know, back and back in the days before black
Speaker 1: was beautiful, I am living proof that it ain't. So
Speaker 1: mama probably just wanted all that coffee for her so self. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she could have probably used some of that sugar they
Speaker 1: dumped on you though, So you know, sweeten up a
Speaker 1: little bit. But I think you started to get into
Speaker 1: my next question. Looky, it's about um. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: spoken really to two parts of it. I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in the way you sort of describe the long history
Speaker 1: of the arts in various movements, highlighting the way that
Speaker 1: even the abolitionist movement for the abolition of slavery, you know,
Speaker 1: literature and songs were so critical. Um. And so I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, sticking to this theme of intergenerational struggle, UM,
Speaker 1: what parts do you see yourself carrying forward from previous
Speaker 1: movements having been very um, I guess in meshed in
Speaker 1: its history growing up with Joan and what sorts of
Speaker 1: new things. I mean, you mentioned TikTok already, but what
Speaker 1: are some of the differences that you try to lean
Speaker 1: into in your modern day work. Um, there's so much differences.
Speaker 1: For me, it's, um, you know, I've I've been asked
Speaker 1: repeatedly what I have set the lunch counter, And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would have, but I don't
Speaker 1: have to because my mother already did this kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: those different there's like things like that, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and it really it's we all have a role
Speaker 1: to play. Not everyone could set the lunch counters. Not
Speaker 1: everyone this position. Uh, there was threats for on families,
Speaker 1: you know, they could lose their tuition all these different jobs,
Speaker 1: or houses be bombed and whatever else. Um. And and
Speaker 1: some people you know this, they just weren't at that
Speaker 1: place at that time, you know. And and so they
Speaker 1: found other ways to contribute. Um. So I use the
Speaker 1: gifts that I've been given to you move that work forward,
Speaker 1: move that message forward, and to highlight the history. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day. Um, whether we're gonna go
Speaker 1: back to abolitionists or civil rights movement or any sort
Speaker 1: of movement, it really comes down to that one on
Speaker 1: one opportunity of seeing those individuals, seeing those people sitting
Speaker 1: at the lunch counter, that you have to actually confront it.
Speaker 1: It's right there in front of you that you just
Speaker 1: can't replicate in a film or or you know, the
Speaker 1: photograph or anything yeah yeah, or rap song. It just
Speaker 1: becomes those The art becomes a way to motivate people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to inspire, to inform, But really it's to
Speaker 1: do all that to get you down to those lunch counters,
Speaker 1: on the buses or in the streets. Carrying the signs
Speaker 1: and putting forth that message to move things forward and
Speaker 1: designing a petition online is not you know, really bringing
Speaker 1: about a big change. It's just making you feel good.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah. I had post a TikTok earlier about
Speaker 1: getting off Twitter and like getting in the streets, whether
Speaker 1: that's knocking on your neighbor's doors or marching or go
Speaker 1: into city hall, whatever you gotta do. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the idea of everyone having their role to play.
Speaker 1: That kind of makes me rethink my question and a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we need to do are the same,
Speaker 1: and that like certain people put their bodies online, certain
Speaker 1: people's are documenting it. It's really about folks finding the
Speaker 1: intersection of their passion and what the gifts they're given
Speaker 1: with the tools that are available at the time. So
Speaker 1: now we do have TikTok and Instagram to like make
Speaker 1: sure those images of protests are circulated. Um, so it's
Speaker 1: the same kind of project, just new tools. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and and you know, I mean we're in a
Speaker 1: capital society. Money makes the world turn. I mean you
Speaker 1: had people, um, beyond the Harry Belafontes of the world.
Speaker 1: You had actually white women whose husbands were probably either
Speaker 1: in the clan or in the White Citizens Council and
Speaker 1: Jackson who were giving money to the Mays, to the
Speaker 1: help Right to give back to Medgarrever's office. They knew
Speaker 1: they couldn't give it directly, so they would sneak it in.
Speaker 1: And this is this is known. There was a gentleman's
Speaker 1: great story. He um, his gift was robbing jewelry stores. Hey, whatever,
Speaker 1: that's what you got. He would time out the train
Speaker 1: and how long it would take the police to get
Speaker 1: to the jewelry store, rob the store, hopped the train,
Speaker 1: go the next town, sell the goods to rent some repeat,
Speaker 1: and that money went back to the act. Now they
Speaker 1: had no idea where it was coming from. They did,
Speaker 1: they might be like, yeah, that's amazing, but yeah, I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: you use the gifts you've been given the stores and
Speaker 1: selling the goods for money. But obviously, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: use being white to the advantage of the movement. Could
Speaker 1: um blend into the crowd and be an observer of
Speaker 1: what was happening. I could At Glen Echo Amusement Park
Speaker 1: just over in Maryland, I could go in and buy tickets.
Speaker 1: And I heard it buy me to have a ticket
Speaker 1: for each ride you got on, ticket in hand, and
Speaker 1: I could go back out and hand him out from
Speaker 1: the Howard students who popped on the Merry Go Round
Speaker 1: ticket in hand and got arrested. What were the passes
Speaker 1: that you gave me when I was a two blue student.
Speaker 1: I went up to the state legislature and got a
Speaker 1: handful of passes to you know, sit in the galleries
Speaker 1: and watch the legislature debate things. Went back, gave those
Speaker 1: to Mega and he handed him out to the most
Speaker 1: prominent black ministers he could find, and they got arrested.
Speaker 1: Gallery pass in hand, m hm. And by the next
Speaker 1: day the law had changed you had to personally get
Speaker 1: your pass from your representatives, but there would a number
Speaker 1: of times just being white could be used to the
Speaker 1: advantage of the movement. So you got to use what
Speaker 1: you got. Yeah. Yeah, And I think people are still
Speaker 1: waking up to that today of thinking about how I
Speaker 1: mean broadly people say use your privilege, etcetera. But the
Speaker 1: specific ways for us, like, yeah, use use your whiteness
Speaker 1: to like get in those spaces where others can um
Speaker 1: and things like that I'm doing. I had one question
Speaker 1: for you, So we talked a little bit about what
Speaker 1: Loki takes from movements before. But I was wondering if
Speaker 1: there's anything that young movement makers are doing today that
Speaker 1: you find interesting or inspiring. Well, I find the complete
Speaker 1: diversity of the crowds and the marches, to say nothing
Speaker 1: of the size of the crowds and the marches. But
Speaker 1: I think you've got a much you know, like a
Speaker 1: no majority massive demonstration. Um, we didn't have that. We
Speaker 1: had just a handful of Wie or Hispanic or Asian
Speaker 1: folks in our activities and marches. Um, well, we didn't
Speaker 1: have so many marches because you all get arrested. Um
Speaker 1: before we got down the block before and the police
Speaker 1: are even joining the marchers and protesters with them, mailing
Speaker 1: to pray with them, if just for those my mind. Um,
Speaker 1: that makes me think as well about talking about like
Speaker 1: then and now that and now so at the time,
Speaker 1: from my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jones,
Speaker 1: it seemed like a lot of folks that took part
Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement were somewhat demonized. I saw
Speaker 1: recently a comic from I think the Birmingham News where
Speaker 1: they were painting MLK as UM starting riots even though
Speaker 1: non violence was the core of the movement. And then
Speaker 1: yet today the same people that are disrupting modern movements
Speaker 1: sending the National Garden when folks are marching and tear
Speaker 1: gassing folks are heralding um civil rights movement leaders at
Speaker 1: the same time. And so I was wondering what you
Speaker 1: both make of trends like that where you see a
Speaker 1: sort of contradiction in the way folks um treat both
Speaker 1: historic and modern civil rights movements. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: immediately comes to mind as someone like Ted Cruise, who
Speaker 1: in one breath will praise quote doctor King and his
Speaker 1: convenie and then say that appointing a you know, even
Speaker 1: the idea of appointing a black woman is an affront
Speaker 1: to an insult to black women, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and inequality, which it was just absurd to begin with,
Speaker 1: like he cares um. But yeah, you know Dr King
Speaker 1: when he when he was killed, study percent of white
Speaker 1: America you know, didn't like him, if you holes and stuff.
Speaker 1: But now you know, it's it's weaponizing Dr King to
Speaker 1: push forward. Uh you know these agendas of like you know,
Speaker 1: anti CRT, which of course not taught taught in school
Speaker 1: is not even a Yeah, it's a whole thing to
Speaker 1: roll back, you know, the narrative that they feel uncomfortable with.
Speaker 1: Um because then and and quite frankly don't even understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a fascinating thing. Um do you do
Speaker 1: you even contemplate? But uh, that's that's where it's so
Speaker 1: vital for the rest of us to be informed. And
Speaker 1: and I when I have people who quote Dr King
Speaker 1: like that, like, hey, yes, that's wonderful. What about the
Speaker 1: rest of his speech? Yeah, do you know any words
Speaker 1: after the first seven Well do you know the words
Speaker 1: that you said before that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, everything before
Speaker 1: that was about reparations I mean, let's talk about that
Speaker 1: for a moment. It's talking about that. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: you know, a federal job guarantee. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: evils of capitalism and militarism. Nobody wants to get into that.
Speaker 1: But John, from your perspective, having lived through that and
Speaker 1: seeing the way that people treat it today, what is
Speaker 1: that like for you? Um? Aside from comical, Um, they
Speaker 1: want to idealize of what we did and we were
Speaker 1: not perfectly made mistakes. Um, there are things we could
Speaker 1: have done better. Um, all that, But um, they want
Speaker 1: to use us as you know that we did it
Speaker 1: all and they don't need to do anything, and they
Speaker 1: need to look deeper. I mean, like I said, we
Speaker 1: took care of the laws for segregation, but there is
Speaker 1: so much more the racism behind, and then the forms
Speaker 1: that the racism takes. Um. Housing, Yeah, whose neighborhood does
Speaker 1: the interstate care up? Where does the school money go?
Speaker 1: It's not you know that some schools get hand me
Speaker 1: downs anymore like it used to be. But certainly, um,
Speaker 1: they say, you know, I'm in Arlington, and they say
Speaker 1: South Arlington gets the least and North Arlington gets the
Speaker 1: most because the rich folks lived there in the power base.
Speaker 1: But um, it doesn't need to be that way. Discrimination
Speaker 1: against people because of their first language, um, their ethnic origins,
Speaker 1: their religion, all that stuff. I was impressed a few
Speaker 1: years ago when the anti Muslim thing got going that
Speaker 1: college kids, girls and some places, we're walking around with
Speaker 1: their classmates wearing his jobs, just like the classmates were.
Speaker 1: But there are lots of ways to show solidarity. There's
Speaker 1: lots more forms of discrimination that we now recognize. And
Speaker 1: part of that comes to mind as well, is how
Speaker 1: we you know, so part of it is like Dr
Speaker 1: King was a comedy, right, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like the Washington football team will now be hailed
Speaker 1: to their and I didn't think about that. I love
Speaker 1: that it's funny, but um, you know, so so those sames,
Speaker 1: those same terms are thrown around. They don't even know
Speaker 1: what they mean. But um, I think what's really fascinating
Speaker 1: is there's part of this element of the civil rights
Speaker 1: movements kind of safe to talk about. Well you don't
Speaker 1: talk about why it happened, of course, but there's this,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of glorification if you will. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the freedom writers and the sit ins and all this,
Speaker 1: you know, John Lewis and the other impettish Ridge and
Speaker 1: Dr King. I had a dream all that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff because it means hey problem solved. And I actually
Speaker 1: did a TikTok video on this recently, just talking about
Speaker 1: you know what scares um white America about teaching history
Speaker 1: is that it's there. It's it's their own history. Because
Speaker 1: my age, when I was in elementary school, Dr King
Speaker 1: had only been killed, you know, sixteen years earlier. So
Speaker 1: World War Two had only ended about forty years earlier.
Speaker 1: So um, if you if you take today and roll
Speaker 1: back that same time period forty years ago, forty years ago, Uh,
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Police Department was bombing their own city and
Speaker 1: people know about that stuff. Off in your math. World
Speaker 1: War Two ended, and you were in elementary school and
Speaker 1: the late mentally seventies, right, I wasn't how much schooling
Speaker 1: to eighties? Mom? I was ten years old, nineteen eight. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that's store up forty years okay, mother. Nonetheless, world
Speaker 1: War two was raging forty years earlier. Yeah, that's let's safe.
Speaker 1: The message your worst subject and you're trying to school
Speaker 1: me on a mother, But if you go back one
Speaker 1: years ago, Rodney King was beaten. Four years ago, you know,
Speaker 1: James Bird was was lynched Jasper, Texas, right dragged behind
Speaker 1: a pickup truck, chained by his feet till his body
Speaker 1: fell apart. Ten years ago, is Trayvon. Yeah, these were
Speaker 1: the things that that's the type same type of stuff
Speaker 1: they would have been teaching us back then. If they
Speaker 1: were even going to teach that. They weren't going to
Speaker 1: teach it. But so if you take a look at
Speaker 1: that time frame, that's what really scares him because they
Speaker 1: were alive during that. They understand that, and they it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: that happened on our watch and did yeah, And and
Speaker 1: the history of racism is so it's taught as black
Speaker 1: history when it's really white history, and that it's a
Speaker 1: lot of white people as well, folks like Joan that
Speaker 1: were out there marching with people. It was like a
Speaker 1: shared struggle for some folks, but is just straight out
Speaker 1: in our US history, it's a sewers history. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was very I was very interested in something you said, Joan,
Speaker 1: about how you all made mistakes. There's things that you
Speaker 1: would have done differently, and that's certainly not a piece
Speaker 1: of history that they teach people in the in the
Speaker 1: way that they idealize the struggle at the time we
Speaker 1: levon Brown. Mom talks about that my jog memory a
Speaker 1: little bit. But um, when there was that schism in Snick,
Speaker 1: the Snake leadership between John, Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: the thing that I I kind of focus on at
Speaker 1: times about the civil rights movement is we kind of
Speaker 1: forget you know, we we we focus on these key
Speaker 1: singular moments, the Greensboro sit in and the freedom rise
Speaker 1: into setness. Um, but you know, and assume that one
Speaker 1: thing took care of everything, and that you know, we
Speaker 1: can condense these things down to just a couple of
Speaker 1: days here and there and hoof everything. Saw. I mean,
Speaker 1: Greensboro did not fix Jackson. Greensboro fixed Greensboro Jackson Jackson
Speaker 1: right right. We all need to work within the space
Speaker 1: where we live, as my mom would say. And that's
Speaker 1: the hippies say, you know, bloom where you're planted right right. Um,
Speaker 1: we tell kids, don't try to change the world, change
Speaker 1: your world, whatever that might be. And what for my
Speaker 1: mom it was the South right want I didn't care
Speaker 1: about them. Let them fix their own stuff. They got
Speaker 1: their own different problems that they'll tackle. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Malcolm X was working on that, right, so right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I really appreciate you raising that because I
Speaker 1: think I speak to like middle schools, high schools all
Speaker 1: the time, and I've been thinking a lot about how this,
Speaker 1: like civil rights history is kind of painted for a
Speaker 1: lot of kids like something that happened somewhere else as
Speaker 1: part of the way where they're trying to discourage people
Speaker 1: from like carrying those struggles forward. It's like, oh, they
Speaker 1: were marching, Yeah, they're marching on Washington, They're marching down
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. Was like, no, they were marching in Athens, Georgia,
Speaker 1: Like we had our own movement here. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know about because at the university, Wait,
Speaker 1: you when integrating. Yeah, yes, I do recall that they
Speaker 1: don't teach you about that. That inspired me to, um
Speaker 1: go to two Galoup that watching that so close to
Speaker 1: where my family was from Nicholson, that if integration was real,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, it's got to be a two way street.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should applied to a colored school, not being
Speaker 1: put like term then and um I talked it over
Speaker 1: with my friends. You know, the leadership of Snick and
Speaker 1: they thought it was a good idea. And somebody said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do what you may as well go
Speaker 1: to Mississippi. Those students haven't done anything yet, meaning demonstrations,
Speaker 1: maybe you can help them. And so I applied, and
Speaker 1: two of the lutives. It was the only nationally accredited
Speaker 1: school that colored students could go to. Sorry about that phone,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to remut it. It's all that
Speaker 1: I got a baby yodel in the background, we got phones,
Speaker 1: It's all. It's an orchestract. And I was accepted in
Speaker 1: two Glue, even though my high school up here refused,
Speaker 1: very pointedly, without spelling it out, to send my transcripts. Um.
Speaker 1: But they still accepted me and said, oh well we'll
Speaker 1: take you on your Duke University transcripts and go on
Speaker 1: there for one year, reported company when I wanted to
Speaker 1: go back to school, and it was right after the riots.
Speaker 1: And that is such an interesting idea that I don't
Speaker 1: think people and brave enough that like integration does have
Speaker 1: to be a two way stream. Um, it's not just
Speaker 1: about like advancing, you know, getting people of color and
Speaker 1: positions of power and into these white spaces. It's also
Speaker 1: like I got this one friend that's like, why dude
Speaker 1: who like shows up at like all of these like
Speaker 1: all black events, cetera. Does it just happened to be
Speaker 1: in black communities. But he's out there doing the work
Speaker 1: of meeting people, of helping people, of talking to folks. Um.
Speaker 1: But so many people are scared to do that because
Speaker 1: there is helping green racism. Like even if you try
Speaker 1: to be an anti racism, it's like, well if I
Speaker 1: show up, like people will laugh at me or I won't,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to understand, etcetera. But that's
Speaker 1: a really important thing for us to remember as well.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of different ways to make a difference.
Speaker 1: I mean I was sitting in and all that. Then
Speaker 1: I had a family and that really I had to
Speaker 1: take care of the kids. But at their elementary school
Speaker 1: I made a difference. Um, I particularly one of and
Speaker 1: a number of different ways. But the music teacher who
Speaker 1: lived a couple of blocks so I may wanted to
Speaker 1: a good song to teach for I think it was,
Speaker 1: you know, Black History Month, and I said, we'll lift
Speaker 1: every voice and sing. He had not a blue but
Speaker 1: she looked it up. She wanted to teach it to something,
Speaker 1: to teach to the chorus to sing it and um
Speaker 1: our big international dinner. She ended up teaching that song
Speaker 1: to every kid in the school and they sang it
Speaker 1: at the international dinner with the chorus standing on the stage.
Speaker 1: But every kid, you know, singing on probably the first
Speaker 1: I'm you know, not a nine point nine for St.
Speaker 1: Suard's the first formerly all white school in the county,
Speaker 1: if not the state, for all the kids to learn
Speaker 1: lift every voice and sing. But there were a number
Speaker 1: of other things too, But the biggest deal in my book,
Speaker 1: it's not just like study again, like the big event studying,
Speaker 1: you know what happened in Greensburg's also just knowing about
Speaker 1: cultural artifacts from our communities, like taking the time to
Speaker 1: learn a very important song test and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I took care. They had all these white doll baby
Speaker 1: and olders sounds kindergarten class, and it was the girl's
Speaker 1: corner and the boys corner. Well, I took care of
Speaker 1: the doll babies by making a bunch of cloth dolls
Speaker 1: out of different skin tone. Perhaps I had an interchangeable
Speaker 1: clothes and those white plastic doll babies disappeared, and then
Speaker 1: I said, well, now, my son, he's going to be
Speaker 1: upset by you pauling that the girl's corner because he
Speaker 1: likes he wanted an ironing board, small ironing board for Christmas,
Speaker 1: and he's not gonna be happy about you saying that's
Speaker 1: a girl thing. Well it quickly changed to the housekeeping
Speaker 1: corner and the workshop corner. When the school I was working,
Speaker 1: and I would go in with the second grade classes
Speaker 1: every year and read books about segregation, Dr King and
Speaker 1: the American South. I mean, that's why they will play
Speaker 1: picture books to the second graders and alternate those with
Speaker 1: um South Africa part time that Nelson Mandela mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I've had now decades later, adults walk up to me
Speaker 1: and remind me they remember when I taught them all
Speaker 1: that in class. So I think I made a difference
Speaker 1: in my small ways. Oh absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you sharing so much history I didn't know about
Speaker 1: and reframing the history that I knew. But I also
Speaker 1: love to ask you all about what you're working on
Speaker 1: these days. So um, let's start with you. Look, what's
Speaker 1: what are you getting into these days? Oh? Gosh, who
Speaker 1: am I working? On right now. What are you doing
Speaker 1: these days? You know, I've discovered TikTok after a while.
Speaker 1: I've been working on that, sharing a lot of content there, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and yeah, more of my mom's stories, kind
Speaker 1: of stuff you don't hear about from the sol I
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah, and then trying to interject a few
Speaker 1: little things that I have as well. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just we finished shooting a film, a little short documentary, um,
Speaker 1: about a gentleman who every day he goes He's ninety
Speaker 1: two years old and every day he goes the Evan
Speaker 1: Pettish Bridge to pray for the state trooper that beat
Speaker 1: him on bloody Sunday. Um. I'm working on a whole
Speaker 1: diverse the equity inclusion training modules you know, that will
Speaker 1: be a whole online platform, but that that incorporates my
Speaker 1: mom's story and in the various films now that I've
Speaker 1: done and using those as kind of a training tools
Speaker 1: as well. Um, you know, working on an Emmett til film.
Speaker 1: That's been a long process that continues. You know, they
Speaker 1: just got kind of gag with with the COVID and
Speaker 1: so forth. I'm starting to yeah, okay, let's start, let's
Speaker 1: go back and reevaluate that a little more and than another.
Speaker 1: Now working on another season of our Uncomfortable Truth podcast,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna cramped up for that. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: know the usual, the usual, you know the usual. Well
Speaker 1: that's a really exciting and what about you and John?
Speaker 1: What you what I got in the fire these days? Well,
Speaker 1: I can't march anymore because my knees have given out,
Speaker 1: but um, I can run my mouth pretty good. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of public speaking. The Deltas had me
Speaker 1: out to Memphis the alumni chapter, and I was talking
Speaker 1: out there and I just um. I was talking at
Speaker 1: a Hampton Sydney University and um with Loki along with
Speaker 1: me on this and showing video clips in Farmville, Virginia,
Speaker 1: which was crucial to getting the schools integrated in Virginia
Speaker 1: and even went into Brown versus board. I'm moving to
Speaker 1: high school and um, I speak in local elementary schools,
Speaker 1: you know, colleges and anybody that invites me. And if
Speaker 1: I got transportation issues, they got to pay for my transportation.
Speaker 1: Put me up and feed me somewhere, private home, five
Speaker 1: star hotel either way. Yeah, run in my mouth is
Speaker 1: my main thing. Now. I love that I'm going to
Speaker 1: remember that for the rest of my life as long
Speaker 1: as the brain cell still work. Cut me off and
Speaker 1: they don't. Yeah, oh man, Well, um, any closing words
Speaker 1: of hope for our listeners. Y'all have been at it
Speaker 1: for a minute, creating beautiful art and sharing beautiful stories
Speaker 1: to you know, keep this movement alive. But what's one
Speaker 1: last thing you'd like people to know as they as
Speaker 1: we part ways? Um, to give them the do something?
Speaker 1: Get out there? Yeah? I feel that things things do
Speaker 1: get better. People didn't believe slavery went in, but it did,
Speaker 1: and I believe Jim Crow was gonna end, but it did. Um.
Speaker 1: But it ended because you know, like the echo the
Speaker 1: words of FAINTI low hammer. Uh, they were stick and
Speaker 1: tired of being sick and tired. We we we gotta
Speaker 1: keep pressing forward because the other side's not tired. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, how do people keep in touch with your work?
Speaker 1: Find your work? Um? You know, continue to learn from
Speaker 1: you on Obviously you know what I said before. We're
Speaker 1: all we're on TikTok so Loki Malholland is it is
Speaker 1: it a page a channel where they I'm really new
Speaker 1: to TikTok. Also so yeah, I think a page but
Speaker 1: I don't know. But it's fire fire content. Please go
Speaker 1: check it out. Yes, yeah, we know. We're on Instagram
Speaker 1: and Facebook and stuff foundation with Mama's name on it. Yep,
Speaker 1: I was good. So if you go to our website
Speaker 1: www dot the j t M Foundation dot org. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I put the www at the
Speaker 1: beginning of that. That shows how one way I am now.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean so the jt M Foundation dot
Speaker 1: org um, and that's where we have h we have
Speaker 1: scholarship programs there that we're doing. We've got obviously our films.
Speaker 1: People can contribute. Please go check out the jt M
Speaker 1: Foundation dot org to learn more. Follow Loki on TikTok
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Loki Mohammed at Loki Moholland and keep
Speaker 1: up the fight. You know, they've been out here doing
Speaker 1: it for a minute, creating beautiful, our cham peutiful stories.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna make our own new stories, carrying forward
Speaker 1: the fight. But yeah, thank you, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you a yo, we are back. That was Joan
Speaker 1: Maholland and her son Loki. That was quite a robust conversation.
Speaker 1: You'll have there. Yeah. I tried not to get into
Speaker 1: like specific like what was it light to meet megger ever,
Speaker 1: but still kind of like understand more of just like
Speaker 1: what lessons can be drawn from the work that they
Speaker 1: have done. And so I hope that's been helpful to
Speaker 1: everybody listening and thinking about your own role in movements,
Speaker 1: the work that is still left to be done, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I definitely feel like I got a lot of that. No,
Speaker 1: you definitely did. Definitely did. And you'll make sure that
Speaker 1: you'll check out that documentary so you can get a
Speaker 1: more robust picture of her full biography and the things
Speaker 1: that she did well I do. Oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: we gotta throw out a congratulate sations Mariah, our homie,
Speaker 1: the person who you've never heard who spends us the beats.
Speaker 1: Joel brought a new bundle of joy. Dad's dad is
Speaker 1: now Dad's dad times too. Congratulations Joel. He's not going
Speaker 1: to hear this because he's probably like knee deep and
Speaker 1: dirty diverse right now. But who's taken over? I think
Speaker 1: it's Taylor taken over? A Taylor. You know, we know
Speaker 1: you're new to this, Taylor, but we we gotta wrap
Speaker 1: to close this out, So can you can you pick
Speaker 1: through one of those instrumentals of mine and play something? Yeah, wait,
Speaker 1: no reparation to get in and sitting in their bodies
Speaker 1: on the line, get in jail the kit and fund
Speaker 1: dement that. But right at the time they deep but
Speaker 1: not the John no surprised. They's saying the times to
Speaker 1: the best on the right and like they would have
Speaker 1: set up but really they would have set up a
Speaker 1: wouldn't cross and burning like some terrorizing the neighbors of
Speaker 1: what they hoods up. They really shook watching all the
Speaker 1: people out they mobilized, looking back and them Okay, like
Speaker 1: I know that guy, they don't even know to have
Speaker 1: motherfucker's I know you're whack when the revolutions over exploded
Speaker 1: like a nova. I just took a ride to Croker
Speaker 1: and nobody pulled me over. I got the love Song
Speaker 1: site and ain't nobody sober. You know my name dope night.
Speaker 1: My mamma called me toga go and smoke up. It's
Speaker 1: all legal. We all regal all ball. No such things
Speaker 1: as small people, gun sticks, pots and pans were fought evil.
Speaker 1: Now we got plots of land for a zero told
Speaker 1: you not to dreams that it's all in your hand.
Speaker 1: They told you not to lead to the followers. Stand now,
Speaker 1: you can get a good job keeping all of your dreads,
Speaker 1: and we can party without caring. Go and call the fans.
Speaker 1: Everybody dapping on one having a fuss. Came a long
Speaker 1: damn way from the back of the bus, and we
Speaker 1: let in the white folks that we happen to trust,
Speaker 1: and everybody else can come, but as black as a fuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: waiting a reparation, Oh knife, Frank, we are waiting on reparations. Peace.
Speaker 1: Listen to Waiting on Reparations on Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast.