Speaker 1: So I just want to say hell yeah to what
Speaker 1: we just listened to. All right, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it is about to get even better. So please welcome
Speaker 1: to the stage again, Propaganda and Dr Natalie Hopkinson, Well,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I just saw y'all a second ago. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, have a seat, doctor. Um. When
Speaker 1: my wife got through her her PhD, I was she
Speaker 1: was so exhausted and she was like, any want to
Speaker 1: go to ceremony. I was like, if you're not going,
Speaker 1: I'm going. Because then and from that point on, I
Speaker 1: was like, if I meet anybody that has a doctor
Speaker 1: in front of their name, I will After going through that,
Speaker 1: and I just did it. Like I just watched her.
Speaker 1: I was like, call that person bout a prefix. Thank
Speaker 1: you doctor. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy to be here in Asheville. Hello everyone him. So,
Speaker 1: introduce yourself a little bit of your work and uh,
Speaker 1: we'll get into some questions for you. Sure. So, my
Speaker 1: name is Natalie Hopkinson. I'm an associate professor in the
Speaker 1: Department of Communication, Culture and Media Studies at Howard University. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm also a thank you any Howard people here familiar
Speaker 1: with Howard yeah, and uh. I Most recently, I was
Speaker 1: a co founder of a movement called Don't mut d
Speaker 1: C around Go Go Music, preserving Go Go music and
Speaker 1: culture and the life and people of the Chocolate City.
Speaker 1: Let's go. Yeah. Any y'all been through DC before, you know,
Speaker 1: you got me, got any d m V sny P
Speaker 1: GCS anybody. So uh, if you're familiar with me, you
Speaker 1: know I believe you cut me open. I believe the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean of Los Angeles. Boy. But my mother and
Speaker 1: I was saving this story for the States. But my
Speaker 1: mother is five generations Chocolate City, Like, so we go
Speaker 1: my mom's life and everybody's there. Everybody's born there, they
Speaker 1: buried there. You know. I was naming some like four
Speaker 1: League Cemetery on Bladesburg Row. That's where my whole family
Speaker 1: is at. You know what I'm saying. Um, and I
Speaker 1: spent every other summer in d C with Grandma and
Speaker 1: all nine of my mom's siblings, you know, bouncing around
Speaker 1: Capital Heights, everything which is bounced around the city. So
Speaker 1: I I have a deep love for anything d C
Speaker 1: um and including Go Go music. But here's my story.
Speaker 1: So my cousin, one of the I'm at the tail
Speaker 1: end of my cousins. You know, there's like two under me,
Speaker 1: there's a million of them above us, right, because she
Speaker 1: had nine siblings. Right. So he would bring these tapes
Speaker 1: back to CALLI, these these gogo it tapes, and I
Speaker 1: would be like what is this? Like, I just I
Speaker 1: didn't let taste. I did not get it. I was like,
Speaker 1: these are bad recordings. You would not understand. Yes, I
Speaker 1: was like this and he was like, no, okay, now
Speaker 1: listen to this he brought. He brought chunk Yard dang
Speaker 1: backyard boys. You know what I'm saying. Was it Chuck
Speaker 1: Brown that brought them all to the city. And I
Speaker 1: was just like I don't I. I was like I
Speaker 1: don't understand. Like I don't understand. Until I was sixteen
Speaker 1: and it was my turn to go to DC and
Speaker 1: we went to a go go I was like, now
Speaker 1: I get it. And that's the whole thing about go
Speaker 1: go music, which is d C. It's a cousin of
Speaker 1: hip hop started in d C the same time that
Speaker 1: hip hop started the seventies. So d C is to
Speaker 1: the Bronx, you know, sort of like parallel um and
Speaker 1: but it's live music. It's about twelve people on stage,
Speaker 1: multi layers of percussion, cow bell, sim bolts, Timbali's conga drums.
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of Afro Latin rhythms. And when
Speaker 1: you hear it on a tape, the tape is really
Speaker 1: just like a memento the experience. Yeah, it does not
Speaker 1: translate at all. The experience is it's a conversation. So
Speaker 1: the music is a call and response between the audience,
Speaker 1: and so the band is actually the audience is part
Speaker 1: of the band, and so unless you're there in that moment,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna understand that. Yeah, it's so beautiful. And
Speaker 1: I grew in such appreciation for that because of like
Speaker 1: you said, like experiencing any thing, understanding what go go
Speaker 1: means to d C. It's a native grown born sound um.
Speaker 1: And then after that I started recognizing it in other
Speaker 1: groups like so so when you the first time I
Speaker 1: heard uh crazy and love yes, like Rich Harrison produced
Speaker 1: that D Yes, that's go And then do you guys
Speaker 1: remember a Marie yea what thing? Just you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? How the timing is Like I was like,
Speaker 1: I think that's going you know what I'm saying? Yes,
Speaker 1: And me being in Cali like nobody knew. I like, why,
Speaker 1: what what are you talking about? And I was like,
Speaker 1: it's it's DC, It's Go Go, you know. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: So I have a very um special moment for for
Speaker 1: Go Go. There was one time again one year becausin
Speaker 1: Jeff took me down. There is a U Street that's
Speaker 1: got yeah so yeah with the one of the it
Speaker 1: was one of the one of the one of the clubs.
Speaker 1: That's a house. That's probably all of them, right, but
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. It was like a three story house.
Speaker 1: The basement was the open mic and bar none maybe
Speaker 1: it's DC Live. It might have been there. DC Live
Speaker 1: was downtown, so it wasn't you Street, but anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: There's a lot of a a lot of places. But it
Speaker 1: was like when it was the second time I experienced
Speaker 1: it and it was an open mic. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I have to Callie Boy underground hip hop battle rapper.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm getting on this, but I
Speaker 1: don't care what y'all. You know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: so I went up there told the dude like, hey,
Speaker 1: look from CALLI you know what I'm saying. I do.
Speaker 1: I do hip hop music. Back there I would love to,
Speaker 1: like if is there any space on the list, And
Speaker 1: it was like yeah, yeah, you know you're talking yeah, bamo,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like you know saying yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we we got a little time at the end,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, We'll get you there. So
Speaker 1: she did the full and then um so then towards
Speaker 1: the end he was like, oh yeah, now we gotta
Speaker 1: care CALLI. So like I came in there and I'm like,
Speaker 1: now my nerves is going and I'm not used to
Speaker 1: wrapping over a band so so much like sound, I'm
Speaker 1: used to wrapping over horrible microphones, so like I have
Speaker 1: to know how to project. So I kind of knew
Speaker 1: how to project because I'm used to rapping on like
Speaker 1: karaoke machines. So I was like, I know how to
Speaker 1: do this, but like that, but I did it. It
Speaker 1: was like, oh, pat myself on the back slated slay
Speaker 1: that mug became friends ever since. I'm like, I'm still
Speaker 1: tapped in with those guys, like ever since. It was
Speaker 1: just one of those but it was one of those
Speaker 1: like Yo, I just wish everybody could travel and experience
Speaker 1: this because I was like I don't know how to
Speaker 1: tell anyone back home what that's like. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a very Chocolate city experience. You know. It comes
Speaker 1: out of the segregated history of DC, segregated school systems, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and it's as horrible as segregation is,
Speaker 1: it did allow a space to protect these traditions that
Speaker 1: really go back to West Africa, you know, our roots.
Speaker 1: So I started off writing about gog I'm not a
Speaker 1: DC native. I came to Howard um in the nineties
Speaker 1: and I was an arts writer at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Then I went to do my dissertation. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do my PhD at the University of Maryland, and
Speaker 1: I did it on Go Go music. And so that's
Speaker 1: part of what I did was sort of really looking
Speaker 1: at these roots. And it's so go go. It is
Speaker 1: not just also the music. It's fashion, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the sound companies, it's uh people who sell the tapes.
Speaker 1: It's a whole multi million our industry in d C.
Speaker 1: And um, you know. As DC has gentrified, it's one
Speaker 1: of the most intensely gentrified spaces in the country. Uh
Speaker 1: go Go has been under attack through gentrification, but it
Speaker 1: also was attacked during the murder capital years of d C,
Speaker 1: when it really got blamed for it, got scapegoaded for
Speaker 1: all the murders that took place. Which I always say
Speaker 1: that the you know, the conquer players were innocent. They
Speaker 1: were totally innocent. They just happened to be there once
Speaker 1: uping went down, which a lot of things were going
Speaker 1: down when you have an epidemic of drug addiction and
Speaker 1: gun violence, like things go down, and somehow this beautiful
Speaker 1: music um got blamed for that. And so in the
Speaker 1: last three years with the Don't U d C movement,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had an amazing turnaround as far as people,
Speaker 1: more people coming to the realization that you did, which
Speaker 1: is that, Okay, maybe I don't understand this, but maybe
Speaker 1: this is something that has value. Man, man makes no
Speaker 1: noise for that man that don't ut DC things so dope.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of kinds ship to like that
Speaker 1: in gangster rap, you know what I'm saying, Like the
Speaker 1: music coming out of the West Coast to you know
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of times for you know,
Speaker 1: the the inner mixing of like like you said, like
Speaker 1: this can you know guy playing the can guys He's
Speaker 1: like I just happened to be from this project, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Like, so, I'm like, I'm just
Speaker 1: from South Central, Like you know what I'm saying, I'm
Speaker 1: running from the same dudes you're running from, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So, and and I chose and a
Speaker 1: lot of times, especially a lot of like the gangster rappers,
Speaker 1: like a lot of them chose doing music to get
Speaker 1: away from the violence. You know what I'm saying. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is who we are, is where we're from, it
Speaker 1: is what it is. I'm not scared, but I'm doing
Speaker 1: this to avoid that, you know, and even to be
Speaker 1: successful in because if you think about, like at least
Speaker 1: how California's played out, and I've learned that it's a
Speaker 1: little similar to DC. It's like the way that our
Speaker 1: sections are. If you want to be a successful artist,
Speaker 1: you can't only do shows in the hoods you're good
Speaker 1: and like, you gotta you gotta be able to play
Speaker 1: in areas that have like rival here said, which means
Speaker 1: that means that I have to learn how to like
Speaker 1: navigate outside of you know what I'm saying. So you
Speaker 1: pick up a lot of skills being able to be
Speaker 1: like first of all, knowing the grid, you know, and
Speaker 1: where you are when there's no maps for it, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of knowing where you are and then knowing, Okay,
Speaker 1: who do I check in with? Who do I tapped
Speaker 1: in with? Who we make sure is this and how
Speaker 1: is this? What do you need for me to make
Speaker 1: sure everything's okay with this? Okay? Because I really just
Speaker 1: want to do this music. It was it similar or
Speaker 1: there to absolutely absolutely, and so you know, and the
Speaker 1: other thing that with the Go goes were also really
Speaker 1: a place to mediate. You know, this is a place
Speaker 1: where everybody is celebrating, a lot of people from different
Speaker 1: communities are coming together. They're also a place to sort
Speaker 1: of heal from a lot of the trauma that's going on.
Speaker 1: You know again d C Murder Capital Days uh d
Speaker 1: C was leading the nation and gun violence and all
Speaker 1: these other things that we're going out which were because
Speaker 1: of the violence over the drug drug trade, people competing
Speaker 1: over profits and there were a lot of people who
Speaker 1: lost their lives. And much like New Orleans, you know,
Speaker 1: the second line and sort of like the brass band culture,
Speaker 1: the go go is that space where you can heal,
Speaker 1: you know, where you can mourn where you could remember
Speaker 1: your friends, where you could be recognized. You go take
Speaker 1: your picture in the you know the spot, and you
Speaker 1: know a lot of times those are the records of
Speaker 1: people's lives that have been lost. So it's a really
Speaker 1: special space. That's beautiful. That's so beautiful, and it's and
Speaker 1: the more you more you talk about it, the more
Speaker 1: I feel like it can be. Like the principles of
Speaker 1: it is like, yeah, this is like any hood, USA,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like we have for California,
Speaker 1: we have an area in the Crunchhaw district called the
Speaker 1: murt Park that like was like for some reason, it's
Speaker 1: in between like a trade cribs and rolling sixty cribs
Speaker 1: like Nipsey Hustle and him like this is it's in
Speaker 1: the center, you know what I'm saying. But they do
Speaker 1: an African drump circle every Sunday, Like it's like this
Speaker 1: is It's one of the most peaceful of my whole life.
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything ever. It's along the cruising
Speaker 1: boys in the hood, the Crenshaw Cruising Crenshaw that's on
Speaker 1: this that street, you know, But it's just the I
Speaker 1: remember my father bringing me on Sundays to the flea market,
Speaker 1: like as a child Lamart Park, you know. And then Saturdays,
Speaker 1: I bring my my my little nephews, I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I'm a girl dad, so that my daughters aren't interested,
Speaker 1: but I bring like my nephews with me and we
Speaker 1: just kicking on Cranshaw and it's just but that space.
Speaker 1: We just knew how the space was sacred, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a sacred space. Um. It's a place for art,
Speaker 1: communication community. Um. And you know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: questions that my work has been asking the last couple
Speaker 1: of years is like, well, where are the arts grants
Speaker 1: for those drummers? Okay, talk you talk, because where are
Speaker 1: you know? You we recognize opera in ballet as great
Speaker 1: American art forms, but you know their European art forms,
Speaker 1: and there are there are many other continents. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure why, well I know why. But they all
Speaker 1: don't have to These art forms don't all have to
Speaker 1: originate in Europe to be valuable. Some of them came
Speaker 1: right here on American soil, things like hip hop, things
Speaker 1: like go go music. But our public policy structures are
Speaker 1: not built to include them. And so that's a lot
Speaker 1: of the work that I've been doing the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, is really trying to really make these arguments
Speaker 1: and to try to help people understand that this is
Speaker 1: American art and it deserves the respect and the financial support.
Speaker 1: It deserves the space we make every American city, major
Speaker 1: city makes room for sports. They will put their money
Speaker 1: into these stadiums. They will give tax subsidies to private
Speaker 1: people who are making money off of it. Because we
Speaker 1: appreciate that this is a special space. This is not
Speaker 1: to not sports, right, This is a special space where
Speaker 1: people come together as and this is something that our
Speaker 1: society values. And so we have to to get to
Speaker 1: the hood politics part. We have to be able that
Speaker 1: has to also extend to the drummers and the drums. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's like pay us too. Yes, this is perfect. This
Speaker 1: gets to perfect segue. You know what you're doing, what
Speaker 1: I'll tell you right. So, my my podcast I Do
Speaker 1: is called her Politics Will Problem, And what the podcast
Speaker 1: is essentially like in a lot of ways, like The Doctor,
Speaker 1: here's an embodiment of this. It's just this idea that
Speaker 1: like oftentimes we feel if we don't have like formal
Speaker 1: or like academy education, that we kind of don't know
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, and what I found was that's
Speaker 1: just not the case right some of when in getting
Speaker 1: my formal education, I realized a lot of the ways
Speaker 1: that I made sense of history, politics, foreign policy, all
Speaker 1: those things were really just lessons I learned growing up
Speaker 1: with gangsters, you know what I'm saying, and just learning
Speaker 1: how to like navigate the city. Like you know. I again,
Speaker 1: I'm just from South Central. I never gang bang the
Speaker 1: day in my life, but I knew exactly where they were,
Speaker 1: what they're doing, how they move, what offending them because
Speaker 1: I needed I needed to know to survive, like I
Speaker 1: have to know how y'all work right and in the
Speaker 1: same way like I'm I've never ran for office, not
Speaker 1: a politician, neither of you. But for you to survive
Speaker 1: and thrive, you better know how they work right. You
Speaker 1: have to know how this stuff and what my encouragement
Speaker 1: to you is, like you probably already do this is
Speaker 1: nobody pointed at it. You understand what I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: think right now, you know, if we were taking the
Speaker 1: conflict in Ukraine, that's not complicated. You get it. You
Speaker 1: know you you've had you've had to deal with a bully,
Speaker 1: you know, saying, you know what the deal and feel
Speaker 1: like to deal with a bully. You you know what
Speaker 1: they feel like if you're about to get jumped, Like,
Speaker 1: let me be real with y'all, let me show you,
Speaker 1: hi positive you're about to get jumped. You know, somebody's
Speaker 1: like surrounding you. There's three rules. Three rules is don't
Speaker 1: let nobody get behind you, right Number one? Number two,
Speaker 1: I need to go psycho on one of y'all, right,
Speaker 1: because if I go psycho on one of y'all, the
Speaker 1: rest of you might think twice right, And if I
Speaker 1: could just hold on long enough, y'all might gas out right.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, if that's Crane right, Like, okay, you
Speaker 1: don't surround him. You didn't surround it our nation, all right,
Speaker 1: We just gotta hold out, you have we have to
Speaker 1: show them that we got hard right and and and
Speaker 1: ain't nobody jumping in if you notice, ain't nobody helping right,
Speaker 1: everybody's standing outside like I'll throw you a batter two
Speaker 1: you feel me? But Yo, this is your fight, bro,
Speaker 1: Like you gonna have to hand over and you Crane like, Yo,
Speaker 1: y'all gonna jump in. It's like, no, we because we
Speaker 1: don't want to smoke with Russia also, so both the
Speaker 1: point is you already understand this stuff, right, and it's
Speaker 1: just using what you already knew to understand what's happening
Speaker 1: right now, and then this is then and then and
Speaker 1: in your role in again building a better world. So
Speaker 1: you're already abodying this. I want to ask you a
Speaker 1: specific question around that idea, Like, so you have your
Speaker 1: your school training and what you knew about your like
Speaker 1: formal training, and how to turn that into things that
Speaker 1: affect the community around us. What I would argue is,
Speaker 1: like that's real power. There's a thing with politicians called astroturfing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever heard this, but it's
Speaker 1: this idea of like, if you're about to do this rally,
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of hit hit the craigslist, you know,
Speaker 1: hit the d M. You start saying, y'all, here's fifty bucks,
Speaker 1: pull up out here, what draw some signs for you?
Speaker 1: You pull up so they pay people to come out
Speaker 1: for the for the for the rally to look big, right,
Speaker 1: That's called astroturfing. But I know, dudes, right now, and
Speaker 1: I bet you you since you're so plugged into the community,
Speaker 1: you can send out three texts and be like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're pulling up at this part y'all. Y'all pull up
Speaker 1: hunted people on the street. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Hounty people outside. You're like, Hey, we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: barbecue at the Carter Park in the whole city. Come out.
Speaker 1: That's real political power. Politicians pay for that. So what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is like somebody like yourself. Ultimately, my hope
Speaker 1: for this show is to onboard people like us into policy.
Speaker 1: You understand what I'm saying, So that now we at
Speaker 1: gotta hate our politicians if it's a real one like this. Well,
Speaker 1: and I want to say exactly what you just described
Speaker 1: is really what the don't d C movement came about.
Speaker 1: So there was an issue where there was somebody who
Speaker 1: was playing music on a corner for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: playing go go music. The neighborhood was gentrified. Gentrifiers came
Speaker 1: in demanded the music be shut off. Everybody rolled up.
Speaker 1: Everyone there was not I mean, you had people who
Speaker 1: came on the corner of fourteenth in New Street to
Speaker 1: watch Backyard band perform. So like the go go bands
Speaker 1: have that type of Natalie Hopkinson not so much right,
Speaker 1: but the go go, the go go bads. If you
Speaker 1: say Big g is gonna be at the quarter four,
Speaker 1: you you gonna have They're coming. And so what we've
Speaker 1: been doing able to do with the don't U d
Speaker 1: C movement, we were able to rally people to come
Speaker 1: to defend that corner and to be able to say, okay,
Speaker 1: every everybody backed off. They're like, okay, never mind, We're
Speaker 1: gonna let him play his music. But then we're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we got other things that we want
Speaker 1: to say. So we talked about how they were going
Speaker 1: to shut down a hospital in Wards seven and eight,
Speaker 1: the blackest, poorest part of the city, separated by a bridge.
Speaker 1: These are genocidal policy decisions. We did a go go
Speaker 1: in the hospital parking lot, and every one of those
Speaker 1: council people they flipped the vote. It was twelve eleven
Speaker 1: one against it. It was the opposite, you know, when
Speaker 1: they finally came to the final vote. We applied it
Speaker 1: to issues like school funding. They were going to take
Speaker 1: away um a new building of his black high school.
Speaker 1: Put that on our list of demands. We talked about
Speaker 1: UM return citizens. There was in a place for people
Speaker 1: who after having served their time in the district, they
Speaker 1: had no place for them to come back to the district.
Speaker 1: And so we did a rally on New York Avenue
Speaker 1: the middle of the work day. We had a thousand
Speaker 1: people come out um to see these bands perform. And
Speaker 1: so that's what I'm saying is the power of these
Speaker 1: So again, Dr Hopkinson does not have that power, but
Speaker 1: I've read. What I do know is that the Go
Speaker 1: Go musicians have the power. And so once you pair
Speaker 1: them with people who are interested in different policy issues,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that we can't do. And so we've been
Speaker 1: on a role for the last um last few years
Speaker 1: and really winning a lot of arguments, including making Go
Speaker 1: Go name the official music of Washington, d C. That
Speaker 1: was a law that was pfial, so they got remember,
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna remember what Go Go is, right, And and
Speaker 1: then now we're in the process of just figuring out
Speaker 1: how we institutionalize this, how do we do this? So
Speaker 1: and I was really like hearing you talk about that
Speaker 1: traditional knowledge. So I tell with my kids so books,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of books. Yeah, I've written a
Speaker 1: few of them, I read a lot of them. It's
Speaker 1: a very efficient way to learn because you can learn,
Speaker 1: You could cross time and space learn about people's experience.
Speaker 1: Wonderfully efficient way to learn. But the other way to
Speaker 1: learn is by sitting down and talking to people, observing
Speaker 1: and having experiences. Those are like two ways that you
Speaker 1: become smart and knowledgeable. And in our community we have
Speaker 1: a lot of talking about in the black community, you
Speaker 1: could just sit with elders. Yes, you know, you could
Speaker 1: sit with people who've been around and so you know,
Speaker 1: some of the work we're doing is around how do
Speaker 1: we make sure that that traditional knowledge gets passed on?
Speaker 1: How do we make these power structures respect the fact
Speaker 1: that there is a thing called traditional knowledge and there's
Speaker 1: a thing called book knowledge and they're not. There shouldn't
Speaker 1: be such a great hierarchy between them. Yeah, you again,
Speaker 1: it makes a noise for that right there. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, give give the doc or flowers. I like,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think about in my own life,
Speaker 1: like if I were to go back home and tell
Speaker 1: my grandma, like when she was around, like you know
Speaker 1: what we learned it, you know, blah blah blah, all
Speaker 1: they said, yeah this and is Grandma would say, they
Speaker 1: don't know what they're talking about. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: what happened, you know. And when I tell you and
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're the same, I would dismiss anything
Speaker 1: anybody else said, you don't. I don't care what the
Speaker 1: books say. When my grandma say they don't know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about, let me tell you, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: immediately believe her. You know what I'm saying. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure it's the same for you. We
Speaker 1: just don't have a name for it. What she's calling
Speaker 1: it is, that's the name of it. It's called traditional knowledge,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's why you know what
Speaker 1: we say, don't cross railroad tracks. It's why you know, hey,
Speaker 1: don't go to that liquor store because it is this
Speaker 1: and is hey when you go to the store, make
Speaker 1: sure you buy this version and not that version. That's
Speaker 1: traditional knowledge. And Grandma is the traditional PhD. She's the
Speaker 1: p o G. She's the one teaching things like even
Speaker 1: the food that we eat, you know, like these are
Speaker 1: the these are our cultural traditions, and that those are
Speaker 1: passed on often by women, you know, sitting around tables,
Speaker 1: and they just get the respect that they deserve. So
Speaker 1: thank you for giving her respect. Oh man, come on,
Speaker 1: get grandma or flowers. It's the thing she already It's
Speaker 1: the crazy part to me. Again, it's like, but we
Speaker 1: we already do it, you know, we just don't name it.
Speaker 1: And I and I appreciate you naming it. And and
Speaker 1: again like once you do name it, now you can
Speaker 1: institutionalize it and give it its flowers. That's great. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think one thing you said, just going back
Speaker 1: to something you said where you were like, I don't
Speaker 1: have the official powers the go go players that do.
Speaker 1: What that translates to me is like, this is what
Speaker 1: she described is what lobbying should be like. Right now,
Speaker 1: we see lobbying as like as a bad word, but
Speaker 1: it's just a bit. It depends on who you're working for,
Speaker 1: Like when you're lobbying, and like if you're working for
Speaker 1: you know, Lex Corp. You know what I'm saying, then yeah,
Speaker 1: you're lobbying is evil, you know what I'm saying. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to bend somebody's will for something that's just
Speaker 1: for a selfish game, and that's evil lobbying. What she
Speaker 1: said was this, Okay, we have an issue. I know
Speaker 1: who got the Jews who got the cloud in the
Speaker 1: in the city. I'm tapped in with them. You're good
Speaker 1: with these people, you feel me, which is something again
Speaker 1: people pay for that to be good with somebody that
Speaker 1: knows how to get people, and say, if you're good
Speaker 1: with them, then do you know what I mean when
Speaker 1: I say you good with them? Am I going too far? Okay? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're good with them, then now you what you do?
Speaker 1: Exactly what you said. You just pair them with the policymaker.
Speaker 1: That's called lobbying, you know. So rather than these big
Speaker 1: lobbying corporations you know what I'm saying, in firms that
Speaker 1: are just hiring kids out of college and just being like, yo,
Speaker 1: this is the project. Like what if we saw a
Speaker 1: world that had more like this, where it's like we're indigenous,
Speaker 1: we're grown from here, We're I'm good in the streets,
Speaker 1: I'm good in the academy, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And I'm good with the council people. And I understand
Speaker 1: how all these things work. And this is again this
Speaker 1: is hood politics. Well, and I swe it was the
Speaker 1: Other thing I will start to add is with um
Speaker 1: when this this businessman who would sell ago tapes in
Speaker 1: addition to selling cell phones. MS. Donald Campbell. When he
Speaker 1: was under attack, the first person who came to his
Speaker 1: defense very publicly was a student at Howard named Julien Broomfield.
Speaker 1: And she created this hashtag don't mu DC and she said,
Speaker 1: you know, what's happening is disgusting. Gentrification is horrible. And
Speaker 1: she said, maybe this won't change anything, but let's when
Speaker 1: we talk about it. Let's talk about this using the
Speaker 1: hashtag don't mut d C. And so I and my
Speaker 1: partner Ronald Molton, who's my he's an activist, so he's
Speaker 1: been in the street activists, um, you know for for years.
Speaker 1: We created a petition on change dot org. We were
Speaker 1: able using this don't mut d C language, we were
Speaker 1: able to get eighty thousand people to sign our petition
Speaker 1: from every state in the Union, in ninety four different
Speaker 1: countries around the world. People rallied on behalf of the
Speaker 1: specific street corners. So, you know, so it's like you
Speaker 1: can use these tools. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: be just tweeting in the void. You know, if you
Speaker 1: sort of pair it with people who are ready with
Speaker 1: plans and need to have a conversation and you know
Speaker 1: the other thing with my um with Ronald Molton, who's
Speaker 1: he's creating the Go Go Museum, cafe and d C. Now,
Speaker 1: which is another thing that's come out of this is
Speaker 1: that um, he's taught me a lot about lobbying. We
Speaker 1: were able to get three million dollars just directly for
Speaker 1: Go Go because we said, look, it's not enough for
Speaker 1: you to just say we're official. We've always been official, right,
Speaker 1: So what what you gotta do is you gotta put
Speaker 1: some investments. And especially when the community was really reeling
Speaker 1: from the COVID pandemic, and so we were able to
Speaker 1: get direct relief to artists, direct relief, direct support for
Speaker 1: Go Go related archiving. And we're just getting started because
Speaker 1: d C is rich and so you know, DC has
Speaker 1: a seventeen point five billion dollar budget. You know, like
Speaker 1: they gave us a couple of crops. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: go back for like really institutionalize in making sure that
Speaker 1: there's never a case that you know, DC Go Go
Speaker 1: music will be forgotten or muted again. Man, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing I learned about one thing I learned about
Speaker 1: government is oh they got the money, they said, like,
Speaker 1: don't let nobody don't let these people lie to you.
Speaker 1: They got it. They got it on them right. One
Speaker 1: thing I've learned, um, and then I'm gonna end with
Speaker 1: this last question, you know. But one thing I've learned
Speaker 1: was like, and I'll be honest with you. I learned
Speaker 1: this from my white friends. Be real with you. It's
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe it's true for you, but it's let
Speaker 1: them tell you no. Like in the sense of this,
Speaker 1: if you don't ask right or just start doing, then
Speaker 1: you never know. Again, remember I talked about it in
Speaker 1: the terraforming thing. There was a lot of ways that
Speaker 1: I had to rethink what's actually possible. The thought would
Speaker 1: have never crossed my mind that asked for three million
Speaker 1: dollars to go into the thing and asked like, Yo, hey,
Speaker 1: y'all got money for arts, we need it, We'll run it,
Speaker 1: like I would never ask. And if you say no,
Speaker 1: then some of my other again, another one of my
Speaker 1: white friends was like, Noah's a starting point. It's just
Speaker 1: like there's there's a way to get to yes. I
Speaker 1: had yeah, and you cannot. I mean the thing is
Speaker 1: is with the art, like it sort of goes back
Speaker 1: to the drummers in the circle, Like if if we've
Speaker 1: gotten it in our minds and the public narrative is
Speaker 1: around art is a certain thing. Art aren't people who
Speaker 1: look like you or look like me? Right, then you
Speaker 1: don't even think like, okay, we're entitled to this money.
Speaker 1: Like I'm like, not only do they need to do
Speaker 1: three million, they gotta do reparations for the last forty
Speaker 1: years that they hadn't had anybody involved in this, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's a whole lot of checks that need to
Speaker 1: be and you know, and we do it in a
Speaker 1: very systematic way. Um, you know, I do. I did charts.
Speaker 1: I did an analysis of arts funding in d C.
Speaker 1: I found that seventy eight percent of the funding went
Speaker 1: to white neighborhoods in d C, where where black people
Speaker 1: are the are the largest ethnic group. Like, how does
Speaker 1: that make? Make that make sense? You know, the math
Speaker 1: wasn't mapping, and they tried to throw us off the
Speaker 1: Arts Commission for that. But then you know, my friends
Speaker 1: in the go go community really came to our rescue.
Speaker 1: They did another alley, you know, and they were like, yeah, don't, don't,
Speaker 1: don't try this with that, and they didn't. So it's
Speaker 1: it's our superpower, you know, our music is our superpower. Wow, man,
Speaker 1: that's actually that's actually a better place to stop. You know,
Speaker 1: our music is our superpower. You You, you have embodied
Speaker 1: what I hope for, what I hope to see in
Speaker 1: the future where somebody who's in you know, born and
Speaker 1: bread from the soil, you know, learned, never left the roots,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, got into a position of access,
Speaker 1: brought people with you, and learned how to leverage and
Speaker 1: even like even deflect some of the Even in this conversation,
Speaker 1: you've deflected some of the like you know, some of
Speaker 1: the flowers and glory and was like, nah, it's a tine,
Speaker 1: Like we come from this and that's and that's again
Speaker 1: that's another thing that I am going to assume this
Speaker 1: of you, like this just comes from growing up in
Speaker 1: a black and brown community. You just yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not only we, it's we. It's always we. You
Speaker 1: want to go fast, go alone, if you want to
Speaker 1: go far, go together, that's the pros. That's how we
Speaker 1: have to do it. Yeah. So when you when you
Speaker 1: don't deny that part of you. I know, for so long,
Speaker 1: when I was getting into the academy, I thought I
Speaker 1: had to shut off all of those lessons I learned
Speaker 1: from there and learn something new and I realized like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is this is actually it's actually better
Speaker 1: to bring this to the table. Yeah. Anyway, doctor, thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Thank you y'all. This was incredible. I'm
Speaker 1: so honored your books outside. Yes, I have two books outside.
Speaker 1: She got two books outside. I got one book outside
Speaker 1: called Terraform. She got two books outside. Again, if you
Speaker 1: want to read Work of Dogs versus Wolf of Work
Speaker 1: of Wolves, you know there it is. Thank you again, appreciate,
Speaker 1: thank you. Do you guys want to take some audience
Speaker 1: questions or you just want to oh yeah, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: We were supposed to open for Q and A. Any
Speaker 1: I mean, do we got any Hey everybody, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in asking some questions right now, I'm glad to
Speaker 1: come around with the microphones. Just put your hand up
Speaker 1: and thanks for bringing the house lights up. Thank you darling. Well, first,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much. This has been
Speaker 1: an incredible inspiration. Um and I just thank the festival
Speaker 1: for doing this and bringing you guys here. And my
Speaker 1: question is I'm working in Ashville with a lot of
Speaker 1: people trying to save trying to make sure that ashvill
Speaker 1: doesn't become Charlotte or Austin, Texas, or Bend, Oregon and
Speaker 1: all these other cities that have just grown really fast
Speaker 1: and lost a lot of affordable housing and a lot
Speaker 1: of culture, a lot of the culture built in culture,
Speaker 1: and UM, it is it's rare. It's it's like to
Speaker 1: know that you did it by music is great. And
Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that I've gotten
Speaker 1: out of this is like the positivity thinking of it.
Speaker 1: As you know, we have to become more inclusive and
Speaker 1: sometimes I get really angry and I expose that in
Speaker 1: my in my writings and in my standing up against
Speaker 1: you know, the powers that be. But um, any any
Speaker 1: words of advice on how to keep that, how to
Speaker 1: build I mean I'm getting this, but any further thing
Speaker 1: that you can offer is great help. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: for the question. Actually, right now as we speak, UM,
Speaker 1: I mentioned the the co author of the Don't U
Speaker 1: d C petition, Ronald Moulton, right now is doing a
Speaker 1: tour of Anacostia that's in d C's It's a black
Speaker 1: neighborhood in d C um where he was able to
Speaker 1: acquire his business UM with the support of the city,
Speaker 1: he was acquire to acquire the property um and that
Speaker 1: also inspired some really innovative legislation in DC that allowed
Speaker 1: legacy uh cultural business owners like him, uh, like a
Speaker 1: bookstore owner, like the several cultural businesses were able to
Speaker 1: get there um to to get ownership. And that's really
Speaker 1: the only way that you can assure that people won't
Speaker 1: get displaced is if they have ownership. And so that's
Speaker 1: one of the I think one of the policy innovations
Speaker 1: that sort of come out of it is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can, just like you give a tax break to
Speaker 1: uh sports stadium, you can give a tax break to
Speaker 1: a mom and pop cultural you know, cultural organization. You know.
Speaker 1: So we've were able to make those arguments, and we
Speaker 1: hope that other people um do the same. All Right,
Speaker 1: we got another question around here. Oh yeah, so I
Speaker 1: actually have more of a common First off, shout out
Speaker 1: the problem man. I've been following you since Humble Best Days,
Speaker 1: So shout out to you man. Uh doc, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here. Appreciate you just coming through.
Speaker 1: My name's best b E S. Thank you all once again,
Speaker 1: and uh just for sharing the light man, just for
Speaker 1: bringing this to everybody's attention. Go go such a strong movement.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a bunch of family in DC
Speaker 1: as well, and just wanted to invite you guys, if
Speaker 1: you guys have time to try and go park. For
Speaker 1: those of you who don't know about Triangle Park, it
Speaker 1: is the last or one of the last remaining black
Speaker 1: cultural artifacts here in Asheville. And so we actually, me
Speaker 1: and my brother next here. Right before we came through,
Speaker 1: we actually just finished having our monthly meeting, just figuring
Speaker 1: out what we were gonna do this summer. For those
Speaker 1: of you who don't know, we kick stuff off at
Speaker 1: the park. We do live jams, DJ sets, band sets,
Speaker 1: set up their play chests, all the stuff that should
Speaker 1: go on, so don't neglect what's already going on right
Speaker 1: here in the city. For those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: right it's good to see you all up here. It's
Speaker 1: up to see that y'all came out to support them
Speaker 1: as we should. Shout out to Jessica for bringing them through,
Speaker 1: but I had to take a minute to shout out
Speaker 1: just folks and Triangle Parks because we're trying to keep
Speaker 1: it alive. And if y'all have time, I would love
Speaker 1: to show you the park just to point out the artifacts.
Speaker 1: I know you're busy, I know y'll here for different reasons,
Speaker 1: but I had to point that out problem. I didn't
Speaker 1: know we aligned so much. Man, Like I said, I've
Speaker 1: been fooling you for a long time. But girl dad
Speaker 1: got a cat for the exact same reason. So I
Speaker 1: felt you completely. I was like, man, if I love
Speaker 1: this little girl, that thing would be somewhere else, man, yo,
Speaker 1: and I got shot out one more thing. Man, if
Speaker 1: you ever need a DJ for your said, howl at me,
Speaker 1: howl at me anybody else and thanks. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: my exercise doing this today. Al Right. First off, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be really dense and ask you to spell out
Speaker 1: that hashtag because I'm don't mute DC. Yes, don't mute
Speaker 1: d C, d O N D O N T m
Speaker 1: U T E. There is e C And there's a
Speaker 1: website don't mute DC dot com that has a lot
Speaker 1: of information that I shared. DC statehood is hugely important,
Speaker 1: like nationally, yes it is. What can we do? What
Speaker 1: can we do here in North Carolina to support that?
Speaker 1: So that's a really strong movement and definitely I think yes,
Speaker 1: very strong movement. Really important DC gets statehood. That changes
Speaker 1: the whole political game in the United States, which is
Speaker 1: why there's so much resistance in places like North Carolina
Speaker 1: because it it mutes the power people who are already states.
Speaker 1: It mutes their power. UM. So I would say, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's I could probably send you some resources of the
Speaker 1: d C statehood. There's many organizers who's been doing working
Speaker 1: on this for decades, UM. And I really think that
Speaker 1: now is the time. I don't know why people wait.
Speaker 1: Like the minute Biden got in, he should have that
Speaker 1: should have been the first thing he did so that
Speaker 1: we could you know that, so that we they can't
Speaker 1: just take away people's voting rights and all the rest
Speaker 1: of the stuff that they're doing. They can only do
Speaker 1: that and you know without um, without DC being a state.
Speaker 1: So I think it's very important. And thank you for
Speaker 1: for asking the question. Anybody else, Yeah, thanks UM, Thank you.
Speaker 1: First off, great conversations. UM. I was sitting here reflecting
Speaker 1: a lot on what you were discussing about lobbying and
Speaker 1: lobbyists and just sitting here thinking that what we consider
Speaker 1: lobbyists is like the power is the money, Like those
Speaker 1: are the ones that are lobbyists. Um and just sitting
Speaker 1: here kind of trying to consider whether the issue is
Speaker 1: that right now the money actually has more power than
Speaker 1: people power or is that a mentality like what you
Speaker 1: were talking about in the beginning, Like our idea of
Speaker 1: what has power is wrong. So this idea that like
Speaker 1: and don't mute d C like, actually people are remembering
Speaker 1: that they have power. Um. So I'm just I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm rambling, but just kind of thinking. That got me
Speaker 1: thinking about like where is the power? No, You're you're
Speaker 1: actually nailing it. What what I have found? And I
Speaker 1: mean obviously you're actually doing the work, you know, but
Speaker 1: what I have found is like, No, the power is
Speaker 1: the access to the people. The fact that like that's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like they politicians, the money is to
Speaker 1: pay for access to the people. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's getting people to the You know, why
Speaker 1: why in the world if you're looking at like a
Speaker 1: rally on on television, why are there people behind the stage?
Speaker 1: Like it's absurd, what type there's nobody behind us? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: why would you sit behind at an event? It's for
Speaker 1: the perception of power. It's to look like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people here. Most of the time, ain't nobody
Speaker 1: in front of them, everybody's actually behind, you know, saying
Speaker 1: because they need to look like they have access to
Speaker 1: the people. Right, So, so the power has always been again,
Speaker 1: can I send out an email? Can I send out
Speaker 1: a text? Can I make one phone call and get
Speaker 1: a hundred people outside? That's that's what they need. So
Speaker 1: then that's why you partner with activists with, why you
Speaker 1: hire street teams, why you do all that because they
Speaker 1: actually get you. But if that street team, if that
Speaker 1: person like like their team is like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not making this call unless you cut the check
Speaker 1: for this, for this, for this, and for this, and
Speaker 1: if you don't, we're going outside against you. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So that's what I found. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think power is also so the part of what
Speaker 1: money is paying for is just access to eyeballs. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you have a viral tweet or if you
Speaker 1: have something, if you've got you're able to command attention
Speaker 1: and bring a platform to issues, that's just as good
Speaker 1: as money. And then so so the social media part
Speaker 1: is really important, but also just the spectacle of people
Speaker 1: on the middle of a day, be it in the streets,
Speaker 1: shutting down traffic. That is a real signal to people,
Speaker 1: and that's really we've been operating off of that for
Speaker 1: a while time. It makes people very uncomfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: to see that people could be rallied and engaged because
Speaker 1: you know, they really makes them see how like they're
Speaker 1: not seeing those people on a daily basis. So it
Speaker 1: sort of reminds them that you exist and that, you know,
Speaker 1: the threat is implicit. Is that, yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: go to the polls too, you know, and that's when
Speaker 1: you're really threatening. So the last thing I'll just say
Speaker 1: really quickly is about you know, Stacy Abrams, I think
Speaker 1: has shown more than anybody how your street and she
Speaker 1: played a long game, her street game. You know, people
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom said that, you know, you you have to
Speaker 1: go for the you have to convince white people of this,
Speaker 1: and her thing was like, no, we have to include
Speaker 1: everybody who lives in our state. How about we start
Speaker 1: with that. You know, why don't we go to the
Speaker 1: people who have not we you haven't been campaigning these areas.
Speaker 1: Let's get their turn out to be right. And she's
Speaker 1: turned out to be right, so so far, and that's
Speaker 1: why she's probably one of the most dangerous threats to
Speaker 1: the to the powers that be right now, because she's
Speaker 1: smarter than them, Yes, exactly. And she's because she's good
Speaker 1: in the streets saying she's good out there, they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: when when she pulls up, you don't want to see
Speaker 1: her pull up. Yeah, if she pulls up, it's very
Speaker 1: different when they pull up. And and even to piggyback
Speaker 1: on what she's saying, like what that when those forty
Speaker 1: five people come out, then that then that person in
Speaker 1: power realizes like I don't have access to none of them.
Speaker 1: They didn't and you're just like, oh, I don't have
Speaker 1: as much pull as I thought, and you just showed me.
Speaker 1: And you can control the need the media narrative that
Speaker 1: way too. You can point you know, so you have
Speaker 1: what the mainstream media is talking about. You actually have
Speaker 1: a platform to be able to tell people like, this
Speaker 1: is what we need to be talking about right now.
Speaker 1: So that's also very powerful and that's a currency as well.
Speaker 1: Anybody else, do you have one more question? Well, we
Speaker 1: are going to send them out to sign some books. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I hear what you're saying here, we tried
Speaker 1: to save a group of us. We had three fifty people.
Speaker 1: We wrapped a big um for blocks to keep these
Speaker 1: houses that held affordable housing, true affordable housing from being
Speaker 1: displaced and those houses from being destroyed. We had four
Speaker 1: thousand signatures. We thought for sure this happened in downtown
Speaker 1: Nashville at twelve city blocks, and we wrapped it in
Speaker 1: in in sheets and those all those buildings are still there.
Speaker 1: It feels today like there's a real different tenor it's like, um,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's like we did all of that and
Speaker 1: it fell on deaf ears, and it continues to fall
Speaker 1: on deaf ears, and you know, it's Urban renewal has
Speaker 1: been a horrible thing for Ashville. We used to have
Speaker 1: a thriving African American community downtown. It's great, and we
Speaker 1: just keep shoving them further and further. Everything gets further
Speaker 1: and further out, and it doesn't and I and I
Speaker 1: hear what you're saying. And we haven't done the music part,
Speaker 1: but I hear what you're saying. But even the media
Speaker 1: paints those of us who are really about equity and
Speaker 1: affordability and climate change in the truest sense are being
Speaker 1: are being looked at like we are the you know,
Speaker 1: the pariahs. So how it's it's hard to stay the
Speaker 1: course when it feels very much like it's not we're
Speaker 1: not gaining and they're gel like YouTube, y'all just need
Speaker 1: to talk, you know. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1: And I would say also um Conservative has invested a
Speaker 1: lot of money in framing and how to frame issues,
Speaker 1: and they've just and they're they're so excellent at it
Speaker 1: instead of they're able to like spin you off of
Speaker 1: what you know, like Kelly Uh Kelly and Conway, she
Speaker 1: was like she was the embodiment of that. You could
Speaker 1: ask her a direct question that she's like dancing and pure,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like and they'll never give you
Speaker 1: a straight ant. They'll they'll put you off the scent
Speaker 1: and then sort of point the finger at something else.
Speaker 1: And so what you have to do is just be
Speaker 1: stronger and be smarter and keep changing it and coming
Speaker 1: out of a different way and you know, partner with
Speaker 1: new people. Give this. I love this idea that I
Speaker 1: thought about that like right here, you know, get a
Speaker 1: hot DJ, you know, put it. That's so what we
Speaker 1: do in d C, we do uh conversation and crank.
Speaker 1: That's what we do. We don't have it. We just
Speaker 1: did event at the Kennedy Center a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: We have no illusion that people want to hear our
Speaker 1: policy broccoli, but we they do want to come see
Speaker 1: Backyard Band, and so they don't have to hear a
Speaker 1: little bit of our policy, our conversation, and then they
Speaker 1: get to hear Backyard Band, and so it really like
Speaker 1: it elevates the issues. And so you know, and I
Speaker 1: think once you really work with gosh, you work with
Speaker 1: the artists, they're the most creative people you know, in
Speaker 1: in in being able to um express themselves, reach audiences
Speaker 1: and just keep switching up the playbook. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the big thing is just and don't don't give up.
Speaker 1: So I think with us, like with d C, d
Speaker 1: C people have said that Chocolate City is dead. That's
Speaker 1: been the narrative for for many years now, and so
Speaker 1: it's got us to the point where we believe that
Speaker 1: we don't even exist in DC anymore, when we're literally
Speaker 1: forty something percent of the population. Still we are the
Speaker 1: largest ethnic group in d C. And the narrative is
Speaker 1: that we don't exist anymore. People don't even try for
Speaker 1: our votes anymore. And what this movement has done, um,
Speaker 1: is that it just reminded us that okay, maybe it
Speaker 1: started with a little street corner, but we could win
Speaker 1: a battle. And then once you start winning, you want
Speaker 1: to win all the time, you know, and so you
Speaker 1: just coming up with new ideas, more people come into
Speaker 1: the fold, and just keep working at it, and don't
Speaker 1: let them give up. Because we're progressives outnumber the people
Speaker 1: who want to maintain the status quo, and so we
Speaker 1: we we we are going to win. I do think too,
Speaker 1: I want to hear what you have to obviously want
Speaker 1: you have to say. I think in in in addition
Speaker 1: to what what y'all have done well in me, listening
Speaker 1: is like is not allowing the person to build a
Speaker 1: strong man to define your terms where you tell it
Speaker 1: orm What happens a lot of times and progressive movements
Speaker 1: is we come up with a word, a term, and
Speaker 1: idea and then it's told back to us in a
Speaker 1: very different definition and then weaponized like critical race theory,
Speaker 1: like oh oh yeah, this seventy year old concept that
Speaker 1: you just discovered. You know what I'm saying don't understand
Speaker 1: and still and still don't know to means you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Yeah, you know. But but if we
Speaker 1: let you go, well we're defending. It's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: defending what you're saying because that's not critical race theory.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So if you like, I would even encourage
Speaker 1: you to be like, not even let someone redefine your terms. No,
Speaker 1: this is this is no, I said what I meant,
Speaker 1: I said what I said. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and this is what it means. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. We are saying this, and I think
Speaker 1: that that's something your movement has done. Well, it's like no,
Speaker 1: go goes in art. No, it's an art, an American
Speaker 1: born art. Okay, what you do. But for thirty years
Speaker 1: they got to say, but but it's violent, yea, And
Speaker 1: they got away with it right to the point where
Speaker 1: I was doing my dissertation, people were like, why would
Speaker 1: you want to do that? That those criminals that you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, And like every it used to
Speaker 1: be every talk I gave, I would every time I
Speaker 1: got a question about violence, and I would very calmly
Speaker 1: say that the ConA player is innocent. The conga player
Speaker 1: was just playing his congda. What does that have to
Speaker 1: do with that? You know, the gun laws and drug
Speaker 1: epidemics and blah blah blah. These are two different conversations.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that that I would say, don't let them,
Speaker 1: don't let nobody. Take your time and redefine it like
Speaker 1: it's your words. Thank you so very much. I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you both for coming here. And my
Speaker 1: response is actually to the audience and not y'all um,
Speaker 1: as a black Indigenous person who lives in Asheville and
Speaker 1: who's watched how things go mostly talking to the white
Speaker 1: colonize people, like we had someone talk about Triangle Park
Speaker 1: like we're not gone. These neighborhoods that you've pushed us
Speaker 1: out of doesn't mean that we don't exist. We're still here.
Speaker 1: We're sitting in indigenous land. The problem with the most
Speaker 1: of these movements in Asheville is that they're run by
Speaker 1: white people that are not resourcing the neighborhood. They're not
Speaker 1: going and building true deep relationships the black and indigenous
Speaker 1: you know, individuals and uplifting them instead, it's your faces everywhere,
Speaker 1: and of course nobody gonna come out and listen, because
Speaker 1: if you're speaking towards the inequities, you need the people
Speaker 1: that are affected by the inequities. You can't keep doing
Speaker 1: things the same way. Ashville like acts like they're doing
Speaker 1: all of these things. We keep talking about reparations, we're
Speaker 1: talking about all of this stuff. But there is a
Speaker 1: multitude of beautiful black indigenous fire humans that live here
Speaker 1: that are doing these things. But our voices get stifled
Speaker 1: by your money, by your power, by what it is
Speaker 1: you all think you're doing. If you just plug in,
Speaker 1: step back and resource tap in like you're talking about
Speaker 1: doing all this tapping in like we're here, how about
Speaker 1: you pay some respect to those of us that are here.
Speaker 1: Talk to our elders, go to Cherokee, talk to the
Speaker 1: people who own this land. We can't even be talking
Speaker 1: about reparation and talking about housing if we're not talking
Speaker 1: about land back like, that's why this stuff keeps failing.
Speaker 1: Let's figure it out without white supremacy leading, because then
Speaker 1: we're just doing the same ship over and over again
Speaker 1: with a different toilet, and it doesn't work. Straight up
Speaker 1: tap in alright, questions, comments, anybody else? All right, look y'all,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Please give them another round of applause. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is here. Thing was recorded by ME Propaganda and
Speaker 1: East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This smug was mixed, edited, mastered,
Speaker 1: and scored by Matt Osowski. I can totally say his name, guys,
Speaker 1: it was it was just stick. He's going by Matt
Speaker 1: now again because he got into some legal situations with
Speaker 1: the name Headlights. You know, common used to be called
Speaker 1: common sense. You know, tip t I was tipped sometimes
Speaker 1: it happened. Executive produced by the one and only Sophie
Speaker 1: Lecterman for a Cool Zone Media and the theme music
Speaker 1: by the one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips d
Speaker 1: J Shawn p. So y'all just remember listen every time
Speaker 1: you check in. If you understand city living, you understand politics.
Speaker 1: We'll see how next week. Talking talking it