Speaker 1: You're listening waiting on reparations the production of iHeart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: you ain't no reparations. Uh. I see these snipers what
Speaker 1: they I host set cripple lay rifles and they white supreme.
Speaker 1: But what I figured that the spipe fool pets people
Speaker 1: getting is that it's my whole set. I'm just the
Speaker 1: ticket head of generation why and Z. I know my
Speaker 1: ideas won't die even if I'm modern, My squad will
Speaker 1: go harder. My movement goes farther, goest barrow. I'm proof
Speaker 1: that any good with a good heart could finished whore
Speaker 1: I started. Who is Mariah Parker Man? It doesn't even
Speaker 1: matter if I'm really being honest, and honesty is the
Speaker 1: quality we need to leave the charge. We need defeat
Speaker 1: the sparkle beat. The doctor sees completely the ton of
Speaker 1: may we screaming barker, bleeding hearts would do it. I'm repeat,
Speaker 1: So we have we blocked the streets betweet in march
Speaker 1: for better policy. Yes, I wish it wasn't me, but
Speaker 1: God damn it, it's gotta be. I'm not a champion
Speaker 1: or a panther. I'm just standing with my hands up.
Speaker 1: The man answers handing over. It's my man's turn. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm walking to my dealer. They spraying so the clouds
Speaker 1: of Brave my life in the thriller. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: earn my modest pay. If they want to follow, well,
Speaker 1: it's not like you can drive away while you listen.
Speaker 1: And they're saying, I'm only trying to buy a wake
Speaker 1: him up, shake them up. I wanted to, but they
Speaker 1: doubted it. Swapped Meet Louis World looking like its counterfeit rass,
Speaker 1: chase cheese, and settle for fake accomplishments. Rappers should do
Speaker 1: like Nasco and wait the corporate sponsorship, his ice cream
Speaker 1: and every color. When you for your president, you can
Speaker 1: only pick the fuck up from two living like there's
Speaker 1: nothing to do. And when we stuck, they abused because
Speaker 1: we confuse freedom with just being comfortable. They're loving me
Speaker 1: smoke pure, nothing to go and fade away. Everything is
Speaker 1: like the whole game is stuck on lay wait and
Speaker 1: pay to make a plate, but they'll pay to make
Speaker 1: a prison. Should is rape. It's got you tell you
Speaker 1: in your position, fuck it, they don't listen a yap
Speaker 1: yo le franca. My name is dope knife and we
Speaker 1: are waiting on reparations. Hey, so how's your how's your week?
Speaker 1: It's been better? Um, I have fucking coronavirus. Yes, this
Speaker 1: I know, of course, because you know, of course that's
Speaker 1: my roommate. I went after the protests in the march
Speaker 1: on Sunday, having been around a couple of thousand people, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, decided to go get tested last Wednesday. And
Speaker 1: I waited in line for three hours and got my
Speaker 1: test back in back a few minutes and found out
Speaker 1: that I have fucking coronavirus. So what was I like?
Speaker 1: I mean, what was it like taking this house? It
Speaker 1: was like scary. I mean, like I saw that video
Speaker 1: online of them like shoving the Q tip into your brain,
Speaker 1: and like I was so scared. I flinched. All I
Speaker 1: did was swab the right like just inside my nose.
Speaker 1: But I was like flinching. It's like like the whole time.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I was fine. But they didn't
Speaker 1: like jam it in there. They did not jam a
Speaker 1: QUE tip into my brain. Yeah, thankfully, but yeah, technological advantage.
Speaker 1: I know, we're good places in America. Finally catching up
Speaker 1: with South Korea, well yeah, I mean I I of
Speaker 1: course I went on self quarantine since it doesn't been
Speaker 1: hiding this room like hard. I mean, I mean the
Speaker 1: chances are that, you know, like if you live in
Speaker 1: the house with somebody. I don't know that I have it.
Speaker 1: I really don't. I know that you have it. I don't.
Speaker 1: Didn't hear that about coronavirus when when you get it
Speaker 1: you can sense it. Another piece of people being gay.
Speaker 1: So I'm just locking around here rowing it up. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I haven't. I haven't gotten any symptoms yet.
Speaker 1: I'm on as we're recording those. I'm on my seventh
Speaker 1: day of lockdown since I was exposed quote unquote, So
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you know, yeah, my symptoms have only
Speaker 1: been pretty mild. I went to the hospital last night, uh,
Speaker 1: because I was having chest pains and like my home
Speaker 1: oximeter said my oxygen levels were really low, and so
Speaker 1: I called a couple of hot lines. They were all like,
Speaker 1: you should call one one. It was pretty scary. I
Speaker 1: was really scared. But then I went to the hospital
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours and they did chest X
Speaker 1: rays and I don't have pneumonia, so they it's like
Speaker 1: I went through like stages. Because it's like when you
Speaker 1: when you told me. You were like, yo, I got
Speaker 1: the ron up, and I was like, ah, fuck, all right,
Speaker 1: because we recorded the episode, so I guess I got
Speaker 1: the road to too right. So like for the first day,
Speaker 1: I was like sad. It was sucked up. The you know,
Speaker 1: episode one was coming out the next day and I
Speaker 1: was all sad, like, man, I got the roadap you
Speaker 1: kept having like a spirit and energy about you that
Speaker 1: was just it was like damn, well, right, Yo, we're
Speaker 1: gonna beat This is gonna be fine. And then like
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, I gotta go to the hospital. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh no, yeah, I'm doing good. I mean
Speaker 1: I've been facing a lot of backlash online. I was
Speaker 1: like very transparent immediately when I found out. I posted
Speaker 1: on Facebook that I have coronavirus and it got shared,
Speaker 1: I don't know, four hundred times, and like everybody from
Speaker 1: fum funk anywhere that hates the liberal blue dot of
Speaker 1: Athens was giving me shit about having led this margin
Speaker 1: Sunday and uh that sucked. But um, you know, I've
Speaker 1: faced a lot of harassment before as like a public
Speaker 1: figure of public you know, public servant, And I also
Speaker 1: just wanted to emphasize that I'm certainly not letting this
Speaker 1: fucking stop me. Like, like you said, I've had some
Speaker 1: energy anyway. Yeah, I don't feel good, but like all
Speaker 1: day today, I've been planning another protests, this time a
Speaker 1: car caravan through the streets of Athens. We are partnering
Speaker 1: with the local radio station to have them play revolutionary
Speaker 1: jams all night and have one of our comrades behind
Speaker 1: the you know, in the booth speaking to the people,
Speaker 1: and as we drive around the city to all the
Speaker 1: locations where people were killed by cops last year, they're
Speaker 1: gonna read biographies of those people who were killed so
Speaker 1: we can pay homage to them. And then we're gonna
Speaker 1: sucking shut down downtown Athens from a safe distance, so
Speaker 1: you know, all my fellow COVID havers as well as
Speaker 1: other vulnerable people can like participate in the movement in
Speaker 1: the revolution. Finally, you know what's really funny, So people
Speaker 1: online speaking of harassment and ship have been questioning whether
Speaker 1: or not I've been given a false positive on my
Speaker 1: coronavirus tests to silence me. I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think of that? I mean, I don't believe it, but
Speaker 1: it's not out of the question given the ways that
Speaker 1: like the government has surveiled that infortrated and sabotage black
Speaker 1: lead cultural organizations and movements throughout history. There's like, there's
Speaker 1: like a historical precedent for this kind of thing with
Speaker 1: with me and things like that. It's like you always
Speaker 1: have to think of the implications. It's like, so that
Speaker 1: would mean that the people at the hospital didn't do
Speaker 1: their job, or we're in on it potentially, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like, I'm not saying that that's
Speaker 1: out of the question. I'm just saying, like, is that
Speaker 1: I asked the folks at the hospital to retest me,
Speaker 1: and they were like, no, you know, false negatives are
Speaker 1: far more common than false positive, so if you tested positive,
Speaker 1: you probably have it. I'm not saying this is I'm
Speaker 1: not saying there is a plot, but I'm just saying that,
Speaker 1: like there's historical precedent. I'm just being Devil's advocate. There's
Speaker 1: definitely a historical precedent for it. I mean that's with
Speaker 1: the episode is to day, which is like the FEDS
Speaker 1: or FBI or one time Faveaux, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, spying on various revolutionary movements and groups and individuals.
Speaker 1: Now As far back as the nineteen thirties, black musicians
Speaker 1: were monitored by the FBI for suspected involvement or forgiving
Speaker 1: sympathy to revolutionary groups. From the likes of Louis Armstrong,
Speaker 1: Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Nat King Cole, they were all
Speaker 1: tracked by FBI. FBI records even show the agents would
Speaker 1: repeatedly attempt to determine if Nat King Cole was a communist, sympathizer,
Speaker 1: civil rights activists, or some kind of troublemaker. That's just
Speaker 1: one example. So you've got that ship. And then in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and nineteen seventies you've got co intel
Speaker 1: pro so like the series of covert FBI operations aimed
Speaker 1: at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations, anything
Speaker 1: from the Communist Party to the Nation of Islam, like
Speaker 1: they were getting into animal rights and environmental activist groups,
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, and the black power moves. This
Speaker 1: was like all under the Jagger Hoover regime of the administration.
Speaker 1: So after nineteen sixty three, after the March on Washington
Speaker 1: for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover singled out Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: Is a major target for cointel Pro. The FBI infamously
Speaker 1: sent MLK a letter in nineteen sixty four that was
Speaker 1: encouraging and to commit suicide. Beginning in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: coin tel Pro started targeting leaders of the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party and having them assassinated or falsely charged for crimes
Speaker 1: they didn't commit and in prison or even publicly humiliated
Speaker 1: and blackmail. The overall effect of this was just like
Speaker 1: a general environment of Hayden foremants, illegal surveillance operations aimed
Speaker 1: at intimidating, and a lot of this was officially uncovered
Speaker 1: years or even decades later. But make no mistake, some
Speaker 1: of this was actual illegal activity on the party straight up.
Speaker 1: I mean they were engaged in research and study of
Speaker 1: black culture, and they had files on music as theater, actors, magazines,
Speaker 1: black independent bookstores, and it was all for the purpose
Speaker 1: of infiltration. So yeah, so get this. In Night X,
Speaker 1: FBI informant Darthurd Perry gave his account of the way
Speaker 1: the FBI would study black culture musicians, comedians, actors to
Speaker 1: better infiltrate black cultural organizations and revolutionary groups. During the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, they study the profiles of celebrities who were
Speaker 1: supportive organizations by like gathering intel on their psychological backgrounds,
Speaker 1: their weaknesses, their strengths, their files and files on like
Speaker 1: their sexual activity, and they use these weaknesses to get
Speaker 1: further information out of them or disrupt their engagement with
Speaker 1: political organizations. He for example, describes a sting involving Doc Holiday,
Speaker 1: one of the leaders of the b GF or the
Speaker 1: Black Gorilla Family, a Marxist Leninist narcotics prison gang, and
Speaker 1: the California prison system. So they so they did this
Speaker 1: sting where they planted a woman in his life who
Speaker 1: became his lover to extract names, phone numbers, and other
Speaker 1: information for him over several months when he was released.
Speaker 1: But you know, it wasn't just like narcotics gang leaders
Speaker 1: of Marxist Leninist persuasion. It was people like Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: Perry was assigned to get close to Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: And his staff and would videotape us whole office, including
Speaker 1: numerous other celebrities that dropped in. Damn Niggas was snitching
Speaker 1: way before Takashi. It was so much more at stake.
Speaker 1: Perry himself also infiltrated the Watts Writer's Workshop, which was
Speaker 1: a creative writing group initiated in the wake of the
Speaker 1: devastating August Watts riots in South central Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: admits on camera in this interview to burning the workshop
Speaker 1: to the ground on behalf of the FBI. When asked
Speaker 1: if he thought these activities were still ongoing and at
Speaker 1: the time of the interview, Perry laughed and emphatically a
Speaker 1: sense that things escalated the year after year during coental
Speaker 1: pro and probably had escalated even further after you left
Speaker 1: the agency. Yeah, there's well documented evidence that the FBI
Speaker 1: has continued to monitor black musicians to this day. For example,
Speaker 1: the FBI has a mask the twenty eight page surveillance
Speaker 1: file and R and B poet Neil Scott Heron from
Speaker 1: the nineties, seventies and eighties, which identifies his ties to
Speaker 1: socialist group to All Africans People's Revolutionary Party as an
Speaker 1: extremist matter. Now, as far as hip hop's concern, I mean,
Speaker 1: at this point, FBI surveillance might as well be a
Speaker 1: fucking element. I mean, they've surveiled, investigated, and extorted rappers
Speaker 1: for years. We've got Tupac Easy notorious b I G.
Speaker 1: We're all uncovered to have been under surveillance n way
Speaker 1: around the time of the the Police song. They were
Speaker 1: actually sent a warning letter from the FBI, and in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, the FBI's National Gang Threat Assessment classified Juggalos
Speaker 1: as a gang. Now, the Juggalos are like the fan
Speaker 1: base or the community that's surrounding the rap group. The
Speaker 1: insane clown posse, which the insane clown posts is like this,
Speaker 1: you should just you should you should just contact your
Speaker 1: pharmacists and ask them if in saying clown policy is
Speaker 1: right for you, and yeah, take the recommended Does this
Speaker 1: all led like this led to people who had this
Speaker 1: gang designation, like getting you know, constant job promotion. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I can see it happening. I mean you
Speaker 1: can't imagine it, like like I just know from circles
Speaker 1: that I know, like people like clown on Jugglers to
Speaker 1: begin with. Let alone, if you're trying to get hired
Speaker 1: or like get into the military. So I can imagine
Speaker 1: if somebody's trying to get a job or something and
Speaker 1: someone who's like, you know, posting you at the gathering
Speaker 1: of the Juggle or something that's like not cool. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Yeah, um, you know. Actually I
Speaker 1: used to have some rap proteges. I had like an
Speaker 1: opportunity to open up for insane clown posse, and I
Speaker 1: ended up sending my rap proteges to do it so
Speaker 1: that I could do a different like festival thing. But
Speaker 1: they covered those boys in fuego. The nixas was all sticky,
Speaker 1: But I think they had fun though. So I mean,
Speaker 1: here we go, like, we got mountains of evidence that
Speaker 1: the government has surveilled haapotage and committed acts of violence
Speaker 1: against revolutionaries and musicians in a systematic way for almost
Speaker 1: one years. And then you have the fact that over
Speaker 1: the last six years, six Ferguson activists have turned up dead.
Speaker 1: A November fourteen, the morning after the grand jury declined
Speaker 1: to indict Mike Brown's killer, twenty year old DeAndre Joshua,
Speaker 1: close friend of Dorrian Johnson, who was with Michael Brown
Speaker 1: on the day of Mike's death, was found dead, reportedly
Speaker 1: inside a burned car after being shot in the head.
Speaker 1: In September two thousand sixteen, twenty nine year old Darren Seals,
Speaker 1: a prominent figure in the Ferguson protests, suffered a similar
Speaker 1: death to Joshua. His body was found inside a burning
Speaker 1: car after having been shot as well. Like what the
Speaker 1: fuck is that? Then you got Shawn Gray, who was
Speaker 1: three years old when he went missing the same that
Speaker 1: Joshua died, and was later found it drowned in a river.
Speaker 1: A medical examiner ruled the death and accidental drowning, with
Speaker 1: alcohol poisoning as a major contributing factor, according to the
Speaker 1: Louis St. Louis Post Dispatch. But then in two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: in November bass and Mass three, a Palestinian American man
Speaker 1: who live stream videos at the Perkusan protests, was found
Speaker 1: overdose on fennyl on a bus. Edward Crawford Jr. Seven
Speaker 1: was featured in the famous photograph from Ferguson throwing a
Speaker 1: gas canister back at the police. Police determined that he
Speaker 1: died by suicide. May two thousand seventeen. In October two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, twenty four year old Danye Jones was found
Speaker 1: dead in the yard of a St. Louis Holmes. It
Speaker 1: was also ruled a suicide. Okay, so these don't quite
Speaker 1: look in quack like ducks. I will give them that
Speaker 1: people kill themselves people due too many drugs. I've been
Speaker 1: really close to doing both many times in my life.
Speaker 1: But like you know, and I'm not saying it was
Speaker 1: the government. It could easily, you know, be white supremacist groups,
Speaker 1: or it could just be two murders and four folks
Speaker 1: who snapped under the tremendous pressure of doing this work
Speaker 1: and either took their own lives or self medicated themselves
Speaker 1: into an early grave. In either case, it's still white
Speaker 1: supremacist violence against people of color. Harassing and humanizing someone
Speaker 1: to the point they killed themselves in the yard is
Speaker 1: still white supremacy at work. And who knows how many
Speaker 1: countless people who weren't prominent figures in the movement also
Speaker 1: took their lives in the aftermath of Ferguson feeling helpless
Speaker 1: to stop what's happening in this country and surrendering. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think what this also tells us is that
Speaker 1: this is war. If you you know, want to talk
Speaker 1: about David mcgaddy shot by cops while leaning out the
Speaker 1: door of his restaurant in Louisville couple weeks ago, maybe
Speaker 1: just last week, or Sarah Grossman who died of an
Speaker 1: asthma attack after being hit with tear gas or even
Speaker 1: had they're higher, the protesters are struck and killed by
Speaker 1: a white supremacist car and Charlotte's go in two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: People are dying for this and they will continue to
Speaker 1: die for this, in my belief, until we win. And
Speaker 1: I think it's some of that people, particularly white people
Speaker 1: who are new to this work, kind of have to
Speaker 1: be prepared for when they are signing up for the
Speaker 1: spite Do you think white people should be prepared to
Speaker 1: die for this movement? I mean, I think everybody should
Speaker 1: be prepared for violence. I mean, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: jake up any system, you can expect violent reaction or
Speaker 1: violent opposition to change all the time. I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: we're in like an environment right now where I think
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of the Trump stuff that
Speaker 1: I don't think people are paying attention to is like
Speaker 1: if Trump looks into the camera and tells his supporters
Speaker 1: to do some dumb ship, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who would be willing to do some dumb ships. How
Speaker 1: many people were calling medical hotlines to try to figure
Speaker 1: out whether or not they should drink bleach, so yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean and and even to this day, I mean,
Speaker 1: like we were just talking about all this stuff with
Speaker 1: the FBI surveillance. I mean, to this day, they're still
Speaker 1: doing this disproportionate focus on left wing groups or left
Speaker 1: wing activity with like a blind eye to right wing
Speaker 1: extremists and ship. It's like, um, in two thousand and seventeen,
Speaker 1: the FBI sent out a secret memo warning about the
Speaker 1: rise of Black identity extremists. And this is like in
Speaker 1: the this is the same year that this is the
Speaker 1: same year as Charlottesville. I got money, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So it's like weird that they have this
Speaker 1: focus for Black Lives Matter or antifas like movements and organizations.
Speaker 1: They haven't killed anybody, but then they turn a blind
Speaker 1: eye to some of these right wing groups they got
Speaker 1: like mad bodies on them. Well with like these the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers had some shootouts, yeah, but I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of that in like retaliation though. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like they started like, hey, we're coming out
Speaker 1: the gate attacking the FBI or some ship like that. Yeah. None, right,
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean, everybody's all up in arms about
Speaker 1: State violence as they should be, particularly police violence. But
Speaker 1: then there's all all this evidence about tracking and monitoring, disruption,
Speaker 1: all these covert kinds of violence and control that because
Speaker 1: we can't film it with our camera phones and we
Speaker 1: can't watch watch it on the news, people are paying
Speaker 1: attention to it. So people keep saying stuff like, oh,
Speaker 1: be safe out there are your protests, but like there's
Speaker 1: so many other levels to safety with regards to combating
Speaker 1: state violence that like people aren't talking about stuff like
Speaker 1: encrypting your text messages, like don't send sensitive things via
Speaker 1: email or even text. Call people if you have, if
Speaker 1: you're making plans, if you're doing direct action and organizing
Speaker 1: around it. Um, because we don't fully grasp the scope
Speaker 1: and scale of the surveillance operations that the FBI is
Speaker 1: capable of, just use common sense and like act as
Speaker 1: if the ship is not like a game we live
Speaker 1: I mean, and we were living in. We're living in
Speaker 1: like the overshare yea era where like everyone thinks it's
Speaker 1: so cool to like bust out all their fucking secrets online.
Speaker 1: It's like, yo, it's not cool. I mean, it's cool
Speaker 1: to party. I was really moved by like Saturday, the
Speaker 1: people dancing in the streets, and like they were like
Speaker 1: doing line dances and swing dances and and like I
Speaker 1: love that kind of spirit to these things, where like
Speaker 1: we're reclaiming our streets joyously as well as in grieving.
Speaker 1: But also don't treat it like a fucking party in
Speaker 1: the sense of like opening yourself up to um, getting
Speaker 1: your friends nabbed by the cops because you posted pictures
Speaker 1: of their faces from the protest online, or your text
Speaker 1: messages get intercepted in which you're discussing bringing cones to
Speaker 1: the protests to help diffuse or neutralize tear gas canisters.
Speaker 1: Like that kind of ship UM could get you popped.
Speaker 1: So don't do it, or do it in an encrypted,
Speaker 1: safe way, a safe way as possible. So it's like,
Speaker 1: how do we handle it? What? What does all this
Speaker 1: mean during this time? How do does taking precaution even matter?
Speaker 1: Are we just defenseless against the state? Yeah, until there's
Speaker 1: until there's until there's like a fundamental change from within.
Speaker 1: I don't think that at any point yet there's been
Speaker 1: an elected official or somebody who has worked their way
Speaker 1: up the ranks of the system who is in the
Speaker 1: mind frame of you know, let's take power away from
Speaker 1: the state. So until that happens, I think the states
Speaker 1: just like too powerful for it to change, because you know,
Speaker 1: people are trying to get it to the way we've
Speaker 1: been going about it. People have been protesting for years.
Speaker 1: It's ultimately going to have to like have to be
Speaker 1: the effort from within. Yeah, I've been telling people lately
Speaker 1: we cannot take away their guns with our hands. That
Speaker 1: these last two weeks, I've shown us that, well, we
Speaker 1: can take away their guns with our laws. We can
Speaker 1: take away their power with their laws. We can let
Speaker 1: slate all of their ammunition away, we can shrink them
Speaker 1: like I you know, people want to talk about a revolution,
Speaker 1: and that's all cool and fine. I draw a lot
Speaker 1: of strength from revolutionary movements of old, but like, we're
Speaker 1: not going to overthrow the government. No. Like if they're
Speaker 1: if you know, like if they're reading all our text
Speaker 1: messages and they're infiltrating our cultural groups in burning them
Speaker 1: to the ground, and I feel like in all this,
Speaker 1: you know, understanding this history, it underscores the importance of
Speaker 1: protecting the identities of people. At these protests, everybody wants
Speaker 1: to live stream and take their little selfie with their
Speaker 1: cute little like hashtaggable sign. But you have to protect
Speaker 1: the I didn't they say the people this protest because
Speaker 1: people are going missing, people are dying, They are watching us.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've got secret police out there in the streets,
Speaker 1: blur the faces of people in your videos. If you're
Speaker 1: live streaming live stream from the shoulders down, I you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't be at the protest here on Saturday because
Speaker 1: I have fucking coronavirus. But you know, I was able
Speaker 1: to follow along with a live streamer who was just
Speaker 1: showing people's feet, and that was enough for me to
Speaker 1: hear the music being played over the speakers and see
Speaker 1: that people were dancing, and that gave me so much hope,
Speaker 1: even from being stuck at home. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: out there, cover up identifying tattoos with bandages before you
Speaker 1: go out, and add you to covering your face, wearing
Speaker 1: swim goggles protect you from tear gas, and it also
Speaker 1: helped conceal your identity to protect you from targeting and
Speaker 1: harassment from state and identitarian hate groups. So how does
Speaker 1: it feel to not trust the state when you're part
Speaker 1: of the state. It's really complicated because I want to
Speaker 1: give people hope that change is possible electorally given all
Speaker 1: that we have described, like we were not going to
Speaker 1: take their power away, um with by force. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like I really truly want to get as many people
Speaker 1: engaged in govern incident democracy as possible and like do
Speaker 1: this kind of of X education where people understand how
Speaker 1: that works enough to participate. Um. But like I've seen
Speaker 1: first hand the way that like what the policy makers
Speaker 1: do is such a limited part of the actual process.
Speaker 1: You have all the other people behind the scenes who
Speaker 1: are running all of the departments that are building all
Speaker 1: the roads and uh driving all the buses and uh
Speaker 1: laying all the sewer pipes that like, you know, we
Speaker 1: might be anti racist and if you're me, anti capitalists,
Speaker 1: but like these ideologies are so deeply ingrained and embedded
Speaker 1: in like the workings of of keeping a city running
Speaker 1: in itself. Um. And so I feel like it's a
Speaker 1: really weird tight rope to walk where like I have
Speaker 1: to work with these people and it's really important to
Speaker 1: have like a sense of mutual respect and an understanding
Speaker 1: of where they're coming from in order for us to
Speaker 1: find moments of coalition. Is that hard to do? To
Speaker 1: see where they're coming from. No, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: a good listener, like even if I have to kind
Speaker 1: of fake it at first, but like just openly listening
Speaker 1: like helps facilitate that dialogue. Um. So like I come
Speaker 1: from like government workers, so that sometimes helps me be
Speaker 1: a bit more. None of your people were elected, right, No, no, No,
Speaker 1: except for your cousin into Montana. But so all your people,
Speaker 1: everybody in your family is just taking orders from someone
Speaker 1: that also probably wasn't elected. And so it's those parts
Speaker 1: of government where it's like we can rabble arouse all
Speaker 1: day and pass policy all day, but like there's so
Speaker 1: many invisible gears churning in the government that people don't
Speaker 1: even think about. It's like sometimes in our heads we
Speaker 1: can kind of attached a sort of boogeyman figure to it,
Speaker 1: but it's I worked for the federal government for like
Speaker 1: a short period of time, and it's it's really like
Speaker 1: a lot of people sitting at desks like clocking in,
Speaker 1: and one of those people who are sitting at deaths
Speaker 1: and weren't elected. Um, like what do they believe? We
Speaker 1: don't know, We don't interr but they're all just doing orders.
Speaker 1: It's the same sort of dynamic as when we're talking
Speaker 1: about the cops. It's a job, you know, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of these things are just jobs to the people
Speaker 1: that do them. That's not necessarily an excuse for anything.
Speaker 1: I can sometimes understand where they're coming from because I
Speaker 1: know it's just other human beings that make it up.
Speaker 1: It's not like some some supernatural force that we're as people,
Speaker 1: And it underscores importance to me of like people who
Speaker 1: don't know what their role in all this is. We
Speaker 1: need people who work in the planning department in your
Speaker 1: local in your local city government, or who work in
Speaker 1: the human resources department, or who work in the transportation
Speaker 1: department or the public utilities office to like help undo
Speaker 1: white supremacy as it manifests there as well. Because I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't. I'm gonna elected official, but I can't be
Speaker 1: paying attention to all that. I can try my best,
Speaker 1: But folks on the ground who are working on pushing
Speaker 1: paper in those offices, we need people to do that
Speaker 1: work in an anti racist way too, if possible. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you're like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: what my point isn't what my part is, and all
Speaker 1: this I'm not out here marked in the streets. I
Speaker 1: don't really like tweeting, Like I don't know what to do, Like, well,
Speaker 1: do you work an office job? Can you do it
Speaker 1: in an entire racist way? What does that look like
Speaker 1: for you? Um? And infiltrating the government in like a
Speaker 1: less romantic sense regarding like all the other machinery of
Speaker 1: it that turns along without any sort of oversight from
Speaker 1: direct you know, like electoralism that changed from within, Like
Speaker 1: I was saying, Yeah, so let's um talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about RAPS relationship with the FBI. So do you
Speaker 1: think we're paranoid because of this history or is it
Speaker 1: more about drug dealing and gang activity. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a combination of both, but mainly legacy
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff carried on over you know,
Speaker 1: you know, the same way that certain civil rights its
Speaker 1: error groups kind of morphed into the gangs, the street gangs.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that same sort of thing. So
Speaker 1: like the state suspicion you know that was already looking
Speaker 1: into like the cultural aspects of black people. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers gradually dissipated and then like just regular
Speaker 1: rask gangs kind of replaced them in terms of the
Speaker 1: way communities were organized, you know, things like that. I
Speaker 1: do think that it definitely maybe it's like psychological I
Speaker 1: believe I believe in generational trauma. I think Black people
Speaker 1: just trust to the state generally. You know, it's concretized
Speaker 1: in our history of being targeted by entities like the FBI.
Speaker 1: It's something that lives in us physically and psychologically. And
Speaker 1: so a rapper might not point back to nat King
Speaker 1: cole beings are built by the FBI and say that's
Speaker 1: why I don't trust the FEDS. But like, not trusting
Speaker 1: the Feds, it's just in our blood as a people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can funk with that, and I think it definitely
Speaker 1: contributes to a broader sense of paranoia that's in hip hop,
Speaker 1: of like constantly thinking that you're being underminded, or that
Speaker 1: you've got haters or somebody's watching you. Motherfucker's is out
Speaker 1: to get you or backstab you, and you can't trust anybody.
Speaker 1: That's like a common theme in hip hop. You want
Speaker 1: to look at some musical examples of how rappers have
Speaker 1: dealt with this relationship to the FBI and this history
Speaker 1: and their music yeah, sure, So do we get up first? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So our first example is from the Dayton Family, which
Speaker 1: is the nineties rap group from Flint, Michigan. UM. There
Speaker 1: are music largely focused on the you know, the grittiness
Speaker 1: of survival, and the song is FBI. It's after a
Speaker 1: second album in nineteen sixty nine. If the song is
Speaker 1: called FBI, it's off their second album entitled FBI, which
Speaker 1: is you know, stood for fun being indicted, where they
Speaker 1: describe paranoia about being hunted down by the cops of
Speaker 1: the FBI. Stop. Yes, dirty cops, clean you took the
Speaker 1: father from the family, you know what. Literally, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest with you. I did not know about these
Speaker 1: cats before. Yeah, no, I never. I didn't hear about this. Thanks.
Speaker 1: It's pretty hard, but I have wrapped over that beat
Speaker 1: mad times that like ciphers, are like hip hop functions.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't think it's I think it's obscure
Speaker 1: to us, but I think I think heads know about that.
Speaker 1: It was funny. I was looking in their Wikipedia page
Speaker 1: actually has them under gangster rap in horrorcore. That's funny.
Speaker 1: So up next, we got public Enemy Louder than a Bomb.
Speaker 1: Now I'm assuming everybody knows whose public enemy is the
Speaker 1: famed Wrap group from the eighties and nineties fronted by
Speaker 1: Chuck d and Flavor Flavor. Now. In this they talk
Speaker 1: about wire tappings and assassinations of MLK and Malcolm X.
Speaker 1: I'll Never Live Alone. Yeah. And then we have dead
Speaker 1: Press Pop Propaganda. Dead Press as a hip hop duo
Speaker 1: out of New York. The song Propagandas off their two
Speaker 1: thousand album Let's Get Free for It makes reference to
Speaker 1: Council Prope specific the death of Puee Newton when he
Speaker 1: talks when he says, who brought the churches to the
Speaker 1: ground with no evidence found? It's not coincidence. Too many
Speaker 1: steady incidents. It would have been a plan. Put that
Speaker 1: bomb at the eleftly spot. It probably was the dusty
Speaker 1: m hm, I love that song. Then we got Kendrick
Speaker 1: Lamar with Mortal Man and uh, he's got the line
Speaker 1: where he's like, if I'm tried in the court of
Speaker 1: law in the industry, cut me off cocaine, would you
Speaker 1: judge me a truck kid? See? What was this one
Speaker 1: off of Butterfly? How many leaders you needed? And then
Speaker 1: you left him for dead? Is that Moses is that
Speaker 1: Huee Newton or Detroit Red, Detroit Red being a reference
Speaker 1: to Malcolm X who went by the name Detroit Red,
Speaker 1: but he had he dyed his hair red and like
Speaker 1: like straightened it would lie back in his pimp days.
Speaker 1: And then up next we got phone Tapped by the Firm.
Speaker 1: Now a lot of people don't remember the Firm, but
Speaker 1: the Firm was like a short lived supergroup back in
Speaker 1: the day, consisting of as Nas and Foxy Brown, and
Speaker 1: I do think Dr Dre was doing some of the
Speaker 1: beats for them. But the song phone Tap was really
Speaker 1: dope checking out the Dynasty. What made this song really
Speaker 1: clever to me is like the entire song is like
Speaker 1: a conversation between people knowing that they're tapped by the Feds,
Speaker 1: like on the other end of the line. And then
Speaker 1: it's got Dr Dre doing the hook as one like
Speaker 1: the Feds like, we got your phone tap, what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do? So later we got your whole crew? Now
Speaker 1: we really need is what wrote two? Got you all
Speaker 1: stuck like glue and y'all through. And for this last one,
Speaker 1: it's kind of an honorable mentioned in a way, but
Speaker 1: it was the first song that came to my mind,
Speaker 1: and we thought of this episode. It's an old Masterpiece song.
Speaker 1: I used to be a huge O Limit fan back
Speaker 1: in the day, but it was a master p and
Speaker 1: Soaked the Shaker song called Somebody's Watching Me. It was
Speaker 1: a It was a cover of the old eighties joint
Speaker 1: I always feel like somebody I'm never don't I'm in
Speaker 1: the dump, Jake. I think you think it's nothing, Jimmy May.
Speaker 1: They kind of did their own playoff of it, but
Speaker 1: made it about the feeds tapping your phone and watching
Speaker 1: you and ship. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like hip hop has revolutionary roots,
Speaker 1: as we're probably going to discuss in future episodes like that,
Speaker 1: it just all kind of comes full circle, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think that's this episode. That's it for today.
Speaker 1: I feel like wrapping, of course, but let me just
Speaker 1: do a little shameless plug real quick. I got an
Speaker 1: ep that I dropped last week, so go check it out.
Speaker 1: I want to say the name of it, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's like an ethics dispute with that,
Speaker 1: so let me find that out first. But let's get
Speaker 1: that be popping. Let's hit it. We're waiting on our reparations. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're waiting our reparations. Hey, sometimes it feels like I'm
Speaker 1: always being watched by the fans, by the white supremacists,
Speaker 1: and the cops got my personal security people watching my
Speaker 1: house to cut My message is encrypted, as if they
Speaker 1: could even stop them from listening to the topics. I'm
Speaker 1: whispering in the darkness. I'm showing up but their partners
Speaker 1: and executing it us in the paranoias, cousin Sarah destroying
Speaker 1: the confidence, filling byers to prepare my lawyers with the documents.
Speaker 1: I went and cut the fuck Rona went on a
Speaker 1: little walk to help man is my bipolar can't even
Speaker 1: take a stroll of a hike without a toll on
Speaker 1: the right, patrol on the bikes looking over my shoulder. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know they got a monopoly, so they dropped the economy.
Speaker 1: But no one's really bothering because we wobble de wobble.
Speaker 1: You see. Now, that's what the problem, being surprised philosophy,
Speaker 1: So you know they're probably the prophecies with the prophets
Speaker 1: being Now I'm feeling kind of mad, so I'll make
Speaker 1: fish feeling like a rat and amaze for kicks. I
Speaker 1: don't really know just what to make of it. Fucks
Speaker 1: the throat shots, I make a miss. I'm in the
Speaker 1: cipher without talking to Agent Smith, up in my backyard,
Speaker 1: grilling on some charcoal, looking at the cam trail, puffing
Speaker 1: onto Marlboro. This is how they do it. When they
Speaker 1: move in, it'll start slow on your neck. I'm getting
Speaker 1: pretty soon will be a bar code as mad documents.
Speaker 1: They never should have burned, So we just wait until
Speaker 1: an episode occurs and the rates getting raised by the
Speaker 1: federal were reserved. A bunch of other ship niggas never
Speaker 1: would have heard. Y'ALLNA listen. He be safe out there. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Get tested for coronavirus and make sure your social distance
Speaker 1: while you're fighting the power. Waiting on Reparations as a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.