Speaker 1: Native Lampod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: Reason Choice Media. Welcome home, everybody, this is your favorite
Speaker 1: politics and culture podcast, Native Lampod coming at.
Speaker 2: You with episode four.
Speaker 1: We are your hosts Angela Rae, Tiffany Cross, and Andrew Gillum.
Speaker 1: And as you know, we keep it real because what
Speaker 1: else can you keep?
Speaker 2: What's up everybody? What's up you guys?
Speaker 3: What's good? What's good?
Speaker 4: Everybody? As usual.
Speaker 5: I want to give a quick shout out to the
Speaker 5: Gathering Spot broadcasting live from the Gathering Spot. So thanks,
Speaker 5: thanks to you guys for partnering with Native Lampodana.
Speaker 1: Andrew and tiff I miss you guys. It's been too long.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see you in person next week. I'm excited
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, let's get together in person time.
Speaker 5: I think we would flow better when we're in the
Speaker 5: same room. We can.
Speaker 3: Energy send you from here, put hands on it, okay
Speaker 3: and required.
Speaker 1: But here's what we need the people to do in
Speaker 1: the meantime until we get back together, and that is
Speaker 1: we want you all to please make sure you are
Speaker 1: subscribing to Native lampid. You are downloading every single episode
Speaker 1: and you're reviewing the show.
Speaker 2: We can take a hater remark here and there, but
Speaker 2: we mostly want to.
Speaker 1: Keep the love, okay, everybody, So I gotta say, it's
Speaker 1: crazy how much has happened since we last got together.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden said he's ready to shut down the border.
Speaker 1: All the while, the House Committee on Homeland Security is
Speaker 1: teeing up an impeachment of the DHS Secretary of New
Speaker 1: Yorkis cities are reeling with the response to migrants, and
Speaker 1: residents are filling the pinch of being left behind. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has designated Tim Sick and Tire Scott as the
Speaker 1: head of White Outreach.
Speaker 2: Oh my bad, My bad.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be black outreach, but it probably should
Speaker 1: have been white either way. He's thinking there's a play
Speaker 1: for the blackmail vote on today.
Speaker 2: Those are my bars.
Speaker 1: Tip, You're not the only one, but I think this
Speaker 1: is not exactly the case. Meg the Stallion hissed that
Speaker 1: Nikki and send her into a spiral of online bullying
Speaker 1: for seventy two hours in counting.
Speaker 2: Is that how we honor in hip hop fifty?
Speaker 3: I don't know you've been following this for seventy two I.
Speaker 1: Mean the people have said, speaking of hip hop, fifty
Speaker 1: K Solo said, your mom's in my business.
Speaker 2: She's in my business.
Speaker 1: I wonder what he would say about the NSA being
Speaker 1: in the business. So we can talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that too. And it wouldn't be Home without our
Speaker 1: listeners and viewers. So we are doing Q and A
Speaker 1: throughout this episode to create even more of a conversation.
Speaker 1: And we even have some inspiration from a faithful listener
Speaker 1: that's a surprise, so make sure you stay tuned. Also
Speaker 1: today my governor and my co host, my brother Andrew Gillam,
Speaker 1: is sharing his very courageous story. You do not want
Speaker 1: to miss this, y'all. This is episode for a welcome home. Okay.
Speaker 1: So from Kamala Harris's viral moment, do not come to
Speaker 1: the Biden administrations and initial proposal that was to restore
Speaker 1: humanity and American values to our immigration system, Joe's taking
Speaker 1: a hard turn to the right.
Speaker 2: Joe Biden is now saying this not.
Speaker 3: Biller the law today.
Speaker 4: I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.
Speaker 6: And Congress needs to get it done.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So, as you all know, there is a lot going
Speaker 1: on with our community in particularly excuse me, in particular
Speaker 1: with immigration.
Speaker 2: I think we're real divided.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of pushback, even from the audience
Speaker 1: of Native lampod Last week. We were joking about New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: like what New Hampshire got to do with border security?
Speaker 1: But folks are like, actually a whole lot there are
Speaker 1: differing opinions here, and apparently, y'all we're not necessarily in
Speaker 1: lockstep with the culture. So I would like to have
Speaker 1: y'all weigh in here. And I'm definitely not in lockstep
Speaker 1: but what Biden's talking about, and I'm even more definitely
Speaker 1: not in lockstep with what Donald Trump has said about
Speaker 1: the border.
Speaker 2: So hey, aint, y'all what you got?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I gotta tell you, angel I was really disappointed
Speaker 5: with a lot of the comments. They were very anti immigrant,
Speaker 5: and I just want to kick us off and is
Speaker 5: having this conversation by saying, listen, this country has not
Speaker 5: been kind to any community of color and weaponizing communities
Speaker 5: of color against each other. That is the devil's work,
Speaker 5: and I just don't want us to do that. I
Speaker 5: think there are legitimate questions around the strain that immigration
Speaker 5: places on us from a federal policy, especially to a state.
Speaker 4: And local government.
Speaker 5: I actually I don't think we were really joking around
Speaker 5: New Hampshire, because it was a legitimate question, what is
Speaker 5: the huge immigration policy that would be number two that
Speaker 5: most New Hampshire states were voting on, particularly when that
Speaker 5: state is nearly ninety four percent white. So I think
Speaker 5: those were legitimate questions. I think the consistent comment in
Speaker 5: a lot of from a lot of our viewers was
Speaker 5: this notion that immigration takes away resources from black communities.
Speaker 5: And I just want to say that is not true.
Speaker 5: Undocumented immigrants pay more than eleven billion dollars in taxes
Speaker 5: every year. Undocumented immigrants are not really eligible for a
Speaker 5: lot of federal benefits, and some of the labor shortages
Speaker 5: that we see in our community would have happened anyway.
Speaker 5: That is not You have to consider things like automation
Speaker 5: and the way the economy is going that is not
Speaker 5: undocumented immigrants taking away from you. I understand that I'm
Speaker 5: speaking as someone who hasn't worked on this policy, but Andrew, you,
Speaker 5: I mean, you were a mayor, you were running to
Speaker 5: run a state. I'm really curious for you because you
Speaker 5: look at mayors like Eric Adams and what's happening in
Speaker 5: New York, what's happening in Chicago with these you know,
Speaker 5: immigrants getting dropped off? What is I don't want us
Speaker 5: to lose the humanity in all of this, but what
Speaker 5: is like common sense immigration solutions? And do these folks
Speaker 5: have a point for being so upset about it?
Speaker 3: You set it up well, Angela, and it is a
Speaker 3: real broad conversation. But I want to go back to
Speaker 3: the premise, which was Biden's talking point of I'm going
Speaker 3: to close the border. The American borders have always been closed.
Speaker 3: Let's reject the Republican talking points. There is always been
Speaker 3: a process for legal entry and asylum entry and a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of other designations we are not going to
Speaker 3: go through on this show. But there have always been
Speaker 3: processes in place by which people legally enter this country.
Speaker 3: That's number one. Don't accept the Republican talking point and
Speaker 3: frame on this frame this thing to what it is
Speaker 3: in real life. To people who are you know, saying
Speaker 3: I agree with Trump and the Republicans, these folks who
Speaker 3: taking jobs. I am not going to tell you to
Speaker 3: betray your very beautiful twenty twenty vision seeing eyes because
Speaker 3: I know from experiencing my own community, and I heard
Speaker 3: about it on the trail and otherwise. Jobs. At one
Speaker 3: time I could drive past and see black folk doing
Speaker 3: I've experienced it's largely in the blue collar sector where
Speaker 3: it's most visible when you're driving past and they're construction
Speaker 3: workers on the street, and they are folks who are
Speaker 3: doing the traffic, you know, the road repairs and all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. There used to be a lot
Speaker 3: more black men when I was growing up and where
Speaker 3: I live, and folks have noticed that the faces have
Speaker 3: shipped have changed in that y'all. This is no different
Speaker 3: than what folks up in the Northeast during the still
Speaker 3: boom and industrial the Irish folks was coming in to
Speaker 3: replace the good white man. If you were in Detroit,
Speaker 3: Michigan working for Henry Ford, and he bought in Middle Easterners,
Speaker 3: which is why it's the largest concentration of Middle Easterners
Speaker 3: in the world outside of the Middle East is in Detroit.
Speaker 3: He bought them because he didn't want to shut the
Speaker 3: factories down during the summer. It was molding hot, and
Speaker 3: he didn't want to have to take the workers off
Speaker 3: the line. He wanted to continue to produce. So what
Speaker 3: did he do. He got planes and boats, well not
Speaker 3: planes but ships, and bought over Middle Easterners who now
Speaker 3: are still huge constituency parts of Detroit and Michigan and
Speaker 3: all around. Our Congresswoman Rashida till Alive could tell us
Speaker 3: about that. But again, there was some replacement that was
Speaker 3: happening for a corporate economic need. In my state of Florida,
Speaker 3: we have a lot of immigrants who do a lot
Speaker 3: of the farming grapefruits and oranges and so on and
Speaker 3: so forth, and those are tending to be around the people.
Speaker 3: But if an employer a company is prepared and willing
Speaker 3: and able to give away the work to workers who
Speaker 3: are willing to do it at either half the cost
Speaker 3: or off the books, or for a cash trade rather
Speaker 3: than whatever, then there's always going to be a market
Speaker 3: for people who are going to do it less. And
Speaker 3: I think if we were serious about real immigration reform,
Speaker 3: we would put the emphasis on a national comprehensive solution
Speaker 3: that is led by cracking down on the economic powers
Speaker 3: of this country who are manipulating, using benefiting from the
Speaker 3: hard labor of folks, but they're not being paid with
Speaker 3: their worth and they're making the trade off. But displacing
Speaker 3: a whole different set of people. But to your point, Tiffany,
Speaker 3: at the local level, these folks pay taxes that they
Speaker 3: don't get tax refunds for. And my state, where we
Speaker 3: don't have a property, we have a property tax, but
Speaker 3: we don't have a state income tax. The large percentage
Speaker 3: of taxes are collected through sales. So if you go
Speaker 3: and buy milk and eggs and groceries and you're paying
Speaker 3: the text of the gas station, you're contributing to Florida's
Speaker 3: tax base in a regressive way. I might add, but
Speaker 3: you're paying into the system and you're not taking from it.
Speaker 3: I know you're never gonna believe that these folks are
Speaker 3: not here and replacing you, But the truth is they're
Speaker 3: here making contributions and are not getting the resources that
Speaker 3: they would otherwise receive, and we end up at the
Speaker 3: local level paying the huge lion's share of burden of
Speaker 3: cost here because the federal government isn't willing to do
Speaker 3: anything solve the problem by fixing the rules.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm key, you're saying, but you're saying that we
Speaker 5: paid the burden of cost, and I think that's what
Speaker 5: a lot of the people who are leaving these comments
Speaker 5: suggesting that it is a strain on our resources.
Speaker 3: Immigrants are and they're paying more. And by the way,
Speaker 3: these folks aren't wrong that they're seeing the bill because
Speaker 3: they see their taxes go up and they make the contribution. Well, y'alling.
Speaker 3: We're paying at the local level to solve an immigration
Speaker 3: and issue, more than Donald Trump paid in the entirety
Speaker 3: before becoming president of the United States or since, and
Speaker 3: taxes working folks have paid more than the wealthy class
Speaker 3: and taking care of this problem. They give us lip service,
Speaker 3: but they don't give us no green you to help
Speaker 3: us through the Issuas.
Speaker 1: You've reference the comments, I do want to get into
Speaker 1: the comments because this is a safe place for our audience,
Speaker 1: our listeners. So this is from Dina in New York,
Speaker 1: where we know there's also a migrant crisis that they're
Speaker 1: actively trying to solve. Dina says, how do we own
Speaker 1: the conversation surrounding the southern border? Black people in my
Speaker 1: community feel like Trump would handle the alleged crisis better
Speaker 1: than Biden. Also, I'm extremely concerned that Biden will sign
Speaker 1: a bad deal to appease a voting block that will
Speaker 1: not vote for him anyway. I believe immigration reform is
Speaker 1: desperately needed, but this hardline position held by right wing
Speaker 1: Republicans will put us right back where we were prior
Speaker 1: to the Civil Rights movement, only allowing Caucasians into this country.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear your views on this. I
Speaker 1: love this question from Dina. I think she spot on.
Speaker 1: This is exactly why I started with Biden's plan today.
Speaker 1: It is a hard right turn towards right wing Republicans
Speaker 1: that are never going to vote for him, and he's
Speaker 1: abandoning potentially some of his base.
Speaker 2: TIF you had an excellent point before.
Speaker 1: We got on today about why you thought he actually
Speaker 1: is not making the pivot to right wing Republicans.
Speaker 2: What did you say, Tip.
Speaker 5: And why that he's not making it? Well, I don't
Speaker 5: know what did I say.
Speaker 1: You were talking about how you think he actually is
Speaker 1: trying to appease the base because to the point, we
Speaker 1: have black folks in our comments who actually agree with
Speaker 1: some of what Joe Biden has done.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: So the different is I think both parties are right,
Speaker 5: but both parties are doing this by weaponizing communities of
Speaker 5: color against each other. Look, Republicans do not have any
Speaker 5: interest in protecting black men and their pathway to you know,
Speaker 5: being construction workers or black women in their pathway. But
Speaker 5: they're very strategic and targeting black men with that message,
Speaker 5: and so you hear a lot of people parroting those
Speaker 5: same talking points, which something that that you know was
Speaker 5: going to happen anyway. My only point is that immigrants,
Speaker 5: undocumented immigrants even are not stealing those levels that level
Speaker 5: of resource from our community. It's just not true. Study
Speaker 5: after study, from the from the Pew Research Center to
Speaker 5: the acl you has shown that there's not some sort
Speaker 5: of resource stuff going on. Angel I actually had a
Speaker 5: question for you though, because a lot of people don't
Speaker 5: know your policy background, but you actually started on Capitol
Speaker 5: Hill working on Homeland security for mister Bennie Thompson, who,
Speaker 5: as we know, yeah, when they were in the majority,
Speaker 5: chaired the Homeland Security Committee. So I do wonder when
Speaker 5: we talk about a federal immigration policy, what could that
Speaker 5: look like, because then you get into the issue of states'
Speaker 5: rights and you know, usurping some of these local governments.
Speaker 5: So I don't know the solution, but I know I
Speaker 5: would like to take away that rhetoric of we're stealing,
Speaker 5: you know, the brown folks are stealing from us, because
Speaker 5: that's the devil's work.
Speaker 2: It is the devil's work. Tip. I will say a
Speaker 2: couple of things.
Speaker 1: One is, I think that we often forget that black
Speaker 1: people are immigrants too, and oftentimes, like I don't know
Speaker 1: if you all remember, of course, you remember the very
Speaker 1: traumatic photo we saw that took us back to slavery,
Speaker 1: when you saw that white border patrol officer on a
Speaker 1: horse almost cracking a whip on a Haitian migrant, right like,
Speaker 1: we have to remember our humanity first. I also and
Speaker 1: shout out to the indigenous community who've been so kind,
Speaker 1: embracing and talking to us about this pod. These borders
Speaker 1: are artificially created, right Like, I'm not saying that there
Speaker 1: shouldn't be immigration policy, but we could. We putting up
Speaker 1: borders on land that wasn't theirs to begin with. You're
Speaker 1: putting up borders on stolen land, which is a mind boob.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say the cussword, but y'all know what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking. It's really like very triggering and traumatizing and
Speaker 1: annoying to me. White folks can come in here and
Speaker 1: blend in and our folks stand out like sore thumbs,
Speaker 1: and we forget about it. So I would say to
Speaker 1: the people who at home, you know they will make
Speaker 1: a special exception for their girlfriend or their side piece,
Speaker 1: or their nanny or their cleaning lady. How about Milangya
Speaker 1: or your first lady, right like all of these other people,
Speaker 1: you'll make.
Speaker 5: Except at the Einstein visa listen for some unknown talent.
Speaker 5: We have yet to discuss trying to figure out her
Speaker 5: unknown talent. Where is that she was able to leap
Speaker 5: frog over everybody. Here's that Ted talk and get this
Speaker 5: Einstein visa listen.
Speaker 4: But they were fine with that.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: But from the very beginning, Congressman Thompson put out border principles,
Speaker 1: standards that we should be governing by legislation that we
Speaker 1: should be pushing. It's not just visas for folks that
Speaker 1: want to work in tech companies. You should care about
Speaker 1: the people who need work permits, who are picking fruit
Speaker 1: and repairing toilets and cleaning floors like we should be
Speaker 1: humane in our approach to our border security, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm so troubled by the direction that the Biden
Speaker 1: administration is now taking. I will say it is also
Speaker 1: immensely troubling, and I'm sure that part of his strategy
Speaker 1: is including this to think that the Republican Party is
Speaker 1: impeaching Secretary Mayorcis for not enforcing border policy. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, Joe Biden has now said, Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: let's go with your plan, but they're not going to
Speaker 1: go for it because Donald Trump ain't about to let
Speaker 1: them go rogue and give Joe Biden this alleged win.
Speaker 1: I do want to pivot here, Andrew, and come back
Speaker 1: to you. There was a Chicago City Council meeting on
Speaker 1: Chicago being a sanctuary city, and an Alderman spoke up
Speaker 1: in this meeting. I want us to roll that clip
Speaker 1: because I think, again, your perspective on local policy here
Speaker 1: is really important.
Speaker 7: The reason I have brought this with some of my
Speaker 7: colleagues to the floor is not to eliminate Chicago as
Speaker 7: a sanctuary city.
Speaker 8: But what it is is.
Speaker 7: To find some kind of compromise and threshold to stop
Speaker 7: the bleeding that we're undertaking right now. When you look
Speaker 7: at what the city is dealing with, we're spending when
Speaker 7: we had twelve thousand migrants, we were spending thirty one
Speaker 7: million dollars a month at that time. We have twenty
Speaker 7: thousand migrants today, So what is the price tag on
Speaker 7: that now? And we can't get solid answers to what
Speaker 7: is costing us right now?
Speaker 9: Y'all don't care what y'all trying to find.
Speaker 8: Y'all trying to find housing.
Speaker 9: For the for for for Venice, for for Venezuelans, for
Speaker 9: the Latinos, for all that, y'all, y'all keep it sending
Speaker 9: them over here when that needs to go back, y'all
Speaker 9: one time, y'all sent ice there, Ice need to come after.
Speaker 8: There's prostitution. There's prostitution that's behind there's prostitution that's behind
Speaker 8: all of these police districts.
Speaker 9: I love that Streeterville as prostitution right up the street.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's it's it's it's it's a it's.
Speaker 3: A disrespect, that's real. I don't like it. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: let me I hate it. All of us have to
Speaker 3: not like it. But the truth is this is where
Speaker 3: we create the way for Republicans to come in and
Speaker 3: go after very discreet sets of voters. We talked about
Speaker 3: this before. They don't need everybody, they don't even need
Speaker 3: most of everybody. They just need a few And so
Speaker 3: this is the kind of thing. We can't tell these
Speaker 3: folks to disbelieve their lying eyes. Their lived experience is
Speaker 3: gonna be what it is, but very quickly one. This
Speaker 3: thing is based in a very racist and also separatists
Speaker 3: otherising American tradition of the elite and corporate interests finding
Speaker 3: and figuring out a way to keep us separate, divided,
Speaker 3: and conquered. When the union started to peep up during
Speaker 3: the early beginnings of the industrial complex and say, listen,
Speaker 3: these were white men. We're dying here. We need work
Speaker 3: hours that respect us, we need a weekend, we need
Speaker 3: to pay that, they went and did that. What did
Speaker 3: the union bosses do, They saytiated them as best they
Speaker 3: could so they didn't have to kill them. Outside of
Speaker 3: the mills where they were blocking the entrances of them
Speaker 3: importing more cheap labor and to replace them, they blocked them.
Speaker 3: And then they came up with a strata system. What
Speaker 3: they started giving these folks titles but doing the same
Speaker 3: work on the floor, so that the new title people
Speaker 3: who didn't even make more with the new title, they
Speaker 3: still made the same amount that everybody else did, but
Speaker 3: it created strata so that they could never come together
Speaker 3: and do this thing as a as a as a unit.
Speaker 3: So this has been an intention from the very beginning, y'all.
Speaker 3: Divide and conquer is the name of the game, and
Speaker 3: the writers of the rules are these corporate interests. But
Speaker 3: as Angela and Tivity both said, the devil is a lie.
Speaker 3: But not only is the devil a lie, or this
Speaker 3: is the devil's work, it is also a lie that
Speaker 3: immigrants are not paying their fair share. But nobody's going
Speaker 3: to believe that. As a fact, they pay more than
Speaker 3: their fair share, therefore contribute more to the system than
Speaker 3: they take from Hate me, love me, don't have an opinion,
Speaker 3: it's a fact. The other thing, the other rising, is
Speaker 3: a way to divide. And this whole thing, y'all, goes
Speaker 3: back to the very beginning, and it's divide and conquer.
Speaker 3: So long as they keep us thinking that the enemy
Speaker 3: is you and me, this and this, then we ain't
Speaker 3: never paying attention to how much the corporate board made.
Speaker 5: I think that's such a I want to punctuate everything
Speaker 5: Andrew just said, because I think that's such an important point.
Speaker 5: I also want to make the point that Angela spoke
Speaker 5: about nine percent of Black Americans have a foreign born
Speaker 5: parent that their parent was also an immigrant, and one
Speaker 5: out of ten black people living in the United States
Speaker 5: is considered an immigrant as well. So those are all
Speaker 5: things to keep in mind.
Speaker 3: But y'all also hit on the fact that we cannot
Speaker 3: ignore the racism that is steeped in our immigration policy.
Speaker 3: In Florida, we had wetfoot dry foot. If you were
Speaker 3: wet foot, it meant you came on a boat from Cuba.
Speaker 3: If you were dryfoot, it meant you. And they would
Speaker 3: let the boats that were coming from Cuba in and
Speaker 3: onto shore, they'd become dryfood Haitian boats. They wouldn't let
Speaker 3: them in the port. They turn them around in the
Speaker 3: sea so they couldn't get drift foot and send them
Speaker 3: right back to Haiti. Everybody knows it. Why were there
Speaker 3: two different policies, didn't make sense. It's steeped in racism.
Speaker 5: Well, I just think it's an important thing to point
Speaker 5: out to our audience that a lot of the reasons
Speaker 5: why these people are migrating to the US is because
Speaker 5: of how US policy has impacted their native countries. We
Speaker 5: have had an adverse impact on so many of these countries.
Speaker 5: Because if it's something that's good for ten percent of
Speaker 5: the people in the United States but bad for ninety
Speaker 5: percent of a population, guess what the United States does.
Speaker 5: They proceed accordingly, and they prioritize our interest over everyone else.
Speaker 5: So before we shun people and lose our humanity and
Speaker 5: look at somebody trying to cross over a razor wire
Speaker 5: at the southern border with their child and their arms
Speaker 5: and watching them drown, just think about how you would
Speaker 5: like to be treated, and never lose sight that these
Speaker 5: are human beings that we are talking to under the
Speaker 5: most desperate of circumstances, trying to find a better life.
Speaker 3: And by the way, we leave the master's tools with
Speaker 3: the master. We are on the same team, and we
Speaker 3: don't have the same vision. Our vision is that everybody
Speaker 3: out of work, make a good way for themselves, have
Speaker 3: opportunity to be able to produce, and that's it. The
Speaker 3: corporate agenda is not that. Yes, So the sides are
Speaker 3: not Americans versus internationals who want to come in and
Speaker 3: take our things. The sides are those who believe in humanity,
Speaker 3: the ability to work hard, play hard, get what it
Speaker 3: is they deserve, versus those who want to keep more money,
Speaker 3: more recent sources pocketed amongst their ten set of friends.
Speaker 3: Those are the sides.
Speaker 1: And speaking of more money in order for us to
Speaker 1: ensure that we can keep this pot going and keep
Speaker 1: your listener questions coming in.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick commercial break.
Speaker 5: All right, Welcome back, everybody. Something that has been the
Speaker 5: subject of a lot of conversation in your group chats, maybe,
Speaker 5: but this week also in the media, is this narrative
Speaker 5: around the black male voting block, even that descriptor. I
Speaker 5: have challenges with I have to tell you. But the
Speaker 5: Washington Post had a really interesting read this week that
Speaker 5: essentially suggested that Biden is having trouble with black men voters.
Speaker 5: I have so many challenges and issues with this, Angela.
Speaker 5: You know, we're in a group chat where we talk
Speaker 5: about this kind of thing a lot all the time,
Speaker 5: and I just think the media framing on this is wrong.
Speaker 5: There are black people are one of the most faithful
Speaker 5: Democratic voters, and we've already talked about we're not faithful
Speaker 5: to a political party. We're faithful to ourselves. We're voting
Speaker 5: in favor of harm reduction. But this notion that somehow
Speaker 5: we're going to lay the failure of Joe Biden at
Speaker 5: the feet of black folks, particularly black men. I have
Speaker 5: an issue with it. I think there is a small
Speaker 5: sect of black men who vote Republican. They certainly don't
Speaker 5: represent the masses. And when the media writes about this,
Speaker 5: I just want to scream, because you know who the
Speaker 5: largest conservative voting bloc is, white men. Write about white
Speaker 5: men voting overwhelmingly for this president with ninety one indictments,
Speaker 5: who brags about grabbing women by their private parts, who
Speaker 5: got one, two, three baby mamas all up in the
Speaker 5: White House. Right about that group of people because of
Speaker 5: their conservative beliefs, they are overwhelmingly voting for him. Write
Speaker 5: about the people who sit at the right hand of
Speaker 5: that power, white women who support this president. So I
Speaker 5: have a lot of issues to say about it. But Angela, I,
Speaker 5: because we had talked about this so aggressively at our
Speaker 5: group chat, I know you have some thoughts about it too,
Speaker 5: because we have to ask the question how do we
Speaker 5: engage black men in these conversations? And I have to
Speaker 5: say Vice President Kamala Harris, I think has been doing
Speaker 5: a great job at that. It's not highly publicized, but
Speaker 5: I know she's had some black mail centric dinners, and
Speaker 5: I think it's wise of the administration to do that.
Speaker 1: I will tell you that I do have a lot
Speaker 1: of thoughts. But we also have a question that's closely
Speaker 1: enough related to this from one of our listeners, Monica Williams.
Speaker 10: Hey Native Land Podcast Spam. I wanted to kind of
Speaker 10: get your thoughts. I saw in a Black Enterprise article
Speaker 10: recently that stated that about fourteen to thirty percent of
Speaker 10: the black vote was seemingly leaning towards.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, which I thought was kind of a.
Speaker 11: Curious stat and kind of wondering what your thoughts are
Speaker 11: on that, if that stat is in fact true, or
Speaker 11: if you feel that it's leaning more or black men
Speaker 11: are going towards Donald Trump versus Black women, or kind
Speaker 11: of what that looks like, and if that's the case,
Speaker 11: if there's anything that the Democratic Party can do to
Speaker 11: kind of stop the faucet from running.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we know right that there's a distinction between
Speaker 1: black women vote and black men vote, and it's still
Speaker 1: not significant enough to call as much attention to it
Speaker 1: as is called in the press every single cycle. It's
Speaker 1: not new to tips point. I do think that I
Speaker 1: believe that there's an alarm being sounded, and it should be.
Speaker 1: There should be no light between people of color and
Speaker 1: Democrats in terms of policy, but there has been traditionally
Speaker 1: and it continues to be a problem. This all hands
Speaker 1: on deck approach to recruiting back a base that Democrats
Speaker 1: lost long ago, and I would like to see them
Speaker 1: keep that same energy to ensure that our voters don't
Speaker 1: leave when they don't feel heard, aren't seen, you know,
Speaker 1: feel ignored, feel like their policy desires are not heard.
Speaker 1: I also think, again I say this every week now,
Speaker 1: that we need to be really clear about what our
Speaker 1: demands are and what our agenda is. Andrew, I want
Speaker 1: to come to you, and then I want to go
Speaker 1: to one other clip.
Speaker 3: Black male voters need to be talked to like a
Speaker 3: target community, as they would what you call the independent
Speaker 3: lane center voter. That we're going to spend what six
Speaker 3: times the amount we would on a base voter trying
Speaker 3: to get out and say that we're their choice. Black
Speaker 3: folks are not a monolith. We say this often, but
Speaker 3: increasingly when it comes to economic strata. If you are
Speaker 3: not talking to me about more than a social program,
Speaker 3: but one that yes, allows everybody to survive. But I
Speaker 3: need a thriving agenda. I want to see the agenda
Speaker 3: on a small black business, recruitment development, early seed investments,
Speaker 3: and then the kind of coverage and support that folks need.
Speaker 3: You know, Donald Trump, you need daddy. God is from
Speaker 3: his daddy. But institutions who are supposed to do that,
Speaker 3: our banks aren't lending to us. So what public policy
Speaker 3: are you going to produce that makes that door opened
Speaker 3: and easier? During COVID, what black women were the fastest
Speaker 3: starters of new business, yet something like ninety seven percent
Speaker 3: of all startup capital was going to white men. Yeah,
Speaker 3: make it make sense. The policy isn't lining up. So
Speaker 3: don't bring me no Chitlin circuit mess and think I'm
Speaker 3: going to be impressed by it. We are not. We
Speaker 3: now want you to go further.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 3: It is boilerplate to take care of basic human needs.
Speaker 3: Now I need you to tell me how in second
Speaker 3: and third generation college we're gonna thrive. What's that agenda?
Speaker 3: And so we've got to be willing to speak to it.
Speaker 3: And if we don't, if we keep thinking that the
Speaker 3: same three things are gonna motivate us civil rights paved
Speaker 3: the way, and we owe our ancestors a lot. We
Speaker 3: understand that, and it is baked in the cake. But
Speaker 3: those talking points are not applying to an emerging voter
Speaker 3: black men being I think at the apex of it,
Speaker 3: who want more. Yeah, they want more, and they deserve more,
Speaker 3: just as we would give more if they were considered
Speaker 3: a swing voter.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And speaking of just that, there's a man named
Speaker 1: Keith Rivers who spoke at a Black Voters Matter town
Speaker 1: hall recently. I want to shout out Roland Martin who
Speaker 1: gave us access to this footage for this town hall
Speaker 1: that I actually moderated in South Carolina last Friday.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 12: We are a little city that is right about twenty
Speaker 12: miles from the Virginia line, and so all of our
Speaker 12: media comes out of Virginia. So North Carolina doesn't see us,
Speaker 12: and we don't see North Carolina, and everything around.
Speaker 8: Us is rule.
Speaker 12: Within twenty four hours of the sharp.
Speaker 6: And verdict right ouf the George Floyd excuse me.
Speaker 8: On April the twenty first, twenty twenty one, they shot
Speaker 8: a brother in the back of the head with the
Speaker 8: AR fifteen rifle fired thirty some of the shots in
Speaker 8: his head when he was rolling out. He was goldly
Speaker 8: going away. The Corners report said that it was homicide,
Speaker 8: and the media came into our city. They sold out
Speaker 8: every hotel in the city, and we marched for almost
Speaker 8: a year. And we didn't burn down any buildings, We
Speaker 8: didn't shoot each other, we didn't do anything. And the
Speaker 8: media left. The media left, and those deputies that murdered
Speaker 8: Andrew Brown Jr. Go to work every day. And my
Speaker 8: question is, where's the media now? Where's the black media
Speaker 8: who's telling our story? Now? Where's the black media to
Speaker 8: tell this story that these white deputies, one of them
Speaker 8: is by Ray. Sure, they don't make no difference. They
Speaker 8: all of them, that wall of blue. They shot this
Speaker 8: brother in the back of the head. And nobody's telling
Speaker 8: this story today. And maybe if this story get told,
Speaker 8: the same sheriff got reelected the district attorney, it became
Speaker 8: a judge. We don't have a black judge in our district.
Speaker 6: Who's telling our story in these rural areas.
Speaker 8: But maybe if our media, if the black media start
Speaker 8: telling our story, we won't have a problem getting people
Speaker 8: to the polls.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I know that you guys might be asking
Speaker 1: why did we play this clip around black media, But
Speaker 1: I think it is so clear, and I want to
Speaker 1: tell you, guys, because Andrew and tiff y'all are some
Speaker 1: of the greatest public servants I know. When I heard
Speaker 1: this man and saw this grown man cry at the
Speaker 1: mic like that, I said, I'm committing to you. We
Speaker 1: are putting this story on the podcast. We will talk
Speaker 1: about Andrew Brown Junior. But the thing that he said
Speaker 1: that is so poignant, and I know y'all feel this.
Speaker 1: When we talk to rural black voters a lot of times,
Speaker 1: they say they feel forgotten. They are only thought about
Speaker 1: every four years. And he hits that right on the
Speaker 1: head when he says the media sold out these hotel rooms,
Speaker 1: that they were everywhere. They were swarming right after this
Speaker 1: man was shot and killed, but shortly thereafter because they
Speaker 1: left because there was no more attention placed on this.
Speaker 1: Because the tv ads are Virginia and not North Carolina.
Speaker 1: The sheriff was reelected, the DA became an elected judge.
Speaker 1: And Andrew Brown Junior's legacy is brought on by the
Speaker 1: people who were to boost up and to fortify his killers.
Speaker 1: This I mean, if there's not something that encapsulates the
Speaker 1: problem better. I don't know what it is. Like the
Speaker 1: reason black men are like, yo, I'm not doing this,
Speaker 1: the reason our people are like forget it.
Speaker 2: But the reason young people are like, I'm just trying to.
Speaker 1: Understand what you're doing with Gaza though, like you're not
Speaker 1: speaking to my humanity.
Speaker 2: In fact, you don't even see me until you need
Speaker 2: my vote.
Speaker 1: That is the issue, Like we have to drill down
Speaker 1: on the actual problem. This isn't even about going at policy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just like, do you see me? Can you
Speaker 1: acknowledge my existence?
Speaker 2: I matter? Talk to me like I matter.
Speaker 1: Latasha and Clip founded Black voters Matter, and they do
Speaker 1: the work all year long, not just in an election year,
Speaker 1: but three sixty five seven days a week, all of
Speaker 1: the time because we matter all of the time. Our
Speaker 1: engagement matters all of the time, and what we hear
Speaker 1: from this man. And I also don't want to blame
Speaker 1: black media. We got a resource challenge rather just like
Speaker 1: everybody else, but like we have to do the work
Speaker 1: of staying engaged and ensuring that our folks feel seen
Speaker 1: all the time because we cannot count on any elected official,
Speaker 1: no matter the race, to do that all the time
Speaker 1: for us, We've got to do that. Thank God for
Speaker 1: a Black Voters Matter for making this happen. But truly,
Speaker 1: that's where I believe the work is, and that's where
Speaker 1: I think the disconnect really lies.
Speaker 2: We got to do that well.
Speaker 5: I think it's a really good point is about rural America, right,
Speaker 5: because when you hear people talk about rural America and
Speaker 5: the mainstream media, so often we are not included the
Speaker 5: rural America. In mainstream media, the white is silent. So
Speaker 5: assume that everyone lives in rural America is a white
Speaker 5: farmer who has somehow been disenfranchised, when in reality, more
Speaker 5: than seven percent of black folks call rural America home.
Speaker 5: And I want to say people of color comprised more
Speaker 5: than thirty percent of rural America across this country. So yes,
Speaker 5: we see you, we hear you, we understand you. I
Speaker 5: have to too, echo Angela sentiments and defend black media.
Speaker 5: It is a more than a resource challenge. Media everywhere
Speaker 5: is challenged, and so if you can imagine that when
Speaker 5: it comes to black media, it is a severe resource
Speaker 5: challenge that they do not have the resources to be
Speaker 5: on ground and cover everything like that. So I wouldn't
Speaker 5: lay that film at the foot of black media. I
Speaker 5: lay this failure at the foot of media, at white
Speaker 5: decision makers who do not see faces like this as
Speaker 5: being real America or the heart of America. That is
Speaker 5: a challenge that we all have to press forward on
Speaker 5: and we can't depend on, you know, white run newsrooms
Speaker 5: to do that for us. That's why there's always been
Speaker 5: such credo and importance to media that centers us black
Speaker 5: run media, black owned media. But I just want to
Speaker 5: say that when it comes to because this was such
Speaker 5: a huge conversation around the Georgia race where Stacy Abrams
Speaker 5: ran for governor, and there was a similar conversation around
Speaker 5: black men. And you think about there's Atlanta, which is
Speaker 5: a hard blue spot on a very red map, and
Speaker 5: so as Georgia turns purple, you think about all the
Speaker 5: people in rural America there And just to give black
Speaker 5: men a shout out, because I know you all stand
Speaker 5: with us. There's a small margin of people who venture
Speaker 5: over to the other side. But in Georgia, twenty seven
Speaker 5: percent or twenty three thousand people, excuse me, voted for
Speaker 5: Brian Kemp. Twenty three black men voted for Brian Kemp.
Speaker 5: If you took all twenty three thousand of those black men,
Speaker 5: they would have done nothing for the more than fifty
Speaker 5: thousand lead that he had. So I just rebuke any
Speaker 5: time we're laying failure in this democracy at the foot
Speaker 5: of black folks, we have to turn that mirror and say,
Speaker 5: how are white folks voting? Because they are still the
Speaker 5: largest voting block.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't go after your number two highest contributing
Speaker 3: member to your success period, bar nne By sharing the
Speaker 3: vote and say you're the blame for the loss. If
Speaker 3: you got a fifty cheap, fifty numbered long list of
Speaker 3: who your constituency is, and black men right behind black
Speaker 3: women are the number one and two performers, you would
Speaker 3: think that your ad resourcing money would be so heavily
Speaker 3: concentrated on maximizing that community and being there and doing
Speaker 3: what needs to be done for that community that you
Speaker 3: make no light in between. But what black folks are
Speaker 3: willing to do in black men and black women too.
Speaker 3: I think we're pragmatic voters. But let's just take what
Speaker 3: Donald Trump has said and is doing on the issue
Speaker 3: of criminal justice. I find it largely self serving given
Speaker 3: his particular condition right now, But his head face on
Speaker 3: attack about the corruption of the FBI and what federal
Speaker 3: prosecutors are doing and state prosecutors and so forth, that
Speaker 3: resonates with our community. Those were our talking points before
Speaker 3: he co opted them and the folks on the right
Speaker 3: co opted them. We were saying, this is a system
Speaker 3: that is not designed for us, but it is except
Speaker 3: to our demise. If we let them run away with
Speaker 3: criminal justice as an issue, in the corruption of institutions
Speaker 3: as an issue, then I can tell you we will
Speaker 3: have something to worry about. Because I am done sick.
Speaker 3: I no longer will lay down and blindly support any
Speaker 3: governmental institution or law enforcement entity, agency, or individual or
Speaker 3: set of people without scrutinizing it to the highest degree,
Speaker 3: because I've been on this where those systems have cooperated
Speaker 3: maliciously to make a thing that wasn't a thing a
Speaker 3: thing and ruining and crushing lives, communities, families, neighborhoods in between.
Speaker 3: So when I look at MSNBC or CNN or any
Speaker 3: of these cable news networks, and I'm hearing the same
Speaker 3: black voices that were on there saying during Barock's administration
Speaker 3: that we need a criminal justice reform and a prosecutorial
Speaker 3: accountability who are now saying, hell, when prosecutors put together
Speaker 3: their case against Trump, you know they're not going to
Speaker 3: leave any stone unturned. And now giving these folks unfettered
Speaker 3: credibility for their work, no, serve you lose me. I'm
Speaker 3: not with that because no institution's beyond reproach and certainly
Speaker 3: not a governmental institution. And I think he's tapping on
Speaker 3: something and people are willing to hear that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, we got to pay some more bills and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: As you all know, politics are everywhere and they're definitely
Speaker 1: in hip hop. We have Nicki Minaj versus Meg the Stallion.
Speaker 1: Meg the Stallion his first with her track.
Speaker 2: Called His These Hos don't be mad at Megan. These
Speaker 2: host made at Megan's law.
Speaker 13: I don't really know what the problem means, but I
Speaker 13: get see y'all want me staring.
Speaker 1: And Nicki Minaj hit back with a track called Bigfoot
Speaker 1: Shi by Bigot.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this because it just went
Speaker 2: a little far for me.
Speaker 1: It went a little far for me, and I want
Speaker 1: to reference first in Meg's track Hiss, she referenced something
Speaker 1: called Meghan's Law. So she says, these holes don't be
Speaker 1: mad at Meghan. These holes be mad at Meghan's Law.
Speaker 1: And she referenced Megan's Law, which is about the required
Speaker 1: for a sexual offender to report that they are in
Speaker 1: fact a sexual offender. It's a federal law that requires
Speaker 1: law enforcement to make information available about registered sex offenders.
Speaker 1: We know that Nicki Minaj is married to one Kenneth
Speaker 1: Petty who's a registered sex offender.
Speaker 2: So Nikki hit back and she came at her about bigfoot.
Speaker 1: Meg is five to ten and I guess this is
Speaker 1: something about that, as well as hitting at the fact
Speaker 1: that she was shot in the foot by Tory Lanes,
Speaker 1: which we all know anyway, we don't have to get
Speaker 1: in all that. But my question is, just like, what
Speaker 1: do we do with this. It's online bullying for seventy
Speaker 1: two hours. I thought we could leave it all on
Speaker 1: the sixteen bars, but apparently not. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: hear y'all thoughts about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I gotta say, I'm so disgusted by this Angela.
Speaker 5: I think it's so tragic. Number one, that these two
Speaker 5: women are fighting like this and the public eye ladies,
Speaker 5: there is nothing attractive about tearing down another black woman.
Speaker 5: It just Isn't you look so much more secure and
Speaker 5: happy and together when you're secure enough in yourself to
Speaker 5: stand next to another queen whose light shines as bright
Speaker 5: as yours, and if her light ain't shining as bright
Speaker 5: as yours, you're trying to lift her up to make
Speaker 5: sure her light shines as bright as yours. The challenge
Speaker 5: with this is when this kind of like petty back
Speaker 5: and forth, and I believe Nicki Mina said something about
Speaker 5: Megan's deceased mother. It feeds such a baser instinct and
Speaker 5: find you a tribe and let's celebrate sisterhood because I
Speaker 5: couldn't imagine Salt and Peppa going after MC light, who
Speaker 5: was going after mony Love Like we just didn't have
Speaker 5: that coming up. And I don't want a morphine. So
Speaker 5: one of those get off my lawn. Middle aged women.
Speaker 5: I'm certainly not seeing the Lauras Tucker sitting up here
Speaker 5: on this panel.
Speaker 4: But this ain't it.
Speaker 5: You know, whatever you all think this is accomplishing, it doesn't.
Speaker 5: Sixty four percent of young adults experience online bullying. You
Speaker 5: have black people who say, oh, suicide that ain't something
Speaker 5: we do.
Speaker 4: That is not true.
Speaker 5: Suicides among black youth seventeen ten to seventeen years old
Speaker 5: is up one hundred and forty four percent, and that
Speaker 5: number is attributed to online bullying. So to talk about
Speaker 5: somebody who was a victim of assault, to talk about
Speaker 5: somebody's body shaping, I believe Niki is almost forty years old.
Speaker 5: If she's not over forty, over forty, it doesn't matter
Speaker 5: how old you are, but that kind of behavior is disgusting.
Speaker 5: I also want to make the point Angela that she
Speaker 5: tweeted she was tweeting with Ben Shapiro. Nicki Minaj was
Speaker 5: Ben Shapiro is a right wing conservative zealot, a MAGA extremist.
Speaker 5: And so any time that you are so caught up
Speaker 5: in belittling another woman, you would align yourself with somebody
Speaker 5: who doesn't even see your humanity. I would hope that
Speaker 5: you question yourself. And I pray for both their healing,
Speaker 5: but especially Nicki Minaj I pray for your healing, sys
Speaker 5: because something inside you was broken that you would go
Speaker 5: to that level of disgusting attack on someone who lost
Speaker 5: their mother and who was the victim of an assault.
Speaker 5: I don't like any of it, it's not entertaining at all.
Speaker 1: To the point tip, just so you know, this online bullying,
Speaker 1: as we know, finds its way into what happens in
Speaker 1: real life. We saw that on January sixth, it turns
Speaker 1: into an insurrection. Well, there was an insurrection at Meg
Speaker 1: the Stallion's mother's grave site. Yep, they actually went to
Speaker 1: her grave site to deface the grave. That's where we are, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I saw you about to weigh in.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, y'all, I'm learning about this as I'm listening
Speaker 3: to y'all, so quick question.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nicki Minaj's critique before this thing seemed to degrade in
Speaker 3: the black hole, was that Meghan's law or.
Speaker 1: My point was that Meg said in the lyrics, she says,
Speaker 1: you think Holds is mad at Meghan, but they're really
Speaker 1: mad at Meghan's law, like the fact that he has
Speaker 1: to report.
Speaker 2: That's actually the lyric.
Speaker 5: She's talking about Nicky's husband who's a registered sex offender.
Speaker 5: Meghan's law is yes, it already, but she's saying, oh.
Speaker 3: Right, okay, so she threw it back at her as
Speaker 3: it did.
Speaker 2: Nicki responded with bigfoot. But here's the other thing.
Speaker 1: This is happening in real time, while like literally today
Speaker 1: we record, you guys know, we pre record. There is
Speaker 1: a Kids Online Safety Act being discussed in the Senate.
Speaker 1: This has everything to do with bullying and harassment and
Speaker 1: all these things. So I'm saying, you got adults demonstrating
Speaker 1: why this is so dangerous for kids. There are kids who,
Speaker 1: when they're bullied online, go home and commit or die
Speaker 1: by suicide. We have to be mindful of how we're
Speaker 1: carrying ourselves, particularly when you have a fan base. Charles
Speaker 1: Barkley said in that commercial back in the day, I'm
Speaker 1: not a role model. Guess what you are as soon
Speaker 1: as you step in that limelight. There are kids who
Speaker 1: are emulating themselves to try to be like you. There
Speaker 1: are adults who are trying to be like you. Nicki
Speaker 1: minaj Sis you're forty one, I'm forty four. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying we might have to shine a light and be
Speaker 1: a role model, even for the sisters in their twenties,
Speaker 1: like Meg. Meg's been through a lot, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, and it's hip hop there, I mean, you know.
Speaker 2: It's hip hop. There's always been rap battles at hip hop.
Speaker 4: You ain't gotta take its a Twitter.
Speaker 2: It's too far.
Speaker 4: Never like this, Never like this. I mean I do
Speaker 4: think of ll Cool Day and Cool Mode.
Speaker 5: They had one of the dopest rat battles and when
Speaker 5: you you know, hear those jay z Exactly throughout history
Speaker 5: there's always been rat battles.
Speaker 4: This is something else.
Speaker 5: And the fact that people are going to her mother's
Speaker 5: grave debasing her grave, I just find it all disgusting.
Speaker 5: And listen, Angela and I and Andrew, all of us
Speaker 5: have been have experienced ugly comments on social media. I
Speaker 5: am a grown ass woman, so I know the difference
Speaker 5: between my real life and what people are on here saying,
Speaker 5: and still it can impact me when somebody overwhelmingly is
Speaker 5: saying something. People have an opinion on your hair, your outfit,
Speaker 5: everything you look like, who you date, all of that stuff.
Speaker 5: It can be overwhelming to a grown adult who's securing herself.
Speaker 5: So you imagine being thirteen or fifteen and seeing this
Speaker 5: behavior play out and then mimicking it with your peers,
Speaker 5: and the consequences are dire. So monitor to social media. Kids,
Speaker 5: share responsibly, behave responsibly. If you're the victim of online bullying,
Speaker 5: you can report those comments. There are some safe practices
Speaker 5: out there for you that you can google. But this
Speaker 5: is not This is not normal behavior. This is the
Speaker 5: behavior of at least one broken woman, if not too
Speaker 5: and it's nothing to celebrate.
Speaker 3: I want to co sign everything again, less informed about it,
Speaker 3: but I do know this much. I don't have to
Speaker 3: be that informed to know this. This is the point
Speaker 3: at which the close friends, the enlightened ones who are close,
Speaker 3: respectively to these women. This is when you tell them
Speaker 3: on the side to take a bee, and y'all going
Speaker 3: to handle this inside the door rather than out in
Speaker 3: the yard, in the street, and up at the community plaza.
Speaker 3: Because these beats happen all the time. Grown folks have them,
Speaker 3: young folks have them. It impacts all of us differently,
Speaker 3: in every one of us has areas of brokenness. But
Speaker 3: this ain't the forum and these women. My colleagues have
Speaker 3: pointed out many reasons why it isn't, but it to
Speaker 3: me underscoes why you have to have people around you
Speaker 3: who are willing to pull you up and out so
Speaker 3: you can stop being at the three inch level and
Speaker 3: get out to the three thousand level and see what
Speaker 3: the big picture is. Then women don't know enough about
Speaker 3: each other to go at one another so viscerally and
Speaker 3: so personally. That's a disconnect. I used to feel this
Speaker 3: way when I get emails from people who would just
Speaker 3: tearing me to pieces. Don't know me from Tom Adam
Speaker 3: Katt except for the comment or the clip or whatever
Speaker 3: they read. And I had to quickly come to a
Speaker 3: place and I thank YACHTI for this. Angela knows her.
Speaker 3: I had to get into a place where, look, your
Speaker 3: opinion of me is not my business, because you can't
Speaker 3: feel this much unless you've experienced something in your life
Speaker 3: personally that has been triggered and lifted and you are hurt.
Speaker 3: And so guess what. I know. You put my name there,
Speaker 3: but you can change it to whomever this is intended for,
Speaker 3: because some healing has to happen there.
Speaker 6: You can't.
Speaker 3: You don't know me well enough to feel that way
Speaker 3: about me? Whatsoever? Ought to take the time to write
Speaker 3: that much about me? To take take that back to
Speaker 3: who it is intended for, because your opinion of me
Speaker 3: is not my business.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 3: And these women need friends who are pulling them up
Speaker 3: all that time.
Speaker 4: You spend all that time right into a stranger.
Speaker 5: Okay, let me I just can I just say really quickly,
Speaker 5: because Angela knows this, like we there are different social circles,
Speaker 5: and you know, for the young people at what you
Speaker 5: do at twenty will still stick with you when you're thirty,
Speaker 5: when you forty. So you always want to try to
Speaker 5: live like a good life. And everybody deserves redemption. There
Speaker 5: are people who might be who I might not be
Speaker 5: their favorite person, you know, and they might say, oh,
Speaker 5: Tiffany Cross, I don't like her. And somebody comes to
Speaker 5: me and they say, oh, well, Susie Q says she
Speaker 5: don't like you. At this moment, I have a choice.
Speaker 5: I can say I don't give a shit. If Susie
Speaker 5: Q don't like me, who cares? Or I can say,
Speaker 5: you know, that's really unfortunate. I've always liked her and
Speaker 5: I thought she was a pleasant person. But I hope
Speaker 5: she's well and I'm whatever I did, I hope that
Speaker 5: she can find healing in it for her own.
Speaker 4: Life in that moment.
Speaker 5: Who looks like the more senior person, So Nikki and
Speaker 5: Megan and somebody not everything so deserves the response.
Speaker 3: My response with a band, why are you chasing over
Speaker 3: here to me to tell me somebody's business and why
Speaker 3: they feel comfortable telling you and not me.
Speaker 4: Right, that's the whole other conversation.
Speaker 5: What you say when they say they ain't like me,
Speaker 5: and why they feel comfortable telling you they ain't like me.
Speaker 5: That's something to think about too. Stay out of mess,
Speaker 5: keep your mouth shut, and stay out of mess.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: So we spent a lot of time in mess today,
Speaker 1: and I just gotta say, you know who else is
Speaker 1: in our mess?
Speaker 2: Didn't nobody ask them to be there? The n essay.
Speaker 1: So the Senate has held a hearing on this because
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to understand what tech company's responsibility
Speaker 1: to us. There's this ability right now for folks to
Speaker 1: buy internet metadata that is telling all our business. So
Speaker 1: you think you're going to do something online and you
Speaker 1: hit that delete button that's still there, booboo. And there's
Speaker 1: somebody who I'm really surprised I agree with, who had
Speaker 1: something to say about this. Let's roll that clip.
Speaker 14: Mister Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us. I know
Speaker 14: you don't mean it to be so, but you have
Speaker 14: blood on your hands. You have a product. You have
Speaker 14: a product that's killing people.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 14: Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn who've been like the Dynamic duo
Speaker 14: here have found emails from your company where they warned
Speaker 14: you about this stuff, and you decided not to hire
Speaker 14: forty five people that could do a better job of
Speaker 14: policing this. So the bottom line is you can't be sued.
Speaker 14: You should be and these emails would be great for
Speaker 14: punitive damages, but the courtrooms closed. Every American abused by
Speaker 14: all the companies in front of me.
Speaker 2: Let me find out, Lindsey.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel bipartisan today because Lindsey tore that down.
Speaker 2: Now it feels like that really went more with Meg
Speaker 2: and Nikki.
Speaker 1: But I will say that on this the Senator has
Speaker 1: been relentless at figuring out what is happening with tech companies,
Speaker 1: like what their responsibility is to the general republic, particularly kids.
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham mentioned Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal, who are also
Speaker 1: the co sponsors of the Kids Online Safety Act we
Speaker 1: just talked about. I have got to tell you the
Speaker 1: NSA spying is of course not a surprise, that's what
Speaker 1: they do. But the ability to pass off our metadata
Speaker 1: without a warrant is deeply troubling for me, and I
Speaker 1: think this is a place where libertarian Republicans would also
Speaker 1: agree with us on this. I don't know if y'all
Speaker 1: have stuff on this, but I just I had to
Speaker 1: get that Lindsey Graham clip in there.
Speaker 4: I was surprised, Yeah, I so, Lindsey Graham was.
Speaker 5: Definitely it was in the hearing about online safety and
Speaker 5: online bullying, but the NSA a completely different issue. Look,
Speaker 5: this is surveillance capitalism run amuck. And obviously, as Black Americans,
Speaker 5: we know that government agencies has always taken license to
Speaker 5: spy on us, not just during co Intel pro but
Speaker 5: even in recent history during Black Lives Matter, when the
Speaker 5: FBI had a whole list of folks that they were targeting.
Speaker 5: I think it's interesting how you know people are very
Speaker 5: paranoid and you know they won't do Certainly, they won't vote,
Speaker 5: they won't take the vaccine, and they won't do other
Speaker 5: things because they think people are spying on them. Let
Speaker 5: me tell you who's spying on you. This right here,
Speaker 5: this phone in your hand. They are collecting all your data,
Speaker 5: all your information, and spoon feeding you information on your
Speaker 5: Google search, on your navigation page, on your Instagram landing page,
Speaker 5: TikTok et, cetera, and so you know, I think technology,
Speaker 5: as we've said many times before, is moving faster than
Speaker 5: law and policy, particularly when you think about some of
Speaker 5: the artificial intelligence tools that are feeding some of our
Speaker 5: devices that we engage with every day. Even TikTok, this
Speaker 5: is not a business that was born here in America.
Speaker 5: I'm the owners of TikTok's are Chinese, and so there
Speaker 5: are features on TikTok that monitor how even your finger movements.
Speaker 5: They monitor how you hold your device, how you tap
Speaker 5: your device. Now, it might not matter if somebody is
Speaker 5: watching your ten year old now, but when that ten
Speaker 5: year old becomes a thirty year old and they work
Speaker 5: for the NSA and people are collecting their data, it
Speaker 5: matters a great deal. So, you know, I wish I
Speaker 5: had a solution, but I appreciate you bringing this up,
Speaker 5: Angela and waving a huge red flag. But this is
Speaker 5: something that's happening and certainly something that we need to
Speaker 5: pay attention to and get ahead of these government agencies
Speaker 5: before they get too far ahead of us.
Speaker 3: Well, Lindsey Graham could pass some laws number one, but
Speaker 3: until we get that done, he could begin his care
Speaker 3: and concern by stop being in an online bully harasser himself.
Speaker 3: It's hard for me to take him seriously when he
Speaker 3: uses these very same platforms to go individually after people,
Speaker 3: you call for violence, and states and the nations across
Speaker 3: the world to threaten other political leaders for whom he disagrees. So,
Speaker 3: while y'all are working on the law, could you, at
Speaker 3: least I don't know self, govern and start to exhibit
Speaker 3: what it means to be a responsible user of this information,
Speaker 3: not just an abuser when it suits you and Zuckerberger, y'all,
Speaker 3: I'll just restate this, which is, let's not get the
Speaker 3: enemy twisted. It isn't left and right Republican man next
Speaker 3: to the Democratic woman. Corporate interests turn those groups on
Speaker 3: and off at their pleasure. They create divides at their pleasure.
Speaker 3: They create wedges at their pleasure, because what they understand
Speaker 3: is that the matrix that they have built is resilient.
Speaker 3: It is intended to produce a certain outcome and to
Speaker 3: keep the powerful as powerful as they can be. They
Speaker 3: see nothing. They are ungenerous with it. And so I
Speaker 3: love to go after individuals and parties who do there whatever.
Speaker 3: But the real enemy here is the corporate interests who
Speaker 3: have always been at the center of the design of systems. Well,
Speaker 3: they built the system to be resilient. It will not
Speaker 3: break because they have tried and true methods like won't
Speaker 3: you sick this group against this group, won't you sell
Speaker 3: this to this group? And we got to create these
Speaker 3: environments where you keep us the some of us, Heather
Speaker 3: McGhee separated, So I you know, thank you, Lindsey, appreciate it,
Speaker 3: practice what you preach. Okay, Oh we needed that Miami,
Speaker 3: that South that base, South City Base. Okay, We're luking
Speaker 3: trita what you need and trick when you need them.
Speaker 1: So speaking at a bounty, we're going to questions from
Speaker 1: the audience. So we only have one left because as
Speaker 1: you know, we've done such a wonderful job at integrating
Speaker 1: them this time. So we're gonna pause here for a
Speaker 1: questions for the audience.
Speaker 6: Hello Native Land Podcast. My name is Norvel. I'm a grandfather,
Speaker 6: got two granddaughters, five children, and.
Speaker 15: I'm a gen answer my question is how do you
Speaker 15: feel technology can help Black America and how do you
Speaker 15: feel it's going to hinder us if we don't get.
Speaker 6: Involved with it now, especially with the election season in
Speaker 6: full swing.
Speaker 3: That's real, brother, Leville. I was just doing the math
Speaker 3: on gen X. I was like, I think I'm one
Speaker 3: of them. These generations can be. It's not the point,
Speaker 3: I think, hopefully, what he is saying in the use
Speaker 3: of technology, It's evolved in a whole bunch of ways,
Speaker 3: not just sitting at a computer and reading articles, but
Speaker 3: cell phones. How we vote? Should I be able to
Speaker 3: technology advance to a way where I can vote right
Speaker 3: from the comfort of my living room, where there are
Speaker 3: states that are exhibiting and some local communities are showing
Speaker 3: how that could work. I'm a huge advocate for our
Speaker 3: aging population to stay connected to technology for as good uses,
Speaker 3: because let me tell you, the right is using it,
Speaker 3: and they're using it against a lot of black folks
Speaker 3: who are on the internet and use technology.
Speaker 8: I know.
Speaker 3: Angela gave a story the other day I got way
Speaker 3: too many to give where my mother takes screenshots saying
Speaker 3: you need to contact this person about this bitcoin who
Speaker 3: sent me an email saying you know they had money
Speaker 3: for me. That folks are using these things for evil
Speaker 3: and they're getting directly to who they're trying to target,
Speaker 3: and that's you. And what I would say is is
Speaker 3: certainly as we age, and with elections coming around, we
Speaker 3: have to check our sources primary source, which means that
Speaker 3: is a headline like the Atlanta Constitution Journal to tell
Speaker 3: us that whatever your legitimate sources of news, but you're
Speaker 3: sending me some Facebook ad article, some what have you
Speaker 3: picked up off of? I need sources, need sources, I
Speaker 3: need this has to be validated some number of places.
Speaker 3: Don't be giving your social security and all that stuff
Speaker 3: out over the internet. All I'm saying is the tools
Speaker 3: exist there. They are getting to older folks. We just
Speaker 3: need to teach folks how to best use this so
Speaker 3: it's not weaponized against them. And right now technology is
Speaker 3: being used on both politically for weaponization, but also the
Speaker 3: big bad enemy, the huge, huge, huge top one percent
Speaker 3: corporate interests, who has a reason for sending and allowing
Speaker 3: and not regulating certain things or allowing certain regulations so
Speaker 3: they could get directly to you for this very special purpose.
Speaker 3: But it's no mistake, it's intentional.
Speaker 5: Yes, can I just I want to just jump in
Speaker 5: and say it's for younger people on technology. It's also
Speaker 5: a big deal black people over index when it comes
Speaker 5: to using technology, particularly social media. And so if we're
Speaker 5: over indexing there. I would love to see more people
Speaker 5: pursue fields of study in STEM learn to code, learn
Speaker 5: to design, learn how you can benefit financially from something
Speaker 5: that you enjoy doing. And there are increased amounts of
Speaker 5: programs that support for young folks who want to pursue
Speaker 5: studies in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and.
Speaker 3: Math and pursue it with an intention toward the greater good,
Speaker 3: achieve some good.
Speaker 2: We have one more audience question, high Native Lampid.
Speaker 16: My name is Tina West and I'm from Detroit, Michigan,
Speaker 16: and my question is how are we going to engage
Speaker 16: the younger generation and encourage them to show up and
Speaker 16: vote in the twenty twenty four election cycle. A couple
Speaker 16: of things. Everyday work in black folks, young folks, they
Speaker 16: are not feeling any of the effects of the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: It's hard out here.
Speaker 16: And then they sit on their phones and they see
Speaker 16: the genocide that's happening overseas at the hands of Israel,
Speaker 16: and they hear Biden saying that he's going to support them.
Speaker 16: How do we shift the focus on what is important
Speaker 16: here at home and encourage these people to get out
Speaker 16: and vote for their interests. How can we engage them.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm happy that she brought up what's happening in Israel,
Speaker 5: because I wonder does the administration understand the why vast
Speaker 5: impact this has had on their voting base. You know,
Speaker 5: it's hard to look at the imagery that we see
Speaker 5: and not have some sort of disdain on what is
Speaker 5: being allowed to take place and happen in Gaza. Regardless
Speaker 5: of where you stand on this divide in this issue,
Speaker 5: it is to me an issue of just humanity, and
Speaker 5: I think for people of color, it's hard to look
Speaker 5: at this and not identify with those people who we
Speaker 5: would call oppressed and oppressed people. And the bloody, gory
Speaker 5: violence this week. The latest video I saw was a
Speaker 5: grandmother who had been invited to safety walking with her
Speaker 5: grandson waving a white flag and you see her get
Speaker 5: gunned down. It's hard to see that imagery and not
Speaker 5: be outraged about it. So I at least want to
Speaker 5: show up and first validate young people for feeling that
Speaker 5: way and seeing that, and we understand that, and we
Speaker 5: won't be one of the people who are going to
Speaker 5: spin in your face and try to convince you as reigning. No,
Speaker 5: that is real and you have every right to be outraged.
Speaker 5: I want to push back, however, on this notion that
Speaker 5: gen Z does not benefit from the Biden administration. I
Speaker 5: think we have to do a better job at informing
Speaker 5: voters across every demographic, every age group we are benefiting
Speaker 5: from Democratic led policies, from Democratic push policies. I think
Speaker 5: we have to consider the states you live in. Often,
Speaker 5: when the federal government gives money, the local government controls
Speaker 5: how that money is issued or spent. And so when
Speaker 5: Democrats vote for something, you know, a boost in federal
Speaker 5: funding that gets the states if you have a Republican
Speaker 5: governor controlling the purse strings, and that money does not
Speaker 5: always get to where it needs to get to, especially
Speaker 5: for people who look like us. I would hold up
Speaker 5: Mississippi as a perfect example of that with Tate Reeves,
Speaker 5: and look at what's happening with La Mumba down there
Speaker 5: in Jackson and their water system. So that's a top
Speaker 5: topic for another day. But I just remember, young folks,
Speaker 5: there are plenty of policies coming out of the Biden administration,
Speaker 5: from infrastructure to the employment rate that are that are
Speaker 5: impacting you. And also remember those down ballot races and
Speaker 5: issues that impact you to from ballot initiatives to your
Speaker 5: city council, to your school boards, your local government. So
Speaker 5: if you don't participate in this process, you cannot shape
Speaker 5: them mindocracy to your liking.
Speaker 2: Guess what we have this. I've been waiting for this
Speaker 2: the whole time. I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: We have someone who's already such a fan, such a
Speaker 1: part of the Native Lampire community that they submitted a song.
Speaker 1: And it's not a traditional Q and A, but we
Speaker 1: were gonna take this moment really quick to play a
Speaker 1: song that was submitted, a little Native Lampire jingle from
Speaker 1: Daniel Lawrence, who I believe is a constituent of our
Speaker 1: good friend Ayanna Presley. He resides in the Roxbury neighborhood
Speaker 1: in Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 13: Let's roll that bang, Welcome Home with the Natives, landing
Speaker 13: on the podcast Things six of a Breakness sixty minutes
Speaker 13: or so. Hit not too long for the graphigh level
Speaker 13: politics in a way that you can taste it, then
Speaker 13: digested politics such a shoe waven if you don't touch it.
Speaker 13: Getting Beth to across the tees and doctor I skill
Speaker 13: him back to get him standing on business. Will ri
Speaker 13: you could have been anywhere to play podcast. So bringing
Speaker 13: the trust.
Speaker 2: Let me just let me just stand up, Let me
Speaker 2: just stand up. I'm just standing on. I'm standing on
Speaker 2: with you. Got back down.
Speaker 1: Y'all can't see me standing up anything, speaking, standing speaking
Speaker 1: our centerments. We got another ad break, and after the
Speaker 1: ad break, our brother Andrew Gillam sharing this testimony.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 3: Andrew, thank you, Thank you, Thank you, sisters, and to
Speaker 3: our amazing audience, thank you as well for listening and supporting.
Speaker 3: And last week Tiffany and La has some sympathy for
Speaker 3: my post construction mouth. Mostly they were looking at my
Speaker 3: odd expressions. I guess throughout I didn't see it didn't
Speaker 3: bother me. It's okay, but it was painful. And I'm
Speaker 3: thankful for y'all's grace and their grace and allowing me
Speaker 3: to to start to ump. I love y'all back, to
Speaker 3: start to unpack a little bit of my own personal
Speaker 3: story and what has allowed me to arrive at this moment.
Speaker 3: And before I sort of dive in, I I want
Speaker 3: to just set the stage that part of my sharingness
Speaker 3: is actually I can say that what it's not about one.
Speaker 3: It isn't about explaining to anybody anything just.
Speaker 17: Because you're curious.
Speaker 3: It isn't about me feeling forced to do so by
Speaker 3: anyone for anything, for any money. It isn't about explaining
Speaker 3: for the per purposes of anyone understanding, even because I
Speaker 3: know that explanations doesn't necessarily lead to an understanding. And
Speaker 3: it isn't about addressing haters and others who have opinions
Speaker 3: of you that will not change. May not change because
Speaker 3: I have long ago suspended with the fact that people's
Speaker 3: opinions of me and my business, They've got to interrogate
Speaker 3: why that is. And I hope this doesn't sound bymbassy
Speaker 3: to anybody, but I want to be very clear that
Speaker 3: my reason for wanting to share more about my walk
Speaker 3: and my experience is out of hope that through sharing
Speaker 3: that there are individuals who may be going through, have
Speaker 3: gone through, or whether they know it or not, will
Speaker 3: go through. That there are so many of us who
Speaker 3: stand on the other side of that journey, and I
Speaker 3: know there'll be many, many, many more life lessons for
Speaker 3: me to learn from. I am I am thankful to God,
Speaker 3: and it's taken me some time to get here. For
Speaker 3: taking what others may have meant for bad and destructive,
Speaker 3: and I'll just say it, for my death may have
Speaker 3: been the exact things that conspired for my resurrection, and
Speaker 3: so to God be the glory for that. Many of you, all,
Speaker 3: of course, heard about what happened in Miami. If you
Speaker 3: didn't know me from running for governor, but you heard
Speaker 3: about me running for governor, you didn't see me and
Speaker 3: my post selection work on CNN or traveling or public speaking.
Speaker 3: What you know and last got updated about was a
Speaker 3: hotel room and pictures that looked salacious and my inviting
Speaker 3: in folks to my bisexuality. But what you should know
Speaker 3: is that while Miami was loud and explosive and eye catching,
Speaker 3: it wasn't the beginning of the bottom mean for me.
Speaker 3: It was me really hitting a rock bottom after many, many,
Speaker 3: many many years of work toward a thing, and then
Speaker 3: to not reach that goal, and to have a lot
Speaker 3: of pain and agony around really all of it, but
Speaker 3: nowhere to put it. You start to put it on yourself,
Speaker 3: and it becomes incredibly self destructive. So let me stop
Speaker 3: by saying politicians are oftentimes demonized because they run for office,
Speaker 3: and people those politicians, and so there's a thing that
Speaker 3: you expect from us, how we show up, what we say,
Speaker 3: how inauthentic we may be. Well, I've lived too much
Speaker 3: of life at this point and experience too much for superficial,
Speaker 3: hype up, superficial really anything. I just want it real.
Speaker 3: And so you should know that I got into public
Speaker 3: service from a very very very young young age, and
Speaker 3: I was one of those kids, if you let my
Speaker 3: mom tell it, one of seven kids, you know, grew
Speaker 3: up in poverty, buying large economically down in Miami Dade,
Speaker 3: Miami Richmond Heights, shout out. But my mother would joke
Speaker 3: as she tells stories of my childhood about how I
Speaker 3: would run around with penny loafers on after I got
Speaker 3: out of school, and I was particular about making sure
Speaker 3: my pennies were in there. How I was a very
Speaker 3: caring person, but often was very much about the plan,
Speaker 3: how are we going to get this done, How we're
Speaker 3: going to get this done. And I also told the
Speaker 3: story when I was running for governor about some of
Speaker 3: the sadder instances of my growing up where I would
Speaker 3: see the police show up at the house and my
Speaker 3: mom would start crying hysterically because she'd been told that
Speaker 3: one of my brothers had been locked up or got
Speaker 3: into some trouble of some sort, and she'd have to
Speaker 3: go down.
Speaker 17: And see about them.
Speaker 3: And as the fifth of seven children, all boys and
Speaker 3: one girl, my baby sister and the first of my
Speaker 3: siblings to attend college and to graduate, much of the
Speaker 3: decision for me to go that route, to go the
Speaker 3: rite of service was I remember trying to commit to myself,
Speaker 3: if not verbally, to my mother, how badly it hurt
Speaker 3: me to see her cry in life. I just wanted
Speaker 3: to make sure that and the things that I did
Speaker 3: that I didn't make my mom cry for being sad.
Speaker 3: But if she cried, it was because she was happy
Speaker 3: and proud, And I didn't want her to be visited
Speaker 3: by tears and anguish of me getting into some kind
Speaker 3: of trouble, but tears and joy over the good that
Speaker 3: I was doing. And so as a kid, I would
Speaker 3: watch c Span and I remember back in the day
Speaker 3: Maxine Waters, who was a young young girl woman she's
Speaker 3: still young in Congress, and she would be down on
Speaker 3: that floor speaking with all kind of power and strength
Speaker 3: and declaration and clarity, and I was like, I.
Speaker 17: Want to be her.
Speaker 3: I want to know that woman, and that's what I
Speaker 3: want to be when I grow up. Because she was
Speaker 3: talking like I didn't hear black people talk to white men.
Speaker 3: Miss us speak of us such and such and such,
Speaker 3: and you know, goe and on, and I was impressed
Speaker 3: by that power to be able to show up as
Speaker 3: us without compromising what it looks like, what it sounds like,
Speaker 3: and what the truth is. I ran for student government
Speaker 3: I was in the sixth grade, got elected and served
Speaker 3: every year through high school all through college, becoming student
Speaker 3: body president of fam you and a member of the
Speaker 3: Board of Trustees, the first student ever to serve on
Speaker 3: that board, and then directly after that into city commission,
Speaker 3: where I got elected to a citywide seat in a
Speaker 3: city that at the time was almost seventy percent white.
Speaker 3: That elected me citywide to the Chilisi City Council, becoming
Speaker 3: the youngest person ever in the history of the city
Speaker 3: to be elected to serve there, where I served for
Speaker 3: you know, three terms, and then ran for mayor and
Speaker 3: got elected. I say that to say I've been in
Speaker 3: service for a long time. And I say service for
Speaker 3: a reason because I'm almost Pollyannish. I used to be
Speaker 3: giddy about it, not about the position, but about the
Speaker 3: fact that I could show up at a meeting on
Speaker 3: Monday night to deal with I don't know, high utility
Speaker 3: bills and make a decision on that same night that
Speaker 3: by Wednesday would lower people's rates and that they would
Speaker 3: see a system working for them.
Speaker 17: And why that was important to me was because.
Speaker 3: As a child, that will watch my mother make calls
Speaker 3: for help because she was a little low on what
Speaker 3: it was going to cost to make both rent and
Speaker 3: keep the lights on pardon me, okay, And I remember
Speaker 3: the feeling of feeling helpless because I couldn't do anything
Speaker 3: to help the situation, and that I was a burden
Speaker 3: because who was she keeping a roof over the head
Speaker 3: of and who was she keeping the light built on?
Speaker 17: Boy?
Speaker 3: It was us. She was doing what was needed to
Speaker 3: help us get by right, making a way out of
Speaker 3: no way, which we're all so familiar with in our community.
Speaker 3: But those early imprints have been everything to how I've
Speaker 3: approached governing and politics that this isn't this is not
Speaker 3: a game. What we're doing here tonight is not a joke.
Speaker 3: The decisions we're making have real, everyday impact on people's lives,
Speaker 3: so it matters what we do. I say that because
Speaker 3: almost up into this day, that's the kind of feeling
Speaker 3: I've had about our government and what it can do,
Speaker 3: not all the bad treacherous things that have been done,
Speaker 3: but the good that can be done there. So as
Speaker 3: a true believer, and when I decided to run for governor,
Speaker 3: I made that decision because I was clear about what
Speaker 3: I wanted to do for the people of the state
Speaker 3: of Florida, expertly clear on so many of the issues
Speaker 3: that I saw as a local official that showed up
Speaker 3: at the local level that the state didn't seem so
Speaker 3: hip or tuned to, or maybe they did, and they
Speaker 3: just were making the choice to communicate to me people
Speaker 3: who look like me and were situated similarly, that we
Speaker 3: didn't matter. Medicare expansion, real criminal justice reform, where I
Speaker 3: would on the trail say that nobody should be judged
Speaker 3: forever by their worst day. Where did that come from?
Speaker 3: That came from the fact that my brother Chuck did
Speaker 3: time for being found guilty of drug sales and at
Speaker 3: high qualities. And I remember my brother Chuck only as
Speaker 3: a person who was cutting yards at thirteen and going
Speaker 3: through the neighborhood, picking up stuff, I mean, finding any
Speaker 3: way he could to hustle so he could bring some
Speaker 3: cash home to my mom, so she could add a
Speaker 3: little bit more to the pot for what we were
Speaker 3: going to eat. So this out just this man who
Speaker 3: wanted to be a man for not just our host hole,
Speaker 3: but my aunties and others who were struggling. He did
Speaker 3: what he could to make away for them. And so
Speaker 3: the fact that he was being judged by a singular conviction,
Speaker 3: to me, just didn't seem to make sense. And it
Speaker 3: maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. I stand with him,
Speaker 3: But why should we judge him and create policies that
Speaker 3: will keep him locked out on his neck and on
Speaker 3: his knees all the time because of the ways in
Speaker 3: which we eliminate folks. So when I said you shouldn't
Speaker 3: be judged for everybody your work, it was because I
Speaker 3: believed it, because I had seen it. And y'all, it
Speaker 3: would come to pass that after losing that race for
Speaker 3: governor by zero point four percent difference, the closest margin
Speaker 3: in the history of the state of Florida, I ran
Speaker 3: also instead of choosing to run for reelection as mayor
Speaker 3: of the city of Tallahassee. So for the first time
Speaker 3: in my life as a forty year old man going
Speaker 3: back to sixth grade, but certainly from the age of
Speaker 3: twenty three and I'm forty four today, I didn't have
Speaker 3: a title to give me a seat at the table
Speaker 3: where decisions were being made about the things and the
Speaker 3: people I cared about, as I had been able to
Speaker 3: do all of my life up until that point find solutions.
Speaker 3: And the night when I gave my concession, I broke
Speaker 3: down when I said that I was sorry to the voters,
Speaker 3: that I could bring it home for them. And no
Speaker 3: one wrote that line for me. I knew it for
Speaker 3: myself because the loss was already beginning to feel like
Speaker 3: my skills could no longer be used for good, to
Speaker 3: help lift the community that I cared about, which were
Speaker 3: the people of my state, and particularly those who found
Speaker 3: themselves at the margins of everything always in my state,
Speaker 3: and that I had gotten so close and we just
Speaker 3: couldn't get passed at all. And I started thinking about
Speaker 3: all the things that got in the way of that
Speaker 3: being possible, the fact that I couldn't do anymore, that
Speaker 3: I did everything that I could within my own power,
Speaker 3: to win the race for governor, but all the while
Speaker 3: was haunted by a particular set of headlines around me
Speaker 3: being under FBI investigation and whispers of corruption and corrupt
Speaker 3: activity on my part, and so on and so forth,
Speaker 3: and everywhere I went, I would have to ask answer
Speaker 3: questions about these things, and I would I I was
Speaker 3: rehearsing and polished enough to say, I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 3: I have no idea, because I knew what my actions were.
Speaker 3: But then to see leaks of information coming out throughout
Speaker 3: the course of the campaign that would again suggest that
Speaker 3: I was doing something unto ward, it became almost too
Speaker 3: much for voters to be able to overcome that, And
Speaker 3: could zero point four percent of voters in a state
Speaker 3: of twenty million where eight million plus people had turned
Speaker 3: out to vote, had been affected by a narrative that
Speaker 3: said that I was a taker in this for the
Speaker 3: wrong reason, corrupt and now trying to swindle the people
Speaker 3: out of Florida so that I could, I don't know,
Speaker 3: just take care of myself, buy some new shoes.
Speaker 17: Whatever that was about.
Speaker 3: I say that all y'all to say that Miami was
Speaker 3: never just Miami me, And if you want to make
Speaker 3: this case in your own life. That thing that you're
Speaker 3: embarrassing shame for is never just that thing. We're not
Speaker 3: people who can be diced up into all these different
Speaker 3: varieties we like to think so, but everything is everything.
Speaker 3: If something impacts you in your walk to become governor
Speaker 3: and you lose, and so on and so forth, it
Speaker 3: contributes to the way you view the next big risk.
Speaker 3: Do you go for that next big thing or are
Speaker 3: you too traumatized by what it felt like to not
Speaker 3: be able to do? And y'all, despite the way that
Speaker 3: I looked in the highlight reel that I tried to
Speaker 3: keep up with and posts over the course of the
Speaker 3: rest of twenty eighteen and through twenty nineteen, I was
Speaker 3: going off the rail, making horrible decisions for myself drinking.
Speaker 3: And understand this whole drinking thing that I wasn't a
Speaker 3: drinker in college, didn't do it in high school, didn't
Speaker 3: the first us the time I smoke, we was in college.
Speaker 3: I can hope I can say that now, But no, hard, no, no,
Speaker 3: no drinking. My daddy was an alcoholic, my grandmother, relatives
Speaker 3: before I knew what that looked like. But I was
Speaker 3: so high on what I was doing being a service.
Speaker 3: I didn't need nothing to take me out of that reality.
Speaker 3: But when you are then faced with another reality that
Speaker 3: the universe conspires with circumstances to then say you're not
Speaker 3: of service, you get busy, being busy, at least in
Speaker 3: my case.
Speaker 17: To distract from whatever.
Speaker 8: You can.
Speaker 3: Fast forward to Miami, where this all hit ahead publicly.
Speaker 3: I am not going to get into two things that
Speaker 3: I don't know and put out speculation that I can't necessarily.
Speaker 17: Confirm, and so on and so forth. I'm not going
Speaker 17: to do that to you.
Speaker 3: What I will say is what I came to learn
Speaker 3: about the episode that evening, what I know today and
Speaker 3: what most people don't know in the public, you know,
Speaker 3: they don't match. And I'm not necessarily in a hurry
Speaker 3: to go and re litigate all of those pieces and parts,
Speaker 3: because in truth, my spiraling from twenty eighteen all the
Speaker 3: way to March thirteenth of twenty twenty Miami, there were
Speaker 3: too many nights in too many days where I should
Speaker 3: have deserved a lot worse because I made choices that
Speaker 3: should have landed me in a lot worse. I was
Speaker 3: not a model father, not a model leader, not a
Speaker 3: model man, not.
Speaker 17: A model husband and partner and best friend.
Speaker 3: I was the antithesis of all of that by the
Speaker 3: point that I reached that day where I made the
Speaker 3: choice after a work day I did in Miami to
Speaker 3: try to connect with a guy who I knew from
Speaker 3: from from a number of times before, not during the campaign,
Speaker 3: where we had a special relationship. We'd get together and
Speaker 3: you know, enjoy the company of being around people who didn't.
Speaker 15: Care that you.
Speaker 17: You know, you're not mayor and you're not governor, and
Speaker 17: that you.
Speaker 3: But certainly by my measure, pretty powerless, didn't care about that,
Speaker 3: but just thought I deserved to have fun.
Speaker 17: And being being on how do you say company that
Speaker 17: was unjudging.
Speaker 3: And all throughout the time, I wouldn't even bore you,
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't embarrass my family by going through all
Speaker 3: of mischief that you do when you find yourself at
Speaker 3: rock bottom. But I will tell you, regardless of the
Speaker 3: reasons for doing you think they are, there's a big,
Speaker 3: big wound that needs to be healed, and you just
Speaker 3: don't know it, so you're willing to fill it with
Speaker 3: anything that at a time might feel good. I was
Speaker 3: there on Miami Beach on the afternoon of the eleventh,
Speaker 3: about five, after I finished some meetings, the text a
Speaker 3: friend of mine, Hey, I know you're down on Miami
Speaker 3: Beach from here in town. Let's get up. I've got
Speaker 3: to go to the airport and pick up a car
Speaker 3: and pick up my wife and some of my best
Speaker 3: friends that are coming into town for this wedding this weekend.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'll drop by, We'll get a drink
Speaker 3: and whatever, you know, and I'll get onto the airport
Speaker 3: and I do drop by, and I do get a
Speaker 3: drink at about five thirty maybe six in the evening,
Speaker 3: and we'll need to leave soon after. And the last
Speaker 3: memory I have is having that drink. And the next
Speaker 3: memory I have from that five or six o'clock in
Speaker 3: the afternoon is just around midnight, where I'm awake and
Speaker 3: maybe alert, and I'm sitting on the counter in the
Speaker 3: bathroom surrounded by what must have been maybe six Miami
Speaker 3: Beach law enforcement officers who are all uniformed with their
Speaker 3: cameras and on their bodies, and I am naked, on clothed,
Speaker 3: not even a towel, and I say, why is going on?
Speaker 17: What happened to Da?
Speaker 3: Da? And they start to say, we're responding to a
Speaker 3: medical call of an overdose. Da da da da. And
Speaker 3: I say, who overdose? Overdose? Of what what's going on?
Speaker 3: And they say, well, your friend and their pills and
Speaker 3: the and I said, what in the world are you
Speaker 3: talking about? And I then say, I'm sorry, but where
Speaker 3: are my clothes? I mean really, I'm coming to my awareness.
Speaker 3: And a higher up turns the corner and comes in
Speaker 3: and he says, one of you go in there and
Speaker 3: grab his clothes, get him a towel, something, you know, decent,
Speaker 3: very sort of you know, just yeah, give him his clothes.
Speaker 3: I said, okay, Well, what time is it, y'all? Because
Speaker 3: I've got to pick my wife and some folks at
Speaker 3: the airport. It's whatever plass midnight. And now I'm in
Speaker 3: shock because I've lost all this time and I have
Speaker 3: no idea what went on.
Speaker 17: Anyway, fast forward past that, they I get dressed.
Speaker 3: I then say I've got to get back to my
Speaker 3: hotel and get my luggage and then get to the
Speaker 3: airport d D. And the officers say, and I said, no,
Speaker 3: I can uber, where's my face? Somebody gives me my
Speaker 3: fun I can call an uber And this sergeant says,
Speaker 3: oh no, we'll give you a ride, and I thought
Speaker 3: it was I say, okay, I put my clothes on.
Speaker 3: We walk out of the bathroom and now it's about
Speaker 3: four higher ups, officers brass and we walked to the
Speaker 3: elevator and down the elevator through the lobby to their
Speaker 3: patrol car and we all get in the patrol car
Speaker 3: and I tell them where I'm staying, and they seem
Speaker 3: to know where I'm staying, but they take me back
Speaker 3: out of the beach and across the water back to
Speaker 3: my hotel. Well, and I get to the hotel of
Speaker 3: mine and I start they walk me and then they
Speaker 3: want to walk me all the way up to my room.
Speaker 3: I allow them to escort me up and they tell
Speaker 3: me on the drive over, they say, one of those says,
Speaker 3: so listen, this is we know you're married, we know
Speaker 3: you have kids, but I just want you to know
Speaker 3: this is going to be public record because we we
Speaker 3: were responding at first to a medical call, but which
Speaker 3: would have not been public because it's just medical. But
Speaker 3: this was a potential homicide. I said what I said,
Speaker 3: Oh well it didn't, but we had to report it
Speaker 3: as a potential homicide and so it's going to be
Speaker 3: made public at some point tomorrow. So I just want
Speaker 3: you to know, you know, so that you know the
Speaker 3: people you need to talk to you can do that.
Speaker 3: And I say absolutely, you know, thank you, thank you
Speaker 3: so much. Can you tell me about what time. Can
Speaker 3: y'all send me the report when it's written so that
Speaker 3: I can see what's in it before it goes Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,
Speaker 3: I say, well, here's my cell phone. We get to
Speaker 3: my out there. They walk me up to the door.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if they're going to come in, but
Speaker 3: I kind of around and I say, thank you. I
Speaker 3: just got to get my luggage. I've got to get
Speaker 3: to the Airbnb. I gotta catch up myne And that's
Speaker 3: the end of it with those folks. But I'm still
Speaker 3: now just totally blurred. But I got to get to
Speaker 3: Jay and my wife and I've got to get to AIRBNBB.
Speaker 3: So I race there and I get there and it's
Speaker 3: early in the morning, and I don't want to wake anybody,
Speaker 3: but I go and I wake one of my guy
Speaker 3: friends and I tell them what I think happened. I
Speaker 3: was like I was at this I went metaphor at
Speaker 3: a hotel I don't know what, you know went down,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't good. I was naked and so on
Speaker 3: and so forth, and he's probably like, what are you
Speaker 3: talking about? But I'm piecing it together, y'all as best
Speaker 3: I can, and I say, I gotta go up, and
Speaker 3: I tell and I gotta tell Jay. I'll let her
Speaker 3: sleep a few hours, but I'll go up. But then
Speaker 3: I go out and I call the cell number of
Speaker 3: the guy who I will not name, that I was
Speaker 3: there to meet because I didn't see him before I left.
Speaker 3: I mean, I went from the bathroom, which was right
Speaker 3: by the door were out into the elevators to see
Speaker 3: if he'd answer and I could find out what this
Speaker 3: whole homicide thing was because I was totally unclear. And
Speaker 3: lo and behold he answers when I'm told that the
Speaker 3: homicide was. He almost dying.
Speaker 17: So I'm like, I heard something happened.
Speaker 3: Da da da da, And he's like, yeah, it was
Speaker 3: really bad.
Speaker 17: I was just, you know, knocked out.
Speaker 3: This is a sort of thing. But I'm thinking he's
Speaker 3: fully awaken. He's got his own cell phone and da.
Speaker 10: Da da da da.
Speaker 3: And I was like, you know, what if those officers
Speaker 3: never took a statement from me.
Speaker 17: I didn't write anything, and.
Speaker 3: If it was a homicide, why didn't I Why didn't
Speaker 3: I do any of that? Now I'm really confused because
Speaker 3: I'm like, I just called the homicidal victim and he
Speaker 3: answered the phone. And now these four guys have taken
Speaker 3: me back to my hotel, but they didn't get anything
Speaker 3: off me. And I don't remember ever taking a blood test,
Speaker 3: a drug test, getting.
Speaker 17: Stuck by a needle. STD said nothing.
Speaker 3: So it's still not making sense. But all I know
Speaker 3: is I made a set of decisions that landed me
Speaker 3: in this situation. And so when Jay wakes up, I say,
Speaker 3: I have to tell you something, and I don't know
Speaker 3: how you are going to react to it, but let
Speaker 3: me let me finish, because it's really bad. And I
Speaker 3: start to say, what's what? And I start confessing to
Speaker 3: all kinds of things because I don't know what I
Speaker 3: did or what I didn't do, but I know that
Speaker 3: I've been modeled before, and so even if I'm confessing
Speaker 3: to something that I had done before and you needed
Speaker 3: to know it, this was the moment of release because
Speaker 3: everybody will know it tomorrow. And thankfully my wife and
Speaker 3: I she already knew I was bisexual, and so she
Speaker 3: knew that before we got married, and we talked to
Speaker 3: you all that kind of stuff, So there was no
Speaker 3: blind spot here, and I could speak very openly about
Speaker 3: the things, except that what I said that night about
Speaker 3: what had happened I later learned in the days after
Speaker 3: weren't true when we were able to find through a
Speaker 3: lot of means all the footage from the cell phone
Speaker 3: of the person that I saw there, and then those
Speaker 3: things were able to be provided to me later. But
Speaker 3: I don't want to jump the story. Jay takes it
Speaker 3: as best she can, and then I start to tell
Speaker 3: her we've got to be you know, we're there for
Speaker 3: a wedding. In fact, I am going to be presiding
Speaker 3: over the wedding of this friend in two days. That's
Speaker 3: why we're in Miami. And I say to them, we've
Speaker 3: got to tell them. I'm going to help them buind
Speaker 3: someone else to do this. I do not deserve this honor.
Speaker 3: And I'll pack my things, you know, I'll get out
Speaker 3: of here and hopefully it'll tamp down so that their
Speaker 3: wedding doesn't become, you know, chaos. Ultimately, the couple came
Speaker 3: to me they were. She one of the bride stayed
Speaker 3: at the house that we were at for one night
Speaker 3: and she came to me and she said, we've talked
Speaker 3: and there is nobody else who will marry us. If
Speaker 3: it's not you, we will not get married this weekend.
Speaker 3: Of course, when I'm thinking the worst of myself and
Speaker 3: this is not what I wanted to hear from her.
Speaker 3: I really wanted not to be associated with this big day,
Speaker 3: but I want to know Kneesha gave me.
Speaker 17: A little modicum of humanity when she said that they
Speaker 17: wanted me to do that.
Speaker 3: Okay, so now I know I can't just rush away
Speaker 3: from Miami because we got to stay another day because
Speaker 3: this thing has happened. We've got to manage this crisis.
Speaker 3: And the day is.
Speaker 17: A disaster.
Speaker 3: We break the internet, everything just goes Hey why or
Speaker 3: the report I was waiting for someone to send me
Speaker 3: never came. We learned about it from a blogger, a
Speaker 3: right wing blogger on the internet who released it, and
Speaker 3: so my first time reading it was from that as
Speaker 3: a source. So it is sufficient to say that the
Speaker 3: Miami Beach Police someone took a screenshot of their information
Speaker 3: and document and before I was ever notified it was
Speaker 3: given to a right wing outlet, and so the day
Speaker 3: gets shaped by that. But my friends who are with
Speaker 3: me are just trying to keep things confined. The couple
Speaker 3: goes on eventually to cancel the regular ceremony and we
Speaker 3: do a very very very very early beachside ceremony with
Speaker 3: just a few of us. And then there is me
Speaker 3: trying to get out of Miami, and my brother who
Speaker 3: lived in Chicago, flew down to drive Jay and I
Speaker 3: from South Florida back to town. It has to avoid
Speaker 3: just the spectacle of going to the airport and being
Speaker 3: in public. These people were camped out everywhere, and my
Speaker 3: friend Angie Angela put me with a therapist, a practice
Speaker 3: I had no real belief in before, because I just
Speaker 3: didn't understand the purpose of unpacking stuff with people who
Speaker 3: couldn't help you put it back together. They couldn't solve
Speaker 3: the harm, and they didn't create. They couldn't solve it.
Speaker 3: That was my thinking. But Yadi saw me and saved me.
Speaker 3: I talked to ijan Lea VanZant that day on the
Speaker 3: advice of Van Jones, telling her to give me a call.
Speaker 3: I talked to Tyler Perry that day, and this is
Speaker 3: where I wanted to make a mention, because he said, Andrew,
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry this happened. I don't know the details.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything, but I'm glad that I'm hearing
Speaker 3: your voice right now. And I'm hating this, but I
Speaker 3: want you to know that you need to think on
Speaker 3: on this moment, what God may have saved you from.
Speaker 3: I thought back to homicide, and I'm thinking, I guess
Speaker 3: the picture. I guess the picture could have looked different.
Speaker 17: I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 3: He said, I'm sorry for all that you will lose here,
Speaker 3: but who knows what God.
Speaker 17: We're saving you from.
Speaker 3: And we get in the car and we start to
Speaker 3: make the trip, and at different points, I am we're
Speaker 3: pretty much silent on the road. Jay and I are
Speaker 3: in the backseat of this suv. My brother's driving in front,
Speaker 3: and my phone's blowing up. Everyone is reaching out and
Speaker 3: I'm hearing both from good, bad and in in between,
Speaker 3: and I keep having these moments of breakdown, and this
Speaker 3: one moment where I have a breakdown, if you will,
Speaker 3: r J reaches over and she starts to rub my back.
Speaker 3: I am bowed over in the seat, closed tight as
Speaker 3: I can tie as they could be my eyes, maybe
Speaker 3: thinking that if I blinked hard enough when I opened them,
Speaker 3: this will have been a dream. And I hear RJ shuffling,
Speaker 3: and I feel her britty body moving around, and I
Speaker 3: don't know what she's doing, but the silence was interrupted
Speaker 3: by a song coming on through the car speakers.
Speaker 8: And.
Speaker 3: In a moment where RJ had every reason to hate me,
Speaker 3: not want to share a car with me, not a
Speaker 3: car ride when I had, I've just been the most
Speaker 3: undeserving of partners in the world, a bad example of
Speaker 3: her dad, I don't know, a horrible human, but absolutely
Speaker 3: the worst of a spouse. She reached over to me
Speaker 3: and rubbing my back, and the song coming on, just
Speaker 3: in the moment to disrupt a thought that.
Speaker 17: I was having about what it might mean to not
Speaker 17: be here, so that.
Speaker 3: People may not have reason to talk about my wife
Speaker 3: and my kids anymore. And then the voice comes through
Speaker 3: and I recognize the song immediately, and the lyrics start
Speaker 3: and it says, you thought I was worth saving, so
Speaker 3: you came and changed my life. You thought I was
Speaker 3: worth keeping, so you cleaned me up inside. You thought
Speaker 3: I was to die for so you sacrificed your life
Speaker 3: so I could be free, so I could be whole,
Speaker 3: so I could tell everyone I know that you thought I.
Speaker 17: Was worth saving.
Speaker 3: And in the moment where I was thinking about not
Speaker 3: saving my life, the singer the lyrics, but most importantly,
Speaker 3: RJ saved my life right there in that moment, because
Speaker 3: I believed for a second that God was saving me
Speaker 3: rather than ending me. And instead of RJ being angry
Speaker 3: and mad, she saw the person who I was, who
Speaker 3: she chose to marry, who was her best friend. And
Speaker 3: while I didn't understand in that moment the word grace,
Speaker 3: RJ taught me the meeting of grace, which is even
Speaker 3: when you don't deserve it, when you've done nothing to
Speaker 3: earn it, maybe you've done the exact opposite everything to
Speaker 3: lose it, that in this moment you deserve love and humanity.
Speaker 17: And care.
Speaker 3: So I want to thank RJ first and foremost for
Speaker 3: saving me in my life. To then go on and
Speaker 3: to then see how viscerally she was being attacked for
Speaker 3: her decision to stand by me sent me to a
Speaker 3: whole other level.
Speaker 17: Because I could take what people were saying about me.
Speaker 3: I deserved it, I thought, I couldn't understand what would
Speaker 3: cause people to go so horribly against the victim of
Speaker 3: the woman who was as in her right to be
Speaker 3: angry and hate me and as she can, But she
Speaker 3: chose in that moment that we were not gonna make
Speaker 3: big decisions about our men. We were going to deal
Speaker 3: with that, but right now, in this moment, we're just
Speaker 3: trying to save your life. So she showed up. She
Speaker 3: showed up for me. In the days following, I got
Speaker 3: back to Tallahassee, and I had to say goodbye.
Speaker 17: To my three kids because I went to rehab a
Speaker 17: residential center, and this.
Speaker 3: Was at the very start of COVID, and I left
Speaker 3: my wife and my family for a few months to
Speaker 3: try to get better. Because I didn't talk a lot
Speaker 3: about this, but that time caused me to do crazy things.
Speaker 3: But I got to the point where a person who
Speaker 3: was not much of a drinker was hiding whiskey and
Speaker 3: my coffee mug in the morning because I knew it
Speaker 3: was dark and nobody would question me having a coffee
Speaker 3: big and deciding to drink drink, drink, drink, drink as
Speaker 3: much as I could before we went to public events
Speaker 3: so that I could get through them many times, those
Speaker 3: evenings ending with me not even knowing how I made
Speaker 3: it back to my hotel and to my bed. Being
Speaker 3: at the events one Tiffany and Angelo. We were at
Speaker 3: Tyler Perr's event, a beautiful, beautiful dedication of his buildings
Speaker 3: in Atlanta, and.
Speaker 17: Being so drunk the night of the.
Speaker 3: Event that Kelly Rowland's at the table, of course, my
Speaker 3: friend Vergil RJ's there, Beyonce and Jay Z are like
Speaker 3: two over, Viola Davis's here, And someone comes around one
Speaker 3: of the celebrities that is there and is talking to
Speaker 3: me and saying, brother, you don't know me, but I've
Speaker 3: been praying for you since.
Speaker 17: And I am practically rolling.
Speaker 3: My eyes because all I know is I needed to
Speaker 3: get out of there. I had been drinking so much
Speaker 3: before we got there to get through the evening, but
Speaker 3: I had over drank, so we didn't stay for the
Speaker 3: great festivities because I told our jad to stay and
Speaker 3: stay with the car. I'll leave the car with her,
Speaker 3: but that i'd take a ober I get home. But
Speaker 3: she left the event that she looked so much forward
Speaker 3: to a beautiful, wonderful event in evening because she didn't
Speaker 3: want me to be by myself in this jounken state,
Speaker 3: and that she was going to see me home. And
Speaker 3: I showed up the next day at CNN with you
Speaker 3: Angela that next morning in Atlanta, and we're all suited
Speaker 3: up and given our best political whatever. And I don't
Speaker 3: think I slept the night before. I was just hung
Speaker 3: over and whatnot. And I think about the times where
Speaker 3: I had friends cover for me, and it was happening increasingly.
Speaker 3: And there's this one time, y'all. I was phoning out
Speaker 3: to Vegas to participate in this big speaking event, and
Speaker 3: I had gotten so sick from my alcohol intake the
Speaker 3: night before that when I landed, I didn't make it
Speaker 3: all the way to the restroom and time, and so
Speaker 3: I had to call my assistant, who was at the
Speaker 3: back of the plane, and see if he could bring
Speaker 3: me something when he got off the hotel plane, I
Speaker 3: mean the airplane to the bathroom.
Speaker 17: That I could be appropriate to be in public.
Speaker 3: And then we got to the hotel and I threw up,
Speaker 3: and I was sick, and I was supposed to speak
Speaker 3: the next morning. Suffice it to say, after speaking, I
Speaker 3: was supposed to be on a plane right back to
Speaker 3: East keeping my busy schedule. Well, I didn't make that
Speaker 3: speaking engagement that morning. I didn't make that plane. For
Speaker 3: four days, I convalesced in a Vegas hotel room that
Speaker 3: smelled like God knows what because I was that sick
Speaker 3: from my own abuse. So I had to go and
Speaker 3: deal with me. But it was hard being away. I
Speaker 3: have not had a drink, and coming March in a
Speaker 3: few months, March twenty twenty four will make four years
Speaker 3: of never having touched an alcoholic beverage again. I, who
Speaker 3: didn't believe in therapy, was introduced to my healing sister
Speaker 3: Yachte through Angela, went to couple's therapy unpacked a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff that I didn't even know was in
Speaker 3: the way. For the first time, I was able to
Speaker 3: admit my grief and devastation from the race and all
Speaker 3: the people I blamed for it and had internalized but
Speaker 3: mostly blaming myself. I tried to make some catharsis with
Speaker 3: all of the bad decision making that got me to
Speaker 3: where I was, and we began to start to repair
Speaker 3: a little bit of the things that I wanted to
Speaker 3: try to make whole, and whether I chose it or not,
Speaker 3: a lot of the distractions removed themselves. A fall from
Speaker 3: grace tends to take care of those kinds of things
Speaker 3: for you. And with the patience of my wife r J,
Speaker 3: the beautiful love of my three children, Jackson, Carolina, and Davis,
Speaker 3: my parents, a praying pastor and friend therapist, and a
Speaker 3: very very small group of people I can count on
Speaker 3: my ten fingers. They nursed me each day back to
Speaker 3: eventually a place where I could get up each day
Speaker 3: without breaking down from embarrassment or shame or what if.
Speaker 3: And I remember saying to my one healer that I'm
Speaker 3: just so worried that I'm not going to be able
Speaker 3: to put it back together.
Speaker 17: Said to me, did you ever consider.
Speaker 3: That when God broke it, he meant for it to
Speaker 3: stay broken, so that would never ever be put back
Speaker 3: that way again? I hadn't thought about that. And then
Speaker 3: we got into the healing of Like I said, I
Speaker 3: admitted to a whole bunch of things and took responsibility
Speaker 3: for a whole bunch of stuff. But in rehab when
Speaker 3: I had the emergency be pulled over to hear from
Speaker 3: my lawyers and others about the images that were being distributed,
Speaker 3: and then through an extortion attempt, by this same person
Speaker 3: to get tens of thousands of dollars out of me
Speaker 3: and to set threatened to sell these photos to journalists.
Speaker 3: We were able to get a New York journalist who
Speaker 3: was going to buy them, and we were able to
Speaker 3: get the catalog of them, and I started to go
Speaker 3: through them in this therapy period, and I see these
Speaker 3: images of myself in every single one of them that
Speaker 3: I see shows me that evening looking lifeless, with no
Speaker 3: movement except that I had been moved around the room, posed,
Speaker 3: and my lifeless looking condition was put in the shower,
Speaker 3: the showers raining down on me, and this person is
Speaker 3: narrating something funny, but I'm not looking like I'm breathing.
Speaker 3: I was okay with take your responsibility for all of
Speaker 3: these things, because surely, since twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, surely
Speaker 3: I've done some things to deserve whatever happened.
Speaker 17: And even though I can't remember a thing, I deserved it,
Speaker 17: that is a violation I can't even get. I can't
Speaker 17: even process because.
Speaker 3: It hurt me badly to see those pictures. And then
Speaker 3: there was a video, supposedly a sex tape that I
Speaker 3: never looked at, but a woman who worked for me,
Speaker 3: and Rosie shout out to you for this. She and
Speaker 3: Katie Fang, who has a UH show on MSNBC now,
Speaker 3: who was my lawyer during this period. They did get
Speaker 3: the catalog and they did go through it. In this
Speaker 3: video is not even of me. It's of some other
Speaker 3: some black guy images that were attempted to be sold
Speaker 3: and pass off as me that weren't me, an extortion
Speaker 3: attempt to get thousands and then to re sell them
Speaker 3: to these photo journalists.
Speaker 11: It it.
Speaker 3: It my fear of being hostage to this person and
Speaker 3: whatever machine they had with them. It ends today. You
Speaker 3: can't touch me. There's nothing you can do to me
Speaker 3: that I haven't already done to myself. And then some
Speaker 3: And what I thank God for Yati for was getting
Speaker 3: me to a place where she could say what happened
Speaker 3: wasn't right, It was a violation, It was foul, and
Speaker 3: you didn't deserve it forever to release this idea of
Speaker 3: what I deserved. And like I said, I can cop
Speaker 3: to anything that I knowingly do and participate in.
Speaker 17: And I've been a shitty person a.
Speaker 3: Lot of times, but nothing was sitting right on this
Speaker 3: except what happened and why and and shame for myself,
Speaker 3: but mostly shame because I thought I was going to
Speaker 3: and my generation make it easier for my kids who
Speaker 3: were going to come after me. And it just kept
Speaker 3: visiting me that I just made everything worse. But it's
Speaker 3: a process and we pushed through. And that year was
Speaker 3: hard to celebrate anything, my birthday, mind, whatever, my anything.
Speaker 3: But we got to the point in this whole period
Speaker 3: of time and my periods of recovery, that last year
Speaker 3: r J wanted to you know, we have fits and
Speaker 3: starts of what she wanted to celebrate. Most days she
Speaker 3: wasn't celebrating anything they had to do with me and
Speaker 3: vice versa, because there was work to do and we've
Speaker 3: been doing the hard work. But we go out for
Speaker 3: Father's Day and she has bought tickets for me and
Speaker 3: the kids and her to go to this special brunch
Speaker 3: and we take this picture on the lawn or the
Speaker 3: place where we have brunch for Father's Day. And I
Speaker 3: started to get this sense that all right, we won't
Speaker 3: be okay. And that's when the next week I get
Speaker 3: a call and the call comes through and it says
Speaker 3: this is agent you know such and such and I
Speaker 3: calling on behalf of the fbr of government, federal government.
Speaker 3: And I need to get with you because we got
Speaker 3: a what is it called a sealed grand jury indictment
Speaker 3: of you on however mind accounts, he says. And I'm
Speaker 3: not remembering all this at the time, and we need
Speaker 3: to we need we know where you are so you
Speaker 3: can surrender yourself.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know you're normally used to us having a call
Speaker 1: to action section. We're not going to do that at
Speaker 1: all today. Our only call to action is that you
Speaker 1: tune in next time to hear this second part of
Speaker 1: Andrew's harrowing testimony where he talks about United States of
Speaker 1: America versus Gillam. Before we end the show, I want
Speaker 1: to remind everyone to leave us a review and subscribe
Speaker 1: to Native Land Pod. We're available on all platforms and YouTube.
Speaker 1: New episodes drop every single Thursday. You can also follow
Speaker 1: us on social media at Native Land Pod. We are
Speaker 1: Angela Raie, Tiffany Cross, and Andrew Gillim.
Speaker 2: Welcome home, y'all.
Speaker 1: There are two hundred and seventy seven days till election day.
Speaker 1: Native Lampod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: reisent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.