Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Eating Wild Broke. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Colleen Witt, and today we have special guests. A Reva
Speaker 1: Martin is in the building. We have civil rights attorney,
Speaker 1: we have best selling authors, nonprofit leader. I don't know
Speaker 1: anybody that is a female that has more titles than
Speaker 1: you do. I have a lot of titles, but one
Speaker 1: that I really love is that of mom. So don't
Speaker 1: forget and your mom. I'm a mom, and I know
Speaker 1: you're a new I just joined the mom club. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. You may be a superhero. You may
Speaker 1: be you may actually be a superhero. Moms are superheroes.
Speaker 1: You got your I like that. I like that. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited about having you here today. And I'm also
Speaker 1: like nervous and overwhelmed because your resume says a lot
Speaker 1: and you've done so much. Well. I am just like
Speaker 1: you and every other mom that's dealing with raising kids,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, this crazy mixed up
Speaker 1: world we live in, how to keep our kids safe,
Speaker 1: how to make sure they grew up to be responsible, loving, caring,
Speaker 1: nurturing adults. So hey, relax, We're here to cook today.
Speaker 1: Cook and you came on eating while broke, which just
Speaker 1: says a lot because I would have never Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then on top of it, you're cooking one of my
Speaker 1: favorite dishes and I had no idea how to make it.
Speaker 1: So what are you cooking? I am making my classic
Speaker 1: tuna melt. This is a dish that I perfected while
Speaker 1: I was into all school and I was very, very
Speaker 1: very broke. So I had to figure out Harvard. I
Speaker 1: was broken her. I was broke away before I got
Speaker 1: to Harvard, and I remained broke while I was at Harvard.
Speaker 1: So I can figure out how to cook because you
Speaker 1: could go out, you know, every night. I had the
Speaker 1: kind of money, so I had to figure out how
Speaker 1: I can make food that I could put a refrigerator
Speaker 1: and eat, you know, on for a couple of days.
Speaker 1: And I grew up. I always left tuna. Tuna was like,
Speaker 1: you know, poor Man's caveat So I like that the
Speaker 1: poor Man's cavears. You get your canra tuna, you open it.
Speaker 1: You can make all kinds of things. So I started
Speaker 1: making too melts, and I got pretty popular. My tona
Speaker 1: melts were legendary and other people want to come over
Speaker 1: and have I took melt with me. So I solved
Speaker 1: a lot of problems and did a lot of studying
Speaker 1: over tuna melts. Now, did you have to learn how
Speaker 1: to make a tuna melt or did you feel yourself
Speaker 1: through it? You know, I'm a kind of cook. I
Speaker 1: grew up with my godmother and my grandmother and several aunts,
Speaker 1: and they were all cooked. So I think I picked
Speaker 1: up a little bit from each of the women that
Speaker 1: I grew up with. I'm not a recipe cook. I'm
Speaker 1: very much like kind a brain cook and how I feel,
Speaker 1: so it's a pinch of this, a pinch of that.
Speaker 1: So I don't have, you know, precise measurements for how
Speaker 1: I cook. So I taste and I just kind of
Speaker 1: wing it. Like you put a lot of love and
Speaker 1: a lot of hard into your cooking, it comes out
Speaker 1: great sounds like what ingredients are we're using today? So today,
Speaker 1: for this legendary Harvard Law School cooking, while I'm broke
Speaker 1: tuna milk, we have some classic tuna, tuna and water,
Speaker 1: just two cans, just you know, at any local grower
Speaker 1: store tuna. We have some slices of cheddar cheese, you know, again,
Speaker 1: just whatever cheese you can find. I happen to like
Speaker 1: yellow cheese. You can use white cheese. We have pieces
Speaker 1: of celery chopped up. We have eggs, boiled eggs, really
Speaker 1: important tuna to have eggs. I have pickle, relish mustard,
Speaker 1: some wheat. Read paprika, Oh my god, my favorite spice.
Speaker 1: I put paprica on everything. Don't ever sleep on. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start using paprika and smoked paprika is the absolute best.
Speaker 1: Put it on everything. Some Gari seasoning salt. Couldn't cook
Speaker 1: without that, you know, black folks, miracle will right, So
Speaker 1: we has a miracle whil It could be mayonnaise, but
Speaker 1: we have miracle whippers salt and pepper and that's it.
Speaker 1: So not you know, elaborate. And the reason you can
Speaker 1: make this while you're broke is because everything that all
Speaker 1: the condiments, you use them, you can buy them. This
Speaker 1: is probably fifteen Yeah, well actually a lot less, but
Speaker 1: you it was so funny because I do a lot
Speaker 1: of the shopping for the show and I had to
Speaker 1: shoot a lot today. But your dish was hands down
Speaker 1: the cheapest dish. Yeah. I mean, I don't count the
Speaker 1: condiments because like you said, you reuse them. You reuse them.
Speaker 1: But the actual dish, I mean, you're talking a couple
Speaker 1: of dollars prepared. You know, a couple of dollars for tuna, cheese,
Speaker 1: celery is really cheap, and so this is like the
Speaker 1: gold to dish. And I was excited about it because
Speaker 1: I make tuna sandwiches all day and the only time
Speaker 1: I buy a tuna sandwich is if it's a tuna
Speaker 1: mel So I officially will learn how to make it
Speaker 1: to the melt today. And you notice with our tune
Speaker 1: on our eggs, lots of proteins. This is a really
Speaker 1: high protein dish. So anybody that's worried, like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they don't want to do the bread, you can
Speaker 1: obviously leave off the bridge. You can just put it
Speaker 1: on the grill without bread. You could put it in
Speaker 1: a little piece of lettuce if you wanted to. You
Speaker 1: leave the cheese off. That's the good part. But I'm
Speaker 1: just doing people now. A lot of people want to
Speaker 1: eat healthy, so they may be a little weary about
Speaker 1: the bread or the cheese, but hands down, this is
Speaker 1: a really healthy meal. So okay, well I get started, okay,
Speaker 1: so obviously and take the tuna that was drained open
Speaker 1: the can drain the water off. You don't want it
Speaker 1: to be too you know, sloppy. You put the tune
Speaker 1: in a big bowl and then the cellery. Now again,
Speaker 1: I like crunchy food. A lot of people don't like
Speaker 1: the crunchy. So if you like crunchy, make your pieces
Speaker 1: kind of nice and you know, crunchy. And we don't
Speaker 1: have onions today because you're not gonna be standing next
Speaker 1: to each other and and offensive or maybe made me cry.
Speaker 1: But if you like onions, put some onions in your tune.
Speaker 1: That's another thing, to be white onions red on this.
Speaker 1: Even green onions are great in tunas. So you can
Speaker 1: chop up some green onions, put the celery in here
Speaker 1: and then the other like really important part of this
Speaker 1: are the eggs. So we have three. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I did not know eggs were part of the tuna milt. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love eggs and tuna. So we boiled our three
Speaker 1: eggs and then we're just gonna cut them up and
Speaker 1: again into pieces. Some people might want them in little
Speaker 1: tiny pieces. I just make mine, you know, just slice them. Uh,
Speaker 1: Because once you start to put it in the bowl
Speaker 1: and you start to mix it all, don't break up
Speaker 1: some more, so don't worry about it once you start
Speaker 1: moving the eggs around in the bowl. And I love
Speaker 1: eggs period. I eat them always soft boiled, hard boiled.
Speaker 1: The egg girl. So it's funny because I love egg whites.
Speaker 1: I don't love egg yellows except in my tuna. So
Speaker 1: if I go to breakfast, I always eat egg whites.
Speaker 1: But in my tuna up, I put the yellows and
Speaker 1: the whites. And again, if you're like, you know, all
Speaker 1: healthy and say, oh I don't eat yellows away, we
Speaker 1: would have been great friends because I would eat all
Speaker 1: the yellows. I'm not a fan of the white. I'm like,
Speaker 1: find your yeah, okay. So now I have my eggs,
Speaker 1: I have my celery and tune just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: take a big spoon, stir it up a little, get
Speaker 1: it all mixed in there, and thou comes your seasoning.
Speaker 1: So pickle relish really important because it's gonna make it
Speaker 1: a little sweet again crunchy because pickle relish is crunchy,
Speaker 1: and there's juice in the pickle relish. So it gives
Speaker 1: you again something to bind the big cooking word. You
Speaker 1: gotta bind the ingredients and depending on your taste, like
Speaker 1: I like it's sweet, Like it's sweet. Add more if
Speaker 1: you're not a sweet this person, you know, add a
Speaker 1: little west. But I like my tuna nice and sweets,
Speaker 1: so that that put the pickle rolish in. Now Here
Speaker 1: comes your male, so you know, people are really funny
Speaker 1: about male. Some people like a lot, I'm not a
Speaker 1: big and some people like miracle whip or male. Can
Speaker 1: you switch out the two or just you can use yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: either one gives you the same taste. I didn't put
Speaker 1: a lot, I just put Maybe that's the equivalent of
Speaker 1: two table spoons. Because with the pickle relish, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get the you know that that juice is binding the
Speaker 1: tuna and the other ingredients, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of mayonnaise. That's why says it's
Speaker 1: a healthy dish too, because you could also buy like
Speaker 1: a low calorie male if you wanted to. So, okay,
Speaker 1: now look look how good that looks. It's really good.
Speaker 1: Already a little mustard, yellow mustard, So pickle relish makes
Speaker 1: it sweet. The yellow mustard gives it that little, you know,
Speaker 1: that little kick. So again, not a whole lot, just
Speaker 1: enough to give it a little kick. So maybe that's
Speaker 1: one like a little spot a tea, let's use a teaspoon.
Speaker 1: And again, if you like your food less sweet and
Speaker 1: more kind of tart, you might even want to use
Speaker 1: more yellow mustard, but I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: want to dial down the sweetness from the pickle relish,
Speaker 1: which I love. Okay, So now you got all our
Speaker 1: ingredients gotta mixed together. Pepper important because we got eggs
Speaker 1: in here. So right at breakfast, you put salt and
Speaker 1: peppers on your eggs. Right, so you put some pepper
Speaker 1: on your in your bowl. And again this is to taste.
Speaker 1: Remember I don't use measuring cups or spoons, but I
Speaker 1: like my food kind of hot, so I'm a little
Speaker 1: heavy on the pepper. Uh. Seasoning salt again, secret ingredient. Uh,
Speaker 1: go easy on it, because I don't know if you
Speaker 1: have somebody at home with diabetes or you know, got
Speaker 1: some kind of strict diet, you don't want to use
Speaker 1: too much salt, but a little salt. And then my
Speaker 1: real secret weapon is are this is an organic ground paprika.
Speaker 1: Get white p preaka. You can get smoked grocery stores,
Speaker 1: farmers markets, and you notice I'm making this really red.
Speaker 1: Love the taste. It's Paprica. Now it's paprika spicy, it's
Speaker 1: not spicy, it's very subtle. The smoke paprika has like
Speaker 1: a smoky taste to it. The regular it has a
Speaker 1: distinctive taste, but it's not overpowering. So don't let the
Speaker 1: color of food. A lot of people get nervous because
Speaker 1: it's red, Oh my god. And it's not hot. It's
Speaker 1: not like chilly powder or any kind of spice. But
Speaker 1: it just has a subtle taste that makes I think
Speaker 1: everything tastes a little better. So okay, now you have
Speaker 1: to taste it right. It's gonna be a good, clean cook.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna take a little and you have
Speaker 1: your own fork so you won't use my fork. You
Speaker 1: did it to have the best tunament well more. So okay, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go up. Now. I haven't had this in a
Speaker 1: long time time. I'm like you, I'm excited. Now do
Speaker 1: you usually eat out or do you do cook? I
Speaker 1: know you you cook, but what do you do nowadays?
Speaker 1: M Well, I go to a lot of events and
Speaker 1: the food, unfortunately, is often pretty bad. So I try
Speaker 1: to eat something before I get there or while I'm there,
Speaker 1: if you know there's I don't eat meat. So if
Speaker 1: there's meat on the menu, I try to get a vegetarian. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I stop eating meat about seven years ago and I
Speaker 1: just never went back. Are you gonna be able to
Speaker 1: eat this today? Eat fish? You fish? Yes, eat fish?
Speaker 1: So okay, now we're ready. Our tuna is all together.
Speaker 1: This will last in the fridge it least a couple
Speaker 1: of days. You can put some some ran wrap on
Speaker 1: and make sure it's tight, and put it in a
Speaker 1: tupperware bowl. Make sure the top is type. Hey, this
Speaker 1: is two three meals. So school, this was like lunch dinner,
Speaker 1: lunch dinner. This was the bomb. So all right, now
Speaker 1: your bread and you can we're using just regular slice
Speaker 1: bread here. Another thing I used to love in law
Speaker 1: school is to use English muffins. I saw that English
Speaker 1: is going to do that. So again, you know, English
Speaker 1: muffin is great. They come and you slice it and
Speaker 1: you do it the same way you do the bread.
Speaker 1: So in this case, you just take your tuna, you
Speaker 1: spread it on the bread and again not too much
Speaker 1: but enough, make sure, you know, cover the whole surface.
Speaker 1: And then you put this is open face, open face face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you take. And then we didn't do the craft cheese.
Speaker 1: We didn't know if you wanted the craft or the
Speaker 1: if you're specific on your cheese, is I know? And
Speaker 1: again this is you just needed slice so it could
Speaker 1: be yo, it could be white. You swish you could
Speaker 1: use cheddar, any kind of cheese that you like, American
Speaker 1: cheese or slices. Again, in law school, it's probably that
Speaker 1: big pack of American cheese that was nice and cheese.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Now we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: make two, so one for you, one for me. Perfect,
Speaker 1: move this over here and into our oven, which we
Speaker 1: preheated our oven so it's nice and hot. And now
Speaker 1: how long do you usually heat this for? This is
Speaker 1: just about making sure your bread gets toasted, because you
Speaker 1: want it to be toasted and you want the cheese
Speaker 1: to actually mal start to melt and get gooley. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna turn this on like a three fifty oven.
Speaker 1: We're gonna bake it. Let's put this oven on ten
Speaker 1: minutes and see what happens. And we've already preheated it,
Speaker 1: so the oven is pretty warm. So we're just gonna
Speaker 1: watch it and see what happens, and see as it gets.
Speaker 1: While we watch it, my favorite parts got to happen.
Speaker 1: I get to ask how you got to where you were.
Speaker 1: Did you always want to be a civil rights attorney?
Speaker 1: You know? No, I knew I wanted to do something
Speaker 1: that helped people. I knew I wanted to work in
Speaker 1: my community. I grew up in this housing project in St. Louis,
Speaker 1: and I always knew that there was something different about
Speaker 1: where I lived. And I used to catch a bus
Speaker 1: to this private school, and I would see these big homes,
Speaker 1: and I met kids in this high school I went
Speaker 1: to whose parents were super rich. And I would go
Speaker 1: actually with my godmother. She was a janitor, and we
Speaker 1: would go into the wealthy parts of St. Louis, and
Speaker 1: she had to clean offices and I would help her.
Speaker 1: So I had all this exposure, So the big offices
Speaker 1: at night that I'm helping my godmother clean, the bus
Speaker 1: ride to my school, where I'm seeing these big, old houses,
Speaker 1: and then these very wealthy white kids that went to
Speaker 1: the school, this high school with me. So I would
Speaker 1: always like ask myself why the And I wasn't using
Speaker 1: the word disparity but that's what it is. Why are
Speaker 1: the such the huge disparity where I live, where these
Speaker 1: kids live. You know, we're cleaning these offices where you know,
Speaker 1: white men mostly worked, and so I just thought there
Speaker 1: was something wrong with that, and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: do something in my career, my life where I could
Speaker 1: impact those people that I grew up with. So that's
Speaker 1: how I got to civil rights. Did you ever figure
Speaker 1: out the answer to that question? What was the answer?
Speaker 1: A lot of a systemic racism. It's plain and simple.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just that it was redlining uh
Speaker 1: D investment in neighborhoods and black and brown neighborhoods. It
Speaker 1: was discriminatory lending practices that prevented uh, people of color
Speaker 1: from buying homes, are predatory lending practices that even when
Speaker 1: they bought homes, they often lost the homes. Discrimination in
Speaker 1: workplace that prevented uh, you know, African Americans and people
Speaker 1: of color from getting jobs and then getting promotions in
Speaker 1: those jobs. You know, our criminal justice system that had
Speaker 1: taken literally hundreds of thousands of black men out of
Speaker 1: our community and you know, put them in jails, mass incarceration.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I figured out a lot of it, And
Speaker 1: do you think that's what played a pivotal role? Like
Speaker 1: that answer and see you going into civil right, Well,
Speaker 1: I discovered that answer. So as a kid, I see
Speaker 1: the differences, right, I see the injustices. I don't have
Speaker 1: a name for it, don't have words for it. And
Speaker 1: then as I get to law school and I started
Speaker 1: to study as I you know, and then get out
Speaker 1: into the real world, then I have a clear understanding
Speaker 1: of everything that I was witnessing as a kid that
Speaker 1: I couldn't put a label too, couldn't put words to.
Speaker 1: Ok oh, and the bottom is looking good and crunchy.
Speaker 1: So mid sentence, I was like, Okay, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I gotta check on our tuna milt. Okay, so we uh, Now,
Speaker 1: this is a choice. If you like your bread really crispy,
Speaker 1: we can leave it in or it literally is looking
Speaker 1: pretty good to me. So if it looks pretty good
Speaker 1: to you, that's because the oven was already hot. So
Speaker 1: we already had prepeated this oven, so we're gonna turn
Speaker 1: our oven off. Speaking of systematic racism, do you think
Speaker 1: that we are headed away from that or do you
Speaker 1: think we still deal with it? Oh? I think it's uh,
Speaker 1: in some ways worse than it has ever been. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: that would be safe. Don't touch a hot oven with
Speaker 1: your hands, thank you, Colleen. Look how easy that is. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's for you. Well, i'll just put it out on
Speaker 1: this quite then we can figure out how we're gonna
Speaker 1: plate it. Yeah no, unfortunately, Uh, in some ways we
Speaker 1: are going backwards in this country. Look at that? How
Speaker 1: cool that looks beautiful cameras. Look at that high school
Speaker 1: each I've never ever witnessed one being made, so this
Speaker 1: will probably be something I make at home every week. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is your point. You take that one? Quite?
Speaker 1: This up so good? Yes, and this we had This
Speaker 1: is where we add see when you bro ther side
Speaker 1: dish is a big old bag of lais. So get
Speaker 1: your chips, okay, perfect, get you some barbecue as I
Speaker 1: love barbecue chips. I know this would be my little
Speaker 1: side dish. A couple of chips here, as I've gotten older, though,
Speaker 1: Eileen swards. Just the plain potato chips. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: like the sweet potato friese and potato chips. Actly. Here's
Speaker 1: our water. Okay, so you take a bite. Okay, tell
Speaker 1: me what you think. I want your honest success month,
Speaker 1: the honest success. I want the real deal. Girl spot gooley, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's the real deal. It tastes really good. I'm going
Speaker 1: for another bite though, probably because it's really good. So
Speaker 1: if you had this English muffin, you could, you know,
Speaker 1: make two for yourself. You'd have to. The bread is
Speaker 1: pretty big with some people. Depending on how much you eat,
Speaker 1: this could be like a meal. Definitely your guy or
Speaker 1: your big eater. You want to have two of these.
Speaker 1: But you and I are like, I feel like this
Speaker 1: is more fancy because it's open. Is that just me?
Speaker 1: Does anyone else feel like that? When it's an open sandwich,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh yeah, it's a little fancy here, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna taste it. This is manning. You see all the
Speaker 1: crunchy stuff too, the way the egg hits, the way
Speaker 1: the relish, it's the celery, the crunch on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the bread. This is the best tunament ever. And
Speaker 1: when you put this in the fridge overnight mm hmm,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna get even more flavor for your tuna.
Speaker 1: That's the next day you have you another wonderful tuna milk.
Speaker 1: You can taste all the ingredients Yeah, nothing's overpowering, right, No,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the key. Now, a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You may want to put some olives in here. We
Speaker 1: can get real creative. You can put raises, you can
Speaker 1: put dried cranberries, you can put you know, some dried fruit, um,
Speaker 1: even nuts if you like it. I mean tuna. That's
Speaker 1: what I love about tuna. I mean, you can make
Speaker 1: it however you want. You put some sprouts in there,
Speaker 1: if you can put some lettuce. After you finish this,
Speaker 1: you can do some slices of tomato. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to add chef to your titles set, because you know what,
Speaker 1: it's every every grade you use really holds his own,
Speaker 1: like the celery, the way you can fight into and
Speaker 1: crunch into it, the egg like all these things I
Speaker 1: never knew went with tuna. Clearly go with tuna. But
Speaker 1: it's like you thought about each element, like each bite,
Speaker 1: each from the textures to the flavors. That's what you
Speaker 1: gotta add steps to your title. Okay, well show I
Speaker 1: love cooking though. It's like therapeutic in some ways. I
Speaker 1: mean you're in the kitchen, you just kind of turn
Speaker 1: on your music at your glass of wine and cook uh,
Speaker 1: And I like making. I'm a big entertainer, so I
Speaker 1: love having people over. I love entertaining and sometimes a
Speaker 1: big party make cater but I like always making something myself.
Speaker 1: I like, uh, putting my own personal touches on it.
Speaker 1: And when I was in college, I was in college
Speaker 1: in Chicago and my uncle was like a really really
Speaker 1: phenomenal caterer. So I got to work with him during college.
Speaker 1: So I learned some tricks from Uncle Floyd about how
Speaker 1: to you know, whip up certain dishes and hit this guy,
Speaker 1: my uncle. Oh my god, he could go into a
Speaker 1: refrigerator and whatever is there he needs coming to my house.
Speaker 1: Where are you Atman? The most amazing meal? That's how
Speaker 1: you say that, because I would have never thought all
Speaker 1: these ingredients would have made such an amazing dish. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's good, I mean, and that's a mad I jipped
Speaker 1: you on your onions. But when you make it at home, See,
Speaker 1: you can add those green onions. You can add some
Speaker 1: green pepper, some red peppers, some yellow peppers. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what's amazing about this. You can make this super healthy.
Speaker 1: Throw a ton of vegetables in there. Uh, some broccoli,
Speaker 1: you know, some asparagus, green beans, just make it a
Speaker 1: big old and you put us on a bed of
Speaker 1: letts and now you got your serious tuna salad and
Speaker 1: it's it's just delicious and affordable. So let's dive into you. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now we know you can cook, know you sell at all, that,
Speaker 1: we know all these things. But I want to know, like,
Speaker 1: how did you go from you said you're from St. Louis.
Speaker 1: From St. Louis to seeing an analyst? Too? Like how
Speaker 1: how did you go from there to here? And we
Speaker 1: could start maybe at the Harvard level if you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I when I left Harvard, I went and worked
Speaker 1: at a big corporate Wall Street offering I wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: big biggest law firms in the country. And I went
Speaker 1: there because I needed to earn some money because I
Speaker 1: had a lot of student loan depth. But I always
Speaker 1: knew I wasn't gonna stay. I just needed to get out,
Speaker 1: earn some dough and figure out, you know, what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do with my life. But I stayed about
Speaker 1: a year and a half. I got real anty, real fast,
Speaker 1: and I started my own law firm at about a
Speaker 1: year and a half after working. And it was scary
Speaker 1: I had to call my family in St. Louis and
Speaker 1: tell them I was leaving this really high paying job.
Speaker 1: I had an office like on the thirty third floor
Speaker 1: of this amazing building, and you're gonna step away to
Speaker 1: start your own Yeah, And I was moving into this
Speaker 1: tiny little office over a nightclub on Worlfship Boivarts. So
Speaker 1: I wanna tell this really funny story. When you graduate
Speaker 1: from Harvard, you have the blessing, I should say, an
Speaker 1: opportunity to pretty much work wherever. You get recruited from
Speaker 1: all the big law firms, the big companies, so you
Speaker 1: have a lot of choices to make. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you take one of these jobs at these big
Speaker 1: law firms, you make a lot of money. Your first
Speaker 1: paycheck is more than some people will ever make, uh
Speaker 1: in their entire life. So you know, I'm growing up poor,
Speaker 1: you know. So here I am making more money than
Speaker 1: I could have ever imagined. And all my friends are
Speaker 1: buying sports cars and you know, Mercedes and all these
Speaker 1: big fancy cars, and a lot of us had moved
Speaker 1: here from Boston and they were living here in l A.
Speaker 1: They're moving to the beach there, you know, uh, moving
Speaker 1: into these really expensive condos and expensive apartments, and my
Speaker 1: first car and never own a car. My first car
Speaker 1: was a ten year old Jetta. My car note was
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars and my friends thought I was absolutely
Speaker 1: crazy because they're all driving these big Beamers and you know,
Speaker 1: Mercedes and all these sportions and fancy cars. And my
Speaker 1: first apartment was downtown l a off of McArthur Park,
Speaker 1: so one bedroom, sporting and seventy five Why were you
Speaker 1: living like that? Because I was wrote But I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I thought you said that you after Harvard, they were
Speaker 1: paying you, but you still broke. I had all the
Speaker 1: student owned debt, so I was making more money than
Speaker 1: you know, ungodly amount of money. But I had come
Speaker 1: out of law school. I didn't nobody paid for that,
Speaker 1: and I had to take out a lot of loans,
Speaker 1: which is the reality of a lot of students who
Speaker 1: graduated and lost. We have a lot of debt. So
Speaker 1: my friends who were living large, they're just adding more
Speaker 1: debt to the debt we already had. So when you
Speaker 1: grow up in the Midwest, it's you know, you have
Speaker 1: these u values that we grew up with, and you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be out. We don't traditionally, you don't be
Speaker 1: flossing in a big car and you got a lot
Speaker 1: of debt. So my upbringing was like, yeah, you're making
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but you gotta pay down some
Speaker 1: of this debt. So my friends, they were pretty cruel.
Speaker 1: You don't know in high school if you were the
Speaker 1: kid that didn't have a cool clothes, how the popular
Speaker 1: kids would mock you and you know, make fun of you.
Speaker 1: That what happened to me as an adult because my
Speaker 1: r was old and I can remember, just like you said,
Speaker 1: why were you living like that? My car broke down,
Speaker 1: and this lady said the same thing to me, like
Speaker 1: why are you driving that car with all this disdain
Speaker 1: on her face? Because it's my car and I chose
Speaker 1: a body act. Do you do you think that some
Speaker 1: of your parents, their parents were paying it down or
Speaker 1: do you think that they were in the same boat
Speaker 1: where they were responsible for their dead It was a
Speaker 1: mixed bag. I had some who didn't have debt because
Speaker 1: they had wealthy parents, so they didn't even have the debt.
Speaker 1: And I had others who they just like, you know,
Speaker 1: a kid in the candy store, right it was their
Speaker 1: first big check and they just lost their minds, But
Speaker 1: I didn't do that. I saved as much of my
Speaker 1: check as I could. I paid my little four seventy
Speaker 1: five rent, I paid my little hundred cardinal, paid my
Speaker 1: student loans. I was banking my money. Uh, and it
Speaker 1: made it easier. So when I had to make the
Speaker 1: decision to go out on my own and leave that
Speaker 1: cushy job, I didn't have the pressure of like all
Speaker 1: these bills, and I had cushion. I had savings. So
Speaker 1: if it didn't work out, I told myself, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, I just go back to the firm and
Speaker 1: get another job. So a lot of entrepreneurs, you know,
Speaker 1: people want to become entrepreneurs, they're fearful that they don't
Speaker 1: have that kind of financial cushion, Like what am I
Speaker 1: gonna do? How am I gonna pay my bills? So
Speaker 1: I always knew I wanted to start my own firm
Speaker 1: once I graduated, so I knew I needed to have
Speaker 1: that cushion. So but trying to explain this to some relatives,
Speaker 1: You're doing what leaving that job to go work like
Speaker 1: in this tiny little office. So it was hard. And
Speaker 1: even my friends too, Again they're disdained because seems like
Speaker 1: you were an entrepreneur before you were attorney. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny thought process, because that's how entrepreneurs think,
Speaker 1: is like produced as much of our personal overload so
Speaker 1: we can take as much risk as possible. And it's
Speaker 1: funny that you say that because my husband grew up
Speaker 1: with a family of entrepreneurs. He's like been working for
Speaker 1: himself since he was twelve. He's never had a quote
Speaker 1: unquote job. I didn't really grow up that way. My
Speaker 1: grandmother was a janitor, so she worked. She cleaned homes
Speaker 1: in the daytime offices at night. So I didn't really
Speaker 1: grow up in an entrepreneurial family. But I think it
Speaker 1: was always just kind of a free spirit and I
Speaker 1: was always a risk taker, so I wasn't afraid. And
Speaker 1: when I left that job, I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I got the first job, I'll get a second job.
Speaker 1: Did you always know you're going to go into work
Speaker 1: for yourself as an attorney? When I graduated, I pretty
Speaker 1: much had made up my mind that I wanted to
Speaker 1: have control over the kinds of cases that I took.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have control over my work schedule. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, people think working for yourself is you
Speaker 1: know Cake Wall. In those early days, I would leave
Speaker 1: my apartment at nine. I didn't get back till midnight
Speaker 1: because what I had to do. I had to do
Speaker 1: the case work, the legal work in the daytime. Then
Speaker 1: that nine I had to go hustle. I was new
Speaker 1: to LN and know anyone, so I had to go
Speaker 1: meet people. Had to go to clubs and parties and
Speaker 1: gagas and wherever abody was having something where there would
Speaker 1: be people. I had to be there because I had
Speaker 1: to meet you to convince you to make me your lawyer.
Speaker 1: So I had to hustle business at night. A lot
Speaker 1: of times I would go back to the office at nine,
Speaker 1: ten o'clock at night after having been out you know, networking, uh,
Speaker 1: and then do some more work. So some nights I
Speaker 1: got I'm like one o'clock in the morning. So it
Speaker 1: was a grueling schedule. But I loved it. I love
Speaker 1: the independence. I didn't mind. You know, I'm a hard
Speaker 1: work I'm from saying Louis, you cannot outwork me, and
Speaker 1: I did. I was just happy. Now was the money
Speaker 1: there as an entrepreneur in the beginning or no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was easing that and but it didn't matter to
Speaker 1: me because I didn't have that pressure. So it's one
Speaker 1: thing to be broken. You do owe anybody, but you
Speaker 1: know when you owe everybody and your phone is blowing
Speaker 1: up from bill collectors, that's a level of stress. And
Speaker 1: I did not want that stress. So that's why I
Speaker 1: saved that money. And it okay, I could go without
Speaker 1: a paycheck. Youah, no, I took a huge pay cut.
Speaker 1: I mean it was what did your family say this
Speaker 1: entire time while you're taking these pay cuts and hustling?
Speaker 1: They thought I was crazy. You didn't go to Harvard
Speaker 1: to do that. You could have gone to any school
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go hang out your shingo, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? There was a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of shaming. I would call you know now we say
Speaker 1: everything is shaming, A lot of shaming. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of support, and even my colleagues, a lot of
Speaker 1: my friends were very Ariva Stone was left that job.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of whispering. Uh, it was were
Speaker 1: you scared at all? While all that was going on.
Speaker 1: I probably would have been more afraid, but I was
Speaker 1: dating my uh now husband than boyfriend, and he had
Speaker 1: always worked for himself. So he was like, go out there,
Speaker 1: but you could do it. They're gonna be laughing, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be crying when you, you you know, walk into the
Speaker 1: bank with all this money you're gonna make eventually. So
Speaker 1: he kept me encouraged. And he had been through the process,
Speaker 1: so he had already uh, you know, he had been there.
Speaker 1: So having someone on that journey with you definitely makes
Speaker 1: a big difference. And he made a big difference. And
Speaker 1: then eventually, as I started meeting people in the last,
Speaker 1: started meeting other entrepreneurs, started to meeting other women in
Speaker 1: particular who had their own businesses, and that was very much. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to leave my Harvard friends alone
Speaker 1: for a minute. I just had to put them over
Speaker 1: here because our lives were going in such divergent past,
Speaker 1: and that negativity can get in your brain and start
Speaker 1: making you doubt yourself, and so I had to shelter
Speaker 1: my brain from that. So I really left my classmates
Speaker 1: for a minute, and you know, I had to meet
Speaker 1: new friends. Was there ever point during that chapter where
Speaker 1: you were like, I don't know if I can stick
Speaker 1: this through. I never thought about getting a job. There
Speaker 1: were hard times though, Man, being self employed, I had
Speaker 1: some rough rough years years because my firm started to grow,
Speaker 1: I started to hire people. You know, at one point
Speaker 1: I had the largest African American owned law firm in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. So my firm got to be really big
Speaker 1: and we start hiring people. Talk about nightmares. People. You
Speaker 1: know you can control and manage you, right, But the
Speaker 1: minute you know there's a second person to that equation,
Speaker 1: everything changed. And I was so nice. I'm young, I'm
Speaker 1: like seven years old. I'm young, and I thought everybody
Speaker 1: it was like me, that you've come to work and
Speaker 1: you give, and you just grind it out and you
Speaker 1: work hard. I didn't know a lot of people just
Speaker 1: came to work to piss off and get a check
Speaker 1: and do nothing. I didn't know that. See, so I
Speaker 1: would and I spent a lot of time. I've made
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes as a young entrepreneur, as a woman.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that as a black woman in a
Speaker 1: white male dominated profession, because that's what the legal profession is.
Speaker 1: Getting people to respect you. People used to always asked
Speaker 1: me if I was a court reporter. They'd asked me
Speaker 1: if I was secretary. Uh, I had a male partner
Speaker 1: they always thought, you know, you're hitting that. They thought,
Speaker 1: you know, we were sleeping together, and this guy was
Speaker 1: my husband's best friend, and we were like family, like
Speaker 1: brother and sister, and we would be out at night,
Speaker 1: going to events and going to see clients. But I mean,
Speaker 1: nothing ever remotely romantic between us. But everybody just assume.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was also hard because you're attractive
Speaker 1: or do you think that helps you or hurt you? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for the compliment. So I don't know. Here's
Speaker 1: what I do dressing. So I've always like my mom
Speaker 1: was just a major fashionista, So I always grew up
Speaker 1: wearing bright colors, big earrings. I was always gonna fashion.
Speaker 1: And you grew up in saying, Lucian, your clothes always
Speaker 1: super clean, iron press, you know, your your appearances. Everything
Speaker 1: didn't have the cost a lot, but it had to
Speaker 1: be clean and just neat. So I didn't dress like
Speaker 1: your traditional lawyer. I don't have any blue suits and
Speaker 1: i'm gray suit, so I'm you know, I'm rolling red
Speaker 1: and yellow and bright colors. So people would say to
Speaker 1: me things like, well, you don't look like your typical lawyer.
Speaker 1: So I got a lot of that. So I think
Speaker 1: my style more so than quote unquote my looks bothered people.
Speaker 1: And again, now you know, women shouldn't wear anything. We
Speaker 1: can show up any way that we wanted to, any
Speaker 1: way that we want to in most environments. But there
Speaker 1: was a time when if you were a professional woman,
Speaker 1: you were supposed to look a certain way, and that
Speaker 1: look was in some ways very close to how men dressed.
Speaker 1: So women are supposed to were very conservative. Blue suits,
Speaker 1: gray suits, white brows, the pearls. That was the uniform
Speaker 1: for a lawyer. And so I didn't that was never
Speaker 1: that was not gonna be me. Just it's never gonna
Speaker 1: be my uniform. So people had a problem with how
Speaker 1: I would roll into court, uh, and how I just
Speaker 1: you know, presented myself overall. But you over time, you
Speaker 1: feel your confidence and you don't let other people define
Speaker 1: your worth. And you know, I wasn't gonna change who
Speaker 1: I was. So so you you're how did you transition
Speaker 1: to the CNN? So media good questions? So I started
Speaker 1: asked again early stages, grinding trial, lawyer in cord working
Speaker 1: crazy hours. I was representing some families in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: five families of kids who have been physically abused by
Speaker 1: their teacher in the classroom, and the Dr Phil Show
Speaker 1: was interested in the story of my clients, so his
Speaker 1: produced production team reached out to me to get to
Speaker 1: my clients. They wanted my clients to come on and
Speaker 1: tell the story of what it happened. The case made
Speaker 1: national news because it was the first time in the
Speaker 1: state of Nevada where a teacher was actually criminally prosecuted
Speaker 1: for her treatment of kids in the classroom. And these
Speaker 1: were a combination of kids uh gon verbal artistic kids
Speaker 1: and kids with special needs and horrible allegations of like
Speaker 1: putting is in a trash can and just horrible. And
Speaker 1: so this teacher actually got criminally prosecuted, so it made
Speaker 1: the national news. The families found me. I ended up
Speaker 1: representing them in a civil case against the school, and
Speaker 1: so the Doctor Field team read the story wanted to
Speaker 1: bring the families on to talk about this case, and
Speaker 1: so I went on. You know, I was there on
Speaker 1: the show with my families and the taping a taping
Speaker 1: a show went so well. The producer came over to
Speaker 1: me and says, Heyrie, but you know, will you you
Speaker 1: want to stick around for the B show. We're doing
Speaker 1: a show on dog the Bounty Hunter using the in word.
Speaker 1: And we have this male panel including Bishop TV, Jake's
Speaker 1: and some activists, but they're all men. We don't have
Speaker 1: a female voice on this panel. You want to stick
Speaker 1: around and join this panel? And in my mind, I'm like,
Speaker 1: at first, I don't even know the story. I like,
Speaker 1: don't watch reality team? Who was Dog the Bounty Hunever,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, and I'm scared to death because I
Speaker 1: literally I don't know anything about this. Is this your
Speaker 1: first time in front of the camera at this point, Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty much. I mean maybe an occasional appearance here and there,
Speaker 1: but this is the first time, you know, national syndicated,
Speaker 1: you know, show like Dr Phields between A and B show,
Speaker 1: maybe there's an hour and a half maybe two. So
Speaker 1: I've got to learn and i gotta develop. Because the
Speaker 1: question was gonna be what should happen to him for
Speaker 1: using the inn word? Should you think maybe a show
Speaker 1: had been taken off the air, So that was gonna
Speaker 1: be the question should he be punished in that way?
Speaker 1: And then all the things that go with the N word, right,
Speaker 1: you know, rappers use it, black people use it. So
Speaker 1: I had to have an opinion wasn't just gonna be
Speaker 1: there as I had have a point of view on this.
Speaker 1: So in this hour hour and a half period, I
Speaker 1: have to like read the whole like what did he say,
Speaker 1: who did he say it to, what was the context?
Speaker 1: I gotta think about what I'm gonna say. And TV
Speaker 1: Jake's is like, god, yeah, people, so I never met him,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh my god, I might be sitting
Speaker 1: next to D D Jase. He's so smart. I don't
Speaker 1: know what nervous. I mean. I wasn't nervous with my
Speaker 1: clients because I was talking about something I knew about, Like,
Speaker 1: ask me anything about this case. I'm you know, I'm there,
Speaker 1: but this in word, you know, it's so violato, so explosive.
Speaker 1: People have so many different opinions about it. So here
Speaker 1: I am sitting there four men, T D Jake's and
Speaker 1: these other three guys, and you know, I held my own, Okay,
Speaker 1: I held my own. You know, I didn't represent the
Speaker 1: I didn't embarrass my family or anything, and apparently to
Speaker 1: these producers I did more than you know, just okay,
Speaker 1: because after that taping, the producer said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd love to have you back if you have any
Speaker 1: other cases like the cases you know we're in a show.
Speaker 1: Let us know. We'll have your clients on and we
Speaker 1: may have shows where we'd love to have your expertise.
Speaker 1: And that began my relationship with the Doctor Phil show.
Speaker 1: And they started calling me and they had me come
Speaker 1: on and talk about, you know, stories that Dr Phil
Speaker 1: was doing. I had some other really interesting cases. I
Speaker 1: would pitch stories to them, and I started going on,
Speaker 1: you know, Dr Phil has been and at the time
Speaker 1: probably was the number one rated time talk show. And
Speaker 1: it just started from there. And from Dr Phil, I
Speaker 1: started doing other shows, including cable News, and one day
Speaker 1: I got a call from the talent director at CNN
Speaker 1: and she said I had been guesting. So as an expert,
Speaker 1: typically you will start off some people, not everyone, but
Speaker 1: the typical pathway is they'll say, hey, you're a great cook.
Speaker 1: We're doing a segment on cooking. Will you come on
Speaker 1: and talk about cooking. You don't get paid. A lot
Speaker 1: of people do it for promoting, right, be promoting a cookbook.
Speaker 1: He may be promoting your restaurant, so there's a reason
Speaker 1: to do it. Uh. So I was guesting what they
Speaker 1: called guesting, So I would go on and give my
Speaker 1: legal opinions, get in and miss NBC even at that
Speaker 1: time Fox, so you know, whatever station would call me
Speaker 1: because I was trying to get my name, I was
Speaker 1: trying to get exposure. And then I got the call
Speaker 1: from the talent director CNN offering me a paid position
Speaker 1: as a contributor. Huhh. And he was like, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So that was that was going on through
Speaker 1: your mind when that happened. You know, I was so shocked,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of similar. So I was I
Speaker 1: coasted a couple of our daytime talk shows, uh, some
Speaker 1: produced by Dr Phil, and something very similar happened one
Speaker 1: of the shows that I was on with Dr Phil
Speaker 1: that I was a co hosting. I was at home
Speaker 1: and I just got a call and it was Dr
Speaker 1: Phil saying, hey, he wanted to meet with me. So
Speaker 1: most of my blessed scenes or my my TV westerns
Speaker 1: have come where I'm just at home, chilling and looking
Speaker 1: up the phone and that CNN, it's Dr Phield someone
Speaker 1: offering me a job. So it was surreal in some
Speaker 1: ways because I knew I wanted to help people. I
Speaker 1: never and you grow up in the Midwest, you're not
Speaker 1: thinking Hollywood is like way over there. For me, it's
Speaker 1: not even something that most people think about. So TV
Speaker 1: was not in the uh you know, the blueprint in
Speaker 1: the plan. But I realized very early on that once
Speaker 1: I started, that it was a way to have a voice,
Speaker 1: and it was a way to talk about issues that
Speaker 1: are important to people. And I my proudest moment and
Speaker 1: being on television was during Team with Michael Brown was
Speaker 1: shot and killed by the Ferguson Police because a part
Speaker 1: of where I grew up and saying, oh, it's this
Speaker 1: next door to Ferguson. And I was on Don Women
Speaker 1: other CNN shows throughout that whole period, and all the
Speaker 1: stuff that happened after Michael Brown was shot, the issues
Speaker 1: with the prosecutor and some of the protests were happening,
Speaker 1: and I was so angry by what I would often
Speaker 1: see other people, how they talked about that saint was
Speaker 1: community and how they were villainizing and and just uh,
Speaker 1: you know, really painting those families in a negative life.
Speaker 1: Because at some point, you know, buildings started to burn
Speaker 1: and cars were burning, so the stuff was happening, uh,
Speaker 1: and I was so angry, and I felt so proud
Speaker 1: to be able to go on. I would call my
Speaker 1: family and friends at home. I'd get there like real,
Speaker 1: like what's going on on the ground, not what people
Speaker 1: are repeating on television. And so I was able to
Speaker 1: represent that community and help I think in some ways
Speaker 1: people better understand. Put some faces to those people, help
Speaker 1: people understand that these were not quote unquote thugs, that
Speaker 1: this was a community of homeowners and you know, educated
Speaker 1: people with hard working people and families and mothers and fathers.
Speaker 1: So that was probably the thing that made me feel
Speaker 1: the best, like, thank you Jesus for allowing me this
Speaker 1: at for him to paint my community a community that
Speaker 1: I love, because I love saying was I go there
Speaker 1: all the time. I'm so connected to my hometown. To
Speaker 1: get to paint it in a different light and and
Speaker 1: really bringing out that humanity that was so missing and
Speaker 1: a lot of the reporting. Wow, I have some questions,
Speaker 1: like personal questions that I go into debate with my friends.
Speaker 1: But since I have you here, why not right? So
Speaker 1: I I started to learn about like systematic racism and redlining.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Was definitely more recent than a long time ago, But
Speaker 1: I when everything happened during the pandemic with George Floyd
Speaker 1: and everything. I kept telling all my friends, We're gonna
Speaker 1: have reparations. They'd be like, no, you're crazy, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I'm like, mm hmm, Now it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: This was before the bailouse. By the way, what's the
Speaker 1: bailouse happened? I said, Oh, reparations coming, It's coming, right,
Speaker 1: I kept telling my friends, and I have good relationships
Speaker 1: with banks because of some of the work I do
Speaker 1: on the side. Um, but I hold the banks responsible
Speaker 1: for most of our issues, mainly because of generational wealth
Speaker 1: and just the roller coaster of effect that happens with it.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that, Well, I feel strongly
Speaker 1: that when you're talking about generational wealth. I'm writing a book.
Speaker 1: My fifth book is on h it's called the working
Speaker 1: title right now, it's called Where's Black Wealth? And it
Speaker 1: really delves into this issue of how black wealth has been,
Speaker 1: you know, ripped away from the black community and some
Speaker 1: of the policies, banking policies, housing policies, transportation policies, the
Speaker 1: role that they have played in reducing black wealth and
Speaker 1: what we need to do in this country because the
Speaker 1: wealth gap between blacks and whites is growing exponentially and
Speaker 1: there you know, like a twenty year period, so black
Speaker 1: wealth will be at zero if we don't make some
Speaker 1: systemic changes to some of these UH institutions and some
Speaker 1: of these policy changes that lots of folks have talked about.
Speaker 1: So I'm so glad we started having those conversations because
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't even know about Tulsa. They
Speaker 1: didn't know about Black Wall Street until after George Floyd,
Speaker 1: after the worldwide protests that we saw UH, and you know,
Speaker 1: we started to hear that history has been hidden from
Speaker 1: so many generations, from you know, students. And I have
Speaker 1: a web based show where I interviewed about a thousand
Speaker 1: people since the pandemic, and I've interviewed some descendants of
Speaker 1: those business owners in Tulsa, and they said their ancestors,
Speaker 1: their parents, and grandparents were so traumatized by that they
Speaker 1: didn't even talk about it. That many of them didn't
Speaker 1: learn about it until either they got to school or
Speaker 1: you know, they started being more prevalent in the news
Speaker 1: because there's still so much trauma associated with it by
Speaker 1: the black families who were impacted so I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: banks play a big role in this huge wealth gap,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot that we could do in this
Speaker 1: country to address it. What can we do to address it, though, well,
Speaker 1: we've seen some things already. Remember just recently, there was
Speaker 1: the Child Tax Credit, So if you were a parent, uh,
Speaker 1: and depending on how much you earned, it was up
Speaker 1: to a hundred fifty thou dollars you could earn, you
Speaker 1: would receive literally a check up to three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per child. And that tax credit played a huge role
Speaker 1: in pulling like millions of kids out of poverty. So
Speaker 1: one way we reduced the wealth gap is by creating
Speaker 1: even more income earning opportunities for African Americans and just
Speaker 1: by having more income, right, you know, there were some
Speaker 1: others who were getting dollars. Yeah, five kids, you'd get
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred dollars, and that was on top of you
Speaker 1: know it, But it wasn't on own you have to
Speaker 1: do anything to get it. But it recognized that a
Speaker 1: mother of three, four or five kids is likely to
Speaker 1: be impacted in her earnings because she may not be
Speaker 1: able to work full time because of childcare. How expensive
Speaker 1: child care is, so she may not be able to
Speaker 1: take a promotion that would maybe have her travel or
Speaker 1: do something else because of childcare. And so that three
Speaker 1: that tax credit played a huge role in helping a
Speaker 1: lot of parents be able to afford childcare. Uh maybe
Speaker 1: you know, pay for after school activities for their kids. Again,
Speaker 1: if you a kid gets out of school at three o'clock, jobs,
Speaker 1: most jobs on into five or six o'clock, right, so
Speaker 1: you gotta figure out what are you gonna do with
Speaker 1: your kid for those two or three hours. So there
Speaker 1: are things like that those you know, our countries failure
Speaker 1: to provide um paid family lead. All those things negatively
Speaker 1: impact go income people. Women in particular to or usually
Speaker 1: because we're the care give her. So if the child
Speaker 1: is sick and she was gonna be the mom that's
Speaker 1: gonna take off if grandma grandpa six, usually gonna be
Speaker 1: the woman that's gonna take off to care for the
Speaker 1: you know, the sick relative. So all of that depresses
Speaker 1: our earning potential if we can't be free to earn
Speaker 1: like men are. No one expects a man to quit
Speaker 1: their job to stay home, you know, with a sick child,
Speaker 1: or to quit their job to go take care of
Speaker 1: a sick mother and father. But that's always the burden
Speaker 1: that falls on women. And we saw that during the pandemic. Literally, women,
Speaker 1: you know, bore the brunt of the economic downfall that
Speaker 1: happened during the pandemic. Do you think the black community
Speaker 1: we'll see separations. Absolutely, And you know why we should
Speaker 1: all be encouraged. Bruce's Beach in California. Bruce's Beach you're
Speaker 1: talking about the Manhattan Beach. I was going to next
Speaker 1: we are twin flames Ruce's Beach, hundred million dollars property
Speaker 1: restored to this black the descendants of Willow Bruce and
Speaker 1: her husband who owned this property on the beachfront property
Speaker 1: they could have been the Hilton's, could have been the
Speaker 1: and the government comes in uses imminent domain, takes the
Speaker 1: property away from them under the guys who're gonna build
Speaker 1: a park park never got built. Uh And for years
Speaker 1: that property was illegally in the hands of the state
Speaker 1: of California, the County of Los Angeles, and that city,
Speaker 1: Manhattan Beach. And so that property, now I'm proud my
Speaker 1: friend George Fatherley did there. He's a real estate lawyer,
Speaker 1: did pro bono charge the family nothing very instrumental. Steve
Speaker 1: Bradford is a state senator here in California. He was
Speaker 1: also instrumental in moving the legislation that made it possible
Speaker 1: for the property to be returned. So I think the
Speaker 1: deal now is they're gonna reach the property back to
Speaker 1: the county for about I think like four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: a month or something, and then they're gonna decide after
Speaker 1: three years if they sell it to the county, because
Speaker 1: now it's like a public beach, but even beyond Bruce's Beach.
Speaker 1: The State of California, then assembly Woman Shirley Webber, she's
Speaker 1: now our Secretary of State in California, she put forth
Speaker 1: a piece of legislation for California to create a committee
Speaker 1: to study reparations. And that committee has now made some findings,
Speaker 1: some recommendations, and they when they get to the final
Speaker 1: recommendations about who should get what what form should this
Speaker 1: reparations come in, UH, and what time period of some
Speaker 1: other things, they have to decide. They're gonna make those
Speaker 1: recommendations to the state legislature in California and then they
Speaker 1: get to vote. And we have a Democratic legislature here
Speaker 1: in California, so it's very likely that those recommendations California.
Speaker 1: That's California. But you know, as California goes, so does
Speaker 1: the rest of the nation. So imagine California then one
Speaker 1: of the biggest state in the country, you know, with
Speaker 1: a thirty three million people live here. If black folks
Speaker 1: in California get reparations, that's gonna put pressure on New
Speaker 1: York and Illinois and you know other states. And there's
Speaker 1: some cities like h Evans in Illinois, will suburb outside
Speaker 1: of Chicago. They have started reparations. They're giving forty thousand,
Speaker 1: i think in some kind of home loan, home grant
Speaker 1: program to black residents. So it's starting to happen. Remember
Speaker 1: it used to be such a like your friends who
Speaker 1: laughed at you, and you know, because reparations was thought
Speaker 1: to be a French concept and nobody ever thought we'd
Speaker 1: be gonna happen. It's gonna happen. I'm gonna happen. It's
Speaker 1: gonna now we don't know. Like a friend of mine
Speaker 1: works for the city of l A and they have
Speaker 1: their own reparations committee. She said that their committee is
Speaker 1: recommending giving mental health counseling as a form of reparations.
Speaker 1: To address the trauma. And I see your face, and
Speaker 1: I gave her to say, I gave her the same
Speaker 1: face she told me that, like all right, okay, right,
Speaker 1: But so the point is it's gonna come a different
Speaker 1: form some you know, it might be a cash, maybe
Speaker 1: a check. Some people are talking about free college tuition. Uh,
Speaker 1: paying off STO loan debt is a form maybe homeown assistance.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you can think of all these ways
Speaker 1: because the name of the game with reparations is to
Speaker 1: try to even the playing field, is to reduce that
Speaker 1: huge wealth gap that exists in this country because the
Speaker 1: systemic racism, because of very intentional policies by the US
Speaker 1: government that have stripped African Americans of wealth. So you know,
Speaker 1: home ownership is I'm going to tell you right now,
Speaker 1: that's that's all I want to see as homeownership because
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, even living in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: if you walk behind my house, because I don't live
Speaker 1: on the block with a million dollar homes, I live
Speaker 1: in the condos in front of them. And if you
Speaker 1: walk that block, most of the houses on that million
Speaker 1: dollar block were inherited, and I'm like, wow, must be nice.
Speaker 1: And that's why white folks is so far ahead of
Speaker 1: us is because of inheritances and homeownership being one of them.
Speaker 1: If you live in one of those million dollar houses
Speaker 1: now and say these the parents bought it in the sixties,
Speaker 1: they may have paid seventy five dollars. Uh. So, my
Speaker 1: husband's parents, they lived in South l A around sixty seven,
Speaker 1: and western bought their house for under forty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: When they sold it in the like late two thousand,
Speaker 1: mid two thousand, houses like six hundred thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: literally there could be millions of dollars in equity that
Speaker 1: then gets passed down to those kids. And that's when
Speaker 1: we've been robbed of that opportunity to create that well,
Speaker 1: to pass it down to you, our children and our grandchildren.
Speaker 1: So now the last thing I want to mention, are
Speaker 1: you familiar with birthright? I'm pretty sure you are. Are
Speaker 1: you It's birthright? Is I'm Jewish and Jamaican. So in
Speaker 1: Jewish culture they have this this thing called birthright where
Speaker 1: I believe, up to the age of twenty seven, you
Speaker 1: can fly fly to Israel for I think it's two
Speaker 1: weeks for free, fully paid. They you know, they teach
Speaker 1: you everything about your Jewish culture and what the Jews
Speaker 1: went through. I feel like the black community desperately needs
Speaker 1: that because, you know, we don't fully know our last names,
Speaker 1: Like we don't really know who we are. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, boy, what it would do for blacks to
Speaker 1: be able to have their own version of a birthright?
Speaker 1: You know, So where would you have them go? You
Speaker 1: would have to leave the US and go to certain
Speaker 1: countries in Africa or what I would say? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would lean towards that because I also feel like some
Speaker 1: black people, you know, if you say African American or African,
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe because of the American culture, there's
Speaker 1: like a weird negative of like disassociation with it. And
Speaker 1: if you talk to people that visit Africa, they're like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we're kings and queens and we're living
Speaker 1: a life. Are you kidding me? And it's like portrayed
Speaker 1: so differently in America. And I think that experience, I
Speaker 1: think that experience of reminding like how powerful our melanin is.
Speaker 1: Also when it's utilized and it has its full potential, well,
Speaker 1: that could be a form of reparations. Right, So you
Speaker 1: need to write into that committee I help you do.
Speaker 1: That's that's not her, but I mean that's that's what
Speaker 1: they're grappling with, like what is going to be the
Speaker 1: most substant what's going to have the most impact. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's why my friend at the city said mental health.
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of money either, she said this,
Speaker 1: Their options were limited by their resources. But I like that.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of us being able to go,
Speaker 1: whether it's to Africa or some other, you know country
Speaker 1: and just see how you know, regal and royal uh
Speaker 1: people that we come from. Because I think that would
Speaker 1: help to a lot of younger black folks who kind
Speaker 1: of you know, have lost touch with their ancestors and
Speaker 1: don't know that they are from such noble people. Maybe
Speaker 1: it helped build their confidence. You know, young men you
Speaker 1: see who have been so beaten down, feel like you
Speaker 1: know that they have no hope. We see these really
Speaker 1: high rates of suicide amongst African American men and young women,
Speaker 1: you know, those growing races, and you often ask the
Speaker 1: do they know that they are descendants of kings and queens?
Speaker 1: And if they knew that, you know, would that make
Speaker 1: a difference. So I like it. Thank you I'm glad
Speaker 1: you like my little idea. I like it. I like it.
Speaker 1: I can't always go up with the race. I'm there
Speaker 1: for you. Well, thank you so much for taking time
Speaker 1: out of your busy schedule to eat Barbara, and I
Speaker 1: am going to eat all of this because it is
Speaker 1: absolutely delicious. I encourage my production crew to enjoy the meal.
Speaker 1: Um and uh yeah, thank you. And then where can
Speaker 1: people catch you? I know you have some books that
Speaker 1: are coming out, so just let us all know how
Speaker 1: you can follow me on all social media add a
Speaker 1: Reva Martin, Twitter at Spacebook, It's Instagram, LinkedIn. I have
Speaker 1: a website, Martin dot com. And I have a show
Speaker 1: that I produced every Tuesday, Wednesday Thursdays on YouTube. It's
Speaker 1: on Facebook, uh, and it's unfiltered. We you know, it's
Speaker 1: news of the day, but it's the story behind the story.
Speaker 1: It's everyday people. It's experts. Uh, it's you know, thought
Speaker 1: makers and you know opinion makers. And then I at
Speaker 1: a radio show on Saturday's kb L A talk fight.
Speaker 1: I do uh again, an opinionated current events, current affairs
Speaker 1: the show I should call it on kb L A.
Speaker 1: So I'm a talker and I like to talk to people,
Speaker 1: and I like to help people understand stuff because you
Speaker 1: know a lot of stuff. We get a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff thrown at us on the social media and the media,
Speaker 1: and people often don't know you know, how to decipher it.
Speaker 1: What's real, what's not real? What should I you know? Follow?
Speaker 1: What you know shouldn't I follow? And I like to
Speaker 1: help people make some of those choices and be informed
Speaker 1: because we know you know, knowledge is power, So knowledge
Speaker 1: is power. Thank you. PE's out y'all for more eating
Speaker 1: while broke from I Heart Radio and The Black Effect,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.