Latest / Coconut Justice / CJP #24: Kyah Creekmore (NC-5)

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CJP #24: Kyah Creekmore (NC-5) · Coconut Justice

• speaker-0: Hey what's good? Kaya Creekmore may have had the deck stacked against him his entire life, but he keeps fighting. And now he's ready to fight for you, North Carolina. At just 24 years old, Kaya is running for Congress in North Carolina's 5th district, bringing a new generation's perspective to a rapidly changing world. One that actually understands technology and how we can use it to shape our future. C4 Explosive joins me in this conversation with Kaya Creekmore. Before we get into it, remember to go to coconutjustice.com to get you some clothes that I think would look good on you. Let's go. Let's go ahead and say happy new year to everyone. speaker-1: Happy New Year. Happy New Year. speaker-0: And ⁓ and ⁓ we're kicking it off in the right way. This young man is the first person to ever run for office, and in the same breath, tell me he's gonna dunk on me. So we're gonna fuck we're gonna figure this out. You guys welcome Kaya Creek Moore from North Carolina's fifth. speaker-1: District. What's up? speaker-0: Happy be here. Please come to the front of the class. One and only C4 explosives. speaker-1: Good. I I'm here to watch Kaya dunk on Carlos. speaker-0: ⁓ That's one thing. Hey, I had to retire from that. I ⁓ yeah, when you ⁓ when you get older, it starts to make sense. You sit your old ass down. speaker-1: Or you're gonna start getting ducked on, you get put on my wall. The basic speaker-0: Basically, because I will hold you, ain't nobody dunking on me. speaker-1: I go up, he like ⁓ I'm out. speaker-0: Yeah, I remember being ⁓ a young whipper snapper like Kaya and just everybody I was trying to dunk on everybody. And my even at my mom's house, like all the doorways always had hand prints because I would wait for someone to walk through the doorway and I'd fake dunk on them and you know, now we got hand prints all over the walls. speaker-1: You're not hitting the top of the doorway, you then you don't play basketball. speaker-0: You know what I'm saying? Kaya, has has being in sports influenced your life in a positive way? speaker-1: Extremely. So I actually used to be overweight. Now I still got a little bit of body weight to get off now. But I used to be a little big bone chubby boy. And I was like five, seven, like probably 190. I mean, I was a big boy, man, titties, all of it, you know? but when I started actually, I got my own hoop at home, started going outside, you know, I I still like to play games a lot. But I would go outside and go hoop on it for you know an hour or two hours, whatever, get some kids down the street, come play with me. And they stopped being as scared to like play with other kids. Cause I'm a big boy. So you know, you think about that kind of stuff when you're playing with other kids that aren't that big. Yeah. ⁓ but I'm always competitive. And so that video game competitiveness translated over into physical sports. And so I would want to get better. I'd want to beat the kids, and I didn't want to lose. So I would have to learn how to play around that. And as I kept doing that, strategizing, ⁓ it made it so much more fun and made me actually go outside so much more. I started losing the weight. And then I actually, for the first time, it was like I think eleventh grade, I took gym for the first time in high school. And my friend kept telling me, like, just you know, go play, bro. Like they were having ⁓ just through the balls out to all the kids, whatever, just go play because it was the start of the semester. Like just go play and I'm over here like, but everyone's gonna be looking at me. When I went out on the court, I just started playing ball and yeah, yeah. I wasn't thinking about all the people in the background and it just escalated to the point where like once I entered college, I played with all the kids and it made me I was not very outgoing at all. Like what you're seeing right now, I could not do this ⁓ had it been four years ago. At least not to this extent. ⁓ It made me it forced me to get out of my comfort zone. Like how do I play with kids if I don't say nothing? How do I go and beat someone if I don't ask them for a one on one or a two on two or whatever? Right. And so that competitive drive pushed me out of my comfort zone so that I could play with other kids that, you know, could get come get this butt whooping. And speaker-0: Hey that speaker-1: ⁓ compound it, compounded, compounded, and now I know I'm not the best in the world, but I can compete with pretty much any player on any given day that steps on a wreck gym floor. Sure. I don't think they're beating me. And I'm very confident in my abilities now. And it's so enjoyable to be this because I worked day by day, one percent every time I would step out there to you know. Go cook someone or ⁓ be a little bit better or take some of the skills I was seeing and translate it out into my own bag. And yeah, now I get to talk junk to you guys in a group chat. speaker-0: Hey, that's what's up, man. Exactly. We talk about that all the time. Like, how do you know what your body is capable of doing if you don't put your body in that situation? You could be good at video games and mad props to video game folks. Like that is an industry. Parents, that is an industry. True. ⁓ but how do you know you're gonna bust someone's ankles until you get out there and bust someone's ankles? speaker-1: That's like with that's like with music too on the battle scene. When we go to open you you can freestyle and cipher with your boys, but would you go out and go to ⁓ step inside the circle and you start to battle somebody, you you you got you got those tubs, you got those punch lines, you got those bars or speaker-0: Do those nerves grab grapples. speaker-1: Just you got my ⁓ my spaghetti on your s on your shirt or something, you know what I'm saying? No, you gotta come with them bangers. So it's the same thing. And I and going back to the team aspect of things, like you gotta have a team behind you. You gotta know you have you know you can't do all all things through yourself. So what what's what what's it what is it like trying to get your team together? ⁓ I'm assuming you're talking about my political team. ⁓ trying to get a team together. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: At first, and actually throughout most of this ⁓ campaign, it was pretty difficult because one, I'm so new to pretty much everything politics. Like I've never ⁓ volunteered for a campaign. I never ⁓ knew any of my senators before like two years ago. Like I wasn't a part of any of these political processes. I didn't do political science. I didn't know nothing really about any of the the real groundwork. And any of the groups, organizations, and things that they do. So I was starting with a network of basically me. like my friends aren't doing political campaigns. Like, that's just normal, typical people are not political or are not doing things that are political. So I had to start stepping outside my box. Yet again, going and finding organizations and ⁓ nonprofit groups and volunteers ⁓ from places that I've just never been. I've never associated myself. But ⁓ reaching out and talking to people, I've excited them with not only like my presence, just because I'd be one of the youngest in history to do this kind of thing. So ⁓ the average age of people in these rooms are like 58, you know, everyone's gray hair. ⁓ that alone excited people enough to like be interested. But then number two, like my message. Of you know, affordability, healthcare, affordable housing, all that kind of stuff. Like, actually, not just trying to be like a status quo, regular, everyday centrist ⁓ politician. ⁓ actually establishing myself as in my own beliefs and my own plans. People have actually been reaching out. Like I've been re doing a lot of TikTok videos and Instagram videos or whatever. ⁓ like I said, going to all these different organizational meetings. And put myself out there, and people will reach out to me and be like, Yeah, I would be interested in helping out or volunteering and finding ways to actually build more than just like a ⁓ a give and take type of relationship. Like, I'm only doing this because you're doing this for me. It's more like I'm building a relationship with them. Like, I want y'all to be family with me. Like, we're ultimately trying to do this together because we want a better world. This is not. For the Kaya Creek Moore campaign. This is for us and our future. How do we get our future? You have to have stakes in it. You have to want this. And the only way we're going to make this happen, especially when we don't have the big millions of dollars like they got, we're not working with ⁓ big boatloads of money coming in all the time. We have to put every ounce of sweat, tears, and and drive and energy into this. ⁓ gotta want it. And that's what I've been trying to cultivate now. speaker-0: On it. speaker-1: Even just doing ⁓ organizing and delegation, that's new to me as well. Like, I don't know how many times is a 20 year old yourselves that you've had to delegate a whole bunch of tasks and organize huge groups of people, but I've never had to do that. And so even navigating that aspect itself is ⁓ challenging, but I've been every day, like obviously people can't see the work, but every day I'm like trying to figure out. What is the best method for not only distributing the information between each of us, but also getting people to be activated in ways that I don't have to even directly say it to them or have like my campaign manager say it to them? Like they are getting on it themselves, putting in initiative and time and effort in their own mean times and trying to get things organized in a way where we're just like starting to do things like clockwork instead of like Well, what is he gonna ask today? Right. We just know what our roles are and we just start completing it. ⁓ that's what that's where I'm at right now. speaker-0: ⁓ and let me let me let me ask you because you you've been you've been saying a lot of things about like affordability and all this stuff. What do what does Kaya say to someone that says, You're only twenty four, what do you know about running the country? speaker-1: What I know is that we have people with Harvard degrees that don't know anything about running a country. Yeah. We have guys that are CEOs of businesses and they don't know they don't know a damn thing about running a business, let alone a country. We have dudes that have never spoken public until their boss said, Run for the government and then I'll give basically give you all of your donations and get all the other millionaires to donate to. You'll win easy. Yeah. There's so many people that have no idea how to govern until they're put in the position to govern. Yeah. All it takes is the willingness and the desire to not only learn, sponge, but want something better. And unless we put people there that want something better, well, you're gonna keep getting stuck on qualifications that don't qualify people for a job that clearly isn't being done now. Were we gonna keep going for the guys with Harvard degrees that are Taking away your grandma's Medicare. They're like, hmm, your grandma doesn't need her cancer treatment this month. Well that was a Harvard degree guy. What what do you want for your country? What do you want in your future? That is what you ask yourself. Yeah. So that's what I say. Goodness gracious. speaker-0: And how many times how many times does the normal person feel like or even see someone from Harvard or Princeton actually taking the time to turn back and help instead of just sitting there and saying, ⁓ this is easy, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. speaker-1: ⁓ most people don't even know the difference between government ⁓ government elect goodness gracious they don't know the difference between our elected officials in any part of the government and that is also because these people think they're above us and not of us. They don't think that they're one of the people, they're just one of those people. They're our elected officials. They're they're our ⁓ represent representative. They're sitting in the big gilded columns and huge buildings, ⁓ you know, decorated beautifully. And they're that is not the traditional home, that is not the traditional building that normal people walk into. So, like they have a whole like their environment they're in, even predicates ⁓ a a type of elitism that basically is the same. Throughout their whole life for most of these people. Harvard grads, I'm sure Harvard is beautiful. I can guarantee you it being one of the biggest, most profound colleges in all of the world. Yeah. Right? Everyone knows what Harvard is. So if you're going from Harvard, Yale, any of those top institutions, chances are you're used to that. And then you, your regular is so much different than everyone else's regular. And so they have no idea the lived experiences that most regular people are going through. Imagine their school look like their worst school in their district. Then they would have a different sense of like what's really going on in this country. But they don't because they're just out of touch. And some of them it's not their fault. But at the same time, you have to take agency yourself. You're too old to not ⁓ even even think about going to see what that's like and go and experience what other people's shoes are. speaker-0: And we can mix in there too. so to give you the you know 15 second biography film of who I am coming up from Chicago, not having much of anything to where I am now, and I've seen the spectrum. I'm not allowed in some parties out here, but you know, it is what it is. But being able to see everything, I can tell you for a fact that people who live in the same environment think that the world is that environment. So if you're poor, you think the majority of the world is poor. But if you're rich, you probably kind of know that poor people exist, but you're not worried about them. And so if you only let rich people make decisions. speaker-2: Hmm. speaker-0: In the government, it's going to look like rich people thinking. And that's why you're seeing these days where society, the fabric of society, is tearing, is because we have one group of people making decisions. And now it's getting to the point where they're not even letting groups of people. They want one orange bastard to tell people what to do and how to live, and he's gotta put his dumbass name on everything. Yeah. They're dwindling everything down or they're they're they're whittling everything down to like this is what we want everything to look like. And unfortunately right now we're living with ⁓ the manifestation of all of these decisions that have gotten us to this point. Yeah. And speaker-1: there's a greater disconnect between them, that small percentage, and us who actually are the people, you know? And you know, and it it it it's it's defeating to know that the person that's in charge has no idea what you're going through. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: And they don't like It's not even just that they don't know. It's that they don't care give a damn. They don't care. Like it could be it's so besides them for them to ever even consider what kind of pain and turmoil and hardship you might have endured or are continuing to go through. ⁓ and they have no no desire to fix it. They have no desire to even place it on any of their levels of ⁓ care whatsoever. That is it's so unique to them. speaker-0: And the funny thing is, like, you know, if you if you make it look like if you make it look like a film, you have this person who's navigating life and they finally get to that place and there are it they're in shambles, their clothes are tattered, and the and they all these rich people, you know, this poor person walks into the room and the rich per all the rich people look over and they're like, Hey, you made it, we knew you could do it. speaker-1: They won't acknowledge them. That's not how that works. They don't acknowledge them. speaker-0: It depends on who it is. I can give you examples. Mike Tyson was a good is a good example. He came from nothing and he literally fought his way to the top. And everybody's like, see, all you have to do is put CTE on the table. Football players are a really good example. speaker-1: Right. Okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah. They do that more as a tactic to preserve ⁓ the confidence in capitalism as a system, not because they actually care to see them make it out of their bootstraps. Because they know the majority of people, that's ninety nine percent of people are never gonna be a Mike Tyson, a Muhammad Ali, a my ⁓ Michael Jordan, LeBron James. They're not gonna be any of these people ever. But they push these people up on the pedestal because they finally made it. Wow, they You know, they went through every piece of adversity, every roadblock, every wall in their way, and somehow made it through. And then they pushed those people up to the top and pretend like that's the normal situation. Go ahead and do that. What is wrong with you? And that's but not work whatsoever. speaker-0: Those people but those people aren't allowed to buy houses in the neighborhoods of the people that have had money the whole time. That's the trick. That's the trick. speaker-1: Yeah. They elevate them ⁓ spiritually, but never physically, never tangibly. Not they don't elevate how the system works for everyone, only how it works for that one or two people that finally made it out. And that's how they triggered trigger people's votes. They that's ⁓ that's not like for instance, that's how Trump triggered all his base. Like, ⁓ I'm gonna I'm gonna pick one thing for that you that that that you rely heavily on and I'm gonna run with it and then after I win, I don't care about it anymore. I I'm not talking about it. I'm not following through and I don't I don't give a shit about you whatsoever. speaker-0: He said it he said it during his thing, during his run. He said during the campaign trail, you say whatever it takes to get the nomination. He said it. He told you he will lie to your face to get the nomination. And then you guys is br and then some people with the the people that are slowly falling away from the the the MAGA crowd, you know, the people that are getting tired of that narrative. They're like, you know, you have to tell ⁓ He he told you. He told you he's a liar. He told you he was gonna do all this dumb stuff. He told you he was gonna take people like us and rough us up. He told you all of this. speaker-1: I think that all that is true, but we have to we always forget that the ⁓ majority of people are not going to be able to keep up like we keep up. And the majority of people aren't even going to care to keep up like we keep up. Now, maybe after all this pain and turmoil from this year, maybe they might, but chances are they still won't. And we have to understand that most people won't see majority, if not any, of those things that any candidate will say at any given point. So it's really up to us as political people to be ⁓ megaphoning everything wrong and everything bad that ⁓ these politicians, especially the MAGA guys, the the fascists, the racists, we have to be megaphoning everything that they do and say to the most people possible. And I feel like everything that ⁓ Democrats do specifically, it's so fractured. Like it's all ⁓ whoever does what does their thing. And it's never like if we were to see on the campaign trail how much he was saying he would do this and do that, and I only have to say it for the campaign and I can stop talking about it. If we ever seen something like that, why wasn't that platform on like everybody's campaign? Like, why wasn't this being pushed out by every politician still in office? Like everyone in safe seats should have been using their platform, especially because They don't have nothing to worry about. They can just talk about whatever they want because who's gonna take their seat from them? It's it's perfectly fine. ⁓ but we don't have that. It's we our fonts are run as if everything happens one day at a time, and not that the past does matter, and that we should be ⁓ not only talking about the past, but also projecting what the future should look like. This is what Trump said. He's lying to you, and you need not to believe him when he's lying. This is what we're advocating for because he's going to speak to your needs and not come through. We're going to speak to your needs, platform your stories, and then come through. And this is how we're gonna do it. We don't do that. And I think it's gonna take more of us trying to be something closer to Mandani than something closer to Trump and Hakeem Jeffreys and Chuckles. speaker-0: Let me tell you let me toss this in here for for folks that think that the that the ⁓ that the nation that the country needs to be run like a corporation. People that say that haven't worked at corporations long enough. I have worked at corporations where I have to bring my own equipment to work because their stuff is trash. Because they will give you a computer. That's limping along just to say that they gave you equipment. But then to get anything of of value done, I had to bring all my stuff in. I've worked at places where if you know it's a Chicago, it was in the suburbs, but you know, in Chicago it snows. Sometimes you're gonna be a little half hour late just because of the the environment, things that are out of your control. They would take those half hours. out of my vacation time and I only found out when it was time to take vacation time. This is not how you want the country to run. Yeah. You don't want the country to run off of cheapest job quote. You don't want it to run like you're ripping people off because it's gonna look like what it is today. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I'm just saying that's and of my statement is that like you we don't need it to run like a corporation because a corporation's bottom line is the main focus. speaker-1: Yeah. I I don't think people realize how bad our corporations are doing us as Americans today. Like every single industry, any you can pick anything, you can look at something and pick that industry and then break down how they make their profit. And I can guarantee you're gonna find shisty ⁓ tactic after shisty tactic after shisty tac tactic. They're not doing things in the best interest of their consumers. They're doing the best interest in raising their profits. What do they do this year? They probably what laid off 14,000 people? ⁓ maybe they made ⁓ their product now has like 15 chemicals instead of three. What they put PFAS in it? What did they lower the the health ⁓ the the health standards for it so you can eat more of the chemicals instead of less? Like You can look at any industry and they've ⁓ intentionally made their product worse, giving you less of it and charged you more. And that's fundamentally the wrong way to ever think about Deverney. Yeah. Why would we give people less? Why would we charge them more? It's almost like you want people pissed off, angry, and trying to rebel. They get mad at the word revolution like it's crazy. People are ready to chop your head off. Because you can't do what you're supposed to do as a government. Our government forgets it was made for the people to put our money together to better the people. Period point blank. And instead, they treat government like it's its own entity, like it's supposed to do whatever the government wants to do. No. The government was made so that we would be a more ⁓ civilized and organized nation that could actually provide for the people that live inside of it. What Mam Dani was going on? ⁓ taking care of New Yorkers. He stayed on New York because why? That was the whole point. He's running so he can take care of New Yorkers. If that's not your goal, what are you doing? What is the government is supposed to take care of you? We have so much wealth. It's extraordinary amounts of wealth. We're taxing billionaires and millionaires at the lowest we've ever done it. And we still have the most wealth of any nation in the world. ⁓ speaker-0: We have so much money. We have so much money that we destroy countries and then build them back up and give them enough money to have schools, free schooling, and healthcare. ⁓ that's how much money we have. speaker-1: We have so much money we could buy other countries and still have more than enough money to be above every other country. We can get another budget and still kind of be fine. It's unfathomable how much money we have. People don't understand the amount of 1,000 billions. ⁓ really how much that really holds. Like getting to one billion is absolutely astronomical. You could stack a a ⁓ bills all the way through the sky, through the atmosphere, the ozone layer with a hundred dollars. speaker-0: Be careful, Greenland. Yeah. speaker-1: hundred dollar bills and you you'd be there for a long time. Stocking a billion a thousand times is a trillion. Yeah. That's taking like since the since Christ was born and then multiplying that by like five hundred it's like astronomical amounts of money. You can make hundred thousand dollars every minute since Christ was born and you still wouldn't have Elon Musk money, let alone a trillion. speaker-0: One day. Think about that. speaker-1: People can't really fathom it and don't fathom it. speaker-0: If you Elon Musk money, think of it like this. If you spent one million dollars a day, it would still take you one thousand days of spending a million dollars a speaker-1: Day. A hell of a habit. That's just for a billion. That's for one. Yeah, no, that's just one. Now you have to do that thousand days times what? Seven hundred billion or seven hundred times? So seven seven seven hundred thousand is speaker-0: That's one. Days of spending one million dollars. speaker-1: You think you get tired of spending money? Yes, because it has no value when you have that much. You're literally just looking at things you want and then you get it. That's it. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to ⁓ try to earn it. You don't have to save anything. You just have money. You just have whatever you need. I I don't I think a lot of people underestimate the value of like playing video games. I used to play video games on my phone. I would cheat on them. I used to get ⁓ unlimited gems and coins and stuff because I thought you know I would enjoy the game more if I had all those coins that they make me buy as a little kid. I would cheat. Download ⁓ a hacked APK file on my Android. And so when I would play the game, now that I have all the gems and gold and whatever else, I would upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, have everything. And then the game wasn't fun. I realized I wasn't. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I wasn't working towards anything, but I would do it again. Because you know, I'd always play other games and I would want gems and the gold and all that stuff. So I would do it again. But every time it'll be enjoyable for maybe an hour, and I was over it because not the problem isn't that I want everything, the problem is that I can't get anything. It wants all my time. It won't reward me for the effort. It wants to dangle the thought of having 9,999 gems and completing my upgrade faster if I spend more money in order for me to have fun and progress at a reasonable rate. And that's a a really good ⁓ example of like what our economy and our system actually does. It dangles you could be LeBron, just work hard. And Every time you work hard, it doesn't equate to nearly enough progress to ever move you towards that LeBron type of outcome. And so we're over here just like always looking at the carrot, but we never come close to getting it. And they dangle it and then they tell you you're stupid, you're dummy, you can't carrot, you lazy, ⁓ no good, non working immigrant. speaker-0: Like speaker-1: Bum, why are you asking for more health care? They they throw out any and every slur you can find instead of just creating a system that helps people. speaker-0: Exactly. Exactly. And and to and to add to that, Stu, I have stories upon stories. Going to high school at Roosevelt High School, shout out Roosevelt High School in Chicago. ⁓ and then, you know, going to the service and everything. And then while I was in college, I was working at this high school up in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire. I wanted to go to college at that high school. There's computers in every classroom and this is back when like AOL instant messenger and stuff was happening. They had speaker-1: I don't know if you do I know that AOL. He's still got an AOL account. speaker-0: And I betcha he didn't have to wait for that CD to show up so he could get an extra fifteen minutes. speaker-1: We use it for Netflix. Peeps to burn CDs and everything. speaker-0: Yes, sir. speaker-1: I remember all of that. Y'all can't play me. speaker-0: Yeah. But yeah, going to that, like, you know, they say they say pull yourself up by the bootstraps and all this stuff, but then like the inner city specifically is is what means the most to me. You're gonna let you're gonna let those kids go through that education, and then you're gonna show me what the kids in the good neighborhoods go to school at. No, ain't no way in hell. So these folks that say, ⁓ they're trying to invest in the inner city, that's just throwing good money after bad, all this stuff. no, that's not true. Cause the folks that those kids, the kids that live in the good neighborhoods, if you track them all the way back to Europe, you're gonna find out that back in the day, they used to throw their poop and pee out the windows. They were disgusting. speaker-2: Just throwing good- speaker-0: So you add a little money, all of a sudden they're going to potty inside. And we're still working on this one. Some of y'all still gotta learn wash your hands after you go potty, but we'll talk about that. you can't tell me that investing in a society in a neighborhood, investing proper money to actually invest in education is not going to help this country. speaker-1: The end. That's the problem, is that they think somehow giving people more opportunity and resources takes away opportunities from themselves. They're not comfortable with allowing people to just have a good chance to win. they want to make sure that they're always up here and then everyone else is down here. And y'all just work up here and we'll start here and then always go higher. And then y'all always try to get here and then we'll just knock you back down. They don't want you to start on an even playing field. And I don't understand how it's been going on for so long. It's such a grip that somehow we should be policing more instead of providing more economic opportunities. All of our economic indicators. speaker-0: Spending money in such a dumb way. speaker-1: All of our economic indicators for crime always come from giving some places too much money, too much power, and then giving other places no power. If you have too much money, you feel like you're above the law. If you have too little money, you feel like the law doesn't even work for you. And so how do you get by when you have no money? Break the law. Period. If you don't have money to buy your food, you're going to die. I just won't buy it then. I'm gonna steal it. Right? ⁓ well he has money. I'm gonna steal his money then. And they we don't invest in our people to have the opportunity. Having an opportunity just eliminates the desire or the feasibility of what crime could provide. If crime provides more than what the law provides, then crime is more feasible. That's just how that works. Yeah, they treat they don't they don't ever try to invest. They treat the inner city and like you know. neighborhoods with culture like failing businesses. They wanna they wanna shut them speaker-0: And not just the inner city, but the rural places too. ⁓ yeah. Because one of our problems is rural people think that they're rich because they don't have black and brown people in their neighborhood. Right. ⁓ yeah. Right. speaker-1: It's like y'all have rusty water. You don't even have any rusty water. Y'all don't have Wi-Fi over there in Jarlostown, over like 80 minutes away from any city whatsoever. You have about 400 people there. It's like what do you guys really have? speaker-0: Yeah. Well. They look the same. speaker-1: ⁓ They all have Talk the same. And they all it's like living in water. They don't realize what their water is like because they've never been in anyone else's water. They don't come over to the big cities and you know look at like, well, maybe I would want to train over here. I don't know. It would be kind of nice to have like a government run grocery store. Like we don't have a lot of spices in our store. I don't know, it'd be nice to have something more than a dollar general to go and get my food from. Yeah. It's like they don't think about none of that stuff because they don't go and experience it. They don't go and look at it. They don't go and like I actually like take in a different experience. Isn't that like they d like when they send like the Amish people, they go out into the city and then they try to come back to to their town and they're like speaker-0: Yeah, let's just ⁓ that's part of their journey though. That's I actually I actually appreciate that. Where so if you don't know, Amish people have a certain point, I and I want to say it's like late teens, early twenties, where you know you have you've been exposed to that way of life. And to make sure that you understand how good you have it, they send you out into the world. You get to pick whatever town you get to hang out in. And then you learn about our society. And not for anything. I don't know what the numbers are, but I think that our society is so scary to these folks because they have stability, they have food, they have community, they have like-minded people who are pulling in the same. They have this team that we keep talking about. They have this team that is building. the infrastructure for their success as a team. So when you take one of those team members and you drop them into this shit about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, they're gonna be like, no, I ain't no way. Of course you don't even have straps. Don't even have straps. speaker-1: Kai, what was the turning point for you that said, I I want to get in this, I had enough. ⁓ of course I always go back to it. It's Kamala Lost. My heart snapped, it broke. And I was like just constantly looking at TikToks, like everyone's basically going crazy over it, ⁓ dropping video after video. And I'm like complaining on my phone and I'm just talking trash. But that's what everyone does. Talk trash, complain, leave comments. What the hell does a comment do to change it? Nothing. And that's how I felt whenever I play basketball. I have teammates that are over here like, ⁓ all right, we're about to lose, whatever. And they're just like giving up on the game. And I'm like, I'm not losing, bro. Get on get on your goddamn defense, boy. Yeah. Get on your man. What's wrong with you? Yeah, I would start. Elevating myself because I'm like, I don't want the outcome that's about to unfold. And so I applied that to my own complaining on TikTok. I'm like, if my government, and I like I said, I I'm kind of new, but I'm keeping up with how incompetent my government is and how they literally sound nothing like a normal person. They don't talk about our struggles whatsoever. I've never heard Anything similar to what I've been through or what I go through, what my family's going through right now, ever come ⁓ get uttered out of their mouths unless it's AOC or Bernie. I want, I'm like, if this guy can go and rape people and touch kids, why can't I just go and represent a handful of people? A small section of our whole United States can get proper representation by someone that may or may not look like them. But also lives like them, that also feels like them, that also has family that's going through what they're going through, that has real stakes in the laws that I can create. I was like, it's the scariest thing I've ever done. It's absolutely ⁓ it it gives me a lot of anxiety on the daily because of how gargantuan this moment is, this opportunity is. But I'm like, If anyone's capable enough, it's someone that plays basketball, that actually likes to win, somebody that actually lives the the life that most people are going through. I can relate to people. Most all most of all of this is just making arguments and talking. I can argue all day. Now, can I argue effectively? Can I communicate in a way that it'll reach every type of person, no matter what their background is? Am I going to elevate everything that I do to a level where people not only relate to me, but they believe that I can make the change that I'm talking about? And that's what the process has been is just like ⁓ going through everything that I've done in life, figuring out what it is I need to grow ⁓ and make better and strategize around, and then applying that to real world tangible results. How are we gonna do a town hall? How are we gonna do a fundraiser? How are we gonna talk to rural voters that are very conservative and MAGA? How do we even talk to some of them hidden KKK members? Because they're gonna be around. I mean, we gotta be honest. We have to be really realistic. And so, how do I actually strategize around each of these things where it keeps me safe, but also keeps me confident, grounded, and believable? Because people need to believe. They need something to believe in. That's just something to hate. And that's one of the things that really gravitated me towards you, man. Cause when when I came across your page, you you were you were telling your story. Like, man, everything was like from you. So like when people could start identifying themselves with you, it it it makes a difference. It triggers something inside that says, you know what, I I I wanna I wanna pull for this guy because this this this guy I don't care how young he is, this this kid is the new generation of what's going on. And one of the biggest posts that you posted was the one that when you said, I hate asking people for help. And I I commented on there because you were asking people, I don't know how to ask these guys for donations. I don't know how to go on my phone and ask people for help. And I've seen I've seen the growth in that. I've seen the growth in your comp ⁓ confidence through these posts, you know what I'm saying? Through your journey. And there's something about that that will will speaker-0: People people start speaker-1: are growing with you. You know what I'm saying? So when when people are growing with you, not only are you not only are you taking the people that voted for the people that are in administration now, the older heads and all this other stuff, you're grabbing a younger generation that is going to ride or die with you because you are who you are and you you don't fray from that. You're just evolving. You know what I'm saying? And speaker-0: Nancy Pelosi was in office for like a hundred and thirty seven years. speaker-1: Man, you got eighty, right? You got eighty eighty to go. speaker-0: get ⁓ you get speaker-1: What was the speaker-0: What was it like growing up in North Carolina that influenced your decision-making process? Not just to run for office, but that helps you form your platform. What was like, how did you grow up? What area did you grow up in? speaker-1: I actually grew up in Florida for sixteen of my years on Earth. I was growing up and I'm still here now. But I I grew up I my mom was on ⁓ all the social programs, single mom, four kids. ⁓ stepdad or brother's dad in and out of her life. ⁓ I don't know my actual father. I'm product of sexual assault. and we actually move pretty much every every other year at minimum. It's like one or two years in each house. I went to nine different schools. I'm I'm literally the epitome of poverty. Like No stability, no what father figure at home, at least not a stable one. ⁓ no, no family to lean back on, no opportunity except the one that my mom believed in, which is I would get to college and we're gonna make some money or something and get out of this hellhole. And once we went to speaker-0: Time out real quick. Time out real quick. Shout out, mom. Thank you for putting together the soldier. Go ahead. speaker-1: Thank you very much for She was she is a soldier. Look, if if we took all the time to go through all her her trauma as a kid, it'd take a long time. We'd be here for hours. Yeah. So like she didn't do drugs and she didn't ⁓ she was not a drunk. She did not drink almost ever. And so that I think is ultimately the only reason she was ever ever able to do what she did. Like working two and three jobs while going to hair school, while trying to get her GD, while At the same time. And people will comment, you know, like, well, work harder, keep working, keep doing your thing, you'll make it. She's 40 now and she's almost at the same spot she was when I was a kid. And moving to Charlotte ⁓ when I was 16 and seeing like the differences and like infrastructure. Like we actually had rec centers and nice basketball courts and ⁓ drains and stuff. I didn't have none of that in Florida. We had trains, they were not for people. They're carrying what coal or whatever was in those big cargo containers. So all the infrastructure we had was like cars and horrible social services. Like I didn't in my areas, there was not basketball courts. They were run down, there was ⁓ overgrowth. There wasn't really much for a little kid like me to do unless I live next to a park. And seeing the differences in like Charlotte. ⁓ versus Lakeland, huge, mountainous. It's so different. Like the best we got is a lake with a bunch of mansions and then the inner city with a bunch of poor people and run down houses and apartments. And then we come to Charlotte and then there's actually like all of that and more. Like they actually invested in their city. There's actually services for people and little kids to go do. I can walk down the street and feel safe doing it and go play basketball. And I was like I could never feel like that. And Once I went to college and we're dealing with all this presidency presidency stuff, ⁓ and seeing like what our government actually looks like, that's what formed my my mental like going through all the poverty, going through the lack of opportunities, the lack of social services, and then coming to North Carolina, at least in my area, because I could have gone to a lot of other places that might look like Lakeland, and seeing that. Like there is opportunities. All you have to do is actually invest in them. You actually put your mind and mental and ⁓ plans towards making those things happen. ⁓ that's shaped like what our future really could be if we wanted to use our richest nation on earth budget in order to make it happen. speaker-0: That's my I love hearing you say that because that's my whole thing is like if America if if we thought of America as a the United States, not America. Sorry, all of my Americans that are like, hey, Venezuela's part of America. Yes, the United States. ⁓ if we built the United States to be the coolest house on the block, everybody would want to be like us. speaker-1: ⁓ my gosh. Bro. speaker-0: We wouldn't have to bust our windows. speaker-1: If we invested in every area of the United States, like it is New York City, ⁓ my goodness, we'd have the most not only beautiful, but it would be if we invested in all of our places, I wouldn't even say like New because New York got a lot of problems too. If we did it like ⁓ what Hong Kong, China, they do everything right there. They have any and everything you can imagine from their train routes, their bus routes. their public infra ⁓ infrastructure, their bike lanes, their walkability, the the amount of small businesses, the how livable it is, the amount of crime, the just the the infrastructure's design, the artsiness of it, the the amount of technological ⁓ advancement. They got it all. New York is cool. It it's what America should be pretty much everywhere at this point in twenty twenty six. But it's not what many other countries have already done, which is actually upgraded everything in their city to reflect what tech is now, what infrastructure is now. Like we have the materials to build everything we could ever want. And it could be so cool, it could be so efficient, it could be ⁓ just beautiful, and we don't. We build the same block block buildings with neutral gray and tan colors. And it has tall windows. Sometimes we have that's it. Like we have the most boring bland ⁓ corporate buildings you've ever seen. ⁓ and then bad plumbing and then bad like it just keep going on. It's like we could be so cool. I want us to be cool as hell. I want my country to look like my wardrobe when I get that congressional check. It's going to be cool. speaker-0: Short windows. Yeah. I want internet everywhere because I want everybody to know what the hell they're talking about. I need you to be informed. I need you to tap in. I need you to be a part of this. speaker-1: Yes. At least be associated with society. At least have the opportunity to see what your neighbors are talking about without being on their front porch. Conversation in community is so important. And people don't even have the luxury of Wi-Fi to to indulge in that. I feel like speaker-0: Yeah. I just yeah like I need you to be able to watch a movie called Carlitos Way and know that not all Puerto Ricans are doing life like that. I need you to understand, please. Step in. I wanna turn the I wanna turn the mood a little bit because you said something earlier that I wanna and if this is too personal, if this is too much, that's cool. We can change the subject, but I wanna go back to mom because it the I'm a big fan of moms and not even trying to be funny. Moms moms go through things, especially black women have have through the generations have had to deal with the most dumb shit. But you said that you're a product of sexual assault. W how what's your stance on abortion? speaker-1: I think abortion is just healthcare, period. I think that people should be able to have an abortion, especially in this economy where you can't afford anything. It's like they only care about ⁓ abortion and in in pro-life when it's in the womb, not when it comes out, because then they'll defund your SNAP benefits so that you can't feed your children. So I think that people abortion is health care. And a lot of times people need this. It's a vital form of healthcare where people will die if they don't receive. An abortion while they're living a baby come not coming out is not a living thing yet. It's not ⁓ a full life because this woman already existed for 20, 30, 40 years. This baby has not entered yet. And if her life is in jeopardy, what is the point? Because who will take care of the baby then? What if that is a single mother? Then what? What if that that mother was also poor as hell? Then it's gonna be what a poverty baby. We're just I look at it as. The elites want us to push this anti-abortion narrative because not only have they stolen all our wealth, they want us to breed more workers, more dumb workers in bad schools that won't ever think of a different box than the one that they've been born into. speaker-0: And that are gonna be tricked into and they're gonna be tricked into signing up for the military. speaker-1: In that too. speaker-0: And then you get sent to go fight some dumbass wars that you didn't want any part of. speaker-1: I just try to feed my family. Well, you're going to Iraq again. Exactly. speaker-0: I wanted to go to school. Now I'm looking for a speaker-1: Just wanted to go to college after my four years. How about you get through Iran first? It's like speaker-0: And these are the hurdles that we keep talking about that we were talking about earlier. Like you go through all of these things and you finally get to the to the the you know the cool kids club or whatever and your your clothes are shat just tattered and torn and you've you've been put through the paces. speaker-1: Yeah. You go through literally speaker-0: Like hey, way to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. speaker-1: Still wearing your broken bootstraps and shoes with holes in ⁓ also that you can feel like the cool kids that have had the bootstraps since they were born. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. What was baby Kaya like? Were you a were you a brainy kid? Were you a ⁓ video game kid? Were you were you a troublemaker? speaker-1: So my mom actually used to call me an angel. Now she doesn't call me that anymore, but I used to be her favorite kid because I was always quiet. speaker-0: Okay. Part of what where are you in the lineup? Are you the oldest? Yeah. Okay. speaker-1: I'm the yellows, yeah. Yeah, but I I was just like sat in a room, played my video games. I didn't really like hang out with the family and talk a lot. I didn't like to dance and put myself out there. I didn't I I was mostly just the nice ⁓ nerdy kid that liked to learn and whatever. I was good at school. I didn't really like school. I liked the people there is what I'm realizing. like I said, I'm just I was just good at school. So I was smart, I would get good grades and she loved it. It's like perfect. You're gonna go to college and we're gonna get out of the hood. You said what? Either the meal ticket. How how was that responsibility though for you? Like it that's a lot that's a big burden for you. ⁓ I thought I didn't really think a lot of it. I thought it was just natural. Like that was what I was supposed to do. And I'll be real. Her dream of me being like the big brainiac nerd and speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: All that kind of stuff. I literally just played video games all day and cheated on my homework right for class. I'll be real. I did not try and I succeeded. I did not study. I did not studied a little bit, but it was always in class. It was like right before my test. Like I was always doing things last minute. I was always being ⁓ fairly irresponsible, but getting by very well. I always had the good grades and she would reward me for it. And I thought I could do that. I didn't really think about it, but I just did it, not realizing like it's gonna take a lot more effort. ⁓ but I realized that I wasn't putting in the effort because it wasn't my dream. Like it was I was doing that because I wanted to make sure my mom was taken care of. Yeah, so I was doing it, but I didn't feel that ⁓ the passion for myself and what I was doing and how I was going to achieve that for her. So I was never feeling the motivation to like go all in on my, you know, calculus three. It just wasn't it wasn't right here. So I still have that that pressure like getting her out the hood because I haven't gotten her out yet. ⁓ that's where I see me doing this congressional work. Not only can I get her out the hood, ⁓ but I can help so many other people get out of their situations as well by actually producing policy that put money right back into their pocket. Like people cannot be putting running. ⁓ she honestly I don't think she has too much opinion. I think it's just like another thing I'm doing. She's never shared any in depth idea or opinion about it whatsoever. I think it's kinda weird, but I mean it is what it is. That's because she has trust in you, man. She has faith in you, man. You're gonna do the right thing. I think she speaker-0: Yeah. That's one thing that's been that's one thing that was told to me when I was younger. moms know their kids so much that they know who needs a little bit more support and they knew who they know who's gonna be good. So don't take it personally if your mom's not all up in your Kool-Aid. Yeah, she knows she knows what she built. speaker-1: I just wish she would tell me she knew she built this. You know, it'd be nice to have some support. Like unless I give it like a like on my Instagram post. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: ⁓ I don't know. But my mom speaker-0: I think it's I think it's it's a let me say this. It's a lonely journey to be the one that wants to make the change. And when you understand that, that not everybody wants to do this, not everybody has the enough gas in the tank, they don't understand the importance of what you're doing. That will influence how people react to you. And if and if you're the first one to ever do that, people will be like, Yeah, okay, well. And then depending on, you know, the area and depending on what your your fan base is the road, your family members, let's say, depending on their experience is whether or not they're gonna get super excited, you know. 'Cause like if you if you're used to seeing black people run for office and not make it, you're just gonna be like, yeah, okay, we're just gonna play that script again, right? Right. But now now we had we have Barack Obama in the in the biggest office. Tell me we can't do this. speaker-1: And then we had the dumb the dumbest guy in the biggest office. Tell me I can't do this. speaker-0: You know what I'm saying. You think you cheated on Homer. That dude cheated all life. speaker-1: Yeah, no, he cheated on everything. Bankrupt six times to still become a ultra billionaire. Come on, man. He had the APK for sure. No, for real. ⁓ speaker-0: And and and and that only happened when he won won the presidency. He was he was close to broke from what I understand. He was close to broke. And then, you know, he ran for office and all the things, and now all of a sudden he's a successful billionaire. Get out of here. speaker-1: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. So you also got you're running up against someone that's been there since two thousand five, right? Virginia Fox. That is that is the definition of business as usual. Yeah. What what what's what's that like right now? You still gotta go through the ⁓ beforehand, you gotta go up against the the Democrat, right in the primary? Primary, yep. So how's that working out too? I mean ⁓ so you got you gotta gather all that runway. speaker-0: Twenty years. Good lord. speaker-1: You gotta defeat the guy in the primary. You gotta unify that that base from him. You gotta get the cosign just so you guys can go together and then handle business. What's that process like? right now, I think there's actually a lot of people that are really excited that I'm running. I know I already said this, but Having went to some of these events, it seems like people were more than glad to finally have a different candidate going up. ⁓ like I'll be honest. I went to some of those events, the fundraisers or whatever, and he was there, or he had his merch there, like or his like buttons, his little, you know, literature, and they were wearing or holding his stuff, and then coming up to me and then saying, I'm voting for you. And that was like so like mind-boggling because I'm assuming he's already won their vote, but he hasn't. They just didn't have another option. And what I'm realizing is that I'm every bit as viable as he is. Only difference he has money and he has rap name recognition that has spent multiple years of him running and losing. And I'm like, I have every reason to win, except with the amount of money that I have. I know that we can win, it will just take a lot more work. And what I'm also seeing is that if we win this primary, similar to how Maxwell Frost, he was pretty much the youngest in history, like you know, 45th or something, youngest. I'm gonna be a national story. Winning my primary. 24 years old, not even old enough to take the office right now. And winning in a primary where my guy has been on Midas touch. My guy has been ⁓ running against Virginia Fox for the last two years. My guy is every everything that people traditionally think will win and should win. And if I win. That whole game shatters. The facade of the establishment's power shatters. It's already shattered in NYC. Zorro did his thing. But imagine it happens in rural R plus 9, NC5 versus Virginia Fox and Chuck Hubbard. That's a crazy story. And that allows so many more people to start. Sprinting after I've done all the walking. Yep. Walking all my miles doing this crazy, crazy race, people are gonna start sprinting. Like we've already had record ⁓ numbers of candidates this year across local and federal races. Imagine what happens if a kid like me goes and does what everyone thinks is not possible. I think that was awesome. Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: agree. I agree. So tell them tell ⁓ what are what are some of the things that are happening in NC five that you want to address? speaker-1: I see that in Stokes County we're supposed to be having some hearings because they're trying to put a data center over there. ⁓ I don't know about y'all, but I'm not particularly a fan of data centers. And most of the country isn't. That's gonna just ⁓ remove some of the land that's gonna pollute our water, our air, and then also going to raise our price. People are already poor. What are we doing? speaker-0: I think prices are gonna go up. speaker-1: So I see no benefit to having a data center in my district whatsoever. I know Virginia Fox could care less. She gets all the energy and corporate subsidies ⁓ donations all day, every day. So that's gonna be a fight in its in and of itself. ⁓ we have multiple places ⁓ in the rural areas in my district that don't have any cell reception whatsoever if you're driving. ⁓ so we're gonna make sure that we get that reconciled. ⁓ we have healthcare deserts, which is just places that don't have nearby healthcare facilities. ⁓ we have to make sure that w they're getting proper care and getting facilities resurrected nearby because you shouldn't have to drive out of your county to get service for your health. ⁓ if you're getting a heart attack, you shouldn't have to drive thirty minutes, you know. That's just realities people have to deal with. Yeah. You know, getting get getting pregnant and then having to drive forty five minutes away, that's speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: It's just crazy. ⁓ we have bad water, you know, it's usually everywhere, but I have a lot of rural areas. The waters just it has to be reconciled with. ⁓ speaker-0: Your rural areas, are they farmers that are affecting the water? Or is the water bad before the farmers get it? speaker-1: ⁓ I don't know specifically around our farmers. What I do know is that in our rural areas, ⁓ the water quality is just not up to part because it's not being invested in. ⁓ that's just most speaker-0: They're on some Flint, Michigan stuff. But not flammable. speaker-1: Maybe not that bad, but it's not flammable water, but it's it's not it's not the greatest water. water quality even in Greensboro, in the start bakery city, it's not all that great either. So I can only imagine, you know, turning on someone's faucet and drinking that. I probably would enjoy it probably less. ⁓ And then affordable housing. We have multiple counties that are considered rural, but they have like four hundred thousand dollars is like the average home price. I think in Caldwell County, ⁓ believe in Ash. There's a couple counties that have like really high home prices, even higher than Greensboro. And we, like I said, third largest city, it's around like three sixty eight, and theirs are like nearing like four hundred and fifty thousand. So the average home price. speaker-0: What's the industry that's happening in that area that makes home prices so like here in Silicon Well, I live north of Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley, all the computer heads are here and they want to work at Facebook and they're making all the money, so they get the big house. What is the industry that is prevalent in your area that makes home prices so expensive? Expensive. speaker-1: Honest, that's an incredible question. And because you've asked it, I have to write it down. Because I actually don't know, and I did see in the in the statistics that those home prices are extremely large. And ⁓ like I said, for speaker-0: Because that could be something as simple as Black Rock bought a bunch of houses and they say that it's five hundred thousand. Like here in Sonoma, we're a bunch of farmers. It's a bunch of farmers and we're starting to get the we're starting to get the ⁓ the computer heads up here. All the tech guys. Well, all the all the tech leaders, because you can't you can't if you're just a normal tech guy, you you speaker-1: You can't afford twenty of them in a in a two bedroom. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah, hey, when I was working in ⁓ there's ⁓ a place called Redwood City that's in Silicon Valley. I was working at Redwood City and ⁓ it's it's two hour drive to get there, and then on Friday nights it was a three hour drive to get home. So instead of doing the two hour drive, I wanted to look at, you know, maybe sharing an apartment or something like that. Somebody wanted five hundred dollars. For me to be able to sleep in the living room and it was divided by a a shower curtain and I couldn't have any I couldn't have any visitors. speaker-1: Yeah, they're out of their mind. But that's the that's the world we live in now is that we don't have any any alternatives to a regular apartment or single family home. Like where are our duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes? Where do we have our public housing? Where do we have actual alternatives to you know luxury apartments? It seems like the only thing that we've invested in is our upper middle class and one percent to be able to live fruitfully with really nice places, really nice services. We don't have any alternatives that allow for community. We have all these nimbies, not in my backyard, ⁓ type people who are usually a little bit more wealthy own their house, ⁓ voting against zoning reform that would allow for these public housings to exist in the neighborhoods around them. ⁓ I think that's also one of the biggest issues. ⁓ because we have a a very bureaucratic process that makes it hard to do in general because of we don't have political will. Then we have a bureaucratic process that ⁓ inadvertently stops any kind of political will in its tracks because of all the different hurdles you have to jump through, just to try to get it built. ⁓ and then because people are so used to being Outside of poverty, they don't want poverty next and they want their home prices to go up. They want all these different things. They're focused on individual instead of community, and it stops us from benefiting as a society. ⁓ you don't see all the poor people because you make sure the poor people don't have places to stay, especially not near you. ⁓ keeps the housing prices high and they don't really care because they own their house. ⁓ it's just a really compounding issue. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: It's like it is over here by me in Florida. I'm north of West Palm. I'm in, I don't know, I you're from Florida, but I was in I'm in Jensen Beach, right? So I'm on the east coast of Florida by the water. But there's a lot of new development here. There's a lot of ⁓ gated communities and things like that. And then there are these old small businesses that are all for sale, they're shut down, right? And then there's new these new businesses that are right next to ⁓ that are all like the corporate businesses. So all the mom and pops are shut down. We got all these people that that came down with with this money from up north that bought all these ⁓ all the duplexes, all the all the ⁓ all all the communities that are out there, all these buildings jacked up their rent 'cause there's no market cap. And then it forced everybody out. Like like you said, the gentrification is going on. You know, they want everybody out. They want their places looking pretty, but still there's all these condemned businesses here on on the flip side next to these like luxury like businesses, right? Corporations. And like where's the where's the beauty in that whatsoever? You know like like there's there's There's no there's no personality. Everything is a ⁓ everything's a chain. You know what I'm saying? There's no like authentic anything here other than I'm gonna go out and fish. You know I feel like I was gonna say, I feel like in our school systems, we're taught like robots. We learn the same thing every single year. It's just like a little bit harder version. ⁓ you're in like what, reading five? You're in like math seven. Like it just goes up. You're learning the same thing. It's nothing, it's not like tangible valuable skills. It's not learning cooking. It's not learning. People still don't even know how to like work their washer and dryer when they're in college. Like it's you don't you don't learn actual tangible skills. You don't learn about how connected to nature we are supposed to be. You don't learn about how how we are literally just animals and we should be taking care of each other as animals. Like as animals, we usually go in packs. We usually come as herds. We usually come as communities and tribes. And we take care of the very lowest in the tribe to the very highest in the tribe. Make sure that we all have ⁓ the collective good in mind. We don't teach ourselves good philosophy in our school systems. And then that translates into our adult lives as parents. Everyone's talking about things as if they're just objects that just appear and not as like this was literally sand in like some like weird rock over here. And then they like Put some chemicals together from this thing, and then boom, now it's your iPhone. Like people just buy things like they're just things. People throw away things like they're just things. There's no ⁓ connection to the things that they purchase and the things that they use, unless it's like their car. Unless it's like ⁓ you know, maybe they they do have a special connection to their phone because they've had it for like six years. It's their favorite Samsung. ⁓ people have a very speaker-0: Yeah, you trade that for a upgraded Samsung and speaker-1: You get the Samsung S twenty seven ultra. speaker-0: You know, you're not you're not worried about it. speaker-1: Most people are just so disconnected. It's like the paper we're we're writing on, like this is this is revolutionary stuff. And we treat it like it's normal, regular, everyday things. We have no connection to it. We don't value it. And it's like, when do we change that philosophy so that people can actually feel some kind of connection back to everything that we have? We hold these things to a higher standard. Like we should take care of our shoes. We should take care of our TV and our whatever. And if we don't want it no more, give it to someone else. Like continue its value. People don't have that that mentality. I think that's that's where we've gone wrong as a society. speaker-0: Yep. I agree. We don't we don't look out for you know, you're the the chain is only as strong as his weak weakest link. There's the goofy things like that that we have said throughout the years, that's just so obvious. The weakest link educationally. I I tell this story all the time. And people are like, What? When I was in high school, you look at the little cardboard cutouts and stuff up on the wall. I said, Reading is fundamental. ABCs and one, two, three. This is high school. ABC's and one, two, threes and all this stuff. And that other high school that I was telling you about on their walls is said, remember to diversify your funds. The culture. Yeah. Yeah. The culture that is happening in inner city schools versus the suburban schools. Or let me say inner city schools could now that white folks are back on the living in the city is cool again. Those schools too. Those schools in those neighborhoods too. They have the culture that they have is completely different. They are grooming you. To run the company, whereas in Roosevelt, you know, the one that didn't have a librarian for a hot second because we couldn't afford librarians. So my kids, the kids that look like me, the kids that come from the streets that I come from, they don't have access to internet. They don't have access to books. And you can't just say, ⁓ you pull yourself up by the bootstraps. No, because when I was going to high school, I didn't have time to pull myself up by the bootstraps because I Right after high school, I had to jump on a bus to go to the Kmart to sell toilet paper to all you knuckleheads. The game is different. You treat us like we're a machine part, and you treat kids in these good schools like they're about to run the machine. The game is different. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: The game is different. speaker-1: Think about all the time, like we lost our imagination. Like if you look at any industry, we basically are making replicas of everything that we used to value. How many damn Star Wars movies are they gonna make? speaker-0: How many damn kung fu pandas are they gonna make? speaker-1: How many Call of Duties are they gonna make? How many like they make the same thing? how many iPhones are going to look like the iPhone eleven? We're at sixteen now. Five years in a row, it's pretty much the exact same phone. All they did was add one or two cameras on the back. Yep. That's it. Yep. Added a little black bar at the top that says like the time sometimes. Like When are we going to innovate in ways that we've never done before? When are we going to stop looking for short term, short term profit and start looking at long term ⁓ you know, innovation? When are we actually going to invest in our future in ways that we used to do way back in the day? Why have we never been back to the moon since we've been to the moon? speaker-0: Actually last year, I think it was I think last year, ⁓ last year, maybe two years ago now, India sent some, but they didn't send any astronauts up there. They sent the equipment up there. And to all my flat earthers, supposedly. speaker-1: Manager. speaker-0: But no, yeah, I agree. Like when are when are we going to educate United States citizens to the point where there is no question that we don't need H one B visas anymore? speaker-1: We don't. Well that can happen. When are we actually going to educate our our kids so that our kids are able to create the jobs, make the jobs, work the jobs that we all want and need, instead of purposefully, intentionally outsourcing and extracting from those people everything humanly possible from them, working them day and night constantly. When are we gonna invest in our people so they can just work normal hours? make normal money and just be happy and contribute. We over here outsource into India so that we can make sure that their people work twenty five hours a day, every single day of the week, with, you know, your stuff being deported. speaker-0: The three on your stuff. Not our stuff. Right? Right. So so the three of us coming from the city. ⁓ if we wanted to work on whatever it was, businesses that we had. We don't need all the resources available on some of these other folks. Money. That's just the beginning. speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. speaker-0: Because you need money, then you need exposure to education, then you need to then you need to be able to go through all this information and process it so you're making proper decisions. It's a process to doing this stuff. But if you refuse to if you refuse to kick in, but the thing, and I know what it is is the people with the money are the ones that like the control of all the decisions being made. So we're made into machine parts. Вирна тол тут. Верна толтон про конгрес. But I bet you some of those schools, I bet you they're grooming some of those kids to go run coronavirus. ⁓ yeah. speaker-1: And if you can think about like the Harvard to pretty much everywhere pipeline, you go to these top institutions, they're pretty much linked to every like major office, professional position, expert ⁓ position, whatever you name it. If you go to one of these top institutions, it's basically a pipeline. And if you're going to a regular institution, it's like ⁓ maybe you know, you can. You can get good good opportunity, but it's likely not gonna be anywhere close. Forgot where I was going with that. speaker-0: We were talking about like creating opportunities and and the schools that only create opportunities for the certain people that go through ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ speaker-0: All those school parties, they're building a network. We took we d we started this conversation talking about building your team. Yep. speaker-1: Фу имажі Obama never went to Harvard, likely he would have never become president. And we need more of our places to be less predicated on the place you go and rather the level of education you got. Like, what are we are we pushing opportunity for everyone or only for the select few that can make it to these very specific places? I don't think that's any way to value education because If I get you know my doctorates from North Carolina AT, it should be just as valuable as getting it from, you know, Harvard because they're still teaching higher education. There's you're still going through amount the same amount of time if ⁓ with rigorous ⁓ educational capacity. You're going through all the steps, all the barriers, except spending the same amount of money. I don't think anyone's gonna, you know, match Harvard tuition. But speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: It shouldn't be devaluing what you what you work for. It should not limit what kind of opportunities you get. It should not limit the kind of box you're able to think of. And that's the part. People are not wanting to even go to college anymore. Because not only can they not afford it, it's not getting them any jobs. Like unless you're going to Harvard, you're not getting the job you want in any you know decent amount of time. Like on average, young people are waiting like six months in order to just get an interview. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: To one of these jobs. Most of these jobs are ghost jobs, having up ⁓ applications and stuff available, but not actually accepting anyone into their job. It's just literally there just to show like it's an opening. It's there to ⁓ hit an arbitrary quota, it's there as a loophole in order to not actually have to hire more people because they'd rather have a limited staff that they barely pay a certain wage and to get as much. ⁓ value out of those specific people as possible. Or use AI. Or use AI, yeah. So we definitely have a multifaceted issue there with how do we start getting people to not only value education again, but how do we get our education to be valuable itself? And then how do we get the jobs to stop pretending to ⁓ Pretending that they actually want students and graduates when they actually don't. How do we start ⁓ elevating our workers' rights so that we can have more of us working, making a fairer wage, and working less hours so we're not, you know, there every single day of the week? Yeah. There's a sort of the quality of life. speaker-0: Is it? Isn't it crazy to think or not even to think but to know that every time the Democrats are in office the economy goes up, jobs up jobs go up. All this stuff goes up and then we're doing good, we're doing good and then for some reason we voted Republican and they just got everything. speaker-1: I think because we've been doing this liberal ⁓ like doing this liberal ideology type of system for so long, like even the Republicans are just like neoliberal, ⁓ like promoting the status quo and making sure capitalism keeps going pretty much as is. I think They always focus on the biggest numbers like our GDP and our stock market. They point to all the indicators that show a thriving economy, but they never point to any of the indicators that show a lowering ⁓ standard of living, ⁓ a lower life expectancy, a lower ⁓ like impoverished lived experience. They don't talk about people's actual lived experiences in any of their small towns and ⁓ people on Medicaid. They don't Go and platform those people. I had actually devised a people's assembly. That is my idea for essentially a hybrid town hall, where instead of just having a town hall, right? I go and talk about myself or whatever's going on in the ⁓ in the district or what I'm doing in Washington, whatever. Not only do we have that, there'd be another area in the same building where people from speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: even in the district, out of district, whoever wanted to show up, was able to come there and platform their stories about what it's like to live in these systems, what it's like to like maybe we're working on universal health care in in this in this like right now. I I'll be working on universal health care. So they're talking about their their stories in Medicaid, what they were dealing with with their hospital, how far their hospitals are away. ⁓ my my sister or my cousin died on the way to get care. Because she has a hospital 45 minutes away and she was pregnant, died in the car, something like that, right? We actually platform these stories so that people across the country, let alone in the district, people across the country can also relate to and empathize with the plight of our American system. Because we as politicians, politicians, representatives, always focus on the numbers, but not on the stories. And the stories make the numbers credible. That's what makes people engage. People aren't trying to hear ⁓ 10% of ⁓ all people in the United States own 80% of the wealth. They don't give a damn. They don't know what that even means. They don't even know numbers. Well, they do know what a story is, they'll listen to a story, especially when it has a name, especially when it has a face, especially when it's someone's lived experience they're speaking on right now. It was pain trauma. I want to elevate that because. What you don't see is on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, whatever you want to watch. They don't do that. They want to highlight mass murder. ⁓ white kid from Georgetown, Ohio, or whatever it is. And they'll highlight that one mass murder, but they'll never highlight the people that are going through this system. They'll never talk about the ⁓ that city and how it has an abnormal mental health crisis and ⁓ that's why the kid could have gotten service before. You know, they don't go through that. I want to highlight that and have its own dedicated like social media platforms just for those stories where people literally only follow and only ⁓ listen and stay in that community of people on social media just to listen to those stories. Just to just to hear what people are going through and relate to it and share their own. Maybe they'll come out to one of those town hall, ⁓ these people's assemblies one day. Maybe they'll come and actually share their story with their family members or whatever and start conversations that we traditionally don't have or at least don't know how to have because these these stories are not very well known or not talked about. Like change the conversation. Why are we always talking about, well, how are we gonna pay for it? How about we talk about how the hell it affected them because we didn't pay for it? Right. ⁓ And speaker-0: And and then how do we pay for it thing? We gotta stop that. We can stop bombing one country and we're good. So the answer is there. speaker-1: Look, look, we we could talk Yeah. We always have the the questions when it comes to the public good, but we never have any questions when it comes to blowing up someone else's home. How do we take care of our people? Hmm. Well, I'm not really sure. How are you gonna do it, buddy? Then when it's like, let's go bomb kids in Gaza and shoot them in the head. So 20 billion at them. Where did it come from? Not sure, but they got it. So I want to make sure that we're changing the conversation. I'm like, I know that my one vote will not change anything, right? I will never be the one guy that they're waiting on for a vote to pass the legislation. Let's be real. I'll know my stance. I'm not waiting to for how where the wind's gonna blow. I'm gonna know how I'm gonna feel about what's going on. I'm gonna read the bills. I'm gonna have it broke down in ways that will allow me to be very sure about what decision I'm making. I think the problem is that we're not having the conversation that we're supposed to be having with our people, with our society, with our communities. Our society needs to be talking about how do we better each other. What right wings and MAGA have gotten a monopoly on, which is the problem, is the conversation. They monopolize the conversation to be ⁓ anti-abortion, pro-life, family values, ⁓ guns galore, just have the gun, give your third three-year-old a pistol, whatever. They have the whole monopoly on the conversation and what is normal, what is not normal. They're making Nazism normal again. We have these right wing thrifters going on their podcasts to be like, can we just bring back racism? Or aren't we being racist enough? Because they have nothing, they can only go farther extreme they can only go farther to the right to appease more or to ⁓ keep their their base entertained it so to speak and so it's up to us that money to force the conversation like what they did with the Green New Deal we need to be doing this about universal health care we need to be doing this about literally everything we need to be platforming and ⁓ conversing with these ideas and being thought leaders for these ideas all day. speaker-0: The trickle. speaker-1: Every day. What Bernie Sanders was doing about oligarchy, I did not think people knew what oligarchy was. I'll be real. I didn't think they knew. But Bernie Sanders is showing like that's not the case. Our people are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Yes, they make really stupid MAGA boned ⁓ decisions, but MAGA's not that damn dumb. They just that damn brainwash. They don't have ⁓ a different conversation to have, or at least not one that Actually stimulates their into intellectualism. They don't have one that stimulates their need for community and their empathy. They don't have all that. What MAGA does is tell a bunch of stories. They might be all lies in racism, but they tell story, story, story, story, story. They have some kind of story for every situation. Yeah, that stupid blue-haired leftist trying to get rid of her baby. She's a murderer. That sounds crazy. Someone's gonna sit here and say, like that blue-haired leftist needs to die because they keep saying it. We don't say the same things about good things. We need to be yelling it until that's all they hear. All they hear right now is Donald Trump. We need to be changing that. speaker-0: And and not just the Donald Trump stuff, but just the world in general. The world is a very cool, exciting place. It's beautiful. So when you're sitting there listening to Fox News telling you how terrible everything is, and then I show up. No, it's beautiful out here. I got a bunch of travel videos that'll show you. It's really cool. You just gotta get out from ⁓ whatever they're telling. Whatever they're telling you. Go experience your lives and you can you can have your own opinion. Literally. speaker-1: And this goes back to like also talking to your neighbors. Like your neighbor Your neighbors don't want to talk to you. They want they want to go handle their daily lives and deal with their struggles and in themselves. And that and then when you turn those platforms out in their stories, you post those stories out, conversations will start to happen, they'll start recognizing some people and be like, you know what? I'm going through the same shit you are. Let's let's figure out how to handle that. Let's talk about it. speaker-0: One hundred. speaker-1: And that and that that that deals with anything, man. Any trauma that deals with any sort of struggle. You can't do it, you can't internalize all that shit on yourself. You know what I'm saying? You gotta learn how to you gotta bridge those gaps, man. You gotta you gotta connect them. And the the the way the way you do that is you make the world smaller. Right? You have conversations like this and be like, listen, man, we are we are all like-minded, we all have, but we are all different, so let's figure out how to defeat the opponent. And let's figure out how Let's figure out how we bring some of those on our team too, because they are they are they are assets as well. You know, they got they they have tendencies and tactics and things like that and and ⁓ attributes that we can utilize. We need we need we need we need a we need a ⁓ a a field lame beer. We need somebody to throw some elbows, you know what I'm saying, while we go out dunk on people. Or or we got we got a Steph Curry shooting a J. But we need somebody that needs to rough somebody up or you know, tell you know speaker-0: Dream Lagreen. speaker-1: Let's let's set a picture. Yeah, we need a Draymond Green to kick somebody in the nuts. And then you know what I'm saying? But we need somebody to sell popcorn. We need somebody to be cheerlead. We need somebody to be ⁓ in the stands rooting for us. We need somebody out there running the show. We need all we need everybody. speaker-0: But even bigger than that. Even bigger than that. Changing the culture. Because I'm sorry. When people say America first, they're thinking of one culture speaker-1: people. Yeah. It's it's a monopoly on culture. speaker-0: the culture for you to understand that there's some brown kids out here that that had the courage to strap them up to go out there to enable you to talk your speaker-1: Shit. speaker-0: veterans out here, multicolored veterans out here doing their thing for you to be able to be lazy sitting there watching Fox News that tells you that I'm a I'm I'm gonna steal your purse. Meanwhile you got dudes that are taking money straight out of your bank account. speaker-1: We have A duty to change the conversation because we've been basically. We've been just propagandized and coddled into the idea that this is normal. When you're rich, you can steal from everyone, especially the poor, and get away with it. You know, there's how many pardons this year from Trump to drug dealers and rich right. They scammers, dudes that did millions or billions and speaker-0: Do Wi-Fi abuse. speaker-1: fraud and they're just getting pardons left and right. And the the poor need to be worried about the other poor's robbing them. Like white people are supposed to be so scared of the brown people, but it's like 88% of all white crime or crime that happens to white people happen from other white people. And then we're we're focused on the three percent. You're not scared of the white guys that speaker-0: No. Lot in those neighborhoods. How are we gonna steal your TV, dum dum? speaker-1: Right. Like we don't live anywhere near you, but you're scared of speaker-0: You're in a gated community. speaker-1: Right. The majority of mass mass shooters are white guys, but you're gonna be worried about the black guy if he might have a gun or a weapon or a knife or something. It's like we don't go based off of the facts. We go based off how we feel and the stories they tell. We need to start telling better stories so that the the narrative can start shifting and that especially, especially rural white folk that Are typically conservative that are fed all this conservative nonsense ⁓ can actually feel a semblance of relatability with these people. Like that's my whole goal with this People's Assembly is like you'll have white folk that are poor, rural, that will eventually, inevitably, find some kind of relatability with these conversations, with these stories, with these moments. And We'll start seeing a shift in how people interact with each other. It won't be obviously overnight. They a lot of them are gonna be very stubborn and still racist, but we're gonna see it shift. speaker-0: ⁓ but this is We're seeing it already because me growing up in the seventies, let me tell you, race relations are completely different. There are they are so much better these days. But exactly what you were saying earlier, Kaya, when you push someone to change, they'll continue to push away and they'll continue to go to the extremes. But now with the invention of the internet and conversations like this that we're having and then sharing stuff like this on Instagram, everyone gets to see that whatever you're seeing on Fox News, whatever you're seeing in the TV shows where all these brown kids are stealing shit and breaking shit and doing shit. I'm not saying that there aren't some of us out there that are doing that, that aren't doing that. What I'm saying is the majority of us are out here trying to make it a better place for all of us. And you need to pay attention to us. The ones that are talking like this. Yes. You have some out there that are they're gonna spray paint this and they're gonna break into that. They're gonna do all the yes. Generally speaking, those are the people that went to underfunded schools. It's just that simple. If you invest in a community, that community will thrive. The challenge for the communities that we come from is the people that we hang out with when we were kids, all those kids in the inner city, they have zero trust in the system because the system has shown over and over again that the system is playing against you. So it's hard to cosign to things that are contrary to who are who are. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Why would I wanna why would I to be a part of a team that's saying that I'm poisoning the blood of the team? speaker-1: ⁓ because of who I believe in isn't the same name as the one that you believe in. Because yours is apparently better than mine. Mine's murderous. And you've never even read my book, but you know everything about me. It's like how does it work? speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Only reason it works is because we don't talk. We don't share stories and we don't do for our neighbor. But at some point, ⁓ man, when Mamdani starts doing his thing, we start seeing the people are happier and people are getting better results and all that kind of stuff. ⁓ my goodness. There's only so much ⁓ Islamophobia and racism could go towards that guy. I mean, he'll just have to become one of the good ones. And he'll be one more great example of someone that It's fundamentally different from everything a white Christian man is, yet he's doing so much more than all the Christian white Christian men do. speaker-0: No. A hundred percent. What are some of the things that you have learned from a Bernie or even a AOC that you can possibly leverage for your campaign? speaker-1: I think one speaking across class, like knowing that there are so many different people in our class that we need to be focused on reaching, whether it be a conservative or not, those people are important. Those people are deserving and are valued. Like I had even this was back before I like fully committed to the idea. I was just like sitting in Target and like someone's experience or something they bought or some some conversation I had like had me like think of a speech in my head and I started to like jot it down and when I went home and fleshed it out one part of the speech like I wanted to actually address all the bigots, all the racists, all the the KKK members, all the white supremacists, the whoever else. I wanted to address all of them very specifically, group by group. And let them know, like you can hate me, you can spit on me, you can wish death on me, you can do all the things. Well, all I want you to know is that everything I'm trying to do, I'm trying to do for you two. Because I don't believe your family should have a worse school than my kids. I don't want your kids to get shot up in those schools because they're trying to learn. I don't want you to go home and not know whether or not you can eat because you don't know whether or not you can buy food. I don't want you to be worried about whether or not you're gonna have your paycheck on time to get your rent paid so that your credit score doesn't go down a hundred points and then your loans start shooting up in ⁓ in interest rates and stuff. I want you to have a very good life. And through that, through that good work, through me wanting that for you, at some point you're gonna stop hating me. You might not like me, but you're not gonna hate me. Right. And Everything I'm doing is in the betterment of you because I see my mom, I see my siblings, and you and your family. Yep. That's that's the problem is that we don't see ourselves in each other. We're all humans. I don't want other humans to suffer. Unless you're making other humans suffer, I don't want you to suffer. If your goal is not to wake up and make someone else's day worse, I don't want you to suffer. Because most people have been fundamentally ⁓ just shown. A whole different worldview that I could never fathom or understand from my own upbringing, but through my own upbringing, I can help move them towards a more ⁓ you know, just kind and empathetic type of thinking. So Bernie doing that pretty much in all his speeches, going to like West Virginia, and people are like, ⁓ wow, actually kind of like this guy. He's nothing like what we thought. That's what I want. Like I had so many people like on Reddit. I I posted on Reddit a couple times and actually blew up, which is crazy. ⁓ never used Reddit before. I was using Reddit, made some posts or whatever, and I would have these slew of like Reddit trolls that like just go in there and be like, This kid is a moron, his little dumbass. Like, what is this little kid doing going from ⁓ a dinosaur to newborn baby? Like they have everything in the world to say. ⁓ Trash in, trash out. They have everything. ⁓ he's just gonna be another establishment puppet. Literally everything. And none of it is based off who I am, my values, my platform, anything. And I'm like, I want to get to a point where people can stop assuming that somehow little old broke me could be anything close to the establishment that I'm literally arguing against. And we stop thinking about. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: A label being Democrat or Republican and start thinking of us representatives as our name in what we think, period. We have too many people trying to be ⁓ a mold instead of just being them. It's like what how how did you get elected? It had to be you were actually genuine. You were you. You were some puppet version of whatever you think people wanted to see. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-1: And that's I don't know how people do that. Honestly. I I couldn't fake it if I tried. I'll hold back some of my words, but ⁓ I'm not gonna fake it. speaker-0: That happens in the record industry. That happens in the movie industry too. Something hits and it just like ingenuity goes away because now everyone is focused on doing it like this. And then you wonder why we're stuck in a system that doesn't change is because you keep feeding it the same stuff. You gotta toss in some vegetables. You gotta toss in some spices. You gotta otherwise it's gonna it's all gonna taste the same. speaker-1: You need some flavor in that. Put some McDobo on that shoe. Garlic papriga, I mean something. Slap your mama. Something, bro. speaker-0: Frank's apparently that old lady possession on everything. speaker-1: Slap your mama is good if y'all ain't never had it. Mm. speaker-0: Yeah. If we were to go if we were to go to North Carolina, what's the North Carolina dish? Is there is there a specific dish? speaker-1: Mm. Honestly, I I don't know if there's a specific dish. What I do know is that my favorite food is always gonna be some fried chicken. So speaker-0: Let's go. speaker-1: We're gonna get some great soul food. Some soul food. Collard greens. Some greens and some mac and macchies. Some fried chickens, cornbread. I got excellent cornbread recipe, but y'all can't know about it. You just have to try it. speaker-0: Okay, I'm down. speaker-1: Done. Done. Yeah, my friends. Everybody was praising my my cornbread for Friendsgiving. speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. Were they being nice? Were they being ⁓ was this the first time you cooking out of a box or like they making you feel good or did you do this from scratch? speaker-1: The next time. speaker-0: Did we lose them? speaker-1: We lost the mic. speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah, I always wonder. Cause I have friends that be like, ooh, I can make some really good chocolate cake. And you see them reaching for the Duncan Hines. speaker-1: I mean, I use the Jiffy box, but ⁓ there's a couple extra ingredients and yeah, you know, cooking time so that it's not burnt at the sides and it's soft, fluffy, and really sweet. Like it's just it's not like diabetes, but it just it comes through. Yeah, it comes through. All right. As long as it is not it's not dry and I I choke on halfway through that first bite. speaker-0: Right. You had that cornbread, you take a bite and turns it to sand in your mouth. You're like speaker-1: Usually usually I didn't even like cornbread like that, but I realized it's just because everyone cooks it the same way. You just get the jiffy box, put it in there. But it really needs a little bit of like personal touch. And once I did it like that, I was like, ⁓ yeah, we can have this on everything. We we pull up I pull up with my my wife to the soul food spot and we walked out there's outside seating, right? And I'm like, all right, let's let's let's see what they're eating real quick. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And then they they had cornbread. I'm like, all right, cool, let's check this out. And as soon as he bit it, like the crumble went all over the dude's face. And I'm like, let's find somewhere else to eat. I'd rather go. You know, I'm good. I'm good. You just you just sold you just straight, I'm out. Let me get that jiffy box. speaker-0: Yeah. For real. speaker-1: Kai w guy, what what's what's this next these next ⁓ ten months look like for you or eleven months? Well, I'm not focused on anything past March because there's no ten months without a primary win. So these next few months, I'm focused on getting some town halls going. Like I want at least three. We'll probably do more, but I want at minimum three of these things going. And I want to start getting some fundraiser. I wanted to do a basketball fundraiser. I wanted to do ⁓ a video game fundraiser where we, you know, connect with some other candidates and stuff. I want to do some really cool things where we get people that traditionally are not political and get them literally not even just into the process, but like donate into ⁓ a nonprofit or some like after school program or veterans ⁓ program or whatever. And then also donating to me. And then also, we're just having a great time. Like things that people actually genuinely enjoy doing. That's would be awesome. I would love to have ⁓ a cooking kids with ⁓ Congressman Creekmore cooking kids as like the title of my video from unraised right through with just a bunch of like you know, soccer dads and ⁓ 17-year-olds, high schoolers, just all speaker-0: Kaya cooking kids and is Kaya dunking on all these six year olds. speaker-1: You know what I'm saying? That would be so cool. ⁓ I get to live out my dream of a content creator while fundraising for my Congress, while just having fun, like doing what I love. Like this is literally the dream. Like I thought about doing this as actual content. And then now I like I literally get to do this as like a strategy method to instead of like a big nice fancy dinner with rich people, we could just go and have some fun with the community. Yeah. Make a little money while we at it so we can make our campaign work and do some more cool stuff. Like that's the whole dream. And it just I just can't wait. Because we're gonna do at least one. At least one. You gotta see how it works, how everyone's reception is, but I think this would be pretty awesome. That right there is what's missing in politics, man. That's my joy. You know what I'm saying? Like speaker-0: Actually being connected to the community that you represent. How how simple. speaker-1: That's it. Like that's it. I was hearing people say, like, they did like mariachi bands and all types of stuff for their like congressional ⁓ races and campaigns for whatever office. I'm like, what could I do? What could Kaya do? Like, I like the hoot. How do we turn a hoop session into a fundraiser? How do we turn my video game love into a connect with people across the country? Right nationally, there are gamers galower. There's so many good games dropping. speaker-0: Yeah, I'm a throat. speaker-1: I can't play those with my with my supporters. speaker-0: I'm gonna throw out this idea. You play Call of Duty against Kai. If he gives you a headshot, you give him a vote. speaker-1: I ain't gonna lie, that would be too easy. That would be too easy. Challenge. Challenge. It's not a challenge. I've won eight thousand dollars playing Call of Duty with my with my college team. So yo. I'm not like I'm not a bad player. You know what I'm saying? Most most average gamers are not gonna be Kaya. Like I'm Kaya on the sticks. That's it's a whole different type of player. I'm like a top one percent of any game I actually try at. speaker-0: Yeah. Easily. speaker-1: You gotta play Elon then now, right? Cause he's supposed to be a gamer, right? Elon is a joke. That would just be a fraud check. It'd be like me going versus Andrew Tate in a in a in a fight. Like it's that's a fraud check. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I've been telling people. I mean, Elon is smart, sure, but it it helped that his family like had gem mines in South Africa. speaker-1: He's not a G. Right. And was a part of apartheid. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So rules again, rules that benefit you. If you don't succeed, you're an idiot. speaker-1: And if you do succeed, you're a genius. How did you do it? Self made. You're amazing. You're the greatest thing to exist. You know what? You should be magazine. But speaker-0: How are you how do you foresee your energy affecting ⁓ Congress when you get there? speaker-1: I think I think there's gonna be a lot of people that hate me because one, one, people are not gonna like me simply because I'm gonna be the guy that just doesn't shut up. You know? And I know that that there's two parties that are at fault and that are at issue at any given moment when our government doesn't work. When our government fails, when it doesn't deliver, when it gives us any incremental change, it's because of Democrats, it's because of Republicans. We have both sides usually working against the interest of the common man. And so I know a lot of them won't like me, but I know there's a lot of them that are trying to make change and actually have moved towards the center to get it done. And that with my energy, they'll start moving back to the left because now there's a real force that's like come up with some stuff that we've never seen, right? The people's assembly. Imagine I perfect it here in district five, right? People love the idea. People are like it's blown up, maybe like CNN or something covers it. It's like, ⁓ This da da da da Kaya Creek more. Now I'm setting a whole new precedent for what a town hall could or should look like. It shouldn't just be you talking at your constituents. You should be providing value. Every time you speak, it should provide value. If they're going to pay you $175,000 a year, provide value every time you speak. Yes. The whole point is for you to go talk. You're representing people. Go speak. At least speak value. speaker-0: A hundred percent. speaker-1: At least provide value. You have all these connections, all these networks provide value. I can also see, like I said, all these people that want to make change. Not only are they gonna see someone that wants to make change, someone who's fun. Like I'm a normal dude. I did not want to run for Congress, but I'm here now. So now that speaker-0: Yeah, 'cause you guys kept messing with me. Now I gotta run for Congress. speaker-1: kept ruining my parents' lives. Y'all kept ruining my my future for the you know the economy for our nature for all the industries that are monopolized. Y'all ruined everything. So now I'm here. We're gonna start playing pool. We're gonna start playing basketball. We're gonna start working out. We're gonna start doing just fun stuff. You're gonna start seeing me at the at the clubs with with my constituents just having a good time drinking with my with my ⁓ my friend over here. Yeah I met this guy in ⁓ you know County, he was just pretty cool. We just get some shots here and there. Like being a normal dude in your community that you're working for. I think that's gonna be awesome. It's gonna change the precedent that ⁓ we gotta always stay in DC or we're always gotta be like in meetings. You can also be a regular human. Like speaker-0: You don't have to be they only work forty seven days this year. speaker-1: Right. I'm not I'm not gonna be working that much. Now I will have to to start because there's so many things I have to implement and get worked out and kinks ⁓ you know smooth. I have to get my process down. But once I'm like firmly comfortable, I've firmly in integrated many of the ideas that I wanted into tangible results, we're gonna be able to start just doing cool stuff. Like I wanna go experience a Drake concert. Now, as a working class target ⁓ associate, I would probably have to save up for a Drake concert for a year to think about going. Yeah. Now I can just get one of my paychecks monthly. It's like one of my one of my Medicaid ⁓ enrollees out in, you know, Wataga County. Let me go to a Drake concert and have some fun. Like, how awesome would that be? Like me experiencing life. And then go and taking someone else that couldn't experience it like I couldn't a year ago and then go experience it with me. That'd be so damn awesome. It's like you could be one of those. I I want y'all to have a core memory, like I'm having it right now. I can't believe I did this, and I also can't believe I'm able to help you also do this with me. This is so cool. Like, I want to go experience stuff. I want to go and travel to a different country. Like, that would be cool to have like a a stipend or something for like. some students in my in my district. Just like, you know, here's here's this month. We get five kids. We go and travel to ⁓ you know, Hawaii or we go to ⁓ Bali. We just try something different. speaker-0: Speaking speaking of sponsored travels, what's your stance on APAC? speaker-1: Let's be serious. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Look, we don't have to say a lot. Unless you're a Zionist and you hate people like humans, there's no way in hell that I'll ever take no APAC money. There's no way in hell I would ever respect someone. speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah, your mic went out. Right when it was getting juicy too. There you are. APAG cutting out your microphone. No, for real. speaker-1: We have to run that back. But yeah, I would never consider taking any of that money simply because it's just it's literally ⁓ just used to go and bomb children and then plan for a real estate development. They went and leveled whole cities, hundreds of thousands of people murdered or are losing their limbs, all for what? So they can get a beachfront hotel and make some money. Like, what is that gonna be on my conscience? Why are other people not concerned with that? Why are we so okay with political violence when it comes to brown people? Especially overseas. ⁓ they they believe in ⁓ they're Muslims. Okay, so that doesn't mean they murder people for fun. I mean, look in their speaker-0: Look at how many different kind of Christians we have here. It's not like you got your story straight either. speaker-1: Right, like look at look at our Christians. Most of our mass murderers were Christians. Let's just be real. They either were atheists or Christians. They weren't over here praising Allah. That's not the majority. So We need to make sure that Yeah, ⁓ yeah, we need to make sure that we're moving to speaker-2: indicate. speaker-1: APAC as a foreign lobby, J Street, whoever else is foreign lobbyists, and that they don't have the same level of sway and influence over our officials. They they literally have bought out like over 90% of our officials. That's unbelievable. ⁓ speaker-0: Crazy. If and a lot of them they have a bunch of these videos and supposed files and stuff, so I don't know. speaker-1: We're the richest nation on earth. We're the most powerful. And we're owned by Israel, which isn't even top five, top ten. We subsidize their health care. We subsidize their what univ ⁓ their free free schools. We subsidize all their social programs and we can't even afford it for our people. What are we doing? Sounds like we're downgrading. speaker-0: They say, they say, we know we can. We know we can. They say that they can't. But we know that they can because they do it for Israel. We know that they can because they do it for Ukraine. We know that they can because there's a lot of money going to all these little countries that what? Invest in schools and housing. And then what they do is they send those educated kids over here on a H will B visa. Yep. And that's the system. That's the trick. speaker-1: And and actually it's actually making more sense. They invest in other people's countries because it's cheaper. And then we can just take all of their labor, all their genius, exploit it for the lowest amount possible. Yeah. And then underfund our people so we can give all the money to the rich in the war industry. speaker-0: And then we're gonna and then we're gonna and then because we're mistreating the people that don't have here in this country, it's gonna break government. So now everything is gonna be privatized. So now the burden is on you to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. See, that's the game. They say we don't have money for education here in the United States. But then they go somewhere else to go get all the cream of the crop from somewhere else. So what's that say about you as a number one country? That as the number one country, the only way you can survive, the only way you can keep your economy going is by going somewhere else. speaker-1: Ooh. speaker-0: Welcome. Welcome to the game. speaker-1: We just broke the game. It's the rat race and we've all been racing. speaker-0: That's it, man. Like the Coming from where I come from and doing all the things that I have done to get to this point, and you're paying attention, and I'm like you, Kaya. I talk to everybody. Everybody. I don't care. The haves, the have nots, the bleached, the non-bleached. I don't care. I will speak to everyone. And my consensus is that. My consensus is that if you look There's a certain complexion that gets really good Education and then jobs. Those are your project managers. They all have the same complexion. Then when you come here to Silicon Valley, you have the project managers, and then everybody else is of somewhere else. If you see an American on a development team. It's a unicorn. speaker-1: Yeah, they had some reason. That's somebody's nephew. speaker-0: And then just to fully bring it all the way home for you. The reason why they go and they get these contractors from India, China, everywhere else, is because you can get three to four of those and then you bring them in super cheap. And then if they talk up, they're like, No, I'm gonna need a sick day. You need a sick day. You need to go get your laid, you just got laid off and now you get to go home. speaker-1: Back to your company. Ego. And you know, the worst part is that they don't have a really good process to even make those people ⁓ like full citizens. And they will have them here so long, making like so much better money and in such a cooler place than wherever they came from that they established themselves and their whole lives here. And so that if they lost their job, that's basically disrupting their entire life. Like They already disrupted it to come. Now they've established themselves, they lose their job. That's everything crumbles. So they're pretty much guaranteed to stay being good little robots listening to whatever the project manager says. And they're gonna keep getting exploited. And there's almost nothing they can do about it because our processes are designed to be that way. They don't want you to have ⁓ speaker-0: Labor alone. speaker-1: laws and stuff to help you. There's no worker protections, buddy. You think there's a workers constitution in America? Wrong place. This isn't sweet ⁓ Sweden. This isn't ⁓ Switzerland. We're not going to Iceland. Mm-mm. Wrong place, bro. You went to the wrong place to get a good life. Now you're stuck. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not even mad at the people that are coming to get those jobs. I'm not mad at the the s South American peoples that come here for a better life. I'm not mad at the ⁓ at the programmers that are coming here for a better life. They're just trying to feed their kids. But you know what? I'm trying to feed my kids too. Well, not that I I don't have kids here with me, but I'm trying to live my life too. I'm trying to make my moves too. I'm trying to find my success too. But when you continue to throw these hurdles out here, again, why would people of our complexion want to be a part of this system that is so obviously rigged? And then you get mad when we run for office to try to make change. And you say those things on the posts. You say that these this kid is too young. You're one of the more well spoken people, young people that I've talked to in a long time. Your thoughts are very well intentioned. And the way that you describe yourself, I would be more than happy to see you make it into into Washington, DC. Because we need that. Mike will tell you. I am a big fan of this younger generation saying, nah, it's time for change. I am a big fan of that. That's why we continue to to to beef you guys up and and and we're doing what we can to help amplify your voice because we come from the generation to sit down and shut up. You ain't changing shit. speaker-1: No. I was talking to someone about that where like we used to grow up essentially with ⁓ you you were thought of as a success the more you worked. ⁓ you're pulling doubles, ⁓ you're working two jobs, ⁓ you're working 60 hours this week, 20 hours overtime, like whoa, big accomplishments. Wow, you're a teacher and you're an Uber driver? Like that's awesome. Like they thought. Doing more work and having more effort for basically the same pay and/or worse pay was a sign of success when it was just a whole lie predicated on making you a worker drone. The philosophy had you motivated because you would do more and be happy with less. And young people are not. condition to believe that whatsoever. We're looking at all these nice cars. We're looking at these cool watches and chains. We're looking at our ⁓ famous folk. And we're like, well, my life's not like that at all. Well, my rent's stupid expensive. Well, I can't even get a loan for a car, let alone a house. Well, it's taking me eight months to get a job after college. Well I can't do anything with my degree. Not nobody's trying to hire me. Well, and they and you could keep going and keep going and keep going. Young people are not growing up with that same mentality because the system doesn't even pretend anymore. Before they at least allowed you a sliver of opportunity if you were, you know, a certain complexion or an extremely hardworking brown person. Yeah, you you could get it. But now it's like, huh, well, you'll rent it forever. Okay, well, you want to watch movies? Well, which movie do you want to watch? Because you're gonna have to get This subscription or this subscription or this subscription. ⁓ or you might have to get two of them, like Amazon and Hulu, just so you can watch your Disney Plus account. Like it just gets more convoluted. People used to be able to just buy their their DVDs and VCRs. Now you don't know nothing. You speaker-0: they're setting you up Yeah, they're setting you up for subscription everything down to housing. They're trying to change housing to a rental market. Yeah, they're trying to change farming into a speaker-1: lucrative business. It's not about feeding people. It's about right making money. How do we make this the most efficient? Well, use eight hundred pesticides and then have a robot go through and till the soil and all right, it'll be done in eight months. Monopolize the whole industry, every industry known to man. Yeah. Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate. All right. Fellas, I'm gonna have to bounce in a minute, but I need to know Kai's vision. What's your vision for the the the kid that that that is standing on the sidelines of the basketball court? He's got game but doesn't wanna get in, not quite yet, but he he may need to hear that that voice. Throw it at him, man. You are gonna miss every shot you don't take. The only way you're gonna become Michael Jordan is if you do what Michael Jordan did and stepped up to the plate and shot them shots. He missed a bunch, but he made a bunch. And the only way he kept making them is because he kept practicing, because he kept going hard, because he knew that he was better than his situation. Yeah, you're not on the court yet. But once you get on the court, you make the best of what you got. And every time that you get on the court, you provide all the value in the world so they can't take you off of it. You get all the minutes because you've done so much hard work to ensure your value is seen, felt, and valued. I know that it's hard to do what you're scared of, but once you do what you're scared of, you'll realize how hard it really wasn't. And you were it was all in your mind. speaker-0: Yeah. How do you eat an elephant? speaker-1: One bite at time. That's what my dad told me when I was doing this cognitive simple. I ⁓ I was watching this this this highlight of Jordan, right? Or it was K K and J R Ryder. They were talking they were talking on ⁓ I think ⁓ all the smoke podcast, right? And they were sharing the story about Michael Jordan, how they were they were they were young Bucks c coming into the league and ⁓ speaker-0: That simple. speaker-1: They were like, man, J are you smoke? They were killing him right now. We're killing Mike right there. We're we're busting him up right now. And Mike's like five feet from him. He carry everything. And their bulls are down by two. Next thing you know, bulls are up by 30 within like ten minutes. He he put he beat the brakes off of them young boys. You know, you you you you understand the situation. speaker-0: Yep. speaker-1: You understand that is oppositions that are trying to get you out of every situation that you can dream of and any opportunity that you want and you say, Nah, I ain't got time for that. I'm gonna do me right now. That that's what you're doing right now. And that's speaker-0: life that's life everybody's trying to push you off your game. ⁓ I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna give a shout out to ⁓ DJ Jazzy Jeff. ⁓ he has a song if you guys want a really good ⁓ preachy song DJ Jazzy Jeff practice and he's got a line in here that says I heard amateurs keep doing it till they get it right but pros do it so much speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: We can't get it wrong. That's practice. You do it so much. And Kaya, you you tell them, I used to play so much basketball, I knew I could feel the ribs of the basketball on my fingertips when I was gonna shoot. And and you know, if you do it enough, you know when you can shift it just enough. And you could be mid jump, you shift the ball just enough. 'Cause you practice and you practice and you practice it until it gets ridiculous. speaker-1: Yeah. You do it so much that you know when it's going in because it's just that natural. speaker-0: And sometimes it goes in you didn't even realize that you were that good. You were having that part. Sometimes that rim is a is a trash can. speaker-1: That is something. ⁓ And it feels good. speaker-0: Kaya, brother, it is so good to have met you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of how you are representing this younger generation. I'm proud of how you're trying to step up and represent North Carolina. North Carolina, pay attention. Your boy is coming. He's trying to do things in a different special way, in a meaningful way. And we're starting to see more and more of these grassroots candidates that are coming out because enough is enough. There's a good way of doing it. And obviously, right now is not the way. But it's really good to see you getting out here and putting in the work. I, for one, am a huge fan of you and your your story and your campaign. Shout out to your mom again. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: for putting for putting that structure in and showing folks that this there's some colored kids from the inner city with dads on part-time that can still come out here and make a huge, huge difference. So thank you for strapping them up and and getting in the game. speaker-1: ⁓ well I appreciate your appreciation to start. ⁓ like I said before, this was the absolute scariest thing I ever did in my life. ⁓ before if we was to re rewind to last year, start of January. I had never done a public speech of any sort whatsoever. My second biggest fear ever, right? I It's like heights. You get up a little too high and that's how I felt about any speech. Like it gives me anxiety. I'm just not sure what to say. I'm just stumbling over myself. And now I can firmly, confidently represent myself and potentially millions of other people. ⁓ all through hard work. like putting myself in those positions to be uncomfortable and growing from it. Like not even just like, okay, good job, Kaya. Yeah you did it. It's like, well, what could I have done better so that I'm not even that, you know, scared or anxious next time? Like how do I improve this so that my speech, even if it even if I'm nervous, I can communicate very clearly what I'm trying to say. How do I go, you know, how do I communicate to people without rambling and staying on topic like trying to make sure I'm taking a conscious effort to improve myself. ⁓ no matter how hard or challenging or scary it might be, because I know that there's a reason I'm doing it. I know my capability, I know what people need right now, some hope and some youth, some some real strategy, some real plans for a better future. speaker-0: Good positive energy. speaker-1: Positive energy. I know people need this. And I'm like, I can I can go ahead and sacrifice a little bit of my own comfort so that we can help the majority of people have a better outlook and a better eventual life. ⁓ it's just gonna take some, you know, work on myself. It's gonna take some accountability for myself. It's gonna take me breaking habits and building new better ones. ⁓ so we can do what we gotta do and people respect me. And I can represent everyone well. speaker-0: I can't wait to see it. ⁓ real quick, tell everybody where they can find you online. speaker-1: ⁓ just my name, Kaya Creekmore, K-Y-A-H-C-R-E-E-K-M-O-R-E.org. You can find my platform about me, a little bit more of my personal story. ⁓ you can donate, you can sign up with your email. ⁓ and there's all my social media links at the top or bottom of the website. Catch me on any of them support. That would be awesome. Greatly appreciate you. speaker-0: gonna have all those links in the description of this video too to make it easy for everyone to be able to find Kaya and participate and follow him. It's really cool. Again, it's really cool to see you getting out there talking your mess and doing your thing. I can't wait to see you dunking on your constituents. speaker-1: All right, I'll be real. I can't dunce. Not right now, at least. I'm a little I'm a little chunky, so I can just grab it. speaker-0: ⁓ I'm a so basically I have a chance then. speaker-1: You're not winning because I can't dunk. Be serious. speaker-0: That's the only way you're gonna be able to. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I'm nice with it, kid. I am nice with it. I'm speaker-1: after we after we play we're gonna break some cornbread and we're gonna be all right. Okay, okay, okay. That sounds good. speaker-0: All right, everybody. And with that, we out. speaker-2: Bye! Peace. Coconut chest.