Latest / TMI / Rashad Robinson on power vs. presence, plus the real story behind the Target boycott

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Rashad Robinson on power vs. presence, plus the real story behind the Target boycott · TMI

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm tamik a D. Mallory and it.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Shit boy, my son in general.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: We are your host of TMI.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Ta Mika and my song's information, truth, motivation and.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Inspiration, new name, new energy.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: How you doing today to make a D. Mallory.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I'm doing doing God doing God doing good.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: I'm tired because, like fifty thousand other people, I was
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: in Yankee Stadium for the third night of the jay
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: Z concert, the Extra Innings, and I actually stay did
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: all three nights.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Now you know, it was what.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: You said from day one. You was like real history.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I got history.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I've done.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: I've done the Roots Picnic and all three shows in
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Yankee cea like being a kid that grew up ten
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: blocks from Yankee Stadium, Like, and jay Z is coming
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: and perform his greatest hits inside Yankee Stadium for the
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: thirtieth anniversary of one of my favorite albums of all time?
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Like why would I not be at every one of
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: those shows? And none of them disappointed me? You know,
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: the third one actually probably was the best. The first
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: one was probably my favorite because just watching him and
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: ours was like nostalgia for me, and seeing him and
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Beyonce her come out and do marriage with Like, I
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: did not expect her to come out to sing Mary J.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Blige's Mary's at her residency in Vegas. Yeah, so she
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: can't just break it. Somebody said that Geezi broke his residency,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: but he's been doing it for so long you could
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: kind of play with it. But Mary like she you know,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: it's new. And she had a lot of people because
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: some of our people left Friday night show and went
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to Angelo and Jamilla. They left Friday night show, went
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to the airport the next morning and went to Vegas
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: to see Mary for Jamila's birthday. So happy birthday to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: shout out to doctor Jamillity.
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: David, shout out to Doctarday have birth day.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was, it was, It was amazing. I
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: think so if you haven't heard, which you probably must
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: be under rock if you didn't here that on Sunday
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: night that the doors did not open and closed the
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: doors for about four hours. The show did not start
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: to twelve fifteen exactly in the am. So it probably
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: was the fourth night. We actually have four nights of
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: a jay Z concert and didn't the show did I
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: finish to three am? And even though my feet was
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: on fire, because I had constructions on. You know, in
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: true New York fashion, you go to a jay Z concert,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: you know where you celebrating that nostalgic feeling. You want
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: to go back to that feeling. So I had my
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: constructions on my Yankee hand. My feet was on fire,
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: on fire on five.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: So, but our socks was too thin. I wore constructions
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the night before and I didn't feel no pain. And
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it was because I had on thick socks like cushion
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: on the bottom. Yr socks was tooth thing.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotta figure it out because I can't do
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: that again.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: It was too long and it was amazing. You need
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: it on shoes from Sketchers, you see when you go
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: to a concert place.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: I said, you need no, you need Sketchers slides everywhere.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: But those are also because they wear I think the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Yeezy slides that I wear, and they're cool. But after
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a while, even that like the giving you the type
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: of posh. I'm telling you what is wrong with you
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: that you not accepting that Sketches. Sketchers is for your
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: back and help you with your.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: But it's on my back, it's my foot was too.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Sketches is for all the things.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not gonna do no sketus.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: But see that's the problem with people. No, but that's
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: because you like certain things. You we have to when
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: you turn old like you are, you have to accept
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: it that that the things you used to do, you
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: can't do those things anymore. You have to wear things
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: that are more for your health and the the security
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: of your body and all of that than fashion and sketches.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Has some cute things.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: Have you seen that I'm not gonna see it because
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna wear no skits.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Well, don't say I didn't tell you. But and then
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: one day, you know, and and you know when we
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: got to put your clothes on for you and help
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you around.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Right now, I'm personally I'm personally witness kitchen. You know
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: what I'm saying. So moving right along.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: You know. On day three of the concert, it was
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: full of surprises.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: You know, like you said, Gezi was there, Usher was there.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: Beyonce came out, you know, Tianna Taylor actually did Mary's
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: verse in the song this time, Jada Kiss and Fat
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: Joe did they thing they did New York. Who else,
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Jermaine Dupre came out, Terrell came out, it was.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: It was like really like exhilarating.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: It was. It was one of those nights.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Man, I have never seen Rihanna and Beyonce perform on
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: the same stage at the same time.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: They weren't on it the same.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: On the same show. I've never seen that because.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Just so you know, being in the same stadium doesn't
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: mean like actually having to interact.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I've never seen it like this, But I'm just saying
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: I've never seen them perform on the same night, the
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: same stage.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I've never seen that.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: It was one for the ages, man, So shout out
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: to whole man. And the show was just amazing, and
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: you could tell that after you know, they try to
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: breach the doors. That's why it happened, and so it
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: was a safety.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: They didn't try they breached the doors. People got in
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and I watched this one little clip where a woman
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: squeeze is her way through. She gets kind of stuck,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and when she finally makes it in, she's like, you know,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: kind of out of it, Like it's not really a game.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: It's serious. Does people have you know, it's unfortunate to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: bring up old things, but this is similar to what
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: took place at City College.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's what he was definitely trying to
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: explore because he knew that, you know, with that type
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: of situation it was. He said, it was literally still
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: about ten thousand people outside, and had they you know,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: not secured everything and just said, are we not letting
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: the people in and we're just going to start to
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: show without them, people might have started bum rushing.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And anything could have happened. And you know, I think
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think that puff And tended for to die
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: at his basketball tournament. Obviously he was younger, didn't really
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: all the way understand logistics and all of that, and
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some blame for the college, but nevertheless,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: people got hurt like that was very serious, and he
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: ended up having to deal with that, like he had
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: to deal actually he had to know.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: I was there the day before because my my couple
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: of players on my school was playing in the tournament,
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: and I remember going to the day before and it
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: was like, we're supposed to go back the next day
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: and we didn't, you know, and that's.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: When the whole incident happened. Yeah, Like, I mean, you know,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: so I can understand that, but I still would say
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: that Yankee stadium's logistics was just not up to part
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: in the way it was. I would have thought they
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: would have been, because I've been to a number of
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Yankee games and it you know, people are definitely crowded
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: on the outside, but everybody kind of funnels to gets
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: where they're going. And I've been to you know, many,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: many many Yankee games, and I don't feel that they
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: had the same that they that they put the same
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: effort into the logistics the same way that they have
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: at other events. Maybe when concerts happened and the seeds
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: change and different things, you know, move around, it might
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: have caused there to be just like a difference in
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: process that they're not used to because they don't do
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it all the time. But there definitely was some kind
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of logistical issue that a lot of people were speaking on.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I saw it on social media. I ended up standing
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: in one spot talking to a man and he and
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I was said the same exact thing, like, you know,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: if another person tells us go that way, and then
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: that way, and that way and that way, and you
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: never really ever know where you're supposed to be, that's
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: like a problem, you know what I'm saying. And so
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: I think there's probably a lot of things that can
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: be in a debrief where people can understand that you
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: can put people's lives in danger when you don't have
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: your logistics together.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: No, that was one hundred percent true, you know. That's
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that happened. On the second night.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: It was just like trying to figure out where to go,
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: and we had passes and we had and everybody was saying,
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: you go this way, you go that way.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Fortunately for me the first night, shout out to Fat Joe.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: I was with him in his suite and we just
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: went and elevated and went straight to the suite. So
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: there wasn't much for me to have to deal with that,
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: and I just stayed in the suite the whole time
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: and just enjoyed that. But last night, it wasn't like that.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: I actually got in there kind of early, you know.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: But people needed to be in that stadium from four
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: o'clock from three o'clock.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, it wasn't crowded.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: The thing is, I don't I'm trying to figure out
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: why is it taken so long to feel because I
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: got into the stadium probably about seven forty five, right
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: almost eight o'clock and it wasn't nowhere in there.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: For well, you're going through a different entrance.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: But I'm talking about inside the stadium.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the people were outside.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: But that's what I'm saying. I'm so confused that why
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: is it so empty?
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I believe I when it shows.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: The doors opening at seven, it's like, why you're not
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: why it probably wasn't even about about a thousand people
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: in there.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I truly believe that the stadium's logistics were not up
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: to where it should be. I could be wrong. I mean,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: obviously I don't know.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Shit.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just over here just running chap.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying to myself the way that even when
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: I would get there the first you know, the second
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: night when I got there. The first night, when I
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: got there it was nine to thirty, the show didn't
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: start ton thirty. I probably got in like nine, right,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: and the front of Yankee City was so crowded still.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: At nine o'clock, and I'm like, I know the show
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: is supposed to start.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: People that don't have tickets too. That's the whole other thing,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: is that people don't have tickets, they just show up.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: But not that many people's way.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: That is, I promise you, because at least ten people
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: told me I ain't got no ticket, but I'm going.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I'm going. I'm going. I promised you.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: But those people that.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: They they had the dugout was popping all night. So
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: people's going into the little spots doing anything.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: List on that line. They just go to the door
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and see what happens. Line. You know why people feel
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: that way. You know why people feel that way because
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: they in their mind jay Z and all of this,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: this is like that's the homie, like I know I'm
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: gonna get in, Like that's not it fail they they
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I'm telling, well, we know for sure that people who
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: breached the door did not have ticket don't because they
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: know something and they know that for sure. I mean
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I saw I read an article on it. Some of
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: them did not have tickets. I'm sure some of them did.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: It was a mixture, but there were people who didn't
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: have tickets. There were people who went there and said,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: when the crowds, we just going inside because this is
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: everybody is invited. That's what I mean. What do you
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: read you know where everybody's invited. But anyway, let's get
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: this show going today because we have a good guest
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that's coming up to talk about his new book. You know,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I have sensitivity for authors because I know how hard
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: it is to write a book, and what has been
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: created by this gentleman is a masterpiece. And so this
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: is true. I'm excited to welcome our guests. So let
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: me just piggyback on the conversation about jay Z weekend.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Of course, I went, I enjoyed, my friends went. I
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: was able to take my son, which is a very
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: you know, big moment for us because he's like the
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: tail end of Jay and I'm the all the way in,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: you know, from day one, and so you know, definitely
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: having him to be able to experience it with me,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: that was great. And everybody. I saw everybody and had
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: a great time and just enjoyed it. And I'm you know,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: and and I'm happy that other people. I'm so happy
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that New York has had a stretch like the Knicks
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: winning and all the stuff that's been happening. We needed
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: this city. This has taken like has not just revitales revitalized,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: also made some people money. You know, the from the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: T shirt guys, to sneaker stores to the you know,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: every single thing, the restaurants, the clubs, everything. There has
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: been a real, as you said, revitalization of the city
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and and and and giving people an opportunity to like
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: come out and enjoy themselves in a way that has
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: not happened in a long time. And so and I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: think it kind of started all the way back with
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: mom Donnie's win. Like since then, we've been having some moments.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And while there have been there has been some violence
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: and some bad things to happen, it hasn't been as
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: bad as it could be. Right, there was a little
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: destruction during the next games kind of got a little,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: but it did not people didn't burn the city then,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: you know, there was no looting and things of that nature.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: So this has been a good stretch and I loved
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that for us. So you know, I'm happy, happy to
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: know that. I feel like, you know anyway, So that's
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: that now I wanted to talk about, you know, the
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: last couple of weeks we've been in sort of this
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: world of going back and forth on the Target boycott.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, I don't shy away from it. I
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: know everybody's not gonna agree. We know that when you
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: open your mouth, even for the funny thing about it
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: is that even working with our sister Nina Turner, who
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: started the boycott, first person to get out there and
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: say less boycott Target, supporting her efforts, and then also
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: you know, partnering with Jamal Bryant Pastor Bryant and working
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: with him and all the things that have happened, there
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: was controversy. So from day one there's been people. It
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: was an onslaught of people who said, why y'all doing that?
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense? What about this? What about that?
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: What about the businesses? What about all these you know,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: what about the workers? What about what about? What about?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Well I don't like it? Well, how come we can't
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: focus on a different company? Well, I don't you know
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: what y'all get? Then when when you know, when we
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: said okay, Pastor Bryant is going to suspend some of
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: his daily activity that he had been holding for over
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: a year, then it was people who said, oh, you
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: know who took a check? Did y'all get money? Which
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: absolutely did not happen. In between all of that, there
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: was a different celebrity, a different brand, a different somebody
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to work with Target, which created issues the pastors, the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: this that I mean it, There has been a consistent
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: strugg of opinion and thought and feelings, and people who
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: have found themselves standing firmly even when they don't know
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: what they're talking about on one side of the track
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: so or the other. So that we're used to and
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: so we don't shy away from it. We address what
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: we feel needs to be addressed. And you know, throughout
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the three days of this concert, on Friday, Jay Z
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: makes a comment that you know, people pretty much like
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you're you're upset with me about my albums being sold
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: in Target. This is not this is not exactly what
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: he said, but I assume that this is what he meant,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that you're upset with me or challenging me because my
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: albums are being sold in Target, and yet you're using Meta,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: you're using Amazon, Like, are you also boycotting those people?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Because if not, it's it's like it's hypocrisy to some extent.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, one of the things that
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I found to be the biggest sort of argument, if
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: you will, or the spot where I go back and
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: forth with people a lot, is in this idea that
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: when I talk about all the other people who have
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: done who have had partnerships with Target and people who've
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: worked with them throughout this process, Black folks that have
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: continued working with them and or have new partnerships, They're like, Oh,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: it's not the same level. It's not the same level.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Those people are at this level and jay Z is
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: at the top of the food chain, so it makes
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: it different. And I guess I'm trying to hear that,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: but I don't all the way accept it because for us,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the people who were holding the responsibility of the boycott
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: every day, every time we saw anybody, including a lady
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: with a pocket with a red bag walking down the street,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: it's like, God, dang, you know why why like that?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: We always felt that we would always discuss it, like damn,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: are we making progress? What's happening? Thankfully, what we saw
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: was a stock price that was down low for enough
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: time to prove that the boycott was actually a part
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of the pressure keeping Target's ass on their toes, right, Like.
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: We know that.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: And so the reason why I'm saying that is because
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: when I hear jay make that statement why not Meta
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and why not this one and Amazon and all of that,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: it doesn't just stick with him for me, right, Like,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I don't hear that and then say or I can't
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: believe Jay Z said that. You know why because in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the movement, and when I say in the movement, i'm
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: talking about other social justice organizations, organizes, people that folks
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: respect in the movement, people who are doing great work.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Our brother Charlemagne, We've had to have this conversation. That
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: topic came up all the time. So when I hear
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: him say it, it's reminiscent of people in the comments
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: section of our iguments that we had in the movement,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: things that have been off the table that nobody has
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: known about. And what makes it to the people's point,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: what makes it a need to be addressed in this moment,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: is that his platform is so big that when he
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: says it, it goes so far that it in effect,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: in effect, it has the ability to influence people's thinking.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And therefore you have to educate because you can't just
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: leave it unaddressed. So I want to go back to
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: how the Target boycott started and why right again, from
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: my perspective and what I know based upon receipts that
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: we have proven, senat Anina Turner was the initial person
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to say, let's boycott Target if they don't turn go back,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: if they don't read if they don't reverse their decision
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to stand with the biggest biggot, to stand with bigotry
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. That is what she said. She called me.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: She's the first person to put that out there in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the world. The reason why this is important and how
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Target became the Target is because of the position their
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: CEO took during the uprising for George Floyd, which they
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: also are headquartered in the place where the actual heart
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: of the uprisings took place, which is in Minneapolis, right.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: That is where the CEO comes out and says, George
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Floyd could have been one of my employees, and therefore
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: we are committed to X, Y and Z the DEI practices,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the different things that they were going to do with
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the black community. Also, sometime years before that, Michelle Obama
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: names Target Tarja and women everywhere. I didn't even know
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: what Target was until I heard her say Tarja, and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh wow. And we in many ways
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: began to support Target one because the first Lady, that
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: forever black first lady kind of said this is the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: place for us and made it a cultural, a culturally
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: accepted business for all communities and particularly for black folks.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And then two we know that the CEO made this
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: very very powerful statement about his position on George Floyd. Now,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: in addition to that, their initiatives that they started with
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: through their DEI programs allowed people like tabith the Brown
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and other businesses to go into Target and go into
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: partnership with them. And it was a place that we
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: could go to find many black products on the shelves.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: A sister be Judy, just a bunch of people, let
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: me not get in trouble. And it became a place
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: where you could go to find some black businesses, a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: lot of black businesses. And therefore, when the list of
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: companies are dropping DEI and saying and siding with the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: bigotry of the Trump administration, people are listening to the rollout,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: and at some point when Target comes out, which is
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: what forty eight hours later, maybe seventy two hours later,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: folks say, bingo, I can I can impact that, I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: can do something.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And they felt the most with that. They felt the most.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Felt that's right. They say, a lot.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Of promises, it has seemed to be with diversity are
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: inclusions seem to be on one to be on the
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: side right Christy and George for Floyd situation, So people
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: felt betrayed by that. I don't think they felt betrayed
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: by anything.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Well, well, whether they no, they may have felt because
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I see people they're not on this, and they're not
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: you know, they don't support Amazon anymore, They're not going
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to be. What I'm saying is that when people saw
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: a target it, it moved people to do something right.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: And I want to put a pin in that so
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: that I can make a comparison to a different issue, Okay,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Breonna Taylor and Pamela Turner. Pamela Turner was a woman
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: in Houston, Texas who had a was struggling with the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: mental illness issue. An officer who actually lived in that
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: neighborhood and knew her challenges saw her, or perceived or
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: heard a report or something that she was rumbling in
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a garbage can approached her, and while Pamela Turner was
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: laying down on the ground, the officer shot her to
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: death and killed her. That to me was one of
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the worst cases I've ever seen. It's not to say
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: that Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, all the lists of a
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Tatiana Jefferson, that the list of other people are not terrible,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: But this particular case in Pamela Turner moved me personally
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to say, how could we not raise the roof on
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: society behind a woman who had a mental health issue
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: being shot to death on the ground in the ways
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: in which she was And I can be I can
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: tell you that most people when they hear her speaking
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: about Pamela Turning today, they'll say, who is that? What happened?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about this. It's not that they
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: don't care. It doesn't make them bad people, but that's
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: just not something that they knew about. And people will say, well,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: what did y'all do? We went there, We went there,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: we raised her name, we had a daughter on our shows,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: we talked about it, We tried everything we could to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: get some attention around pan turn the story, but it
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: did not move people in the same way that the
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: story of Breonna Taylor and other stories have done right
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and all of them deserve equal and more than what
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: they even received in terms of attention, awareness and the
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: fight to at least have some accountability for the loss
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of life all of them received. That you cannot always
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: determine what is going to be the thing that moves
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: people in a movement, sometimes people will go in the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: direction that you are thinking. But at other times people
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: will not be They will not be inspired on a
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: particular cause if they do not feel that there is
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: something that they can actually do right, that there's a
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: connection and they know I have the ability to impact this.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: So when Jay and other people raise this issue again,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: it's not just Jay, It's been Charlomage. It's been people
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: in our movement that have said, why won't we do
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: all these other things? The thing that I don't I'm
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: confused about is are we saying that because all the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: companies are not being boycotted at the same time, that
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: that means that the efforts of millions of people should
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: be ignored. Is that what we're saying? And are we
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: also saying that we lack the sophistication to be able
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: to understand that when there is a movement and a
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: struggle and a target pun intended that we have chosen,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: that we can get behind that complete that task and
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: then move on to other things, especially when people see
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the power of what we were able to accomplish in
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: point one before trying to go to point two. Because
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: what happens is that when we ask the question, why
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: not all of these other companies at the same time,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and why this one and not that one. What we
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: are doing essentially is saying let's do nothing. Let's do nothing,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: because we already know that when you give people forty
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: different tasks at one time, it is very difficult for
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: people to be able to focus and get something done.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: We have to look at what our intended message and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: target is and then move on that. And I am
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: proud of the people who didn't ask the question why
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: not this or why not that? That they were able
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: to say, if this is the way that we're moving,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: I am going to get behind it and support it
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: because I want to be in the number of black
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: people who are standing up for ourselves, regardless of whether
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: or not I agree with everything about this issue. I
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: didn't choose target as the target, but you know who did?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: My mother did, people from her dance group, did people
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: in the community chose target? The people chose target. And
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that's it. And so you don't have to like it,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you don't have to support it. You can actually go
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: walk right in the target. But no matter what we say,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: no matter what we say, and I'm going to continue
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to repeat that over and over again, because guess what,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: we are not all going to agree. We are not.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: And I have listened and watched people sit on TV,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: on radio shows, now on a stage in front of
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: what is now millions of people stand up and try
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to diminish the work, the value of the work that
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: we are doing by uniting around a cause and being
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: very serious about it. And what I would say over
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and over and over again is that there are probably millions,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I would say, hundreds of thousands of us that don't
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: care what you sell. We ain't buying it if it's
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: gonna be in target.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: That's and that's pretty much my stance, you know. Like
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: when he said that, I say to myself, you know,
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: like I wanted to reply in the freestyle, like I
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: really said, I'm gonna write me an agropella to reply
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: to it, you know, because that's the way to do it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: So I've been thinking about it. I've just been mowing
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: it over in my head. But I just think in
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: my just if I have to answer right now, what
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: I would say is you've been doing this thirty years, right,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: you know, activists along who've been the part of this
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: boycott have been doing twenty thirty years as well. So
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: he's an expert, and Hip Hop is a expert businessman,
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: you know, But none of us are experts and everything.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: And I think there are people who have been doing
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: civil rights, who have been boycott and who know the history.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Even when we look at the Target boycott is documented
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: to be the most successful boycott since the Montgomery boycott.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: This is documented, the stats and everything say that. So
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: you know, there's room for everybody to be taught, you know.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: And I think sometimes you say things or sometimes you
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: believe things, and I'm not a person that just is
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: going to let you say something that I don't agree with,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: no matter who it is. So I don't actually agree
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: with that statement, you know. And I think it's open
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: for dialogue and we could learn from each other. Maybe
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: you know something I don't about the situation. Maybe I
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: know something you don't, but I got a little something
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: I'm putting together.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that we can learn from one another.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I'm open to that, and I think that that's part
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: of why I continue to under score that throughout this
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: entire process, I have not or I have chosen not
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: to fight every black person in Target. Yeah, because there's
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: so many different perspectives and ideas, and I felt like
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: if I you know, there's been many disappointing things that
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: have happened, and I felt like if I every time
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: somebody popped up in a partnership with Target, if I
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: focus my attention on that, not only would I not
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: be able to get a lot of the other work
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: that I have done, but I would literally be spending
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: my time in a posture like of darkness, like anger
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: all the time. Because of the ways in which you're fighting.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: You know that the fight you're fighting is a good fight,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and then there are people who will always undermine it,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: always undermine it, either because they just don't know, or
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: either because you know they don't feel connected to it.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: There's always still't agree and don't agree. Listen, everybody in
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the movement didn't agree on Target.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: And it's not a thing.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: It's not there's nothing wrong with not agreeing, but just
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: to understand the premise.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Of why we don't boycott a million things at one.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Time, it's not it's not really viable because getting bought
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: targeted up.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: To exact people focusing on one thing.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: So telling people, look, you can't go and buy nothing
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: from nowhere, and we're just gonna that's just not something
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: that is doable in this room. It's never been something
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: that has been you know, successful, So while we try
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: strategy that that's not been successful. So you know that's
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: my take on it. My little free soeund and put
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: together a little a cappella.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: All right. So our next guest, actually, I'm sure has
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: a perspective on this, as he is one who's led
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: successful boycotts. He has a new book out that we
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: want to tell you about right now check out with
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: shar Robinson will be right back right. Well, we we
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: are in studio today with our friend, our good friend.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Y'all know, we love to have our friends on our show,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and this particular friend is a super powerhouse and so
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: you all may know him from TV as being the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: man with the hat who's super smart, that sits at
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the table with people at the highest level of corporate
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: entertainment and media speaking on various topics and advocating for
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: black folks and other groups that have been marginalized and
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: or oppressed. And that would be true, all those things
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: would be true. But he's also our buddy, our friend,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: and we're happy to have Rashard Robinson today, who is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: a social justice strategist and author whose work has helped
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: produce changes in corporate behavior, media representation, technology policy, and
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the criminal justice system. Rashad led Color of Change for
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: nearly fourteen years and previously worked at GLAD. His record
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Your record includes helping to launch the Progressive Prosecutor Movement,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: winning net neutrality protections, challenging discriminatory practices and technology, and
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: co leading a successful boycott against Facebook and Instagram.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: So thank you for coming. This is your first time.
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: So I'm a I'm a listener and a fan and
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: now I get to and now I get to be
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: you know, participants.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having it.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for being with us today.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: It's always a pleasure to see you.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: You know, I always I admire just watching you navigate
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: in different spaces. You know, you always seem comfortable, You
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: always have the right answers. You know, I never used
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: to I used to be very flustered in skin and
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: watching you it gives me a level of confidence and
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: like and it gives me something inspired to So I
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: just want to say, like your motivation to me, So
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you doing this. So now you have this
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: book and when I'm reading, like I'm reading the Synopsist
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: and going through it, and it really just culminates the
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: work that you do. Most people don't understand what it
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: takes to create a move and what it takes to
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: create power. A lot of people just see old there
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: is a march, or they see people boycott, and they
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: see people angry, and you just summed it up that
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: none of those things individually actually create power. You know,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: there's a culmination of all those things. So give me
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: just an idea of what made you want to write this.
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: There were so many moments along the way where I
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: would see people move into what I think talk about
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: is magical thinking, like the stories they tell ourselves about
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: change but are not actually true. Sometimes the things that
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: we wish we kind of hope. There was this moment
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: y'ah at the It was at the end of the
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: Obama years, and they had invited all the criminal justice advocates,
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: like people who had been working locally, all the folks
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: that they work folks work locally. They had a lot
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: of funders, they had some formally incarcerated folks, they had
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: national folks, local folks. It's probably about a hundred plus
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: people and they were doing a victory laugh on what
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: they had all the people, or the Obama administration was
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: doing a victory lap. This was after Killery had lost
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: and so we knew what was about to happen, but
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: they were trying to keep us in the story of
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: the successes, right. And you know, I go to this
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: meeting and you know, they're talking about different things, and
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: there was a fireside chat with the redd A Lynch
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: during lunch and she was the Attorney General at the time,
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: and she's ticking off all these new announcements, new announcements,
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: and I'm like, are any is this any of this real?
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: And you know, they started letting people ask questions.
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: And you know, for the first several years of the
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: Obama administration, I wasn't really invited to a lot of things.
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: It wasn't tel towards the end, you know, I was
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: used to being out front with petitions, pushing, but that
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: was the role and so by this so I wasn't
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: always the person they would bring a microphone too, because
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: I would oftentimes ask a question about corporate power or.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Something and people uncomfortable, Andy Bee uncomfortable.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: But you know, now to the end of the administration,
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: and you know, the young people that are walking around
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: with the microphones, they need jobs.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: I had jobs.
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: So they came to me with the microphone and let
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: me us and I said, thank you, Attorney General Lynch,
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: appreciate this. But you're in a room full of the
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: people who help make this happen. What is our marching warders,
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: What should we do next? Because what we know is
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: that the folks that just got elected are trying to
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: undo all these things. And her retort was that we've
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: made a lot possible and the country has changed.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: They thought that for really.
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: This is what they said to a room full of
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: the biggest activists, donors, leaders have been working on criminal.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: Justice, that things had changed and that things were going
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: to continue to move forward.
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: And I was just like, this is exactly the type
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: of magical thinking that needs to be disrupted. And it
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: doesn't get disrupted just by running good campaigns. It disrupted
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: by offering up a new framework. And that was when
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: I first realized that maybe it was a book, maybe
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: it was something else, but I needed to do something
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: that stepped back. And that was, you know, ten years
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: ago now, but over those ten years, so much has
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: happened so many moments where I felt like the calling
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: to put in wins and losses, but also build a
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: framework that is twenty first century, that focuses on the
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: role of corporations, that focuses on the role of race,
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: that focuses on the role of what's happening in big tech,
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: and gives us all like the tools we need right
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: now to win more things.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: From presence to power. And when I think of that,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: you know, being someone who's been in this movement for
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: thirty years of my life, I know all too well
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: what it is to have proximity and not power. And
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: I'm that you have experienced some of the very same things.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about other people. I'm saying even
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: me being in the rooms, going to the meetings, being
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: at the events, you know, being invited, but not feeling like,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: when it's time to move the needle that I have
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the actual power to do so or the influence to
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: do so, and also kind of feeling like people who
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: are supposed to be on your side are not necessarily
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: like they're okay with just being invited to the thing, yep.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And that's really hard, you know, And I just wonder
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: what is your experience there, Like, have there been moments
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: when you had to say and do you talk about
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: it in the book, moments where you had to say, oh, oh, okay,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like a problem person here, you know, you know
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: what I mean, because your ideas are maybe too strong
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: to whatever good.
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: Well, the willingness to not take corporate money meant that
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: I was free in a lot of situations.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I tell a lot of.
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: Stories in the book, and they break them down so
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: that people can sort of have the strategic understanding behind them.
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: But I talk a little a lot about the back
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: and forth with Facebook during the big Tech section and
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: just exactly what you're saying, right, So Facebook had so
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: many harmful practices and the government was not regulating.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: Our cars are safe because there's regulation and rules, not
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: because the auto industry.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Cares so much about it.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: And tech is the same way. There's no rules.
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: So these big companies regulate themselves and so then they
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: do whatever they want. And so, you know, we had
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: been advocating, you know, as I was leading Color Change,
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: we'd be advocating and pushing and demanding very publicly for
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: Facebook to do things.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: And while they were doing that they had.
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: We finally got into the table to talk to them,
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: like getting in the room talking to them.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Not at the highest.
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: Levels, but but we were, but we were, but we
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: were talking to people who were decision makers. And then
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: we found out for the New York Times that they
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: had hired a pr for to plant spaceless stories about
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: the organization and me, and the New York Times revealed
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: it that they hide this company called Definers, And all
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: of a sudden, now.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: Facebook has to deal with this crisis on their hands
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: and they have to meet with us now at the
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: highest levels now Sheryl Sandberg and marketing. Yeah, right, And
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: I remember going out to.
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: Menlo Park, which is their headquarters, and get to the
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: headquarters and they want me to sign an NDA to
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: have people for me. I'm just like, no, yeah, we've
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: been under attack, so it don't sign the NDA. And
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: they give me a big badge that says no NDA
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: on it where around their headquarters.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: So now I go to the meeting, and you know,
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: through those.
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: Series of meetings over the several years, I really did
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: learn the difference between being in.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: A dialogue and a negotiation.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: They want to keep you on a dialogue. They want
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: to keep you talking. They want to be able to
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: say that they're talking to you. You know, we had
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: a meeting with Tamika. We really heard her concerns. We
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: understand that the community is upset being in negotiations when
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: you have actual leverage, when you have the ability to
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: set a timeline of expectations that if you don't do
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: this by this date, we're going to do this. And
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: I talk about the difference because I think it's important
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: because proximity to power, Presence can be intoxicating. Sometimes it
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: can make us think that something has happened that hasn't happened.
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: When we mistake presence for power. We can think that
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: the black president means that we're post racial. We can
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: think that the pop star that announces they're pregnant and
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: the internet stops means that America loves black people as
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: America loves black culture. But we know that America can love, celebrate,
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: and monetize of course black culture, and hate black people
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: at the same time. And so presence can be a trap.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: It's not bad, it just can make us think that
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: something has happened. And so you know, even the cover
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: of the book I Presence is faded, and power is
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: like fully realized because presence does fade, it goes in
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: in and out. How much visibility, how much shine, those
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: go in and out? Your ability to shape the world,
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: shape the outcomes, shape the decisions. That's power, and that's
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: what we as black people, what we as folks who
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: are marginalized, who have been excluded, that's what we have
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: to constantly because they're going to always be willing to
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: be in dialogue with us, always be willing to give
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: us a little bit of presence, but are we in
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: a place to actually change the rules. And what I'm
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: trying to offer is a framework for that. And one
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: of the things I did as I was writing this book,
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: I was like, how do we help people apply these tools?
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: And so at the end of nine of the chapters,
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: there's exercises like take that a piece of paper, and
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: it's called find your Power. And my goal was to like,
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: how do I help people make sense of this If
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: you are taking on a fight around books being banned
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: in your local community, or you're facing down a data center,
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: or you have some issue with Congress or a big business,
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: all of those things are sort of they have entry
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: points in the book.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's very interesting. Yeah, and there's something that
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: I read that you said that having moral clarity, having
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: public opinion, and all those things on your side does not.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Necessarily mean that you want what else do you need
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: to have?
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Because that's that's hard for us, just as minded individuals
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: or who actually come from a place of morally and
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: want to do things just right. So to know that
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: you can have all those things and still not when
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: it's crazy.
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: It's crazy. But I think it's once you release that,
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: once you did.
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: That, then it helps you actually just settle in with
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: what's required. Right.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: People will say, seventy five percent of Americans are you know,
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: want sensible gun reform?
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: We haven't God only that a poll. So that means
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: that there's a moral clarity more is there, it's there.
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: Morals got meant, you got religious leaders calling for it,
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: you have.
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: The majority of Americans for it, and.
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: You got schools of white kids being shot up, babies, babies,
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: and you can't pass the legislation. And so I talk
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: a lot about profiteering in the book because I think
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: we have to truly understand profiteering in order to understand
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: one of the biggest things that stands in the way
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: of change actually happened. Behind every type of injustice is
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: someone making money.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Someone profiting.
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: And so that is why sometimes public opinion doesn't actually
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: help us, because you have to.
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: Overcome people that are going to fight like hell to
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: keep the systems that have benefited them in place. And
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: I talk about profiteering in two ways.
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: I talk about profiteing in terms of money, because you
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: know it is about money, but I asked talk about
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: profiteering in terms of higher er. I think about Stephen Miller,
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: who works for Trump, as a profiteer. Now, I don't
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: think Stephen Miller is really in it for the money necessarily,
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: That's not why you go and work in the White House.
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: He's in it because he wants his kids to be
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: able to go to schools that your kids can't, that's right.
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: He wants to have access to certain rewards of society
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: for himself, and he wants society structured to his benefit
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: and not yours. And that is a type of profit
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: heer in too. And I think what we sometimes do,
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: what the left sometimes do, is the left will sometimes
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: focus simply on the economic hierarchy and miss the race
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: race hierarchy and as a number of people have read
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: the book, they've like, you know, shod, I really love
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: the book, but you know, you kept going back to
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: race over and over and over against everything.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: And I was like, well, let's just be really clear.
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: Our interest in avoiding race sometimes on the left is
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: what got us into this. Right, Like, if once we
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: know that racial injustice is their strategy, we have to
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: be clear that racial justice has to be ours. And
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: I think about sort of like the profiteering, the hierarchy
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: and the money as being very clear as to why
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: you can have public opinion on your side, why you
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: can have millions of people in the streets and you
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: still may not get the thing over if you are
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: not directing your energy at the places that are going
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: to stand in the way. And So in this moment
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: where I think where I look at what's happening with
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: voting rights, I look at sort of our inability to
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: get the type of policing reform or other things. Taking
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: our fights simply to the city councils or state capitals
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: and not taking on the profiteers, not taking on the
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: corporations who are making money, not taking on the enablers,
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: will be to our detriment, and so any twenty first
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: century sort of understanding of power has to address the
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: twenty first century where our opponents have built power, and
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: they've built it through corporations, through enablers, through money, through marketing,
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: through all of these things.
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: And if we're not disrupting that, we're playing the wrong game.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: We're playing the absolute wrong game, and we're playing a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: game that just sets us up to lose war. You know,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: during the target boycott, at the height of the Target boycott,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: you and I had many conversations, and I've said many times,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: but let me also say here thank you for taking
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the time to listen to me, because there were days
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: when I was really heartbroken, you know, and you said,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: this is hard. Yep, this is hard. You said, boycotts
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: are hard. Organizing our people, it is hard. And I now,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: especially after the fallout and how all the things happen
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: that no matter what you say and how your intentions
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: may have been over here, people's emotional and emotional and
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: also their passion in general around it, it just feels
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: to them one way, and there's nothing that you can
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: say to cancel that out, Like you just have to
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: walk into it. Yep, you know I've heard you say
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: that before too. You were speaking somewhere and I was
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: listening to you say that when people are committed to
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: you being wrong for whatever reason, instead of trying to
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: like fight it all the time, sometimes you just to
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: walk into it and then figure it, like figure it
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: out from even inside the bowl. It was something about
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: being inside the bowl. But when you said it was hard,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I understood what you meant until
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: I've actually had to go through and carry a boycott
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: for this long. It is really really hard.
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So, like, as someone who's done this, I always
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: tell people right up front that it's hard. I actually
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: think we do people at disservice that we're going to
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: overtake authoritarianism or we're gonna face down the biggest money
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: corporations in the world, and that it's going to be easy,
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: and it's going to be easy.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: You know, anyone who tells you there.
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: Is like these five ten steps that you can take it,
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: and like they're playing in your Shore's a book out there,
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: like there are all sorts of stuff out there then,
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: and I think, like, if you if you want to
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: take ten steps to lose by their book, if you
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: actually want to recognize that the forces standing in our
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: way are winning not by accident, but because this is
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: not easy. This is not simple. Our ancestors who won
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: and lost battles along the way, like we're doing their
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: very best, and it's our job right now to do
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: our very best. But knowing that it is hard is
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: actually important because the other thing I recognize about the
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: commitment that the other side has. It's like, sometimes, you know,
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: on our side, I hate people say when we win,
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: and they'll talk about when we.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Win, and they'll say all these things.
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and our opponents never really say that the war
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: is never over for them.
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: This war was never over for them.
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: Like, so, like, you know, if you're like a Marvel fan,
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: if you're like a fan of like action movies, imagine
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: facing an opponent where the war never ends for them
• 51:07
  Speaker 5: and you think you think there's some magical ending point
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: of the war. We've like structured ourselves. And so what
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: they've done really effectively is they've made it the whole
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: thing about their participation, the whole sport about their participation,
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: and our side is sort of like we're a spectator
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: sport where we go and we watch the Knicks or
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: we go and we watch Hamilton and we.
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: Sit in we sit in this, we sit in the
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: seats and watch. But they're on the field. So you
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: go to the gym and they're putting Fox News up
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: on the TV.
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: Every right, they're we're in their red caps around they
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: are like putting on their jersey and every day are
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: showing up because they believe they are in a never
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: ending war for their children, for their hierarchy, for like
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: their profiteering, all of these things. And we're in this
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: like battle of like, oh well, eventually we're gonna win
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: and they're gonna come on our side. No no, no,
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: we're gonna we're gonna get some books in the library
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: and then they're gonna try to ban them. We're gonna
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: get some people elected through voting rights, and then they're
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: gonna try to make sure that we don't actually get
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: to see a voting booth ever. Again, Like this is
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: the back and forth. And that's why power is so important.
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: And understanding power and understanding what our opponents will do
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: means that we could be more clear out about what
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: we're willing to do for ourselves, for our family, for
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: our community, because that's what it's all about, at the end.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Of day, how hard it's going to be to actually
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: do it's gonna be. What do you think is the
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: hardest part for me? What becomes difficult is the internal confusion.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's like because I already know the beast
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: that I'm up against.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I come from a family that is in a never
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: end of trouble. That's that's that's always been because they
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: are true historians. They come out of a movement that
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: was like before our movement. You know, my parents started.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: My parents they are now eighty years old, and my
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: grandfather organized the labor union for my dad. I'm not
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: for my dad. My dad's father organized a labor union
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: for mill workers in North Carolina. So this is a
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: never ending struggle for them. And they wear the clothes
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, They've got it on. They're in the struggle
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: all the time. But and they are constantly trying to
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: get me to understand that us fighting each other is
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: like where the process slows down so much because every
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: movement they've been in, the internal struggle has been the thing.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: Everybody has an idea of what they think is going
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: to win it, like it's right or wrong.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: It's just your theory of what it looks like.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: And that's what a lot of leaders come to the
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: table and they say, I think we should do this,
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: and I think we should do this, and then they
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: come to success it. It's not like they forget or
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: abandon their.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: Theory, right.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: So they and and and in some ways they want
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: to be able to say I told you we should
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: have did it this way, right, and so, so.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Those things happen to so and I think for me
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: and I think us as black people.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: So when we look at these the targets, we look
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: at the boycott that you did with Facebook and and
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: all those things, I think that if we are not careful,
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: they will divide us all the time in those things,
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: like real leaders who actually love our people. Because what
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: happens is me and you might differ in a strategy
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: for a target a target no no pun at target, yeah,
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: you know, for a boycott, and because we differ, people
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: will be like, he's not with you, he's not for
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: black people, he's not real because if he was with you,
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: then he would say the same thing.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, that's not how this move that's not that.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: That's no movement has a monolithic leaders who have one
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: idea all the time.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: No, sometimes we I have different disagreements.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we gotta go to the table and we might argue,
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: we might be mad at each other, but we understand
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: that our liberation is bond together. So we're gonna figure
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: it out. And I tell people I don't agree with
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: all my friends. Me and my friends meant to make
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: all you all the time, but I would our hold
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: strategy for this podcast starts out with I don't agree.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: I think we need disagreement, and I think we need
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: ways to disagree. When I look back at the the
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: fights between the Boys and the Washington and we're all
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: arguing in really deep ways, and they all love black people,
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: all love black people, and they also like really respected
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: each other, you know.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: And they had a way of arguing.
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: But let's just be clear, Like, you know, I talk
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: about the ALEC campaign's right, how hard that.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: But I didn't like go into the fact that.
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: Like South ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, it
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: is this right wing organization that was founded by the
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: same people, that same guy that founded Heritage Foundation, which
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: is behind Project twenty twenty five and.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: So much more.
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: And I they are behind that. They were behind the
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: Staniard ground laws. They bring corporations and state legislators into
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: meetings and they basically write what they call model legislation,
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: and they introduce it into states. They're so successful that
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: state legislators will take the model legislation and not even
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: remove the ALEC name off and it would get passed.
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: And they were behind the discriminatory voter right d laws
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: back and you know that said you can vote with
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: your gun license, but not your student ID. They were
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: behind all of these really outrageous laws. And I let
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: a campaign that got over one hundred corporations to divest
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: from sponsoring ALIX. But I watched during some of those
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: battles whereas I was walking out of a meeting with
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: a corporation, another civil rights group was walking in to
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: get a.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Check, and and you know, and like they.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: Were like and had my camp had I waited to
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: build a coalition for that campaign, it would have never happened.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, that same group or organization, I don't know
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: what it is not discussed that, but I can imagine.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: But anyway, what's probably walking in a room doing something else,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: somewhere else that was really important. It's you know, it's
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: not It's like it's like, to my son's point, there's
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: tension in and how we ever get to the place. Well,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: let me let me say this, let me say it
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: this way. I think that our fights are now so
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: much more public than they were in the past, and
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: so the internal struggles that you speak about that were
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: very necessary today it's on social media, and.
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: The attention economy of social media makes it so that
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: in order for you to be heard, you have to
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: say nothing, and you have to say it in a
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: certain way.
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: You have to sort of burn people down in the.
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: Process, right, I mean, you know, like the glee sometimes
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: that I see people take out of taking down people,
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: where I'm like, are we are we trying to disrupt
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: an idea or are we trying to take out that person?
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: And I feel like knowing the difference between that is
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: really important. But I'll you know, I I fundamentally, you know,
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: believe in all the work that I have done that
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: you're gonna have all sorts of you're all gonna have
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: to take you know, in the middle of the Alley campaign,
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: we found out that Alec had hired Edelman pr to
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: basically try to.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: You know, they came for you every every week, try
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: to make.
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: Me and you know, my dimples angry black man. And
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: and I would start seeing stories like you know, in
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: right wing media that I was like, you know, the
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: next coming of this communist And I was just like,
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: continue to do the work and focus on running the
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: campaign frum beat of building enough energy, responding to the
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: moments that happen out in the world, and then over time, right,
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: they're gonna do everything they can to prevent themselves from
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: having to negotiate. Once you build up enough leverage to negotiate,
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: now you're in that back and forth. And I really,
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: I really want to make that clear to folks, because
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: right nothing worth winning is going to happen without real opposition.
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: It's not going to happen without folks us being under
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: attack on our way there. We are disrupting the ways
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: in which people make money. If we disrupt the way
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: the criminal justice system works, that means that people's jobs
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: and livelihoods will be disrupted.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: There's just no other.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: Way to look at it.
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: When we disrupt sort of the predatory practices of banks,
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: that means the ways that people have done their work
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: and the ways they made money are going to be disrupted,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: and that means that we have to be ready to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: actually do that disrupting. We have to have infrastructure, we
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: have to allied, and we have to know that along
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: the way, there's gonna be people who disappoint us. There's
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: gonna be people who we expected to be with us,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: and there'll be people who weren't really with us, who when.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: We win, will say they always were. You know, they
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: were responsible.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: I know this for shot, But you know I made
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: a couple of calls that were really critical that.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: I met with them. But how but you why were
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: you meeting with them without me totally?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: Why?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Why? But Okay, you know what I learned because thirty
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: years you learned things to say? Thank you so much.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: I appreciate every call you made. I appreciate everybody's everything.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: We need everything, everything and everyone.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Do you think we can build power with the public
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: onslaught That happens every time black people open their mouths
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: and maybe don't say the right thing or make people
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: feel like there is confusion.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: Yes, I feel like I feel like we are in
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: a moment where a lot is possible and I think
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: that every day our opponents give us openings if we're
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: willing to take them. I think the enablers and the
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: corporations who back them are worried and nervous. I think
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: we will head into this new post this twenty sixth election,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: and we're going to have to hold the people we
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: put in office accountable. But I'm watching in these primaries
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: there's a hunger for a new level of accountability. There's
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: a hunger for something different among people, and particularly young
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: people and.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Folks of color.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: And if we can sort of recognize that they are
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: going to use race, they're going to use gender, they're
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: going to use all of these things to divide us.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: And so it's not just enough to us to like
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: set up defenses so that we're not divided.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: It's going to be as important for us to really.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: Build sort of the energy and the demands of what
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: we want, how we're driving people, the sort of hope
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: and aspiration. I talk a lot in the conclusion of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: the book about backlash, and I connect backlash to hope,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: and I connected to like the time that we're in,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: Like the three of us sitting at this table right now,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: we are here in this particular time.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: If we were born, you.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: Know, fifty years ago, you know, I might be dead,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: you know, I might not have survived. I say all
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: that to say that, like taking every opportunity, we each
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: have to do what we possibly can in this moment
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: is you know, it's also part of it. And so
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: no movement has ever won, no movement has ever changed
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: anything without a culture of belief, people believing something for
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: themselves and for their families that they can't see or
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: they can't touch. I think about our ancestors who, like,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: you know, I heard a ton of hot sea coats
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: in an interview talk about how many generations of people
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: were born and died, enslaved, but they still dreamed of
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: something better. That's right, That's that's and you know when
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: I think about that, and I think about the time
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: that we get to live in right, that we get
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: to amplify our ideas out in the world, we get
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: to fight back. Yes, there's a lot of challenge, but
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: we are in a place where we can try to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: move the ball forward.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: Let's take it.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: And I love that. I love you saying that, sorry, son,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: I love you, you know, putting forward that even with
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: all the stuff because there's so much. There's so much,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: it's very loud everything. If you're tuned in, if you're not,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: you can kind of have rest in peace that hey,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: well somebody else is going to work it out because
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: I don't have time for it, you know, or whatever.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: And sometimes I wish I was like in that.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: Bucket, but I couldn't see you there for a second.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: But I mean, but I think a girl can hope.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's not that's not my reality. I've
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: made other different choices, and I appreciate that God gave
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: me the instinct to do something right, to try something,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: to get in the work. But I appreciate you saying
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: that even with all the noise and all the difficult
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: things and all of the challenges and the tensions that
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: we face, if we believe that we can win, we
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: can win.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And we can find that strategy. You can find
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: that with and we and we fight the magical thinking.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: But yes, I think any wins start with people believing
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: that winning is possible and willing to like fight forward
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: and put energy behind it. It's just that is the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 5: fuel that's where these that's where these efforts start. Nothing
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: I've ever built or run in terms of a campaign
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: has existed without people willing to be able to raise
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: their voices, to show up on a corporation, to demand
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: something out of an elected official, to force a situation
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: that seemed on its.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: Face something we would lose.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: But we built up enough power and energy where we
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: became unignorable to those in charge and they were forced
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: to actually have to hear us first before they do anything.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 5: They're going to try to discredit you, right, They're going
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: to try to make it so that people don't listen
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: to you.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: But that is a metric on the way to win it.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: They're not spending money to discredit you if you are
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: not a threat. When you are ignorable, you are truly ignorable.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: So when they're attacking you, Tamika, when they're pushing back,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: it's because you have pulled enough of a thread, So
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: you've created enough of a danger, You've created enough of
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 5: a challenge.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: And now they're like, okay, well.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: Every campaign where we started to see the attacks, I knew.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: Kay.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: They've had some meetings inside. They have decided they're not
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: yet ready to give us what we want. But what
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: they have decided is that they need to stop what
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: we're doing, and now we have to turn up the pressure.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 5: And so sometimes I think where we can go wrong
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: because of the I think the error that we're in
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: is that we don't have the resources or the energy
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: or even sometimes they're like wherewithal to see it through,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: and so we will like do something for a couple
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: of months and not feel like it's making the type
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: of change. And to know that if you're gonna take
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: down a multinational corporation, if you're going to force members
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: of Congress to change their vote, if you're gonna, you know,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: change the policy of your local school, it's not gonna
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: happen overnight. And if it did happen overnight, it's probably
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: because you didn't get the win that you really needed.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: You got the first win, didn't get the big win. Yeah,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: I mean.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: No, No, there's so many things to unpack here right,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: just listening, right, You get motivated as just being a
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: part of this movement. You get motivated by certain things,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: and then there's just times where you get this feeling
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: like are we are we really fighting for something that's attainable?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: I was?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: I watched Finding Harry Harry Belafonte.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: They have a short documentary on it, right, And the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: main thing I watched is, you know, he's a brilliant
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: man and he's always been for the movement, but there
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: was footage from like three different generations in there, right,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: and I watched him have this enthusiasm, right motivating young leaders.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: He was motivating Luke Carman and you know, Philo Agnew
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: and he was talking to them, he was like, what
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: are we supposed to do? We're supposed to find that
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: a gender. And then then there was the Parkland right.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: Then he was talking to them with the same conversation,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: and he was talking to to meeking them with the
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: same conversation. And I've seen a little bit of energy
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: leaving him every time because it was the same fight, right,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: he was having these same conversations with three different generations
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: of leaders who really wanted to win, right, And and
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: I believe that we've seen wins.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: But now I found ourselves back.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: In a situation where it's like we gotta fight for
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: this again, right, Like we literally gotta fight for this again.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: But but my soul won't let me do anything else.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: So it's like it's like it's so confusing, And sometimes
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: do you ever feel like that like.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I'm human, so yeah, so yeah, so
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: it's it is. Yeah, you can sometimes feel like what
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: are we doing? Like what is the what's the end?
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: End of it?
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: All?
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: If?
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: But that's why I came to the this real clear
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 5: conclusion that when your opponents think the war's never over,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: h and you think the war's over, you show up.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: With the wrong mentality about what what the war is.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: And and I think the war is not over. I
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: think we will constantly be fighting and pushing and building
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 5: and life. It's a lifelong struggle.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: But also like I want to like, it's not just
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: it's not yours only. Yes, that's the thing. Think, I
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: feel like we all play a role, yes, and we
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: have to see ourselves.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: And the culture of belief isn't just about struggle. It's
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: about joy too.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, you should be able to like feel a
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 5: sense of hope and optimism and happiness with our wins.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: We should be able to like know that we're doing
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: this so that the people that come behind us have
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: more opportunities than we had, Like this is also part
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: of the thing that should sustain us in this too.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: And if it's just if it is just about struggle.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: I think what ends up happening is is like no
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: one wants to be part of that either, And so
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: we do have to create the right sense of like
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: hope and possibility and joy. And I've watched you do
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 5: all that through your work constantly. But that doesn't mean
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: that we're that there's still not a struggle.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it's been progress. It's just you don't have
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: to stay dialed into it at the highest level of
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: intensity at all times. There are days when you can
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: take rest, take take all the things time, joy, life,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: have passions that you want to actually follow, ride bikes,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: you know, experience family. My granddaughter's very special. These are things.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: And there are some people who burn out because they
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: wake up in the morning and go to bed. And
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: I've been there, I'm sure you have to. Well, you
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: wake up in the morning and it's like I gotta
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: today today, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: and you run out because it's not possible when to
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: your point, there is no real endpoint, because your opponent
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: is never gonna give up, never ever gonna give up.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: They made it their lifestyle and they have it.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: And another thing that I was sitting here thinking, is
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: that as you you get englfed into this movement and
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: you get in golfed into fighting for all people and
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: and wanting to win right.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you think winning only looks one way.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: You think winning is the way you see it, and
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: if it's not that, then it's nothing. And those are
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: the main things that divide us. But as you continue
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: to move on to the space, you realize winning can
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: look like something that you want right, it can look
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: like something that you It's a culmination of all of
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: what we want together. And once you you grab onto
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: it because I don't have to fight with you because
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: I think we should go that way, and you do,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: and you might have a route to get I don't
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: want to fight with you about that. Like that's not
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: even saying I want to fight. I want to figure
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: out a right. So we're both trying to get there,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: But how do we move the data right? And I
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: think that's like so much special And that's what social
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: media has done. Social media has divided people based on
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: what direction anyone like we got FBA, and we got
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: natural blacks, and we got like we all black people
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: right in the same and you and you really convinced
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: yourself that you're struggle with somehow different because the enemy
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: knows how to divide you. He knows how to keep
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: you focusing on the shit that don't matter at all,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: so you don't get to the things that matter. So
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: I think, for me, I'm out of space now, Like,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: how do we get there together? Like I don't need
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: to get there by myself. I don't need to be right,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: I don't need to be the leader. I don't need
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: to be the strongest. I don't need to know all
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: the things. I want to know that whatever it is
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: that I have contributed to us get into the ultimate golf.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 5: And how do we disagree in ways that actually allow
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: us to hear one another, see one another, to understand
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 5: the arguments that we're disagreeing with right, and to push
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: back in healthy ways. Look, I've over the years had
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 5: deep disagreements with folks.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: In the movement.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: Had felt like I learned things along the way.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: If I was willing to listen, it didn't mean that
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: I changed my opinion, and meant like I've.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: Really understood a perspective.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: I understood why someone didn't want to go that route
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: and I wanted to go a different route, and that
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 5: was important. I do think that you know, one thing
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: I recently said in relationship to like a lot of
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 5: folks were sharing the the mugshot of Andrew Gillow online
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 5: and my first reaction was.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: Like, why are we sharing this mugshot like of this
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: black man? Like why like on Mark Zuckerberg's.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Right, another question. Yeah, we know how these.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: Systems work and how they monetize.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: We know.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 5: I testified in front of Congress next to the Facebook
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: whistleblower and the whole the whistleblower papers all showed that
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 5: they keep the controversy is what drives people to stay
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 5: on Facebook and Instagram longer. So people fighting. So you
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 5: know how many times have you gotten something that they
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: call it rage b right where it keeps you on
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 5: and you get mad about it and you share it
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 5: with someone else, or because they have to sell ads
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 5: so they need you on there longer, and happy stuff
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 5: does not keep you on there longer.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 5: Right, And so we are falling right into the trap
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 5: of like I've watched people that I have seen in
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 5: one one in one setting talk about racial justice and
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 5: criminal justice and the next minute sharing a mugshot from
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: Alabama of a black person.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Or you know, traveling down this road of drugs right,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: or for that person stole money or from an organization
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: like things that where did you get that from? Where
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: did it originate?
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 5: And why were you so quick to share it?
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: And then took mohaw much you love it? And then and.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 5: Then take glee up in the downfall of someone else.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: You know, that's serious, Like now we don't have any
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: time today to go down that rabbit hole.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: But but what I but what I hope Yeah, yeah,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: I hope. I'm want fringing.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 5: The book is that once you understand profiteering, once you
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 5: understand profiteering as a framework, then you see these things
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 5: through a different lis design, the design of like why
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: does this travel?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: Why do you get in mind?
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Why do more people see this?
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: Does the anti black black person always have a platform?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah? My thought I've been saying, which I pay attention now,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: that the MAGA, the black MAGA supporters could have two followers,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: but for some reason, they're all over everybody's timeline, Like
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: how is that possible when I have a million and
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: people are telling me they never see my content? It
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: is it is?
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 5: It is by design, right, Like this is by design.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 5: It's how the system is designed. And this is, you know,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 5: part of why you know, back in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 5: I was pushing for regulation of these companies because self
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 5: regulated companies are unregulated companies. And now we're still in
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: this unregulated role where it's worse.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, and so you.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 5: Have the biggest you know, you have someone who's now
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 5: a trillionaire owning a social media platform. I met with
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: Elon Musk right after he bought Twitter, and he had
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 5: not much to say other than I want to make
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: Twitter fun again, and this should be a public square.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: A public square owned by a single white.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 5: South African is a scary proposition because oneed, that's not
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 5: a public square, and two we know what.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: White South Africans did to public squares.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: And I've never heard, and I've never heard Elon Musk
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 5: talk about anything related to what he thinks about Mandela
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 5: or Desmond Tutu or white South African doesn't tell you
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 5: how they feel about that, you have.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: To really worry in question.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: So I say all that.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: To say that, like we understand profiteers, which is one
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 5: of the key frameworks in the book Understanding Perception, which
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 5: is how you see a problem determines how you see
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 5: the solution, and far too often we see inequality as unfortunate,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 5: like it's a car accident, like it almost just happened,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 5: not that there's someone behind it, manufacturing.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: Benefit got up, they got in the car, they drank
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: the drink and smoked the crack and did whatever and
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: said I'm headed down here to kill people.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 5: Yes, because that's not unfortunate, that's right, that's a but
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 5: we sometimes see it's like and so when you define
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: a problem, so you know, I remember seeing you we
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 5: were someplace and you were had just watched the hurricane Katrina.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, destroyed?
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: Oh yes, right, and think about Hurricane Katrina.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 5: Think about everything we know about Katrina as a as
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 5: a as a life altering disaster that was caused by
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 5: bad decision makers. How often do you hear people call
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 5: it a natural disaster? They put natural in front of.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: A natural disaster. For Katrina, yea naturally disaster.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 5: Well that's not a natural it was cause but they
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 5: but from a perception perspective. They're always trying to manage perception.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: So you call it a natural disaster, and then it
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 5: changes how people see the problem. Because now it's not unjust.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 5: Now it's not cause. And so when Katrina is happening
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 5: and you look at the presence versus power framework, Kanye
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 5: West right is deeply present, probably uttering the most memorable
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 5: words from that sort of era, George Bush doesn't care
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 5: about black people. But while that's happening very present, you
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 5: have something behind the scenes that's very powerful, and that's
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 5: Mike Pence, who was then a congressman, and he was
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 5: meeting with other Republicans after the Levies broke at the
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: Heritage Foundation twenty years before Project twenty twenty five and
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 5: they divided up New Orleans, they decided how they were
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: going to privatize it and privatize its resources, blame its
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 5: black leadership for decisions that were made at the federal level,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 5: and totally sort of take control over the future of
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 5: a very visible black city. Right that you don't get
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 5: the culture of New Orleans without black people. And this
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 5: is what I mean by you can be deeply present
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 5: and not have any power. And how the folks who
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 5: stand in our way are constantly trying to build power.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: And if we're just building presence, then we are losing that.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about Target. So there is a
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: lot you know. Again, that's another one of those issues
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: where we could just like, we're gonna have a show
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: today with Rashid Robinson just to dissect and analyze Target
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: from start to finish. Earlier on this show, we talked
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: about jay Z's comments during his Night one performance of
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: his new His Just Recent Shows tour, and he made
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: a statement about people being upset with him about his
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: album being in Target, and meanwhile they're still using Google
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: and all the things to make the statements, like they're
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: actually tweeting or whatever at him from these other platforms
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: and not boycotting those platforms, but picking and choosing Target. Now,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: let me just say, which we've talked about, there is
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: this concept of selective outrage that I've been hearing everywhere,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: which to me is a cop out. Like a lot
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: of people are talking about, Oh, it's all selective outrage,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: and our friends have said it. We've had many debates,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: as you said, about this idea that we're mad at
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: one and not the other. I don't know though of
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: a time where when like my parents used to boycott
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: BP gas oil BP oil because of the oil spill
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: in Mississippi. My mom is from Alabama, and they were like,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: the intentional Again, this is not just an accident that happened.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: These are environmental issues that people had been raising for
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: some time. It was never structurally addressed. And now black
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: folks are harmed by this oil spill and so they
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: they've became a part of protests and they've been in
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: other protests for a long time. No one said going
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: to we're going to boycott every single gas station and
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: nobody can drive their car right like that was not
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: in Montgomery. There was only one bus company, so it's
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: very different. But they didn't say, well, we're not gonna
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: drive our cars either. You know, we're gonna stop with
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: the We're gonna turn the lights off in the house
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: because the light company is disrespectful the every You if
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: black people started undressing themselves, their homes, their families, and
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: their lifestyles from all the things that's racist and harmful,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: we would be walking around butt naked, running up and
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: down the street. In my in my mind, so when
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: I hear that you know this question about selective outrage
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: or why target only, and then I also hear you
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: talking about meta yeah, and how dangerous they are. What
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: do you think about making the comparison. Does it make
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: sense to you or as a practitioner who has done
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: many boycotts, do you understand as I do that when
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: a particular company is chosen, it is for a particular
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: purpose and it plays a particular role in the movement.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 5: So I fundamentally believe in the you have to build
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 5: a domino effect. In domino strategy, you also have to
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 5: look at the landscape and figure out where do we
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 5: have leverage's right, who should our first target be and
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 5: why right? I remember we started the ALEC campaign by
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 5: talking to about twenty corporations behind the scenes, not calling
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 5: them out publicly, going back and forth with conversations. But
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 5: they were all companies that had said, you know, we
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 5: support the black community. They advertised during Black History, they
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 5: passed up with Black Radio. So we reached out to
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 5: those companies first. I remember being on the phone with
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: someone from Kraft who had been sponsoring ALEC, and they
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 5: finally got their senior level black person on the phone
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 5: with me and they were like, and I said, you know,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 5: you know, black people like macaroni and cheese, and this
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 5: would be a problem. And they were like, and that
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 5: person talked about voting with their grandfather that I talked
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 5: about voting with my grandfather, and we got off the phone.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: But Pepi pulled out behind the scenes.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 5: After some back and forth, PEPSI said, we're no longer
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 5: going to be part of ALEC. We had sort of
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 5: made some insinuations because they owned at the time, they
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 5: owned the Antie Mamma brands, and I was like, well,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 5: lease could be a good billboards with you all preventing
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 5: Anti Mama from voting, and they pulled.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: Out behind the scenes. So when PEPSI pulls out behind
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: the scenes, strategically, who's your first public target, it's Cope.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Let's cop right, And.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: So that's why we made the choice.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 5: Now, yes, there are other companies, and I remember there
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 5: were organizations that had labor fights with certain companies, like,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 5: oh no, it should definitely be a company, it should
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 5: be this company. Along the way, it is important that
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 5: you keep people in the story. We also know that
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 5: the pr engines of these companies are fierce, and they're
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 5: going to, like, you know what, in the middle of
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 5: your campaign, They're gonna sign brand deals with black people,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 5: and they're gonna try to amplify and discredit your your
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 5: movement work.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 4: But you know that that's because you're making traction.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 5: And so so yeah, I what I what I know
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 5: is this, I know that that.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: We can what if.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 5: This to death, But we have to be able to
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: go out and sometimes take on an opponent collectively and
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 5: put up enough energy and focus to win that battle.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 5: And will that one target that we hit prove to
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 5: do everything that we wanted to do. No, but you know,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 5: I'm five to three, so I grew up, you know,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 5: being bullied sometimes and I think about this, and my
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 5: dad's five three two, and so he would be like,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 5: you know, sometimes you're gonna have to fight, and you
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 5: may have to like defend yourself and you know you
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 5: may not win, but you want.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 4: To fight in such a way. This is this is
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: so awful.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 5: You want to fight in such a way so that
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 5: folks know, well, you know, he may have one, but
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 5: actually it's just not worth it. It's not it's just
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: not worth it's not worth it. He's gonna like And
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 5: so we have to take on some fights to change
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 5: the line of what's acceptable, you know, of how we
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 5: should be treated and if we would if all of
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 5: these situations.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: Will never fight and will never move.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 5: Things forward, and they'll always be there's no target that
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 5: is important. And you know you and we've all been
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 5: on the ground in communities where people have mobilized to
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 5: stand up to fight for an unarmed black person has
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 5: been killed, and every single time they try to find
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 5: a way to make that person undeserving, vicdim and undeserving
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 5: of our attention or our sympathy.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: This is all the same strategy.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 5: It's how do we insert enough doubt into the campaign
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 5: so that folks are not willing to like move or engage.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 5: And I think with for all of our campaigns, as
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 5: we take on corporations, I think we're just gonna need
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 5: and I talk about it a lot, We're gonna need
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 5: more infrastructure. I think we talked about it during the
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 5: target campaign. You need a person who's gonna multiple people,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 5: is gonna wake up every day, just work and just
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 5: keep the community involved, keep the community engaged. And when
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 5: you leave too many gaps because we don't have the
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 5: money forward, we don't have the time for it. It's like
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 5: fighting a battle but not having the weapon, weaponry, not
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 5: having the infrastructure, not having the Calgary and that to
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 5: me is like one thing that I always focus on
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 5: it's like, if we're gonna take on a fight, and
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 5: once again, this may this may come from like.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: You know, knowing to like.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 5: Not let my life alligator mouth get the rest of
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 5: me into situations that I can't back up. It's to like,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 5: before you make the threat, before you make the demand,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 5: know what you're willing to do when they say no,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 5: are you willing to actually run a campaign?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: Are you willing?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 5: And I've watched over the last couple of years in
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 5: our movement as someone who's running a lot of corporate campaigns.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 5: People reach out to me about corporate campaign sometimes and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 5: they'll be on it and they'll have the right target,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 5: all the right energy, but they wouldn't have yet thought
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: about how hard it is.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: And I tell everybody.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 5: How hard it is, because what's going to happen is
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 5: that you're going to have an initial couple of stories
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 5: and then you're going to have a lull. And in
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 5: that lull, you've got to be like doing all the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 5: infrastructure building and all the campaigning. And while you have
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 5: that low, they're going to be arming themselves. They're going
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 5: to be deciding how they discredit you, how they protect themselves.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: How partner with people who look like you, and the
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: whole thing.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 5: Whole thing, all of that's gonna happen. That is the
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 5: back and forth of this work. In some ways, that's
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 5: the that's the fun part for me, right, that's the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 5: part that I relish because I know now now I'm
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 5: in a real bad because if I'm not, if they're
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 5: not doing those things, then I'm not. I haven't yet
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 5: proven myself to be a worthy about it. Yeah, well, listen,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 5: this has been incredible. I don't know what else they
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 5: have to say. I would love for you to tell
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 5: us who is this book for.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: That's a really important question, because if I'm watching, we
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: have all types people that watch ourselves. I love Grandma's
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: young people, you know, folks who are working from, folks
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: who are strategizing. Who would you say, go out, get
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: it tomorrow as soon as it Joss, what's what's the date?
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: That?
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 5: It's July twenty eighth, July twenty eighth, days away, days away,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 5: So you can pre order now, it's it's you can
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 5: get it anywhere anywhere anywhere you buy books.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 4: This book is for people who are tired of us losing.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: I want to win more things.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 5: I wrote this book for people who wake up every
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 5: day and you know, watch this podcast, who watch the news,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 5: who may show up to a protest, who may give
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 5: a little bit of money to a campaign when they
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 5: see it, who talk about these issues in the beauty salon,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: in the barbershop. Folks who want a perspective about why
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 5: we are losing and what we can do to win.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 5: Because you know, there's a long list of ideas that
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 5: I have and now we all have about how the
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 5: world should work, and I could have put and some
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 5: of those are in the book.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: But the book is what it is is The book
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 4: is a how to.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: It's a set of.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 5: Lessons and tools, and so the book is also meant
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 5: to pass along. The book you should buy one for
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 5: yourself and maybe buy one for a young person in
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 5: your life, or read it and pass it along that
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 5: the nine exercises at the end of the chapters are
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 5: a great starting place if you're trying to map your
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 5: own sort of community world and trying to understand what's
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 5: the good use of your time? Is this protest worth it?
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 5: Is giving money to this type of campaign useful? Like
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm trying to do, and I'm trying to
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 5: unlock this. What I'm also trying to do, hopefully is
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 5: get us out of the celebratory things that sometimes happen
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 5: because we've made an effort, but we actually didn't make
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 5: any progress.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 4: And I want us.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 5: To be able to look five, ten, fifteen years from
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 5: now and actually feel like we move things for our
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 5: people forward. And so when I talk about winning, I
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 5: am talking about the winning real world change that makes
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 5: people's lives better. And so to find your power section
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 5: for me is some of the most important because it
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: helps us move from analysis to action. It's about finding
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 5: your power in the singular, like you as an individual,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 5: finding your power. And it's also about finding your power
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 5: in the plural our power, our power, our collective power.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 5: And those two things are essential to us being able
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 5: to move forward. And if either one of you hadn't
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: found your power and sometimes having to refine your power
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 5: some days.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: The.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 4: Rest of it doesn't matter.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: I think I rEFInd my ass. No, I'm just I
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: rEFInd my spirit. You know, every day it's like, okay,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: I know yesterday the news came out, or the thing happened,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: or the checked income and all the stuff that just
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: makes you just feel like, if all things were happening
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: as they should, I know, we could like do this thing,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: you know, but there's challenges. It's life, you get Sometimes
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: you're tired. You can't stay up all night to write
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: the speech or do the thing. So every morning when
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: I wake up, I tell myself that it is not
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: all on me. This is not my fight by myself.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Get that out of your head, because that's the first
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: way to me to just break down. If you think
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: all of this stuff that's happening is your fault or
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: your responsibility to solve, I say that, and I also
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: tell myself you are doing a good job because you
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: keep staying in Yeah. Yeah, yeah, And so you are
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: doing a good job by taking the wins, the losses,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: all the things and telling the truth and then putting
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: it in the world, you know. Doctor Angela Davis and
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Cardi B. Were the two collaborators for the forward of
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: my first book, State of Emergency, Very Powerful. Cardi B
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: writes first to doctor Davis that I'm like, I don't
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: know the words, the language, I cuss, I twerk, I'm
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: all that, but I still care about my people. Is
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: there space for me next to you in this movement?
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: And doctor Davis responds to her by saying, you're actually
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: very critical because you even and have more people who
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: listen to you than me, and they have this powerful conversation.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: And I remember going to doctor Davis to say to her,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: I just want to take this whole book and throw
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: it in the garbage. I don't want anybody to see it.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: It's just too it's emotionally a lot for me. And
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: I said, people are going to want to know what
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: makes me think I have answers? You know that what
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: makes you think you have answers? And you know what
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: she said, She said, your job is not to worry
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: about that. Your job is to write it down, put
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: it in the world, and let it go. It will
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: become its own thing. And so here it is. It's
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: in the ten years ago you thought about it. Writing
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: a book is freaking hard as shit.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 5: I had three books that I so much, so much
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 5: like books so much.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: But the thing for me is.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: The thought pruss right to take your thoughts to fruition
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: and really carry it through. Like even the concept of
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: this is so strong, right just because as as as organizers,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: as you know, considered leaders and moving in spaces like
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: everyone in this space is going to be able to
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: really understand this thought just the thought process and the
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: fact that you were able to capture it just me
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: just lead reading the synopsis and things of that nature.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: I know I already understand exactly where you're coming from,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: because we all want to know, like we want to
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: we want to move from presence to power. We want
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: with all the things that we're doing to actually materialize
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: into the thing that we want to see. So and
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: you breaking it down and you're actually showing that it
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: might not look like that, It might not look like.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: This which you think it might be. It might not
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: be that.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: All those things are ideologies and just even sometimes insecurities
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: that we have as individuals who move in this space.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: So I'm just looking forward to it.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 5: No, thank you, thank you both. And yes, along the way,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 5: I did think like should I.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: Be the person?
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 5: But I also would see a lot of strategy books
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 5: out there from people that didn't have receipts, had ideas,
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 5: smart people, but didn't have receipts from the campaigns.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 4: And we don't get to write strategy books.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 5: Oftentimes they have us write in really important books, idea books, memoirs.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 4: These are all really important books.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 5: But I wanted to write the Strategy book from the
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 5: perspective that I bring, which is both unique, but also
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 5: the set of receipts along the way and twenty years
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 5: of wins and losses along the way, and to offer
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 5: that up to anyone who wants to win more things.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 5: And you know, I'm really excited about the reception that
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 5: the book is getting the folks who are really sort
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 5: of appreciated, who feel like it's something new. And I'm
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 5: also interested in the wrestling that this will do, because
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 5: I do think some people are going to be uncomfortable
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 5: with how much I center racial justice, and that's also
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 5: an invitation to the audience.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: This book needs.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 5: Support, and we know that the right wing has a
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 5: whole infrastructure to get their ideas out to make sure
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 5: that people buy their books and that they get into
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 5: libraries and bookstores where people can use them, and we
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 5: have a much harder path. And this the thing I'll
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 5: say about this book is it does take on corporation.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 5: So there will be some corporate media outlets that won't
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 5: have me on.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: Because now I tell people all the time that when
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: we take put the energy into writing a book, giving
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: our experiences teaching and being honest. You know, my memoir.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: I am giving it all, every bit of me for
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: somebody that they can look at my journey and figure
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: out their own right and write their own book and say,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: oh shit, to make a story well mine. Also, let
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: me finish the chapter, y right. The least that we need,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: the least we need is for you to go out
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: and purchase it, support us, put it on a coffee table,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: let your kids thumb through it. You know. Then we
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: need you to actually read it and tell somebody else
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: about it. So please, y'all this I'm so proud because
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: I know what the struggle is of getting it from
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: your mind to the paper to the binding, the process
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: with the publishers. Y'all know, y'all went through this process
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: with me for years.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 5: Legal I'm talking about Facebook. I'm talking about you know,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 5: like leg you could get like to be able to
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 5: talk about the text messages from Chrel Sandberg, right, which.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: Is the vulnerability of I lost some time. All of
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: that stuff. It's not easy to do. So y'all go
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: out and purchase from Rashard Robinson's From Presidence to Power
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: How to take on the fights that matter and win
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: We're proud of you. I appreciate my friends. My son says,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: we're the number one podcast in the world. I love that.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 4: I love that.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: I just past yes, if only we lived in a
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: time where people actually purchased books the way that they
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: used to. My parents went out and got every book
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: if you were a black person who they liked or
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: admired or thought or didn't even like. By the way,
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: they have books that belong to people who they don't
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: agree with about ship. I think there's a book on
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Clarion Thomas in my parents' house, I think. But it's
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: because they wanted all the knowledge. They want to understand
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: where did he come from? See, they didn't have the
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: internet the way that we do, where you don't have
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: to purchase it, but you could just go google it
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: up and read it and know it and didn't throw
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: it away. But which, by the way, that also lends
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: itself to somebody's algorithm and the support for you know
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: on one of these apps about people googling you and
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: looking up your name and your story, so that actually
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: works in your favor as well, But it's obviously not
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: at the same level as buying a book of you know,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: a particular author, but they used to buy books from
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of different people to read and understand different perspectives.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: I think. I know one of my friends, her mother
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: had the book of the Gentleman you mentioned to me
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: the other day, or a book about him, the pastor
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: in Harlem who has all the very controversial statements that
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: he puts up and you know, sometimes hateful in my opinion.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: You know, them and the Israelites like just learning about
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: all the different elements of what's out there in black world.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: And so again, when you don't have the Internet at
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: the same level that we do now, it creates a
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: space for more books, more reading of black and white,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: you know, more turning the page. Now, because of all
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: these devices and the way that our attention spans go
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: so quickly, people do not take the time to purchase books,
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: and the book industry is actually suffering greatly as a
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: result of that. It's good to know that, you know,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: my publishing company, Black Privilege Publishing. I'm not a New
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: York Times bestseller, but there are a number of people
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: who are, you know, and that gives them space to
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: have books for people like me who may not be
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: the top selling author but still I have an important
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: I have two important, very important and so you know,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: you play with the numbers and you kind of move
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: things around to be able to accommodate your passion and
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: your profit at the same time. And I appreciate being
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: the beneficiary of you know, such you know, agreement if
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: you will, between the two and the negotiation between making
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: money and making good purpose. But people, I hope that
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: people take away from what Rashard is offering that his
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: book actually has in it real how to steps. And
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: people ask me every day what do we do? What
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: do we do? What's the next step? What do we do?
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: And I think that folks struggle with the idea that
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: what we do or what's next is not going to
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: be just this one cookie cutter answer or this one
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: good idea and this one hit. It's at going to
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: take you having to sit back and get some knowledge
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: and ability to assess your role where you stand in
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: state of emergency. My first book, you know, I talk
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: a lot about what is the role of an ally
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: or a supporter or a person who's supposed to be
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: in the movement. What is your role? How do you
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: play a significant part in what you actually can do?
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: And help to move the needle forward. So I think
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: that there's enough material out there that if one is
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: interested in really becoming a you know, or wants to
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: go to the next level of change making, that they should,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: you know, pick up these these bodies of work and
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: support us, support these authors. So I hope folks support
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: ra Shad No not do.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 3: Too man, just listening to him talk about the book
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 3: and just reading the synopsis of the book and just
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: understanding how important.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: It is from presence to power power.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: And just showing how you have to actually do things,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: you know, like it's not just that means it.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 3: Means like people think, oh, this is trendy or this
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: and that, and people are paying attention. You know, it's
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 3: a viral little second or moment. It doesn't that doesn't
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: just manifest into power. There are steps, There are a
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: lot of things that go in there's actual work that
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 3: goes into creating power out of trendy situations and things
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 3: that go viral, you know, So talking about that and
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 3: just showing the difference between things that go viral and
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 3: things that actually turn into power and what power actually
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 3: looks like, you know. So I think it's an important book,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 3: and I hope people do really sit.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: Down and read it. Absolutely so for my I don't
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: get it.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 3: This week, we had a very tragic situation, you know,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: where a man lost his life. He was well known
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: in the basketball arena. He played college basketball, played professional
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: overseas and he was playing in the Kingdome tournament in
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: Harlem and he was fatally shot in his head and
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: lost his life by a bullet that wasn't even intended
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: for him. And the crazy thing is, I bring my
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: kids to Kingdom. You know. I go to Kingdome, I
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: go to a lot of the Harlem tournaments. I go
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: to the Dykeman like in the summertime. I like to
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: watch professional basketball, so I go to all of the tournaments.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 3: And my son's love it too. And when I seen
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: that he was kid, I was actually going to go
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: to Kingdom, you know, literally was going, but I wasn't here.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: I think we had something that we were doing, so
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: I wasn't available to go, but I was. I was
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: saying to myself, I'm gonna go to I'm gonna go
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: to Kingdome. I'm gonna go to Queen Harlem tournament, you know,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: and I'm gonna be there. And it really hurt me
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 3: that that man lost his life at the basketball game,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: and I just don't know why, Like why are people
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: killing people at basketball games? Like why is that not
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: someplace that you go to enjoy, you bringing your kids,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: You want to see, you know, people play at the
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: highest level of basketball.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: You want to be entertained.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 3: Like why after all these years of people still bringing
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 3: that negativity to those spaces where these kids are there,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: with innocent people were there.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: This man was a good dude.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't know him personally, but everybody that
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: I know who knows him talks about how good of
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: a person he was, how he would give the shirt
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 3: off his back to someone, how he was just that
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: good of a person.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: He lost his life for something that was nothing, but
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: what was.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: He the intended No, this was a shooting where he
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: was hit in the midst of it.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 3: He was hit in the midst of the shoot and
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: then he lost his life. And I think someone else
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 3: was actually shot as well, but he actually lost his life.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 4: He's like it was taken, you know, his life was taken.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: And it's like, at what point does it stop? At
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: what point do we look and say this is our communities?
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 3: When are we going to say that we love our communities,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: that we're gonna protect our communities, We're gonna protect our children,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: We're gonna protect just our space. You know, I remember
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, shout out to Queen of
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: Harlem and my brother Hunk. We organized a march around
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: to each of the basketball tournaments at Harlem in which
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: we did a prayer. You know, we said a prayer
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 3: on each of those courts that there would be no
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: violence that comes to anyone on those courts, and we
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: declared them save spaces. And you know, it's like, Dad,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 3: we probably should have do that. We should do that
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 3: every year, you know. I think we need to get
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 3: make a practice of that throughout the city. I think
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 3: that should be a practice where because when you see
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 3: things you start, it materializes into things. When people see
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 3: us come out there and we say a prayer and
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 3: you see people from the community declare that this is
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 3: a safe space and no violence will happen in this community,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: then the people that come in there and start respecting
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 3: it different. And I think sometimes people forget that. You know,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know who the shooter was. I don't even
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: know what the situation was. About but I just know
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: it shouldn't happen. Then it shouldn't happen anywhere. At some point,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: we got to stop taking each other's lives. But there
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: has to be rules in places that are off guard,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 3: that are off limits, that you're not shooting on basketball courts,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 3: you're not shooting in playgrounds like those things just they
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: can't happen, you know. And I think we need to
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 3: get back to that rally and that march and that
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: declaration by the community leaders, by the family members who
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 3: went to each park. Family members came out, older ladies,
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 3: older men, young kids, everyone, and we just declared that
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 3: they will save spaces. And I don't remember for the
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 3: last couple of years when anything happened on those space,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: so I think.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: We need to It was, it was, it was, I think,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, we had some better days in
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: the last like two summers.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: And one thing that I will give Eric Adams credit for,
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: and you know, he could have done more, of course,
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: in in terms of making sure that the resources were expanded,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: I totally believe that. But one thing I will give
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: him credit for is he used to walk the street
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: just talking to people with you guys going out just
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: being around late night, early morning. You know, he said
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: what he said he used to do. He would go
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: to the back of the barbershop with Hennessy oh lood. Anyway,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna anyway, but I mean, but while for
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: us it was kind of like TMI, like we just
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: didn't need to know. But at the same time, I
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: get the point that he was making was that you
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: can find him in the hood, in the community, walking
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: and talking with our people. And I think I'm not
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: suggesting I think you know, of course'm Donnie, he's been
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: out there at some of the shooting responses, but we
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: got to do some of that pre work and get
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: him also out there in the community. And I don't
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that I think that Mayor Ma'm Donnie
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: and Mayor Eric Adams have the same cachet with the
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: black community. I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying that
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: what we have learned is that it's all hands on
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: that kind of situation. And I've had that conversation with him.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: I've had the conversation with him to tell him that
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: if it was if people were shooting in April, right
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: and we had the loss of the young man who
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: the kids were fighting or doing whatever they was doing,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: and they had the gun. And then the young boy
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: I think he's like fourteen years old or something was killed.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: And then baby in Queens or maybe it was in Brooklyn.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: It's too many cases because also there was the baby
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: in the stroller. All of this stuff happened while it
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: was still cold outside. It wasn't hot. And so my
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: advice to him was that my knowledge of and the
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: years of experience that I have in this area tells
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: me that if you have shootings that early, the summer
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: is gonna be hot, like you know, everywhere, and so
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: there has to be a strategy. And thankfully you have
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: our sister Ronita and Schwa who is now in a
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: position as Deputy Mayor of Community Safety, and so there's
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: certainly a focus. There's certainly you know, they're working very
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: much towards being able to wrap their hands around many
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: of the safety issues in the city. But as with
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: everything else, black people are our own lane. We're our lane,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: you know, like you almost need something that's just about
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: black people, like literally you need six deputy mayors that
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: they're in hire focus is just on the black people,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: because if you can solve the concerns in the black community,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: you can solve the concerns of the entire society. And
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: I think that people and I think that's one of
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: the critiques of Bernie Sanders and the socialist movement, right
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: that they think sort of the opposite that if you
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: can solve for the poor, and you're right.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 4: It will trickle down to or not trickle down to.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: Right, it'll it'll impact everybody if you can deal with
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: the poor, the you know, impoverish, the vulnerable. And I
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: think some of that is true. But what we know
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: is that right well, what we know is that when
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: you positively impact the lives of black folks in this country,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: in these cities, then it helps everybody because everybody rides
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: our back. And that's a fact. That's why what Cardi
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: b said is so true that if it were not
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: for Black people in the contributions we've made, there would
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: not be there would not be the success of the
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: Caribbean culture and all the others Black Americans happened the trendsetters.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 4: So you know, when I.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: See things like that, I start, you know, I get
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: it that on a surface level, your question is like
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: why is there no colde like what happened to the
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: cod I think we lost the coldes a long time ago.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: For me, it's just like, why aren't we just not
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 3: protecting safe spaces like these are places where.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: But I don't think these kids know what that that, Like.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 3: Somebody the basketball court is a safe space, like basketball
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 3: kept me alive.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: But somebody taught you that it wasn't.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 3: Because even the people that was in the street, the
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 3: most gangsterius dudes would come watch us play basketball and SAYOK,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 3: make sure they safe, like keep keep that away from
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: them over there doing something positive. When we over here,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 3: we're gonna take whatever we're doing somewhere else. And it's
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 3: just like the fact that that's not long no longer
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 3: a thing is just disheartened.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: It's just like, but I think what I'm saying is
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: what I'm expressing, is that if the ogs or the
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: gangsters and all the things used to look at this
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: the lake, the landscape and say these places are quartered
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: off as protected zones, that type of thought process and
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: that type of leadership doesn't exist today. I don't even
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: know if you call it leadership, but whatever, it doesn't
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: exist in leadership. Well to some extent, because you can't
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: be like killed down the block. That's not leadership.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: It is leadership. Generals, generals in the army. Generals in
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: the army.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: Get because guess what, at least it's.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: Miss abouted army.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 3: It's just like it's like like John O'Brien said, it's misgut.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 3: It's the same exact strat you said. Drug dealer is
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 3: just a what do he said? An immoral businessman. But
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 3: he has the same principles. He understands, you know, buying, selling,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 3: He understands product. He understands the same thing. He just
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 3: needs to put it into a different practice. So when
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 3: we talk about these people in the street, they and
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 3: they think they're actually leading. They think they're fighting for something.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 3: They think they gotta you know, we gotta protect each
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 3: other and all of that, and they giving orders and
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 3: they doing that. Then they're actually leading some Now, whether
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 3: it's leading them positively or negatively is you know, I
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 3: understand that, but they definitely leading something.
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: Miss Lennon. I'm not getting ready to argue with you
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: back and forth, but if you are out here, it
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: is leading, and it is the most ass backwards, ridiculous
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: leadership ever I can hear that that when you are
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: leading people and saying kill on these ten blocks, but
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: not these two or three. No killing at all is leadership.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: But let's leave that alone. I'm saying today it doesn't
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: exist today. There is a pop culture. Pop culture, everything
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: is right now right here. Got to get it. Don't read,
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: don't learn, don't know nothing, don't have community the way
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: in which we should. And I'm not talking about black people.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: I'm saying across all racism groups. People are addicted to
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: everything happening and at speed. So if you see ya,
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: I get them. Don't matter where it is, it's on site,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: it's anytime, any place. And so what you're looking for
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: is the establishment of a code that would require a
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: real system of you know, of OG's doing, like real
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: work to just.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: About morality.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: It's just about just understanding that regardless of what you
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 3: not bringing everybody into situations that you may have. It's
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 3: in the community, especially in a safe space. And I
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 3: think the basketball court, to me, this is a safe space.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 3: It's like people go to the enjoy themselves. So I
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: don't think the people who are not there to enjoy
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 3: their show should be there.
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't. I'm just I refuse to take the
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: bait today because it's some of you know, the people
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: you know that don't set the proper tone. But anyway,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: so in conclusion.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: Let's take back our communities. Let's protect our basketball course,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 3: Let's protect our safe spaces. Let's make sure that our
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 3: children feel safe, that the ladies feel safe, that we
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 3: can go to our basketball courts and enjoy summertime and
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 3: watch people play basketball. Let's just enjoy. Let's get back
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 3: to love and protecting our communities. We say that we
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: don't want police, but if we're not making sure that
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 3: our communities are safe, if we're not providing community safety,
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 3: then what happens. Look at what happens. So once again,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 3: RP to Keenu and his family. You know, I hope
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: that we've learned something from this. It's a good brother man.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 3: He was taken too early. You know, anyone who lose
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 3: their lives that the hands of gun violence is taken
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 3: too early. But we definitely wanted to send our love
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 3: and respect that to him and his family. And may
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: his death not be in vain, May it teach us
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: a lesson, may we grow from it, and may we
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 3: not see another one amen that brings us to the.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: End of another episode of TMI.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 3: Make sure that you follow us on Instagram at TMI
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 3: Underscore Show. Make sure you follow us on YouTube at
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 3: TMI Show PC. I'm not gonna always be right tonking
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 3: De marries not gonna always be wrong.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: Both always and I mean always be authentic.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: Please listen to the TMI podcast on the Black Effect Network,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio, or anywhere podcasts are available, or
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 3: Catch the video version on YouTube at tyre My show
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 3: Piece