Social Activism Isn’t Just for Social Media with Mysonne

Before you check your favorite celebrities and Facebook friends about posting about social justice issues, have you checked yourself? This week, Khadeen and Devale Ellis speak to Mysonne (co-founder of Until Freedom) about what it means to be a social activist, and how we can all activate change.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Posting on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook is not the only
way to be an activist, which is funny. You almost
took my SoundBite because of what I'm wondering is how
active is social activism? Really? It's a good question dead ask. Hey,

(00:22):
I'm Cadine and we're the ellis Is. You may know
us from posting funny videos with our boys and reading
each other publicly as a form of we are making
me derby most days. Oh and one more important thing
to mention, we're married, Yes, sir, we are. We created
this podcast to open dialogue about some of the life's

(00:43):
most taboo topics, things most folks don't want to talk
about through the lens of a millennium married couple. Dead
ass is the term that we say every day. So
when we say dead ass, we're actually saying fast the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We're about
to take pillow talk to are whole new level. Dead

(01:03):
ad starts right now. All right, you got a good
story for me today? I got I got a good story.
That's his mad stories, but I got a good story
today and it hit close to home because I remember
you and I waken up one morning to a couple

(01:23):
of Um, I guess it was d M s and
comments from people who were upset at you and me
because they felt like we weren't vocal enough when it
came to what was going on in the country at
the time. And this was right after George Floyd was
murdered and you had went silent on social media for

(01:46):
about a week and a half. I had posted a
couple of things, but to be quite honest, UM, that
wasn't My main focus. Wasn't posting at the time. UM.
What a lot of people don't know is that I
still run a nonprofit organization in Brooklyn called Prototyp Sports Performance,
and during that time, we were dealing with the shutdown
of the school system. So I had six employees that

(02:08):
were working in the school system, all young kids who
just graduated college, and they talked about shutting down the school.
So I was spending a lot of time trying to
figure out a way to help them not only get
jobs if we couldn't go back into schools, but trying
to redefine the program so that we can get funding
to make sure that they got paid during the pandemic.
So there was a lot of things going on. Um,

(02:31):
for me socially that I just didn't want to post
on social media. And at first I was a little
taken back because I was like, you know, I do
a lot that I don't post because I don't think
it's postworthy. I just I just feel like something it's
not necessary. This is these are things that these are
my mission. This is my mission, this is my passion project.
You know, I want to make sure that my people

(02:52):
are taking care of on a daily basis, on the
front lines. Everything doesn't have to be looking at what
I'm doing. But then I also had to sit back
and think that UM as a quote unquote celebrity, because
once you are in the public eye, we do have
a podcast, I am on TV shows, we do have
our social media platforms. People do want to hear what
you have to say when it comes to things of

(03:12):
this nature that affect all of us. So at first
I was pissed, right, and I responded to one of
the comments and I started to list all the things
that I was doing during this time, because I was
actually trying to help people. And if people start to
chime in, you know the value. You don't owe them anything,
you don't own anything. And then that person reached out
and hit me a d M on private and apologized
and you know, and said, I didn't realize that all

(03:33):
of that's going on. But that made me think, in
that moment, how much of social media has kind of
um distorted our views of what real activism is. And
it was that moment and that when it happened to
me that I realized, you know, how much are people
doing that we don't know? So check this out, guys.
This this song that I'm about to sing for karaoke.

(03:55):
It means a lot to me because you guys know
how I feel about this particular artist. But what made
it so important to me was that Jackson listened to
the song and it's become all like our song that
we listened to doing workouts, and um, he says, it's
amazing how this song, you know it was was made
in the nineties and it's so relevant today in the
hundred hundreds, when your TV was black and white and big,

(04:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, hey, I see no changes. Wake up
in the morning and I asked myself, it's like forth
flipping shu ut blast myself. I'm tired of being broken
even worth some black my stomach so I'm looking for
a purse to snatch cops killing them. About the need
bro pull a trigger, killer nigger, he's a heat wrote

(04:46):
selling oh, selling crack to the kids who the hell
kids one less hungry mouth on the welfare. Think about
those words. Are we literally not going through the same
things right now? Jackson said to me. We listened to
it and that's two shout out to two. Cairo's middle
name in Shakoor. But wake up in the morning and

(05:08):
I asked myself, is life worth living? Should I blast myself?
I'm tired of being poor and even worse some black
My stomach hurts, So I'm looking for a purse to
snatch cops. Skill a cops, give a damn about the
negro pull a trigger killing nigga, he's a hero. Mhmm.
Jackson heard these words, was just like, that's happening right now.

(05:31):
And you think about the suicide rate amongst blocks right now.
It's especially during the pandemic, which which brings me back
to story time. Back to story time because when we
developed a program prototype Sports Performance Lab, when I was
tired from the NFL, to give young men an opportunity
to transition into the world. If their NFL dreams don't.

(05:52):
And over the years it expanded to young women as well.
So we currently have two mentors, two mentors that are women,
they ran track in college, and we have three athletes
who are football players. Right, so we've pretty much always
had a pulse in the community. UM, and I love
you for that because that was a vision that you
had super early on, as early as when you retired

(06:14):
from the NFL, UM and you wanted to start your
speeding performance enhancement training program. And it was more than
just training children physically or athletically. It was about encompassing
the entire child and the entire experience and how they
UM can be a well rounded athlete, you know, maintaining
a certain grade level in school. There were certain criteria

(06:35):
they had to above a three point oh Um. To me,
it was more about caregiving and less about training because
we mentored these young men and women from seven all
the way through college. And then the program ended up
becoming a pay it forward program. Well, we got to
grant from the United Way. We partnered with after school
All Stars, and these young men and women that came
back from college who couldn't find work, we placed them

(06:58):
as mentors and discipline every deans PS two seventy two
shout out to our principal Dakota Keys, who worked with
us uh Mateo like that whole staff Rashim. They worked
with us to create this program where we took these
young African American people who would have been lost any
other way because they thought they would be in pro athletes.
They come back into the elementary schools and they mentor

(07:19):
the young kids so that for the first time they're
getting they have an opportunity to see young people that
look like them who graduated from college who worked with
them daily hand to hands. So they're like mentor disciplinary deans.
And we've been able to decrease the dropout rate when
I drop a rate or decreased the absentee rate because
kids wanted to come to school to spend time with
the mentors. UM. Kids started to graduate on time, behavioral

(07:41):
issues started to decrease, and that was part of the
activism that we created because I feel like it was
necessary for us to UM have an actual hand and
pulse in the community. And you know, for me, the
change was about being able to see it and being
able to just on the front lines be the ones

(08:01):
to be able to institute that change, you know what
I mean in seeing it through. So sometimes you can't
affect the entire mass of people, but if you can
help you know, a handful directly. But but realistically, it
wasn't just about that school. It was about the whole community.
Because shout out to CANARSI. You know what I'm saying,
This is on the school, the floors, stutt of the
floor PS two seventy two. I love y'all, y'all know

(08:23):
y'all more people's But this program was designed to help
the community so that those young people, and we're talking
about hundreds of kids that go to PS two seventy
two who will ultimately graduate and go on to different
junior high schools, but they're having they feel better about
themselves because they see versions of themselves that they can emulate.
You know, college graduates who played sports, who did well,
who were productive members of society, who chose to come

(08:45):
back and help them. So, you know, to take it
back the story time, my focus was there because when
they decided to close the schools, not only did the
kids not have the mentors, but the mentors didn't have
a job. So now we're dealing with an economic crisis,
and I have five young men and women who don't
have work, some of them have children. So we were

(09:05):
trying to focus on a way to revamp the program
so they could do remote mentoring and we were able
to figure it out. But in that first two week
span where I was kind of off social media, this
is what I was dealing with, and that became my
focus because at the time I found out that I
wasn't going back to film yet um all the brand
partnerships had stopped, so social media for me wasn't a priority.
It was my family and it was my actual community.

(09:27):
And I started to get backlash from it because I
wasn't posting constantly about what was going on, and if
you did post, then I was getting backlash for not
posting as well or as frequently. And it was just like,
can I exist in the process in this moment and
see what is going on? Or am I just going
to be a person that's aimlessly, you know, reposting other
people's post just to say that I'm posting and I'm active,

(09:49):
you know. And that's where we were with it. To
take it a step further though, um Bay, with what
we were doing in the community. The community was not
only just the parents, the children, the families, it was
also having an establishment between the relationship between like our
young men and women in the community and the police
because which was one of our local precincts and stuff

(10:12):
like that. It was important for us too for they
for them to kind of know who we were, um
to know some of our children who were in the
mentorship program. So that way it kind of decreased a
little bit of the tension or the aim was to
try to decrease some of the tension that existed or
could have potentially existed between our young folks and the cops. Yeah. Absolutely.
During the time at the peak of prototype, we had

(10:33):
a partnership with pact Plex and there was a mccalling,
a young man by the name of Tommy who had
a really good partnership with the sixty nine Precinct and
he ran the boxing gym at the time, I think
it was zab Juda's boxing gym, but um he ran
the boxing gym. And there were some there were men
and their older black men who really had a stronghold
in the community, so we used to partner with them,

(10:55):
partner with the sixty nine priescint to make sure that
they were there was at least an understanding sort of
something happened between one of my kids, I could reach
out to someone at THET precent and say, hey, that's
one of my product type kids. Let me get his
parents on the phone, let me get a lawyer present.
And then I had an attorney that I could call
when one of my kids had issues. Y'all heard him,
Kenneth Montgomery. He comes down here all the time. So

(11:17):
what we had developed through Prototype was at least a
system where we could protect our kids, especially the kids
that we knew were doing the right things, because the
worst thing is for a kid to get caught up
in in in the system and have no way or
no one to turn to, no advice, no legal counsel,
things like that. So we were creating in a sense,
our own ecosystem of you know, change and of support

(11:40):
within our community, which is still super very important to us.
So shout out to Canarcy again in Brooklyn. I mean,
we have a special surprise for you guys. I met
this young man a couple of weeks back when I
did face to face with Lewis Carr, and I actually
got introduced to him months before when Jackson started asking
me about what was going on in the country, and

(12:01):
I was trying to find a way to introduce him
learning about black history, and I found this I Know
Your Rights, I Know My Rights book Bill of Rights,
and it was written by my son Lennon, who was
who was our guest today who we're gonna speak to.
And I'm gonna introduce my son and let him tell
you a little bit about himself. But before we start,
I'm gonna tell you that my son is an independent
hip hop artist and criminal justice reformed activists from Bronx,

(12:23):
New York. He's a co founder of the social justice
organizations Until Freedom, where he organizes and speaks out against
biased police and inequity in the criminal justice system. He's
also an author. Mr Maison, are you with us piece?
Thanks for having me, Thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you so much for being here. This is the
first time you meeting my wife. You and I met

(12:44):
earlier this this year, but it's the first time. Leisure.
It's nice to now put an actual phase to the
cartoon version of you because your book is a heavy
rotation in our house. Like I told you before, so um,
thank you so much for that. I mean, it made
the transition for us to have that talk with our
sons um that much easier. So I appreciate that. And
that will tell you also to how you kind of

(13:05):
inspired us. So keep on keeping on brother, Thank you, queen.
I appreciate it so so. For the people that really
don't know you yet, please just tell them a little
bit about yourself and tell them how you made this
this decision to becoming activist. Um okay, well going and
raised in the bronx um Um. First, I was a

(13:28):
basketball player when I was young, and I guess my
knee got bad. So I started playing basketball and I
started hip hop, and you know, I was real. I
thought I was good. People telling me I was good,
and I got signed to def jam unviolated records by

(13:51):
Chris Lady alright, Peter Chris Liy. He was the first
person that signed me. Roughly right after I got signed,
I got convicted of robbery charge that I actually never did.
Ended up spending seven and fourteen years seven years out
of a seven or fourteen years sentence in prison. Wow.
So of the peak of my career when I first

(14:12):
was getting signed was scheduled to be pretty much the
biggest hip hop artist, the next next best thing, they said.
And I ended up spending seven years right when that
sun So did seven years. Came home in two thousand
and six. Um, and while I was incarcerated, you know,
I just I learned a lot about the system, about

(14:33):
the injustices of the system. You know, were so many
young black and brown youth in there. That was coming
in sixteen seventeen with thirty years for crimes that didn't
amount to over a hundred dollars, you know, a lot
of a lot of older guys that I was in
there was only twentieth years sentence for supposedly robbing somebody

(14:55):
for a white woman for one dollar. Her pocketbook supposedly
had one doll One of my closest friends, he actually
just came home probably about a year ago, and um,
he was one of my mentors. Brilliant, really brilliant guy.
And he was explaining to me his case and I
you know, we were just sitting there one day, he
was talking to me. We was reading something and he
started telling me about his case. He's like, you know,

(15:17):
I got locked up. You know, he said, when I
was young, you know, we used to do a lot
of stupids. I used to hustle downtown, you know. He
used to hustle downtown and selling drugs whatever. And a
white lady told the police that he robbed Mm hmm.
He didn't never see any I've never seen this lady before.
So I got arrested for this robbery. And she said

(15:39):
that nobody did anything to but they walked up to
her with a gun and said give me your purse
and took her purse, and she said she had one
dollar in the purse, and he went and he was fighting.
He was fighting the case. She wasn't hurt nothing. They
gave him in twenty five years, but twenty five years
for a one dollar crime pretty much. So that really

(16:02):
stuck in my mind. And it was when, you know,
when I was in there, there was so many stories
like this from young kids that was it just was
in proportionate to a lot of these white kids that
was going in there, that was going home in two
or three years, were way worse. Crowns, million dollar beselment
charges and all types of stuff. I start realized, you know,
it was it was disproportionate to our communities. So when

(16:25):
I came home being a hip hop artists, having notoriety
from that, being from the streets, understood that a lot
of our realities were different. We have been taught the
wrong things. We had glorified stupid things, and I was
a victim of that, and a lot of our kids
are victims of that, and the injustice system utilizes, you know,

(16:46):
the fact that we have been taught wrong. What can
you do? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Because you are a hip hop artist and my wife
and I constantly have this conversation about how the mainstream
media and on all of these outlets that utilize our
culture to sell records and sell TV shows continuously put
us in a negative light so they can continue to
push us through the injustice system. Can you talk a

(17:07):
little bit about how that made you feel as an
artist in the type of music you want to put out,
in the type of things you want to push forward. Yeah,
that and and that that's that was my first step
into activism, you know, when I realized that I had
been lied to and have been taught you know something
that was the reality that we were taught to glorif
like when we went to prison when we was young,
it was some type of badge honor because a lot

(17:29):
of these cruser was coming home from prison. They had
the jail stories. So my how they had the gators
on and they was on the visit and you know,
I had, I had, I was getting packages and all
of this stuff. And they come home they were doing
worked out. So you're looking at the whole block is
glorifying them, and you think that it's something to go
to prison. You're like, wow, actually, in your mind in

(17:50):
a in a funny way, you like, I want to
go to jail. I want people to look at me
like that. I want to have this disrespect, you know.
And when I went there, I realized we have been
to everybody in there, and to come home, you know,
it's it's surrounded by people who you probably would never
talk to in the street, you know what I'm saying.
So it was a false narrative, and I wanted to

(18:10):
come home and dispel that narrative. And I understood how
hip hop had created that and not created it, but
it had it had glorified and unilized that, yeah, and
utilized that that false narrative, and it was feeding that
to these kids. And I realized when I was a rapper,
That's all I knew. So I grabbed onto that same
thing I fed in too, glorifying violence and negativity. I

(18:31):
fed into that, and and I was celebrated for it,
you know. And I realized that most of the artists
who who are trying to sell positivity, who are giving us,
do you know, enlightening things, they're not celebrated. We we
gotta read. My thing is we have to make that cool.
It wasn't cool for you to be a conscious rapp.
It wasn't cool for you to talk about doing things positive,

(18:53):
you know. So that's what I wanted to do. I
wanted to come home and not make it corny, but
still make it cool. I know, I understood what our
communities gravitated to, so I wanted to tell the stories truthfully. Well,
not only was it was it not to cut you off.
Not only was it not cool, but it wasn't lucrative
because if you look at conscious rappers, they weren't giving
the big deals, they weren't put wasn't behind them, right,
That's why I wasn't cool. So and if it's not

(19:15):
cool and it's not lucrative, then why would I even
go that route exactly right, you know, So it becomes
just a moral stance that we have. And that's what
it was for me. It's like I felt like I
was cool. So I felt like I can make this cool.
You know what I'm saying. That's what the reality is.
We we dictate what cool is. They don't need to tell.
So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to

(19:36):
make being honest and being realistic and being you know,
and having real integrity, having moral LUs and values something
that was cool. So when I came home, that's the
path that I want. I wanted to dispel the jail
myths and not make y'all think it was cool. Going
to jail wasn't nothing cool about but an each we
ain't shooting and killing each other. Let's figure out how

(19:56):
we're gonna build. Because I know you have another initiative
called kings. Uh, Kings, don't kill kings. Kings stop king,
Stop kings. Can you talk a little bit about that, Well,
it came from my organization, you know, I wanted I
started called raising in Kings and me dealing with at
risk youth and and and and retraining their mind state

(20:19):
and and re giving them a right to passage, retraining
what they believe real was what manhood was. A lot
of our kids, the definition of manhood has been tainted
and something that is not. So I started raising kings
based on that, and then you know, I wanted when
based on when Nipsey lost his life, you know, knowing

(20:40):
that he lost his life to another black man and
most of the time that's what's happened in our communities.
But you know, I started the initiative Kings stopped killing Kings,
in which we did. We already did fourth Marchers. Um,
we do a lot of different I go to different
detention centers, different schools, and you know, just trying to
traine the monster, because what it is is we got

(21:03):
to identify each other as brothers, as family because when
you identify someone as a brother, a family member, you
don't want to hurt them, you don't want to kill him.
So that's what we don't got to reaffirm. I've realized
that we've taken the neighborhood out of neighborhood for a reason.
It's just the hood in the you know, neighborhood, but
you don't see that as your neighbor. When you start

(21:25):
seeing that person as a neighbors, somebody that you got
to protect and that you're supposed to love, you know.
So I don't use the hood and I say neighborhood.
I'm from the neighborhood because my neighbors are participants in
the hood. These are people I want to protect, I
want to love. I want to make sure that the
kids are safe. I want to make sure that the
old woman feel safe. I want to make sure that
the other brother that if I can do something to

(21:45):
help him, that he understands that we all in lived together.
That's putting the neighbor back in neighborhood because you think
about it, the hood is there's a negative connotation around neighborhood,
you know what I mean for some people unless you're
from the hood, and then it's different because that's just
like home, that's where you're you're used to getting that love.
So showing the differentiation between putting neighbor back in it

(22:05):
for our young men, I think that's definitely that's definitely key. Um.
We were talking about what's cool my son, right, so
it's cool too. For example, glorify the guy who comes
home from jail. So you think about now social media
and what's cool. You know, people are young, young kids
particularly are glorifying these lives that they see on social media.
So now that you've taken the stance as an activist

(22:27):
and use your social media platform to push this, what
do you think about Don Lemon's call out to celebrities
who don't post in the height of protesting this year,
people who may not be using their platforms to um
you know, continue this uprising in the fight. Well, I agree,
you know, I say that all the times, like if
we have a platform, and you have a voice and

(22:49):
you'll connect, if you really say that you're full the
upliftment of our culture and of our people, and why
not utilize it to say something. I just did a
panel off the Double Excel Freshman and in which we
interviewed me and the rest of my unto Freedom organization,
and we interviewed the next up becoming Freshman, and we

(23:10):
was talking about that and and they identified with the
fact that they have a responsibility. I think when you
have a voice, you have a platform, and you've and
and you've profited or for this complete then you're supposed
to give back. You're supposed to elevate those things like
I say all the time, I wanted I want my
favorite basketball players, football players, artists, everything to have some

(23:35):
social social responsibility. I want you to feel like you
owe it to us, because I do. I feel like
to all exactly you should feel like if you do,
and you should want you should actually want that responsibility
because this culture and these people put you in a
position to have these things. So you have to speak out,
you have to speak up. Right now, We're we're in

(23:57):
such a uh life changing time and error that the
more people speak up, you really can see change. Like
that's what it is like. The more that everyone is
is conscious of that and they're speaking up and they're saying, hey,
we don't like this, and we're not okay with this,
and I'm willing to make a stand, and I'm willing
to do something, and I'm willing to sacrifice something. You

(24:18):
can actually see that the tide is changing, you know.
So we need as many people as possible to utilize
their platforms and voices. This is the way I talked
to my my wife about this, because she and I
had a little bit of a not a disagreement, but
we had different ideologies. Because as a mom, when things
start to get real heavy. The first thing she wanted
to do was take care of her family first, and

(24:39):
I said, I understand that as a woman, and I
understand that as as a mom and a wife, but
we also have to understand that when we utilize our
social media to go back to these people and say, hey,
we're doing X, y Z, we need your support, so
we don't have a problem asking them for their support.
Now they need our support. So because we asked them
these hundreds of millions of thousands of people for their

(25:00):
support all the time, we have a responsibility to be
their support system because they can't necessarily reach out and
ask us for it. So, um, when we had this conversation,
was like, you know, I never thought about it like that,
and I never thought about where she was coming from,
from the maternal instinct of having to protect home first.
So we had to come to like a common ground.
And then they'd be like, you know what, You're gonna
find a way to say it in your time, but

(25:21):
you got to say something, definitely, And I didn't realize
that it would be tone deaf of me to just
pretended if this was not occurring. Although I was very
aware within my household like that said, Um, but I
had to know that there were, you know, about seven
thousand people who supported me in my journey to where
I am now. That was owed you know something, you know,

(25:42):
whether it was me posting about it, me doing content
around it, it has to be highs and lows because
we've always taken people through the highs and lows of
our our journey. So and that leads me to a
question to you about black women, because you speak up
on behalf of black women all the time. My son,
and there was one thing you said that that me
and my wife were talking about yesterday. We were watching
what was the documentary Black Boys, and they were talking

(26:03):
about how so many black men in prison are in
prison because of the woeful cries of white women, which
America puts white women on the pedestal. If you attack
a white woman or you become a villain to white women,
you will be dealt with accordingly. But for black women,
and when the black woman cries, it's never heard. And
you've you've been talking about this for months. Can you

(26:25):
speak a little bit about going through the Beyanna tailorcase
and everything that's going on and what you've seen over
the past couple of months. Well, you know, this Brianna
Taylor case is its personal for me, and it's also
something that I realized throughout the cases, how serious and

(26:47):
how disrespected Black women are the most disrespected people. You know,
you say it all the time, and I say it
all the time, but I think that with this case,
it really made me pay attention because when you know,
when Sandra Bland happened, I was fighting because I always
fight for black women. I'm surrounded by Black women and
women just in general or all the time. It's strong,

(27:10):
you know, so I'm very aware of the responsibility that
we have to fight. But when this Brianna Taylor case
happened and I really started to think about it, I
had never seen a black woman get justice like I've
never seen I've never heard the case but black women
killed by the police and somebody was even charged, I've

(27:32):
never heard it. I've heard one time in in in
in the officer got a way. I was fighting for
elder lady in the Bronx named Debra Dana who was
shot by the police officers. She was a sixty seven
year old woman and she was mental health and they
called the police to the house and she picked up
a pair of scissors and the police shot at three
times in the house, said that she was a threat

(27:54):
to him. She was sixty seven years old, and I'm
just trying to figure out, why did you need to
shoot this woman, you know? And they be four and
I fought and I protested for forty straight days in
front of the preteen I never forget. Every day rain sleeps.
And I was out there and they finally charged. They
charged the officer, but he beat the case. But other
than that, I'm never and even that there was no justice.

(28:17):
I've never seen a black woman received any level of
justice in America, and that really really bothered me. You know.
So when I was out here and I started getting
in tune with the family and I started really understanding
this case and just and now when you see what's
going on now, the rabbit hole is even deeper. When
we talk about going on with this case. You have

(28:37):
this man, Daniel Cameron, who was quote unquote a black man,
who literally decided that he was going to circumvent due process.
Like he literally decided, you know what, this case right here,
I'm not gonna give it to I'm not gonna let
him see his day in court. I don't believe he
did it, and I believe it's right. So, you know what,

(29:00):
I'm not even gonna present this to the case because
based on my my own personal beliefs, I think it
made sense. And that's what people realize that with the
grand jury, that the district attorney has a right to
present whatever they think was done wrong. So he purposely
omitted the bullets that went into Brianna Taylor. He purposely
admitted that. So now the grand jury is coming out

(29:22):
saying we didn't even we didn't even know that this
was part of the case. Can you talk a little
bit about that. It's it's just crazy when you sit
there and you think about that, like, how did they
just justify How do you just say that we're not
even going to present that this even happened. Like I

(29:44):
understanding that there's an outcry by the world saying that
these officers need to be arrested. The whole world is
saying it, and you made your own decision that you're
not even going to let it be presented to a
jury to for them to even decide whether we think
it's some they need to be heard. Just have due process,
you know, what I Many times we've got arrested for
things that we were innocent for and they had no

(30:06):
proof and said, well, we just gotta arrested. You go
to court, you know, fight your case, let them take
their case. Let don't let them have their day in court.
They took some woman lost her life over so much
negligence and cover ups and illegal things, and you decided
that that wasn't even pertinent to give to a jury
for them to even decide on it. And that's the problem.

(30:27):
And I and I when I watched your post, that's
what you're continuously arguing. You're not even in here saying
they're definitely guilty. But though you're saying let's let them
have their day in court, you don't even want to
let them have their And that's what black people don't understand.
That is crazy. That is really crazy to me. Like
I I sent jail for seven years for crime I

(30:48):
didn't commit. I went to I had to go to
and they had no evidence. They had one person saying
he did something. I went to jail for seven years
and you're telling me we got bullets that went into
a woman. They didn't even when this grand juryman they
didn't even search the woman's house. They went they were
to search for ran to search the house. They ended
up killing her and never search the house. So you

(31:11):
what did you go there for? What? What was the
whole the whole purpose was. We came there and had
a search for them. We was looking for something. You
never did anything that you came there for, and you
killed the woman and there's nobody responsible for nothing. Like
this system is is rigged and it's and it's not
broke because it's working the way it was designed. Say
that again, it's definitely working in this design. I tell

(31:35):
people all the time, like it wasn't when they had
this system in place. It was never supposed to benefit
black people. The constitution, none of this was supposed to
benefit us. So that's why it doesn't work for us.
And all the time, we really need something different. It's
a it's a slogan that I said, but it's really
we really actually need something different. We have to reconstruct

(31:56):
what justice looks like. You know, when a when a
justice system and in the government no longer fits the people,
then it's not fit to rule. Like we don't the
government works for us. We don't work for the government.
So if everybody is saying this ain't right, and y'all
trying to tell us it is, well, how do we
continue to listen to laws and rules that don't fit us?

(32:16):
You know, it's funny to say that. It's funny to
say that because our producer Trible said something to me
yesterday that was son in South Africa when they ended
apart time, they didn't amend the constitutional rights. They got
rid of the constitution that existed prior to that and
created a new constitution. And that's what America needs to
do to represent black people as more than three fifths

(32:38):
of a human because right now, underneath all of these laws,
and this is what I think black people need to
understand because I hear people argue all the time, you
know what, what do you expect to happen there? This
is legal, Yes, it's legal underneath constitutional laws that do
not protect and stand for black people. That's what we're
fighting for, changes to the constitution, not changes to just
police officers, because that's the big argument BLM is anti police,

(33:02):
their fascist Know that it's far deeper than just like
not liking somebody because of their skin color, which is
I think a lot of people like a lot of
white people are like, well, I have black friends. I
you know, like, not all black people are bad. It's not.
It has nothing to do with that. It's the system
in place, the constitution. White supremacy is destruction. It is

(33:22):
the system. It's not white people in general. And that's
what people don't get. And and the police structure is
built around white supremacy. It's deep, though, Bro, what you
just said was so deep. You just said white supremacy
is not white people. It's the structure in which we exist.

(33:43):
People do not want to hear that. That's why they
keep trying to point to people. But that's so deep, bro,
that's deep, and it's eloquent. White supremacy is not white people,
it's the system in which we exist. Damn my sound.
You need to write another book, brog were I thought
all these explained. What if anyone follows you on social

(34:06):
media and it's not trying to just be a troll
because a lot of people on social media just trying
to be trolls. If anyone's on social media that just
listened to the things you say and what you stand for,
it's not hard to understand why you feel the way
you do, especially since you were a product of a
system that was designed to enslave you. You understand what
I'm saying. You know firsthand, You've been there, you know.

(34:26):
But my thing is this, I take it because I understand.
If you look, I was going to write a post.
I was like, you know, they called mon Luther King coon.
He was one of the most dangerous men in the world.
Malcolm X couldn't even get buried. You wouldn't buried, right.
You understand what I'm saying. Jesus got hung Like if

(34:46):
so when when I when I'm wanted talking the trolls,
I'm in good company. The first person in the world
and all of this, I'm like everybody that I idolized,
it was told the exact same. I have no I
take the so with a grain AsSalt man, because I
understand that my mind state, it's going to trigger people.
It's gonna scare people because it's not something that you're

(35:09):
used to. I don't just follow. I don't follow like
the sheep, like I actually critically think things I and
I know, and I followed my moral compass. You know
what I'm saying. I don't go along like just like
he said, it's legal. No, legal and right is two
different things. I know, right wrong. You know what I'm saying,
and and and based on the Lord. If the Lord
is built on something that's wrong, then it's wrong. I

(35:31):
don't care if you're telling me it's right there. Somebody
was saying one of them the I forgot that. The
guy's name. He was talking during the interview that Charles
Barkley and and Shaq was and he said that the
officers said they did it by the book. He said
they did it by the book and the book. No,
it wasn't the white guy. It wasn't Kidny Smith, the

(35:53):
white he did say that. He said they did it
by the book. Then we got to fix the book.
And that's what it is for me. It's like, I
don't you can't tell me because it says somewhere that
is right, it's right, like one plus one is gonna
be too. You're not gonna tell me it's full because
somebody wrote it in the book. So this is what

(36:15):
we're dealing with. People are comfortable with somebody telling them
something that doesn't make sense, and I'm not okay with that.
So I'll fight. I'll give a troll sometime when I
got time, if I got t see the best part
for me is the people who actually have the time
to troll. So instead of using the time to troll
my soign tell people how they can actually get involved

(36:35):
and be actual social activists and not just people talking
a lot of smack on online. But where will people
start if they really want to evoke change, whether it's
on their community level, state level, national level, give us
some give us some tips. Where can where can they go?
It's so many ways that you can go. There's so
many different things. Because everybody is not gonna be a
frontline activist. Likely they're not gonna take months away from

(36:59):
their family to move Kentucky to stand on the front line.
They're not gonna go to jail, they're not gonna risk
their lives. They're not gonna support fans, they're not gonna
put make those sacrifices. And it's cool some people are
gonna be on Instagram and tweet about it. As long
as you're doing something that's and that is evolving us,
that's pushing us somewhere higher. Like there's so many different things.

(37:19):
You just gotta find your entry point. We got people
that come here and were in Kentucky and they come
bring us food because they can't be out with us.
They bring us fool they mail us um all types
of health things. We've got people that sent us. There's
so many different entry ways into this movement. You just
gotta find out what it is that I do that
I know that I can contribute everybody. Some people speak,

(37:41):
some people don't. Some people support the people that speak,
some people financially support organizations and people who are doing
the work. It's just so many different But I just say,
we don't have the right to do nothing, Like I
don't care what you do, but you can't just do nothing,
you know, like people be on my page like yo,
you're always doing this, Why you're not doing this? And that.
I'm like, well, okay, cool, maybe you're right, but why

(38:02):
don't you do what you say? I'm not You got oh,
you got a lot of arm chair critics, critics without credentials.
With my sister Linda's do something. I don't mind. I
might not. I'm not perfect. I can tell you that
I'm not doing everything right all the time. The thing

(38:22):
the places I'm missing, why don't you do it? You
can create that because I created what I did create
what you feel needs to be done. But you know
what bothers me thought. Even even in you're saying that
my song, people will say, why aren't you doing this?
For stuff that you are doing, but it's not publicized
because they don't want to push that narrative. For example,
the biggest argument against bon l M or against any

(38:43):
any organization like Until Freedom that's pushing forth the changes,
well what about black on black crime? And they go
on my song's page all the times, but you don't
care about black on black crime. And I sit back
and I'm just like, dude, this dude has a whole
platform where he's focusing on black on black crime, but
you won't see it in the news because they don't
want us to talk about that and that, and it's
things like that, And then what you just said that

(39:04):
made me realize in order to be an activist, you
have to understand that activism is understanding the fact that
people will not like you for promoting change that will
evolve us as people. And once you come to that
that point in your life, you can truly be an
activist because the trolls don't matter, the headlines don't matter.
All the bullshit that comes out don't matter because I

(39:25):
know what I'm doing it for. And that's that's what
I applaud you for, bro, because you found your pocket,
you found your niche, You are true to that, and
you're not gonna change based on people saying I don't
like my song. You know what I'm saying. And I
think I think you need to be applauded for that,
because it's hard being a black man just existing, but
trying to be a black man that promote change and
the black man that stands for black women. Forget about it,

(39:46):
Like now now you get it from all angles, because
I've even seen black men come at my song for
promoting black women and be like, oh, you know what
about black men? He talks about black men all the time.
Guys like, can we can he just not just focus
on this for right now? We're focing on this right now,
right now, we are focusing on black women. Can we
not do that? It's it's it's it's a very it's

(40:07):
a very um unique situation for me because, um, I'm
a person that my reputation is what I care about,
Like like I care about how I'm perceived based on
the way that I moved, you know, like I've never
when I was young, and I wasn't a person that
had a lot of money or anything, but I had

(40:27):
a good reputation with people. Anybody that said that, you
know that I actually came in contact with most of
the for the most part, they said that that dude
is a good dude instead of do So Internet was
kind of tricky for me at first, attacking my character
because that's all I ever had. So you can't attack
my character like you can say anything about but my

(40:48):
character is really what is for me, So that that
was really hard for me at first, you know, and
then lately the whole attacks, Like you said, it's about
what about You don't want to talk about what's going
on the bronx and they killing people every day. You
don't say nothing about that. And in the black and
I say all the time that you know, I don't,
I don't. I don't use the term black on black
crime because it's a false narrative, not real. There's no

(41:11):
such thing. Because it's proximity crimes commit crimes in the
areas where people are closest to them. That's who commit
crimes those crimes and white communities are committed by white
people to everybody. So that that term right there is
is designed to make it look like we are more
violent and we are more prone to crime than anybody.

(41:33):
And people don't understand that poverty creates crime. Poverty is violent.
You don't go to communities where black people are thriving.
There's no crime in those coolies, you know what I'm saying.
So when you go to the hood where people are hungry,
there's crime in those communities. You know, there's violence in
those communities. If you put any people in the in

(41:54):
the conditions that you put these black people in that
you say are committing these crimes, they could they do
the same exact thing. There's no different And if you
go throughout the world, the same level of crime, violence
is The overall thing is poverty. And tell people that
all the time. So I understand, I come from error,

(42:15):
I come from a time. I come from a place
where most people would just want to get out. You know,
most people really just trying to figure and when they
get out. If you look at most of our athletes
and when as soon as they get out of that
that era and they get out of that area, and
they get out of that community. It's no more crown.
The crown changes. So we understand what it is when

(42:36):
we talk about defunding the police. That's what defunding the
police means. It doesn't mean we're trying to we want
anarchy and we don't want police ever. Know, we want
you to take some of the billions that you're giving
the police and give a couple of those two community activists.
Give a couple of those two UM community organizations that
can actually come you know, that actually prevent crime, because

(42:58):
police don't prevent crime. They don't they locked you up
after you commit the crime. They don't prevent the crime.
They only prevent two present the crimes. So the crime
is is is gonna be able to be stopped by me?
Because I know everybody in the hood. So when I
go to the hood and they like a certain suches
beefing with sudden such, I sit down with both of them,
like what you're beefing over, and the respect that they
have for me is gonna bring them to the table.

(43:20):
So that's a murder that we stop. We got we
actually got crime, you know, UM crisis management programs in
Queens and the Bronx in Brooklyn with former people who
are gang members and and people that came home from
jail who actually prevent the crimes. So if you get them,
if you allocate those funds to them, you'll see the
crime change. You'll see different changes. But no, they don't.

(43:42):
They don't want to do that because they want if
fit's a narrative, they want to say, you know what,
We're not gonna fund those communities. We're gonna make sure
that the schools is the wordst the the health is
the words. We're gonna make sure everything is the worst,
and we're gonna put a pandemic in the hood. And
then we're gonna say that only a sense you businesses
is the is the liquor store. So they can't go play,

(44:05):
no sports, can't go hang out, can't do nothing, but
you can get liquor stand on the corner and that.
And you're bringing guns in the community and saying, oh,
look how look at the savages like this is like
this is what this is what they do it to us,
and and and and and most of sometimes we get
so frustrated with us and we blame us and we

(44:25):
don't realize and then they say, oh, you just want
to make an excuse like this is common sense. It's
been the same play over and over that they play.
They know if they give us the same opportunities and
the same resources, that we're gonna prevail. And it's it's
done purposely. That's what the reason why they don't. I think.
I think what you just explained was was brilliant because
people don't understand what defund the police is. They think

(44:47):
the defund the police meet just just fire all the
cops and let us do it for ourselves. But what
you're saying is allocating funds for programs that can help
promote wealth building and time management for young men and
women who have nothing but time and resources to allocate energy,
which obviously makes sense because they funded they defunded education,
like the time they took all of the acting and

(45:11):
all the all of the stuff, all the arts out
of schools and now these kids got nothing to do
but go to corners and just sit. So what do
you think it's gonna happen? And their mothers don't have jobs.
They frustrated, you know, so what do you what do
you actually think it's happened? It's funny people have people
have yet to create the correlation that the increase because

(45:33):
what they're saying right now is the increase in crime
in the neighborhoods is because we're all screaming for defunding
the police without thinking that the increase in the crime
is coming from the fact that people do not have jobs.
Like people do not have work. There are millions and
millions of people who do not have work who are
trying to find ways to feed families. But y'all want
to say we're in a pandemic, Like for really, you

(45:54):
don't they realize how traumatic this situation was, being locked
in your house for months, Like I was going through trauma,
like I was dealing. I was angry all the time,
you know, I was frustrated. I had to start creating
workout programs from my stuff, Like literally, I had to
do things because my mind I was losing. I found
myself drinking more like like you know what, let me

(46:15):
just take a drink at every night, just like, yo,
I'm looking at the news. They're showing the deaf count.
You're gonna die, Like so a young kid in the
house going through that. Nobody who ain't who's not who
hasn't really even massive this emotion who doesn't even understand
what you think. He's just still developing and he just

(46:37):
surrounded by that all day, all day long. Like we
are in a crisis. We are in a crisis, and
poverty is the biggest form of crisis. So when you snap,
when you put all the rest of that on top
of poverty, what you think you're gonna get? Bro, We're
gonna have you back on. We have to have you
back because this conversation is not it's not over, This

(46:58):
is just the beginning of the versation continuing. So we
appreciate you. But before you leave, can you please tell
everybody where to find you everything that they can do
to find you with everything that you're working on. Okay,
So my Instagram is my son n y General. You
can follow me there. On Twitter is at my song
um follow until Freedom so you can be up, you know,

(47:19):
updated about what we're doing to fight for Brianna Taylor.
We're doing a big march October seventeen with Brianna Taylor's
family in New York, so we want everybody to come
out there with us, UM and just you just follow
me on those those platforms. It's not hard to find.

(47:46):
We're back. Y'all all right, and it's listener letter time. Um,
we have someone here who's a huge fan of the show.
They say, thank you, thank you for being being willing
to be vulnerable and transparent. My question is about your
stance on activism and what you think is Okay, I
understand the anger that black people have. I am angry,

(48:07):
but when it comes to looting and violence, I often
feel like that behavior sets us back and takes the
attention off of the mission. But I'm hearing so many
conflicting views. What do you think to me? This is simple, okay,
I I do not What what bothers me the most
is that the same people who have a voice on

(48:29):
looting often silent when it comes to the murders talk
about it, which means you mean what you tell us
is that the property and the businesses and talk people.
Yeall care about sheet rock, then you do about the
blood running through our veins and as and as a
small business owner, as a small business owner for the
past ten years, I understand that businesses are important. But
let's be real. Majority of these businesses that are in

(48:51):
our community are not owned by us. They constantly disrespect us.
They are owned by people who don't even live in
the communities in which they act. The people in the
need to patronize their business, so then when their businesses
get destroyed by the same people they disrespect. You cannot
be upset at the people. You understand what I'm saying.
You cannot ask a marginalized people who have been terrorized, brutalized,

(49:15):
and criminalized their whole life to now be civil civilized
but responding to your brutality. So what you're saying to
me is listen, I know I know I killed you.
I know I shot you, I know I shot your kids.
I know I locked your people up. But I'm gonna
need you to just be calm and don't do what
we've been doing to you for four hundred years. That

(49:36):
to me is what when people say to me, you'll
shouldn't riot and loot. That's what you're saying to me. Man,
this woman she said it's so eloquently on this clip.
I wish I could find that. I have to dig
it up. But there was a woman that was speaking
about looting and she started off talking about like a
monopoly game, and it's like, all right, so I'm gonna
give you this money and you know, I'm gonna give

(49:58):
you this money, but I'm gonna take this from you,
wanna take that from you, I'm gonna take that from
And it's like you keep taking and you're taken with
all these promises of things that we're going to get
and it's never it never comes. And I mean, let
me tell you how many times I should I feel
like we should pull that clip up at some point
and you know what I'm talking about. But she literally
was just like, the hell with your building, the socio

(50:21):
economic damage that was created to black people, and why
we respond by damaging your problem? Absolutely absolutely, So it's
a really it's a really um you have the kind
of total line between like, you know, promoting there's no
there's no total line. I don't I don't think that
we promote looting. No, we're not promoting it, but just
saying also holding people accountable who don't understand why we're looting.

(50:42):
Right but but but we can't glaze over that. You
don't promote looting, right but looting and writing is the
voice of the voiceless. You've taken away all other options
for them to get their point across, which is why
they're looting and writing, protesting, the kneeling like that earlier
in the show. You took all of that away. You
said we couldn't peacefully protest, we couldn't nail, we can't march.

(51:04):
We don't have people in positions of power or politicians
who can help us get changed. We have to get
your attention. You want us to stop looting. Pay attention
when we hashtag, You want us to stop looting, Pay
attention when we kneel, Stop moving the goal post, stop
hijacking the narrative, and listen to what we're saying, and
we'll stop looting. That does that's not promoting looting. But

(51:24):
you gotta understand. If you're a child, right, if you're
a child and your whole life your father has been
whooping your ass, whipping your mom's ass every single day,
there's gonna come a point when you grow up and
you become a man and you say, what, I'm tired
of these ass whoppings and I'm gonna hit this man back.
When you decide, after take an abuse for four d years,

(51:48):
that you're gonna hit your abuser back, you cannot then
play the victim as the abuser and say this is wrong.
You know, especially especially since this company, then let's come
this country was gained off of a riot. You celebrate
the Boston tea Party. You celebrate Christopher Columbus, who pretty
much looted and rioted the indigenous people to get this land.

(52:11):
These are the things we celebrate here in America. We
have a Columbus Day. Very selective. Is that not ironic
that we celebrate we celebrate looters and rioters when it's
not black people. So let's be clear. We're not condoning looting,
We're not promoting it. What I am promoting is that
if you listen to us, we won't loot and we
won't riot, But you cannot then point the finger at

(52:32):
us when we do feel that's just what it is. Well,
that was a great listening letter because it encompassed something
that I think that we didn't get to discuss in
social activism, which was what was happening, the rioting and
the moving. Um. So thank you for that, that listener.
But also, this is not the first time looting and rioting,
like we said before, it has happened in America. This
has happened in every social change forum. Every time we

(52:55):
got to that point, there's always been looting and rioting,
and it's his American as American pie. There you go.
And if you'd like to be featured as one of
our listener letters, y'all email us at dead as Advice
at gmail dot com and you can email us about
almost Emmy and everything. Yes, you know, give them, give
the email one more time. That's dead as Advice at

(53:15):
gmail dot com. D E A D A S S
A D V I C E at gmail dot com. Alright,
moment of truth time, Moment of truth time. You want
to go first? You want to go first? Umman, I
can go first. Um. I feel like with this whole
talk of activism, what it looks like, the social activism,
the social media activism. The biggest thing is taking an

(53:41):
introspective look at where you fall in this change system,
picking a point, picking a position. It could be one position,
it can be two or three, depending on what your
interest is or where it lies or where your strengths are,
and then investing time and energy in that as opposed
to clocking other people on what they're doing. Because the

(54:03):
time that you're spending clocking this person or that person,
celebrity or not, is time that can be spent. EVO
can change where you can see it, where it's tangible
for you, where you have that strength. Do that? Yes,
do that? Do that? Do that? I agree, and I'm

(54:25):
gonna I'm gonna piggyback on that. To me, social activism
is a personal choice. How you choose to be an
activists should be something you do daily. And I want
to give this to the people because everything you said,
I agree with everything you said, but I want people
to think about this. If the Underground Railroad existed in
Harriet Tubman would not be on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook,

(54:47):
but she'd be getting shipped done. She beginning it all
the way done. So we got to think about that
before we go out here and start to point out
who we think I'm not doing enough, take an introspective
look and realize am I doing enough exactly? Alright? Be
sure to find us on social media, y'all dead as
the podcasts and of course I'm Cadine I am, and

(55:09):
of course I am devouring. If you're listening on Apple podcasts,
be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. D dead Ass
is a production of I Heart Media podcast network and
is produced by Dinorapinia and triple follow the podcast on
social media at dead as the Podcasts, and never miss

(55:29):
a thing