March 15, 2023 • 57 mins
In this episode Jill, Laiya, and Aja reflect on what makes an impactful social justice movement. To dive deeper into what it takes to get a community organized check out the two articles below.
How to get organized: https://www.brightest.io/community-organizing
How to support social movements: https://mashable.com/article/social-justice-get-involved
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Jay dot Il, a production of iHeartRadio. What's Up,
Good People, Welcome back to Jay dot Ill the Podcast.
I am smiling. I'm smiling on the end, Tige, I'm
smiling on my outside. I feel good. I feel good
(00:24):
and I'm happy to see my sister friends at Graydon
Dan's left. I'm so happy to see you to love. Hi,
my shug, how are you? I'm really good. Life feels
good right now, the years starting out good. I don't
know about everything and everybody else, um, but I'm agree
with you on that for some reasons. One of them
(00:48):
is Lias Saint Claire, because she's here with me today too.
Oh yeah, just looking at y'all looking at each other's eyes,
giving that good sister love. And I'm here. I'm like
a listener. I'm here for all that you mean. It's
so a part of it, I know. But look good. Yeah,
it's it's good to feel good, you know what I'm saying.
(01:09):
And it's good to feel good about the things that
you're doing, like trying to really grasp a greater understanding,
a bigger picture of what it is that you're doing. Now.
I've noticed now, and we all noticed We've seen a
lot of people marching, a lot of people making TikTok's
(01:30):
um and that's no disrespect to TikTok. That's how I
say TikTok um um on the front, you know the
TikTok they're they're making posts and um. I think initially
like social media was to make people more aware of,
(01:50):
you know, things that were happening. Um. A lot of
it's become a lot of like celebrity stuff, which is
which is fine too, But I'm also seeing people commenting
and showing the kind of interactions that they have with police.
And as of late, I've noticed that it's it's white people,
black people, Latina people. It's all kinds of people having
(02:12):
really harsh interactions with the police. White people you show
yes because according to Ben Craft, and they ain't in
the ones that's getting attacked out in these streets, but
they are attacked. Now we're going to say this, there's
a difference which police. But I'm just saying that there
(02:38):
everybody is getting the business. A lot of people are
getting the business when it comes to a traffic violation.
Not everybody. It doesn't equal death for everybody, but damn it, right,
it does for some the more that we see that
it's a problem across the board, the wars, and see
(02:58):
that the institution itself, even though it should be enough,
it should be enough what they're doing, just you know,
us killing us. You know you got a little bit.
You shouldn't need it shouldn't need to be universal. Well,
unfortunately it does. People to make a stand. And you
know what's crazy. I keep saying their name, but because
they've been on TV a lot in the last couple
(03:19):
of weeks because of the loss of Tyree, the murder
of Tyree. But that's what all the activists are saying,
is that exact thing they're like, because white people aren't
affecting and murdered the way they are, we're not having
any change. And that's the only way until they start
looking at us as being them, Uh, we won't have
any change. For me, I think it's probably more like,
(03:42):
how how big are we willing to dream about this?
What are we willing to sacrifice in order for these
things to change? And how big are we willing to
dream about what we want to see it be other
than what it is right now? Like? And and what
I mean by that if I'm just need to be
more specific, is like, are we got to start thinking
(04:02):
beyond reform and we also have to start thinking about
what are the things that we're willing to lose in
the meantime and sacrifice in the meantime for a much larger,
more radical change, And asking for what depends on what
you're asking for, What I got to sacrifice to, It
depends on what. I mean. I'm really not sure. I mean,
I don't know. I mean, that's right, I'm not sure.
(04:24):
There's a number of things. I mean, we're talking if
we're talking about police violence, right, It's been a very
intense conversation around the abolition of police, the abolition of prisons,
and this gets to be an interesting topic, particularly when
you start talking about activist groups where you got some
groups who are primarily made up of black people who
(04:47):
have lost family members to gun violence and the gun
violence that did not come from police. So you have
that argument of well, what do we do with someone
who shot my cousin, or what do we do with
somebody who raped somebody or or assaulted someone that I love,
And then to have a conversation about our individual interactions
(05:09):
with these systems and the systems overall, if we really
talk about how people interact with these systems, they are
primarily negative, and they are primarily deadly for black people
and negative for all people really and anyone who's poor
when we're when we're talking about injustice, I did not
mean to slight in any way your knowledge systs at all.
(05:34):
I'm saying that when we're talking about injustice, it is
a deep a tree with very deep roots and long
branches and many charms. My perception of injustice, or even
cutting down a tree, is that you trim things branch
(05:55):
by branch or when you when you cut it directly
wrote that bitch, if you really want, you can do
that as well. You can absolutely do that as well.
But when you can do it like that, you're going
to have a lot of mess. You're gonna have a
lot to clean up. Sacrifice when I'm talking about, you're
(06:16):
gonna have a lot to clean up. You'll be cleaning
up just as long as you're dealing, as long as
you've been chopping down the tree, if not longer, you're
gonna clean up way longer when you cut. When you
cut injustice, because think about my branch, I hear that's
the right way to go, jil. I hear you. I
(06:36):
hear you. I hear you to my core. But I'm
telling you, we've been talking reform since reconstruction. It's twenty twenty,
motherfucking three. Yeah, but you'll get up murdered in the streets.
And that's true. And that's true. However, you do want
to get props to when there has been reformed and
(06:56):
there have been progress due to people's hard work, blood,
sweat and tears, because like, we ain't even getting here
to where we are, even though it seems it feels
like it's a fucked up time. I mean, there was
a time when ship was even more fucked up and
different with others, I think and those folks cut down
branches have a have a feeling that when we get
(07:17):
to this moment that we think that by talking about
the possibility of uprooting, I think we think that that
somehow means that there's I'm not trying to say there's
no respect for work that has been done in a sense.
We are in a sense. In a sense we are
because we're all talking about uprooting the tree right the
(07:39):
whole trie we're talking about it. And then obviously there's
different ways to uproot it. But to speak specifically about this,
I'm going to say that there's a guy name M. Khalil,
and Khalil puts poison at the bottom of the tree
every Thursday, okay. And there's Um the gardener who comes
(08:02):
and grabs some of the leaves and he gets it
all so we can see how many are falling. Now
there's somebody else who lops off branches at a time.
But we're saying that in any protest or in any
involvement of destroying or uprooting injustice, it takes a lot
(08:26):
of people moving in a similar direction. Layah was saying,
we were talking earlier about how Al Sharpton is at
these things. He's always at these things, and most of
us are like, what are you dumb job? And lat
hit hit us with it, hit us with it? Would
(08:47):
you would you say? Yeah? Well, I said, you know,
we had a we had Alice and gustrowing questions Apreme
one day and I asked, we talked to him about
the things that all of us blacks me thinking like
what do you really do? And he was saying, you know,
the cameras, he said, people think that I chase the cameras,
but you know that if I didn't go, they wouldn't come.
So a lot of times families call me because they
(09:08):
want attention made to what's going on, to what happened
to their loved ones. And then he acts kind of
like as a representative of us, right, he goes there,
he loves on them. I don't know if you watch
what he did at Tyrese's funeral, but he serves as us.
He loves on the family. He makes sure y'all know
that I'm here today and I will be here tomorrow.
Like he continues to bring these things up. So he
(09:31):
has a purpose, but it may not be with y'all think,
and I think that everybody doesn't understand activism in that way,
and that it's a formula and a plan in different pieces.
Just like you said, this tree, it's a tree, just
like Ben Crump. Ben Crump is a part of this tree, right,
and Al Sharpton talked about the fact that Ben Crump
is a person who brought out into Trey Vaughn Martin
right as a young lawyer, and so this relationship grew,
(09:54):
and so now Ben Crump is a man who because
we can't get these officers process hute it like they
should be because we can't take money out of their pockets.
Ben Cropp is going to get money for these families
that have lost their loved ones. That's what he's doing,
and you're gonna know what's going on, and that's what
they do. So I think that as a community and
(10:16):
a family, sometimes we just need to remind ourselves of
like we all serve different purposes and the struggle that
we're going because we put a lot of weight on
a person. Yeah, we put a lot of weight on
a single person. While you're just posting who literally has
a single job to do, just one. You know how
(10:37):
much easier it is to clean your to clean your
room when all your friends help. Everybody's got a job
to do, instead of been taking you two hours to
clean up because you guys had you know, you've had
pillow fights and you've been eating popcorn and whatever else
and got soda cans or whatever around. When everybody participates
(10:58):
and helps clean up, the room gets cleaned and we're
moving on to the next space to do a new thing.
I think that the problem that we're having is that
we're putting a lot of pressure on a single being
a single person when it really and truly takes all
of us, y'all. Some scientists right now is teaching those
(11:20):
termites or glaze in this tree and a certain chemical
that makes the termites go crazy. It's it's a bunch
of people that's just working and you may not know
all of them. But when there are leaders, hopefully what
a leader does is delegate authority. Yeah, so you give
(11:43):
people jobs to where where their greatest strength is and
stay off to social media talking about it. You gotta
stay off. Things that are done are typically done in
the dark. Not everybody our ship and how we're moving. Okay, okay,
(12:06):
I okay, more real talk after the break. But I
think there's a misunderstanding. I think in general, the way
(12:27):
that organizing spaces work. I think the kind of general
public feels, you know, enthralled by the stories of the
charismatic leader and the person who's giving the speeches and
delegating the responsibility and things of that nature. I think
we do forget somehow what the real kind of you know,
(12:50):
work of organizing is always collective, because that's kind of
how we as Africans just operate, and we operated that
way even when on the outside in the media, it
looked like there was this kind of singular leader. I
feel like we have always kind of functioned in this
multi tiered, multi ways of attacking an issue way that
(13:12):
whether it's in a radical space or quote unquote assimilation
in space, whatever, if you're organizing, you're organizing. And I
think organizing looks different behind the scenes than it does
to the general public. And I remember watching the movie Selma,
and one of the one of the the scenes that
I really appreciated was the depiction of those kind of
(13:35):
like war room moments during the civil rights leaders where
you can see that there is a group strategy going
on here and we're gonna do this. We're gonna go
here and do vote a registration, and we're gonna go here,
and we're going to march, and we're gonna sit in
on this day, and then on this day we're doing this,
and these things are happening simultaneously, and this person is
going down south to do some research, and this person
(13:56):
is doing blah blah blah blah, and that this this
doesn't undermine the brilliant minds that are that are involved
in this kind of group project, and many of you know.
I remember, you know, when when Oprah first became like
a billionaire, you know, and it's just like, well, somebody
need to call Oprah. Remember, you know, somebody needs you
(14:22):
need to call y'all need to call Oprah airplane. Yes,
down here, you know. And not saying that. I not
saying that those kind of thing didn't happen, because, um,
you know, there were definitely some people known for that
type of work. You know, Um was my man, I'm
having a brain for it. He's um so fine, honey
(14:44):
an actor day Oh oh, Harry Bella cont Harry, you
gotta call a ninety year old? Fine? Yes he is, baby,
But if you go back to the old footage, it'll
do something. Yes, we said, but you know, I'm horace.
(15:08):
I couldn't do this. But what But again, yes, there
were people who called in the private planes. You know
what I'm saying. There are people at the money. But
that is also yet another tier. Yes, that's also another tier,
funding quiet, funding of radical movements. These are all the things.
So I don't know. I mean, I agree with Jill
(15:30):
and that we can't always tell what's happening, but I
also think we aren't. There is quite a bit of
organizing happening as we speak, and is not being talked
about on Front Street. That is being done in a
very grassroots way. And you know, the thing that touches
my heart and talked about it a little earlier, is
(15:51):
that with all of this effort and constant and consistent effort,
we are dealing with a really monster of us, them
and we and and there's the age old kind of
conversation as to you know, what is the end result?
Is the end result? Because for some people, Jill, they
don't actually want to uproot the tree. They want to
(16:14):
paint the leaves. You know what I'm saying. They don't
really want to up with the tradition one. They just
want to have an area where they can get the shade.
They just want that area where they can't get the shade, y'all.
I'm just listening to Well, luckily, well not luckily, not
(16:38):
luckily at all. Oh, there's a lot of trees in
the garden. So it seems to me that you have
to find the tree that gets on your nerves the most,
find the one that gets on you maybe, you know,
it's like trying to how do you eat an elephant? Right?
(17:01):
It's it's it's like because this tree has the you know,
makes the biggest mess and has the funk. You know
those little stinky things. You remember, those stinky things you
stepped on in Philly they fell off the tree. Oh,
just because that you know, that tree might get on
(17:22):
your nerves a lot. This one over here that is
um keeping, keeping North Philly kids mentally enslaved. This thing
over here that doesn't supply the kind of books or
environment that is needed. This thing over here, maybe that
(17:45):
tree is the one that gets on your nerves the most.
Or the fact that you know somebody's trying to mess
with with your with your ovarians, you know, on your nerves.
I'm saying as a society, somebody else that that gets
on their nerves too, as a society, as a people,
we gotta find a thing that gets on our nerves
(18:07):
and be a portion in the destruction and the uprooting
of that tree. It's just so many things. There's a lot,
but if we don't focus on one thing at a time,
I mean, it gets crazy. You do have to find
your ministry. Amen, come on my home. Cross texts me
this morning, and she's just like I think people are
(18:28):
not realizing how fast this election is going to get here.
And I said, yeah, and and here do it. I'm
starting to get and um, you know, when I think
about this kind of massive elephant that we're talking about today,
which is really just kind of like that overarching white
(18:49):
supremacist capital capitalism, you know, crazy like the way another one,
it's like, um, you know, when we think about this,
this whole thing, I kind of you know, get back
to the whole idea like small group communications. My sister
(19:12):
um started out in college doing HR and marketing and
then she moved to like small HR and small group communications,
and as like what is that? You know, when I
started to understand that kind of mastering the needs of
people where they are is really an important conversation. And
(19:32):
so it gets into that kind of local government thing.
How are how keyed are you into the needs of
your neighbors the p and what kind of aid and
what kind of voice are you giving to the spaces
that you actually take up? And that not that there
aren't huge overarching issues that we have to address, but
(19:55):
I'm not sure if all of us are are deeply
invested in the small group are we really invested in
the ten blocks that we live on now like we
should be most of us are. I know, I'm not.
Let me just I am not. I want to be.
I've been. I've been thinking out loud. I'm not. And
(20:18):
if you are not able to answer the simple question
of what is the most important thing to the people
who live to your left and right, the people you're
actually sharing space with, If you can't answer that question,
or if that question is not relevant to you, I
about to say, that's just because when you don't care
because they don't look like you and they're not you know,
(20:38):
if that question is not relevant to you, then it
begins a conversation about how you're going to engage, Like
I really you know what I'm saying, because the big
thing is a lot to it's a lot to swallow.
I was in a spa a week ago and I
ended up in the spa with this this this white
lady and she's asking me questions and I was like, well,
(21:03):
what do you do? Because she's all in my business
make up less, but I'm like, well what do you do? She's, Oh,
I'm an environmental scientist. Who's that? She said? Yeah, she said,
you know the problem is not she said, the problem
is actually not climate change. She said. Climate change is real,
(21:23):
she said, but what average person to get wrapped their
mind around that. You know, they're gonna vote for the
candidate who says they're against it, she said, But you know,
a lot of that that's going on is so much
bigger than the experience of the everyday people. Y'all should
go on to these meetings and figuring out why they're
building buildings and it's that going to affect your groundwater?
(21:43):
She was like, that's the environmental stuff that that y'all
need to be concerned about. Is what is happening in
the ten to twenty blocks around your home, the twenty
blocks around your kids school especially. Yeah, she was, most
people have no idea what the developmental plan is for
(22:04):
their community, that that's being decided five years before you
see a single construction vehicle. Yeah, I got Living in
California has made me way more locally aware. It's kind
of an interesting advantage because you vote for everything. But
you are I totally agree with you, Adrian. You are
so right. My girlfriend was just complaining the other day
(22:27):
that the city was coming they were gonna tear up
the pipes in the block to refurbish them. And she's like,
that means that we're not gonna have water for you know,
like maybe two or three days. And we got to
stop this and you know, making phone calls and stuff.
And I was like, so you you don't want healthy
water in your house? Do you want the old pipes
(22:51):
that have been around since who knows who um filtering
your water system? You want that? It's it's like, oh,
just taking a taking the picture and making it to
puzzle pieces, and then everybody grabbing a puzzle piece, finding
your partner and coming together to make the bigger picture.
(23:17):
We're talking about how to organize in such a way
that your your energy towards injustice is effective productive, you know,
just for the average person. We only know how to
either romanticize or demonize the activists. Oh, we want the
(23:41):
activists to shut up because we don't want them over
correcting us. But we want them to show up when
shit goes bad. Are we're gonna blame them for why
things never change right where he at, why he income
or he just says they too sensitive. You know, at
the end of the day, the activist, the person who
(24:01):
is active, must be you. It is it is us
as you and me. At the end of the day,
nobody's coming. There's no calvary. You know what I'm saying,
there's no calvary. If you or I have not invested
in it, then what so I my same girlfriend who
(24:21):
texted me, she was like, what are you thinking about
in terms of like your top three things that you
types of like legislation that are on your mind, Like
what's your top three things that you really need to
see changed? Okay? And I had six? Did she say
after you give them? Did she say something else? Did
(24:42):
she say give you like, well, she didn't. She didn't.
But I think it was an important exercise to think
about it, because you're just saying there's a lot of
trees in that in that garden, But do we all
really think about like what is the most important thing
to me? M Like, what is the thing that's like
sitting on my spirit? But if you think about it
(25:03):
in a legislative way, that that list will get longer
and longer. Like you said, she asked you for three,
you gave her six. I think that would happen because
you'll be like, well, I want to get paid equal,
I want to get paid fairly. Uh. I want to
be able to be happy, to have rights over my body,
for the police officers not to be able to kill
black people, huh anybody. I want for people to be
(25:23):
able to get the education, a full education. I'm already
in four like you just you know. But but but again,
the discipline of saying what is most important to me,
and then kind of moving in the ideas of like
or what does it look like for me, What does
it look like for me to show up in the
(25:44):
space around me to help that to happen? What does
that look like for me to in the community where
I live, in my own home? Even first, what's my
own body? Because so much of the care and the
anti racist work that we gotta do is in our
(26:06):
own bodies, you know, taking care of ourselves. You know,
I'm saying those are That's that's the where it starts.
But then the extension of that goes into your neighborhood
and then into your city, into your state, and the
into your country. The decompression of it all. That's why
I posted that Al Sharpton on that treadmill at five
am in the morning, because that is because that is
(26:30):
where the work begins. Because in Al Sharpton who dies
before his time because of heart disease, which is the
number one killer okay of black people. Yes, yes, you
know that. What is that? Then? Then how does that
help us to lose a soldier? Yes, but however you
feel about them? Yea, you know what I'm saying. So
(26:51):
the body, the body is first, and then and then
it goes outward. And again, this is a working and
moving conversation. I'm not an organize, Okay, I'm just abroad.
You need an organizer, somebody who has a big picture,
who can who can really and and be all. They're
easy to find, are they. So there's always somebody organizing
(27:16):
in your community always, And we got the Google now,
so there is always somebody organizing. So that's a step.
That's a step running an organizer locally. Okay. Yeah, we're
gonna take a quick break and then we'll be right back. Okay,
(27:45):
I want to hear my list. My list number one
free healthcare to free college. Three fully funded public schooling,
for abolition of prisons, police with the investment in community healing,
housing and employment. Five comprehensive recovery plan for the pandemic,
(28:09):
and six reparations that's why I live in California because
that last one on your list. You know, it's funny.
I was talking to a group of DC people the
other day and it was like, I mean, y'all ain't
gonna get nothing about that reparations. I said, you know
what the point is that my governor started the process, right,
and you live in a black city with the bush
(28:30):
mayor with okay, and you still being taxed and you're
not even without being a state who So I'm gonna
need you to leave my governor newsom we over here
with the Crown Act. Okay, all right, Okay, I love DC.
That's my that's oh yeah, no, no, no, no, all
day every day, I don't think every day. You can
check your boob, you can check your book. Yeah yeah.
(28:52):
So you find the tree that irks you sold the
most in the garden of injustice, and then you find
an organizer, okay, or or you become one you or
you become one. Hey. Now, so you have a specific reason,
um that you don't like this thing whatever that uh
injustices um, and you the organizer and yourself, I'm just
(29:16):
I'm just throwing shit out here, y'all. Listen, it's organizations,
it's people doing work. Always if you want to do work,
I firmly believe it's only about you deciding to do work. Yeah,
but it's so much easier to just go to my
Instagram and just like repos ahead that I can really
just says, I don't know, y'all. Sometimes I feel like
(29:37):
we're hard on each other about that. I know I'm
us like, oh, y'all just posting and I don't know.
I don't know, y'all. I feel like social media my
retort is actually to the people who comes out. It
has helped. It definitely does. It's a part of it's
another part of that process. I was making a bad
(29:57):
joke for the people who actually attack people that in
these streets doing these things, you know what I'm saying,
Like the ones who ain't in the streets doing these things,
and you just posing. That's what I do because I
know I'm not in the streets like I should be.
Can you ride out? You know what I'm saying, I'm
seeing that every little thing. Um, I'm won't say every
(30:18):
little thing, but all the little things add up. If
you're trying to, you know, uproot a tree, So you
need someone that's going to organize all the things right.
And then you have to find specific people who want
the same thing. They want this tree up rooted, find
specific people to do specific things for the bigger picture.
(30:39):
So I would say the organizer would have the biggest picture,
I guess, or the organizers I think they always do.
But I think I think they always do. Here's here's
the thing I want to keep in mind again, and
this is not to confuse further confuse a very you know,
complex situation any further, but I do want us to
(30:59):
keep this part in mind. All Black people are not
the same. All black people don't think the same, and
this will show itself up in organizing spaces if you
really talk to organizers, which we should have somebody on
here who really does this work. But in organizing spaces,
I've heard different people vent about even in spaces that
(31:22):
are dedicated to liberation have to be checked, vetted and
rework sometimes, you know what I'm saying. So even in
those spaces, to romanticize the organizing spaces is important not
to do that because even in those spaces it will
not be perfect because we're all dealing with the constant
onslide of what these systems do to us, and so
(31:43):
there will be people who look at it like this
is what we should do, and then you go on
this other side. A good friend of mine and he's
been on the show, Josh Meyers posted the other day
a letter from Carter G. Woodson, who turn down an
opportunity to work with w eb D Boys and yes
(32:07):
because some of his work at the time was being
heavily funded by white people. Oh yeah, I remember it
was like the original b So this is important. This
is so important for us that our ancestors didn't always agree.
Malcolm and Martin Hello, you know, I mean, but it's
(32:29):
it exists and it's dalid. You know, they didn't always
agree be but you know, the attempts, the ongoing strategy,
the willingness to grow and evolve. Our leaders evolved in
their lives. A twenty five year old w eb D
Boys is not an eighty year old e w Ebdu Boys.
(32:50):
You can't quote a twenty year old or twenty five
year old D Boys and think that you'd have said
something without then knowing and understanding his thinking in his
politics fifty years later, which is quite different. Same for Malcolm,
same for Martin just shorter lives sounds like a counsel
of ethics, and that council of ethics would have to
(33:17):
be multi generational. Hum to not overmind the situation, but
keep in mind, because you're not easy, we can get
off track. Yeah, it's keep in mind the keep in
mind the focus of this thing. It's like something else
(33:39):
is gonna come up. We're like, you know, people have
hdh D. Sorry sorry sorry, probably I probably I gotta
be because you know squirrel. Um, So like oh look,
oh there's bird flag? Would you say? You know, I'm
(34:00):
I'm very much an artist in that way too. So like, okay,
so you need an organizer or organizers, you need someone
a council of ethics that could be three people or
or you know, I think three is a good number, um,
because it's it keeps it pretty simple, keeps it simple. Um.
(34:22):
I think that that all three would have to agree,
you know what I mean, Like if we trust them,
then all three would have to agree of our whole
break race or is this it locally? Each I'm safety
each tree, each tree, each issue, each issue, each thing,
And that's that's the thing that gets on your soul.
If I guess you so much that you want to
(34:44):
put your energy into destroying that thing and destroying that
particular that tree right there. Okay, so you need some
organizers and you need a council of ethics. I feel
like I honestly, I ain't gonna lie to you. I
just think the world is I think organizers are like
apples on the tree. There's so many people out here
(35:05):
doing work. Yeah, they're easy to find, Yeah, they're easy
to your point about I'm not saying I'm just saying that, yeah, yeah,
I know. I'm not saying that that they don't exist.
I'm saying that if you're listening or within listening ears
and it's something that's really troubling your soul about a
particular thing, you go and find and be of service,
(35:28):
do the thing you might be. You might be the
you know, the ant that's that's dropping in you know, poison.
I'm just you know, I'm just saying, you know, it
takes it takes an army of ants, you know, to
to create a colony. You know now that if you
get rid of one, it doesn't mean that the train
(35:49):
of ants is gonna stop moving. You know. It's like
we've play so much, so much weight on a leader,
and the weight is like, you can't have any flaw,
laws or faults, you can't be a human. You have
to you got you remember and you know you're not.
You don't have space. So the whole leader thing is
(36:12):
is is not going to work. It is to me,
I really feel like it's more of a council, a
tribunal of you know, a group of people that don't
like this particular injustice and some say we have that.
We are just trying to tell anybody within listening ears
who is not found a thing, you know, a found
(36:33):
a thing to be a part of it really is community,
then find the thing. Come on if you're right. I
mean also to like um, what I think like you
might be referring to is you remember um. At the
height of BLM Black Lives Matter movement, there was a
lot of critique around it for not having a centralized
(36:55):
leadership and the fact that really what it was at
the end of the jay was a rallying cry and
then was forced into becoming an organization. And one of
the things that it was in terms of it's it's
kind of rushed into that space was saying we're not
having centralized leadership. This is about people kind of taking
(37:18):
this overall rally and cry in these points and making
it happen locally in their own spaces. And but now
to do right now we do? It's at least three
people who claim to be like along with Patrice Colors,
there were the founders, right, but I think they were
the founders. But you know, there's, like I said, they
(37:39):
came under fire for not having this kind of you know,
centralized leadership. So we do have to work on ourselves.
I think one of the things that I found that
the process that I go through sometimes is making sure
that I'm not in my own way. You know. Sometimes
there's always this feeling like I might be dragging some
(38:02):
sort of kind of outdated thinking or some thinking that's
blocking me from being a real service to people in
the spaces that I want to take up because of
my way of thinking. If I'm a person who feels
really you know, invested in that kind of leadership, and
it's not there, and it is deeply communal because even
we can look at like, you know, I guess our
(38:25):
kind of our indigenous brothers and sisters, and how the
different kind of Native nations worked. Some of them were
were power was spread out amongst people differently. Sometimes leadership
had to come through the woman's lineage. So there's lots
of ways to Skinner can't feel. But you know, I
just like try to keep mind I'm not dragging anything
(38:45):
into the space that's going to keep us from moving forward,
just because I'm just really focused on it happen to
be a certain kind of way, you know, Like for example,
I'm sure there's some spaces that people feel like leadership
has to be male or you know what I'm saying.
You know, our religious spaces used to be really centralized
for where we would be working on these issues. Yeah,
(39:09):
and in some churches and still to this day, women
are not allowed to be in leadership. So you find
an organization or something that you believe in, but the
leadership is not there. You have you, I guess you
have a choice. You can continue to follow it and
see where it's going. And if if you don't like
where it's going, either talk to the people around you,
(39:32):
I suppose, or find something else to do. It's always something,
it's always something has something else to do, It's always
something else. I'm like I was sitting here looking. I'm like,
let me see what the National ash and network got
going on on their little things some resources, Like I'm
not checking it because I'm not checking it. I'm not
checking it daily. No, I'm not checking it daily. I
literally this is the first time I've ever been here.
(39:53):
I was like, to your city council meetings, Do y'all
go to those? I say, some meetings that become national news.
I feel like I definitely need to, But now I
haven't gone yet. Yeah, I'm saying I will get into
a book and to two point two seconds, but I
(40:14):
don't I should go. I'm just trying to get it.
We're all we've all got issues and pass and stuff.
We all have stuff, and I feel like sometimes the
stuff gets put in front of the forward movement. And
(40:37):
I know, like we were talking a lot of people
we were talked earlier about assholes now and how at
some point you got to realize that you're an asshole. Yeah,
and you had that point have a choice to continue
being an asshole or you could go to therapy figure
out why you are like this because it doesn't serve
(40:59):
anything or doesn't serve anyone. For it's greater good. Yeah,
that's that's what I'm talking about. Like when you're following
a particular path because you think that that it's going
to lead you somewhere. But you've been doing this thing,
the same thing for twenty years and nothing is happening,
nothing is happening. Then you have an obligation, I would think,
(41:19):
to yourself to make a different choice, to go a
different path. And we easily like this is just from
my perspective, and I've seen it in myself. I will
leave the thing and go to the thing that's just
like the last thing. It's been a big deal that
I left the thing, but I left the thing for
the for the almost damn near the last thing in
(41:40):
the same skin. Yeah, you know. But that's why the
self awareness piece is important. Like we talked about it
at the top of this conversation, like what are you
doing to um, like decolonize the self first? You know,
like what are you? What are you doing? You know
that that's really important word and sometimes can end up
(42:01):
being your singular work. Okay, So let's just sometimes that
can be your work. That's hard work for us, and
for us it's important because we have a platform. So
the moment that we work on decolonizing ourselves and we
start talking and using that platform and we're putting that
kind of messaging out that makes the work, the self
(42:22):
work that we do that more impactful. Man. Okay, So
just imagine you've got a group of people who are
thinking along the same lines, trying to get rid of
this particular tree, right, a particular one, and then they
have people come in for just I'm just saying, like
a meeting or something. I don't know what to call
the thing, but they have someone come in to talk
(42:45):
about decolonizing your mentality, like continuously fueling. So because anybody
and everybody can get lost, it's so easy to do
very and essentially they already are lost. So there's a
level of education that has to be provided and options
(43:05):
provide it because we're all just people, right of course. Yep,
I'm listening. I don't know if anybody's taking notes. I'm sorry,
I'm feeling this shit. Okay, So you need an organizer
of ethics, you know, a different generation of people. I'm
just there's many ways to do this thing. I just
(43:28):
I just want and um encourage you. I love that
your mind is circle back to solution based thinking you know.
And and again, if you're organizing, you're listening to this
and you're thinking like, bless bless their hearts. I love it.
I love that because everybody has to start in a
space of newness, in that place where it is like
(43:51):
if you're moving into a different way of thinking in
your mind, you know, and you have access to other people,
it is your journey is as important as somebody who
may be a little bit further down down the road.
You know what I'm saying, because who you are in
the circle of people that you're in is that's that's
a group of important people will come out of that
(44:13):
group can be life changing, transformative. Even so, you can't
don't underestimate where you are in this process, you know
what I'm saying. If this is something that you're not
if this is something that we're talking about right now,
and it's just like, oh, I'm so above this, I'm
beyond this. I've already I've been doing this twenty five
thirty years. Fool. If you've never thought about it before. Cool.
(44:38):
Everybody is kind of like in a different space in
that journey and that's okay, And that the moment that
you start thinking about it. The moment you start really
working out in your head, you are already changing the room.
You're already changing the space, You're already impacting the people
around you. I just, I really am a firm believer
in that because I'm just you know, I find a
(44:59):
lot of liberation and being the dummy in the room.
I don't like being the person in the room that
knows the most. I want to be the person in
the moom that knows the least because I want to
learn something. When I leave, I want to be enlightened.
You know what I'm saying, And I mean ultimately, that's
why I enjoy talking to you guys, because when I
(45:20):
walk away from it, I'm like, yeah, we do that
for you girls. Shut up. I'm like you just say
I thought she was the one doing it, Okay, No,
and you know better and you do it for me,
like yeah, and you know, I know, I know. More
(45:41):
conversation after the break, everybody is really gifted and thoughtful
about what's happening, you know, around us, and we are
(46:04):
formula as well, ladies. So we are formula as well
when we talk about you know, activism and how everybody
serves a different I feel like, that's us too. We
are are voltron, right, It's like voltron basically that's what
that's what it takes. It takes ron, it takes kind
of so so anybody exactly listening this is this is
(46:24):
just to get you excited. If you've already been active,
and you've already been working on changing the system, and
you know, maybe you feel tired, maybe you do need
to take a break, Maybe you need to need a
moment ago and and get in some hot springs and okay,
huh and the nature the rest of us need to
(46:46):
tap in the yeah, because people are exhausted, Jill, They
really are. I saw an interview with Angela Davis and
she talked about they ain't know nothing about no self
care as active and during their time has a very
new concept. But I'm gonna tell you something something I
have really learned by watching just on the outside looking in,
(47:10):
watching some of the work around like mutual Aid within
the LGBTQ community. It is inspiring because it's a keepist, simple,
stupid thing. You know what I mean. You know what
I'm saying, who is in need, who has something to
give to who is in need? But more than anything
is what are the needs of those who are around you?
(47:33):
What are your needs? And what are the needs of
those around you who have less? Who have less? Uh,
you know, accessibility to things or whatever the case may be.
I follow a guy Instagram and literally his entire account
is mutual aid requests. I think that's powerful is that
(47:56):
his name is Freedom John. Now, what is mutual aid
alone aid? And it's basically it's it's it's some regular
church community shit. So and so gotta move and they
got three kids and they gotta move. They about to
get kicked out their apartment. They need money to move.
All right, cool? Who got what? We're gonna drop off
(48:17):
an envelope? You remember the envelope like the Red Parties, Like, yes,
mutual aide. It is this black woman's opinion that that
is a time it is is though that So it's
like go fund me like a new mutual aid. People
use it as so fund me is mutual aide. It's
(48:38):
been demonized because of different things that have happened, you know,
and people feel like, ex what, people are lazy or
they're not doing what they're supposed to do when they
just depend on go fund me. And I'm not saying
it ain't no people out there that's you know, less
than kosher about what they're trying to do. However, the
idea of community giving and community support is not new.
(49:00):
It's super super you know, you know, you've been doing
it for a long time, and you know again it
helps us to make it bite sized. What we like
at Jadi L Yes we do. We like a bite
size okay, and it's bite size. It's a bite size
you know, response and an immediate and direct response to need.
(49:26):
And it's not the only thing you do again, multi
tiered shit is the way we have always operated. This
is our actual history. I'm not, you know, reinventing any
wheels here. This is something our ancestors have done never.
We always didn't have the names for these things. It's
so funny now today we have the verbiage for it,
like we have the name. It's a thing, you know, trauma.
(49:48):
It's not funny, is there funny at all? Because that's
what happens when somebody steals your language income jail. I'm
just saying, I chance for my lemon water. That's what happens.
Sound like the spirit of Stephanie Mills, just jail. Imagine
(50:09):
imagine that I could I could call across a room,
you know, or or across a yard or across a field,
and and um say a word that not only takes
you to a place mentally, that takes you to a
feeling that gives you a strength and remind you who
(50:32):
you are. Yeah, you're not allowed to say anything. Don't
speak your language, kill you. No, that's why we now.
All we have left is our our mmmmmmmmmmmmm mmm mmmmmmmmmmmm
(50:54):
mmmm that's what we gotta left, and we're bad. We
could look at that, all of that, all of that, Yeah,
and we and see strangers when women who are strangers
to you doing it, and you know what's going on,
so maybe we just Yeah, that was a moment. I
just realized we still have that powerful. It made me
happy to feel that. It's a little joy. That's us.
(51:23):
That's what we do. You're talking about people who truly
take absolutely nothing and just create. That's that's We're very
powerful people. And when we focus, we may not get
(51:46):
everything that we want to get done on our lists.
You know, we might not be able to check everything.
But go on and check something. It'll feel good. And
maybe maybe he might want to check something else, and
then something else. I'm going to a meet me. You
are powerful and when you and when you decide, you
(52:10):
make a decision. Man o man. I would just want
to say thank you to everybody who is um making
strides and using whatever acts, whatever saw, whatever's knife, whatever sin,
whatever pencil, toe, nail clip, whatever it is that you're
(52:32):
doing to cut down the tree. Thank you, thank you,
thank you so much. And for anybody who hasn't decided
on what tree they want to tear down, just know
that when you do go for it, go hard in
the paint. And sometimes that means those things that you
do hard in the paint won't be noticed, not yet,
(52:55):
not yet. But when you do good, you get good.
That's my firm opinion. Like a paver, Papa takes part.
Maybe when it's like you know Martins said it, I
may not get there with you, m but the thing
is that I'm responsible for this section of road. I'm
(53:19):
putting down these ten pavers. This is my part and
my section, and I want to do my work. Yeah,
you know, when you're like if I could just get one,
I can just get one, you know, I just be
(53:40):
feeling in a pothole, boo. But that's cool too, that's activism.
Get the pothhole field saving cards one day at a time,
especially in a rough neighborhood, and try and kill your car.
What is that? Boom? The whole bottom mouth? Damn. You
should like together if you want me to get anywhere?
(54:01):
Huh pick continue for me to pay for this insurance.
Stop it anyway, y'all we were half on and half
off topic and it goes down just like that. We
are having conversations to spark conversation and action not only
in your lives but in ours as well. And thank
(54:24):
my sisters. Can I can I interrupt you real quick
to just say I also want to thank our listeners
who stop us in the streets to tell us that
they are listening. I'm getting more more those lately. And
shout us to Breeze, who is one of our long
time listeners who I'm met in person yesterday. I just
want to give love because they think your family. I
tell them that all the time. Breeze, Breeze, Breeze, Thank
(54:45):
you Barber. Okay, you can walk by the shop in
a big window and be like today, I look cute.
Her looks eat out the barbertop. It's a it's a
(55:06):
whole vibe. I'm sorry, I just said I was, I did,
I did, I did? Come back look at it. Tell
the people go bye. You come on, we gotta go now.
I'm kay bye y'all. Till next time. Peace. How do
(55:29):
you eat an elephant? One? By? It time? Hey? Listeners?
Is Amber the producer here understanding where to even start
when getting involved in any type of community Organizing can
feel really overwhelming, So I want to share with you
just a really easy place to start is with ourselves
(55:51):
and in our own households. Are your habits and behaviors,
upholding your beliefs? Are you contributing to or combating the
problems that you see in your neighborhood? And what ways
can you adjust after you ask yourself these questions and
make those little adjustments in your day to day life
to go deeper. I want to leave you with two articles,
(56:13):
one about organizing a movement yourself and another about getting
involved in a movement that's already going. I link both
of those in the show notes below. Hi. If you
(56:36):
have comments on something you said in this episode, call
eight six six, Hey Joe, if you want to add
to this conversation. That's eight six, six, four, three, nine, five,
four five five. Don't forget to tell us your name
and the episode you're referring to. You might just hear
your message on a future episode. Thank you for listening
(56:57):
to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot m. The podcast j
dot Ill is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Jay dot Il, a production of iHeartRadio. What's Up,
Good People, Welcome back to Jay dot Ill the Podcast.
I am smiling. I'm smiling on the end, Tige, I'm
smiling on my outside. I feel good. I feel good
(00:24):
and I'm happy to see my sister friends at Graydon
Dan's left. I'm so happy to see you to love. Hi,
my shug, how are you? I'm really good. Life feels
good right now, the years starting out good. I don't
know about everything and everybody else, um, but I'm agree
with you on that for some reasons. One of them
(00:48):
is Lias Saint Claire, because she's here with me today too.
Oh yeah, just looking at y'all looking at each other's eyes,
giving that good sister love. And I'm here. I'm like
a listener. I'm here for all that you mean. It's
so a part of it, I know. But look good. Yeah,
it's it's good to feel good, you know what I'm saying.
(01:09):
And it's good to feel good about the things that
you're doing, like trying to really grasp a greater understanding,
a bigger picture of what it is that you're doing. Now.
I've noticed now, and we all noticed We've seen a
lot of people marching, a lot of people making TikTok's
(01:30):
um and that's no disrespect to TikTok. That's how I
say TikTok um um on the front, you know the
TikTok they're they're making posts and um. I think initially
like social media was to make people more aware of,
(01:50):
you know, things that were happening. Um. A lot of
it's become a lot of like celebrity stuff, which is
which is fine too, But I'm also seeing people commenting
and showing the kind of interactions that they have with police.
And as of late, I've noticed that it's it's white people,
black people, Latina people. It's all kinds of people having
(02:12):
really harsh interactions with the police. White people you show
yes because according to Ben Craft, and they ain't in
the ones that's getting attacked out in these streets, but
they are attacked. Now we're going to say this, there's
a difference which police. But I'm just saying that there
(02:38):
everybody is getting the business. A lot of people are
getting the business when it comes to a traffic violation.
Not everybody. It doesn't equal death for everybody, but damn it, right,
it does for some the more that we see that
it's a problem across the board, the wars, and see
(02:58):
that the institution itself, even though it should be enough,
it should be enough what they're doing, just you know,
us killing us. You know you got a little bit.
You shouldn't need it shouldn't need to be universal. Well,
unfortunately it does. People to make a stand. And you
know what's crazy. I keep saying their name, but because
they've been on TV a lot in the last couple
(03:19):
of weeks because of the loss of Tyree, the murder
of Tyree. But that's what all the activists are saying,
is that exact thing they're like, because white people aren't
affecting and murdered the way they are, we're not having
any change. And that's the only way until they start
looking at us as being them, Uh, we won't have
any change. For me, I think it's probably more like,
(03:42):
how how big are we willing to dream about this?
What are we willing to sacrifice in order for these
things to change? And how big are we willing to
dream about what we want to see it be other
than what it is right now? Like? And and what
I mean by that if I'm just need to be
more specific, is like, are we got to start thinking
(04:02):
beyond reform and we also have to start thinking about
what are the things that we're willing to lose in
the meantime and sacrifice in the meantime for a much larger,
more radical change, And asking for what depends on what
you're asking for, What I got to sacrifice to, It
depends on what. I mean. I'm really not sure. I mean,
I don't know. I mean, that's right, I'm not sure.
(04:24):
There's a number of things. I mean, we're talking if
we're talking about police violence, right, It's been a very
intense conversation around the abolition of police, the abolition of prisons,
and this gets to be an interesting topic, particularly when
you start talking about activist groups where you got some
groups who are primarily made up of black people who
(04:47):
have lost family members to gun violence and the gun
violence that did not come from police. So you have
that argument of well, what do we do with someone
who shot my cousin, or what do we do with
somebody who raped somebody or or assaulted someone that I love,
And then to have a conversation about our individual interactions
(05:09):
with these systems and the systems overall, if we really
talk about how people interact with these systems, they are
primarily negative, and they are primarily deadly for black people
and negative for all people really and anyone who's poor
when we're when we're talking about injustice, I did not
mean to slight in any way your knowledge systs at all.
(05:34):
I'm saying that when we're talking about injustice, it is
a deep a tree with very deep roots and long
branches and many charms. My perception of injustice, or even
cutting down a tree, is that you trim things branch
(05:55):
by branch or when you when you cut it directly
wrote that bitch, if you really want, you can do
that as well. You can absolutely do that as well.
But when you can do it like that, you're going
to have a lot of mess. You're gonna have a
lot to clean up. Sacrifice when I'm talking about, you're
(06:16):
gonna have a lot to clean up. You'll be cleaning
up just as long as you're dealing, as long as
you've been chopping down the tree, if not longer, you're
gonna clean up way longer when you cut. When you
cut injustice, because think about my branch, I hear that's
the right way to go, jil. I hear you. I
(06:36):
hear you. I hear you to my core. But I'm
telling you, we've been talking reform since reconstruction. It's twenty twenty,
motherfucking three. Yeah, but you'll get up murdered in the streets.
And that's true. And that's true. However, you do want
to get props to when there has been reformed and
(06:56):
there have been progress due to people's hard work, blood,
sweat and tears, because like, we ain't even getting here
to where we are, even though it seems it feels
like it's a fucked up time. I mean, there was
a time when ship was even more fucked up and
different with others, I think and those folks cut down
branches have a have a feeling that when we get
(07:17):
to this moment that we think that by talking about
the possibility of uprooting, I think we think that that
somehow means that there's I'm not trying to say there's
no respect for work that has been done in a sense.
We are in a sense. In a sense we are
because we're all talking about uprooting the tree right the
(07:39):
whole trie we're talking about it. And then obviously there's
different ways to uproot it. But to speak specifically about this,
I'm going to say that there's a guy name M. Khalil,
and Khalil puts poison at the bottom of the tree
every Thursday, okay. And there's Um the gardener who comes
(08:02):
and grabs some of the leaves and he gets it
all so we can see how many are falling. Now
there's somebody else who lops off branches at a time.
But we're saying that in any protest or in any
involvement of destroying or uprooting injustice, it takes a lot
(08:26):
of people moving in a similar direction. Layah was saying,
we were talking earlier about how Al Sharpton is at
these things. He's always at these things, and most of
us are like, what are you dumb job? And lat
hit hit us with it, hit us with it? Would
(08:47):
you would you say? Yeah? Well, I said, you know,
we had a we had Alice and gustrowing questions Apreme
one day and I asked, we talked to him about
the things that all of us blacks me thinking like
what do you really do? And he was saying, you know,
the cameras, he said, people think that I chase the cameras,
but you know that if I didn't go, they wouldn't come.
So a lot of times families call me because they
(09:08):
want attention made to what's going on, to what happened
to their loved ones. And then he acts kind of
like as a representative of us, right, he goes there,
he loves on them. I don't know if you watch
what he did at Tyrese's funeral, but he serves as us.
He loves on the family. He makes sure y'all know
that I'm here today and I will be here tomorrow.
Like he continues to bring these things up. So he
(09:31):
has a purpose, but it may not be with y'all think,
and I think that everybody doesn't understand activism in that way,
and that it's a formula and a plan in different pieces.
Just like you said, this tree, it's a tree, just
like Ben Crump. Ben Crump is a part of this tree, right,
and Al Sharpton talked about the fact that Ben Crump
is a person who brought out into Trey Vaughn Martin
right as a young lawyer, and so this relationship grew,
(09:54):
and so now Ben Crump is a man who because
we can't get these officers process hute it like they
should be because we can't take money out of their pockets.
Ben Cropp is going to get money for these families
that have lost their loved ones. That's what he's doing,
and you're gonna know what's going on, and that's what
they do. So I think that as a community and
(10:16):
a family, sometimes we just need to remind ourselves of
like we all serve different purposes and the struggle that
we're going because we put a lot of weight on
a person. Yeah, we put a lot of weight on
a single person. While you're just posting who literally has
a single job to do, just one. You know how
(10:37):
much easier it is to clean your to clean your
room when all your friends help. Everybody's got a job
to do, instead of been taking you two hours to
clean up because you guys had you know, you've had
pillow fights and you've been eating popcorn and whatever else
and got soda cans or whatever around. When everybody participates
(10:58):
and helps clean up, the room gets cleaned and we're
moving on to the next space to do a new thing.
I think that the problem that we're having is that
we're putting a lot of pressure on a single being
a single person when it really and truly takes all
of us, y'all. Some scientists right now is teaching those
(11:20):
termites or glaze in this tree and a certain chemical
that makes the termites go crazy. It's it's a bunch
of people that's just working and you may not know
all of them. But when there are leaders, hopefully what
a leader does is delegate authority. Yeah, so you give
(11:43):
people jobs to where where their greatest strength is and
stay off to social media talking about it. You gotta
stay off. Things that are done are typically done in
the dark. Not everybody our ship and how we're moving. Okay, okay,
(12:06):
I okay, more real talk after the break. But I
think there's a misunderstanding. I think in general, the way
(12:27):
that organizing spaces work. I think the kind of general
public feels, you know, enthralled by the stories of the
charismatic leader and the person who's giving the speeches and
delegating the responsibility and things of that nature. I think
we do forget somehow what the real kind of you know,
(12:50):
work of organizing is always collective, because that's kind of
how we as Africans just operate, and we operated that
way even when on the outside in the media, it
looked like there was this kind of singular leader. I
feel like we have always kind of functioned in this
multi tiered, multi ways of attacking an issue way that
(13:12):
whether it's in a radical space or quote unquote assimilation
in space, whatever, if you're organizing, you're organizing. And I
think organizing looks different behind the scenes than it does
to the general public. And I remember watching the movie Selma,
and one of the one of the the scenes that
I really appreciated was the depiction of those kind of
(13:35):
like war room moments during the civil rights leaders where
you can see that there is a group strategy going
on here and we're gonna do this. We're gonna go
here and do vote a registration, and we're gonna go here,
and we're going to march, and we're gonna sit in
on this day, and then on this day we're doing this,
and these things are happening simultaneously, and this person is
going down south to do some research, and this person
(13:56):
is doing blah blah blah blah, and that this this
doesn't undermine the brilliant minds that are that are involved
in this kind of group project, and many of you know.
I remember, you know, when when Oprah first became like
a billionaire, you know, and it's just like, well, somebody
need to call Oprah. Remember, you know, somebody needs you
(14:22):
need to call y'all need to call Oprah airplane. Yes,
down here, you know. And not saying that. I not
saying that those kind of thing didn't happen, because, um,
you know, there were definitely some people known for that
type of work. You know, Um was my man, I'm
having a brain for it. He's um so fine, honey
(14:44):
an actor day Oh oh, Harry Bella cont Harry, you
gotta call a ninety year old? Fine? Yes he is, baby,
But if you go back to the old footage, it'll
do something. Yes, we said, but you know, I'm horace.
(15:08):
I couldn't do this. But what But again, yes, there
were people who called in the private planes. You know
what I'm saying. There are people at the money. But
that is also yet another tier. Yes, that's also another tier,
funding quiet, funding of radical movements. These are all the things.
So I don't know. I mean, I agree with Jill
(15:30):
and that we can't always tell what's happening, but I
also think we aren't. There is quite a bit of
organizing happening as we speak, and is not being talked
about on Front Street. That is being done in a
very grassroots way. And you know, the thing that touches
my heart and talked about it a little earlier, is
(15:51):
that with all of this effort and constant and consistent effort,
we are dealing with a really monster of us, them
and we and and there's the age old kind of
conversation as to you know, what is the end result?
Is the end result? Because for some people, Jill, they
don't actually want to uproot the tree. They want to
(16:14):
paint the leaves. You know what I'm saying. They don't
really want to up with the tradition one. They just
want to have an area where they can get the shade.
They just want that area where they can't get the shade, y'all.
I'm just listening to Well, luckily, well not luckily, not
(16:38):
luckily at all. Oh, there's a lot of trees in
the garden. So it seems to me that you have
to find the tree that gets on your nerves the most,
find the one that gets on you maybe, you know,
it's like trying to how do you eat an elephant? Right?
(17:01):
It's it's it's like because this tree has the you know,
makes the biggest mess and has the funk. You know
those little stinky things. You remember, those stinky things you
stepped on in Philly they fell off the tree. Oh,
just because that you know, that tree might get on
(17:22):
your nerves a lot. This one over here that is
um keeping, keeping North Philly kids mentally enslaved. This thing
over here that doesn't supply the kind of books or
environment that is needed. This thing over here, maybe that
(17:45):
tree is the one that gets on your nerves the most.
Or the fact that you know somebody's trying to mess
with with your with your ovarians, you know, on your nerves.
I'm saying as a society, somebody else that that gets
on their nerves too, as a society, as a people,
we gotta find a thing that gets on our nerves
(18:07):
and be a portion in the destruction and the uprooting
of that tree. It's just so many things. There's a lot,
but if we don't focus on one thing at a time,
I mean, it gets crazy. You do have to find
your ministry. Amen, come on my home. Cross texts me
this morning, and she's just like I think people are
(18:28):
not realizing how fast this election is going to get here.
And I said, yeah, and and here do it. I'm
starting to get and um, you know, when I think
about this kind of massive elephant that we're talking about today,
which is really just kind of like that overarching white
(18:49):
supremacist capital capitalism, you know, crazy like the way another one,
it's like, um, you know, when we think about this,
this whole thing, I kind of you know, get back
to the whole idea like small group communications. My sister
(19:12):
um started out in college doing HR and marketing and
then she moved to like small HR and small group communications,
and as like what is that? You know, when I
started to understand that kind of mastering the needs of
people where they are is really an important conversation. And
(19:32):
so it gets into that kind of local government thing.
How are how keyed are you into the needs of
your neighbors the p and what kind of aid and
what kind of voice are you giving to the spaces
that you actually take up? And that not that there
aren't huge overarching issues that we have to address, but
(19:55):
I'm not sure if all of us are are deeply
invested in the small group are we really invested in
the ten blocks that we live on now like we
should be most of us are. I know, I'm not.
Let me just I am not. I want to be.
I've been. I've been thinking out loud. I'm not. And
(20:18):
if you are not able to answer the simple question
of what is the most important thing to the people
who live to your left and right, the people you're
actually sharing space with, If you can't answer that question,
or if that question is not relevant to you, I
about to say, that's just because when you don't care
because they don't look like you and they're not you know,
(20:38):
if that question is not relevant to you, then it
begins a conversation about how you're going to engage, Like
I really you know what I'm saying, because the big
thing is a lot to it's a lot to swallow.
I was in a spa a week ago and I
ended up in the spa with this this this white
lady and she's asking me questions and I was like, well,
(21:03):
what do you do? Because she's all in my business
make up less, but I'm like, well what do you do? She's, Oh,
I'm an environmental scientist. Who's that? She said? Yeah, she said,
you know the problem is not she said, the problem
is actually not climate change. She said. Climate change is real,
(21:23):
she said, but what average person to get wrapped their
mind around that. You know, they're gonna vote for the
candidate who says they're against it, she said, But you know,
a lot of that that's going on is so much
bigger than the experience of the everyday people. Y'all should
go on to these meetings and figuring out why they're
building buildings and it's that going to affect your groundwater?
(21:43):
She was like, that's the environmental stuff that that y'all
need to be concerned about. Is what is happening in
the ten to twenty blocks around your home, the twenty
blocks around your kids school especially. Yeah, she was, most
people have no idea what the developmental plan is for
(22:04):
their community, that that's being decided five years before you
see a single construction vehicle. Yeah, I got Living in
California has made me way more locally aware. It's kind
of an interesting advantage because you vote for everything. But
you are I totally agree with you, Adrian. You are
so right. My girlfriend was just complaining the other day
(22:27):
that the city was coming they were gonna tear up
the pipes in the block to refurbish them. And she's like,
that means that we're not gonna have water for you know,
like maybe two or three days. And we got to
stop this and you know, making phone calls and stuff.
And I was like, so you you don't want healthy
water in your house? Do you want the old pipes
(22:51):
that have been around since who knows who um filtering
your water system? You want that? It's it's like, oh,
just taking a taking the picture and making it to
puzzle pieces, and then everybody grabbing a puzzle piece, finding
your partner and coming together to make the bigger picture.
(23:17):
We're talking about how to organize in such a way
that your your energy towards injustice is effective productive, you know,
just for the average person. We only know how to
either romanticize or demonize the activists. Oh, we want the
(23:41):
activists to shut up because we don't want them over
correcting us. But we want them to show up when
shit goes bad. Are we're gonna blame them for why
things never change right where he at, why he income
or he just says they too sensitive. You know, at
the end of the day, the activist, the person who
(24:01):
is active, must be you. It is it is us
as you and me. At the end of the day,
nobody's coming. There's no calvary. You know what I'm saying,
there's no calvary. If you or I have not invested
in it, then what so I my same girlfriend who
(24:21):
texted me, she was like, what are you thinking about
in terms of like your top three things that you
types of like legislation that are on your mind, Like
what's your top three things that you really need to
see changed? Okay? And I had six? Did she say
after you give them? Did she say something else? Did
(24:42):
she say give you like, well, she didn't. She didn't.
But I think it was an important exercise to think
about it, because you're just saying there's a lot of
trees in that in that garden, But do we all
really think about like what is the most important thing
to me? M Like, what is the thing that's like
sitting on my spirit? But if you think about it
(25:03):
in a legislative way, that that list will get longer
and longer. Like you said, she asked you for three,
you gave her six. I think that would happen because
you'll be like, well, I want to get paid equal,
I want to get paid fairly. Uh. I want to
be able to be happy, to have rights over my body,
for the police officers not to be able to kill
black people, huh anybody. I want for people to be
(25:23):
able to get the education, a full education. I'm already
in four like you just you know. But but but again,
the discipline of saying what is most important to me,
and then kind of moving in the ideas of like
or what does it look like for me, What does
it look like for me to show up in the
(25:44):
space around me to help that to happen? What does
that look like for me to in the community where
I live, in my own home? Even first, what's my
own body? Because so much of the care and the
anti racist work that we gotta do is in our
(26:06):
own bodies, you know, taking care of ourselves. You know,
I'm saying those are That's that's the where it starts.
But then the extension of that goes into your neighborhood
and then into your city, into your state, and the
into your country. The decompression of it all. That's why
I posted that Al Sharpton on that treadmill at five
am in the morning, because that is because that is
(26:30):
where the work begins. Because in Al Sharpton who dies
before his time because of heart disease, which is the
number one killer okay of black people. Yes, yes, you
know that. What is that? Then? Then how does that
help us to lose a soldier? Yes, but however you
feel about them? Yea, you know what I'm saying. So
(26:51):
the body, the body is first, and then and then
it goes outward. And again, this is a working and
moving conversation. I'm not an organize, Okay, I'm just abroad.
You need an organizer, somebody who has a big picture,
who can who can really and and be all. They're
easy to find, are they. So there's always somebody organizing
(27:16):
in your community always, And we got the Google now,
so there is always somebody organizing. So that's a step.
That's a step running an organizer locally. Okay. Yeah, we're
gonna take a quick break and then we'll be right back. Okay,
(27:45):
I want to hear my list. My list number one
free healthcare to free college. Three fully funded public schooling,
for abolition of prisons, police with the investment in community healing,
housing and employment. Five comprehensive recovery plan for the pandemic,
(28:09):
and six reparations that's why I live in California because
that last one on your list. You know, it's funny.
I was talking to a group of DC people the
other day and it was like, I mean, y'all ain't
gonna get nothing about that reparations. I said, you know
what the point is that my governor started the process, right,
and you live in a black city with the bush
(28:30):
mayor with okay, and you still being taxed and you're
not even without being a state who So I'm gonna
need you to leave my governor newsom we over here
with the Crown Act. Okay, all right, Okay, I love DC.
That's my that's oh yeah, no, no, no, no, all
day every day, I don't think every day. You can
check your boob, you can check your book. Yeah yeah.
(28:52):
So you find the tree that irks you sold the
most in the garden of injustice, and then you find
an organizer, okay, or or you become one you or
you become one. Hey. Now, so you have a specific reason,
um that you don't like this thing whatever that uh
injustices um, and you the organizer and yourself, I'm just
(29:16):
I'm just throwing shit out here, y'all. Listen, it's organizations,
it's people doing work. Always if you want to do work,
I firmly believe it's only about you deciding to do work. Yeah,
but it's so much easier to just go to my
Instagram and just like repos ahead that I can really
just says, I don't know, y'all. Sometimes I feel like
(29:37):
we're hard on each other about that. I know I'm
us like, oh, y'all just posting and I don't know.
I don't know, y'all. I feel like social media my
retort is actually to the people who comes out. It
has helped. It definitely does. It's a part of it's
another part of that process. I was making a bad
(29:57):
joke for the people who actually attack people that in
these streets doing these things, you know what I'm saying,
Like the ones who ain't in the streets doing these things,
and you just posing. That's what I do because I
know I'm not in the streets like I should be.
Can you ride out? You know what I'm saying, I'm
seeing that every little thing. Um, I'm won't say every
(30:18):
little thing, but all the little things add up. If
you're trying to, you know, uproot a tree, So you
need someone that's going to organize all the things right.
And then you have to find specific people who want
the same thing. They want this tree up rooted, find
specific people to do specific things for the bigger picture.
(30:39):
So I would say the organizer would have the biggest picture,
I guess, or the organizers I think they always do.
But I think I think they always do. Here's here's
the thing I want to keep in mind again, and
this is not to confuse further confuse a very you know,
complex situation any further, but I do want us to
(30:59):
keep this part in mind. All Black people are not
the same. All black people don't think the same, and
this will show itself up in organizing spaces if you
really talk to organizers, which we should have somebody on
here who really does this work. But in organizing spaces,
I've heard different people vent about even in spaces that
(31:22):
are dedicated to liberation have to be checked, vetted and
rework sometimes, you know what I'm saying. So even in
those spaces, to romanticize the organizing spaces is important not
to do that because even in those spaces it will
not be perfect because we're all dealing with the constant
onslide of what these systems do to us, and so
(31:43):
there will be people who look at it like this
is what we should do, and then you go on
this other side. A good friend of mine and he's
been on the show, Josh Meyers posted the other day
a letter from Carter G. Woodson, who turn down an
opportunity to work with w eb D Boys and yes
(32:07):
because some of his work at the time was being
heavily funded by white people. Oh yeah, I remember it
was like the original b So this is important. This
is so important for us that our ancestors didn't always agree.
Malcolm and Martin Hello, you know, I mean, but it's
(32:29):
it exists and it's dalid. You know, they didn't always
agree be but you know, the attempts, the ongoing strategy,
the willingness to grow and evolve. Our leaders evolved in
their lives. A twenty five year old w eb D
Boys is not an eighty year old e w Ebdu Boys.
(32:50):
You can't quote a twenty year old or twenty five
year old D Boys and think that you'd have said
something without then knowing and understanding his thinking in his
politics fifty years later, which is quite different. Same for Malcolm,
same for Martin just shorter lives sounds like a counsel
of ethics, and that council of ethics would have to
(33:17):
be multi generational. Hum to not overmind the situation, but
keep in mind, because you're not easy, we can get
off track. Yeah, it's keep in mind the keep in
mind the focus of this thing. It's like something else
(33:39):
is gonna come up. We're like, you know, people have
hdh D. Sorry sorry sorry, probably I probably I gotta
be because you know squirrel. Um, So like oh look,
oh there's bird flag? Would you say? You know, I'm
(34:00):
I'm very much an artist in that way too. So like, okay,
so you need an organizer or organizers, you need someone
a council of ethics that could be three people or
or you know, I think three is a good number, um,
because it's it keeps it pretty simple, keeps it simple. Um.
(34:22):
I think that that all three would have to agree,
you know what I mean, Like if we trust them,
then all three would have to agree of our whole
break race or is this it locally? Each I'm safety
each tree, each tree, each issue, each issue, each thing,
And that's that's the thing that gets on your soul.
If I guess you so much that you want to
(34:44):
put your energy into destroying that thing and destroying that
particular that tree right there. Okay, so you need some
organizers and you need a council of ethics. I feel
like I honestly, I ain't gonna lie to you. I
just think the world is I think organizers are like
apples on the tree. There's so many people out here
(35:05):
doing work. Yeah, they're easy to find, Yeah, they're easy
to your point about I'm not saying I'm just saying that, yeah, yeah,
I know. I'm not saying that that they don't exist.
I'm saying that if you're listening or within listening ears
and it's something that's really troubling your soul about a
particular thing, you go and find and be of service,
(35:28):
do the thing you might be. You might be the
you know, the ant that's that's dropping in you know, poison.
I'm just you know, I'm just saying, you know, it
takes it takes an army of ants, you know, to
to create a colony. You know now that if you
get rid of one, it doesn't mean that the train
(35:49):
of ants is gonna stop moving. You know. It's like
we've play so much, so much weight on a leader,
and the weight is like, you can't have any flaw,
laws or faults, you can't be a human. You have
to you got you remember and you know you're not.
You don't have space. So the whole leader thing is
(36:12):
is is not going to work. It is to me,
I really feel like it's more of a council, a
tribunal of you know, a group of people that don't
like this particular injustice and some say we have that.
We are just trying to tell anybody within listening ears
who is not found a thing, you know, a found
(36:33):
a thing to be a part of it really is community,
then find the thing. Come on if you're right. I
mean also to like um, what I think like you
might be referring to is you remember um. At the
height of BLM Black Lives Matter movement, there was a
lot of critique around it for not having a centralized
(36:55):
leadership and the fact that really what it was at
the end of the jay was a rallying cry and
then was forced into becoming an organization. And one of
the things that it was in terms of it's it's
kind of rushed into that space was saying we're not
having centralized leadership. This is about people kind of taking
(37:18):
this overall rally and cry in these points and making
it happen locally in their own spaces. And but now
to do right now we do? It's at least three
people who claim to be like along with Patrice Colors,
there were the founders, right, but I think they were
the founders. But you know, there's, like I said, they
(37:39):
came under fire for not having this kind of you know,
centralized leadership. So we do have to work on ourselves.
I think one of the things that I found that
the process that I go through sometimes is making sure
that I'm not in my own way. You know. Sometimes
there's always this feeling like I might be dragging some
(38:02):
sort of kind of outdated thinking or some thinking that's
blocking me from being a real service to people in
the spaces that I want to take up because of
my way of thinking. If I'm a person who feels
really you know, invested in that kind of leadership, and
it's not there, and it is deeply communal because even
we can look at like, you know, I guess our
(38:25):
kind of our indigenous brothers and sisters, and how the
different kind of Native nations worked. Some of them were
were power was spread out amongst people differently. Sometimes leadership
had to come through the woman's lineage. So there's lots
of ways to Skinner can't feel. But you know, I
just like try to keep mind I'm not dragging anything
(38:45):
into the space that's going to keep us from moving forward,
just because I'm just really focused on it happen to
be a certain kind of way, you know, Like for example,
I'm sure there's some spaces that people feel like leadership
has to be male or you know what I'm saying.
You know, our religious spaces used to be really centralized
for where we would be working on these issues. Yeah,
(39:09):
and in some churches and still to this day, women
are not allowed to be in leadership. So you find
an organization or something that you believe in, but the
leadership is not there. You have you, I guess you
have a choice. You can continue to follow it and
see where it's going. And if if you don't like
where it's going, either talk to the people around you,
(39:32):
I suppose, or find something else to do. It's always something,
it's always something has something else to do, It's always
something else. I'm like I was sitting here looking. I'm like,
let me see what the National ash and network got
going on on their little things some resources, Like I'm
not checking it because I'm not checking it. I'm not
checking it daily. No, I'm not checking it daily. I
literally this is the first time I've ever been here.
(39:53):
I was like, to your city council meetings, Do y'all
go to those? I say, some meetings that become national news.
I feel like I definitely need to, But now I
haven't gone yet. Yeah, I'm saying I will get into
a book and to two point two seconds, but I
(40:14):
don't I should go. I'm just trying to get it.
We're all we've all got issues and pass and stuff.
We all have stuff, and I feel like sometimes the
stuff gets put in front of the forward movement. And
(40:37):
I know, like we were talking a lot of people
we were talked earlier about assholes now and how at
some point you got to realize that you're an asshole. Yeah,
and you had that point have a choice to continue
being an asshole or you could go to therapy figure
out why you are like this because it doesn't serve
(40:59):
anything or doesn't serve anyone. For it's greater good. Yeah,
that's that's what I'm talking about. Like when you're following
a particular path because you think that that it's going
to lead you somewhere. But you've been doing this thing,
the same thing for twenty years and nothing is happening,
nothing is happening. Then you have an obligation, I would think,
(41:19):
to yourself to make a different choice, to go a
different path. And we easily like this is just from
my perspective, and I've seen it in myself. I will
leave the thing and go to the thing that's just
like the last thing. It's been a big deal that
I left the thing, but I left the thing for
the for the almost damn near the last thing in
(41:40):
the same skin. Yeah, you know. But that's why the
self awareness piece is important. Like we talked about it
at the top of this conversation, like what are you
doing to um, like decolonize the self first? You know,
like what are you? What are you doing? You know
that that's really important word and sometimes can end up
(42:01):
being your singular work. Okay, So let's just sometimes that
can be your work. That's hard work for us, and
for us it's important because we have a platform. So
the moment that we work on decolonizing ourselves and we
start talking and using that platform and we're putting that
kind of messaging out that makes the work, the self
(42:22):
work that we do that more impactful. Man. Okay, So
just imagine you've got a group of people who are
thinking along the same lines, trying to get rid of
this particular tree, right, a particular one, and then they
have people come in for just I'm just saying, like
a meeting or something. I don't know what to call
the thing, but they have someone come in to talk
(42:45):
about decolonizing your mentality, like continuously fueling. So because anybody
and everybody can get lost, it's so easy to do
very and essentially they already are lost. So there's a
level of education that has to be provided and options
(43:05):
provide it because we're all just people, right of course. Yep,
I'm listening. I don't know if anybody's taking notes. I'm sorry,
I'm feeling this shit. Okay, So you need an organizer
of ethics, you know, a different generation of people. I'm
just there's many ways to do this thing. I just
(43:28):
I just want and um encourage you. I love that
your mind is circle back to solution based thinking you know.
And and again, if you're organizing, you're listening to this
and you're thinking like, bless bless their hearts. I love it.
I love that because everybody has to start in a
space of newness, in that place where it is like
(43:51):
if you're moving into a different way of thinking in
your mind, you know, and you have access to other people,
it is your journey is as important as somebody who
may be a little bit further down down the road.
You know what I'm saying, because who you are in
the circle of people that you're in is that's that's
a group of important people will come out of that
(44:13):
group can be life changing, transformative. Even so, you can't
don't underestimate where you are in this process, you know
what I'm saying. If this is something that you're not
if this is something that we're talking about right now,
and it's just like, oh, I'm so above this, I'm
beyond this. I've already I've been doing this twenty five
thirty years. Fool. If you've never thought about it before. Cool.
(44:38):
Everybody is kind of like in a different space in
that journey and that's okay, And that the moment that
you start thinking about it. The moment you start really
working out in your head, you are already changing the room.
You're already changing the space, You're already impacting the people
around you. I just, I really am a firm believer
in that because I'm just you know, I find a
(44:59):
lot of liberation and being the dummy in the room.
I don't like being the person in the room that
knows the most. I want to be the person in
the moom that knows the least because I want to
learn something. When I leave, I want to be enlightened.
You know what I'm saying, And I mean ultimately, that's
why I enjoy talking to you guys, because when I
(45:20):
walk away from it, I'm like, yeah, we do that
for you girls. Shut up. I'm like you just say
I thought she was the one doing it, Okay, No,
and you know better and you do it for me,
like yeah, and you know, I know, I know. More
(45:41):
conversation after the break, everybody is really gifted and thoughtful
about what's happening, you know, around us, and we are
(46:04):
formula as well, ladies. So we are formula as well
when we talk about you know, activism and how everybody
serves a different I feel like, that's us too. We
are are voltron, right, It's like voltron basically that's what
that's what it takes. It takes ron, it takes kind
of so so anybody exactly listening this is this is
(46:24):
just to get you excited. If you've already been active,
and you've already been working on changing the system, and
you know, maybe you feel tired, maybe you do need
to take a break, Maybe you need to need a
moment ago and and get in some hot springs and okay,
huh and the nature the rest of us need to
(46:46):
tap in the yeah, because people are exhausted, Jill, They
really are. I saw an interview with Angela Davis and
she talked about they ain't know nothing about no self
care as active and during their time has a very
new concept. But I'm gonna tell you something something I
have really learned by watching just on the outside looking in,
(47:10):
watching some of the work around like mutual Aid within
the LGBTQ community. It is inspiring because it's a keepist, simple,
stupid thing. You know what I mean. You know what
I'm saying, who is in need, who has something to
give to who is in need? But more than anything
is what are the needs of those who are around you?
(47:33):
What are your needs? And what are the needs of
those around you who have less? Who have less? Uh,
you know, accessibility to things or whatever the case may be.
I follow a guy Instagram and literally his entire account
is mutual aid requests. I think that's powerful is that
(47:56):
his name is Freedom John. Now, what is mutual aid
alone aid? And it's basically it's it's it's some regular
church community shit. So and so gotta move and they
got three kids and they gotta move. They about to
get kicked out their apartment. They need money to move.
All right, cool? Who got what? We're gonna drop off
(48:17):
an envelope? You remember the envelope like the Red Parties, Like, yes,
mutual aide. It is this black woman's opinion that that
is a time it is is though that So it's
like go fund me like a new mutual aid. People
use it as so fund me is mutual aide. It's
(48:38):
been demonized because of different things that have happened, you know,
and people feel like, ex what, people are lazy or
they're not doing what they're supposed to do when they
just depend on go fund me. And I'm not saying
it ain't no people out there that's you know, less
than kosher about what they're trying to do. However, the
idea of community giving and community support is not new.
(49:00):
It's super super you know, you know, you've been doing
it for a long time, and you know again it
helps us to make it bite sized. What we like
at Jadi L Yes we do. We like a bite
size okay, and it's bite size. It's a bite size
you know, response and an immediate and direct response to need.
(49:26):
And it's not the only thing you do again, multi
tiered shit is the way we have always operated. This
is our actual history. I'm not, you know, reinventing any
wheels here. This is something our ancestors have done never.
We always didn't have the names for these things. It's
so funny now today we have the verbiage for it,
like we have the name. It's a thing, you know, trauma.
(49:48):
It's not funny, is there funny at all? Because that's
what happens when somebody steals your language income jail. I'm
just saying, I chance for my lemon water. That's what happens.
Sound like the spirit of Stephanie Mills, just jail. Imagine
(50:09):
imagine that I could I could call across a room,
you know, or or across a yard or across a field,
and and um say a word that not only takes
you to a place mentally, that takes you to a
feeling that gives you a strength and remind you who
(50:32):
you are. Yeah, you're not allowed to say anything. Don't
speak your language, kill you. No, that's why we now.
All we have left is our our mmmmmmmmmmmmm mmm mmmmmmmmmmmm
(50:54):
mmmm that's what we gotta left, and we're bad. We
could look at that, all of that, all of that, Yeah,
and we and see strangers when women who are strangers
to you doing it, and you know what's going on,
so maybe we just Yeah, that was a moment. I
just realized we still have that powerful. It made me
happy to feel that. It's a little joy. That's us.
(51:23):
That's what we do. You're talking about people who truly
take absolutely nothing and just create. That's that's We're very
powerful people. And when we focus, we may not get
(51:46):
everything that we want to get done on our lists.
You know, we might not be able to check everything.
But go on and check something. It'll feel good. And
maybe maybe he might want to check something else, and
then something else. I'm going to a meet me. You
are powerful and when you and when you decide, you
(52:10):
make a decision. Man o man. I would just want
to say thank you to everybody who is um making
strides and using whatever acts, whatever saw, whatever's knife, whatever sin,
whatever pencil, toe, nail clip, whatever it is that you're
(52:32):
doing to cut down the tree. Thank you, thank you,
thank you so much. And for anybody who hasn't decided
on what tree they want to tear down, just know
that when you do go for it, go hard in
the paint. And sometimes that means those things that you
do hard in the paint won't be noticed, not yet,
(52:55):
not yet. But when you do good, you get good.
That's my firm opinion. Like a paver, Papa takes part.
Maybe when it's like you know Martins said it, I
may not get there with you, m but the thing
is that I'm responsible for this section of road. I'm
(53:19):
putting down these ten pavers. This is my part and
my section, and I want to do my work. Yeah,
you know, when you're like if I could just get one,
I can just get one, you know, I just be
(53:40):
feeling in a pothole, boo. But that's cool too, that's activism.
Get the pothhole field saving cards one day at a time,
especially in a rough neighborhood, and try and kill your car.
What is that? Boom? The whole bottom mouth? Damn. You
should like together if you want me to get anywhere?
(54:01):
Huh pick continue for me to pay for this insurance.
Stop it anyway, y'all we were half on and half
off topic and it goes down just like that. We
are having conversations to spark conversation and action not only
in your lives but in ours as well. And thank
(54:24):
my sisters. Can I can I interrupt you real quick
to just say I also want to thank our listeners
who stop us in the streets to tell us that
they are listening. I'm getting more more those lately. And
shout us to Breeze, who is one of our long
time listeners who I'm met in person yesterday. I just
want to give love because they think your family. I
tell them that all the time. Breeze, Breeze, Breeze, Thank
(54:45):
you Barber. Okay, you can walk by the shop in
a big window and be like today, I look cute.
Her looks eat out the barbertop. It's a it's a
(55:06):
whole vibe. I'm sorry, I just said I was, I did,
I did, I did? Come back look at it. Tell
the people go bye. You come on, we gotta go now.
I'm kay bye y'all. Till next time. Peace. How do
(55:29):
you eat an elephant? One? By? It time? Hey? Listeners?
Is Amber the producer here understanding where to even start
when getting involved in any type of community Organizing can
feel really overwhelming, So I want to share with you
just a really easy place to start is with ourselves
(55:51):
and in our own households. Are your habits and behaviors,
upholding your beliefs? Are you contributing to or combating the
problems that you see in your neighborhood? And what ways
can you adjust after you ask yourself these questions and
make those little adjustments in your day to day life
to go deeper. I want to leave you with two articles,
(56:13):
one about organizing a movement yourself and another about getting
involved in a movement that's already going. I link both
of those in the show notes below. Hi. If you
(56:36):
have comments on something you said in this episode, call
eight six six, Hey Joe, if you want to add
to this conversation. That's eight six, six, four, three, nine, five,
four five five. Don't forget to tell us your name
and the episode you're referring to. You might just hear
your message on a future episode. Thank you for listening
(56:57):
to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot m. The podcast j
dot Ill is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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