Confessions of a White Evangelical

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Native Lampod is a production of iHeart Radio in partnership
with Reason Choice Media. Welcome home, y'all. This is episode
one seventeen of Native Lampod, where we give you our
breakdown of all things politics and culture. I am your
host today, Bacari Sellers, and I'm joined by my co host,

(00:23):
none other than Angela Raie and Andrew Gillham. And I'm
excited to actually have a better host than both of
them joining us today. To a Mika Mollory, what's going.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
On, Well, we'll take family. I'm so excited to be
here with you all. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Welcome home, says we welcome home. This is going to
be the youngest looking woman in the.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, that's putting no respect on her name.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
This is the incredible co host of TMI podcast. She's
a legendary activist, a best selling author, not of one,
but two books. She is our dear sister, friend and
comrade who's known forever. We're thrilled to have her join
us as a co host today, but is to South Carolina.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
For me, I don't know was going to mention with
her two books that he also is a two times.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I was not going to do that. I only do
that to you and thank you for putting thank you
for putting some respect on that. I also think that
sometimes like the work that you do speak for you.
There's no doubt that Tamika is a heroine of our day.
And we appreciate all the.

Speaker 5 (01:25):
Work that you do, and so you for sure, and
especially my sister, you know how much I love you.
I work for Angela Rye regularly, just so everyone knows
y'all work.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I just I'm so grateful that you all feel called.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yes, passion, You're grateful, grateful you call us off. Look, Tomika,
we still we're still smoothing this out, but we actually
had this new part of our show that we love.
It's called for your Situational Awareness y F y A.
I've been messing up the acronym for a long period
of time, but we like to run down. It's n

(02:07):
s f W not safe for work. That's what I
call it. I don't know these acronyms be bothering me,
but that's.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
How you know, be up to no good, not safe
for work.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
That's how No, that's not how you catch the case.
But sometimes when you're watching something in a little virus
screen pop up. I don't care about that virus. Go ahead,
they can watch it with me anyway. Oh, anyway, we're
gonna get started because this past weekend we had the Grammys.
I think everybody watched the Grammys. The Grammys were so dope.
It was represented with diversity. We needed it. Our good

(02:39):
friend Jelly Roll actually won some Grammys and was.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Damn good friend.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
I mean during the South, we say our good I mean,
first of all, he.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Did the reverse in the South. Whatever you say, they mean.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, bless your bless your heart, bless you, bless y'all.
But he was up the Bible thump in Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus in his acceptance speech, and then they asked him
a question about ice, and he forgot all about Jesus.
We were all the class.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:06):
I know they're gonna try to kick me off here,
so just let me try to get this out. First
of all, Jesus, I hear you, and I'm listening, Lord,
I am listening Lord. Second of all, I want to
thank my beautiful wife. I would have never changed my
life without you. I'd ended up dead or in jail.
I'd have killed myself if it wasn't for you and Jesus.
I thank you for that. I thank you for my label.
Broken Boat a country radio.

Speaker 7 (03:26):
Baby.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
What's up y'all?

Speaker 8 (03:28):
All Republic John and Neely, we did it.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Baby.

Speaker 6 (03:31):
There was a time in my life y'all that I
was I was broken. That's why I wrote this album.
I didn't think I had a chance, y'all. There was
days that I thought the darkest things. I was a
horrible human. There was a moment in my life that
all I had was a Bible this big in a
radio the same size, and a six by eight foot
sell And I believe that those two things could change
my life. I believe that music had the power to

(03:51):
change my life, and God had the power to change
my life.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
And I want to.

Speaker 8 (03:55):
Tell y'all right now, Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is
not on by one political party. Jesus is not owned
by no music label. Jesus is Jesus, and anybody can
have a relationship with him.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
I love you, Lord.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
And so that was the Bible thumping on stage. It
was a lot of Jesus, and I was with him.
I clap, you know. I like to be sanctified every
now and then, but this was him afterwards talking about
ice right.

Speaker 6 (04:18):
Every now and then, you're so judgment I can tell
you that people shouldn't care to hear my opinion. Man,
you know, I'm a dumb redneck. I haven't watched enough.
I didn't have a phone for eighteen months. I've had
one for four months and don't have social media. I
hate to be the artist in static aloof but I
just I've come so disconnected from what's happening, and I'm
just not a I grew up in a house of

(04:38):
like insane pandemonium and like like I didn't even know
politics were fucking real until I was in my mid
twenties in jail. Like that's how disconnected when you grow
up in a drug addict household. You think we like
have common calls about what's happening in world politics, Like
we're just trying to find a way to survive. Man,
you know, And I have a lot to say about it.

(05:00):
I'm going to in the next week and everybody's gonna
hear exactly what I have to say about it in
the most loud and clear way I've ever spoke in
my life. So I look forward to it. Thank you
for bringing it up.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
What was the question to him.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Comment about Ice.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
They asked about Ice and ice attention and what he's
seeing in the streets, and that was his response.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
Can I just say his was jelly rolling. He was
yelling all around, here's my thing.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
I just don't understand how he's like, I only had
a fall for four months.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Friends.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
In the last four months, Ice has wage war on
this country.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
So you should absolutely.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Know what's good in.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Minnesota and in Tennessee. They in Tennessee.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
This dude lives in Tennessee with Bunny Hopper, his wife
or whatever her name is.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
So he ought to know.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
He ought to know what's happening with Ice, and he
ought to know something about it since he probably since
he said he was in detention, he should know what
he should know what it means to have your rights
protected or violated.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
He should have a thought. He does know. He does
know for sure, So he said, clears a lot he lies.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
And furthermore, he's in pictures and videos with Trump and
MAGA stuff, and like they have now exposed him on
social media that he's actually hanging out with these folks.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
So his phone was working somehow.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
To get him these other events that he went to
so cut it, cut it.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
He was jelly rolling.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
He was he was, he was jelly rolling. I'm actually
a jelly row fan. I listened to him while I run.
I love his music, and I actually go back to
jelly roll.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
We just started a boy off.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
He used to he used to, He used to wrap.
He started out wrapping with three six months in them.
Now they check them stats in Tennessee. We're gonna We're
gonna move right along to the Secretary of War, Secretary
of Defense, whatever y'all want to call him. And this
is a unique thing because it ties into the movie Milania. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah, last yeah, last week Keg's breath, but

(07:08):
Pete's head's gaff actually met with he actually I can't
even say, it don't matter to mean And the black
guy had to be overly qualified and he had to
be Pete. So yeah, so anyway, then you know, we
know Jeff Bezos spent seventy million dollars on Milania to
buy the rights and to advertise it, and then all
of a sudden, the next week, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos,

(07:30):
Pete Hesgeth are having a meeting about defense contracts. Take
a look at this clip Jerry, it's so much reportant.

Speaker 7 (07:37):
It's great to see you.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Are you doing all right?

Speaker 6 (07:39):
Well, Dave Limm, Jeff, thank you for being here.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
I appreciate it. Welcome. The grift continues. What do y'all
think about Milania and watching this grift play out in
real life?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Well, first, first, let's just acknowledge what happened.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
Pete Haig Seth and Jeff Bezos are shaking hands, They're
greeting one another.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's looking real friendly and like.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
At at Bezos's.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
It's at Blue Origin. It's at Bezos in California, in California. Yeah,
it's at Blue Origin. And the cop purpose of the
conversation was to talk about Blue Origins defense contracts with
the United States military and others.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
I think that the point here is that we have
to understand whether or not him paying so much money
for a documentary that only made seven million dollars, Right,
seven million dollars.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's debut week, and it cost how much.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Makari they paid for They paid forty for the rights
directly to Milania, which are a lot for documentary rights,
and then they paid thirty five million for marketing.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
Yes, so that's a whopping seventy five million dollars and
it got back seven million as.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
The market only on truth Social Well.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
I mean Amazon was responsible for marketing, not Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
So you're just saying what they spent.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Apparently, though, let me say this now, they did buy
a lot of seats. They bought seats in bulk, and
it is this is a weird thing. But it's the
highest selling opening weekend for documentary in ten years. But
it's still only sold seven million dollars.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
Well, how many documentaries have a seventy five million dollar
price tag, so it's not really apples apples one two.
I think the point here for those who might be
having a slower day is that they may have spent
seventy five million dollars as an investment into Blue Origin.
I think one other thing that was brought to our attention,

(09:33):
and I should have pulled this headline for you, Nick,
but I didn't. Washington Posts, in the midst of this
seventy five million dollar Amazon spend just laid off their
entire sports department.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
They just laid off.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
I have a friend of mine who was laid off
from Amazon just a couple of days ago. So Amazon
has money to spend on Milanya, but they don't have
money to spend on keeping their employees or at the
Washington Post, which as you all know, hopefully Jeff Bezos
now owns.

Speaker 5 (10:02):
And keep in mind that there have been issues with
Amazon even before this, labor issues that have been going
on for a long time. And you know, at some
point we've got to unravel ourselves from these companies that
just don't respect our communities, you know, and I know
Amazon is a hard one because everybody is into convenience.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
But nevertheless, such as we've done.

Speaker 5 (10:23):
Target, we have to show these CEOs and these companies
that we're not just gonna let you take our money
and then mistreat our communities and our people on the
backside or on the front side.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Really yeah, yeah, you know, to me, God, we didn't
acknowledge it, the leadership you've taken and help you move
our community away from dependency on you know, on Target
accepting of course Bacari, the online ordering of your wife's line. Right.
But the truth is is for those of us who
may draw conclusion, and it's because of the loss of money,

(10:55):
the you know, the you know, just sort of bleeding
money away from from companies. This man, the wealthiest in
the world. He could probably keep every one of these
enterprises going. All two hundred of those employees at the
Washington Post had just got the notice, the fact that
he just set, you know, close nearly seventy brick and
mortar stores, these Amazon stops and Amazon stores around the

(11:16):
country and only announced it last month. At the end
of last month, these people lost their jobs February one,
the start of Black History Month. So no notice, no respect,
no respect for workers' rights, no concern for what happens
to regular, everyday people who are slaving for him to
buy Italy for a weekend or whatever it is that

(11:37):
he chooses to spend his you know, his money on.
I just hate the fact that the disrespect is just
so obvious, it's so in our face, and it comes
without apology. The grift is loud and clear for everybody
to see.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, I mean, listen, they spent seventy five million dollars
on the film Malania, paying that to Donald Trump and
his family to curry favor for defense contracts. Today, just
as we're taping this, there is a reporter, Lizzie Johnson,
who is actually in Kiev in a war zone, and
she was laid off as we are writing this live
from a war zone. Let's think about that.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Uh, you know, Tamika, I love you to death. We
don't have a good track record over the past seven
days with our guest hosts and our guests on the show.
But we love Georgia Ford, we love Don Lemmon. Sometimes
you have to laugh not to cry. But both of
them found themselves in the peril and the and the
bullseye of the Department of Justice for some utter bullshit.

(12:33):
And we hope and we pray that bullshit doesn't befollow
anybody that we love or door like it did Don
Lemon or Georgia Ford. Uh, talk about this for a minute.
I didn't want to let he says that to say.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
By the way, I'm just trying to think to jail
right he I was first.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
I was so said, they tried to get me to girls.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
You know, at some point it becomes a badger out here,
like you.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Know, but can I ask you a question about it,
like can you talk about that? I mean, we don't
really have a clip during this period or graphic per se,
but I did think it was necessary. And Andrew actually
brought this up in our meeting, it was necessary to
talk about it, but talk about the sacrifice briefly that
it takes to be on the front lines of the movements,
because people say, oh, I want to be a part
of it, but they don't understand the sacrifice on family.

(13:27):
Talk about that brief you know.

Speaker 5 (13:28):
What, It kind of made me a little emotional just now,
just because I was trying to take myself back to
those moments where I have been arrested and I have claustophobia.
You know, being in a patty wagon is not something
that I ever want to do.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
And if you know anything about me, some of the
folks who've been in the paddywagon with me, when they
put you between where.

Speaker 5 (13:51):
You're on one side of a little I don't know
what that divider is, which makes it even the partition,
which makes it tighter, and then they close a game
and then they closed the door. The folks who've been
in there with me have had to help sing me through,
you know, help get me through that experience, because it's
not something that I ever wanted to do to myself,
but I've had to in order to really be a

(14:14):
part of the sacrifice that it takes to bring awareness
to certain causes. And when I was watching the video
of Georgia for and the way that DEA offices, which
I meant to call you, Angela and say, help me
understand that, because I've not ever witnessed DEA agents going
to fulfill a warrant about this issue, Like, it just

(14:35):
didn't make sense to me. I'm from the hood. When
DEA agents show up. Somebody was killed, you know what
I'm saying. It was drugs somebody, right, it's something big
has happened. And watching the experience of what was going
on in her home then her daughter speaking afterwards, it
traumatized me so much because even when my family knows

(14:56):
that I'm going out there and they aware I've made
everyone aware of what's happening, they still are traumatized every
single time because you never know what can happen once
a person is put into police custody. And so I
felt really for her, and of course for Don. I know,
Don Lemon in his good suit did not need to

(15:19):
be in the back of a police cargo to be
in a precinct, you know, or wherever they were overnight,
and it's just unfortunate. And I think the last thing
I'll say, is that what it really did was crystallized
for me how dangerous this moment is. That even though
the killing of Renee Good is terrible, terrible, the killing
of Keith Porter and the names go on.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Alex pretty is terrible.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
And then when you add and compound the issue of
journalists being arrested that are trying to tell the stories,
we know that we have entered the real, real phases
of fascism in this country.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
And I just hope everybody.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Is paying attention.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
That's real.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
That's amazing to me.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
Next time you hold your mic up, just hold the
mic part up so it's still out there. You go,
and then Bokar, you're still in the middle of your clips.
I just want to remind you took a significant detour.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
I wasn't gonna cut to mik Off. I don't know
what you think over here, but were gonna keep it
moving because because because one of the other things that
has been going on for the past week is the
release of the Epstein files, they finally got around there
releasing the Epstein files. Ironically enough, they released a lot
of pictures, they released a lot of emails. Did this
man ever text anything? I mean, he emailed like he texted,

(16:32):
like we text. It was kind of wild to see.
Some of the things that came out, though, were mind boggling,
and they actually released some things about Donald Trump. He's
mentioned over a thousand times that they then went back
and tried to pull back, but they couldn't. Somebody else
that was mentioned was Bill Gates. Listen to this clip
about Melinda French Gates and some of the things she
went through allegedly with her husband, Bill Gates, who we

(16:54):
all know.

Speaker 9 (16:54):
The emails in the files suggest that Bill Gates had
additional affairs, and that he tried to get me dedication
to treat a sexually transmitted infection, and that he was
going to give you the medicine without you knowing. His
representative has said all of this is false. It is
not on you to have to respond to the details
of that alleged behavior. But I wonder what your dominant

(17:19):
emotion is when you read these news articles with these details.

Speaker 10 (17:27):
Sad just unbelievable sadness. Unbelievable sadness.

Speaker 11 (17:32):
Right, and again I'm able to take my own sadness
those young girls and say, my god, how did they
how did that happen to those girls, right, And so
for me, it's just sadness. Sadness for you know, I've left,
I had, I left my marriage, I had to leave
my marriage. I wanted to leave my marriage.

Speaker 10 (17:53):
And so it's just sad. That's the truth, right, And
it's kind of like, uh, at least for me, I've.

Speaker 11 (18:00):
Been able to move on in life. And I hope
there's some justice for those now women. Right we see
them standing up in front of microphones in DC. What
they went through is just unimaginable.

Speaker 12 (18:11):
I think.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Angela T. Andrew, I mean what I like the way
that the first of all that question came from PBS,
which I thought in itself was bold. Second, I love
the way she framed it by saying dominant emotion. What
do you think about seeing some of these Epstein files
with the most powerful men in the world even talking
to him about getting antibiotics for std STI.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
I mean, this one, this is clearly a world that
we don't know about like that does this this? I
mean when you look at the the scale, the size,
the impact of the men from the highest individuals in
banking and education and politics, finance, shit, you know, global royalty.

(18:58):
I mean, this man had a reach that I mean,
I just again, it's clearly a world that we're not
necessarily privy to. You mentioned the number of mentions Donald
Trump had in these emails. It is worth note that
his name, aside from Epstein itself, is the second highest
set of mentions in this second release of three million documents. Again,

(19:22):
I understand the association that you can be mentioned and
there not be any criminal liability connected to you. But
also in some ways, you know, you get to uh
measure measure me by what you know, what I do,
what I've done. This man is clearly proven. He's a criminal.
He's clearly proven, and courts have agreed that he has

(19:43):
sexually assaulted whomen and certainly have found him liable for
having done so in the further slandering of these individuals.
But the I'm still upset at the fact that what
we have now is only half of the government's total
collected two minutes, and if we got privy to this much,

(20:04):
the carelessness by which they released the names of previously unknown,
undisclosed victims to this heinous set of crimes, the fact
that they took better care to blackout Trump's names and
Trump's friends than they did the women who were the
girls at the time, kids who were victimized here. I mean,

(20:29):
the Justice Department had one job after that legislation passed,
and it was to protect the victims. And they and
they did everything but protect the victims. One of those victims,
who was previously unknown, wrote to them, please delete my name,
Please delete my name. I mean, this is I don't
know if you can take action. I know we have

(20:50):
two lawyers to me. I gonna know if you want to,
but I play one in the streets. I don't know
if there is a the ability to sue the federal government,
but what they've done. But God knows, those people deserve
to be able to get some modicum of justice or
reckoning for their full out disrespect of what they've gone

(21:12):
through from frankly learning it to the point where we're
at right now, this has been a continuing travesty.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Look, they took care to try to redact and bring
and put bring back some of the things they put
out about Donald Trump without any care for the victims
in this matter. That's how Gloria already talking about that recently.
But those victims have had courage, they're speaking with courage.
Somebody else who's been speaking with courage. We just heard
testimony from Aliah Rochman, who I just think was so powerful.

(21:42):
She was a disabled Minnesota excuse me, Minneapolis, Minnesota resident.
We saw her being detained pull out her car on
a way to a doctor's appointment by ice. She testified
on the heel. And as we bring this Fyisa moment

(22:06):
in our show to a close, we have one more
comment after this. I wanted to play this just so
we could talk about some of the things we're seeing
around us.

Speaker 13 (22:13):
On January thirteenth, on the way to my thirty ninth
appointment at Hennepin County's Traumatic Brain Injury Center, I encountered
a traffic jam caused by ice vehicles and no signs
indicating how to get around it. I had not wanted
to pull into a blocked, chaotic intersection, but verbally agreed

(22:34):
to do so and rolled down my window after an
agent yelled.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Move, I will break your effing window his first instruction.

Speaker 13 (22:43):
Agents on all sides of my vehicle yelled conflicting threats
and instructions that I could not process while watching for pedestrians.
Then the glass of the passenger side window flew across
my face. I yelled, I'm disabled at the hands grabbing
at me, and an agent said too late. I felt

(23:06):
immersed in a pattern, and I thought of Genoa Donald,
an autistic black man killed by police during a traffic
stop in twenty twenty one. I remembered mister Siberio Gonzalez,
who was killed by ice in his vehicle last year.

(23:26):
An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of
my face, which I thought was for cutting me and
later learned was used to cut off my seat belt.
Shooting pain went through my head, neck and wrists. When
I hit the ground face first and people leaned on
my back, I felt the pattern, and I thought of

(23:49):
mister George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away. I
was carried face down through the street by my cuffed
arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain
injury and was disabled. I now cannot lift my arms normally.

(24:11):
I was never asked for ID, never told I was
under arrest, never read my riots, and never charged with
a crime. Approaching the Whipple Center, I saw black and
brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents. Outdoors,

(24:40):
I continue to hear the word bodies, because that is
how agents refer to us.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
I just wanted to play it just because of the
I just I sometimes I just felt the emotion and
the volume in her voice.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
I'm sorry, Angie, her voice is chilling, and I think
part of the reason why it's chilling is because you
can tell that she's speaking so powerfully through her fears.
I want to let the audience know that. In addition
to Alia Rahman, Renee Goods to Brothers also testified this

(25:21):
is about trying to find some way to hold ICE accountable,
CBP accountable, which, again, as we said on multiple shows,
has no place in Minnesota, way outside of their jurisdiction,
given it's not a border and a port of entry
in that regard for this country. I will just also

(25:43):
say that Tom Holman has said that they are going
to draw down seven hundred ICE agents from the streets
of Minnesota, and I think the challenge for many is
it appears that only about one hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Are roaming at any given time.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
So you're talking about drawing down numbers that for the
most part, people haven't seen all at once, and so
I wonder what impact it will actually have.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
But this is not light.

Speaker 4 (26:13):
I mean, even when we were just there Tamika, we
had security to every door.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
We wouldn't leave and go to the store separately.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
We were like, we're gonna be from point to point
and back to the airport. And you know, it's just
there are so many people in Minnesota other parts of
the country that can't do that, that have to make
calculated decisions every day about going to school, about going
to work, about going to the grocery store. You know,
things that are liberties that we shouldn't have to talk

(26:43):
about taking for granted because they just are ours that
in this day and age of terror, they would rather
people live in this type of fear just for power's sake.
And it's not the good kind of power's the abuse
of power anyway.

Speaker 5 (26:57):
Yeah, And now that they're pulling the seven hundred agents,
if you will, I really don't like calling them agents.
But now that they're pulling the vigilant vigilantes, the seven
hundred of them, where are they going. When you talk
about people being in their homes and afraid to come out,
that's the same thing that's happening in Portland. I got

(27:18):
a report from a young lady who's an activist there.
People are locked in their homes, afraid to go to work,
afraid to go to school. And so these seven hundred
agents aren't going back home. They're going somewhere, and we've
got to, you know, keep our eyes open. But I
know one thing I saw is that they haven't received
the fifty thousand dollars that they were promised to sign

(27:40):
on to ICE. In fact, the contract, our sister Elizabeth
was laying it out that the contract actually says you
get ten thousand dollars per year over five years, and
if for some reason you have to separate from ICE,
you got to pay back the original money or whatever
money you've already received. And they play these games with people,

(28:03):
and I don't understand for the life of me, why
do people still believe them when they lie?

Speaker 3 (28:08):
They you lie, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I talk of
that to me. I saw that they they uh with
these federal that we were talking about the recruitment. I
think that's what you referring to, the fifty thousand bonus
that is being offered for the recruitment. I just noticed
now this morning that they're now ICE is now running
ads talking about this is the work that ICE does,

(28:31):
and it's this real slick you know, Madison Avenue, and
you know, talking about this is the real work we do.
We're locking up criminals. We're da da da, And I'm like, nah,
you're trying to psych us out, like we're not seeing
what you actually do. We have watched for weeks, for
months now, the job that Ice does, and ain't nobody

(28:51):
making it up. We've heard your words. We see how
you treat women. We see how you treat people with disabilities,
and pregnant folks and innocent men by standers who are
simply trying to help the women up who you have assaulted,
and then they find themselves dead, lying in the street,
a mother and father without their child, right co workers
without fellow you know, workers, people with bright futures that

(29:12):
are snuffed out. You don't have to you don't. We
don't need your slick ass to tell us what you do.
We have eyes. We've been listening, we've been watching, and
we know the kind of terror that you can rain
down on our you know, on our communities. You know
the question around what next, y'all. It's been rumored that
Ohio is the next destination, and part of that has

(29:36):
to do with the fact that outside of the state
of Florida, frankly, I think between them in Massachusetts that
they've got we got the largest next concentration of Haitians.
The government tried to remove the temporary protective status much
of us know it as GPS from Haitians last week,
and a judge overnight said no, you can't make these
folks out of compliance and ship them off the next day,

(29:58):
no notice on And so far we don't know it's
still going to make his way through the court system
that there may be another judge who may you know,
reverse that ruling. But we just got to keep our
eyes wide open because in spite of all the terror
that's been raining down on those folks, these people are
still showing these block captains and their neighbors are still
showing up, delivering meals, walking kids and immigrants to to

(30:19):
local schools and so on and so forth. So their
courage and their bravery just stands to be you know,
just noted again, it's not it's not easy. I was
exhausted and we were, like Angela said it, going point
to point. But you know, weigh in the chairs of
my family were like, do you really need to be
there right now, you know, against what these people are
doing putting their bodies in the way, and by the way,

(30:41):
there is no innocent way. There is no safe way
of putting your body. And between victims and the aggressor,
there is no safe way because you can die just
helping a woman up.

Speaker 5 (30:54):
And shout out to you for providing relief also on
the ground. I don't know if that was stated, but
there was, you know, an assistant Dwana Thompson helped to
coordinate real relief and resources for the community. So you
didn't just show up, but you showed up with something
in the hand to help the people.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Indeed, you know, Angela was really big on not taking
from the community, making sure we give I want to
get to this next question, Tamiko. One of the things
that I've always I think I said it on this
show till I was bluing the faces, that nothing happens
in a vacuum. I say that literally every episode. The
one Big Beautiful Bill we talked about that, we railed
about that this time last year. That's the reason that
the ICE still has its funding running ads. The fact

(31:32):
that white people were killed in the middle of the
street is the reason that we're having this testimony and
all those things, all those you know, Tom Herman pulling
people out the street. There are other things that are
going on as well around us, because nothing happens in
a vaccine. I do want to go right now to
a quick question. We're going to throw an audience question
up here, but it's from Rashad Robinson because I think
it fits in perfectly before we get to our guests,

(31:53):
which is going to go down a path that Angela
likes to talk about a lot, which is the role
of religiosity in our society today. But let's listen to
Rashad's question and then cham in on the other side.

Speaker 7 (32:04):
Hey, y'all, this is Rashad Robinson, civil rights leader, strategist activists.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
I want to talk a little bit of strategy with
you all.

Speaker 7 (32:12):
Bill Ackman, the anti DEI activist and investor. You know,
Bill makes his money by investing other people's money, kind
of simply put endowments, pensions, rich people's money, and so
he invests that money. Oftentimes when he gets involved those
companies restructure, they do all sorts of things so that
the folks at the top make a lot more money.

(32:33):
But I'm here to actually talk about Bill Ackman giving
ten thousand dollars to Jonathan Ross. Jonathan Ross is the
ice agent that shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis
then called her a bitch. Right, if those are the
type of people that Bill Ackman wants to give money to,
he has every right. But we have every right to
ask ourselves to ask the institutions we're associated with, where

(32:53):
they be the colleges with endowments, whether they be the
places we work or are associated with that have pensions,
the foundations that we may be connected to, do we
allow Bill Ackman to invest our money. Those are the
questions we should be asking this moment. Bill Ackman's anti
DEI work was all about closing the door to education opportunities,

(33:16):
closing the door to government contrast closing the door to
job opportunities. It was about a strategy that profiteers engage
in with making sure that some people can have opportunities
to succeed, while privilege and unearned opportunity becomes the reward
structure for those that don't deserve it. That is part
of the strategy behind what Bill Ackman does is doing,

(33:38):
and it's absolutely connected behind putting money behind this ice
agent and what he's done. He has a right to
do what he is doing, but we have a responsibility
to not mistake the visibility, the virility of this story,
the presence of this story, for the power to actually
do something about it. So we've got an opportunity to
something about it, and we should take it.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Can I chime in on this real quick, guys, just
on the Bill Ackman piece, because Bill Ackman and Elon
Musk have this really weird, i would say, perverse outlook
on society and that the browning of America is something
that terrifies them. It's a world outlook that shows a
level of fear and intimidation by of things such as diversity,

(34:23):
because they view people of diverse backgrounds as somehow not
earning it. And then they go from a level of
not earning it because of the color of their skin
to the fact that they're taking something from us that
would otherwise be ours, which on its face is how
I somewhat define white supremacy, right. And I look at

(34:43):
Elon Musk and Bill Ackman's kind of cut from the
same cloth. They come from pretty much the same cultural community,
cultural background, and they also are people who were born
on third base and believe they hit a home run.
And so the fascinating part about talking about them is Rashad,
who I think is I believe that we all play

(35:03):
our separate roles. Some people are in the streets, some
people are in boardrooms. But everybody's necessary. You need it,
Julian Bond, and you needed Stokely Carmichael, right. We need
to make a Mallory and we need Rashad Robinson right,
and Ben Crump, and I think it's all necessary. Rashad
does amazing work and highlighted something so important because we
have these institutions, we have some places of privilege and

(35:25):
we just acquiesce to the norms, and we have these
institutions where we have control, and we're still giving Bill
Ackman our money. And it makes no actual sense to
me for someone who goes and gets these little returns
plays ball in these rooms. And then there was a
person who shot a woman in the face, and your

(35:47):
political instincts are inclined to say, man, let me, let
me rte that dude a ten thousand dollars check. So
it just shows you the level of humanity. And my
biggest fear is that Bill Ackman will be successful, Steven
Miller will be success, Elon Musk will be successful. And
the classes that we see attaining higher education, the boardrooms
that we see, the people teaching our children, our nurses,

(36:08):
our doctors, our professionals are going to be whiter. And
that's what they want.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
There's no doubt about it. And by the way, Elon
Musk's worldview is carved out of the fact that the
man was raised in aparthe in South Africa. He was
raised in a society where black people were written into
the law, in every rule spoken and unspoken, written and
unwritten of society where he didn't have to compete with blacks.

(36:32):
And then when the competition started, now it's a problem.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Now you can't.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
You know, y'all got to go somewhere. I just want
to double down on this one point, which is we've
got elected officials black and otherwise, and folks who sympathize,
who serve on city council's, county boards, are mayors all
across the entire United States. All of your pension money,
your citizens' retirement money, the workers for government are being
managed by somebody. And I would advise that you'd be

(36:58):
asking you who you hire and on contract for your
city governments and your city employees and your government employees
to make sure that there is no business being done
with Bill Ackman. The Republicans do it all the time
when they take their money out and they say it
can't be used for this, and can't be used for that,
and no anti semitism, and this is that in the

(37:19):
third and all that is whatever. But now you also
sit at the place of opportunity where you can introduce
components of legislation writers to bills that say we're not
doing business with this man, and if you are divesting.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Out, listen. I think that's a good point, you know.
One of the things that I wanted to do was
talk about the fact that we're in these rooms and
talk about the fact that sometimes we need to bring
people in the folk, people that are doing work on
other sides, people that may have their ear when they're
having this conversation, which kind of folds into a larger
conversation that we've had on the show. One larger conversation

(37:54):
I want to have, particularly with you here, Tamika, is
what role do wan white males play? What role do
white male evangelicals play? One of the blessings we have
about this show is we get to talk about it,
all right, And so we have Reverend Shank here joining
us on the show. We're going to bring them in.
Its kind of like a fifth will.

Speaker 12 (38:18):
Nobody knows.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
This is the way I wanted to introduce you, Reverend.
We found a video of you actually testifying, and I
wanted to play that clip right here. It's testifying to
Congress about your work influencing the Supreme Court of these
United States of America. And then I got a question
about Clarence Thomas on the other side. I'm just joking,
go ahead and rote a clip.

Speaker 12 (38:42):
I am here to present facts as I know of
them about Operation Higher Court, a Christian mission that I
directed as part of Faith into Action for twenty years
to bolster conservative Supreme Court justices in the views they
already held. Operation Higher Court involved my recruitment of wealthy

(39:05):
donors as stealth missionaries who befriended justices that shared our
conservative social and religious sensibilities. In this way, I aimed
to show these justices that Americans supported them and thanked
God for their presence on the Court and the opinions
they rendered. Our overarching goals were to gain insights into

(39:29):
the conservative justices thinking and to shore up their resolve
to render solid, unapologetic opinions, particularly against abortion. I called
this our ministry of emboldenment. I believe we pushed the
boundaries of Christian ethics and compromised the High Court's promise

(39:50):
to administer equal justice. But I'm also conscious we were
never admonished for the type of work our missionaries did.
To the contrary. In one instance, Justice Thomas commended me,
saying something like, keep up what you're doing. It's making
a difference.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
So the right Reverend Robert Shank, did I pronounce your
last name correctly?

Speaker 12 (40:16):
Yes? But sometimes I am the wrong reverence, And that's
what that was all.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
About, I understand. So I just wanted to start the
conversation with I think the two most important words in
the English language, other words, thank you, And then I
nearly said enough. So thank you for your time, and
thank you for the work that you are now doing.
Ain't the work you used to do, but thank you
for the work that you're now doing. What role do
white male evangelicals play in changing culture, changing society? We

(40:43):
talked about ice, we talked about jelly, roll earlier, and
sometimes you see a muted voice. I think it all
ties in together. What can we expect, what should we expect?
And what are we not seeing?

Speaker 12 (40:54):
Well, what we're not saying is some of the change
that's happening right now, and a lot of it because
of Minneapolis. I just read a report from Christianity Today,
which has historically been the journal of record for American

(41:20):
white evangelicals, and there's a lot of a lot of
disruption in the in the positions of evangelicals in Minnesota
right now because of what they're seeing playing out in

(41:41):
the streets. H you know, I hate to say it,
but you asked about, you know, white evangelicals. I think
white males in general get a little more attention from
white evangelical leader's keen sense of the obvious. They are

(42:05):
been happening for a long time. But the reason I
mention it is because, of course, the killing of Alex
pretty as compared to even the killing of Renee Good.
Renee Good was white, she would normally command attention, but

(42:28):
discounted by the fact that she's gay. That she was gay.
So but here we go, white male of a certain
age and a gun owner gets the attention that others
don't get, so I think that's part of the reason,

(42:51):
but not the whole reason. I think a fair number
of white evangelical leaders are now feeling uncomfortfter bowl with
the violence, the threats, with the behavior after the shootings,

(43:11):
with the abduction of children and their imprisonment in cages.
It's starting to trouble the conscience. Not enough to tip
the scales, not anywhere near, but it's changing. And I'm
sorry for such a long answer to your short question,
but I'll just add this. I do think it's critically

(43:34):
important now that white male evangelical leaders start airing their
conscience and their descent. And I know there are many
of them, but they are silenced by fear. But they
have to find their courage. And the reason they do

(43:57):
is because this administration will pay attention to that in
a way they won't pay attention to anyone else. They'll
write everybody else off. They're black, they're socialists, they're leftists,
they're communists, their nutcases. But suddenly, when when white males
like me start speaking. I know from my contacts in

(44:20):
the administration, I maintain friends who are working for Trump
right now in the White House, and they will say
that got a little attention here. That bothered some people,
not for the right reasons, but it bothered them.

Speaker 4 (44:33):
So if I could ask you, you know, there's a
conversion moment biblically speaking, where Saul is converted to Paul.
You're talking about finding your courage. I want to know
what helped you to find your courage. And in this
moment where you're talking about having friends in the White House,

(44:55):
knowing now what you understand to be their agenda, how
they whoo to move forward, how are you maintaining those friendships,
and how do you intend to help them to convert
from Saul to Paul.

Speaker 12 (45:07):
Yeah, well, thanks for framing it that way. I talk
about three conversions in my own life. My initial conversion
to the christ I saw in the Sermon on the Mount,
who blessed the poor, who blessed the forgotten, the margin lies,
the lonely, the grieving. Then in the eighties I was

(45:29):
converted to what I now call Ronald Reagan Republican religion,
which is distinctly different from Christianity. And I spent thirty
five years in that religious stream, doing the kind of
work and am now repenting from. Then I had a
third conversion reading the work of church leaders in nineteen

(45:53):
thirties Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and his
racial life dictatorship, and that was the first crack. There
were a few little, tiny threads before that, but it
was really confronting that history and seeing that what I

(46:17):
was engaged in for thirty years was identical to what
the Ivan Gaelic Schekerche, the Evangelical Church of Germany was
doing in that era. In fact, it would be evangelical
leaders who declared Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party a

(46:37):
gifted miracle from God. Well, I was seeing the same,
and so that was part of it. The other substantial
part of my third conversion out of that right wing
cult was my wife, who made a late in life

(47:06):
professional change from being an occupational therapist to a psychotherapist.
And when you're married to a psychotherapist, you can't escape
the therapy no matter how hard you try, and that
was a huge, huge help for me, and I would

(47:27):
enter my own period of therapy which helped me face
myself in a way I ever had and the realities
of what was going on around me. So that was
a lot of it. There was more. It was a
long and complex formula equation that got me to the
other side. But I'm so glad it did.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
When you think about the dates. I was just trying
to help me understand some of the time periods of
your third conversion, just so I understand where where to
sort of place my question.

Speaker 12 (48:06):
Well, it's been a kind of ten year progression for me.
Those versed cracks appeared in oh nine, ten, twenty ten.
It was particularly jarring when when I attended the eightieth

(48:31):
birthday party for the now late televangelist Pat Robertson, who's
built a right winging religious empire that continues to this moment,
and his guest of honor at this big banish where
virtually every e white evangelical luminary in this country was

(48:55):
in the ballroom celebrating with Pat, and his guest of
honor in twenty eleven was none other than Donald Trump,
And I was shocked by that. I didn't think of
Trump as part of our our culture. In fact, when
I was in Bible.

Speaker 14 (49:18):
Yes exactly, and when I was in Bible College what
we call our seminaries to prepare for ministry way back
in the early eighties.

Speaker 12 (49:32):
I was told that Donald Trump was the classic example
of everything it meant not to live that say Christian,
and that he makes a great sermon illustration for that.
And I had used him as that over the years.
But there he was at Pat's birthday party, and I
asked one of my colleagues, a name well known in

(49:55):
the white evangelical world, why is he here? And the
the answer was because he and Pattern now part of
the same billionaires club. Pat had just sold the Family Channel,
his family became billion airs in the process, and now
they were billionaire pals, and that was distressing to me.

(50:19):
And it would be at the twenty sixteen Republican National
Convention that I finally made the break left the movement. Theoretically,
it took me two more years to extract myself legally
and financially.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
But weaky, I'm sorry. Can you say more about the
financial piece. You said to extract yourself financially to what
does that mean?

Speaker 12 (50:46):
Yeah? Well, first, I was running an organization I had
spent thirty five years building, which had fifty thousand donors
spread across the United States, hundreds of churches. We were
raising millions, millions of dollars, and I had legal obligations,
and you know, I lose nothing by being candid and

(51:09):
completely honest these days, and that's what I was trying
to do in Minneapolis. But I wasn't. I wasn't fully
courageous all at once, and and I'm not even at
this moment. I was afraid of donor lawsuits. I was
afraid of contractors suing me. So I carefully deconstructed that operation.

(51:39):
It took two years to do it, and to safely
extract myself once I did, I left all of that behind,
every bit of it. For a little while I was
driving uber to pay my bills all the cost of it.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
That's right.

Speaker 12 (51:56):
You know.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
I'm am appreciative of your transparency, even with us now
and our audience. And we didn't get to say welcome
home at the start of this interview, but but that's
something we say to our guests when when they make
themselves available to this community. I am. I work for
a long time on the other side of some of
your court work at People for the American Way, which

(52:17):
is also known as the House of Bork, because we
led the effort to defeat Robert Bork's nomination to the
to the High Court. So I understand that that space
very well, I am. I don't understand as well the
space of white evangelism, mostly because if we subscribe to

(52:39):
the same Jesus, the same God, the same scripture, and
I know scripture can be used creatively by whoever wills it,
but we miss each other at that intersection of what
scripture seems to say to white evangelicals and then what
it says in the Black tradition, the Christian faith, and

(53:03):
it absolutely shows up differently in our politics, certainly in
American and society and culture. I just wonder, on the
other side of this of of your evolution, where you
now where and how you now carry the message to
other white evangelicals around, how they see the lights come

(53:29):
to evolution, come to transition, because by and large we're
kind of we're kind of on the right track on
our side, and they're still fighting and stay on the
what we believe to be the right track. Yet a
lot of our brothers and sisters on in the Christian
evangelical side still tolerate outrageous forms of hate and terror

(53:55):
and cruelty by the administration and what their politics often produces.
How do you how do you sort of theorize the
best way to move other white male evangelicals closer to
the truth of the faith and away I think from

(54:18):
some of the cruelty in devastating, destructive politics of the
far right.

Speaker 12 (54:26):
Well, it's not easy, although I did retain thousands of
just those sorts of folks on my social media platforms,
which I use as my pulpit these days, and I
remind them of their conversions, what drew them to Christ.

(54:51):
And you know, there's a passage in the New Testament
Book of Revelation where the resurrect at Christ is speaking
to the te from the heavenlys if you read it
that way, and he says, to a particular church in
a particular place, you're doing everything right, but I have

(55:11):
this one thing against you. You have left your first love.
So I try to remind evangelicals of their first love, Jesus,
who I regularly reintroduce as the dark complexed Middle Eastern

(55:35):
man of the Levant, who had very dark skin and
afro textured hair, wool hair exactly. And I put him
out there and I just let them sit with him,
and then I remind them of what he said. And
I do get folks, small numbers, but regularly who come,

(56:00):
usually through a direct message because they're afraid to go
on the page, and they'll say, you know you've got
me on that, You've got me thinking, and yes, that
was the reason I gave my heart to Jesus all
those years ago. It's still small numbers. The other task
I have, which is the larger one, is to expose

(56:24):
this as not just un Christian, but anti Christian. So
I try to do that through my writing, through you know,
on social media platforms and elsewhere, and then in conversation
with leaders. I just invited a unabashed self identified Christian

(56:51):
nationalist leader he heads a small denomination in the United
States to a meeting with progressive leaders up in Boston
in two weeks. He accepted the invitation to a dialogue
with them. We'll see what happens. But I want to
do more and more of that. That's part of the

(57:14):
repair work. There's far more than that, and it's much
closer to people who have suffered because of what I did.
But that's some of the work that I that I
try to do.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
Appreciate that.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
Ramonshane, can I ask you, you know you talked about
some of these folks that you're in relationship with, and
how they have looking at all that's going on, and
particularly Minneapolis, they've changed, their hearts have changed in some ways.
Do you think that that means they're going to show
up at the polls differently? Are they going to vote
different are they talking about that or do you think

(57:50):
because you know, one of the challenges that I have
faced in working with white women, you know, I was
one of the leaders of the Women's March. I have
been on the of America organizing, marching with galvanizing thousands,
hundreds of thousands, millions of women, and oftentimes the numbers,
the math doesn't math. As we say that, you know,

(58:13):
they will say we're with you, We're with you, We're
with you. And then when we look at the numbers
after an election, it is very clear that some people
either weren't telling the truth or they definitely didn't go
and do the work at home of organizing not just
us out in the community, but being there to organize
their mothers, their aunts, their sisters, their friends, their you know,

(58:33):
their family members. So how do you see this translating
to as we are approaching the midterm elections.

Speaker 12 (58:43):
Yeah, that's a great point and It reminds me of
the work I have yet to do to organize white
evangelicals of conscience as I call them, or dissenters. I'm
hopeful that a fair number of them are troubled enough

(59:07):
that they just simply won't vote. That they they'll just
sit it out. Hoping they'll vote for a Democrat is
probably too great of a leap of faith for me.
But maybe they'll We'll take them sit at home. Well,
they can stay home, and I think that's more likely

(59:27):
what they'll do, and it would be a good choice.
And I will be saying that to them. I'll say,
if if you just can't, here's one way you can
preserve your conscience in this sit it out. So that's possibility.

(59:49):
I do know of some already who in the last
election voted for a Democrat for the first time in
their electoral lives. I voted for Joe Biden, first vote
for a Democratic candidate in how many years was it?

(01:00:13):
Because the last time I voted for a Democrat before
Biden was nineteen seventy six, so it was a long time.
Is that forty four at Carter's for Carter? Yeah, so
it was forty four years and there are others. I'm

(01:00:35):
not unique. I am not unique. There's a lot. I
didn't vote for Trump either time. By the way, I
voted for other Republican, for another Republican in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 4 (01:00:50):
I if I can ask you, Reverend, there was just
an arrest several ors made of nine individuals who the
Department of Justice is calling defendants on the other side
of a protest at a church city church in fact
in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where one of the pastors, David Easterwood,

(01:01:14):
serves as an icefield director. And I'm curious to know
if you think there's ever an appropriate time to protest
in church one and two, if you think that journalists
should be exempt from any type of criminal indictment for
covering said protests, Well, I did it.

Speaker 12 (01:01:38):
I did it at the Washington National Cathedral back when
I was a leader in the national pro life anti
abortion movement. Wow, I confronted Bill Clinton in the sanctuary
during a communion service, and I was applauded for that.

(01:01:59):
I was made a hero in the conservative Christian world
for my disruption of a communion service on Christmas Eve.
By the way, on Christmas Eve, so I'd like to say,
I did one better that these folks did on a

(01:02:22):
comment Sunday morning, and I was made a hero for it.
I'm reminding people of that. You want to denounce this.
You applauded me when I did it, and that was
I guess about nineteen ninety six ish something like that.
Don't have to go back and records. But in any case,

(01:02:48):
and ironically, the administration is using a law that we
decried and that anti abortion activists and other white evangelical

(01:03:08):
champions of religious liberty regularly denounce, and that is the
Face Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,
which we decried. We fought it in court, we raised
tens of millions of dollars to oppose it, and now

(01:03:31):
they're using it against Don Lemon, against the others. It's
and I'm reminding my folks of that too, and hoping
it will give some pause, say wait a minute, what
what are we doing here? And incidentally, this is a

(01:03:52):
family issue in the church, and you know family's routine
disrupt one another's Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas celebrations with their differences,
and that's what's happened here. So again it shows the

(01:04:16):
hypocrisy that that I'm confronting my my.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Family with got it, But Cary, I know we have
to push. I did just want to ask this final
question for me and that that's on Rev. Just sort
of how in your in your most connected way, as you,
as you as you consider how some of your former
compadreis and maybe even still compadres might think about this,

(01:04:43):
but just the hierarchy of threat that white evangelical men
sort of consider when considering their politics. So for instance,
if if we, if they, if if the other side wins,
and in there, if I'm them, the other side would
be Democrats. I guess what is is it? Is it

(01:05:04):
that they're going to promote black people above us and
our sons and our children. Is it that they're going
to make abortion free and available everywhere? Is it? Where
do you when you get to the real crux of
what barrier sits in the way of me being able
to get over what coalition or alignment or agreement looks

(01:05:28):
like with the other side. I mean, you can see
bodies strown in the streets, You can see protesters mishandled disrupted.
You can see even women who are approaching abortion clinics
be railed against and cried and insulted and made to
feel in fear to watch children even put in cages.
Because this isn't the first time the Trump administration has
done that. They've done that before. But there's still these

(01:05:53):
walls that exist that keep otherwise decent people from being
able to make the leap to set godly. That just
isn't right. And it is not just right because it
happened to my wife. It's not right because it happened
to another fellow family member of the human you know race,
and it's indecent. What do I always try to think about,

(01:06:16):
what's the thing that's keeping you? Is your fear of me?
That big? Have you made me out to be that
much of a threat? That that's keeping you from being
a better human? But what is it? As you think
about what the hierarchy of either threat or fear dislike,
I don't even know what to call it because I

(01:06:36):
don't know what it is.

Speaker 12 (01:06:40):
Well, I think fear is the best or at least
principle way of understanding of understanding it. And I don't
want to beat Maudlin, and I don't want to turn
your quality podcast into my confessional book, but I.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Think it is yeah, we got the wine.

Speaker 14 (01:07:09):
Okay, okay, Well, no reason for you to associate in
the first place.

Speaker 12 (01:07:14):
But you know, I'll confess that for thirty years I
did business with fundraisers who created millions of messages that
went out across the United States. And I was a small,

(01:07:38):
a bit player. I would send out five to ten
million communic case a year. Uh. Many of my friends
that I kept company with in those days would send
out hundreds of millions of messages, mostly connected to fundraising platforms.

(01:08:01):
And I'll describe those to you this way. In one
exchange that I've thought about many times and I've written about,
with one of my contracted fundraisers, he sat at a
conference room table and he told me in nineteen he said, look,
let me put it this way. The more fear and

(01:08:24):
the more anger you give me, the more money I
will raise for you. You give me a lot of
fear and anger, I'll raise a lot of money for you.
You give me a little fear and anger, I'll raise
a little bit of money for you. So you decide.
But let me tell you this, he said. I want
you to think of Helen. She lives on a rural

(01:08:46):
root in Kansas, her nearest neighbor is three miles away.
Her husband's been dead for several years. She rarely ever
sees her kids or her grandkids. They all live in
other states. The biggest moment in her day is when
she goes to her rural mailbox on the roadside, pulls
out a letter from you, and reads through those eleven

(01:09:10):
pages with multiple underlines and exclamation points. And when she's
done reading, she is terrified of the world her children
will inhabit. And you're going to tell her the only
way that she can solve that problem is to send
your organization one hundred dollars, and you're going to get

(01:09:32):
that hundred and probably two hundred. Every single time I
fired him, I canceled, but I acquiesce just enough to
hire another group. Almost at that level, that's being done

(01:09:53):
and has been done now for forty or fifty years.
People have been shaped and formed in that year, and
now they've taken the reins of government power, and they
are also afraid, but they're more cynical when they are afraid.
But the people who are giving them that power and

(01:10:16):
that money are terrified of the world as they imagine it.
And this has to do with what I call the
southernization of American evangelicalism, who were once the leaders in
the abolitionist movement. The first women's rights a conference was

(01:10:36):
held at an evangelical church in Seneca Falls, New York
in what was that eighteen forty But in any case,
evangelicals were once the leaders of social progress and innovation.
They were champions of minority rights, and they were overrun

(01:11:00):
by the Southern churches that wanted to preserve the Confederacy,
and they did it. Anybody wants to read some really
revelatory work on that. Charles Reagan Wilson, American Southern historian,
writes on the religion of the Lost Cause in a book,

(01:11:24):
his principal book, which is very readable, only about two
hundred and fifty pages, Baptized in blood. It's really worth
reading it. It helps you to understand the white evangelical
mind as it's been formed over the last one hundred
and fifty years. Appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
Appreciate reverse.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
I mean, I just first of all, I just kind
of want to want to wrap this up by where
I began, which is to say thank you for coming on,
thank you for your journey, thank you for sharing your
journey and thank you for being what we what I
believe to be the most powerful thing can be in
this country, which is an example. So I think we
all say on this show Native Lampard, I'm the newest
member here, but welcome.

Speaker 12 (01:12:07):
Home, welcome, welcome home. We feel very undeserving of that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Thank you, praying for you, praying for you, Robert, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Thank you. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the Reverend Robert Shank,
former right wing activist turn dissenting evangelical organizer, and right
here on the other side, we will do our calls
to action, get us on out of here. Thank you, vers, thank.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
You, appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Who cares about truth?

Speaker 15 (01:12:43):
In the last Morning.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
It man, we've had a powerful show to that. I
think that interview with Reverend Robert Shank was something that
we all need to sit with for a little while,
and I think I call to actions are going to
reflect that. So I want to start with our special
guest co host today, the just amazing, amazing, awesome in
the truest sense of the word, to make a maleori.

(01:13:05):
What you got for us?

Speaker 5 (01:13:06):
Well, first of all, thank you all again, this has
really been a pleasure and that was such an incredible
conversation that I'm glad I was able to be a
part of. From my call to action today, you know,
I want to remind folks that as we celebrate the
one month of Black History Month, because the whole year
is Black History Month, but this February, as many of
us are celebrating, I also want us to remember to

(01:13:28):
remember some of the fallen soldiers in our movement. And
you know, just to name a few. On February second
of twenty twelve, for Marley Graham was shot and killed
in his house in the Bronx, and it sparked the
movement not just in New York but across the country.
He was a young teenager and the police ran in
his excuse me in his home behind him and shot

(01:13:49):
him while his elderly grandmother was at home. Then on
February fourth and nineteen ninety nine, twenty seven years ago,
I'm gonna dou Diallo was shot forty one time with
a cell phone in his hands. It is a story
that we will never ever forget. And then on February
twenty six, twenty and twelve, Trayvon Martin was killed.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Fourteen years ago.

Speaker 5 (01:14:12):
I just attended the annual celebration in honor of his life,
his birthday, where his family for fourteen years have been
holding down the fort of remembrance for their son, but
also the movement that we are all engaged in for justice,
for freedom, and for our rights. And you know, it
makes me think about so many people who've been saying

(01:14:35):
ice has been police for us, right, so what.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
Ices to other communities?

Speaker 5 (01:14:41):
Police officers around this country have been that that our
communities have been under sieged by law enforcement for a
long time, and that it is not public safety, it's
actually state sanctioned violence. We see the connection. We know
that these are just different, multiple uniform arms that are
performing the same terror on our communities. And so this February,

(01:15:05):
let's also remember those folks who have been taken from
our communities in this act of terror by law enforcement
across the nation.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Powerful, powerful as always, Angela.

Speaker 4 (01:15:18):
Thank you so much Tamika for sharing that. Mine is
a lot lighter. I just need my Seahawks to win
the super Bowl. It's very plain, it's very easy. I
need us not to relive the trauma from the last
Super Bowl. We made it to my dad and I
vented about it. We retraumatize each other on my live

(01:15:38):
show on Tuesday in case y'all want to see that.
And I also would just encourage you all to have
fun this weekend, watch all the Super Bowl commercials, cheer
on bad Bunny, pray that he does something to make
some real upset, and posting all caps on truth social
that's my cause action, my call to action, and check
out our mini pod because it will be about what
bad Bunny might do.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Mayor gillim uh I actually I'm gonna make this recognidation
without having read it, but I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
Gonna take the passes word baptized in blood if those
if we're curious about maybe understanding a little bit better
the psyche, because it confounds me. That's probably why I
couldn't put a question together right, but it confounds me
what exists and what moves and motivates the other side.
But to the extent that it could become a little
bit of a crack in the window for how we

(01:16:31):
might reach some of our coworkers and people who we
find ourselves in relationship with but have a wall on
our politics, we might be able to maybe learn something.
Peep peep, peep through the window and see if there's
something there for us, So I'm gonna I'm gonna go
ahead and order it and take a re join me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Mine's along the same lines. Just my call to action
is I want people to take a deep breath when
we are evaluating people that we perceive to be our
political opposite. This week we saw Andrew Schultz have somewhat
of a come to Jesus moment for lack of a
better term, saying that you know, I regret platforming Trump.

(01:17:10):
You know this, that, and the third I now see
that you all were right. We're seeing a lot of
young people. I've seen articles in the Washington Post talking
about the young generation saying that they regret voting for Trump.
You see a lot of Hispanic men in particular, regret
voting for Donald Trump. You see the change that the
right Reverend Robert Shank has made. And so I guess

(01:17:32):
my point is before we reflexively say we've told you so,
take a deep breath and think about ways in which
they can be a positive impact to the movement, because
at the end of the day, it's my belief that
we need them to if we're going to have any change.
So that's my call to action. This has been a

(01:17:53):
great show, y'all. I love to Meeka Mallory. I hope
she comes back as often as she possibly can, even
at replace Andrews ever she can. So as always, we
want to remind everyone to leave us a review and
subscribe to Native lamp Pod. We're available on all podcast
platforms and YouTube. If you're looking for more shows like ours,
check out the other shows on our reason Choice Media Networks,

(01:18:14):
Politics with Jamil Hill, Off, The Cup with Si Cup,
and Now you Know with Noah Debra. Fuck his name.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
As you would think an attorney that went to Morehouse
could read that's red.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
It's not phonetically spelled. Noah, thank you. Just do that, Nick,
Thank you, Noah Debrosa. Be sure to give those a follow,
and don't forget to follow us too on social media
and subscribe to our text or email list on Native
lampod dot com and substacks for all of those who
have substacks, including The Moment dot Com Withcari Sellers, we

(01:18:51):
are Angela Rye, Andrew gillim Me Macari Sellers. But even
more importantly, I just want to give a huge prayer,
not for what she has has done or what she
is doing, but a prayer for what she will do.
May God cover you and order all your steps to
Mika Mallory. Welcome home, y'all. Have you one hundred and
seventy seven days until midterm elections. Welcome home to.

Speaker 15 (01:19:13):
The Natives landing on the podcast space. That's a for greatness.
Sixty minutes is so hit, not too long for the
grave shit, high level combo politics in a way that
you could taste it then digest it. Politics touches you
even if you don't touch it. So get invested. Across
the t's and doctor I kill them, got them ass sellers,
staying on business or why you could have been anywhere,

(01:19:34):
but you trust us. Native lampod is the prayer that
you can trusty.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Native Lampard is a production of iHeart Radio and partnership
with Reason Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. And with that we out

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Tiffany Cross

Andrew Gillum

Angela Rye

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Betrayal Season 5

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Confessions of a White Evangelical