May 27, 2025 • 39 mins
Trump’s justice department has drastically scaled back its support for anti-crime initiatives. They’ve cut $500 million in grants from 200+ organizations focused on violence prevention. Angela Rye went LIVE to talk about the impact of these cuts on violence prevention in the Black community with two folks doing the work:
Rev. Michael McBride (Pastor Mike) is the executive director for LIVE FREE USA, a national organizing and social change network committed to ending the criminalization of people of color, reducing gun violence and transforming the policing and the criminal justice system. He is a national leader in the movement to implement community violence intervention and he serves as the Lead Pastor of The Way Church in Berkeley, CA. Support Pastor Mike’s work at https://livefreeusa.org/ and follow him @impastormike_
Wesley Moore created the mentoring and youth leadership program, Our Brothers Keeper (OBK) in 2016. OBK has provided temporary housing, employment, and skill training workshops for youth and young adults ages 14-25. Before OBK, he started a construction company that focuses on providing temporary housing for youth transitioning out of foster care and families transitioning out of shelters. Support Mr. Moore’s work at https://oursbrotherskeepers.org/.
Want to ask Angela a question? Subscribe to our YouTube channel to participate in the chat.
Welcome home y’all!
—---------
We want to hear from you! Send us a video @nativelandpod and we may feature you on the podcast.
Watch full episodes of Native Land Pod here on YouTube.
Native Land Pod is brought to you by Reasoned Choice Media.
Thank you to the Native Land Pod team:
Angela Rye as host, executive producer and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Tiffany Cross as host and producer, Andrew Gillum as host and producer, and Lauren Hansen as executive producer; Loren Mychael is our research producer, and Nikolas Harter is our editor and producer. Special thanks to Chris Morrow and Lenard McKelvey, co-founders of Reasoned Choice Media.
Theme music created by Daniel Laurent.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with Reason Choice Media. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home. Everyone,
it has been a little while I missed you. It's
been a lot going on. I have been working diligently
(00:20):
with some amazing, amazing partners on the local, state and
national level on our State of the People Power Tour,
and that has made it so my travel days of
interview interfere with this podcast is solo Pod, and I
just really appea, I appreciate your patience. Today we're talking
about something that I've learned a lot more about from
(00:41):
being on the ground and from working with some amazing people.
One of them is Pastor Mike McBride, who has become
a fast brother to me. He runs an organization called
Live Free USA. He's the executive director, partnering with folks
all over the country on community violence intervention programs, and
(01:02):
just the other day we were in Detroit, Michigan, at
a juvenile detention center facility where we got to speak
to some young folks who have been impacted by programs
just like Pastor Mike's, and I know that they could
certainly benefit from access to resources like the ones that
Pastor Mike and Liftfree provide every single day. So I
(01:25):
am doing this elongated intro because I am waiting to
see his face and I'm wondering if there's a technical
issue there. He is, Hey, Pastor Mike, how are you brother?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You know? Glad to be talking to the Northwest wonder?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Oh? You guys, just know that I thought that I
was bad at geography. I really did, and then I
met Pastor Mike. For some reason, he doesn't believe that
I get to throw my doves up and I don't
underd why. And my gums have to be up north.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You gotta put it, you gotta put it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I don't know either way. I'm not a y n
and I'm not gonna wrap the Northwest Coast or the Pacific,
this West Coast all day, baby. And since he's deal
in Hope, I know he's not gonna troll me with that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Today it's to talk to the West Coast wonder w
c W.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I'll take it. But we have gotten to do so
much more together, and I just feel like, you know,
every time I see my good brother, I'm like he
been all my life, But he's been busy doing the
work of the Lord in the streets beyond the four
walls of the sanctuary, and it is it is really,
really a pleasure to have gotten the journey with you
thus far. I can I can't wait to see what
(02:48):
else God has in store. But first we're gonna fight
for these programs. So this is what I want to
talk to you about. I saw, as the Bible would say,
your counting is drop.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I think we were in were we in New Orleans?
When did you first learn? Okay, so we learned about
these cuts in New Orleans, and Pastor Mike, I want
you to help people understand community violence. Intervention work is
the thing that saves our young people more than any
law enforcement officer ever could nine point five I say
(03:20):
nine point nine times out of ten. It is the
work that puts, you know, the Ray Lewis's and the
skills and the tefts in front of whatever was going
to come between one young person and another. It is
conflict resolution. It is telling people your own heroing stories.
It is helping people to understand the importance that life does,
(03:42):
in fact matter. We have young people nowadays, even in
my own community of Seattle, Sewer Park is we have
the loop. Some kids just got shot at Sewer Park
the other day, so this work is so important. Can
you talk about the work that you all have been
getting funded through the federal government and how you plan
to pivot now.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Well, it's great to be with you, Angela, and thanks
so much for the opportunity to hang out with you
and the homies as part of your Native Land podcast Family.
I'll just quickly say that the scripture says blessed are
the peacemakers, where they shall be called the children of God.
And often we think of peace as the absence of
(04:26):
conflict or violence, but it is also has to be
considered the presence of justice. Both of them have to
be together. People want safety and they want justice. People
don't want to be criminalized in their own communities as
a price to pay to achieve some false sense of safety,
which has largely been the experience of most black folks
(04:47):
in this country. What has now become known as community
violence intervention. In the past, it may have been known
in Shorthand as ceasefire, as focused atturrens, as cure violence.
It has now kind of largely been described as community
violence intervention, and it is a menu if you will,
(05:08):
a rising sector, a rising labor force and workforce of
trained individuals who are skilled in public health interventions that
interrupt lethal conflicts that are a result of interpersonal violence,
largely with guns. And this has become now in our
(05:29):
say third or fourth decade of or working and organizing,
one of the best, if not the best evaluated public
safety community safety set of interventions. And thankfully in the
last four or five six years, they started to scale
all across the country. It is our life's work when
(05:50):
I say, I'm talking about all of the peacemakers, all
the violence interrupters, all of the community based organization senior executives,
folks who've been doing this work for decades large without
renunration or public appreciation. Community vised intervention is here to
stay if we can organize to keep it so. And
it's righteous work for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I want to ask you this because I think so
often on the policy making side, and I think you've
heard me talk about this on the tour. I feel
like there's something that happens where your advocacy could be fierce.
You can be so intentional about you know, what you're
doing every single day, but there's a disconnect that happens
(06:32):
along the road of strategy between strategy and like the
folks on the ground, And this tour has brought me
a lot closer to that. I'm like, oh, I did
have some gaps, I did have some blind spots. I
know these programs need to be funded, but there's something
I think that happens when a policy maker or a
strategist or even like a bill author has to come
(06:55):
face to face with some of the victims or the
victim's family member. So can you talk about how you
got into this work and why it's so important to
you now? Like what keeps you rooted and grounded in
this work?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Pastor Mike two quick stories. I was a youth pastor
in San Jose, California, in the ninety nine two thousand era.
I got beat up by some cops while I was
a youth pastor down there, physically sexually assaulted in the
course of an arrest. A number of my young people
said to me, you know, Pastor Mike, this happens to
us all the time. I said, why you never said
(07:31):
anything to me? They said, because we didn't expect the
church to respond to this. And I heard God speak
to me and say, what is it about the ministry
you're creating where these children and their families will trust
you with the salvation of their souls but not the
safety of their bodies. These children were experiencing violence at
the hands of police and in their own communities, and
(07:52):
the church was not being responsive. I went to Douke,
came home, started to do more community work, particularly around
this I was introduced to this work by you, Jean Rivers,
Reverend Jeff Brown, Tenny Gross, folks who came out of
the Boston experience of this work and began to do
some of this work here in Berkeley, Oakland, and had
to bury a teenager. Over five hundred young people attended
(08:14):
the funeral. I asked, how many if you've been to
more than one funeral? All of the young people raise
their hands. These are teenagers. Five funerals. All the young
people still had their hands up. I got as high
as ten, asking how many have been to ten funerals?
Half of their children had their hands lifted while they
were weeping, and I was reminded that whatever work I'm
doing is not adequate. If the young people in my
(08:37):
community are teenagers and they've been to more than ten funerals.
Whatever I'm doing, whether it's preaching, whether it's volunteering in
the schools, whether it's getting people jobs, is not adequate
because our children are not safe. Either they're dying or
they're dealing with perpetual grief. And I found myself being
challenged to not only be a proclaimer of peace, but
(09:01):
also as much as I can, a maker, a creator
of peace. And these strategies were the best way to
do so in a structured manner. And it forced us
to organize people like the Larry's and the others all
across the country, in my own neighborhood, to be face
to face with elected officials, law enforcement leaders, preachers, and
(09:24):
respectable black people in every city across the country where
we work, and declare that our story of violence and
trauma is not something that can be solved by arrest alone,
that we need a radical intervention that is public health driven,
that is people centered, and more importantly, that is results based.
(09:46):
And this is the strategy. There is no strategy that
comes close to these menu of strategies. We have found
a lot of elected officials and a lot of law
enforcement leaders at the time were not familiar with these strategies,
and we had to do organizing filling community centers, churches,
mayor's offices, and congressional representatives offices. We had to build
(10:10):
organizing power to push our leaders to champion resource scale
these strategies, and that work is still ongoing quite frankly,
but we're in a good place historically. Now we just
got to keep it cooking.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So CBI funding was cut by this administration one hundred
and fifty million dollars in federal grants right through the
Department of Justice. What was the grant program program I
can't remember the name of the.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Grand well, it was all in the Office of Justice
programs and a lot of those were the Burns, the
Burns Justice grants, you know, things that we were able
to through lots of organizing advocacy our whole field get
resources that were put into the Safer Communities Act, which
(11:00):
the Biden administration champion and signed. That those dollars were
cut and it's been devastating, and it's it's important to
acknowledge that that was just our little part of the cuts,
but all the other kind of resources in the Department
of Justice that deal with victims services and juvenile justice,
and child protection and substance abuse. That all comes to
(11:23):
evaluation of almost eight hundred and twenty million dollars were cut,
and it's devastating. It's devastating to all those who care
about safety and justice.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, I want to bring in Wesley Moore, who runs
an organization called Our Brothers Keepers and High West.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
How are you pretty good by yourself?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Very good? Thank you. You look like you're ready for
customer service. That's good. That's the field y'all are in.
Let's go. So I want to I want to ask
you what the impacts of these federal cuts have meant
to your program? Because so often we talk about this,
at least for me, let me own my stuff. I
talk about this in numbers and data and the names
(12:09):
of the programs, but we don't necessarily see the direct impact.
What did these cuts mean to your programs like yours,
Our Brothers Keepers?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
It affected our program tremendously, from US housing over fifty
to sixty homeless use. I was a victim of homeless
use that got me into drugs and violence, and so
I know that the direction that it can take you,
and also it affects us by every summer that we
are if ages fourteen to seventeen years old jobs opportunity
(12:42):
and teach them some type of job work skill that
they can grab on and still grabbing a gun, grabbing drugs,
stay in survival mode. So this year we're not able
to give out that type of service. We just paying
on fifteen dollars an hour to keep them away from
the street. We all know that if these kids came
get into a program to give them a better outcome
(13:04):
in life, they gonna tend to go to the left
side to where somebody else can put something in their
hands to help feed their family, help take care of bills.
We noticed last year a lot of our students have
not committed a crime in eighteen months. They had the
group down here called Kia Boys on christ shores around
the whole United States, but we had seven in our
(13:26):
program have not stole a car in eighteen months because
we gave them an outlook in life to point their
directions towards something that can help make them a productive
person into life.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
How did you get into involved in this work was
what was your story attached to this.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I've been homeless all my life started at the age
of twelve thirteen years old. My mom was on drugs,
my father was in and out my life. And I'm
the oldest of my brothers and sister forty nine years old.
So I was forced to be a father at thirteen
years old, taking care of my brothers and sisters and stuff.
And I tended to the streets and stuff to be
(14:07):
able to keep our lives on. Give some food onto
my brothers and sisters and stuff, and my young My
other brother underneath me, who helped me, also started this program.
He's assistant director, Mark Moore. We hit the streets and
next thing you know, I was able to take care
of my family. But I also was hurting my family
because at age eighteen years old, I was sentenced to
(14:27):
twenty years. I was sentenced to twenty years and then
I came back home when I was thirty three years old,
did fifteen years and stuff. So when I got out,
I vowed to come back to my community to give
them an opportunity to don't go down the road I
went to, and I'm doing that. Of course, I learned
how to start remodeling homes, doing electric plummies and stuff
(14:49):
like that. And me and my brother had bought this
property and we was rehaving it. Our whole goal was
to rehab it and put it back on to the
market and sell it. But we know we had a
lot of at risk use. And I don't like to
call him at risk us. I like to say we
don't want this at risk and not loving them and
showing them the right direction. But we noticed they was
(15:09):
homeless and stuff, so we start teaching them the type
of trade and start paying them. They were the age fourteen, fifteen,
sixteen years old. So as that went, we end up
start opening up the program which became Our Brother's Keeper,
the Game of Outlook and life to take a different direction.
And I noticed by looking at them saying kids, it
(15:30):
was a reflection of myself, and I seen that they
had no parents inside the house. One had a child
when he was fourteen old, which I had my first
son when I was fourteen years old. So I seen
the reflection of where they head into. And now it's
five years later and with this funding's being cut. I
(15:53):
just noticed over the weekend we have our city was
praising how the violence is down. Within this month we
done had ten to twelve homicides. Over the weekend, we
just had some more homicide last night we just had
another homicide. But these is now the schools is getting out,
so now we really about to see the risks of homicide, robberies,
(16:15):
breaking in cars, still in cars, and stuff like that
because they cutting so many of these programs funding, these
kids don't have nowhere to go.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, I'm curious to know. And we actually got a
question in from Adrian Jordan. Pastor mac, I want to
come to you on this first. You know, when this
we first heard about this, my natural default is like, Okay,
(16:46):
how do we fix this? And so we talked about
city funding and state funding, but someone named Adrian Jordan
asked if these can be privately funded, if you all
could raise your own resources to be able to make
an impact, to have the similar impact that you've been having,
and then the type of impact I know you want
to see, Pastor right, you talked about all those hands
(17:07):
going up at a funeral. I know you wish that
there were no hands that could go up and hopefully
not even be at the funeral. So what types of
resources can you raise privately? What do you need to
see from the state and local government to be able
to make up for this huge gap?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, let me let me just try to contextualize it,
like it's super important for people to understand that in
your city, all the data research has shown us that
less than one percent some cities numbers are less than
half of one percent of your whole city's population is
driving or caught up in about sixty to seventy percent
(17:43):
of the lethal gun violence conflicts. Which just is to say,
if you have one hundred shootings in your city, it's
not because of one hundred people shooting each other. It's
likely a small number of individuals who are caught in
lethal conflicts and they are repeat their volume of fits.
Those individuals are the individuals the lion's share of these
(18:04):
resources from the federal, state and local should be targeting
when we're talking about reducing gun violence. These strategies CBI
aren't necessarily attempting to reduce everything else. Although you will
find that a number of folks who are engaged in robberies,
who are engaged in other kind of violent offenses are
also some of these individuals. Why is that important. It's
(18:27):
important to say that because these are targeted resources that
should impact targeted individuals or networks in our communities. And
I often find that we think the problem is much
bigger than it is, so our brains can't get wrapped
around how vitally important this kind of investment is. Now,
(18:48):
there's several things that we have to acknowledge. First of all,
the federal dollars were so important to us because many
local mayor city council members, county boards of of supervisors,
or governors, their state legislatures would not fund these strategies
with the tax base of the local or the state,
(19:09):
and so we had to go to the federal to
almost be an innovation like catalyst for these strategies. Now,
we've always depended on philanthropy to kind of bridge some
of our gaps. But just like a police department would
never ask philanthropy to fund their police budgets, we're trying
(19:30):
to get to a place in a moment where no
philanthropy is being expected to fund public safety and community safety.
This should be a bill a cost that the local
municipality and the state legislatures should fund themselves. And so
yes to your person's question, we got to organize locally
(19:51):
now that we know for well over a decade, particularly
with the federal dollars that were infused into this post COVID.
Now we know these strategies, we now need local mayors
and local city council members to take local dollars and
fund the local ecosystems of these strategies. It would be
great to continue to have federal funding, and we're gonna
(20:13):
keep working to have federal funding, but every municipality is
the richest institution in every city. More than philanthropy, more
than a fortune five hundred company. Every local municipality can
support these strategies. What we have to do is organize people,
organize the stories, the ideas, and we have to push
(20:36):
in their local municipal budgets to fund it. In the meantime,
if you're a philanthropic partner, if you are an individually
wealthy person, someone with high resources, and you're trying to
put dollars on the ground now to make our summers
less bloody and less lethal, then yes, you should find
an organization like our good brother here on the call,
(20:58):
or you can visit us and live for USA. We
can plug you into all kinds of organizations locally that
you can support in every city we're talking about all
across the country. But resources are needed, and they're needed now.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
What is the number. And I'm going to come to
you too, Wes, But like, what is the number? You're like,
in order to get through this summer, this is what
we need, whether it's from you know, well, let's wait
on city and state, but let's say that, like if
people could donate, Like, what's the number that you're like,
this is what I know we need.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh man, I mean I think you have to go
city by city. If you imagine that half of five
hundred million dollars were cut, you know, I think that
that number is a real number.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I mean, man, and.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
That's over forty fifty cities. We're talking about two hundred
and twenty organizations we're receiving those dollars. Let me just
use Oakland as an example, because I know I have
my hands wrapped around that number. We're serving well over
two hundred individuals in Oakland who are at the highest
risk of shooting or being shot, extending to them about
forty to fifty thousand dollars worth of services for mental
(22:06):
health support. They all have a case manager, an individual
person who literally case manages them so they do not
fall back into lethal conflicts. They get some resources on
the side to help them with some job training and reintegration.
And so in Oakland, if your times that by two hundred,
that's about four to five six million dollars just for
(22:29):
a quarter, right, And so it's just really important to
appreciate that the tax base has to fund this individually.
Wealthy people can help provide gaps and bridges for individual organizations.
But if you really care about this work, and you
care about anchoring this work, then we need everybody I'm
talking about from the pastor to the CEO, to the teacher,
(22:53):
to the nurse, to the parent, to the elected official
to the police. Everybody has to get on one accord
and and insistent. We will invest in peace making in
our communities. We will fund peace We will make sure
that the resources needed for brothers programs, but also case
managers and intervention specialists and violence interruptors that work will
(23:15):
not be shortened because of an administration change at the local,
state and federal level.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, that's good, Wes. I want to ask you for
your organization and the network of organizations that you're connected
to in Columbus, Ohio, what do you see as the
most immediate need. You talked about twelve homicides just over
the weekend over a Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
I want to touch back what the pastor said, and
I truly agree one hundred percent Withding. It is a
city by city base, but I know, speaking for our organization,
we've predominantly been getting three hundred thousand dollars throughout the
summer and that's what intervention prevention, mental health, housing, wrap
(24:01):
around service for the parents, jobs, training skills and everything.
And it seemed like it might be a lot of money,
but it goes so fast when you're putting kids through
job training service and then they working for twelve weeks
throughout the summer program making fifteen dollars an hour, so
the money adds up pretty quick. And then the professionals
that you got around them to keep them stable mentally
(24:23):
more than anything, to be able to understand their job
training skills that they're about to get ready to learn,
or just to note that they're in the safe environment
to where they don't got to wear by toting a
gun or anything else and stuff, as well as the
staff and let them know that they okay. But we
(24:45):
are getting support now because we partner up with one
of our church's City of Grace down here in Columbus
seeing the good work that we've been doing. And Pastor
Mike Young, a great man, he seeing what he was
doing and he unders stay what the outcome would be
by us not being evolved around the summertime with these youths.
(25:06):
You can have a program, but if you if you
don't have the staff to understand what they are about
to receive, it's just gonna be a program. But if
you have a staff to understand what they're about to receive,
and they see this every day and they living in this,
and they know the aunties, the grandma's and stuff that
to prevent, and if we start preventing, we won't have
(25:29):
to be doing an intervention. So right then, doing all
these cuts, now we gotta do the intervention of what's
about to get ready happen. You know it's already happening summertime,
having any start already, and because of the budgets being cut,
we know the homicide because we also work inside the schools,
(25:50):
we know what's about to get ready happened. Within these
next couple of weeks. My team is working at three schools,
the most violent schools to be honest, with the gangs
and stuff. So we got an opportunity to understand this
is going to happen to this day when they had
this event over the weekend. They just had the talk
ovent but were working inside the school. We already reading
(26:12):
the text message the social media. They meeting at this
time to go do fight and stuff. They actually met
up at that time. When I made phone calls, hey
make sure you try to get this prevented. Though two
people end up getting shot, it was already on social media.
What they're gonna do. So programs like myself and other
programs around the city. Revenue it's gonna go up and down.
(26:37):
But I know personally for our program, which is really low,
that have sixty kids come in every day from nine
to five o'clock, and have we got ten staffs on
their LSI w's mental health specialists and our ns. It's
really not no money, but you're saving a life and
(26:57):
that's meaning more to us. It's some money, absolutely, Wes.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I really appreciate you coming on. We're gonna finish up
with pastor Mike, but I thank you so much for
being here today, and I'm definitely sending prayers, love and
urging people to support the work you're doing. In Columbus.
So thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Strong my friend you too as well.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So Pastor Mike. There are a couple of questions that
came in. One was about the church, and I thought
this was particularly important for you given the role that
you play. The question for Marina Taylor is how much
churches are investing in city programs like are they Are
you seeing a shift? I know you talked about feeling
(27:49):
particularly called are you seeing that same type of urgency
and shift from clergy from the church folks.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, that's a great question. So the Live Free USA
network is a largely faith based network of thousands of
faith leaders who are working at the intersection of gun
virus prevention, criminal justice reform, and civic engagement. We also
have an extended network called the Black Church Freedom Fund,
Black Church Pack Again, Pastors, faith leaders, people of faith
(28:18):
who are working to leverage our political infrastructure and influence
to scale up the support for these strategies. And so
what I will say is that yes, you have. And
this is our fifteenth year. Live for USA is our
fifteenth year of training pastors and congregation members to either
(28:38):
provide programs to influence policies or to use their voices
through prophetic proclamations to raise up peacemaking congregations. Of course,
we could always use more, but we have as many
pastors and faith leaders working on this as the number
of pastors and faith leaders supporting Martin Luther King Junior
(28:58):
at the height of SELC. I don't know if that's
a condemnation or something to celebrate, but it is worth
saying that.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'm condemn it. Where are y'all at Church of today?
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Church could go to live FORUSA dot org and just
sign up your church, right Bishop, Yeah, yeah, And we
worked with Kojikup in our earliest years. All the all
the pentalcost nominations is cooking with us on this now.
It's important to say a couple of things though. A
lot of our pastors youth pastors, but whether they be
(29:31):
our brothers or sisters, et cetera, their role is not
necessarily to be on the front lines, because in every
city there are already frontline workers, all right, So some
of this work is the work of individuals like our
dear brother from Columbus who was just on the church
should not be replicating any new programs we ought to
(29:53):
be supplementing through advocacy and organizing. A pastor would do more,
helped to organize his congregation and the surrounding neighborhoods and
show up at a city council meeting, a county board
of supervisors meeting, or the state legislature and demand that
the local and state tax base be leveraged and invested
(30:14):
in these strategies. I would have say, we got to
bring organizing back because a lot of our work has
walked away from organizing and power building and moved into
a lot of services. And while services are important, the
systems have to be restructured. The powers have to be challenged.
And that's what I would put the challenge out to
every pastor and faith leader. Let's organize our congregations to
(30:38):
be peacemakers through our voices, through the programmatic supports of
these CBI efforts, and through the ways in which we
challenge the systems.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
I want to know if you have a recent example
of why this work matters. And I think I keep
getting into this because again, I think my challenge point
was like, for me, the data is enough, Right for me,
the cuts are enough, But that's not true for everybody. Brother, right,
(31:12):
we know there are some folks who need to know, Like,
if I contribute my one hundred dollars that I have
for this month to this entity, even if it's not
the four to five million it takes quarterly, but if
I can make a little bit of a difference, this
is how I know this work is making a difference.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
No, that's a great question. So I'll my plug is
going to be to let's support the organizing work that
makes the power building in each city, leverage and get
the local mayors and cities to release those dollars. So
I'll use Oakland and Indianapolis as two great examples. We've
been able, through the local funding of an organizers seventy
(31:53):
five thousand dollars a year round about to unlock tens
of millions tens of millions of dollars in both Oakland
and Indianapolis, just two examples of many that literally fund
dozens of organizations to do this work. And what does
it require. It requires us to have a person on
(32:14):
the ground who is able to connect both the individuals
directly impacted by this work, help them develop their stories,
help them to kind of get in touch with the
healing they need, but also be prepared to show up publicly,
to speak out to elected officials in public meetings, to
get hundreds of individuals to show up at a city
(32:35):
council meeting, to get a hundreds of individuals to show
up in perhaps on a prayer vigil or a peace vigil,
to get hundreds of individuals to support the programs that
we've just heard from, like the one in Columbus. That
kind of work is an investment of one hundred dollars
a month. By seventy five folks could literally get us
(32:56):
an organizer in each city, which then unlocks tens of
millions of dollars in that city's municipal budget. Indianapolis has
done an amazing work of getting that kind of stuff
funded across multiple mayoral administrations. Oakland has done the same thing.
Orlando has gone six seven eight months without a homicide
(33:18):
in their city because of this kind of work. It's
no accident that when the organizing and advocacy of this stuff,
spite the federal and some local state dollars, infused resources
into our city and we saw historic drop in the
last three years. So I want to say, if we
(33:39):
fund organizing, if we support advocacy, then that pushes the
systems to reimagine the way they use their local tax dollars,
and that in turn puts a battery pack in the
local peacemaking organizations so they can wake up every day,
just like law enforcement wakes up every day to do
(33:59):
this the police fighting and crime fighting work. Now we
have individuals, some of whom are directly impacted, some of
whom who've been trained in conflict resolution behavioral cognitive therapy,
Folks who are being coached at our CVII Leadership Academy
at the University of Chicago that doctor Chico and doctor
(34:20):
Marcus are leading, David Muhammad, de Vone Bogan, Erica Ford.
I can just keep naming names of individual who are
training folks every day to execute the strategies. We need
the dollars at the local level to fund the strategies,
and that happens through organizing and pushing people to do so.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I love this and I love you. I'm so grateful
that you're doing this work. I want to say to
y'all again from getting to know Pastor Mike just a
little bit during this tour, his heart is for our people, y'all,
Like in real, real ways, I've seen how these cuts
have impacted him personally, and I'm probably gonna tell all
(35:03):
your business. I'm sorry, but just like watching how it's
impacted him, his spirit and the pain from this, I
just really want us to surround him. He is a shepherd, right,
He's got a congregation and the flock he leads, and
he's leading this work too. But it takes a toll
on you when your life's work and the thing that
(35:23):
you know you feel called to do has been hit.
It feels like, you know, a failure, even when you
didn't facilitate set failure. You know there are a lot
of young people whose lives are going to be lost
because of this very selfish, sick cut. And so I
want us selfishly to surround my brother. For the mayors,
(35:45):
state elected officials, county elected officials, those of you who
know you can help to impact this work.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Do this.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
For those of you who have one hundred dollars to
give every month towards this. He talked about if seventy
five of us just give one hundred dollars a month,
we help to put someone who's boots on the ground
and helps to organize and convene and facilitate millions of
dollars of impact in this work. We've got to do it, y'all,
because one thing we're learning on this tour, we all
(36:14):
we got so when they listen, So when the people
forget about how to protect the lease of these, that's
where the pastor mics of the world come in. And
so I just want to publicly thank you for all
you do above and beyond this, but certainly in this work,
I'm so grateful that you use something so traumatic, several traumas,
(36:36):
to utilize it for good so that other young people
don't have to have to have the same experience you had,
or all of those young folks who raise their hands
in that funeral. I am praying that you can continue
to work to do the work to prevent funerals like
these from going forward. And most of all, I pray
that in this work that you take care of yourself
and know that here at Native Lampid you are always
(36:57):
welcome home. But we're going to help welcome some of
these dollars. Y'all. We didn't put out the buckets. The
buckets we have the offering. We need the love offering
to be These young people got to survive. Make sure
y'all follow Pastor Mike McBride on socials. Where can they
find you?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Pastor mic I am Pastor Mike Underscore. I'm Pastor Mike Underscore.
I'm on let's see Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Haven't
made it to the other ones yet. I'm on Blue
Scott too. I think that's the new one.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Everybody's own. So yeah, right now, yes, I gotta figure
out way and are to account.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Appreciate there are local people who you could literally connect
with today. They're not hiding. If you need any help,
can it connected with a local person. This is not
a one man show. This is not a you know,
a savior complex. There's hundreds of us working every day
doing this and we love to have more supporters and
more people just to ask us questions, learn about how
(37:55):
violence shows up in your own city. Just like me
and Angela were at the UH the Juvenile Hall with
Jalen and a whole host Michael Eric Dyson last week.
Everybody should be connected to these young people. What did
they say, Angela? They all wanted two things. They wanted
guidance and support. We asked them, what are the two
things you want? They didn't say more money? They didn't
(38:17):
say a house or car. These young people in juvenile
Hall told us the two things they wanted was guidance
and support. That is free, right, that's just availability. Let's
show up for our young people. Let's save their lives.
Let's make sure they can live free from violence and incarceration.
And thanks again, Angel for having me.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I love you, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, y'all.
Make sure you support I know he said it's not
a savior complex, but he is one of my greatest teachers.
I hope y'all follow Pastor Mike and definitely let's live free.
So I'm pledging my support. Y'all joined me. I'm about
to spend all my money trying to help the people
right now. But that's what we gotta do, all right,
(38:56):
Love you, brother, Thank you, Welcome y'all. Native Lampard is
a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media.
(39:19):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with Reason Choice Media. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home. Everyone,
it has been a little while I missed you. It's
been a lot going on. I have been working diligently
(00:20):
with some amazing, amazing partners on the local, state and
national level on our State of the People Power Tour,
and that has made it so my travel days of
interview interfere with this podcast is solo Pod, and I
just really appea, I appreciate your patience. Today we're talking
about something that I've learned a lot more about from
(00:41):
being on the ground and from working with some amazing people.
One of them is Pastor Mike McBride, who has become
a fast brother to me. He runs an organization called
Live Free USA. He's the executive director, partnering with folks
all over the country on community violence intervention programs, and
(01:02):
just the other day we were in Detroit, Michigan, at
a juvenile detention center facility where we got to speak
to some young folks who have been impacted by programs
just like Pastor Mike's, and I know that they could
certainly benefit from access to resources like the ones that
Pastor Mike and Liftfree provide every single day. So I
(01:25):
am doing this elongated intro because I am waiting to
see his face and I'm wondering if there's a technical
issue there. He is, Hey, Pastor Mike, how are you brother?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You know? Glad to be talking to the Northwest wonder?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Oh? You guys, just know that I thought that I
was bad at geography. I really did, and then I
met Pastor Mike. For some reason, he doesn't believe that
I get to throw my doves up and I don't
underd why. And my gums have to be up north.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You gotta put it, you gotta put it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I don't know either way. I'm not a y n
and I'm not gonna wrap the Northwest Coast or the Pacific,
this West Coast all day, baby. And since he's deal
in Hope, I know he's not gonna troll me with that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Today it's to talk to the West Coast wonder w
c W.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I'll take it. But we have gotten to do so
much more together, and I just feel like, you know,
every time I see my good brother, I'm like he
been all my life, But he's been busy doing the
work of the Lord in the streets beyond the four
walls of the sanctuary, and it is it is really,
really a pleasure to have gotten the journey with you
thus far. I can I can't wait to see what
(02:48):
else God has in store. But first we're gonna fight
for these programs. So this is what I want to
talk to you about. I saw, as the Bible would say,
your counting is drop.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I think we were in were we in New Orleans?
When did you first learn? Okay, so we learned about
these cuts in New Orleans, and Pastor Mike, I want
you to help people understand community violence. Intervention work is
the thing that saves our young people more than any
law enforcement officer ever could nine point five I say
(03:20):
nine point nine times out of ten. It is the
work that puts, you know, the Ray Lewis's and the
skills and the tefts in front of whatever was going
to come between one young person and another. It is
conflict resolution. It is telling people your own heroing stories.
It is helping people to understand the importance that life does,
(03:42):
in fact matter. We have young people nowadays, even in
my own community of Seattle, Sewer Park is we have
the loop. Some kids just got shot at Sewer Park
the other day, so this work is so important. Can
you talk about the work that you all have been
getting funded through the federal government and how you plan
to pivot now.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Well, it's great to be with you, Angela, and thanks
so much for the opportunity to hang out with you
and the homies as part of your Native Land podcast Family.
I'll just quickly say that the scripture says blessed are
the peacemakers, where they shall be called the children of God.
And often we think of peace as the absence of
(04:26):
conflict or violence, but it is also has to be
considered the presence of justice. Both of them have to
be together. People want safety and they want justice. People
don't want to be criminalized in their own communities as
a price to pay to achieve some false sense of safety,
which has largely been the experience of most black folks
(04:47):
in this country. What has now become known as community
violence intervention. In the past, it may have been known
in Shorthand as ceasefire, as focused atturrens, as cure violence.
It has now kind of largely been described as community
violence intervention, and it is a menu if you will,
(05:08):
a rising sector, a rising labor force and workforce of
trained individuals who are skilled in public health interventions that
interrupt lethal conflicts that are a result of interpersonal violence,
largely with guns. And this has become now in our
(05:29):
say third or fourth decade of or working and organizing,
one of the best, if not the best evaluated public
safety community safety set of interventions. And thankfully in the
last four or five six years, they started to scale
all across the country. It is our life's work when
(05:50):
I say, I'm talking about all of the peacemakers, all
the violence interrupters, all of the community based organization senior executives,
folks who've been doing this work for decades large without
renunration or public appreciation. Community vised intervention is here to
stay if we can organize to keep it so. And
it's righteous work for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I want to ask you this because I think so
often on the policy making side, and I think you've
heard me talk about this on the tour. I feel
like there's something that happens where your advocacy could be fierce.
You can be so intentional about you know, what you're
doing every single day, but there's a disconnect that happens
(06:32):
along the road of strategy between strategy and like the
folks on the ground, And this tour has brought me
a lot closer to that. I'm like, oh, I did
have some gaps, I did have some blind spots. I
know these programs need to be funded, but there's something
I think that happens when a policy maker or a
strategist or even like a bill author has to come
(06:55):
face to face with some of the victims or the
victim's family member. So can you talk about how you
got into this work and why it's so important to
you now? Like what keeps you rooted and grounded in
this work?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Pastor Mike two quick stories. I was a youth pastor
in San Jose, California, in the ninety nine two thousand era.
I got beat up by some cops while I was
a youth pastor down there, physically sexually assaulted in the
course of an arrest. A number of my young people
said to me, you know, Pastor Mike, this happens to
us all the time. I said, why you never said
(07:31):
anything to me? They said, because we didn't expect the
church to respond to this. And I heard God speak
to me and say, what is it about the ministry
you're creating where these children and their families will trust
you with the salvation of their souls but not the
safety of their bodies. These children were experiencing violence at
the hands of police and in their own communities, and
(07:52):
the church was not being responsive. I went to Douke,
came home, started to do more community work, particularly around
this I was introduced to this work by you, Jean Rivers,
Reverend Jeff Brown, Tenny Gross, folks who came out of
the Boston experience of this work and began to do
some of this work here in Berkeley, Oakland, and had
to bury a teenager. Over five hundred young people attended
(08:14):
the funeral. I asked, how many if you've been to
more than one funeral? All of the young people raise
their hands. These are teenagers. Five funerals. All the young
people still had their hands up. I got as high
as ten, asking how many have been to ten funerals?
Half of their children had their hands lifted while they
were weeping, and I was reminded that whatever work I'm
doing is not adequate. If the young people in my
(08:37):
community are teenagers and they've been to more than ten funerals.
Whatever I'm doing, whether it's preaching, whether it's volunteering in
the schools, whether it's getting people jobs, is not adequate
because our children are not safe. Either they're dying or
they're dealing with perpetual grief. And I found myself being
challenged to not only be a proclaimer of peace, but
(09:01):
also as much as I can, a maker, a creator
of peace. And these strategies were the best way to
do so in a structured manner. And it forced us
to organize people like the Larry's and the others all
across the country, in my own neighborhood, to be face
to face with elected officials, law enforcement leaders, preachers, and
(09:24):
respectable black people in every city across the country where
we work, and declare that our story of violence and
trauma is not something that can be solved by arrest alone,
that we need a radical intervention that is public health driven,
that is people centered, and more importantly, that is results based.
(09:46):
And this is the strategy. There is no strategy that
comes close to these menu of strategies. We have found
a lot of elected officials and a lot of law
enforcement leaders at the time were not familiar with these strategies,
and we had to do organizing filling community centers, churches,
mayor's offices, and congressional representatives offices. We had to build
(10:10):
organizing power to push our leaders to champion resource scale
these strategies, and that work is still ongoing quite frankly,
but we're in a good place historically. Now we just
got to keep it cooking.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So CBI funding was cut by this administration one hundred
and fifty million dollars in federal grants right through the
Department of Justice. What was the grant program program I
can't remember the name of the.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Grand well, it was all in the Office of Justice
programs and a lot of those were the Burns, the
Burns Justice grants, you know, things that we were able
to through lots of organizing advocacy our whole field get
resources that were put into the Safer Communities Act, which
(11:00):
the Biden administration champion and signed. That those dollars were
cut and it's been devastating, and it's it's important to
acknowledge that that was just our little part of the cuts,
but all the other kind of resources in the Department
of Justice that deal with victims services and juvenile justice,
and child protection and substance abuse. That all comes to
(11:23):
evaluation of almost eight hundred and twenty million dollars were cut,
and it's devastating. It's devastating to all those who care
about safety and justice.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, I want to bring in Wesley Moore, who runs
an organization called Our Brothers Keepers and High West.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
How are you pretty good by yourself?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Very good? Thank you. You look like you're ready for
customer service. That's good. That's the field y'all are in.
Let's go. So I want to I want to ask
you what the impacts of these federal cuts have meant
to your program? Because so often we talk about this,
at least for me, let me own my stuff. I
talk about this in numbers and data and the names
(12:09):
of the programs, but we don't necessarily see the direct impact.
What did these cuts mean to your programs like yours,
Our Brothers Keepers?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
It affected our program tremendously, from US housing over fifty
to sixty homeless use. I was a victim of homeless
use that got me into drugs and violence, and so
I know that the direction that it can take you,
and also it affects us by every summer that we
are if ages fourteen to seventeen years old jobs opportunity
(12:42):
and teach them some type of job work skill that
they can grab on and still grabbing a gun, grabbing drugs,
stay in survival mode. So this year we're not able
to give out that type of service. We just paying
on fifteen dollars an hour to keep them away from
the street. We all know that if these kids came
get into a program to give them a better outcome
(13:04):
in life, they gonna tend to go to the left
side to where somebody else can put something in their
hands to help feed their family, help take care of bills.
We noticed last year a lot of our students have
not committed a crime in eighteen months. They had the
group down here called Kia Boys on christ shores around
the whole United States, but we had seven in our
(13:26):
program have not stole a car in eighteen months because
we gave them an outlook in life to point their
directions towards something that can help make them a productive
person into life.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
How did you get into involved in this work was
what was your story attached to this.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I've been homeless all my life started at the age
of twelve thirteen years old. My mom was on drugs,
my father was in and out my life. And I'm
the oldest of my brothers and sister forty nine years old.
So I was forced to be a father at thirteen
years old, taking care of my brothers and sisters and stuff.
And I tended to the streets and stuff to be
(14:07):
able to keep our lives on. Give some food onto
my brothers and sisters and stuff, and my young My
other brother underneath me, who helped me, also started this program.
He's assistant director, Mark Moore. We hit the streets and
next thing you know, I was able to take care
of my family. But I also was hurting my family
because at age eighteen years old, I was sentenced to
(14:27):
twenty years. I was sentenced to twenty years and then
I came back home when I was thirty three years old,
did fifteen years and stuff. So when I got out,
I vowed to come back to my community to give
them an opportunity to don't go down the road I
went to, and I'm doing that. Of course, I learned
how to start remodeling homes, doing electric plummies and stuff
(14:49):
like that. And me and my brother had bought this
property and we was rehaving it. Our whole goal was
to rehab it and put it back on to the
market and sell it. But we know we had a
lot of at risk use. And I don't like to
call him at risk us. I like to say we
don't want this at risk and not loving them and
showing them the right direction. But we noticed they was
(15:09):
homeless and stuff, so we start teaching them the type
of trade and start paying them. They were the age fourteen, fifteen,
sixteen years old. So as that went, we end up
start opening up the program which became Our Brother's Keeper,
the Game of Outlook and life to take a different direction.
And I noticed by looking at them saying kids, it
(15:30):
was a reflection of myself, and I seen that they
had no parents inside the house. One had a child
when he was fourteen old, which I had my first
son when I was fourteen years old. So I seen
the reflection of where they head into. And now it's
five years later and with this funding's being cut. I
(15:53):
just noticed over the weekend we have our city was
praising how the violence is down. Within this month we
done had ten to twelve homicides. Over the weekend, we
just had some more homicide last night we just had
another homicide. But these is now the schools is getting out,
so now we really about to see the risks of homicide, robberies,
(16:15):
breaking in cars, still in cars, and stuff like that
because they cutting so many of these programs funding, these
kids don't have nowhere to go.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, I'm curious to know. And we actually got a
question in from Adrian Jordan. Pastor mac, I want to
come to you on this first. You know, when this
we first heard about this, my natural default is like, Okay,
(16:46):
how do we fix this? And so we talked about
city funding and state funding, but someone named Adrian Jordan
asked if these can be privately funded, if you all
could raise your own resources to be able to make
an impact, to have the similar impact that you've been having,
and then the type of impact I know you want
to see, Pastor right, you talked about all those hands
(17:07):
going up at a funeral. I know you wish that
there were no hands that could go up and hopefully
not even be at the funeral. So what types of
resources can you raise privately? What do you need to
see from the state and local government to be able
to make up for this huge gap?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, let me let me just try to contextualize it,
like it's super important for people to understand that in
your city, all the data research has shown us that
less than one percent some cities numbers are less than
half of one percent of your whole city's population is
driving or caught up in about sixty to seventy percent
(17:43):
of the lethal gun violence conflicts. Which just is to say,
if you have one hundred shootings in your city, it's
not because of one hundred people shooting each other. It's
likely a small number of individuals who are caught in
lethal conflicts and they are repeat their volume of fits.
Those individuals are the individuals the lion's share of these
(18:04):
resources from the federal, state and local should be targeting
when we're talking about reducing gun violence. These strategies CBI
aren't necessarily attempting to reduce everything else. Although you will
find that a number of folks who are engaged in robberies,
who are engaged in other kind of violent offenses are
also some of these individuals. Why is that important. It's
(18:27):
important to say that because these are targeted resources that
should impact targeted individuals or networks in our communities. And
I often find that we think the problem is much
bigger than it is, so our brains can't get wrapped
around how vitally important this kind of investment is. Now,
(18:48):
there's several things that we have to acknowledge. First of all,
the federal dollars were so important to us because many
local mayor city council members, county boards of of supervisors,
or governors, their state legislatures would not fund these strategies
with the tax base of the local or the state,
(19:09):
and so we had to go to the federal to
almost be an innovation like catalyst for these strategies. Now,
we've always depended on philanthropy to kind of bridge some
of our gaps. But just like a police department would
never ask philanthropy to fund their police budgets, we're trying
(19:30):
to get to a place in a moment where no
philanthropy is being expected to fund public safety and community safety.
This should be a bill a cost that the local
municipality and the state legislatures should fund themselves. And so
yes to your person's question, we got to organize locally
(19:51):
now that we know for well over a decade, particularly
with the federal dollars that were infused into this post COVID.
Now we know these strategies, we now need local mayors
and local city council members to take local dollars and
fund the local ecosystems of these strategies. It would be
great to continue to have federal funding, and we're gonna
(20:13):
keep working to have federal funding, but every municipality is
the richest institution in every city. More than philanthropy, more
than a fortune five hundred company. Every local municipality can
support these strategies. What we have to do is organize people,
organize the stories, the ideas, and we have to push
(20:36):
in their local municipal budgets to fund it. In the meantime,
if you're a philanthropic partner, if you are an individually
wealthy person, someone with high resources, and you're trying to
put dollars on the ground now to make our summers
less bloody and less lethal, then yes, you should find
an organization like our good brother here on the call,
(20:58):
or you can visit us and live for USA. We
can plug you into all kinds of organizations locally that
you can support in every city we're talking about all
across the country. But resources are needed, and they're needed now.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
What is the number. And I'm going to come to
you too, Wes, But like, what is the number? You're like,
in order to get through this summer, this is what
we need, whether it's from you know, well, let's wait
on city and state, but let's say that, like if
people could donate, Like, what's the number that you're like,
this is what I know we need.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh man, I mean I think you have to go
city by city. If you imagine that half of five
hundred million dollars were cut, you know, I think that
that number is a real number.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I mean, man, and.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
That's over forty fifty cities. We're talking about two hundred
and twenty organizations we're receiving those dollars. Let me just
use Oakland as an example, because I know I have
my hands wrapped around that number. We're serving well over
two hundred individuals in Oakland who are at the highest
risk of shooting or being shot, extending to them about
forty to fifty thousand dollars worth of services for mental
(22:06):
health support. They all have a case manager, an individual
person who literally case manages them so they do not
fall back into lethal conflicts. They get some resources on
the side to help them with some job training and reintegration.
And so in Oakland, if your times that by two hundred,
that's about four to five six million dollars just for
(22:29):
a quarter, right, And so it's just really important to
appreciate that the tax base has to fund this individually.
Wealthy people can help provide gaps and bridges for individual organizations.
But if you really care about this work, and you
care about anchoring this work, then we need everybody I'm
talking about from the pastor to the CEO, to the teacher,
(22:53):
to the nurse, to the parent, to the elected official
to the police. Everybody has to get on one accord
and and insistent. We will invest in peace making in
our communities. We will fund peace We will make sure
that the resources needed for brothers programs, but also case
managers and intervention specialists and violence interruptors that work will
(23:15):
not be shortened because of an administration change at the local,
state and federal level.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, that's good, Wes. I want to ask you for
your organization and the network of organizations that you're connected
to in Columbus, Ohio, what do you see as the
most immediate need. You talked about twelve homicides just over
the weekend over a Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
I want to touch back what the pastor said, and
I truly agree one hundred percent Withding. It is a
city by city base, but I know, speaking for our organization,
we've predominantly been getting three hundred thousand dollars throughout the
summer and that's what intervention prevention, mental health, housing, wrap
(24:01):
around service for the parents, jobs, training skills and everything.
And it seemed like it might be a lot of money,
but it goes so fast when you're putting kids through
job training service and then they working for twelve weeks
throughout the summer program making fifteen dollars an hour, so
the money adds up pretty quick. And then the professionals
that you got around them to keep them stable mentally
(24:23):
more than anything, to be able to understand their job
training skills that they're about to get ready to learn,
or just to note that they're in the safe environment
to where they don't got to wear by toting a
gun or anything else and stuff, as well as the
staff and let them know that they okay. But we
(24:45):
are getting support now because we partner up with one
of our church's City of Grace down here in Columbus
seeing the good work that we've been doing. And Pastor
Mike Young, a great man, he seeing what he was
doing and he unders stay what the outcome would be
by us not being evolved around the summertime with these youths.
(25:06):
You can have a program, but if you if you
don't have the staff to understand what they are about
to receive, it's just gonna be a program. But if
you have a staff to understand what they're about to receive,
and they see this every day and they living in this,
and they know the aunties, the grandma's and stuff that
to prevent, and if we start preventing, we won't have
(25:29):
to be doing an intervention. So right then, doing all
these cuts, now we gotta do the intervention of what's
about to get ready happen. You know it's already happening summertime,
having any start already, and because of the budgets being cut,
we know the homicide because we also work inside the schools,
(25:50):
we know what's about to get ready happened. Within these
next couple of weeks. My team is working at three schools,
the most violent schools to be honest, with the gangs
and stuff. So we got an opportunity to understand this
is going to happen to this day when they had
this event over the weekend. They just had the talk
ovent but were working inside the school. We already reading
(26:12):
the text message the social media. They meeting at this
time to go do fight and stuff. They actually met
up at that time. When I made phone calls, hey
make sure you try to get this prevented. Though two
people end up getting shot, it was already on social media.
What they're gonna do. So programs like myself and other
programs around the city. Revenue it's gonna go up and down.
(26:37):
But I know personally for our program, which is really low,
that have sixty kids come in every day from nine
to five o'clock, and have we got ten staffs on
their LSI w's mental health specialists and our ns. It's
really not no money, but you're saving a life and
(26:57):
that's meaning more to us. It's some money, absolutely, Wes.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I really appreciate you coming on. We're gonna finish up
with pastor Mike, but I thank you so much for
being here today, and I'm definitely sending prayers, love and
urging people to support the work you're doing. In Columbus.
So thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Strong my friend you too as well.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So Pastor Mike. There are a couple of questions that
came in. One was about the church, and I thought
this was particularly important for you given the role that
you play. The question for Marina Taylor is how much
churches are investing in city programs like are they Are
you seeing a shift? I know you talked about feeling
(27:49):
particularly called are you seeing that same type of urgency
and shift from clergy from the church folks.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, that's a great question. So the Live Free USA
network is a largely faith based network of thousands of
faith leaders who are working at the intersection of gun
virus prevention, criminal justice reform, and civic engagement. We also
have an extended network called the Black Church Freedom Fund,
Black Church Pack Again, Pastors, faith leaders, people of faith
(28:18):
who are working to leverage our political infrastructure and influence
to scale up the support for these strategies. And so
what I will say is that yes, you have. And
this is our fifteenth year. Live for USA is our
fifteenth year of training pastors and congregation members to either
(28:38):
provide programs to influence policies or to use their voices
through prophetic proclamations to raise up peacemaking congregations. Of course,
we could always use more, but we have as many
pastors and faith leaders working on this as the number
of pastors and faith leaders supporting Martin Luther King Junior
(28:58):
at the height of SELC. I don't know if that's
a condemnation or something to celebrate, but it is worth
saying that.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'm condemn it. Where are y'all at Church of today?
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Church could go to live FORUSA dot org and just
sign up your church, right Bishop, Yeah, yeah, And we
worked with Kojikup in our earliest years. All the all
the pentalcost nominations is cooking with us on this now.
It's important to say a couple of things though. A
lot of our pastors youth pastors, but whether they be
(29:31):
our brothers or sisters, et cetera, their role is not
necessarily to be on the front lines, because in every
city there are already frontline workers, all right, So some
of this work is the work of individuals like our
dear brother from Columbus who was just on the church
should not be replicating any new programs we ought to
(29:53):
be supplementing through advocacy and organizing. A pastor would do more,
helped to organize his congregation and the surrounding neighborhoods and
show up at a city council meeting, a county board
of supervisors meeting, or the state legislature and demand that
the local and state tax base be leveraged and invested
(30:14):
in these strategies. I would have say, we got to
bring organizing back because a lot of our work has
walked away from organizing and power building and moved into
a lot of services. And while services are important, the
systems have to be restructured. The powers have to be challenged.
And that's what I would put the challenge out to
every pastor and faith leader. Let's organize our congregations to
(30:38):
be peacemakers through our voices, through the programmatic supports of
these CBI efforts, and through the ways in which we
challenge the systems.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
I want to know if you have a recent example
of why this work matters. And I think I keep
getting into this because again, I think my challenge point
was like, for me, the data is enough, Right for me,
the cuts are enough, But that's not true for everybody. Brother, right,
(31:12):
we know there are some folks who need to know, Like,
if I contribute my one hundred dollars that I have
for this month to this entity, even if it's not
the four to five million it takes quarterly, but if
I can make a little bit of a difference, this
is how I know this work is making a difference.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
No, that's a great question. So I'll my plug is
going to be to let's support the organizing work that
makes the power building in each city, leverage and get
the local mayors and cities to release those dollars. So
I'll use Oakland and Indianapolis as two great examples. We've
been able, through the local funding of an organizers seventy
(31:53):
five thousand dollars a year round about to unlock tens
of millions tens of millions of dollars in both Oakland
and Indianapolis, just two examples of many that literally fund
dozens of organizations to do this work. And what does
it require. It requires us to have a person on
(32:14):
the ground who is able to connect both the individuals
directly impacted by this work, help them develop their stories,
help them to kind of get in touch with the
healing they need, but also be prepared to show up publicly,
to speak out to elected officials in public meetings, to
get hundreds of individuals to show up at a city
(32:35):
council meeting, to get a hundreds of individuals to show
up in perhaps on a prayer vigil or a peace vigil,
to get hundreds of individuals to support the programs that
we've just heard from, like the one in Columbus. That
kind of work is an investment of one hundred dollars
a month. By seventy five folks could literally get us
(32:56):
an organizer in each city, which then unlocks tens of
millions of dollars in that city's municipal budget. Indianapolis has
done an amazing work of getting that kind of stuff
funded across multiple mayoral administrations. Oakland has done the same thing.
Orlando has gone six seven eight months without a homicide
(33:18):
in their city because of this kind of work. It's
no accident that when the organizing and advocacy of this stuff,
spite the federal and some local state dollars, infused resources
into our city and we saw historic drop in the
last three years. So I want to say, if we
(33:39):
fund organizing, if we support advocacy, then that pushes the
systems to reimagine the way they use their local tax dollars,
and that in turn puts a battery pack in the
local peacemaking organizations so they can wake up every day,
just like law enforcement wakes up every day to do
(33:59):
this the police fighting and crime fighting work. Now we
have individuals, some of whom are directly impacted, some of
whom who've been trained in conflict resolution behavioral cognitive therapy,
Folks who are being coached at our CVII Leadership Academy
at the University of Chicago that doctor Chico and doctor
(34:20):
Marcus are leading, David Muhammad, de Vone Bogan, Erica Ford.
I can just keep naming names of individual who are
training folks every day to execute the strategies. We need
the dollars at the local level to fund the strategies,
and that happens through organizing and pushing people to do so.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I love this and I love you. I'm so grateful
that you're doing this work. I want to say to
y'all again from getting to know Pastor Mike just a
little bit during this tour, his heart is for our people, y'all,
Like in real, real ways, I've seen how these cuts
have impacted him personally, and I'm probably gonna tell all
(35:03):
your business. I'm sorry, but just like watching how it's
impacted him, his spirit and the pain from this, I
just really want us to surround him. He is a shepherd, right,
He's got a congregation and the flock he leads, and
he's leading this work too. But it takes a toll
on you when your life's work and the thing that
(35:23):
you know you feel called to do has been hit.
It feels like, you know, a failure, even when you
didn't facilitate set failure. You know there are a lot
of young people whose lives are going to be lost
because of this very selfish, sick cut. And so I
want us selfishly to surround my brother. For the mayors,
(35:45):
state elected officials, county elected officials, those of you who
know you can help to impact this work.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Do this.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
For those of you who have one hundred dollars to
give every month towards this. He talked about if seventy
five of us just give one hundred dollars a month,
we help to put someone who's boots on the ground
and helps to organize and convene and facilitate millions of
dollars of impact in this work. We've got to do it, y'all,
because one thing we're learning on this tour, we all
(36:14):
we got so when they listen, So when the people
forget about how to protect the lease of these, that's
where the pastor mics of the world come in. And
so I just want to publicly thank you for all
you do above and beyond this, but certainly in this work,
I'm so grateful that you use something so traumatic, several traumas,
(36:36):
to utilize it for good so that other young people
don't have to have to have the same experience you had,
or all of those young folks who raise their hands
in that funeral. I am praying that you can continue
to work to do the work to prevent funerals like
these from going forward. And most of all, I pray
that in this work that you take care of yourself
and know that here at Native Lampid you are always
(36:57):
welcome home. But we're going to help welcome some of
these dollars. Y'all. We didn't put out the buckets. The
buckets we have the offering. We need the love offering
to be These young people got to survive. Make sure
y'all follow Pastor Mike McBride on socials. Where can they
find you?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Pastor mic I am Pastor Mike Underscore. I'm Pastor Mike Underscore.
I'm on let's see Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Haven't
made it to the other ones yet. I'm on Blue
Scott too. I think that's the new one.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Everybody's own. So yeah, right now, yes, I gotta figure
out way and are to account.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Appreciate there are local people who you could literally connect
with today. They're not hiding. If you need any help,
can it connected with a local person. This is not
a one man show. This is not a you know,
a savior complex. There's hundreds of us working every day
doing this and we love to have more supporters and
more people just to ask us questions, learn about how
(37:55):
violence shows up in your own city. Just like me
and Angela were at the UH the Juvenile Hall with
Jalen and a whole host Michael Eric Dyson last week.
Everybody should be connected to these young people. What did
they say, Angela? They all wanted two things. They wanted
guidance and support. We asked them, what are the two
things you want? They didn't say more money? They didn't
(38:17):
say a house or car. These young people in juvenile
Hall told us the two things they wanted was guidance
and support. That is free, right, that's just availability. Let's
show up for our young people. Let's save their lives.
Let's make sure they can live free from violence and incarceration.
And thanks again, Angel for having me.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
I love you, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, y'all.
Make sure you support I know he said it's not
a savior complex, but he is one of my greatest teachers.
I hope y'all follow Pastor Mike and definitely let's live free.
So I'm pledging my support. Y'all joined me. I'm about
to spend all my money trying to help the people
right now. But that's what we gotta do, all right,
(38:56):
Love you, brother, Thank you, Welcome y'all. Native Lampard is
a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media.
(39:19):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Tiffany Cross
Andrew Gillum
Angela Rye
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.