NLP on ICE: Live Minneapolis Town Hall

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Native Lampid is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Reisent Choice Media Minneapolis.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I need y'all to make some noise, make.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Some noise, all right, So again tonight is about justice, community,
power and connection. I need y'all up on your feet
as I introduce our next guest to hit the stage,
who will be singing the Black National anthem. I need
you up on your feet, y'all show some love for
Thomasia Petres.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Good evening, everybody, Thank you so much. My name's Thomasina Petris.
Forty years ago, nineteen eighty six. I found my voice here.
I became a singer because of this theater, because of
North North Side, North High So I am honored to
be able to lead you with a little help. Come on,

(00:57):
and you're welcome to sing along.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
Lift every voice hand, sing till their long heaven ring,
ring with the hornies.

Speaker 6 (01:16):
Of leave.

Speaker 5 (01:19):
Liberty, Let our joy sing rise past.

Speaker 7 (01:27):
The leaves, sneak skies, Let resign loud.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
As the rolling scene.

Speaker 7 (01:40):
Oh yeah, let's sing a song full of the faith
that the dark past has talked, a sing a song
full of the hope that the prayer has.

Speaker 8 (02:01):
Broad broads facing the risezing.

Speaker 6 (02:08):
Sun of a new day.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
This new baby eagle.

Speaker 7 (02:16):
Let us much arm till victory.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
He's one. Oh yeah, let us my home to liberty.
Here's one.

Speaker 9 (02:34):
Oh.

Speaker 8 (02:36):
Let my charm till equity.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Equity is one woe, one love.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
Let us my charm till victory.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
He is one.

Speaker 10 (03:08):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (03:09):
All right, Welcome home, y'all.

Speaker 11 (03:11):
Welcome home.

Speaker 10 (03:12):
Wait a second, they got to get my mic out. Okay,
here we go. Welcome home, y'all.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Do y'all have any of those friends or chosen family
members that are your bootleg Beyonce, that's ours down there.

Speaker 10 (03:28):
Thank you, Welcome home.

Speaker 12 (03:29):
It's a Pleasure's a privilege, and a pleasure and an
honor in every other adjective possible to describe how it
feels to be here in your presence tonight. So I
just want to say, before we begin to give yourselves
a round.

Speaker 10 (03:43):
Of applause for being here with us tonight. Good evening, everybody.

Speaker 13 (03:50):
I bring you greetings from the great state of Florida.

Speaker 10 (03:55):
I just looked at my phone.

Speaker 13 (03:56):
I think y'all are about five degrees here, maybe feels
like below zero.

Speaker 11 (04:01):
It's warming up. That's the Florida in it. You could
thank me later for that.

Speaker 13 (04:06):
But in all seriousness, I just I feel real humbled
right now to be in shared space with you to
hopefully this evening have some breakthroughs. If you came into
the doors feeling a little bit shaky, maybe needing to
be propped up on one side or the other, or

(04:27):
maybe needing or feeling like you need a word something
to pierce the tenseness of the space.

Speaker 11 (04:33):
I hope that you find that this evening.

Speaker 13 (04:36):
Maybe you're here because you are the person to.

Speaker 11 (04:39):
Pierce the space.

Speaker 13 (04:40):
Maybe you're the person that's gonna leave us all inspired
and feeling like as we leave this share vicinity.

Speaker 11 (04:48):
That will go out there and will multiply. But I
got to tell you.

Speaker 13 (04:52):
Just coming from one of the fifty states, you all
have made us incredibly proud.

Speaker 11 (04:56):
Yes, yes, yes, made us incredibly proud.

Speaker 13 (05:00):
I know, I know that the sacrifice has been far
too great and too often, Minnesota, that sacrifice has fallen
right here on y'all shoulders. But I want you to
know that by your sacrifice and through your service and
by your example, you've really stiffened the spines.

Speaker 11 (05:18):
Of many of us all across this country.

Speaker 13 (05:20):
And you've set an example that as other communities confront
these kinds of challenges that are being brought down by
the people who are supposed to help us, but find
it right now in their spirit to hurt us. And
in the case is that we've experienced here, kill us.
It's gonna take a mighty army. But I'll tell you

(05:42):
we are greater than them. Every day of the week.
We has got to keep at it all right, So
God bless you and welcome this evening.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Well I'm gonna say this because we didn't say this.
We are your hosts of Native Lampid.

Speaker 14 (05:55):
I'm angelau Rae.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
This is Andrew Gillim and that is Bacari seller. We're
thrilled to be here with you all, and I want
to echo andrew sentiments and just tell you all, thank you,
thank you all for showing us what courage looks like
when fear is trying to overtake you and terror is
trying to overtake you. So we really want to thank you.
And this was our offering to you, not to come
and make content and go viral, but to come and

(06:20):
commune with you the way that we do every single
week on Native Lampod. It is a safe space for us,
and we wanted to create that same safety with some
of the people that we are admiring the greatest right now.
The other thing that was really important to us is
that we come and pour back into the community as
best we can. So we partner with an organization, a
coalition I started called State of the People to engage

(06:41):
in some mutual aid efforts with the Minnesota Freedom Fund, with.

Speaker 14 (06:45):
The Capri Theater.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
And so many other partners throughout the city to give
back groceries for those of your neighbors that are afraid
to go to the grocery store right now, hygiene.

Speaker 14 (06:56):
Kits, diapers for the babies, wipes.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
We also have at the end of the program, we'll
be presenting micro grants to seven small business winners. So
we wanted to come with an offering because we dare
not take another thing from such a beautiful city. So
thank you all for having us right and at this time,
our Beyonce Bakari has a panel that he's hosting, so
we're gonna.

Speaker 12 (07:20):
Last fort y'all slide out, though I wanted to kind
of save this for last because I wanted to introduce
you all to some people that are here just to
point a personal privilege. I know that you were talking
about it, but the pain that we feel sometimes we
find ourselves so interconnected. And I was speaking to Eddie
Rye earlier. Shout out to mister Rye. Who is Papa right?
Who is Angela's father? We all kind of come from
this background of civil rights of movements. And on the

(07:43):
front row with us today is the family of Ricky Cop.
Please stand up. His dad is, his twin brother, his
mama is. Although this family has been holding it together,
many of you all know Ricky Cop was gunned down
right here in Minneapolis, minis Or by Minnesota State Police
not long ago. And so I wanted them to come

(08:04):
in this space and feel the warmth. Because as we
go from m Mittil to Michael Brown, as we go
from Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond and Dellano Middleton all
the way to MegaR Evers, as we think about all
of those lives that were lost, all of those weddings not,
had those graduations, not, had all of those individuals who
weren't able to grow up and raise a family, all
of that pain that we feel in our community, it's

(08:26):
important that we wrap our arms around each other, particularly
on a nightlight tonight, and so we're gonna have a
lot of fun. But I wanted you to share this space.
Give them around of applause, and then we're gonna get
started with the first pattern.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
We also want to acknowledge the folks who are streaming
live nig lampod family.

Speaker 14 (08:40):
We appreciate you. This is about Minneapolis.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
We're wrapping our arms around Minneapolis, but we also are
wrapping our arms around you.

Speaker 14 (08:47):
So let's get started with Carl.

Speaker 10 (08:48):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, welcome home.

Speaker 12 (08:50):
Get them around of applause because the show can finally
start now that they off stage. I was supposed to
have some theme music, but they don't even worry about it. Bye, Okay.
So as we get started, we got a couple of
people I wanted to bring on because we have some
national figures who play.

Speaker 10 (09:04):
A loop a large looming role. You know who they are.
They are organizers.

Speaker 12 (09:07):
The first person I wanted to bring on was Elizabeth
Booker Houston, who you may have seen Come on Elizabeth,
who is a viral content creator who was actually joining
us tomorrow as a special guest host of Native Lamb podcast.
I don't know. They ain't really give me the instructions.
That seat is perfect. Oh and Georgia Ford. How many

(09:28):
of you all know Georgia Ford from right?

Speaker 10 (09:30):
Head lord?

Speaker 12 (09:32):
They cheering louder for you, I said, I said.

Speaker 10 (09:35):
So, miss.

Speaker 12 (09:45):
Well Elizabeth, you should have brought some more fans, I asked.
I asked Georgie, I said, how do you want me
to introduce you? I said, it just says independent journalists.
She talking about Emmy Award winning and then she said,
wait a minute, multiple Emmy Award winning. So we want
to make sure down south, down south, we have to saying,
you give people their flowers while they're living.

Speaker 10 (10:07):
Amen.

Speaker 12 (10:07):
And so George, we want to make sure you give
your flower, give you your flowers. And I you know
this crowd loves you, home loves you. Next we have
Juan Puranio. Come on, oh, Prano, I have to roll
my r. I'm working on it.

Speaker 10 (10:19):
Who is the CEO of Lulac? Now? Uh, let me
just tell you that.

Speaker 12 (10:26):
I think it's a fascinating time in this country because
we are finally starting to see that good people of
like mind, singular hearts are being faced with oppression no
matter what they look like. And I think the country
is actually witnessing good people being gunned down in the streets.

(10:48):
I've oftentimes asked what would happen in this country if
white people were killed in the streets. You know, for
me that was a question coming from South Carolina, that
was a question that we always asked. For me, it
was like, when are we going to see individuals come together?
Because that is the only way that we change in
So Wan's presence here, the work that you do for

(11:10):
the Hispanic community, the work that you do, because many of.

Speaker 10 (11:13):
Us have been singing.

Speaker 12 (11:14):
Our praises and our prayers and bowing our knees and
praying that our brothers and sisters who may not look
like us are not being drug out of their homes
in the middle of the night or rounded up like
wild animals. And so we pray with you, we're here
with you, and we're glad you're here with us tonight
one And so following him, I know he's on an
executive committee meeting, because the NAACP is the most meet

(11:36):
in this organization known to man.

Speaker 10 (11:39):
Is he out here? Is he ready yet? All right?

Speaker 12 (11:43):
Well, we actually have Derek Johnson, who's the President n
CEO of the NAACP, who will join us shortly, but
while he stumbles out here, I wanted to start with you,
and actually, Georgia, this is home for you. I wanted
to start with you and talk about this is kind
of fascinating to me because dealing with the case of
Ricky Cobb or Filando Castile or George Floyd. One of

(12:07):
the things I realized is God sometimes uses some really
unassuming messengers. And the other thing I realized is that
we keep coming back to this place. Talk to me
about how this has taken a toll, the changes you've
seen throughout from your bird's eye view in the community,

(12:27):
and the resilience you've seen in this community.

Speaker 10 (12:29):
As we sit here.

Speaker 15 (12:30):
Today, Minnesota is ground zero.

Speaker 16 (12:35):
We've been ground zero.

Speaker 15 (12:37):
And I think that the rest of the country had
this perception of, you know, ain't no black people there.

Speaker 10 (12:45):
We said that all the time.

Speaker 16 (12:47):
Well you ain't saying it now.

Speaker 10 (12:49):
I know I was, well, I was wrong.

Speaker 16 (12:52):
I was wrong, But so we're ground zero. Prince predicted it.

Speaker 15 (12:57):
He was probably the only person who said the revolution
will start in Minnesota, and people thought he was crazy.
But the thing is, what we're experiencing right now in
Minnesota should be a code read for America, and as
an independent journalist, I live in this kind of interesting

(13:17):
intersection where I'm able to amplify stories mainstream media does not,
while also still holding them accountable.

Speaker 16 (13:24):
And I've been calling them out in this moment.

Speaker 15 (13:27):
Because i feel like the principles of journalism being neutral,
being objective, these things have never really served us, But
right now I think they're central to our demise. Mainstream
media can no longer be neutral about the dismantling of
our democracy yet still expect to be protected by it.

(13:49):
You can't stand by idly and just report the facts
of a US citizen having their constitutional rights violated, but
then be upset when your journalists is attacked by the
police and say, oh, but our First Amendment.

Speaker 16 (14:03):
No, it doesn't work both ways.

Speaker 15 (14:05):
Media is not on an island of their own, and
so that has been my vantage point in being here
in Minnesota. But because I'm from here, these stories are
also my stories. The things that are happening in our
community also impact my family, They impact my children, and
so I don't think any of us really wanted to
be ground zero for this long. We're still recovering from

(14:29):
what happened after George Floyd businesses barely getting by. But
it is that resilience and that perseverance that even Bovino
himself had to acknowledge that the organizer is here. Yes,
he said, those organizers, they're really good, you know. And
so that is a testament of who we are, of

(14:52):
how we love on one another. And I think essentially
why the nation is looking at us right now in
this moment to lead in a pathway forward, and I
think that we are meeting the moment.

Speaker 12 (15:04):
Want to talk about your organization, give a round of
applus for sure, First of all, for some people in
this room, this would be an introduction to your organization.
For those of us who are somewhat in this space,
it's the parallel partner to the NAACP in the Hispanic community.
Talk about your organization briefly, but more importantly, talk about
the toil that you're seeing, weight on the individuals that

(15:28):
you represent, and very succinctly tell us what we can
do in this room to join hands, or what you
all can do to join hands with us.

Speaker 10 (15:36):
How do we bridge that gap?

Speaker 12 (15:37):
Because I will tell you this, one of the most political,
politically brilliant, yet sinister, unholy things that was ever done
in American politics was shipping immigrants to sanctuary cities that
were predominantly black in places like Chicago and places like Baltimore,

(16:00):
and try to drive a wedge.

Speaker 10 (16:01):
Between these communities. How do we bridge that gap?

Speaker 17 (16:06):
Well, thank you very much, Macary. So the organization that
I represent is called the League of United Latin American Citizens,
or as we refer to it as LULAC. It is
a country's oldest Latino civil rights organization, founded in nineteen
twenty nine in Corpus Christi, Texas, and effectively it was
modeled after the NAACP. We have councils, THENBACP has chapters,

(16:31):
and we have members just like THENAACP does. And we've
been doing the exact same work that the NAACP did
in the South, in the Southwest, and in the West.
So one of the seminal cases that we've litigated, for example,
is Menendez versus Westminister, which is a precursor to brownne
Board of Education, and so the same thing, the same

(16:51):
fights that we had in Texas to decigregate pools and
restaurants and funerals, homes and barriers sites. We've been doing
that for the last ninety seven years and as i'd
taken to, you know, inventory what we're seeing today, sadly,
we're going back to that time and we're having to

(17:13):
fight some of those same fights. One of the episodes
in our long history has been what they called the
Braselo program. And I don't know if the Baselo program
was a program that the United States basically had with Mexico,
which was a foreign worker exchange program. They allowed Mexican
Mexicans to come into United States to do the work

(17:36):
that no one else would effectively do. We're talking about
nineteen forties, nineteen fifties, Okay, when they were finished with
those workers, they effectively deported them back. Over a million
Mexicans that were here and had been here for almost
a decade at that point, were effectively shipped back to
Mexico with their families, with their US born children. US

(17:58):
citizens were actually caught up in those effective rates. And
what we're seeing is effectively this a new Brasero program.
And let me explain what that means. They're trying to
take away birthright citizenship. Okay, they're trying to take away
birthright citizenship. We sue this administration on the four Hours
after he signed that executive order.

Speaker 12 (18:20):
Well, this executive order that Stephen Miller wrote, let's be
exactly that's right.

Speaker 17 (18:26):
They are redefining effectively what immigration is, taking away temporary
protected status, taking away asylum, taking a refugee status from folks. Literally,
student visas are basically now null and void, unless you
may want to come from or a white person from
South Africa, they can still get visas. It's interesting Africa,

(18:47):
it's interesting how that happens. So what they're basically trying
to do is they're going to try and get as
many Mexicans, Mexican American immigrants as they can out. And
that's not just Latino immigrants, but if you're from Asia
or from Africa, and even if you're from Ukraine or
some Eastern European country, then they're going to let us
back in with new work visus, with no pathway to

(19:07):
citizenship ever, no birthright citizenship effectively for our children.

Speaker 10 (19:13):
Okay.

Speaker 17 (19:14):
And we know that they're going to somehow or another
find a way to reduce wages for these immigrants that
come into this country to work. That is servitude, okay.
And we know where that effectively is going to lead,
and that's why we're fighting this fight for me. Our
work has been so important to make sure that it
is in lockstep with the NAACP. I have the privilege

(19:38):
to serve on the board of the Leadership Conference and
Civil Rights with Maya Wiley because that's kind of sort
of how I've always grown up. My family is beautiful.
It is assimilated into this country like no other. I
have a nephew who's got red hair because his mom
is Irish. I got three nieces and nephews that are
Afro Latino like we are really what the American dream

(20:00):
is right now. We're struggling and fighting for that because
our community is in fear. They are at home, they're
taking the night shifts, they're not going out during the day.
Their children are missing school. Ten fifteen thousand children have
basically disappeared from Miami Dad's public schools. It really is incredible.
And you've seen the stories of that young man Liam,

(20:22):
who is used as bait to get his father out,
and they're both now in Texas Didley, Texas in detention, and.

Speaker 10 (20:29):
They just they just shipped out a six year old Venezuelan.

Speaker 17 (20:32):
And a two year old girl, Chloe right, who is
also deported, and she's two, and she's a US born
citizen with her father, and we're trying to basically get
her back. And so that's why this is so important
for us. That's why the community aspect of it is
so important for us, because you know, this is the
fight for our generation and it will define who we are.

Speaker 10 (20:55):
I think one of the most important words he used
was our hour.

Speaker 12 (21:01):
We have friends we all know. I mean, I had
these same discussions in the barbershop. We talk about a lot,
we talk about OnlyFans, models, we talk about a lot.
But one of the things we always talk about is
there's always that one guy in the barbershop who's like
that ain't my problem. But when you're quiet when they
come for them, and then you're quiet when they come

(21:23):
for them, and then you're quiet when they come for them.
When they come for you, you look around, ain't nobody
gonna be there to help you. And so I think
our in community is so important and we have to
get back to that. But you got to promise me
one thing now. Now, when I'm out there marching for
the death of Ricky Cobb, I need some of y'all
out there marching with me too. Now, not a crazy

(21:44):
part about this. And I gotta tell that's what I
tell my white liberals, I tell my Hispanic friends, my progressives.
I'm like, look, now, you ain't gonna find no bigger
supporter for planned parenthood and female productive rights than me,
reproductive rights than me. But when there's a little black
boy that died, you got to be marching with me too.
That's the only way this think work.

Speaker 17 (22:00):
Yeah, and so I will be very frank. You know,
LULAC historically has made some decisions that it shouldn't have.
Nineteen thirty six, they supported calling Latinos white. That was
a choice that Latino's actually made as a community. Would
we make that same choice now? I don't think so, certainly,
not under my leadership. And let's be very frank. Latinos

(22:23):
can be racist too, right, we.

Speaker 10 (22:25):
Know that prejudiced something about racist, but we go down
a whole another.

Speaker 17 (22:29):
Even within our own community. And we had to take
our accountability for this past election cycle because Latino men
voted for this.

Speaker 12 (22:37):
Yeah, I was on y'all. I was gonna mention it
at the end of the day.

Speaker 17 (22:42):
And so I'm I'm working to make sure that our
folks effectively know what's that steak? And I think clearly
now they know what's that steak?

Speaker 10 (22:51):
And I live in.

Speaker 17 (22:51):
Miami and it's interesting, Oh, the Latino Republicans are like,
I didn't vote for that.

Speaker 10 (22:56):
I guess you did vote for that. So listen.

Speaker 12 (22:59):
One of the badest women that if you don't know,
you need to follow her. Elizabeth is dope with a
capital D. Now the reason that she is so dope
and I have only admired her from afar, I didn't
know anybody, and then.

Speaker 10 (23:11):
Angelau was like, we gonna have it.

Speaker 12 (23:12):
I was like, hey, So the reason is because she
cuts through the bullsh the stuff, and she does it
in a way where she meets people where they are.
So we have different generations in here, right right, and
you do understand that the way that your mama and
daddy and grandparents communicated with people is not the way

(23:33):
that's effective today. Their entire generations of young people, young women,
who just respond to.

Speaker 10 (23:40):
The way that you talk about politics.

Speaker 12 (23:42):
And so my question is, from your vantage point, particularly
in this content creation, are we seeing the apathy that
people say, is there are people thirsting for change? And
how can we utilize that as a springboard to kind
of catapult and bring in communities together and doing some
of the good work that you talk about doing.

Speaker 10 (24:02):
It's coming, it'll come on.

Speaker 11 (24:04):
My bad.

Speaker 18 (24:05):
I think that everybody sped up, and that's what a
lot of people have in common, regardless of where they
sit generationally.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Right.

Speaker 18 (24:12):
So I'm a millennial, and I know you were referring
to the fact that I have a slick mouth because
I'm from Memphis, Tennessee. So I cuss a lot.

Speaker 10 (24:18):
Are you from Memphis? What high school did you go to?

Speaker 11 (24:21):
I went to Bartlett.

Speaker 10 (24:22):
I hated it. Where is that.

Speaker 11 (24:24):
It's in the suburbs Memphis. I know, we moved out
there when I was a teenager.

Speaker 10 (24:29):
It was terrible. My mama helped desegregate Hamilton High School.
My daddy went to Hamilton. There you go, That's where
I grew up.

Speaker 18 (24:35):
So I grew up around the corner from Hamilton High School. Actually,
But yeah, so I have.

Speaker 10 (24:41):
A slick mouth. I cuss a lot.

Speaker 18 (24:42):
And I think it's funny because you were like, oh,
you know, different generations. But the funny thing is, whenever
I get my openers, because I also do stand up comedy,
whenever I do shows, and I have my people that
open for me. I love when they come in the
green room and they're like your audience old as hell, Elizabeth,
and I'm like, yeah, because I talk. It's like a
king of comedy and that's an older generation, a king

(25:03):
or a queen of comedy, and so it does span generations.
So I see that with my content and how it
resonates with people. It's really not just younger people, it's
not just older people. It's not just folks in the middle.
It's everybody. Like it's a wide range, and when it
comes to addressing the apathy, people just need some direction
and they need it to make sense. We spent so
long with everybody talking down to folks and over folks.

(25:24):
And I say this as a lawyer, I hate it
because the reason why we make everything so complicated is
so we can keep it in charge three hundred dollars
an hour. But it affects everybody. Everybody should know the law,
everybody can understand the law. And I just don't operate
from that vantage point that just because you don't have
a law degree or a bachelor's degree or even a
high school diploma that you can't understand it. You can
come to my page and learn something and you can.

Speaker 10 (25:46):
Figure it out. I had a whole group of people.

Speaker 18 (25:48):
Understanding substantive due process when everything happened with abortion rights
being overturned. If you don't know what that is, go
find my page because you'll learn it in about five minutes.
And it's possible to teach people these things. And so
when we cut through that whole knowledge gap and all
this elitist behavior that we have with the way knowledge
is gate, captain, just share it with everybody in a
way that actually makes sense, and you're not just trying
to talk over everybody's heads. Then people will be willing

(26:10):
to be more active. And that's what I see every
day of my page. My favorite comments are not for
people who've been following me forever. It's people who say
I didn't understand or care about the law of politics
until I found your page, and that always makes me happy.

Speaker 12 (26:20):
One of the other she says, substanative due process, substanitive
through that's three words. I'm from South Carolina. We still
count on our fingers and toes.

Speaker 10 (26:29):
But one of the other.

Speaker 12 (26:30):
Words that we're gonna get real cozy with not tonight,
but in Minnesota, because I think we just got to
teach people this and have this fight of the two
words qualified immunity. It's something I've been dealing with for
a very long period of time in cases around the country.
I don't know is Derek coming out here. This is
a live pod, so I get to yell in the back.
I guess he's gonna join another panel before we, So listen.

(26:50):
We have two mics up here, and I'm gonna have
time for two questions. I got rules about questions, y'all listening.
Questions have question marks. I know y'all got a little
written speeches.

Speaker 10 (27:05):
Get them in the.

Speaker 12 (27:06):
Next panel, ask them questions. Okay, and then I don't
know where we got away with teaching people. There's no
such thing as a dumb question. I always tell people
that there is a such thing is a dumb question.

Speaker 10 (27:19):
You smarter when we answer there? You go okay. You
know I hear you. So make sure we have time
for two questions. Bring them up.

Speaker 12 (27:25):
If you have a question. There's a microphone right here.
Two questions. Just line up those two people before. I
wanted like a rapid response from you guys understanding where
we are. It's fascinating to me that in twenty sixteen,
everybody said we would be here. In twenty twenty four,
running for election, everybody said we would be here, and
it seems like nobody listened. If there is one consequential event, moment,

(27:52):
or thing we could do from this point forward, what
would that consequential moment, event or thing be to help
create the change we.

Speaker 10 (28:01):
Want to see?

Speaker 16 (28:05):
Depoliticized humanity?

Speaker 10 (28:07):
What does that mean?

Speaker 16 (28:09):
It means our humanity has become.

Speaker 12 (28:11):
Political humanity is oh, not like people or human beings,
but like.

Speaker 15 (28:19):
Correct, I think, especially like from a media dvantage point.
I think again, going back to why I feel like
we need media reform, everything is we got to tell
both sides.

Speaker 16 (28:32):
Well, what's the other side of the truth?

Speaker 19 (28:35):
A lie?

Speaker 16 (28:36):
That's problematic?

Speaker 20 (28:37):
Right?

Speaker 15 (28:38):
It's very and it becomes divisive because then it's everything
is us and them, them and us me against you.
And some stories are nuanced, some stories have seven, eight,
nine sides, not just two. And so I think right
now we're living at a time where everything is left right, Republican, democratic,
and I'll just be honest for me, I don't And
I think I hear this a lot from people I

(28:59):
talk to in community. Is not everybody sees themselves represented
in those identities, and the deeper you get into black
and brown communities, people don't really see.

Speaker 16 (29:09):
Themselves represented in that.

Speaker 15 (29:10):
And so America has to get to a place where
we depoliticize humanity.

Speaker 16 (29:15):
Everything is not political.

Speaker 15 (29:17):
Some things like we just witnessed to a woman be
brutally shot in the face, a US citizen, and then
our politicians are trying to force feed us that this
is about immigration, and then we just saw another US
citizen be shot down, and it's this isn't immigration, but
it has become political because our elected officials are not

(29:40):
seeing the humanity of these US citizens and they're giving
us all of these different justifications. At the end of
the day, if America didn't have such a hard time
listening to black women, I think looking back at the
church protests that had everybody, and believe me, I lived
in the Deep.

Speaker 16 (29:59):
South and the Bible Belt.

Speaker 15 (30:00):
I was getting calls, Georgia, what was you doing in
the church doing the protest? But if y'all would have
just listened to a black woman, Alex pretty might still
be here today.

Speaker 10 (30:12):
I heartily agree with you.

Speaker 12 (30:13):
I also think along with that, there's something that I
echo a lot with Angela and Andrew is that many
times we get caught in our own silos and we
seek out news and opinions that reinforce our own views.
And we live in very segregated communities. We just do,
particularly in the South. What's the most segregated place in

(30:34):
the country. Church on Sunday in the South, right, And
oftentimes we don't get out of our silos to hear
the opinions of others. And I think in order to
give people the benefit of their humanity which they don't
give us, sometimes you have to. I like that deep
politicized humanity as both Paul's real quick. One second, y'all

(30:56):
say hello to my good friend Derek who just joined
us today.

Speaker 10 (30:59):
I don't know if y'all know this man. Do y'all
know this man? Do y'all know him?

Speaker 12 (31:04):
Derek Johnson from Mississippi. That's how we pronounce it downside
by way of Detroit. Who's here with us today. I
got a big.

Speaker 10 (31:14):
Question for you. We're not gonna do these questions right here.
I'm sorry. I got a big question.

Speaker 12 (31:17):
For you, and then we'll do these rapid responses because
that was I'm gonna ask you some questions in the
back along that line, but people oftentimes ask the question,
is the NAACP ready for this moment? That's the first question.
Is the NAACP necessary now? Mind you, I say yes
to both of them, but you need to be able

(31:39):
to answer that for these folks.

Speaker 10 (31:40):
And also talk to me about the moment.

Speaker 12 (31:43):
That we're in, because you, as a student of history,
can go and talk about since the inception of the
NAACP through now and is this something we've seen before?
Is this a new struggle? Are people is being sick
in time? Being sick and tired? Is that something that
we just have Do we have to deal with this

(32:04):
every four or five years? How do we this is
this You may not be able to answers, but how do
we break these chains?

Speaker 21 (32:10):
So thank you didn't even give you one. You know,
the question is is NACP ready for this moment? The
real question are black people ready for this moment? Our
institutions are as strong as we populate them and give
them strength. And any time we set our institutions over
here and we put us over there, that's a losing proposition.

(32:32):
And never in the history of the black community has
there been a singular leader a singular organization or a
singular strategy. The real question for all of us, if
we are going to lend our voice to freedom self determination,
what vehicle are we going to use to get there?

Speaker 10 (32:52):
And I'm agnostic.

Speaker 21 (32:54):
You can pick any of the vehicles, but pick one
and get off the sideline of criticis.

Speaker 10 (33:00):
Amen right history, we have never seen this before.

Speaker 21 (33:08):
We've always seen this before at the exact same time,
because this fight is about power, domination and control, and
what we are witnessing is in a democracy where your
vote is your currency, they're running out.

Speaker 10 (33:22):
Of white people to have enough votes.

Speaker 12 (33:27):
In that called the browning of America that Stephen Miller
is definitely afraid of.

Speaker 21 (33:30):
In nineteen o nine when we were created with those
Africans who had American citizenship met the year before, who was.

Speaker 10 (33:37):
Asked to join those non whites in.

Speaker 21 (33:39):
The media in New York because they were non white.
Because if you was Irish Italian, you was not white.
If you was Jewish, you was not white. If you
was anything other than Anglo stacks in Protestant you was
not white because racist or social construct and each one
of those individuals were not doing this to say black
people are doing it because their own communities were under attack.

(34:03):
But then when le Garde gets elected in thirty four
in New York, who.

Speaker 10 (34:07):
Was Italian, and they begin to carve.

Speaker 21 (34:09):
Up to see the New York and say, these are
the Irish districts, and here are the Italian districts.

Speaker 10 (34:14):
In Harlem, you get the black district. And then World
War two.

Speaker 21 (34:17):
Happened, and then the washp class beget out of beginning
to run out of white people. Oh Irish, we're gonna
give your president. You could be white now. Oh Jewish,
it's not world War two. We're gonna make you white now.
And that process continue. The difference is we can never
join the white club.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
And I'm okay with that.

Speaker 21 (34:35):
But the white club was frustrated because the New Deal
policies and the shifting of tax policies, and from nineteen
thirty two up until last year, the big Ugly Bill.
That's been the fight throughout. We've seen this before and
we've never seen it at the exact same time. And
so the use of othering to divide and the store

(34:59):
to cover up the tax policy ship, the use of
othering to divide in the store to cover up the esteem.
Epstein files that still have not been released to use
of divide and the store to show to try to
cover up the fact that white Middle America, your pockets
have been picked.

Speaker 10 (35:16):
Your farms cannot.

Speaker 21 (35:17):
Be harvest and your jobs you cannot sell cheap labor
because we're not doing those jobs. Again, that's what this
is all about. Mass distraction and distortion. We've never seen
this before, and we've seen it before.

Speaker 12 (35:33):
So the reason when anybody asked me, the reason, the
reason that I have faith in the NAACP is your
only really as good as your membership. That membership looks
like us, and it's very strong, but you're also as
good as the leadership that the member elects.

Speaker 10 (35:48):
You want me to leave Derek up here for this
next panel? What? Oh so? Anyway?

Speaker 12 (35:54):
I got some more questions for him. But you know,
Angela's the boss of the podcast.

Speaker 10 (35:57):
Everybody know that. But I do want you to do
me one big favor.

Speaker 12 (36:00):
I want you guys to stand up and give a
round of applause to these four individuals who are on
stage with me tonight.

Speaker 22 (36:06):
Stand up, take your bow, Elizabeth, Georgia Vaughn, Dear, thank
you for joining the Native Podcast. Next up is Andrew Gillham.
And by the way, we are not the same person.
I'm really happy that we are both in a room together.

Speaker 10 (36:28):
You can't top that.

Speaker 13 (36:29):
Thank you, Bagard, thank you, thank you, thank you, Beyonce. Y'all,
we're gonna keep it, keep it moving one. Thank you
all again for your patience for being here with us
and your energy level. We're gonna keep this conversation going
with a panel of some elected officials, our political leaders.
We keep name checking our electeds, and tonight we've had

(36:49):
a couple of them agree to join us, and so
I'll go through a little bit of an introduction, some questions,
and then we'll have this mic right here.

Speaker 11 (37:13):
To my right, you're left where we'll.

Speaker 13 (37:17):
Take audience questions. So not to belabor, let's bring our
panelists up. We're gonna start with some familiar names.

Speaker 10 (37:24):
You know, well state senators.

Speaker 13 (37:26):
They to have Mohammad give her a round of applause.
Stay Representative Cedric Frasier, the immediate.

Speaker 23 (37:40):
Passed and forty sixth mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, my
brother from fam you Melvin Carter, and.

Speaker 11 (37:53):
Another young leader in this state.

Speaker 24 (37:56):
Y'all have potential on potential, on potential, y'all have a
pipeline here in this state of incredible young leaders, and
this one is no is no exception, and that is
your Lieutenant Governor, Miss Peggy Flanagans.

Speaker 13 (38:13):
And Senator Zev Muhammad. We introduce you first. You probably
were further back there. Y'all give the senator another rap
of applause means so, no, you can't see the audience,
but they can see you, watch your expressions. One I

(38:34):
want to thank each of you are elected leaders the folks,
whether you are holding political position at this moment in time,
once you've established yourself in the community as.

Speaker 11 (38:43):
A leader, people look to you for leadership.

Speaker 13 (38:47):
And I can only imagine that these last couple of
uh well now over a month probably of this federal occupation,
a government force that was sent here supposedly to.

Speaker 11 (38:59):
Bring safety and peace.

Speaker 13 (39:04):
I have to treat it like I treat everything that
comes out of the President's mouth. Whatever they say, interpret
the opposite, because instead of peace and safety, we've gotten chaos,
we've gotten destruction, and we've gotten death. And Lieutenant govern
I'm gonna start with you with this question, which is
to simply the set out the states. What has it

(39:26):
been like trying to lead during this time, supporting your governor,
holding down your position, supporting these electeds around the state,
and the most importantly, supporting your people.

Speaker 11 (39:35):
What's the state of mind? How are you all getting
through this?

Speaker 13 (39:39):
And where do you diagnose where you are right now
in this fight with the feats?

Speaker 25 (39:43):
Well, I would say we're exhausted, but not tired. And
as we have watched over the last eight weeks, but like,
let's be real, the surge has started, but ice has
been here for a long time, and so you know

(40:06):
what we have seen and I absolutely am eager to
hear from my colleagues because they have been on the
front lines. But what we have seen is just absolute
chaos and fear. And what is being done under the
guise of safety right couldn't be further from the truth.

(40:26):
When there are two Minnesotans who have been killed by ice,
when we have five year olds and two year olds
who are being detained and brought to Texas, and just
the lies, the lies, the continue to come out of
this administration about the individuals who have been killed at

(40:49):
their hands.

Speaker 14 (40:50):
It is outrageous.

Speaker 25 (40:51):
And so what I have seen over the last several
weeks is the best of Minnesota is folks who are
stepping up, who are standing outside of schools and daycares
and churches and getting food and mutual aid and responding
in a way that I think folks weren't expecting from Minnesota.

(41:15):
But we care about each other. We stand up for
our neighbors. And this isn't just about the Twin Cities.
As we've been traveling across the state, ice is everywhere. Right,
We're in Alexandria, they're there, Detroit Lakes they're there, Saint
Cloud they're there. And so this just terror has to stop,

(41:36):
and they got to get out. And I want to
just name something that I think is really there's a
through line here. Individuals who are being detained are being
brought to Fort Snelling, which was essentially a concentration camp

(41:58):
for Dakota women, children and elders, and now that's where
folks are bringing, you know, brought to in this moment.
And so the through line is that the federal government
continues this long cycle right of separating families of detention.

(42:22):
And so I would say again we are exhausted, but
not tired, and will continue to show up for our neighbors,
continue to use non violent protest and resistance. And that's
what you've seen happen all across the state, and so

(42:44):
much of the groundwork that has been laid is because
of the good organizing work that has happened over the
last several decades in this state. People have relationships, they
have trust, right and we can then just put all
that into action.

Speaker 11 (43:02):
And actually give it a run of the cause. It's
been pretty obvious that you can.

Speaker 13 (43:08):
You can't overcome the will and quite frankly, the sheer
might that they put on the ground overwhelm me the
law enforcement of the communities here in Minnesota and Minneapolis
in the surrounding area unless you have deep, well built, trusted.

Speaker 11 (43:27):
And strong relationships that can carry you through.

Speaker 13 (43:29):
Senator the Lieutenant Governor really set the framework by bringing
in our Native brothers and sisters in the history of
the dissension facilities here of to just put it plainly,
the racism that guys the policies of this administration, gentlemen,
I'm being generous with this term, but Stephen Miller, the

(43:51):
avout I think, unapologetic racist that runs these policies in
the White House, use the pretexts in part for coming
to minute, Minnesota, the Somali community, as President says low
Iq right, which the man who stated that couldn't be

(44:12):
lower in an Iq as far as I'm concerned. But
for those of us who were watched from outside, I mean,
I've been offended every time I've heard the President speak
about Somali Americans, but as is Somali American yourself, and
I realized that your jurisdiction and your governance now expands

(44:35):
far beyond that. But it be a haphazard of me
not to ask you how is this reverberating within the
Somali community here in the state, the attacks and what
does mutual aid? How is that coming? And to focus
for your community? Are their needs that this group, those
who are watching, those of us around the country where

(44:57):
spread out is, are there things.

Speaker 11 (44:58):
We can do to be a greater aid and support.

Speaker 26 (45:02):
Thank you for having me, and thank you everybody for
being here. Well, first of all, the smaller community here
is a large community, but compared to the rest of
the community, to small community right where eighty thousand people,
if not less, across the country, less than two hundred
thousand people were a fraction of the population of this country.

Speaker 27 (45:23):
And I think to see some of.

Speaker 26 (45:25):
The most powerful people in this country, whether it's this
administration or tech billionaires, and the ways in which that
they're using the algorithm to talk about our community.

Speaker 9 (45:35):
Has been disheartening.

Speaker 26 (45:38):
And the one thing I know about Somali people is
that we're an incredibly resilient community. I came to this
country when I was nine years old and I am
twenty eight years old. My community has been here for
less than thirty years, but.

Speaker 14 (45:55):
They have made Minnesota their home.

Speaker 26 (45:56):
They are not everywhere you go, whether you're coming out
of the airport, you're the person who's checking you in
or checking you out as a Somali person. That your
Uber driver is a Somali person. When you take your
mother to a nursing home or it's our final days,
the person who's taking care of them is a Somali person.
The thing I learned in the last five years from

(46:18):
Minnesota since the murder of George Floyd is just how
resilient Minnesotans are and how much we're a fabric of
this community. So many of the people who are on
the ground that are protesting what's happening are also speaking
about the frustrations that they're feeling about what people are
saying about their Somali neighbors. And what I have seen

(46:39):
from my neighbors is I don't think I've shoveled a day.

Speaker 14 (46:42):
There's a day.

Speaker 26 (46:43):
There's not a single day I've shoveled snow this year.
And it's because my neighbors understand the work that I'm
doing and they're showing up for each other.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
We have done massive.

Speaker 26 (46:51):
Food drives for through a number of schools in our communities.
We have seen people raise thousands of dollars. I think
I put a goal GoFundMe on my social media and
by the end of the day had raised like fifty
thousand dollars. And so Minnesotans understand that at a time
where in the federal governments, the state government, every system
that we know that's supposed to help people is failing.

(47:12):
They are looking to each other and they're creating systems.
And I just have never seen such a powerful community
just across the board. I mean, we have like we
are better than the police, we are better than the government.
Like I'm like, these people can do whatever and nobody.

Speaker 14 (47:28):
Can can do anything better.

Speaker 26 (47:29):
But we're a resilient community and at the end of
the day, him speaking about Somali's it just means he's
talking about Minnesotans, because that's who we are, that's our community.

Speaker 11 (47:39):
I love that.

Speaker 10 (47:40):
I love the.

Speaker 11 (47:45):
So Renegga and Alex Preddy.

Speaker 13 (47:48):
We should say their names and lift up their family
and their loved ones in.

Speaker 11 (47:53):
Their absence right now, in their physical absence.

Speaker 13 (47:56):
Black bodies have been put on the line quite a
bit in this state. In fact, most of us around
the nation began paying attention because of the black lives
that have been risked here. Have you representative noticed any bifurcation,
any difference in response from the community based off of

(48:17):
who the victims are, or is it true that people
are seeing an assault on one as an assault on everybody.
I'd love your honest interpretation of that.

Speaker 28 (48:28):
No, thank you for that, and thanks thanks for having
me out here. I appreciate that, and thanks for the
audience for being here tonight during these trying times. I
just want to I need to say again that I
am very proud of the way Minnesota has stood up.
We are showing not only the rest of the country
but the world how you push back when you're looking
at tyranny and authoritarianism trying to be forced upon you.
So Minnesota shul always give themselves a hand and around

(48:49):
applause for that, you know.

Speaker 10 (48:54):
And I've been saying.

Speaker 28 (48:55):
This, and I've been I've been in many rooms since
this has been happening here in the state. What I've
been saying and the most folks is because you keep
showing up, it gives me hope. We may feel helpless,
but we're not hopeless.

Speaker 29 (49:04):
Right.

Speaker 10 (49:04):
We may be tired, but we're not given up.

Speaker 28 (49:07):
And what I'll say, what I say also is that
they picked the wrong state. Right there were and I
say that, and I say it because of this reason.
Only right there were people killed before they came to
the state of Minnesota. I say, you just had killed
the folks. But we made sure that the rest of
the world and the rest of the country knew exactly
what was happening here. We made sure we were going
to have the receipts in real time to show the

(49:27):
rest of the world and the rest of the country
what was happening here on the ground in Minnesota. And
that happens because of what we've been through in this state.
You know, my sisters just talked about George Floyd. We
built a system of community after what happened to George Floyd.

Speaker 10 (49:41):
Right. And let me say this, I what I tell
folks all the time, because.

Speaker 28 (49:44):
When we played the politics here, I still hear some
of my Republican politagies talking about we're going to go
back to the eighties or the nineties when we divided
and segregated, and we can we can put out and
we can demonize people and demonize people that didn't look
like the folks in the suburbs, right and look like
people in certain communities within those neighborhoods.

Speaker 10 (50:02):
Right.

Speaker 28 (50:03):
And what I always say to them is like, you're
living in a time that doesn't exist anymore. Because now
our neighbors they know each other, our neighbors, their friends,
their family, their kids are hanging out, they're having sleepovers,
they're doing carpools. They have a connection with their neighbors
that they didn't have when we had such segregated communities.
That they didn't have in the seventies and the eighties.

(50:23):
We have those connections now. And because we have those connections,
what we were saying is, you're not going to tell
me that my neighbor that I should hate my neighbor,
or be fearful of my neighbor because I know my neighbor.
I'm gonna give you this example right here, and I'm
gonna stop with I'm gonna give.

Speaker 10 (50:38):
You this example. My daughter.

Speaker 28 (50:40):
I walk into the bus every morning. That's how I
find some peace and this chaotic stuff is going on.
And she's got a friend named Freedom that she's six
nice to every day. And when this president won and
they started going to school, she would say, hey, Freda
tells me that her family is really scared to go outside.

Speaker 10 (50:57):
I said, why is that.

Speaker 28 (50:58):
She said, her family is there Mexican and they're feelful
that they're gonna get snatched if they come outside, so
they're not going to work anymore. And she doesn't know
she's going to continue to be able to continue to
go to school. Jesse, yesterday, we're on the bus stop
and I said, how's free to how's free to holding up?
She said, well, she told me she's probably going to
have to be homeschooled for the rest of the year,
but she may be back next year.

Speaker 10 (51:19):
She texts her. Literally, it's almost real time. Broke my heart.

Speaker 28 (51:22):
She text my daughter as they're waiting for the bus,
stop and the bus is always late in it's cold outside,
So we didn't deal with that right. So she texts
my daughter and she says, I'm no longer going to
be riding the bus for the rest of the school year.
I believe I'm going to be in school. I'm be
a parent pickup, but I'm gonna be riding the bus.
My daughter texts back, what's going on? She says, because
of this.

Speaker 10 (51:41):
Ice thing broke my heart.

Speaker 28 (51:45):
Breaks my heart to know that this is what our
young people have to deal with. They're tearing found me
is apart. They're terrifying young people. But what gives me
always young people aren't going to forget about this.

Speaker 10 (51:57):
They are.

Speaker 28 (51:57):
They are creating the future resistence to this right. They
are creating the future leaders that are going to know
what not to do when you're making policy. They're creating
the future leaders that are gonna know how to absolutely
be proactive in taking care of their neighbors and taking
care of their community folks and being right there and
standing up for them.

Speaker 10 (52:16):
So, no, I don't see a difference in their response.

Speaker 28 (52:18):
I see our neighbors showing up here day in and
day out, just like the way they showed up when
George was murdered on the middle of the street in
broad daylight. I see them showing up and saying, enough
is enough. We're not going to stand for this. And
you know what, We're not going to have true healing
until we have accountability, and we're making sure we have
the receipts for that accountability.

Speaker 11 (52:38):
I love that.

Speaker 10 (52:41):
Turn to the audience.

Speaker 13 (52:42):
If you have a question, we can begin to form
a question line over here.

Speaker 11 (52:47):
As I talked to Mayor Carter.

Speaker 13 (52:51):
So you see, yesterday the President appeared to make some
sort of I actually don't know what to call is thing.
Some people the media is running with a pivot or
a retreat. The President did an interview thirty minutes before
we started here this evening on Fox News and basically says,

(53:11):
not a retreat.

Speaker 11 (53:12):
We're still he's.

Speaker 13 (53:12):
Still committed, so on and so forth, but thinks that
the deaths have been unfortunate in some other flowery language, again.

Speaker 11 (53:20):
People executing his will on his behalf. But those were
his comments. I'm curious how you see.

Speaker 13 (53:28):
This as whether or not this is a retreat, maybe
a retreat from the state of Minnesota to be reincarnated
in another city.

Speaker 11 (53:36):
In another state someplace else.

Speaker 13 (53:39):
Or does the administration appear to have learned a lesson
and we may see a secession here until at least
after the midterms earned a lesson.

Speaker 30 (53:49):
No, I don't you said it from the beginning. At
some point we have to understand that, you know, my
angelous say, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them.
And at some point we have to understand that the
things that they are doing are a feature of their plan,

(54:10):
not a bug of their plan. And y'all made it
so inconvenient for them that he had to find a
different news cycle. But do I think that the death
of two absolute, completely innocent people is going to change

(54:32):
their course?

Speaker 13 (54:34):
No?

Speaker 10 (54:34):
And here's why.

Speaker 30 (54:36):
You know, after George Floyd was murdered, I was on
some show and they asked me, you know, what are
you going to do differently now that this happened?

Speaker 10 (54:41):
And I said nothing.

Speaker 30 (54:42):
And I said nothing, I said, Well, the most important
thing you have to know about the murder of George
Floyd is how historically unsurprising it was that my father
and his father and his father could tell you about
unarmed people being killed at the hands of law enforcement.
And so we had to know that this was there.
And the point that I was just trying to make
is the things that we need to do because this happened,

(55:03):
we actually already started doing before this happened in our work,
because we know that this is that this is a phenomenon.
But as my Lieutenant governor was talking about the Fort
Snelling I was thinking about the dread Scott decision where
they brought dread Scott to Fort Snelling and he sued
and he said, Hey, I went to Fort Snelling, so

(55:24):
you know, I ought to be free. And I'm not
a legal scholar, but ultimately, what the Supreme Court of
our country said, the United States Supreme Court that we
look at as the highest level of justice in the
on the planet. The Supreme Court said, We're not even
going to actually answer your question, but what we'll tell
you is that a black man has no rights that
a white man is bound to respect in the first place.

(55:45):
And so I say all of that to say that,
you know, when you place this in a historical arc,
I think it would be farcical for us to assume
that these two murders, which are awful, by the way,
the what's the the evilness with which they're operating is
asking the sheer incompetency with which they're operating. But I

(56:15):
don't think that they are suddenly woke up this morning
better in terms of competency or better in terms of
morality either one because of.

Speaker 10 (56:23):
This news cycle.

Speaker 13 (56:25):
Here you're here, Are there any I'm gonna keep looking
over here in case there are questions, and in the
absence of them, I know.

Speaker 11 (56:32):
We'll have to wrap soon.

Speaker 13 (56:34):
But there is yeah, you to you, yes please.

Speaker 19 (56:41):
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 25 (56:42):
I just wanted to I wanted to build on what
mayor Carter just said, because I think there is this
idea today that somehow, because Greg Bovino is leaving, that
somehow we're cool, right and bringing Tom Holman in. And
I don't mean to be crude, but I saw a
post today that said replacing Greg Bovino with Tom Holman

(57:07):
is like pooping your pants and changing your shirt, right.

Speaker 14 (57:10):
And so I just.

Speaker 25 (57:17):
I think that that's really important to know that going
back to eight weeks ago is not enough, going back
to six months ago is not enough, right, going back
to February of twenty twenty five is not enough.

Speaker 10 (57:31):
Right.

Speaker 25 (57:31):
Ice has to get out, And it is very clear
to me that this has been the plan all along.
You have bright red signs in all caps that say
mass deportations now behind Donald Trump at rallies at the
Republican National Convention. This was not in the fine print, right,

(57:52):
They've been saying what they are going to be doing
for a very long time. And so we can take
a breath, We can catch our breath today for a moment,
but get real that today we've already seen footage of
people being violently pulled from vehicles, of.

Speaker 19 (58:08):
Folks being detained.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
So it is not over right.

Speaker 25 (58:11):
It's just that Donald Trump knows this is a bad look,
and so a little bit of shuffling of the deck
chairs is not going to cut it. They got to
get out right and like we got to rip it
apart and start over.

Speaker 11 (58:25):
That's right, Thank you. Listen to Gon.

Speaker 14 (58:29):
Good evening, Pane.

Speaker 31 (58:31):
I do want to have a I have a question
and I also want to make a comment. I do
want to refer back to the question about it being
a change because of those who are now the murdered victims, right,
and I think just coming from Minneapolis born and raised,
there is.

Speaker 14 (58:46):
A change in response.

Speaker 31 (58:47):
There has been a change in response because not only
was Renee good good enough and not only was George
Floyd a good enough reason. This has been a white
male that has been murdered in broad daylight in America,
on American soil. So the response that the nation has
took over and the response even from the NRA has changed.
We didn't get that same response with Filando Castile. So

(59:08):
there is a difference in the response that we see
with not only two white bodies, but it took for
a middle aged white male to be murdered to get
the response across the nation.

Speaker 10 (59:18):
But that's not my question.

Speaker 31 (59:20):
My question is to Lieutenant Governor Flanagan with the extortion
letter that we received from Pam BONDI, what will be
the response. I've seen the response from Governor Walls, but
what is our real response in regards to extortion which
is a crime which finger.

Speaker 13 (59:38):
You can thank Florida for that, by the way, thank
you gift from Florida.

Speaker 11 (59:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (59:41):
So I think we can go back to our Secretary
State right, who is in charge of the voter rules,
And his answer was simply no, right and no is
a complete sentence. And he couldn't even give that information
if you wanted to, because it is already illegal right

(01:00:04):
to share that information. And so I'm glad that you
brought that up, because let's be clear again, going back
to the through line, preventing certain people from being able
to vote is the goal, right, And so we have
to be really clear, this is already in litigation.

Speaker 9 (01:00:23):
Right.

Speaker 25 (01:00:24):
They have already tried to ask for the voter roles.

Speaker 14 (01:00:26):
They have already tried to ask.

Speaker 25 (01:00:28):
For the names and identities and sensitive information of our
neighbors who aren't who utilize public programs.

Speaker 30 (01:00:34):
Right.

Speaker 25 (01:00:35):
Also, no, and so I think our incredible Secretary of State,
along with our amazing Attorney General Keith Ellison, who by
the way, has been the most valuable player right for
our safe like suing the Trump administration fifty times, that

(01:00:55):
is what this is all about. So Noah is a
complete sentence, and I am grieful for the leadership of
those two constitutional officers. But let's be clear, the goal
is to try to prevent folks from voting, and we're
not going to let that happen.

Speaker 14 (01:01:20):
Hello, Hanne, I have a question, and it's kind of.

Speaker 32 (01:01:26):
I don't want to say loaded, but I hear some
of the comments and we all see the news, but
I want to ask, how do we continue to build
and trust as a community and a whole as a
community without identifying and acknowledging some of the hurt and
the pain some of our community has not only been
through that's outside of this ice situation, but also the

(01:01:47):
the things that has happened within certain communities that has
affected us as a whole. And as leaders and politicians,
it's good to keep us good face, like I understand that,
but for us as people to trust you all, it
has to be knowledged because it's not just good, and
it's not just home all the time, and it's not

(01:02:09):
just these things. There's things that's happened that has affected
all of us from individual communities, and we want to
welcome us as a whole.

Speaker 11 (01:02:16):
Examples, I don't.

Speaker 16 (01:02:19):
Necessarily want to.

Speaker 32 (01:02:20):
I don't think it's like effective to give like an
example really.

Speaker 11 (01:02:24):
Just in general.

Speaker 13 (01:02:25):
If the thing is is that in the black community,
we've confronted X, and let me I think, I think, okay, okay,
never mind, this is inside conversation.

Speaker 11 (01:02:36):
They know what the example is.

Speaker 32 (01:02:39):
Okay, it's an inside conversation. As Minnesota, and I want
to say I'm a proud Minnesota and I love the
fabric that we've created. And I've never appreciated the term
Minnesota nice more than ever now. Minnesota nice means that
we vibe check each other, and we have culturally acknowledged
other people even when we don't know them deeply. We

(01:02:59):
say high and we give them a surface level kindness.
And I've never appreciated Minnesota Knights as much as I
do now, and that's extended to everyone here in this room.
But I just want to say, as leaders, we have
to start to trust. We have to start acknowledging not
just the good but also the things that as humans
are problematic that affects other people.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Yeah, but let's be honest.

Speaker 30 (01:03:20):
That definition you just gave of Minnesota nice is a
new definition of Minnesota nice. Absolutely, because my grandfather would
have said, Minnesota nice means they don't call you the
N word, they smile at you while they deny your law. Absolutely,
And so what you're talking about is so important because

(01:03:42):
we're a state we've always planted our flag. We are
a home ownership state, where education stay, where a healthy state,
where an employment state, all those things, and all of
those things are also the spaces in which we have the.

Speaker 10 (01:03:53):
Worst dispirities in the nation.

Speaker 30 (01:03:58):
And when you were talking, I was Rember when I
first ran for city council one hundred years ago. I
remember telling a group of folks, I love Minnesota so much.
I want some of it in my neighborhood. And so
but let me tell you, like what they're trying to do,
and let me tell you and the reason they chose
the wrong state, what their.

Speaker 11 (01:04:18):
Goal is to do is pit us against each other.

Speaker 10 (01:04:20):
And I saw it.

Speaker 30 (01:04:22):
We had an action in Saint Paul a couple months ago,
and we were trying to get the Ice out of it.
We got them out of there. We were trying to
pull our police officers out of there. We got Ice
all the way out there. They were all the way out.

Speaker 10 (01:04:33):
Three ICE agents.

Speaker 30 (01:04:34):
Turned around and walked right back in the crowd, not
to arrest anybody, not just to like needle some folks
and then walk out. And it went to hell. They're
doing that on purpose. They're trying to like figure out
how to needle that in between.

Speaker 11 (01:04:46):
Us on purpose. And you're right, sister, we.

Speaker 30 (01:04:48):
Have specific issues in our African American community. But one
of the things that I think has has has pushed
Donald Trump to that place we've been able to hold
our discipline. And when we hold our discipline, then the
news story isn't about some glasses that God broken.

Speaker 29 (01:05:05):
Or building they burned down, or is it the only.

Speaker 30 (01:05:07):
Thing they can cover is the fact that you murdered
this man in the streets, shot him in the back.
And so our ability to kind of navigate through this.
And let me tell you, I have conversations with people
in so many different communities that well, our community and
all of our communities are unique, and all of our
communities are challenged, and all of our communities are different,
and we won't be able to hold together. You had

(01:05:27):
the answer in your question, we won't be able to
hold together without acknowledging those uniquenesses and the unique pain
points that our African American community has, and the unique
pain points that our Native community has, and then our
Somoley community has, and our Jewish community have and those
types of things. And the next level is making sure
that we're kind of pulling all of those things together
and saying, yes, there's some uniqueness, is there, but like,

(01:05:48):
we have a common enemy right now who's trying to
attack all of us, and our power exists in being
able to be in this together.

Speaker 13 (01:05:54):
Nice, We've got two minutes, two minutes remaining, and I
wanted to come back to our lodges on accountability. So
right now, we've got a Justice Department that is really
the injustice department. Remember the inversion, if it comes from Trump,
is the opposite.

Speaker 11 (01:06:11):
This is the Justice Department, not under Pambondi.

Speaker 13 (01:06:14):
They're doing anything, but what is just my question is
is on the accountability front, the folks who were the
ICE agents who are masked, and I believe they're masked
and don't want their faces shown because they've got to
create a dissidence between humanity and then what they see
is inhumane, which is.

Speaker 11 (01:06:32):
Their behavior towards all the rest of us.

Speaker 13 (01:06:35):
What does that look like in an administration where you've
got a Justice Department that won't fairly investigate, You've got
a president who is likely going to pardon outright every
ICE agent federally before he leaves office, and yet our
communities have suffered devastating harm. How do we make sure

(01:06:57):
that the individuals who perpetuated and rain down this harm
on our communities get the cost of justice that they deserve.

Speaker 28 (01:07:06):
So we've already started their process and that's a great question.
I'm glad you asked before we got out this panel.
So we've started their process County Attorney may Mriorati, Attorney
General Keith Ellison, who said one of our superstars, they're
already they've created portals to collect evidence, to collect information
so that we can see what kind of harms are
being done, so that we can then vet that information
for potential charging.

Speaker 10 (01:07:26):
I think County Attornity Mary Mority.

Speaker 28 (01:07:28):
Came out to day and said we think she believes
they have some sufficient evidence to move forward on the
renee Good matter pretty soon.

Speaker 10 (01:07:35):
So we are already in the process of doing that.

Speaker 28 (01:07:38):
We've got some legislation that we that we're crafting to
move forward to get people the ability to sue civilly
for the harms that it's been done by these federal agents.
The one thing I think they're gonna have a hard
time doing. We've got some really smart people out there
that can catch people and identify people with some freak
facial recognition stuff. We're going to find these folks, And
what I told people is going to be similar to
how maybe like the Nuremberg trial and the jacent It's

(01:08:00):
gonna be after the fact. But we're gonna find you
and we're gonna hold you accountable. And the one thing
for murder, there's no statute of limitation. So so, but
what I will tell you to the community, and I
didn't come here to campaign, but I will tell you
to the community. You have to look at the people
that are running to be leaders in these offices and

(01:08:22):
positions that will be in a position to try these cases,
to charge these cases and hope people account right. Look
at how those candidates are moving right now to give
you a pretty good idea of what they may or
may not do if they're leading those offices. So we're
gonna need strong leaders to make sure we carry that
out and have the accountability because like I said, there's
not going to be any healing until we do have accountability.

Speaker 11 (01:08:44):
There it is Minnesota, y'all have some of the best.
You all have some of the best.

Speaker 13 (01:08:51):
Elected officials that I've encountered around the country.

Speaker 10 (01:08:54):
Will you give it up again for all four.

Speaker 11 (01:08:56):
Of our panelists or what the sacrifice.

Speaker 29 (01:08:59):
In this tests?

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
All right, everybody's give it up one more time for
these outstanding elected officials.

Speaker 14 (01:09:15):
Thanks for hanging with us.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
We have some other amazing folks who I know you
all have seen, many of.

Speaker 14 (01:09:22):
You follow work with. Before we get.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
To that, I do want to just take a moment
to shout out our friends at Act Blue who immediately
went into action on Saturday night ten sure that there
was a fundraiser page setup for the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
You all know the great work that they're doing every
single day. We thought it was so important to show
you all for everybody who's.

Speaker 14 (01:09:45):
At home, like I'm scared to go to Minnesota, that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Right, send you money because we want to make sure
we can bail people out of jail. We want to
make sure we can get groceries on tables, we want
to make sure we can get.

Speaker 14 (01:09:55):
Grants to small businesses. And our good friend.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Eli Darris, who is the executive director of the Minnesota
Freedom Fund, is joining us.

Speaker 14 (01:10:03):
Now, give it up, give it up, Give it up, y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
He loves you because he is supposed to be at
home on paternity leave.

Speaker 14 (01:10:22):
Okay, so he loves y'all. He's here. I also want to.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Recognize the president of the University of Minnesota's Black Student Union.
Many of you all know him, and if you don't
know him, at home. We've seen him go viral recently
for some powerful remarks in the face of ice terrorism.

Speaker 14 (01:10:38):
Give it up for Gutu Chin Kaso. Please got fans.
Oh this brother I know very very well.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
We became close after I read his New York Times
best selling book My Grandmother's Hands. And you all know
that Resma Minicum is doing the work of the people
every single day in Minnesota, making sure that we are
able to process the trauma that we experience on a
day to day basis and resume wherever you want to sit.

Speaker 14 (01:11:12):
We thank God for you. Oh no it's not. It's
not last just yet.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
So Attorney Leslie Redmond, I want you all to give
it up for her, because literally this would not have
happened if it wasn't for Leslie. Leslie brought every single resource.
Somebody wasn't calling me back. Leslie was like, since I
got you, let me say less.

Speaker 14 (01:11:32):
And she was on it. So I just really thank
God for you, Leslie. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
And it was very important to Leslie that she was
on a panel this evening with someone who she loves
very dearly.

Speaker 14 (01:11:43):
He has a shared sibling to us.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
He is President Derek Johnson of the naacps coming back
to join us to chat it up a little bit,
all right.

Speaker 14 (01:11:54):
So Resma, I want to start with you. I do
because you know why.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Let me tell you why, because the one thing I
know you're gonna do is get us straight. We got
to heal like where right now people are saying, oh, well,
there's no point in being in Minnesota anymore.

Speaker 14 (01:12:08):
They're about to withdraw eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
But now there's all of this destruction, literally death, literally
grief as we sit here right now. Ilhan, our dear sister,
was holding a town hall and a man comes up
and sprays some foreign substance on her in her direction.
Ilhan is the smallest giant I have ever seen in
my life.

Speaker 14 (01:12:29):
So she was like, the town all gonna continu but.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
I think that it's important for us to understand how
we reckon with what's going on.

Speaker 14 (01:12:37):
And as doctor King Best said, where do we go
from here?

Speaker 10 (01:12:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 33 (01:12:40):
You know, Doctor King also said another thing. He said
that just before he passed. He said, you know, I'm
afraid that I've taken my people into a burning house,
right and I want to start there because a lot
of times we start with healing like this, like it's
this magical thing. Right, And what I want to say

(01:13:00):
is if in this moment in time where people are
being murdered in the streets, that are officials' only caveat
is to say we need to be better. They are
leading us into a burning building. You get to be
angry in this moment, You get to be pissed off.

Speaker 10 (01:13:19):
In this moment.

Speaker 33 (01:13:21):
You get to figure out how you turn towards each other.

Speaker 10 (01:13:25):
As opposed to on each other. That's what they want
us to do.

Speaker 33 (01:13:28):
And so when I talk about healing, about healing, I'm
talking about how do we tend to the things snatching babies.

Speaker 10 (01:13:37):
Out of people's arms.

Speaker 33 (01:13:40):
They're executing people by shooting them in the back and
in the chest, and don't care that you're filming it.
They're shooting women in the face and then calling them
foul names after they do it.

Speaker 11 (01:13:54):
They kneeling. And let me say this last piece.

Speaker 10 (01:13:57):
This don't sound healing, but it is healing.

Speaker 33 (01:14:00):
What I'm talking to you about is healing is tending
to the things that are showing up and beginning to
figure out how you use that as fuel for your liberation. Right,
We're not going to get out of this and return
back Gavin Newsom ain't coming to save a Shaw.

Speaker 14 (01:14:19):
Can you say it again? Gay got mad at me
when I went together.

Speaker 33 (01:14:22):
Gather Newsome, the current governor of Minnesota, are not coming
to save us.

Speaker 10 (01:14:30):
What Let me just ask this one question.

Speaker 33 (01:14:33):
What if what we're seeing right now is the best
they got?

Speaker 10 (01:14:40):
What if there are no better angels?

Speaker 33 (01:14:44):
What if what we're seeing is all they got for us?

Speaker 11 (01:14:48):
What does that.

Speaker 33 (01:14:49):
Mean in terms of what we need to do right?
And that's what I want to talk about when I
say healing.

Speaker 10 (01:14:56):
So when your question.

Speaker 33 (01:14:56):
About healing says we have to start nobody coming to
save us. The mid terms ain't coming to save us.
We are being asked right now, who are we going
to be in the face of tyranny?

Speaker 10 (01:15:10):
That's the healing.

Speaker 14 (01:15:13):
Well, y'all see why we started here. He set the tone,
didn't he Eli?

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
So I want to come to you because freedom is
in the name of the fund And to Resmu's point,
you know, for years we have toiled with this concept
of freedom, but we're lacking in resource right So even
right now we're like, what are we going to build? Well,
what are we going to build without proper resource? Like
we won't even stay going to black businesses multiple days

(01:15:38):
a week unless there's a fast. Oh okay, but you
know what I'm saying, like, we won't even support each
other unless we're required for many of us.

Speaker 14 (01:15:47):
I'm not saying all of us, too many of us.
So what does healing look like?

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
What does freedom look like without resource? And how do
you encourage people to give what they have towards a
common cause toward our liberation?

Speaker 29 (01:16:03):
M hmmm.

Speaker 34 (01:16:06):
Well, One, we have incredible resources, as the rest of
this state and the rest of this nation has bear
witness to. Uh, even when it seems as though there's lack.
They may have looked at Minneapolis, Saint Paul, the Twin

(01:16:26):
Cities and thought that, you know, we were lacking in something,
we were weak, We were going to be easy that
you know, this was going to be a push over,
that they were going to create an example lot of
us that they were then going to replicate another municipalities
around the country. What they saw was a people respond
robustly with a deep and embedded resource that's inside of us,

(01:16:49):
and that's people power.

Speaker 7 (01:16:50):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:16:51):
Uh.

Speaker 34 (01:16:52):
So we are the resource and as Resmus said, no
one is coming to save us.

Speaker 10 (01:16:57):
We're the help that we've been waiting on it.

Speaker 34 (01:16:59):
So people have been able to see the power of people.
And I fundamentally believe in the power of people to
impact the realities that we want to see around us,
to help to create the realities that we want to
see around us. We said we were going to get
ice out of here. We said that we were going
to melt ice. We begin to see some of the
tactics that they use, and so we created counter tactics.

(01:17:21):
They weren't allowing people to be able to peacefully go
and get hygiene, or go to the grocery store or
do whatever, and so what did people decided to do?

Speaker 10 (01:17:30):
So we decided to.

Speaker 34 (01:17:34):
Galvanize our own resources and to create alternative ways that
people would still be able to get food, still would
be able to get provisions, still would be able to
get resourced. Right, So, you know, the top level to
the answer of their question is we the people are
the resource. We have absolutely everything that we need to

(01:17:57):
create the reality that we want to see around us.
And so the nation was able to bear witness to
that in terms of in terms of our giving our
resources out, our financial, our emotional, whatever the resource is

(01:18:19):
that we are giving out. I am a firm believer
in sowing and weeping that what we what we put out,
we get back multifold. And what I'm investing now in
terms of I'm supposed to be at home with my
family right now, right.

Speaker 6 (01:18:35):
I have an eight day old daughter, but this is
so important to me.

Speaker 34 (01:18:41):
The environment that is cultivated is so important to me
that I know I have to invest my time, my resources,
my intellectual abilities, well whatever it is that I got,
I know I gotta do this because twenty years from now,
I want her to inherit a certain type of America, right,
And so so I'm going to invest in now. I'm

(01:19:03):
going to fight against the powers that be now. I'm
going to do whatever it needs to be happening now
because I have to. I have to be fighting for
that greater later. And so, you know, those who are
having a tough time of deciding how they're going to
invest in or what they're going to invest in, I
really don't know much to say to them, because to me,

(01:19:26):
the state of the Union, the great conflammation, the great
fire that we see burning around us, If that's not
clear indication enough that we have to get off of
our resources and do something you know what again, whether
that is time, whether that is financial like whatever it is,
I don't have a lot to say to anyone who
would sit on a fence in a moment like this.

(01:19:48):
We have to do something or something that's going to
happen to us. So I know that's a non answer,
but that's what I have.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
It's perfect. I want to take this moment. Speaking of
resources I know we have in the audience. I hope
they're still here because we meant to acknowledge this earlier.
Jazz Hampton, who is an attorney earlier somewhere yes, right here, okay,
and wanted to oh right over here, okay, yes, I

(01:20:17):
can see in the dark now, Jazz, thank you so much.
For those of you who have had interaction with law
enforcement and are still confused about what to do.

Speaker 14 (01:20:26):
Jazz has an entire.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
App called Turn Turn.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
Signal, and it's here to provide other resource to you. Also,
you don't feel like you're loan, because we do have
everything we need. So on that I want to go
to you YouTube because I think it's important. We are
always talking about what young people aren't doing, what young
people ought to do, and I think in rooms like this,

(01:20:51):
what I love to do. I love hearing from young
people about what we're not getting right to facilitate the
type of future that Eli just talked about. So what
do we need to do differently to support young people
because we're not getting it right. Clearly, it ain't on y'all,
it's on us. We all all do y'all got okay, Well,
I'm all they young people too out here.

Speaker 35 (01:21:12):
We've got some young people in the back of board members.
Shout out, y'all, yeah, sure for more of us. First
of all, I just want to thank you Angela and
the rest of you know, the Native lampod and the
whole the whole crew for reaching out to me, you know,
me being a junior at the University of Minnesota, being
you know, younger twenty one, and just being in the

(01:21:32):
space with so many amazing people, you know, legislators, just
amazing people, you know, I'm trying to say, even president
and a CP right here.

Speaker 13 (01:21:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 35 (01:21:40):
Yeah, So that's that's it's a blessing to be here, truly,
just talking to your point about maybe what the people
before me can potentially work on. I mean, honestly speaking,
we're here because of people before me. So the first
thing you have to always acknowledge the things and the
gratitude to them or to kind of be here in

(01:22:01):
these spaces to do this. And even being BSU president,
you know, we're built on activism, We're built on change.
We're built on fighting for what's right and fighting for
the needs to create the better future as you talked
about for people coming in behind us. And that's kind
of how I view this as well. As it can
be tough as a student, you know, you want to
focus on your academics. You want to focus on, you know,

(01:22:22):
maybe your future like an internship or a job. That's
what I'm looking for right now. But you know, but
at the end of the day, you can't deny what
reality is. And what reality is in front of us
all within our communities is that ICE. ICE is a
terroristic organization. They're causing a lot of harm to our people.
You know, whether that's old, young, whether that's immigrant or citizen,

(01:22:42):
it doesn't matter what it is. They are causing continuous
havoc and terror. And I think the biggest thing is
I don't know if you guys got wrong before, but
one thing I've learned is at least is just organization
i'd say in the sense organization to gather troops, to
gather people. I think throughout multiple different areas, multiple differences,

(01:23:05):
and even within our universities, there's definitely a lot of division.
I'd say division because of I don't know whether it
be you know, race or ethnicity, or economic status or
whatever it might be.

Speaker 11 (01:23:16):
There's there's still that division and also.

Speaker 35 (01:23:20):
That sense of I know somebody mentioned it earlier, kind
of like I don't really have to worry about if
it's not directly affecting me. And I know that that
is not a good mindset to have at all, because
when it gets to you, then who's going.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
To help you?

Speaker 10 (01:23:35):
Right?

Speaker 11 (01:23:36):
You feel me? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 35 (01:23:39):
So I just view that as a sense of organization
is key. Organization is important Continuously pushing and relying on
young youth people like me to step up out of
this out of our shelves, to really be here in
these spaces. I mean, I'm so blessed to be here,
but there's so many others that can be here that
can really speak to so much more that I probably
can't even speak to, and I want to to really

(01:24:00):
push them to be here as well. I'd say so
pushing on the youth, pushing them to continuously push to
be better. Organization is definitely another big key step, and
I think hope as well. I think in a lot
of ways that can be lost when you're maybe talking
to certain people that are older than you. Maybe they've
seen a lot or they've been through a lot, and

(01:24:21):
they don't really see that hope. But I think to
continue pushing for hope is basically giving your services to
your community. I think that can bring hope in a sense.
Like let's say, if you're losing hope or if you're
losing whatever you're going through, one thing I always think
about is going back to my community, being a service

(01:24:42):
to my communities, and I think that is the first
step to hope, is relying back on your communities and
pushing that forward as well as organization and you know,
pushing on the youth. So that's kind of my answer.

Speaker 14 (01:24:53):
I guess, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
I want to come to you, Attorney Leslie, and I
want to sit here for a moment in what I
believe is starting to take shape on the stage, which
is the role of each community member, right like we
all have a role to play. Some of us are
utility players. You're supposed to be in DC right now,

(01:25:17):
but you feel called to stay home in Minnesota. Served
as an NAACP president. I don't know how many organizations
you got now, but you connected us to multiple businesses
today that needed support. When we talked about mutual aid,
you said you knew some people that can help with
mutual Like at every turn, there was.

Speaker 14 (01:25:37):
A dot you were connecting.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
And I want to know what is the conviction that
drives you to do that, and how do people who
are sitting at home watching this on the live stream
tap into that conviction even if they're not dot connectors,
maybe they are one that needs to be in service
in a particular way. But what is that conviction that
you tap into when it feels like hope is gone,

(01:26:00):
when it feels like fear and terror is writing.

Speaker 14 (01:26:02):
How do you tap into that?

Speaker 19 (01:26:04):
M such a good question.

Speaker 32 (01:26:07):
Grace and peace everyone, So first I would say, you know,
my mom tells me sometime like Lesly, you're so fearless.
I wish I was so fearless like you, and I
have to remind her that I'm not fearless. There are
a lot of times I'm afraid, and as a believer
in the Bible constantly says, be not afraid, be of

(01:26:27):
good courage, right, because God knows that we are going
to be afraid.

Speaker 19 (01:26:32):
I don't think, amen.

Speaker 32 (01:26:34):
I don't think that David wasn't afraid when he went
up against Goliath.

Speaker 19 (01:26:38):
It's just that he had more faith than he had fear.

Speaker 6 (01:26:41):
Right.

Speaker 32 (01:26:42):
And so for me, you know, I really believe that
we are our ancestors' wildest dreams. I believe that everything
that we're seeing right now is a parallel to places
that we've already been before. Right when we look at
what Ice is doing right now, I think a lot
about the Fugitive Slave Act right eighteen fifty and how
we have to separate law and ethics.

Speaker 19 (01:27:04):
Right.

Speaker 32 (01:27:05):
Just because something is legal does not mean that it
is ethically and moracally correct, right, and that is where
civil disobedience has to rise and where we have to
come to stand in our greatness. I think about drape
Domania and when they tried to tell black people we
were crazy for wanting our freedom.

Speaker 34 (01:27:25):
Right.

Speaker 32 (01:27:25):
I'm just I have crazy faith, Angela, Right, I have
crazy faith to believe that we were meant to be free,
that this is not the world that God intended for us, right,
this is what humans have made it to be. And
in twenty twenty, I said, Black Minnesota, we are done dying,
and white Minnesota, you are done hiding your white Wakanda
has been discovered and it's time for black people's humanity

(01:27:47):
to be recognized.

Speaker 10 (01:27:48):
Right.

Speaker 32 (01:27:49):
And so I didn't know what I was saying in
twenty twenty though, Right.

Speaker 10 (01:27:52):
That was God.

Speaker 14 (01:27:53):
That was God.

Speaker 10 (01:27:54):
It wasn't me.

Speaker 32 (01:27:55):
But as we fast forward to here we are in
twenty twenty six, and white people are being killed in
broad daylight.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
This is something I never thought I would really see in.

Speaker 32 (01:28:04):
Minnesota, right, And I'm seeing the parallels with Renee sitting
in her car like Filando was sitting in his car
when I see Alex laying on the ground and being murdered,
like we saw Jamar Clark laying on the ground and
being murdered.

Speaker 36 (01:28:18):
Right.

Speaker 14 (01:28:20):
And they didn't hear us, Angela, they didn't fill us.

Speaker 4 (01:28:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
And I told people the black.

Speaker 32 (01:28:26):
Community, we've been warning, we've been prophesying, right, telling them
what would happen if something doesn't change. And sadly we're here,
But I believe that God has plans to prosper us
and not harm us. I believe that what the enemy
meant for bad, God meant for good. And so I
believe that we are really at h we at a crossroad,

(01:28:47):
brother Resma, right. And a lot of the time we
talk about history repeating itself as if it's inevitable, but
I think iver pieces o because we repeat ourselves, right,
And so I'm determined not to repeat the sins of
our past. And I was born in nineteen ninety two,
this is my Jesus year.

Speaker 10 (01:29:02):
I'm thirty three, amen.

Speaker 32 (01:29:04):
And you know I was born right around the time
where there was uprising in la and then I ended
up leading in twenty twenty and then here we are,
right here in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 19 (01:29:15):
That doesn't feel like a coincidence to.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
Me, right.

Speaker 32 (01:29:17):
I believe that we were destined to fight this fight.
I believe that we were born for such a time
as this. And I wouldn't trade places with Harriet Tubman.
I'm not trying to run from Delaware to Maryland, right,
and so because this is our run though, this is
our fight, right. They say it's not just not a race,
it's not shout out to Nipsey hustle, just a marathon,

(01:29:38):
but it's a relay, right, and so we're passing the
baton to each other, and me and my good sis
Tis Jones of True Our Speaks have been having a
lot of conversation around our narrative and how we can
capture and reclaim our story. And that's why I say,
don't complain activate right, because we all can't do everything,

(01:29:59):
but we all can do something, Angela. And so my
conviction comes from knowing that I owe something to future generations,
I owe something to our ancestors, and I'm determined to
be who God meant for me to be.

Speaker 13 (01:30:10):
Love it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
Well, we have a phenomenal panel full of license and
unlicensed preachers, and Derek is they'll close us out because
both of my co hosts are texting me as if
Bacari didn't start it by going over his time. But
there's that Derek I'm looking at. He's given me you
got a sadman room if not go back reclaiming my

(01:30:34):
time for the president, I know nobody knows, Derek. I
want you to talk to us about you mobilize hundreds
of thousands of people. NAACP chapters mobilized hundreds of thousands

(01:30:54):
of people.

Speaker 14 (01:30:55):
All over this country and there.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Comes a time where, Leslie, we get called back home, right,
can you please talk to us about the importance of
standing ten toes down with membership organizations, especially when there
might be a vote in the Senate on whether or
not these Nazis, these January six ers, these terrorists now

(01:31:21):
in Ice Mass are.

Speaker 14 (01:31:25):
Gonna get funded or not. You have a whole legislative arm.
It's time for us to.

Speaker 1 (01:31:31):
Stand side by side with our civil rights org So
can you please talk about the importance of that.

Speaker 21 (01:31:35):
So thank you, and I appreciate Lanslie. I remember when
we first met French president, and the crazy thing was
you was in law school and during the same time,
and I said, have you lost your mind? But receiving
Leslie at the exact same time, I had to deal
with the eighty year old deacon who was honorey as

(01:31:58):
hell but committed like nobody's been business and appreciating the
middle aged sister who's trying to get the kids through
high school while I'm talking to.

Speaker 10 (01:32:06):
The brother who's an executive. We are not a monoliths.

Speaker 21 (01:32:10):
We are a collective of Africans in America, and we
got to respect how we show up at every step.
The problem with leadership of institutions like the NAACP too
many people sitting in his seat and then make it
about them. It's ego centric and as a result of

(01:32:30):
that we lose traction because they're trying to get to
the news camera. What's going to happen, What must happen
by Saturday. That will be a budget bill adopted or
continued resolution in there is a line item of giving
Ice more money. We need to mobilize folks. That's the
q coles there to call folks. Senator Kloborshaw want to

(01:32:53):
be a senator, I mean a governor. She need to
be here clear from you all here. Not only do
you vote against this bill if the line item is
in there, you bring five fears along with you from
the Senate. Because two times now we have been betrayed
by Democrats who relied on black volks to get in office.

(01:33:15):
And we must approach just understanding that political parties are
nothing but vehicles for agendas, and we have to have
a clear black agenda, and we always have had a
clear black agenda.

Speaker 10 (01:33:27):
Far too many of.

Speaker 21 (01:33:28):
Us fall prey to the partisan conversation.

Speaker 11 (01:33:32):
Who cares.

Speaker 21 (01:33:35):
If our folks still not not getting the food that's needed.
So as we look at what's happening here, one of
the things we can do is mobilized, as we're doing
across the country, to put the pressure on Senators to
not vote for this bill if the ice funding gets
in there.

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
But if it passed, that doesn't stop.

Speaker 21 (01:33:54):
The process, because that Bob Moses said, do some vices movement.
Every episode just a different theater in the fight on
our journey to freedom, and we will get there. Why
because we are a people who fight, we persevere, and
we will get self determination.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
Absolutely, y'all give it up for this amazing piano.

Speaker 14 (01:34:15):
We're so grateful to each of you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:19):
And speaking of elected officials who are accountable to the people,
who are regularly representing what we need done, ensuring that
our voices are heard, and that there's an advocate in
one of the highest offices in Minnesota, please join me
and welcome me your Attorney General, Keith Ellison. He's got

(01:34:44):
a receiving line, y'all, he's coming, Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Ladies and gentlemen, I mean I try. I said, I'm
channeling Angela Davis. That's who I was named after I
yield the floor to the journey.

Speaker 36 (01:35:01):
Generally, thank you Angela, Hey, thank you guys for being
out here tonight.

Speaker 10 (01:35:06):
I can't think of a more important place for you
to be.

Speaker 36 (01:35:10):
Our country, in our state, in our city, in this
very moment, has been the site of the largest single
escalation of ICE agents of immigration officials in the history
of the United States. Ordinarily, ICE has about one hundred
people for the five state area, the five state area.

(01:35:33):
Now they have four thousand ICE agents for just the
state of Minnesota, which is an increase.

Speaker 10 (01:35:45):
I don't have to tell you what's been happening.

Speaker 36 (01:35:47):
You live here, you've been seeing it, you've been experiencing
it yourself.

Speaker 10 (01:35:52):
But this blanket of.

Speaker 36 (01:35:55):
Attack is certainly not normal, not justified, and is not legal.

Speaker 10 (01:36:03):
So what we have done about Operation Metro Surge.

Speaker 36 (01:36:08):
First of all, as we filed a lawsuit which was
heard yesterday, and what we argue was very simple that
if the federal government cannot bully and take over Minnesota
and pass laws to make us do what the federal
government wants, if they can't do it with an executive

(01:36:28):
order or with a piece of legislation, they certainly can't
do it with four thousand armed masked men. If they
couldn't pass the law that said all Minnesota law enforcement
is now an ice agent, which they could not do.
They certainly can't say, oh, you don't want to do
it our way, We're going to send people with guns

(01:36:51):
in large numbers to your state to intimidate and even
kill people. At the end of the day, believe we
are going to prevail because we're right and what we're
doing is just. And I am telling you that we're
not here to back down. And I will also tell

(01:37:11):
you this, there is no legal barrier to a state
prosecutor charging a federal agent. You understand there's no legal barrier.
I've been a lawyer for thirty six years. I'm here

(01:37:32):
to tell you that law and morality are not the
same thing. That unjust things happen in the name of
the law, and you know. But what I'm telling you
is that it is not a fact that the federal
agents can commit crimes in this state and never have
to worry about accountability.

Speaker 10 (01:37:54):
You heard the Vice.

Speaker 36 (01:37:54):
President of the United States tell you absolute immunity. I
don't know if he's lying or if he just doesn't
know the law, but he's absolutely wrong.

Speaker 10 (01:38:07):
You could pick lying.

Speaker 36 (01:38:09):
Or ignorant, but he's wrong either way. You can pick
either one, but it is not the case. And the
real challenge, and I'm just going to be very clear
with you guys, is the pragmatic reality of completing an
investigation and then getting a case to a grand jury
or getting enough probable cause to charge.

Speaker 10 (01:38:30):
Now, there's a lot of cases that.

Speaker 36 (01:38:35):
Are hard to bring because you do have evidentiary barriers.
In this situation, there's so much video evidence. There is
so much video evidence, and look, so the reality of
the situation is I'm not going to stand upereard and
say I'm charging that dude with this, and I'm gonna

(01:38:55):
tell you why, because that would be improper.

Speaker 10 (01:38:57):
Prosecutors shouldn't do that.

Speaker 36 (01:39:00):
We will remember when George Floyd was murdered, First we got
the evidence together, then we charge all four of them
with murder. I'm just using that as an example to
let you know that nobody here should feel that these
people are just going to skate on this. Okay, you
shouldn't feel that way. Now when when when on the

(01:39:22):
first time, when they killed h renee Good, local police
went and said we need to process the crime scene,
find evidence, put put things down, you know, the little
little cards, and put the numbers down, and make sure
that we process the scene. And the federal agent said, no,
you're not going to be allowed to do that, and

(01:39:43):
we're going to take the casings, we're going to take
this car, and we're going to take the gun. So
then it was like, okay, that's different. And then they
shot a man in North Minneapolis. Who's who survived only
right over there y'all might have been who was there
that night in North Bend the epics when it was
when the chemical irritant was in the ear, like smoke everywhere.

Speaker 10 (01:40:08):
Good to see you there, Latania.

Speaker 36 (01:40:10):
And then but and then they said, no, you're not
going to process that scene. So now on this one
we hear about Preddie getting shot. We went to court
and got a court order and got a judge to
rule that the evidence may not be destroyed, may not
be tampers with, and we have to have access with
it in the gut.

Speaker 10 (01:40:26):
The judge issue the order Saturday night.

Speaker 36 (01:40:29):
We were back in court yesterday arguing it and the
court is not not ruled yet, but we are confident
that they're not going to be able to mess around
with this evidence.

Speaker 10 (01:40:38):
So what I'm just.

Speaker 36 (01:40:40):
Telling you that that whether it's a civil action that
we've taken or whether it's the criminal cases we are
we are going to do everything we can to make
sure there's truth and accountability here. Now, let me just
tell you this, this situation, this oppression that Minnesota is

(01:41:02):
under right now, will not be solved in a courtroom.
It just won't be like so after the Floyd case,
did police brutality stop?

Speaker 10 (01:41:12):
No.

Speaker 36 (01:41:13):
That's why at the time I said, this is not justice,
but it is accountability. The real justice and the real
freedom and the real true democracy will be because you
go out in the street and demonstrate and say no
to this oppression. It is the people in the street,
in the hearts and the minds of the people marching

(01:41:35):
in nine to below weather, standing up and saying no,
we're not going to let you roll over us this way,
which is going to win the day. Together with elections,
together with the artists, together with all of these things
that we collect to try to create a just society.

Speaker 10 (01:41:53):
And it's not overnight.

Speaker 36 (01:41:55):
And I cannot guarantee you perfect safety as you fight
for justice any more than people could guarantee Martin Luther King. Oh,
nobody's ever gonna hurt you if you stand up for justice,
or nobody's ever gonna hurt you. Nobody's ever gonna harm
you if you if you protest, Jimmy Lee Jackson, we

(01:42:17):
all know what happened. There's no there's no guarantee of
perfect safety when an oppress or feels threatened that you're
trying to be free yourself. So at the end of
the day, friends, I am asking you to protest. I'm
asking you to protest peacefully and safely. But I would

(01:42:37):
rather you be out there facing those bad guys, and
that is exactly what they are than sitting at home
worrying about your own comfort and safety safely not doing anything.

Speaker 10 (01:42:49):
We need people to be We need everybody to.

Speaker 36 (01:42:52):
Do any whatever they can do. And some people, look,
they got bad needs there, they've got disabilities.

Speaker 10 (01:42:56):
They can't be out there protesting.

Speaker 36 (01:42:58):
Well, maybe you can make calls and get people to
the election that's coming up. Maybe you can do mutual
aid for people who are shut up in their homes
and can't even go to work because they're scared the
iations going to stop them. But at the end of
the day, all of us have to do something in
this movement that we're in, and you being here tonight

(01:43:19):
is doing something, is doing something important, because let me
tell you, presence is Presence is power, friends, witnesses power.
And let me tell you the bad ones out there
who are trying to press all of us, they know
very well that you're having a meeting here tonight at

(01:43:40):
the Capri. You think they don't know, they knew if
they were spying on you in the sixties. You think
they're not spying you on you in the twenty twenties.
Of course they are, but screw them. We're not scared
of them. And I don't care if mister miss Christinoan
knows that I I'm here working with you guys.

Speaker 10 (01:44:03):
And you should not.

Speaker 36 (01:44:04):
And if you're scared that she's going to know about you,
be hey, are you in the wrong place?

Speaker 10 (01:44:09):
This is this movement. We are guarantee.

Speaker 36 (01:44:12):
Success because we are faithful. We are guarantee success because
we are faithful, and we won't quit and we won't
ever give up. Now, a last word that I want
to say to you, And I don't know if Angela
wants me to answer any questions or not, but there
is one word I want to say to you before
I rap, I want to urge you and talk to

(01:44:33):
you about the fundamental importance of human solidarity in this moment,
because so often we're oppressed based on our identity and
as African Americans. You and I know two hundred and
forty six years of slavery, one hundred years of Jim Crow,
and disparities in race every single year after that, There's

(01:44:58):
never been a moment where black life in America has
been celebrated in official channels. The one time somebody black
becomes president, it scares this country so bad that it
brings on Donald Trump. So you and I both know
the deal here. But what I'm saying to you is,

(01:45:18):
as a child who's as a child of African descent,
as a black man in America, who can trace my
roots in America since seventeen forty two, I can.

Speaker 10 (01:45:32):
These folks can't.

Speaker 36 (01:45:33):
Tell me I don't I'm not from here, And no
black person in this room whose ancestors came here and
slavery can be told you're not from here. But did
you know that you were not a citizen up until
the fourteenth Amendment?

Speaker 10 (01:45:46):
Did you know that?

Speaker 36 (01:45:47):
Did you know that the Supreme Court justice in the
United States, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
said black people who were born, lived their whole lives
and died in this country for seven generations up until
the about eighteen fifties were not citizens. So this thing

(01:46:08):
about citizen has always been racially informed. Did you know
that the first statutes on immigration to this country said
only free white people could come here.

Speaker 10 (01:46:20):
It wasn't until nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 36 (01:46:25):
That Asian, Latin American, and African people could immigrate to
the United States. Immigration was a civil rights bill, just
like the Voting Rights Act was.

Speaker 37 (01:46:35):
And so I'm gonna send me over here like a
sign man.

Speaker 14 (01:46:48):
He just said, might drop.

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
Okay, y'all give it up again for Attorney Generarchy Dallas,
and he walked all the way out.

Speaker 14 (01:46:55):
We love him.

Speaker 1 (01:46:56):
We're so grateful for his passion, first commitment, for being
here with that this evening again on such short notice.
Thank you so much, Attorney General Keith Ellison. I'm bringing
out my co host Andrew.

Speaker 14 (01:47:07):
Gillam Macari Sellers.

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
We have a quick panel with some clergy folk who
are doing tremendous work.

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):
Who cares about truth when the last more than say it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:24):
As you all know, there was a big organizing effort
with clergy at the airport just last week.

Speaker 14 (01:47:31):
It is important that folks are raising.

Speaker 1 (01:47:35):
Their voices because we know there's a whole other one
that has a whole church. But he's also working with lice.
But we'll talk about that another time. Please welcome to
the stage, Reverend doctor Karen McKinney, Professor and Community Liaison
at Betha University, Minister Janeyamuri Bates, Betsamurray Believe, Co Executive
Director of Faith in Minnesota, and Isaiah and our good

(01:47:56):
sister when Tana Mellikein, executive director of Groundwork Action Call Hosts,
So you're coming back out, We're gonna ask some quick
questions and I know we're getting the calls to action.

Speaker 14 (01:48:06):
So the hour is late and we got to work.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
I don't know where when Tana is, but she will
join us soon hopefully.

Speaker 14 (01:48:12):
All right, Well, first of all, ladies, can.

Speaker 1 (01:48:15):
You talk about the importance of motivating and moving clergy
to act at a time like this. I think about
the letter from the Birmingham jail and what doctor King
was challenging us with. Come I Andrew challenging us with and
it feels like this moment is yet again a choice
between white nationalist Christianity and black liberation theology, and then

(01:48:41):
somewhere in between everybody else when Tana, everybody give it
up for when Tana we introduced one time a mother
gen Yes, but I want you to weigh in on that, Jamay,
and then I'll yield to you.

Speaker 16 (01:48:52):
I mean absolutely.

Speaker 20 (01:48:53):
The reality is is that we are we are going
to constantly recreate history, and we get to be deciders
on if we're going to be history makers in the
midst of it. And so I would say it is
not just about frankly agitating the Church, but it is
about agitating America that proclaims and professes to be the Church.

(01:49:16):
And so when you are living in a place in
the land that weaponizes my Jesus and my Bible, I
am I find it incredibly important that people who say
that they know God, say that they know Christ, actually
live that out and call other folks into it. And
so the action that we took on Friday, on the

(01:49:38):
Day of Truth and Freedom, even the fact that that
I think it's important to say, even the fact that
that day came into being was because of a bunch
of people of faith and union leaders and community members
who said that we are going to take ourselves seriously
enough to build the kind of power to orchestrate the
kind of organizing necessary to have something like that, because

(01:49:58):
the reality is that people can call for an economic
blackout or a general strike and like say that thing.
But then you got to look back to what happened
in Montgomery, Alabama in nineteen fifty five, when folks in
a church said we're going to have the Montgomery bus boycott.
It was not just oh, let's do this thing and
we're going to say it and it'll happen. They put

(01:50:18):
in the ground game to have three hundred and eighty
one days of people being able to get to work,
to be able to get their kids, to be able
to go to groceries and not take the bus, and
so with a man and so I do think that
people of faith have to make sure that we are
truly taking ourselves seriously enough to strategize what does it
mean to do something today, what is it going to

(01:50:39):
mean for us tomorrow, what is it going to look
like for our people to day after that, and actually
put in the real grit and organizing that's required to
make that kind of thing come to be.

Speaker 12 (01:50:54):
I had a shirt that said Jesus is not just
a Sunday thing because lot of times we don't ascribe
to the notion that they teach us in the Book
of James that says that faith without works is dead.
Because sometimes we become a very prime people. Our knees
get sore, we put holes in the carpet and forget

(01:51:16):
that we have to put our shoulder to the wheel
on Monday to go out and get out the ditch.

Speaker 10 (01:51:20):
My question is about the.

Speaker 12 (01:51:21):
Disconnect that the church has perceived with this new generation
that's coming up, and how we as believers of whatever,
can bridge that gap because we need them in our doors.
The church used to be Andrew and I we were
having this discussion and Angela as well last week on
the show. But we all agree that the church used

(01:51:42):
to be that, and our stress used to be the
epicenter of change. That's where we had our organizational meetings,
that's where we had our precinct meetings. That's where we
fed the hungary in our communities. I mean, this event
in nineteen sixty five would have been in somebody Baptist
Church in Minneapolis. Doors open bus is going to get

(01:52:03):
folks bringing them here church moms. I mean, so, how
do we get back to that or evolve to the
next iteration of that while also opening our arms to
a generation that feels is that the church is not
their home anymore.

Speaker 10 (01:52:19):
And for me, that's that's almost devastating. McKinney.

Speaker 38 (01:52:26):
That's a hard one, see because and maybe it's because
I'm older, and then that disconnect, I see, it's there.
I have ninety four nieces and nephews, ninety four nieces
and nephews and grand nieces and great grands and so
when I started doing this, I started calling up my

(01:52:48):
nieces and nephews and saying, come come with me.

Speaker 19 (01:52:52):
You have to care. You don't have a choice. And
it's like, oh, that's Dan, Karen, Reverend and Karen. But
some of them listen.

Speaker 38 (01:53:00):
So I think there's a disconnect, but there's also you know,
they see what's going on and they care. And so
when I said come to this training, you know, some
of the four of them showed up and came to
the training, and it's like.

Speaker 19 (01:53:16):
You have you have to be out there with me.

Speaker 38 (01:53:18):
So so I think they're seeing and I'm not sure
that that. I mean, I know there's a disconnect. But
in my church, we have a rebirth of young people
because I remember the days when you know, I'm standing
and I'm shaking hands and standing by the door.

Speaker 19 (01:53:32):
And there's not too many young people. But then I
counted seven babies.

Speaker 38 (01:53:35):
I said, seven people with seven babies walk by, you know,
and it's like, we're getting people, and so.

Speaker 19 (01:53:41):
They want they people are hungry for it.

Speaker 38 (01:53:44):
And in my church, which is Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church,
we are unashamedly black, yes, and we're proud to be
a black church and own that, even if all of
our men are not.

Speaker 19 (01:54:00):
And so we want that black history.

Speaker 38 (01:54:06):
We profess that, we say that we are proud of that,
and we call forth people to be active and not
sit back. And so you know, I was designated in
my church to be when we started this Black Core
Leadership team, We're going to be one of these churches
that is involved in Isaiah and faith in Minnesota. The
pastor said, you take the lead on that. So I

(01:54:28):
took the lead on that, and I was with those
people who got arrested on Friday, because I'm taking the
lead on that, and that's the expectation. And there's all
kinds of people from my churches and all the other
churches that they put in and they say yes. And
I left this meeting, left a meeting where people were saying,

(01:54:48):
we're going to caucus and are you committed to caucusing
and are you committed to bringing ten more people with
you to Caucus on February third, And people were saying, yes,
I'm committed to this for the long run, and I'm
going to ask my people.

Speaker 19 (01:55:02):
So we're still We're still doing it.

Speaker 10 (01:55:04):
Yeah, I love that. Give her a round of applause
for that. I mean, and I am. I mean.

Speaker 12 (01:55:07):
My last comment on this is that I am absolutely
unapologetic about the onus that I put on the Black Church.
And the reason being is because I feel like as
a community.

Speaker 10 (01:55:18):
And this may be right or wrong, but I'll probably
die with this.

Speaker 12 (01:55:22):
We don't survive, but we thrive if our church is
the foundation of our community, not just our faith.

Speaker 1 (01:55:31):
Yeah, I would agree with you speaking of the foundation
of our community. Sit next to someone who created the
Groundwork Institute, and I want to just take a moment
here because without Antana protests and general strikes and all

(01:55:51):
of that. The rally last week would not have happened
last Friday, and so let's please give it up for
Buntana and all the work she's doing. And I also
just want to acknowledge the human cost of the work
she is battling to make sure that her loved ones
are safe in the midst of putting her body on
the line for all of us. And so I want

(01:56:13):
you for a moment to talk about the fact one
I'm acknowledging you give all of you to this community.
I want to know and this is probably going to
be very hard because you're a black woman in America,
but I want to know what this room can give
back to you.

Speaker 9 (01:56:30):
First, I just want to say thank you for having me.

Speaker 39 (01:56:34):
And I also want to say the only reason I
was a part of the march in the rally last
week is because Janey propositioned me to show up and
take that role. Janey was the person that really was
the foundation of it and called me into her team.

Speaker 9 (01:56:46):
They actually just voted me in.

Speaker 39 (01:56:47):
On Monday as official member, and so I just want
to acknowledge all the work she did, So thank you. So,
as Angel shared, i I'm an air trained American. I'm
a US citizen, but I also am struggling with immigration
issues across my family. I mean, just yesterday when coordinating

(01:57:10):
with Angela around this, I had a family member picked
up and now they're in New Mexico and we're trying
to figure out what to do about it. Lately, in Minnesota,
most folks have been getting sent to Texas, and now
we got folks going to a new state.

Speaker 9 (01:57:23):
As y'all know, about.

Speaker 39 (01:57:24):
Three thousand folks have been picked up over the last
couple of weeks. They have been sent all over the country.
I have family members who are US citizens. I've had
family members with green cards. I have folks with more
complex statuses who have been picked up by ice.

Speaker 9 (01:57:37):
There is no strategy, no theory.

Speaker 39 (01:57:41):
They are just picking up our community members and making
them disappear. And at the same time, the other part
of this battle is that I'm an executive director of
not one but two institutions, Groundwork Institute and Groundwork Action,
where I got to get up every day and do
the political organizing and do the development and the train
and all that. At the same time, you know, having

(01:58:02):
to figure out what autlly can I send a Whipple
to pick up my cousin, because I can't go back
there again after, you know, being there just a couple
weeks before that, picking a different family member. And so
I asked for everyone in this community is to continue
with the demands ICE out of Minnesota. Absolutely, I need
you to contact your member of Congress and make those demands,

(01:58:23):
your state rep, your city council member, every single level
of government. The other thing I'll add is that last
Friday during the march, I sat at my computer and
I deleted my Netflix. I deleted every Postmates, all the
little services I had, I canceled them.

Speaker 9 (01:58:39):
The only place I've been shopping at is my co op.

Speaker 39 (01:58:41):
Like folks that I know have already taken a political
position to say we stand with immigrants, we don't stand
with ICE, and I have just been unapologetic about rethinking
about the way I spend money, the way I move,
and I encourage everybody else in this room to do that.
And I just think one other thing I got a
name that I think can't be forgotten about this moment
is that I am very clear that the only reason

(01:59:04):
I have the right to be in the United States
is the work of black Americans. It is very clear
that after passing the Civil Rights Act and after the
passing of Voting Rights.

Speaker 9 (01:59:14):
Act, the Immigration Act was passed.

Speaker 39 (01:59:15):
After that the work of Martin Luther King to open
the door and all the others to open the door
to allow immigrants into the United States. And so I
very clearly see, after all the organizing I did for
Jamar Clark and Philando Castile, I have very overwhelmingly seen
the Black American community step up in this moment and
stand in solidarity.

Speaker 9 (01:59:33):
And I'd be remiss if I didn't name that. And
so I don't know what more to ask for.

Speaker 39 (01:59:37):
I have seen folks really step up in this moment,
and I just encourage folks to continue to do it
with their political power, their message, and their money.

Speaker 12 (01:59:46):
So I guess before we do our lot of actions
that they're any final I mean, I'm a big I'm
the person who's crying on the airplane. I have my
hoodie own and they'd be like, why is he tearing up?
Because it's a Marven Sap plan in my ear. So
I'm that emotional guy who's crying. Any parting words for
this audience as we begin to bring this to a
close of faith, the strength that we have, what we

(02:00:06):
need to do to persevere to get through uh, this
dark time. You can preach a little bit, just a
little bit, have a pisk pal, you're not that Baptist stuff.

Speaker 10 (02:00:18):
Love it.

Speaker 38 (02:00:20):
I would just I guess I would say God chooses
no hands but our hands. God uses no hands but
our hands and feet and and and so we have
to choose. We have to choose to let God use
our hands and feet. And we have to choose it

(02:00:40):
every day. It's not a one time choice. You're not done,
you know, and tomorrow I get to just lay in. No,
we have to we have to choose it every day.
And it matters for the generations that come behind us.

Speaker 19 (02:00:55):
What what kind of kids? What are what are our
kids going to have?

Speaker 11 (02:01:00):
You know?

Speaker 38 (02:01:00):
If we keep going backwards? So we have to pick uh,
and we if we can't let go. Yeah, I guess
that's what I says.

Speaker 20 (02:01:15):
I mean, I would just lean, have us all lean
into the story of the Good Samaritan, the notion that
there is there when anytime there is someone who is hurting,
someone who has beaten, someone who has oppressed, someone who
is down trotten for whatever reason, we are called to
do and to act. And there were folks who walked

(02:01:35):
past that body and thought, I can't I can't do
anything about that, because if I do, what happens to me?
And the one who decided to stop said, I, if
I keep going, what happens to them?

Speaker 2 (02:01:48):
And I think there is a collective what.

Speaker 20 (02:01:50):
Happens to us if we don't act?

Speaker 14 (02:01:53):
And so is that is the call?

Speaker 16 (02:01:55):
And for the Minnesotans.

Speaker 20 (02:01:56):
I can't end this without saying for the Minnesotans who
are in the room, specially black Minnesotan's.

Speaker 10 (02:02:01):
February third is caucus Day.

Speaker 19 (02:02:04):
Okay.

Speaker 20 (02:02:05):
We we could talk all day in like little settings
like this, but it is so incredibly important that we
use our voice and having oversize an outside stay about
what happens in our state and in our country. And
you get the opportunity to do that when you caucus,
and when we caucus together in unity.

Speaker 14 (02:02:21):
Amen.

Speaker 20 (02:02:22):
Amen, So y'all join me at a training on on Monday. Okay,
Monday is six thirty a Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.
We're gonna get trained to caucus together with the actual strategy.
Wein just gonna show up. Willy Nelly, We're gonna come
through and actually win an agenda.

Speaker 27 (02:02:37):
Okay, I go to a Catholic church, so I can't
sermon like that.

Speaker 13 (02:02:43):
It's not in me.

Speaker 9 (02:02:45):
I'll try my best. I'm in the.

Speaker 10 (02:02:51):
That's around the wine and a little bit.

Speaker 9 (02:02:53):
But we do do that.

Speaker 1 (02:02:54):
We do that a little bray is you better watch
that backwash.

Speaker 27 (02:03:00):
Okay, y'all laughed a little too hard at my people.

Speaker 39 (02:03:06):
But so I just I'd be remiss if I didn't
talk about what happened about an hour before I walked
in this room, a Congressoman Omar at her town hall
was standing there talking about how we need to hold
the federal government accountable.

Speaker 9 (02:03:20):
And a man walked up to her with a substance
and sprayed her in the face. And you know, I.

Speaker 27 (02:03:25):
Have to also talk about how Congressman orders.

Speaker 9 (02:03:28):
She swung back. She literally swung back.

Speaker 39 (02:03:31):
She approached him and then cleaned herself up and then
continued the forum, continued the conversation, she put out a
statement and said, we have to keep going.

Speaker 9 (02:03:41):
We have to keep fighting.

Speaker 39 (02:03:42):
And this is very difficult, this is absolutely horrific. But
also we have to keep going. We have to keep fighting.
We can't sit here and wallow. You know, feel the pain,
feel the trauma, experience it, process it, you know, go
to your place of faith, you know, do what you
need to do. But also after that, we have to
you know, leave this, leave these spaces and go back

(02:04:04):
to organizing. And that there are folks with less access
and privilege and all the things who are sitting in
detention centers that are dependent on us to leave this
room and stand up for them because they can't stand
up for themselves. So no matter what we're experiencing, it's
a little bit harder to go to the gas station,
it's a little bit harder to get around.

Speaker 9 (02:04:23):
You got to carry your passport one hundred percent.

Speaker 39 (02:04:26):
But if you have the privilege to stand up for
someone who literally can't leave their house, I beg you
to do it. I beg you to take that action.
And then being an electoral really, as Janey said, you.

Speaker 9 (02:04:36):
Have to caucus.

Speaker 39 (02:04:37):
It is if you have the if you have the
ability to. For some folks it's not safe, I get it.
But if you have the ability, caucus on February third.
One thing that you could do at caucuses that people
often forget is you could do resolution. So there's statements
where you say, I believe that we need ice out
of m N or I believe in a higher minimum wage.
You can write statements like that and bring them there

(02:04:58):
and get them added to your plat parties platform.

Speaker 9 (02:05:01):
You can join one of the committees.

Speaker 39 (02:05:03):
So there are so many opportunities for you to take
a position and let it be known where you stand
and really defend the folks next to you that.

Speaker 9 (02:05:11):
Just don't have the capacity to defend themselves.

Speaker 39 (02:05:13):
So I just ask you to, you know, be a
true neighbor and stand up for whoever you know can't stand.

Speaker 14 (02:05:19):
So thank you all, so very much.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):
Let's give it up again for Reverend doctor Karen McKinny
minister today.

Speaker 14 (02:05:30):
We're so grateful, bring you on.

Speaker 6 (02:05:31):
Thank you so much, so great.

Speaker 1 (02:05:51):
Okay, y'all, we're going to get to our calls to
action or repping the show.

Speaker 13 (02:05:56):
But you can know, well I'll just say I love
that because we talked about this on the show. But
how the right wing is really bastardized evangelicals right, every
time you hear evangelicals, the evangelical community got behind Trump
x y Z. I think what religious people are they
talking to. They're not talking to these women that we
just heard from. That's the true meaning. And I think

(02:06:18):
spirit of the Word of God and the spirit of God.

Speaker 11 (02:06:21):
The other thing that comes to for CTA.

Speaker 13 (02:06:24):
And I think it was set here on this stage
around I think exercising the muscle of repetition, the fact
that we can't just do it one time. We reference
the Montgomery bus boycott, but we oftentimes don't reference the
fact that after the first day of the boycott, the
black community went back to the church that night and

(02:06:44):
decided and voted as a community whether they would go
back and continue the boycott the next day. And then
at the end of that day they showed back up
at the Baptist church and they voted again whether they
were going to continue the bus boycott the next day.
They thought that the bus boycott was going to be
one night, one day, and then two days, and then

(02:07:05):
a week, and that week lasted over a year. They
exercised the muscle of coming back and coming back and
coming back. And I don't think this is a lesson
that you all need here in Minnesota. In fact, I
think this is the lesson you all are teaching the
rest of the country.

Speaker 1 (02:07:21):
Cut that song because we don't like have it licensed.
I was trying to text it nicely. Don't do that
in the middle of a CTA it or get cut.
So if you want to play our music while we're talking,
that's fine, but not anything that's not licensed.

Speaker 13 (02:07:31):
So to conclude is simply to say thank you for
teaching us the lesson and helping us exercise the muscle,
the discipline of coming back again again again.

Speaker 11 (02:07:42):
Delay is not denial.

Speaker 13 (02:07:45):
Trump may think they are winning right now, but delay
is not denial. In my faith tradition, accountability will come
and we will win this thing in the end.

Speaker 11 (02:07:55):
God, bless Yaul, and thank you for being earth.

Speaker 10 (02:07:57):
So mine is very easy.

Speaker 12 (02:07:59):
I know that we are on this journey together and
we are getting extremely weary. It seems very cyclical that
every three months or four months, or five months or
six months, it feels as if we're being pulled down,
we are being put upon, we're being oppressed, We're being suppressed,
and it feels as if sometimes the faith and the
prayers simply aren't working. It feels like the price that

(02:08:21):
we're paying for change with every body and all the
blood that's flowing through the street is just too high.
We're tired of going to memorial services. We're tired of
going to funerals. We're tired of seeing people gunned down
on our streets with our own eyes. We're tired or
seeing people drug out of their homes. We're tired of
seeing black women die in the hotel excuse me, hospital

(02:08:42):
lobbies because they refuse to give them care. We're tired
or seeing our farmers suffer. We're tired or seeing people
just suffer because of who they love, or who they
pray to, or the color of their skin.

Speaker 10 (02:08:54):
We're just tired.

Speaker 12 (02:08:56):
And I guess my call to action is we all
stand before you to just a little bit more tired
today than we were yesterday. But it's incumbent upon us
to dig deep. Like Andrew said, it's incumbent upon us
to rely on that faith because when we were brought
to this country, we were stripped of everything we had,
but our faith.

Speaker 10 (02:09:17):
Rely on that rock.

Speaker 12 (02:09:18):
Rely on that faith, and make sure when you go
out you work extremely hard to make tomorrow better than yesterday.
My dream is for so steady and stokely to have
a better America than the one that I inherited. My
fear is that I'm running behind on that mission. So
I'm encouraging all of you to join me in that journey,
just to make sure that all these little black and

(02:09:41):
brown boys and girls can grow up and say that
this America is made in my image. This America is
something I can be proud of. This America actually gave
us a check that we can cash and no longer
has insufficient funds written on it. So we're here with
you all. I'm asking for your prayers, I'm asking for

(02:10:02):
your work, and I'm asking for you to rely on
that faith because we all need.

Speaker 10 (02:10:06):
That at this time.

Speaker 1 (02:10:07):
Thank you, b So my kind of action is all
thank yous to y'all. We love y'all so much. Thank
you for welcoming us with open arms. I want to
give a shout out again to Act Blue for their
Minnesota Freedom Fund the setup. We pray that again you
all at home will donate to that for all of
you in this room. If you have neighbors who need groceries,

(02:10:28):
we have so many groceries for y'all to take hygiene kits.
Please make sure you go through Paradise all to do that.
We say it again, I'm directionally challenged, so I believe
him I also want to give a special shout out
to Capri Theater. Y'all please give it up for them.
They turn this around so quickly. If you don't already,

(02:10:48):
please make sure you're donating to support the mission of
this critical work. This created a safe space for all
of us to express ourselves and to know that we
would not be terrorized by the Ice people. Also, I
want to shout out Attorney Leslie Redman, who I shouted
out earlier when Tana Mellikan again, Ellie, I'm sorry, not Ellie,
I'm used to r Elie, Eli, Danielle Lauren of Minnesota

(02:11:13):
Freedom Fund, all of them.

Speaker 13 (02:11:14):
Do.

Speaker 14 (02:11:14):
Wanna Thompson, who's going to be joining us just in
a moment to.

Speaker 1 (02:11:18):
Lift up the small businesses that received the micro grants
El Barito, Mercado, Colonial Market and Restaurant, Westside Boosters, Turn
Signal and Jazz and all of our community partners and
all of you please give it up for yourselves. Dwana Thompson,
Where are you come? A noun stee's business? It says up,
stay to the people, represent say of the people.

Speaker 14 (02:11:41):
Come on DT, everybody.

Speaker 40 (02:11:43):
I know the night has been long, but it's been good,
right it's been sold and riching, and so Angel loves
to have me come do this part only because I
have been living my life off of a very simple
African proverb for a while and it says that there
are some people who are so hungry that God can
only appear to them in the form of bread. So
I've been asking myself, and I'm asking you tonight, what

(02:12:05):
is your bread? What do you have to give tonight?
We do have groceries for over two hundred and something families.

Speaker 14 (02:12:12):
We brought the bread with us.

Speaker 40 (02:12:14):
But there are some businesses who've been thinking about how
they can stand with community during this time, and that
does not come with That's not easy for them. They
probably don't even have the resources to do it. And
this won't change everything, but it is a start to
recognize that we need each other. So to these seven businesses,
we see you, we love you. Please stand up when

(02:12:34):
you are called Soulbo Britney Class, I can't see nothing
but hell, mpls Sierra Carter, Sammy's Avenue Eatery Michael McDowell.

(02:12:57):
I know that KB Brown had to leave, but walk
past promotions, y'all give it up for what clat promotions
Czara Cafe, mister Calise or missus Calise, I'll be kitchen
berry berry and right smart wellness, y'all give it up
for doctor Khalil and Felicia. I will meet you at

(02:13:21):
the back to make sure that you get your micro
grants tonight, right, And so thank you so much for
everybody who stayed with us tonight. Again, we want if
you don't need the resources yourself, but you know a family,
please come back and get them. We are going to
also donate whatever is left to local organizations who are
doing the food giveaways daily so it will not go

(02:13:42):
to waste. And thank you so much for your support tonight.

Speaker 14 (02:13:46):
Oh that's not on.

Speaker 6 (02:13:46):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:13:47):
Now to close us out, Thomas Senat Petris, one of
your very own, is gonna join us again to take
us home.

Speaker 14 (02:13:54):
As we in Native Lampard.

Speaker 1 (02:13:56):
We will tell y'all what we always say, welcome home, y'all.

Speaker 4 (02:14:03):
All right, ladies and gentlemen. So I'm really proud to
debut Thish this song. We just launched it called Don't
Buy the Lie. Kashimana Ahua and myself wrote it for
just this moment. We're honored to be able to sing it. Tonight.
If you want to see the video, videographer with Jossi
did the video for us. It's available on Thomasina's music dot.

Speaker 2 (02:14:25):
Square and YouTube.

Speaker 19 (02:14:27):
So this is for the love of our.

Speaker 16 (02:14:28):
Community and for you.

Speaker 4 (02:14:30):
Thank you for being here tonight and letting.

Speaker 41 (02:14:33):
Us use our voices this way.

Speaker 6 (02:14:52):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (02:15:01):
I got my head in my head. Oh you got
me thinking, mm hmmm. Sometimes I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (02:15:15):
Why you want me drinking. M I got my head
in my hands.

Speaker 6 (02:15:24):
Oh you got me fussing.

Speaker 8 (02:15:30):
Because you done up to my place. Now you got
me cussing? Why you want me naked? Why you want
me brood? Why you want me frighten?

Speaker 13 (02:15:54):
Home?

Speaker 2 (02:15:55):
Person confused? Don't mind.

Speaker 8 (02:16:00):
It's gonna cust you to cause when they hurt me,
they hurt you.

Speaker 2 (02:16:14):
We're all connected.

Speaker 42 (02:16:19):
Can't you see none of us suffery.

Speaker 11 (02:16:28):
Till all of us suffery.

Speaker 7 (02:16:34):
You don't care who I am.

Speaker 2 (02:16:37):
You don't wanna know me. You just want to cos
ho to Lord show me. You ignore true.

Speaker 6 (02:16:55):
Rather be blind to see me.

Speaker 19 (02:17:01):
But the shame is on you.

Speaker 2 (02:17:04):
Because you could never own.

Speaker 10 (02:17:07):
It's always been.

Speaker 43 (02:17:08):
Free, so afraid of faces, so afraid of truth, moresnessing, hatred.

Speaker 6 (02:17:24):
What's this world? Coming to God.

Speaker 8 (02:17:31):
It's called a costume to cause when they hurt me,
they hurt you. We're all connected.

Speaker 42 (02:17:49):
Can't you see none of us surfree?

Speaker 2 (02:17:56):
Normal till all of us surfery.

Speaker 5 (02:18:03):
I got my heart in my hate, dreaming of what
could be.

Speaker 8 (02:18:12):
Or all in no violence, nos going hungry.

Speaker 4 (02:18:22):
No, no nose in addiction, no.

Speaker 6 (02:18:28):
Dying yards, Every life a secret more sacred than you God, No.

Speaker 8 (02:18:39):
Gods gonna lost you too.

Speaker 2 (02:18:47):
Husband.

Speaker 6 (02:18:48):
They hurt me, they hurt you.

Speaker 2 (02:18:56):
We're all connected.

Speaker 29 (02:19:00):
Mh.

Speaker 2 (02:19:01):
Can't you see none.

Speaker 6 (02:19:06):
Of us suffree? No till all of.

Speaker 8 (02:19:10):
Us suffree, None of us suffree, Still all of us suffery.

Speaker 2 (02:19:21):
Can we say it to everybody? None of us suffree,
to all of us.

Speaker 29 (02:19:32):
Free?

Speaker 10 (02:19:39):
Thomas say, I cut your suffen?

Speaker 1 (02:19:41):
Thank you, Ny Dave lampod is a production of iHeartRadio

(02:20:02):
and partnership with reisent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.

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Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Tiffany Cross

Andrew Gillum

Angela Rye

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Betrayal Season 5

Dateline NBC

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