"Bad Law": Ten Laws Ruining America Exposed | "American Sirens": First Paramedics Were Black - #RolandMartinUnfiltered

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
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Speaker 1 (01:27):
Today's Friday, August first, twenty twenty five coming up on
roland Mark and Unpulches, streaming live on the Black Start Network,
a special edition. Two fantastic book interviews you do not
want to miss. First up, the Nation's Justice correspondent Ellie
Mittel talks about his new book Bad Law, Ten Popular
Laws that are Ruining America that examines how our country's

(01:49):
laws with immigration, abortion, and voting rights don't reflect the
will of most Americans. He offers a perspective of how
we'll be better off of abolishing them and starting over.
Also on today's show, that you know the first paramedics
and America were black. Yeah, I didn't know that either
until I saw this scene from HBO's TV series The Pit,

(02:11):
which includes references to the Freedom House Enterprises Ambulance Service,
which was considered the first professional paramedic service in the
United States. Folks, it's a fantastic book that breaks down this.
Author Kevin Hazard wrote American Sirens. Trust me, you don't
want to miss that as well. It is time to

(02:33):
get our read on. It's time to bring the funk
on rolling Buck unfilchup on the black stud network. Let's go.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Held it.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
Whatever it is, he's got fined plas.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
He's right on time and.

Speaker 5 (02:49):
Best believe he's knowing.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
Loston news to politics with entertainment justin keeps. He it's.

Speaker 6 (03:14):
He's he's filed up.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Question.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
No, he's roll folks. We've got many laws in this country,
but it doesn't mean that they can't be changed. Well,
Ellie missteril, you've seen them many times in our show. Uh,

(03:37):
he's the course justice correspondent for the nation. It's a
new book called Bad Law. Ten popular laws that are
ruining America. It's a book that you definitely want to
check out. And Ellie breaks down to me why these
laws should be changed and saying, listen, most Americans don't
even agree with these laws. And in his latest literary
work he lays out his thoughts on how Trump is

(03:59):
blatantly this respecting the law, so many other issues that
we break down. Here's our conversation. All right, Elliott, before
we get into Bad Law, explain the people that we

(04:20):
literally are facing a significant constitutional crisis because of the twice,
impeach crimly convicted thug con man in chief Donald Trump. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (04:32):
So, the way that I've tried to get people to
understand the problem here, right, is this, the president does something,
whatever president, whoever president, the president does something. Now, what's
supposed to stop the president from doing those things?

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Right?

Speaker 6 (04:47):
Well, we have a couple of options.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Right.

Speaker 7 (04:49):
We have laws that are passed by Congress. We have
court orders that are issued by the judicial power, usually
the Supreme Court. If the president can ignore both of those, right,
if he doesn't have to follow the law as written
down by Congress, and he doesn't have to follow a
court order as issued by a federal court, then we
don't have anything approaching a democratic self government.

Speaker 6 (05:13):
We have a fascist.

Speaker 7 (05:15):
Dictatorship where the whims of the ruler affect what kind
of situation we live in. Right, And that's exactly what
Trump is doing.

Speaker 8 (05:25):
Now.

Speaker 7 (05:25):
One great way to understand it is with all of
his illegal, unconstitutional funding freezes. Right, he's cutting off money
to various organizations. Any organization that basically hires and hires
and admits black people, their money is under threat. Right now,
that money that Trump is taking away was authorized by Congress.
It wasn't authorized by the president. It was authorized by

(05:47):
an Act of Congress. He has been told by the
Supreme Court and various lower courts to put them to
give the money back, to turn the money back on,
but he doesn't. He just keeps not paying people. Right,
So what do you call that?

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Right?

Speaker 7 (06:05):
If the president can stop money from going to places
that are that the Congress has already authorized that, the
Court has already told him that he has to fund,
but he can just not do it, that's called the
constitutional crisis. That's a situation where the rule of law
has broken down and now we're at the whims of
a war lord, which is what Trump thinks of him

(06:26):
is just how Trump thinks of himself.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
And for people who don't understand, there's an enforcement mechanism
in the court, and it's called the Department of Justice.

Speaker 7 (06:37):
Yeah, the Department of Justice doesn't really function anymore, right
because the Department of Justice has been completely captured by
the MAGA movement. Pam Bondi is not an independent United
States Attorney general. She is a sycophantic United States Attorney General.
She just does what Trump tells tells her to do.
And so there's going to be no federal law force

(07:01):
forcing Trump to do any of the things that he
doesn't want to do. And I keep talking about Trump,
but I also want people to understand this isn't just
about Trump. This is also about the co president Elon Musk, right,
Because for all of the court orders that are aimed
at restricting or restraining Trump's action, there are also a
ton that are aimed at restricting or restraining Elon Musk's

(07:23):
actions through doge right. But again, who's supposed to enforce that?
Who's going to force Elon Musk to follow with court order? Well,
that would have to be the executive branch, the president
United States, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, and
all of those organizations are so afraid of Musk if
they won't say boo to him. So not only does

(07:44):
Trump get to operate above the law because he simply
ignores court orders against them, but must gets to operate
above the law because Trump won't enforce any court orders.

Speaker 6 (07:53):
Against his daddy.

Speaker 7 (07:55):
And that's the again, that's the vice script that these
people have our country in right now. This is, without
being hyperbolic, this is how democracies died. This is how
you go from a republican government based on democratic self
interest and universal saverage to a dictatorship.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
And was laughable. Is that the person who made all
of this possible is John Roberts. By the Supreme Court
allowing Trump to win by saying, you have community, you
can do whatever you want. He took that ruling and said, oh,

(08:39):
if I get back in, I don't give a damn
what anybody has to say, because I'm the king.

Speaker 7 (08:46):
The best thing that you can say about John Roberts,
if you're trying to be completely generous to him, is
that he is doctor Frankenstein right in the Mary Shelley
novel of the same name, that he created a monster
and now he's kind of around me like, oh my god,
what to do about the monster? It's killing my cousins.
Like that's the best way of thinking about Roberts. But

(09:08):
I think that is far too generous. I don't you know,
doctor Frankenstein feels bad about the monster that he created.
I don't think John Roberts feels bad. I don't think
John Roberts is particularly afraid of the monster. I think
John Roberts likes it. I think John Roberts liked the
monster that he created. Is now going around and snuffing
out the rights of people that John Roberts himself has

(09:30):
never liked and never thought should have rights in the
first place. So I do so I think they're acting
more in coordination than as than at opposition. There are
things that there are processes the way, there's a way
that Trump is doing it that I suspect John Roberts
isn't thrilled about. But the outcome, the final actions that

(09:51):
Trump is taking, the policies that he is implementing by fiat.
I think these are policies that John Roberts generally agrees with,
and that is why he's allowed. He created Trump in
the first place.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
And see, this is the thing that for me, I
keep saying to any Democrat in the future. First off,
if I'm running a president and I'm a Democrat, I'm
gonna say, the press is going to say, Governor so
and so, sener so and so, Congressman so and so,

(10:22):
congress Woman so on and so. Are you gonna release
your test scores? Your are your transcripts?

Speaker 9 (10:29):
No?

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Are you going to release your health records? Nope? Are
you going to release are you gonna put your money
in the blind trust? Hell no. And then and if
they win, I'm going to use every inch of power
of the presidency. See Ellie, this is the thing that

(10:51):
that I believe happened. Democrats want to uphold the virtuous institution.
Republicans are about power.

Speaker 7 (11:03):
Republicans use power maximally whenever they get a chance, and
Democrats doubt and roland. That actually kind of brings me
back into my book and to why I wrote it, right,
Because when Republicans get into office, they come in with
a plan, and that plan is to smash things. They

(11:23):
want to smash people's rights, They want to smash people's
abilities to resist them. They want to create a system
where Republicans can never be uncreated, can never be kicked
out of office again. They come in with a sledgehammer
and they take it to government institutions. Right when Democrats
come into office, they come into office with super glue

(11:44):
and duct tape, and they try to reconstitute things that
the Republicans have smashed before, without without their own sledgehammer,
without their own plan or strategy, to smash the things
that the Republicans have created, the often evil, race, misogynist
things that Republicans have created. The Democrats don't come in
with a sledge hammer. They come in with again a

(12:07):
role of duct tape, trying to protect institutions as opposed
to smashing the evil institutions that Republicans erected.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Right.

Speaker 7 (12:16):
And one of the reasons why I wrote the book
is that, as I've been saying Roland, this is my
attempt to start writing Project twenty twenty nine. Right, Republicans
came in Probate twenty twenty five with a plan. They
are implementing that plan. It is terrible for our people. Right, Well,
what's the Democrats plan to counteract that?

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Right?

Speaker 7 (12:37):
All you've got is like, we're not gonna do what
the Republicans do. We're not like that doesn't have that
People don't come out to vote because they're like, oh,
Orange Man is very bad. They already know the Orange
Man is very bad. They bake that into the system.
Democrats need an actual plan for what they're going to do.
And I argue what they're gonna smash if they ever

(12:57):
get the opportunity to hold sledgehammer again. And my book
is about ten things the Democrats could smash if they
ever get power again in twenty twenty nine.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
So here's a perfect example. So Trump comes in, he
overturns the Lennon Bangs Johnson executive order as a relates
strogration in federal jobs. Democrats, Oh my god, the Dobbs decision.
They overturned Roe v. Wade. That's because Democrats actually were, oh,

(13:30):
it's it's it's you know, a star decisive. Oh no,
that's it's halready been decided. Republicans were saying, no, no, no, no,
we get the court. We overturned the sucker. Democrats did
not use the power of legislation to codify, to make
it law. They just said, oh, the courts, they're never

(13:52):
going to touch that again. This right wing court is like,
oh hell no, we gonna go back and tear down everything.
Them accepting the fourteenth Amendment. They are literally saying, we're
going to exercise power. What you're laying out is, Democrats,
if you get power again, damn it, use it.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
Use it right, use it.

Speaker 7 (14:13):
And it's not You were talking about the lack of
legislative protections for abortion rights under previous Democrats tech democratic administrations.
But you and I have talked about all of the
executive actions Biden could have taken even after the Adobs
decision to make sure that abortions were still available and
safe and effective in the red states that were banning abortion. Right,

(14:33):
there was immense federal power that Biden could have used,
could have brought to bear to make sure that you
could still get an abortion in Texas. Because Texas's laws,
for instance, banning abortions don't apply to military bases. That's
federal law. They don't apply to Native reservations, that's federal law.

(14:53):
The administration could have made abortions available on every military
base in Texas regards regardless of what Greg Abbott and
Jonathan Mitchell would have said, and there would have been
nothing that Texas could have done about it, because that's
a uh, that's a vector of federal power that happens
to exist in the state of Texas.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Right.

Speaker 7 (15:13):
But Democrats don't play that game. Democrats Democrats don't again,
don't use the power maximally.

Speaker 6 (15:20):
Look, I have.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Here's the line that I use, Ellie. Republicans go, what line?
Hain't a line. Democrats see the line from five hundred
yards away and they go, we can't, we can't get
you the line. You're five hundred yards away, You're not
even up close and that's that to me, what is maddening.

(15:45):
The purpose of winning is to exercise power.

Speaker 7 (15:52):
It's It's something that Republicans have always understood. It's why
the Republicans have been able to take over the Supreme Court.
It's why the Republicans have been in fact, and if
you even if you look right now, there are people
who don't like who voted for Trump, who don't really.

Speaker 6 (16:05):
Like what he's doing.

Speaker 7 (16:06):
I mean, nobody likes paying you know, seven dollars for
a dozen eggs, and nobody likes the tariffs, and you know,
nobody likes not being able to get their hands on
the switch to They don't like what Trump is doing,
but they still give him credit for doing it. They
still say that, well, he's trying to keep his promises.
He said he was going to do this, and now
he's using all of his power to do what he

(16:27):
promised to do.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Right.

Speaker 7 (16:29):
Democrats never get the benefit of that, because Democrats are
never seen to be using their power as fully as
they could. You know, democrats are you know, I remember
in the Biden administration, we had to have entire discussions.
I had to write entire articles about the Senate parliamentarian
and that functionary in terms of whether or not Biden

(16:51):
could get his budget and his agenda passes. Everybody said,
they talked about the Senate parliamentarian hundred.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Days they did. You know what, they said, We're not
gonna follow him. We're not gonna follow him. Democrats actually said, well,
the Senate Pulmentarium has ruled, so therefore we can't do that.
Republicans with we're gonna ignore them.

Speaker 6 (17:15):
Yeah, and they just kept on stepping right.

Speaker 7 (17:18):
So, like the it's one of the reasons why Democrats
are always fighting an asymmetrical war, right, because Trump and
people need to understand this. The most popular part of
Trump is the bigotry and the misogyny, right, that's very clear.
I don't think that I have to tell your viewers
and listeners that.

Speaker 6 (17:37):
I think most of the people who are watching your
show know that, right.

Speaker 7 (17:41):
But his second most popular thing is his attack on institutions.
People feel, rightly that the institutions haven't worked for them,
haven't helped them get get ahead, have held them back.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
And that appeals to Democrats.

Speaker 6 (17:56):
That appeals to democrats.

Speaker 7 (18:00):
It appeals to democrats, that appeals to black folks, that
appeals like when we go into our communities. Those are
the kinds of things that we hear that the institutions
haven't worked thus far. Why should we be voting for
the party that defends institutions. That's a really good argument
that even I have trouble defeating when I'm out on

(18:20):
the street, right because I also don't like institutions, and
I hate how Democrats always.

Speaker 6 (18:26):
Seem to defend them.

Speaker 7 (18:27):
Trump's second most popular aspect of his racist, misogynist personality
is the idea that he is an anti institutionalist and
he is going to smash the things that get in
people's way. The democrats counterpoint can't be no, no, we're
gonna protect the things that get in people's way. We're
gonna protect these esoteric, elitist, ossified institutions that haven't actually

(18:51):
lived up to their form or function. That's always the
Democrats point, and that is a losing argument. And so
when you bring up people like Bernie Sanders or aoc
Rihanna Presley or Jasmine Crockett, one.

Speaker 6 (19:02):
Of the reasons why they're popular.

Speaker 7 (19:04):
Is because they are also anti institutionalists. They are also
unwilling to let traditions and conservatism with a small c
the idea that things in the past were. They're not
willing to fall for the ocadokee and they're willing to
smash the institutions that gets get in the way of
our progress, just as much as Trump is. And that's

(19:26):
one of the reasons why they're popular. That's one of
the reasons why you have people who vote for AOC
and Donald Trump in the same election. Right from thirty
thousand feet politics, that makes no sense. They're on two
opposite eyes, sides of the spectrum. But when you think
about their anti institutional base, that is how you get

(19:47):
AOC and Trump voters, right, And it's a problem the
Democrats haven't faced directly, and it's one of the huge
reasons why they are bleeding people of co right. And
I don't like to do the white media thing. I
don't like to suggest that Trump is winning black people

(20:09):
or winning Latinos. He's still incredibly underwater Trump. If we
walked around unprotected in Harlem, he would get his ass kicked.
You know, this is not a close thing. But for Republicans,
when they don't need to win the African American vote,
they just need to not get blown off the screen, right,

(20:30):
And so those small marginal numbers of going from like
eleven percent of the black vote to fifteen percent of
the Black vote, going from fifteen percent of the Black
vote to seventeen percent of the Black vote, that can
make huge differences, not just in the national election, but
also in all these state and local elections around the country.
And the reason why Democrats are bleeding Black voters and

(20:50):
Latino voters, and Arab voters and Asian voters is because
of the institutionalism of the party versus the anti institutionalism
of Trump in the MAGA movement. And it's a it's
a problem that we have to that we have to
address head on in twenty twenty six, in twenty twenty

(21:11):
eight if we're gonna have a chance to stop this guy.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Hello, I'm Isaac's the third founder and CEO of fan Base.
Listen to what I'm about to tell you. The window
to invest in fan Base is closing. We've raised over
ten point six million of our seventeen million dollar goal.
That means there's room for less than six thousand, three
hundred and seventy people to invest in fan Base for
the average amount. The minimum to invest in fan Base

(21:49):
right now is three hundred and ninety nine dollars. That
makes you an owner in fan Base today. Go to
start Engine dot com slash fan Base to invest. Why
because current social apps have taken advantage of users for
far too long with content suppression, shadow banning, homeful, racist content,
and no real tools for monetization and equity. Fan Base

(22:09):
has over one point four million users in counting, allowing
anyone to reach all their following and monetize their content
from day one. Social media is the new TV, and
whoever owns an app to distribute that content have the
opportunity to own potential billion dollar companies. While big platforms
with certain futures are failing to serve their users, fan
Base is stepping up to fill the gap. Don't wait

(22:31):
until it's too late, invest now. Invest for yourself and
your future. Go to start Engine dot com slash fan
Base and own the next generation of social media.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
You lay out ten properlar laws that are ruining your
There you, I take it. Your list is actually longer.
So how did you arrive at these specific ten? Yeah?

Speaker 7 (23:08):
Roland look scoping was obviously the hardest, the hardest problem
for the book. There are lots of laws, many of
them are dumb. I have not read them all. The
way that I scope, the way that I whittled it
down to ten is that I thought of two things. One,
what are laws that we can just repeal, right, not
laws that we need to reform or massage or bring
into the modern age. What can we just be rid of?

(23:30):
A great example of this is the Anti Drug Abuse
Act right now. I do not like the Anti Drug
Abuse Act. I do not like our drug laws. I
think they are probably racist and have caused great damage
to multiple communities, including hours. However, I'm not gonna say
that we should repeal all drug laws.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Right.

Speaker 7 (23:49):
We should probably still have some drug laws. I don't
work for the Sackler family. I'm not trying to get
people hooked on opielites opiolites. There should be some you know,
minimum standard of drug laws and the country. They should
be fair, they should be equal, they shouldn't be racist, whatever.
But the Anti Drug Abuse Act is an example of
the law that needs.

Speaker 6 (24:06):
To be reformed.

Speaker 7 (24:07):
The laws that I wrote about in the book, the
ten that I've picked were laws that can be strict struck,
just gotten rid of, that don't need to be reformed,
that are so evil, so racist, so stupid, so misogynists
that they can just be that we can just be
rid of them.

Speaker 9 (24:22):
Right.

Speaker 7 (24:23):
So that was the first focusing mechanism, and the second was,
as I say in the title of the book, these
are ten popular laws that are ruining America. All the
laws that I focus on in the book enjoyed broad
by partisan support when they passed. Now, in a lot
of cases, democrats belateantly are just like, oh, that that

(24:44):
was a bad idea. We shouldn't have done that, we
shouldn't have done the nineteen ninety four Crime Bill. Whoops,
that was a huge mistake.

Speaker 6 (24:49):
Right.

Speaker 7 (24:50):
But at the time, the nineteen ninety four Crime Bell,
the arm Career Criminals Act, these were laws that were
spearheaded and championed by not just for public plans, but
also Democrats. You don't get the nineteen ninety four crime
Bill if you don't have the Congressional Black Caucus getting
it over the line. Those were critical CBC votes that

(25:10):
got the nineteen ninety four crime Bill passed.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Right.

Speaker 7 (25:13):
So the other scoping for the book where people wanted
these laws when they were passed, and they're terrible.

Speaker 6 (25:20):
Let me tell you why, let me tell you how.

Speaker 7 (25:24):
In a real time. I never asked people in the
book to just take my word for it. I go
and I pull out what the people who wrote or
passed the law, what they said the law was intended
to do. And in most cases they're pretty honest about
the racism or the misogyny or the scipidity that they
wanted to do when they passed those laws. And again,

(25:45):
in a lot of cases, Democrats have belateantly, you know,
come to Jesus and been like, oh, that was a
terrible mistake, but the law still exists. And again that's
the problem with the sledgehammer, right. We passed these terrible laws.
We later realized the law law was bad, but we
don't when we have the opportunity take them away.

Speaker 6 (26:04):
We don't get rid of them.

Speaker 7 (26:06):
They just linger on, so that Republicans, whenever they get
an opportunity, can make those laws worse and worse and worse,
building on the rotten foundation that these laws laid in
the first place.

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Speaker 1 (27:20):
When it comes to so you talked about you talk
about the drug law and in obviously one of the
ones that that that really resonates with us, it is
voter waits.

Speaker 6 (27:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (27:31):
So my argument in the book is that every single
voter registration law should be repealed.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right.

Speaker 7 (27:37):
That's different from voter eligibility requirements. I believe that we
still need voter eligibility requirements, and I don't want people
at me. I'm not saying that dead people can vote.
That's you're ineligible to vote if you're not allied. I
think that's a fair standard. I'm not even saying that
non citizens can vote. I can make an argument that
we should allow non citizens to vote, but that's not
the argument I make in the book. I'm like, all

(27:59):
you want to say the citizens is a requirement for
voting rights. That's fine, once you meet the eligibility requirements,
why should you have to preregister?

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Right?

Speaker 7 (28:10):
If I am eligible to vote, why can't I just
show up and vote? Why do I have to register days, weeks,
sometimes months in advance? Why do I have to go
through a second hoop when I'm already eligible to vote?
You see, voter registration requirements do not prevent ineligible voters
from voting. Voter eligibility requirements prevents that.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
And then, of course, in of course, we need a
Supreme Court rule that, Oh it was a case of Ohio,
why goy suit? Oh you haven't voted in the last
two or three elections, so yeah, they got to remove
you from the polls.

Speaker 7 (28:42):
What why voter purges happen because of voter registration requirements,
not voter eligibility requirements. Right, People who have again, who
are eligible to vote, who are should be allowed to
show up and vote for whoever they want, whenever they want,
whenever there's an election. They are being prevented from voting
because of these ridiculous registration requirements.

Speaker 6 (29:04):
Right, we should get rid of them.

Speaker 7 (29:05):
And again, not only do you not have to take
my word for it, this is not a solution that
I am the only person that has come up with
every other major democracy on this earth either has automatic registration,
mandatory registration, or same day registration. Every other democracy collapses

(29:27):
the friction between being eligible, eligible to vote and being
registered to vote. They don't have that distinction. We are
the only one that has this two step process. First,
be eligible, then prove registration, usually weeks or months in
advance before you're actually allowed to vote. It's stupid, right.
We have one state in this country that doesn't have

(29:48):
voter registration requirements, North Dakota. There are a lot of
voter fraud or voter voter fraud stories coming out of
North Dakota.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (30:01):
Is North Dakota even a blue state? I mean people
always are attacking. He's saying like, oh, I'm just trying
to make it easier for Democrats to win. Not necessarily,
North Dakota is not a blue state, and it has
no registration requirements. The reason why North Dakota has no
registration requirements is because North Dakota has, relatively speaking, a
large Native American population and they want to make it

(30:22):
easier for the Native people to vote. And the way
to make it easier for Native people to vote is
to not have a registration requirement. You have an eligibility requirement.
You show up, Ay, I'm eligible, vote great, you vote boom,
simple Democratic. That's all you need. That's all North Dakota needs.
It's all France needs, it's all Israel needs, it's all
Chili needs, it's all the UK needs, it's all Australian needs.

(30:44):
I can list the countries. We are alone in our
stupidity over voter registration.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
And again when you have the Mansions of the world,
who oh they love and they praise John Lewis in
Christian cinema, but then they prevent the John Lewis, you know,
voter law from actually being passed. And then Democrats privately

(31:15):
agreed to a Mansions deal. Oh, let's go forward with
voter id things along those lines, undercutting all of the
progressive legal arguments.

Speaker 7 (31:24):
Right the Democrats again, they may come into office, they
don't do the things necessary to expand voting rights. The
best you can hope for for Democrats is that they
will try to prevent the further restriction of voting rights.
But that's hard to get people to vote for We're
stopping the further restraints.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Or even in blue states. I mean, look, you're there
in New York State. New York State, for a very
long time had some of the worst voting laws in America.
They were worth a lot of red states.

Speaker 6 (31:57):
Still does, still does.

Speaker 7 (31:58):
In my chopter on registration, I focus on New York's laws,
not Texas, not Florida, not one of these red states.
New York has some of still has some of the
worst voting laws in the country. Why because having voter restrictions,
having voter suppression helps the establishment right in New York.

(32:22):
In New York, the way that it really works is
that it makes it very hard to vote in New
York if you are a renter, which you know a city.
When you think about New York City, a city with
eight million people, most of them rented. What that does
is that it decreases the power of New York City
visa the rest of the state. In fairness, the first

(32:44):
massive voter registration law in the country was passed in
New York in the eighteen seventies. Why because New York
was getting a lot of immigrants from Europe, was getting
a lot of former freed slaves migrating up from the South,
and they decided they didn't want to have all those
people who would guard were going to be eligible to vote.
They didn't want to have all those people able to vote,

(33:07):
so they added a voter registration requirement. But critically, that
voter registration requirement in New York State only applied to
New York City. So if you lived in Brooklyn, you
had to register to vote. But if you lived in Syracuse,
if you lived in Albany, if you lived on Long Island,
you didn't have to register to vote. Why because white

(33:29):
folks with money lived in those places, whereas black whereas
black people immigrants lived in the city, and those are
the people they didn't want to allow to vote. New
York State is not just one of the worst now,
it's one of the worst historically when it comes to
voting rights.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
So why do voter rights advocates, why did they just
keep skipping New York State? Like you don't You don't
see voting rights groups holding mass rallies in Albany or
New York City or whatever the it what because it's blue.

Speaker 7 (34:03):
Because it's blue, I mean, that's the only answer that
I've got.

Speaker 6 (34:06):
Because it's blue.

Speaker 7 (34:06):
Because they think that they've got bigger fish to Fry
and I you know, if you if you make it
easier for people to register, vote and vote in states
like North Carolina, in states like Mississippi, obviously, in states
like Georgia, you can flip those states. You can turn
those states from red to blue. Because as we know, Texas,
and you know, the line about Texas is always Texas

(34:28):
is not a red state. It's a non voting state,
right And if you've got a lot of more people
registered in Texas, you could flip Texas a blue and
that would completely change the map of America. So I
understand why they focus some of their efforts, more of
their efforts and places in the South as opposed to
New York State. But I think it would I think

(34:48):
it would say it would show how non partisan the
voting rights and voter registration movement is if they had
as much smoke for New York as they have for
places in the South. Because again, it doesn't have to
be a partisan issue. Making sure making sure that it's
easy and frictionless for people to register to vote or

(35:10):
and then vote doesn't necessarily mean the Democrats win.

Speaker 6 (35:15):
It means that Americans win.

Speaker 7 (35:17):
It means that Americans get to participate in their government
as was promised to us in our flawed constitution. That's
a bigger goal than any one party being in power
in any one state. Of course, the Republicans understand that
their best chance of winning is to have the fewest

(35:38):
amount of people voting, right, and that's where we get
to the voter ID laws. Now, I've made the argument
Roland that if you gave me automatic registration, if you
gave me the mandatory registration, automatic registration, portable registration also
being entirely critical, right, So like your registration should follow
you when you move, you shouldn't have to reregister going

(36:00):
back to New York. If I move from apartment to
B to Apartment one A in my own building, I
got to.

Speaker 6 (36:08):
Reregister to vote.

Speaker 7 (36:09):
So a huge thing is voter Voter registration portability is
something that we need in this country.

Speaker 6 (36:16):
But if you gave me all that, I would give
you voter ID.

Speaker 7 (36:20):
If you want to give me a national voter ID,
then everybody can get that is free. Free is critical
because the twenty fourth Amendment constitutionally prohibits a poll tax,
and having an ID that you have to pay for
becomes a form of poll tax. However small. You might
argue that it is so if you give me a free,

(36:41):
easily accessible national ID, and in exchange you give me
national voter registration and portability and automatic registration. I make
that trade every day. I make that trade every day.
You know who doesn't the Republicans, because the Republicans aren't
actually concerned with voter fraud. They don't actually want to

(37:01):
stop voter fraud because voter fraud doesn't really exist. They
want to stop people from voting. And my plan would
make it easier for eligible citizens to vote, even if
they had to get an ID to prove that they're eligible.
And that's why Republicans will never go for it.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Hey, y'all, welcome to the Other Side of Change, only
on the Blackstar Network and hosted by myself.

Speaker 8 (37:43):
Free Baker and Mike good Sis Jami or Burley.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
We are just two.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics, gender
and pop culture.

Speaker 12 (37:52):
And we don't just settle for commentary.

Speaker 13 (37:53):
This is about solution driven dialogue to get us to
the world.

Speaker 5 (37:56):
As it could be and not just as it is.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
To watch us on the blacks Our Network, So tune
in to the episode.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Of change.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
As you had to make it a sure reach out
to you and say, damn, Ellie, you're making a lot
of sense. We're gonna take up this cause.

Speaker 7 (38:37):
Man, I don't punch that far by my way.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
No. I mean, look, look, you're on television, on radio,
you do podcasts, all these different things. You've been laying
these things out and are they listening. I mean, are
they literally, Hey, Ellie, you know what, walk me through this,
Explain to me how we can do this, or because
that's what the right does. The right is always they've

(39:04):
always listened to their thinkers. A lot of the things
that we see today came out of conservative think tanks
from authors. When you actually look at Donald Trump's entire
campaign and how he operates, he completely ripped off Pat Buchanan.

Speaker 7 (39:26):
Yeah, I mean, you're you're absolutely right. I mean, the
conservative think tank mafia is responsible for many of the
conservative and Republican ideas, whereas the Democrats do not use.
It's far more august I would argue think tank mafia
to inform their own policies and positions.

Speaker 6 (39:49):
And there are a couple of reasons for that.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Right.

Speaker 7 (39:52):
Number One, Democrats do not accept that they are the
party that they are right. The Democrats want to be
at the establishment levels. They want to be the white
working class party. They're still waiting for Reagan voters to
come back home to the Democratic Party. Now, you and
I know that that ain't never gonna happen, but many

(40:15):
Democratic officials, many people in power, still believe that there
is a you know, unwashed mass of white working class
people who are just who were just about to vote
for Democrats, and so in that if you believe that
listening to a black guy like me doesn't seem to
be in your best interest, because I'm not the guy

(40:36):
that you want to send to, you know, Huntington, West Virginia,
to commence some coal miners to vote for the Democratic Party,
even though the ideas that I have would help coal
miners in West Virginia. I'm not the messenger necessarily that
you want to have. So that's one of the reasons
why we don't listen to our think tank mafia. But

(40:56):
I think the so that's kind of like on the ground,
but I think in a larger sense, it's not so
much that people aren't listening to people like me, it's
who's listening to people like me? Right, The younger people
in our party. Do you know I've had conversations with
some of the younger representatives and some of the younger

(41:17):
legislative slators and some of the younger candidates. You know,
I do have those conversations, And I know for a
fact that there are younger people, not just people of color,
but primarily people of color, not just women, but primarily
women who are thinking along my lines and are interested
in my ideas or ideas from people like me and

(41:40):
like us.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Right.

Speaker 7 (41:41):
The problem is that those people are not in leadership
establishment positions, right, and they there's the the old guard
kind of won't get out of the way and let
the new guard take the leadership roles and become the
tip of the spear. There's still just a lot of

(42:03):
old guard dead hand control over the party now, not
every which.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Is why I believe what that new guard has to
understand is they've got to organize and mobilize external pressure
in order to bring that to bear. The reality is,
I don't care what it is, you cannot succeed solely
with an inside game. Yes, when you are and when

(42:29):
you are in an agitator, when you are when you're
operating guerrilla warfare. When you are an insurgent, you cannot
play by traditional rules. And I think they've got to
have forces outside. And this is the hardest thing for
people to understand. You've got to have folk who are

(42:49):
willing to unleash protests, protesters demonstrators against folk who you say, hey,
I agree with you last week. Because this thing is
so important, we need to win it.

Speaker 7 (43:01):
All you need outside And it's one of the reasons
why I don't run for office. I think I'm I'm
more effective on the outside than I would ever be
on the inside.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Here, ye, I'm way I'm way too. No. No, actually,
actually I no, Actually, I think here's the problem. Actually,
not a problem. I think folks like you and I
the problem is we are so honest that we we
might start with twenty thousand votes and end up with
five yes. But because we're not tolerating people's bullshit, we're

(43:35):
not tolerated. We're not It's like when people I remember,
I remember if somebody asked me and said, I mean
every place that I've worked in they asked me to
run for office. I said, let me explain to y'all
how this is gonna go. Because stituent's gonna come up
to me and they're gonna say, I want you something
about our schools. And my response then is gonna be
do you have any children in the school? And they're
gonna say, yes, they do. I said, where do they

(43:56):
go to school? Then they're gonna say set elementary school.
I'm gonna say, you remember the PTA. They're gonna say no.
Then I'm gonna say, how in the hell could you
ask me to fix your schools when you're sorry asked?
Can't even join your own PTA? See right here that
voters gone because because because I just believe, Ellie, that
the greatest fear in our society. And I don't mean

(44:18):
black people, I mean everybody. People hate accountability.

Speaker 7 (44:22):
I think I I would definitely put that in the
top five. People do not like to be called, you know,
on their own bullshit. I also think that like to
to to to run for office, to to to be
a politician, you have to believe that there is a
certain institutional procedure to all of this stuff that can

(44:46):
be massaged and and and and bet to your will.
And I don't necessarily believe that. That's why I kinda
I think I'm better on the outside, pushing people to
become more educated and to become more knowledgeable, and to
as I say in the in the book, don't vote harder,
vote smarter. I think that I have a role to
play there. I think if you put me in Congress,

(45:07):
I'm weakened, uh in some way, because Congress is about compromise.

Speaker 6 (45:11):
Conference.

Speaker 7 (45:12):
Congress is about you know, working across the aisle and
trying to find work together where you can with the
people who you can't like. And that's that's That's never
been my kind of mode of even thinking, much less
my reality. Right, So I don't think that that I
that I that I would be great in that kind
of role. But there are people who are great in
that kind of role. And the people who really want

(45:33):
to do change right now tend to be the younger people.
And I don't want to I'm not being as you know,
Hank Johnson is one of you know, I think the
best congressman that we have, and I've had the opportunity
to talk to him quite a few times about some
of my ideas. I think he's a great guy. So
I don't want to be just ageous about this whole thing.
But there is a sense that there is an old
guard that is squelching the progress and the uprising from

(45:57):
the younger parts of the Democratic Party. And it's something
that we need to figure out now, right, not four
years from now, not eight years from now, not just
when these people finally die. We need to figure out that.
We need to figure that out now. I do not
know that we will have a free and fair mid
term election in twenty twenty six. I do not know
that we will have a free and fair presidential election

(46:20):
in twenty twenty eight. But I am certain we will
have a free and fair democratic primary. And it is
in that free and fair democratic primary where the new
generation and the people who are sick, who are sick
of this government, need to make their voices heard. You know,
Democrats in twenty twenty six who are insufficiently committed to

(46:42):
fighting fascism need to get got in that twenty twenty
six primary. If you take out some you can start
to change the entire party. I always tell people, and
I know you do this to Roland. The Tea Party
announced the Tea Party, which is what became the Maga Party.
They announced themselves to the world not by beating a

(47:02):
Democrat by not by beating Barack Obama, who was curb
stopping them in any kind of public pulling. They announced
themselves to the world by beating a Republican Eric Cancer
in Northern Virginia, right, a conservative but moderate conservative, up
and coming rising star in the Republican leadership. The Tea

(47:25):
Party took his ass out in a primary in northern Virginia.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
They lost, stop and stunned they were. He thought he
was coasting and the guy who beat him they had
no money.

Speaker 6 (47:38):
Yeah, and they.

Speaker 7 (47:39):
Lost the seat the Republicans. The Tea Party took him out,
put a crazy Tea Party conservative up and they got
their ass blown out of that seat in the purpling
Northern Virginia. But it made the entire Republican Party stand
up and notice, oh wait, we got to take these
Tea Parties people seriously. They've got real political power. And

(47:59):
that is what the young, up and coming part of
the Democratic Party needs to do in twenty twenty six.
We got to take out some of these old heads,
some of these establishment figures, some of these people who
are insufficiently committed to fightings fascism, and even if you
lose a seat in a general, taking them out in
the primary is what starts to make the rest of

(48:21):
the Democratic Party take you seriously and realize that they
have to play ball with your issues and along your
lines of thinkings, or else they'll be the next person
to lose a primary. We gotta not be so concerned
about electability in November and take our primaries in June
and July and August incredibly seriously in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
So I take it what David Hole is doing doesn't
freak you out and make you mad the way it
is doing others.

Speaker 7 (48:53):
No, no, no, of course, that's what we need.

Speaker 6 (48:58):
That's what we need, and we need to let these
young people lead.

Speaker 7 (49:00):
I've said before, like you know, I am my general,
I'm gen X, I'm what the white people would call
gen X.

Speaker 6 (49:06):
Right, my generation failed. My generation.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
The fact our generation is the only demographic where a
majority support Trump.

Speaker 7 (49:16):
Yep, the only one. Our generation is a failure. We
had an opportunity to push the rock forward. We had
an opportunity to build on the Barack Obamas of the world,
and we failed miserably. That means, guess what, folks, we
seed our right to lead. Our failure has seeded our

(49:39):
right to lead and must pass to the next generation,
the Millennials and the gen Zers. They're the ones who
have to lead now because we failed. What I can
do as an old head, as a gen xer, right,
my my role is to help them, right?

Speaker 6 (49:54):
My role?

Speaker 1 (49:55):
I like this.

Speaker 7 (49:56):
The analogy that I've made is that, like, look, I'm
a dad. I'm i supposed to go to the game
and bring orange slices.

Speaker 6 (50:03):
Right.

Speaker 7 (50:04):
I'm not supposed to play in the game. I'm not
supposed to score the goal. I'm not supposed to to
dunk the ball. I'm supposed to bring orange slices. I'm
supposed to take the kids out for pizza after the game, right,
And if they want to in while we're having pizza,
if they want to ask me a question or access
my knowledge, I'm happy to share. I'm happy to lend
them my expertise in the ways that they think it

(50:26):
is helpful. But I'm not the leader anymore. I'm too old.
And again my statistically speaking, I've already failed. So it's
gotta be on them. And all I'm supposed to do
is help, right, because I've got things that they don't have.
And I'm not just talking about experience I got things
that they don't have, like disposable freaking income, right, not
a lot. I wish I had more, But I got

(50:49):
a lot more than a lot of these young kids.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Right.

Speaker 6 (50:51):
I can at least spell the word mortgage.

Speaker 7 (50:54):
Right, They're ever gonna in Trump's economy, They're never gonna
get an opportunity to have.

Speaker 6 (51:01):
Right.

Speaker 7 (51:02):
So I've got some I've got some experience, I've got
some expertise, I've got some income. I can help them
in their quest, but it's got to be their quest,
and we and they've got to be the ones that
are leading it. And we've got to be the ones
that are in a support role. And that is fine
with me. I'm I'm willing to help. But they are

(51:23):
far too many in our generation, to say nothing of
the boomers who won't get out of the way, who
won't help and won't let the kids. Look, the kids
are gonna make mistakes.

Speaker 6 (51:32):
They're young.

Speaker 7 (51:33):
That's part of growing up, right there. They're gonna make mistakes.
They're gonna say things maybe they should have said. They're
gonna do things, maybe in a way that won't work,
but sometimes it will work. Sometimes they'll succeed. You know,
why would Why would a thirty year old would be
a candidate come asking me what I think our TikTok

(51:54):
strategy should be?

Speaker 6 (51:55):
Right, I don't know. I'm not digital native.

Speaker 7 (51:59):
Right, you want to ask me how to write a
print magazine article. I have some thoughts, But you want
to ask me how to, like, you know, do your
campaign ad on YouTube.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
I'm probably not the guy to asked.

Speaker 7 (52:11):
The kids are gonna have to lead, and we are
going to have to support them in their efforts.

Speaker 6 (52:17):
And that's how we're going to beat the guy.

Speaker 5 (52:20):
Se hatred on the streets.

Speaker 13 (52:36):
A horrific scene white nationalist rally that descended into deadly
violence of.

Speaker 9 (52:44):
White people are.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Losing their their minds.

Speaker 14 (52:47):
There's an angry pro Trump mob storm to the US
capital six.

Speaker 15 (52:52):
We're about to see the lads what I call white
minority resistance.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
You have seen white folks in this country who simply
cannot tell rage black posts of voting.

Speaker 16 (53:01):
I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of
violent denial.

Speaker 8 (53:06):
This is part of American history.

Speaker 14 (53:08):
Every time that people of color have made progress, whether
real or symbolic, there has been but Carol Anderson at
every university calls white rage as a.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Backlash is the right of the proud boys and the
boogaaloo boys America. There's going to be more of this.

Speaker 17 (53:25):
This country is getting increasingly racist and its behaviors and
its attitudes because of the fear of white people.

Speaker 18 (53:33):
The people that they're taking our job, they're taking our resources, they're.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Taking our women. This in White Beard all all book

(54:04):
authoricals and Danny as they were writing their book, and
as they were researching their book, as they were doing
interviews these labs, what was your what was their wild moment?
So for you, as you were putting together bad law,
what was a wild moment? Was that something that you heard,
you saw that maybe you even go damn, wow, that's crazy.

Speaker 6 (54:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (54:30):
So I wrote about the Immigration and Nationalization Act and
how that needs to be repealed. Right, And as I'm
researching how they passed this law in nineteen twenty one,
I came across their star scientists, the guys whose literal
scientific theories were used as a justification not just for

(54:50):
the law, which is our fundamental alpha immigration law, but
also for why the law was important, how the law
should be written. And this scientist was named Harry Laughlin,
which is the name that I recognized, and I couldn't
figure out why I recognized the name until I did
a little Google searching, and I realized that Harry Laughlin

(55:11):
was the chief American eugenicist of that age. He was
so popular and famous for his theories on eugenics that
Nazi Germany imported him, emigrated him to Germany to teach
the Nazis about eugenics. Right, the Nazi eugenics theory was

(55:37):
given to them by an American, specifically by this guy,
Harry Laughlin. He literally got a medal in nineteen thirty
eight from the University of Heidelberg. How much of a
bad dude you needed to be to get a medal
from the University of Heidelberg in nineteen thirty eight, Right.

Speaker 6 (55:54):
You're not a good guy. And this is the guy.

Speaker 7 (55:56):
Who, in nineteen twenty one was key to writing our
immigration laws. So that literally the Congressman now talking to
doctor Laughlin and praising his work on eugenics, says, the
reason why we need the nineteen twenty one Immigration and
Nationality Act is to stop the mongrelization of the white

(56:17):
race by the inferior races.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
And that sounds very similar to they're poisoning our blood Yep,
didn't Trump say that.

Speaker 7 (56:27):
It's exactly it's a one to one. It's a linear comparison,
it's a linear link, right, And so yeah, that was
a wow moment for me when I I, yeah, look,
I knew the immigration laws were racist, but that you've
literally got Nazi eugenics theory laced into the American immigration system.

(56:50):
That was wow. And you know, after I took a
shower because it was so gross to like read his
science and read his theories, I was like, you know,
people should know this, People need to know where these
laws come from.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Well, it's sort of like when in Virginia when Terry
mcculliff was the governor and he when he was talking
about the felity disenfranchising laws, and the story came out
where a state representative, state centator literally sit on the
floor this is to keep the darkest for voting, or
saying this is keep the niggas from voting. And what

(57:24):
I tell people is people today are defending laws and
then when people say, oh, those things are so old,
you shouldn't bring those ups. No, that's when you say no, no, no,
let's go to the route. What was the root cause
of this law. What were they talking about then? And
it is always important and that's also that's also why
I tell people you can't ignore even Supreme Court dissent,

(57:48):
because when you look at Alito today, he is Alito
Justice sam Alito is in Clayer's timas is the exact
same thing. They are referencing dessents as well as as
well as majority opinions from the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, and
they are referencing people. They're referencing frankly white supremacists.

Speaker 7 (58:12):
The thing that I do consistently in the book is
that I don't ask people to take my word for it.
I show them what the people who passed the laws
said in real time about why they wanted the.

Speaker 6 (58:23):
Law to be passed.

Speaker 7 (58:24):
There you go, because so often these people were honest.
Actually they told you directly they wanted to pass the law.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Remember at that time, yo, it was all we want.
Everybody was clear, I don't like y'all, I'm racist. Hey,
we're good. It's only today where.

Speaker 7 (58:43):
Right and people act like these these statements that they
made don't matter. And while I'm trying to show people
is that, well, if this is what they want, this
is what they said.

Speaker 6 (58:52):
They want to do. Now, here's how the law.

Speaker 7 (58:55):
Here's how the law that they wrote does exactly what
they said they wanted it to do. They seeded right
to say that these statements don't matter. You have to
imagine that these people failed, right, that these people wanted
to do racism but didn't know how to do racism
in the law, and they were just stupid to write
the law the way they wanted to. What if they weren't,

(59:16):
What if they were smart were what if they accomplished
their goals? And for at least these ten laws, I
try to show how these racist or misogynists or stupid
people anti poverty people literally accomplished the goals that they
specifically set out to accomplish when they wrote the law.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Folk. The book is called Bad Law, the ten popular
Laws that are ruining America. It is from the silver
fro Man himself, Elie misstil Ellie. I appreciate it and
praise the Lord. You upgraded your system, because I would

(59:56):
have cushed you out. You had them big ass headphones on,
looking like you had a Sony walkmin under the table
from the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 7 (01:00:05):
I still there's a part of me that still wants
to do these like radio raheem just like this, but.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
We now have a JBO speakers that we can roll Ellie.
I appreciate it, man, thanks a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:00:21):
Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Rolling all right, folks, great conversation with Ellie. When we
come back, I'll talk with the author of a book
that details the nation's first paramedics. Yes, a group of
brothers in Pittsburgh. You're watching Rolling Mark unfiltered.

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You work this man.

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Black media makes sure that our stories are hold.

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I thank you for being the voice of Black America.

Speaker 12 (01:02:06):
Rolling Almo meant to be out. Now we have to
keep this going.

Speaker 6 (01:02:11):
The video looks phenomenal.

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See this dif between Black Starr Network and Black owned
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It's time to be smart.

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Bring your eyeballs home.

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You dig.

Speaker 19 (01:02:42):
Mh Hey, we welcome back to Rolling unking the Black
Our Network.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
I didn't know this, and y'all know how I love history,
but the first paramedics in the United States African American, yes,
founded in nineteen sixte ex even in Pittsburgh, the predominantly
black Hill District. They're in Pittsburgh. Kevin Hazard has a
new book called American Sirens, and he lays out how

(01:03:22):
this started and pays tribute to these unsung heroes and
the challenges that they faced, including systemic racism, institutional adversity. Kevin,
There's so many stories, I mean, my god, we could
just go on and on and on of amazing things
African Americans have done that have not gotten credit that

(01:03:44):
people don't mention in this historical reality. At the first
paramedics were black. A lot of people had never heard
of this until that exerpt from the Max series of
the pit talked about it. This is just unbelievable. When

(01:04:07):
did you first find out about this incredible story?

Speaker 12 (01:04:13):
Summer of twenty eighteen, I'd spent a decade as a
paramedic in Atlanta, and I wrote a memoir about that experience,
and someone who read it reached out to me and said, hey,
you know, I read your book. Have you ever heard
this other story? Do you know how it all began?
And I had not, So I started researching freedom House
because those are two words that I had never heard before,

(01:04:36):
you know, and I just I didn't know what it was.
And immediately what I realized was that Freedom House was
where all of this began. So, you know, like I said,
I spent a decade as a paramedic. It was a
formative ten years of my life. And I thought I
understood the history. I thought I understood the science and
the culture of it. Beginning to research this, I realized

(01:04:56):
I didn't. And then even more so, I realized nobody
did that there was no definitive account of how. In
nineteen sixty six, a doctor looked around and said, my god,
there's you know, there are thousands of people dying for
lack of a very simple but advanced piece new branch
of emergency medicine. And if nobody else is going to
create it, I'm going to create it. And then, you know,

(01:05:18):
to top that off, he can't get anybody to you know,
to fund it. He certainly can't get anybody to join it.
And you know, they're just so he happened to be
living in Pittsburgh at the time, and there just so
happened to be a nonprofit in the city of Pittsburgh
based in the Hill District, which you know is a
predominantly black neighborhood in the city. And you know, what

(01:05:39):
they were trying to do was bring job opportunities to
local residents. They were having an incredibly difficult time doing it.
And so they walked into the hospital one day with
a very you know, basic plan to say, hey, what
if we can bring you know, just bring our residence
to the hospital. Is there a way we can sort
of create this very low tech ambulance service. And the

(01:06:02):
doctor Peter Saffer, looks across at Jim McCoy, who was
running Freedom House Ambulance, and he said, no, we are
not going to do a low tech ambulance service. We're
going to change the world. And through the course of
that meeting, two things come out. One is that the
world's first paramedics are going to be from the city
of Pittsburgh. And the second is that the world's first

(01:06:23):
paramedics are going to be black men from the Hill District.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Okay, so prior to this, what happened, Either you made
it to that, either you drove yourself to the hospital,
or you were through, or someone came to the house.

Speaker 12 (01:06:38):
Yeah, one hundred percent. It dependent on where you live.
There are some cities where it might be a volunteer
fire department. There's some places where it was a funeral home, which,
if you think about it makes sense. It's the only
business with a vehicle that can transport a person who's
lying down. But what a horrible start to your emergency.
You know, you're you're hoping that your family member doesn't die,

(01:06:58):
and what screeches up in front is a hearse, you know,
and two undertakers hop out and have to sweet flower
pedals out of the back of the hearse and then
load your family member in and racing to the hospital.
They're gonna get paid about two thousand for the funeral,
maybe twenty bucks for the ambulance ride so you can see,
you know where they're where their loyalties really lied. I mean,

(01:07:20):
it was a horrible situation and a lot of people
are dying because nobody who showed up had any kind
of training. In the city of Pittsburgh, what you had
was a police born ambulance service, So it was usually
older cops who drove around an old, beat up paddy wagon.
It had a canvas stretcher. They had no equipment, they
had no training, they had no ability to do anything

(01:07:41):
but take you to the hospital. In fact, they didn't
even ride with you, but you got to ride depending
on who you were. In the Hill district, which again
you know, low income, high crime, vast majority of the
people living there were black. And the reason that neighborhood
was the way it was because the city had routinely

(01:08:02):
sort of chipped away at its infrastructure, had denied it funding,
and because of redlining in real estate laws, people living
there were not allowed to move out into other areas,
so it just got continually cramped. So if the cops
got a call in that area, they might show up,
they might not. When they did show up, they might
transport you, when they might not. One of the future

(01:08:24):
of paramedics has you know an incredible story of his
mother having a stroke and he called for help, and
you know, this paddy wagon pulls up. Two aging cops
amble out. They slowly make their way inside. They take
one look at his mother, who's never had a drink
in her life, and said she's drunk. He knew his

(01:08:44):
mother was having a stroke as he fought with them.
He argued finally convinced them to take her to the hospital,
but they refused to carry her, so he had to
carry his own mother to the back of this paddy wagon.
He later in, they shut the doors and drove away.
His mother rode in the back alone to the hospital
where she later died of a stroke. So this was
the sort of care that existed around the country. In

(01:09:06):
nineteen sixty five, a report was released that said, you
are more likely to survive a gunshot wound in Vietnam
than you were in the US. And the reason was
for that was that in Vietnam you have a corman.
In the US, you have the volunteer fire department, you
have the funeral home, or you have two in different
police officers who show up to your house. Set of
paddy wagon, none of whom are trained. And that's what

(01:09:26):
existed prior to Freedom House.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
So these young men who started Freedom House, what was
their prior experience? Were their healthcare practitioners? Were they in
the military? I mean, how did this even just come
up to create this?

Speaker 12 (01:09:49):
So two things happened simultaneously. One is Peter Saffer, who
is the doctor who invented CPR. His own daughter died
of an asthma attack because the people who showed up
to her emergency were not able to treat her, so
by the time she got to the hospital, she was dead.

(01:10:10):
He took that experience and turned it into action, and
so he spent about a year developed what would become
the first paramedic curriculum. So that happens. Do you have
this incredibly you know advanced training program. They're able. You know,
anyone who went through his program would be able to
do essentially what a paramedic does today. But he didn't

(01:10:33):
have the people and so, you know, the guys who
eventually were recruited for this. I mean, you think about
the sales pitch for a second. This is an eight
maybe nine months training course, five days a week, occasionally
on the weekends, oftentimes at night. You've got to walk
away from your life to do this. So this isn't
you know, people who say yes to this aren't people
with a lot of options, especially when you consider that

(01:10:54):
when you finish this course, you've been trained for job
that technically does not exist. So what are you even
going to do when you when you come out of this.
So the guys that that he and Jim McCoy recruited,
some of them were military veterans, some of them were
high school dropouts, some were just high school graduates. A
few had criminal records. A bunch of them, though the

(01:11:15):
majority of them were just young guys who the world
had said, you don't really have a place, and they
were looking to find a way to make their mark,
and it just so happened that the place they were
going to make their mark was was in the back
of an ambulance.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
So so so these these two docs, So were there
one or two doctors? Say far as someone else?

Speaker 12 (01:11:39):
Yeah, Saffer was the doctor and then McCoy was the
man who ran the nonprofit that recruited the people.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Gotcha, uh, and explain this, Explain this situation with his
former governor of Pennsylvania. Yeah, before mayor of Pittsburgh. Because
it's just interesting how all of these different things intersect
that leads to this incredible story.

Speaker 12 (01:12:09):
So you know, as is the case today, first responders
are the last ones to get any sort of government funding.
So you know, when Saffer comes up with this idea,
his daughter died in nineteen sixty six, in June of
nineteen sixty six, and so he immediately begins designing this
idea for a paramedic force. Nobody in the city wants

(01:12:29):
to pay for it. They don't think they need it,
they don't think they want to pay for it. It's
just it's not something that anybody has any interest in.
So jump forward to November of that year, is a
tightly contested gubernatorial race in the state of Pennsylvania. In
the run up to the final days of the election,
a huge Democratic rally is planned for downtown. The keynote

(01:12:50):
speaker is going to be a former mayor of Pittsburgh,
former governor of Pennsylvania, by the name of David Lawrence.
He gets in, he gets in front of the crowd,
he gets about two words into his speed and he
topples over with a heart attack. Drops to the floor,
not breathing, no heartbeat, so panic breaks out among the
crowd and somebody in the room calls for help. There

(01:13:11):
happened to be a nurse in a room named car McGuire,
and she runs forward. She pushes people out of the way.
She checks for a polse doesn't find, which checks for breathing.
He's not breathing, and she begins CPR. So as this
guy hits the ground, he has advanced care immediately taking
place at his side, which is the best case scenario.

(01:13:32):
Within a few minutes, the police born Ambulance service arrives
and again it's two cops. They have a canvas stretcher.
They had a bottle of auction that was either empty
or broken. Accounts stiffer, but either way it was completely useless.
They push nurse McGuire out of the way, so they
immediately stop care. They pick up Lawrence, who was a
large man. They pick him up, they put him on

(01:13:52):
the canvas stretcher and they starts struggling through the crowd
to get him out of there. Karen sees this and
realizes these guys aren't going to do anything, so she
runs to keep up with them. She catches them outside,
sees them putting him in the back of this patty
wagon alone, so she jumps in at the last second
tries to resume CPR, but they're speeding through the streets,

(01:14:12):
so she's just thrown around in the back of this truck.
It's nothing done. A few minutes later, they pull up
to the hospital and who's the doctor there to meet
them but Peter Saffer, the guy who invented CPR and
the guy who has been harassing the city for months
to start an ambul or a PARAMEDICORPS. He meets David Lawrence,
who is the city's most famous citizen, and he sees

(01:14:32):
that he is dead, despite the fact that the moment
he needed care, he had it. When the city's version
of care arrived, he lost it, and because of that,
he was brain dead when he arrived at the hospital.
This provides the catalyst that gets the city to finally
say yes. It's so often the case. It doesn't matter
that a child died of an asthma attack. It doesn't

(01:14:53):
matter that Mitch Brown's mother died of a stroke because
the cops refused to help her. It was out a
very famous man died and the city saw for itself.
Thousands of people witnessed it firsthand, but it was covered
heavily in the newspapers and on TV. Everybody knew that
David Lawrence died because the city was lacking in its
healthcare infrastructure. So finally they turned the safer and they said, fine,

(01:15:15):
if you want to do this thing, go ahead.

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Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
There were no paramedics anywhere else in the country, right, No.

Speaker 12 (01:17:05):
Nothing like this exists anywhere in the country. And again,
nineteen sixty five, a group of physicians put out this
pamphlet to crying how bad pre hospital care is in
the United States. Vietnam is going on. So you have
physicians who are returning home and who have experience with Corman,
who were saying, you know, this is doable. Somebody could
do this. We could train people to save lives. Nineteen

(01:17:26):
sixty five alone, more Americans die in auto accidents and
were killed in the entirety of the Korean War. This
is a you know, avoidable traumatic deaths is an epidemic.
In the mid nineteen sixties in America. So people want
to change, but it wasn't happening. And you know, here
is Peter Saffer, this incredibly driven, incredibly bright eye who

(01:17:49):
you know, is living off of a horrible bit of
tragedy and is helped along by a very public and
preventable death.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
So well, what's interesting here is that, you know, we
hear a lot about, you know, the War on poverty.
This is one of the great success stories of the
War on poverty. And if you listen to conservatives, you
think that the War on Poverty was a total abject failure. No, no, no,

(01:18:22):
this is.

Speaker 12 (01:18:23):
This is your right. I mean, this is the perfect
example of you know, a program that was set up,
it had private funding, it had public funding, and it
was set up specifically in a neighborhood that you know.
So the early nineteen fifties US government is worried about
the state of inner city America because you know, there's

(01:18:45):
a lot of trumbling infrastructure, people moving out, and they're
afraid that this is going to be a hotbed for
communist infiltration. And so they come up with the Urban
Renewal Program, which is if you fix your blighted areas
and you in highways, and hospitals and theaters and universities
will help you pay for that. So cities begin tearing

(01:19:07):
down neighborhoods, and of course, what are you going to
tear down? Are you going to tear down the lowest
income You're going to tear down, you know, the poorest area,
the most beaten up area, the area with no ability
to say, hey, hold on, what about us. So in
the city of Pittsburgh, that was the Hill District, which
up until that point, you know, had been known as
as the Harlem of the Midwest. It was a neighborhood

(01:19:29):
known for its famous jazz clubs. Lena Horn. Louis Armstrong
routinely went there. It had two Negro League baseball teams,
Satchel Paige was a picture on one of these. It
had the nation's largest black owned newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier.
Very famous newspaper. You know. It covered all the you know,
the early civil rights stuff that Thurgood Marshall was involved in.

(01:19:51):
It was a it was a well known historic area.
And then the city decides, well, we want to build
a highway and we want to build a civic center,
and so they tear down two thirds at the neighborhood.
And again, because black residents were not allowed to buy
houses in white neighborhoods, the people living there were stuck.
So overnight thousands, tens of thousands of people are disenfranchised,

(01:20:12):
so they're all just pushed into the remaining one third
of that neighborhood. So immediately by the you know, early
to mid nineteen sixties, jobs are down, incomes down, hope
is down, which of course means that crime and drugs
go up. And that's what the Hill District was facing.
When James McCoy, who was the civil rights activist, started

(01:20:32):
Freedom House. He was trying to find a jobs program
for people he knew were worth more than the outside
world thought of them.

Speaker 6 (01:20:39):
As you know what was crazy though, is freedom House?

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
Was it doing medical services? I love what I love?
What did you say here? Says Freedom House was the
brainchild of McCoy. Let me go ahead and say, as
you write, a Houston native brancholl of McCoy and Civil
Rights Act with with a long term goal of Faalsley
black owned and this is in the main time to
build capital. As the organization got on his beat, Freedom

(01:21:04):
House was selling produce in the street in the back
of a truck, and it was this truck that grabbed
Hallen's a digit. If you could move produce, then you
probably you could probably also move people. At least that's
how Hallan saw it. Oh they're moving produce, they can
move pea. That is crazy.

Speaker 12 (01:21:23):
It's nuts, It's nuts. So Phil Holland, you know, he's
he runs this this nonprofit funder. So they's just a
philanthropy that that's focused specifically on medicine and areas where
you know, the healthcare system has been depleted through racism.
Hallan had a history with EMS. He he had a

(01:21:44):
job when he was getting his PhD. He was working
at a hospital. He would carry severed limbs from the
oar down to the incinerator. He worked part time in
an ambulance, so he had some sense of what it was.
He moves to Pittsburgh and he knows that the EMS
service in the US is bad, and he sees it's
particularly bad in Pittsburgh, especially bad in the Hill. So
he's looking for a way to fix this. And like

(01:22:05):
you said, he's reading the newspaper one day and he
sees an article about Freedom House delivering produce around its neighborhood.
You know, August Wilson, he wrote that play Jitney based on,
you know, a group of people who couldn't get a
cab and so had this sort of makeshift cab system.
They couldn't get any sort of help in the city.

(01:22:25):
And Phil Holland knew this, and of course Jim McCoy
knew this, and that's why McCoy had set up to
produce thing. And so Halland sees it and says, well,
you know, man, if you can move a tomato, you
can move a person. Let's figure out a way to
do this. And that's what brings the two of them
to Presbyterian University Hospital, where they meet Peter Saffer, who's
trying desperately to get an ambulance system off the ground

(01:22:47):
but doesn't have any people willing to take that risk.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
Right, So Hallan wants to do this here, but McCoy
is looking for job opportunities for African Americans, and then
those two forces merge. So this was a job. I mean,
I guess if Phil Hallen had some other kind of idea,
that's what this would have turned out turned out into.
But so so this this didn't start off as a

(01:23:10):
from a from a McCoy's well, hey, let's create this.
You know this, you know healthcare deal. It started off
as a jobs opportunity, and then those two combined forces,
and then that's what that's what we get.

Speaker 12 (01:23:25):
I mean, McCoy he looked at this much more than
you know. Nobody knew the word paramedic didn't exist, so
nobody understood, you know, sort of Saffher's genius. McCoy was saying, hey,
we can if we start an ambulance service. We're gonna
have trucks, which means you're gonna need drivers, which means
you're gonna need mechanics. There's probably gonna be some sort
of dispatch system, so we're gonna have to hire dispatchers.
In his mind, he's hearing jobs. He's hearing you know,

(01:23:47):
mechanic jobs. He's hearing driver jobs, dispatcher jobs, careers. What
he had been offered before this kind of came along
was housekeeper gardner. Those aren't careers. Those are things that
you're stuck into. He's he wanted, he want a way
to elevate the people in his neighborhood. The newspapers referred
to people in the Hill as unemployables, which that means
you don't have a job. That means you are not

(01:24:09):
capable of gaining and holding a job. He didn't believe that.
Nobody in the neighborhood believed that, and so they were
looking for the opportunity. McCoy one sees this as a
way to employ a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
So it's what was What was interesting to me is
that this didn't start in white Pittsburgh.

Speaker 12 (01:24:28):
Yeah, that is starting.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
I mean, that's that's still what what strikes me that that,
uh and so was Hallan specifically looking at this as
an opportunity to provide job for African Americans or was
that just happenstance?

Speaker 12 (01:24:52):
No, the jobs very specifically were for African Americans, would
everybody assumed?

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
So, so, how like, yo, we need this certain yep,
we meet this service, and here's the opportunity to provide
some jobs and economic competities were African Americans, Let's go.

Speaker 12 (01:25:11):
That was that's what they thought. But the presumption was,
like this is going to be self evident. You know,
the moment somebody sees your emergency responded to by a
trained professional who can save your life on the spot,
who doesn't have to wait until you get there to
the hospital, that that the whole world was going to
embrace us, which is what happened in every city in
America except for the one where it started. And the

(01:25:32):
only difference is, of course, the one where it started
it was uh, you know, staffed entirely by young black
men as opposed to young white men, which is how
it was in other areas. So they thought, go ahead.
They thought it was going to expand they thought like
it would move to other neighborhoods in the city, that
it would start in the Hill, but that it would

(01:25:53):
move to everywhere in Pittsburgh because people would see the
genius of it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
But it didn't. It didn't And was it because they
thought it was all black?

Speaker 12 (01:26:05):
They will tell you if you listen to some of
the early meetings, they will people. The pushback was supposedly, well,
we don't know if this works, we don't know if
we can pay for this, we don't know if technically
this is even legal to provide medicine outside of the hospital.
There was all They were all kinds of concerns, but again,
the only place those concerns existed was the one place

(01:26:28):
where the people providing the care were black, and they
so they start in the hill and the one neighborhood
that they expand to is downtown. Downtown has people of
all stripes. So you know, these guys begin responding to
calls chest pain, shortness of breath, all the things that
happened today. But some of the people now that they

(01:26:48):
respond to our white and for the first time they
find that their patients are actually weighing the option of Hey,
do I want to die right here in at my desk?
Or do I want to allow a black man to
lay his hands on me? Yeah, that was a real concern,

(01:27:10):
and they had multiple occasions they'd sit down and say, hey.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Me or I could die? Yeah, leyte me, just go
ahead and go meet Jesus or go meet Satan.

Speaker 12 (01:27:21):
Yeah, you're talking about a neighborhood or a city. People
often think when you think racism, you think segregation, you
think Mississippi, you think Alabama. There were articles in a
newspaper at the time when they began, you know, onwinding
all of these redlining laws in real estate that did
not allow you to sell your house to black homeowners.

(01:27:41):
There were stories of white families who disliked their white
neighbors and would intentionally sell their house to a black
family just despite their neighbors. So, if you're going to
spite sell a house, if you think it's so odious
to live next door to a minority couple, that you
are going to sell your house to one to tick
off your neighbors, imagine then that is the person who

(01:28:04):
walks through the door to unbutton your wife's blouse to
put electrodes on her chest. People really really fought it,
and these guys were stunned. You know, these were young
men who were used to having explained why are you
doing what you're doing? Why aren't you just racing to
the hospital. Why are you here messing around with my
brother should be going already. They were used to having
to explain, Hey, we are paramedics, we are actually delivering

(01:28:26):
care right here. What they were not used to have
to explaining was why us, Why are we the ones
doing it? And are you sure that you really have
to tell.

Speaker 13 (01:28:53):
Hatred on the streets a horrific scene, a white nationalist
rally that descended into deadly violence.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
Well, white people are mosing their their minds.

Speaker 14 (01:29:05):
As an angry proach, Trump mob storms to the US
capital ship.

Speaker 15 (01:29:10):
We're about to see the lives what I call white
minority resistance.

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
We have seen white folks in this country who simply
cannot tolerate black folks voting.

Speaker 16 (01:29:19):
violent denial.

Speaker 8 (01:29:24):

Speaker 14 (01:29:26):
real or symbolic, there has been the Carold Anderson at
every university calls white rage as a backlash.

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
This is the right of the proud boys and the
Boogaaloo boys America. There's going to be more of this.

Speaker 17 (01:29:43):
This country is getting increasingly racist and its behaviors and

Speaker 18 (01:29:51):
The few that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources,
they're taking our women.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
This is white being Look, we still have examples of

(01:30:21):
racist white folks who go into hospitals and as a
black doctor and they'll re quit somebody else or it's
they you know, you know, you know, don't don't you
dare touch me, and it's like, okay, fine, you go
right hand and die.

Speaker 12 (01:30:33):
Then yeah, I mean it's a real pathology.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
Absolutely, Freedom House lasts for how long.

Speaker 12 (01:30:43):
In Pittsburgh they began school in sixty seven. They worked
for the first time in sixty eight. In fact, they
first time paramedic ever took the streets anywhere in the world.
Was an immediate aftermath at the assassination of Martin Luther
King Junior in April nineteen sixty eight. They were shut
down in October of nineteen seventy.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
Five, and they were they shut down because of city
wide adoption and they wanted a more rigorous program. Why
did they shut down?

Speaker 12 (01:31:15):
There was no more rigorous program. In nineteen seventy five,
President Gerald Ford realized that paramedics, based on what was
happening in Pittsburgh, paramedics had taken off all across the
country and they had on even training, uneven equipment, and
uneven deployment, And so he said, we need to create
a national standard. Freedom House was chosen to serve as

(01:31:38):
a national standard. Their medical director, doctor by the name
of Nancy Caroline, wrote a textbook based on her work there,
and that textbook is used to this day to train
people all over the world. If you say emergency care
in the streets to a pre hospital provider, they will
get misdiyed. Everybody knows that book. Everybody knows Nancy Caroline.
She took what she learned in Pittsburgh. She brought up

(01:31:59):
to Israel created their national healthcare program. This was as
advanced an EMS program has existed anywhere in the city.
The reason they were shut down is because a couple
of years earlier there had been a heroin epidemic in Pittsburgh.
It had started in the early seventies New York and
had finally crept over into Pittsburgh. Because Peter Saffer was

(01:32:20):
an anaesthesiologist by training, he turned to his paramedics and said, hey, look, anesty.
Heroin is just another opioid. I know how to reverse
a heroin overdose in the same way that I know
how to get someone out of anesthesia. It's a little
known drug called Narcan. So the Freedom House of Paramedics
are the first people in the world to use Narcan

(01:32:40):
to reverse a heroin overdose. They do it there just
so happens to be a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post
Gazette who's following them around. When they reverse this overdose.
She writes this incredible article about this work that they
did on a dark night in a back alley, and
people in the city reading this article. I have two responses, One,

(01:33:01):
this is amazing, and two why them? The rest of
the city does not have this the rest of the city.
If any other neighborhood has an overdose, that young man,
that young woman, they die right where they fell. But
in Pittsburgh, in the Hill, the poorest and most downtrodden
and overlook neighborhood in the entire city, they're being saved,

(01:33:25):
and they become victims of their own success. People see, well,
wait a minute, this is incredible thing that's happening. But
it's happening there, and it's happening to them, and it's
not happening to me. Why And they get very angry
and they turn to the mayor, who for years has
been trying to stop Freedom House from growing, and he
has to explain why. So finally he says, okay, okay, okay,
we'll start a citywide program. But he doesn't use Peter Sapper,

(01:33:47):
who invented CPR, who invented paramedics, who has been successfully
running a paramedic program in the city now for eight years.
He gets new doctors and they recruit all new people,
none of whom have any experience whatsoever on an ambulance,
and he starts his own program. And it's perhaps not
a coincidence that the paramedics that they roll out look

(01:34:09):
nothing like the paramedics from Freedom House.

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
So Freedom House starts and the white folks wanted nothing
to do with them. But then in seventy five, when
they start saving the lives of black people over hear
and overdoses, then white folks like, yo, hey, what about us?
And then the mayor, obviously pissed off and jealous of

(01:34:32):
this unit, says, fine, we'll go ahead and do this,
but let's screw the most experienced people. Let's not listen
to them, talk to them, hear from them. We'll just
take it from here.

Speaker 12 (01:34:43):
Yes, the people, quite literally selected as a national standard
by the President of the United States, were not chosen
to continue and expand a MS in their own city.
So what are those first paramedics?

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
So what happened to Were they all men? Were there
any black women who were p of this?

Speaker 12 (01:35:01):
There were they?

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
So?

Speaker 12 (01:35:03):
Initially, I mean he started in nineteen sixty, so you know,
there was certainly some chauvinism involved in the beginning, and
women were hired as dispatchers, but several of the women
were watching what was going on and saying, well, well,
hold on a second, I think I can do that.
And one in particular, by the name of Darnella Wilson,
was very young and she's working as a as a
dispatcher and she sees what's happening. And one of the

(01:35:26):
guys who ran the program, by the name of Walt Brown,
he just saw something in Darnella and he said to
her one night, if you're interested in what's going on,
get your butt on an ambulance, then I'll show you.
And so he takes her out and her mind is
blown and she immediately says, I want to do this,
So she begins training. She would go on to become
a lifelong paramedic, a lifelong nurse, but it started there.
So there were you know, there were some women who

(01:35:49):
were involved in the program.

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
What happened to these men? Obviously the city didn't bring
them into their program, So what happened to him?

Speaker 12 (01:36:00):
So, perhaps not surprisingly, the city's program immediately belly flops.
They brought in doctors who didn't know what they were doing.
They brought in brand new paramedics who didn't know what
they were doing. They tried to expand it, and they
didn't have enough money. Nothing was ready, and so the
city began the program begins to fail. So they turned
to Nancy Caroline, who again would write the textbook that

(01:36:21):
the entire world would learn how to be a paramedicon.
And they said, okay, look, we'll hire you. So they
wanted to bring her over to the city, and she said, yeah,
I will absolutely come to the city. You bring all
of my people. So she wrote out this list of demands,
and most of them, honestly, all of them were really

(01:36:42):
simple demands. Hire my people who want to be hired,
keep them in their current shifts, let them practice at
their current level, and the sort of the one thing
that they really wanted more than anything, it was the
final item on the list was publicly recognized Freedom House
for the services provided this city for the last seven years.

(01:37:03):
So and I mean I pulled it out of her
papers in Harvard. You can see her letter to the mayor,
and you can see the mayor's response. He reluctantly agrees
to all of the demands except the last one, the
only one that was free, which was a public recognition
of the people who started at all. That is not
on his list of things that he'll do. So the
city hires as many of the Freedom House medics as

(01:37:25):
want to go over. They're required to do that, but
they're not required to keep them. So over the course
of the next year, they essentially make life so miserable
for them that the vast majority of the people who quit.
Darnello Wilson was not even allowed to operate as a paramedic.
They put her in the jail where she had to
supervise prisoners. She had no experience with that whatsoever. She's

(01:37:47):
very young, she's eighteen, nineteen years old. It was a
traumatic experience for her, but she was angry enough that
she held on. Some of the medics who stayed remained
with the City of Pittsburgh through their careers. Won by
the name of John Moon hired as the assistant chief,
but before he left, he hired a woman by the
name of America Gilchrist, who would go on to become

(01:38:08):
the first female chief of Pittsburgh, Ga mess In, the
first black chief of Pittsburgh.

Speaker 8 (01:38:12):
Game mess The thing.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
That is just incredulous. They have the experience, they have
the knowledge, they have the success, and you were so spiteful,
you are so racist that you would rather hire people
to run a program who have no idea what they're doing,
who are all white, because you do not want to

(01:38:35):
use those black people.

Speaker 12 (01:38:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's no there's literally no, there's
no way to look at it in any other way.
From the city's reluctance through the nineteen seventies. There's no
way to justify it because it doesn't happen in any
other city, large or small. Through its closing. It would
be one thing if you could point to Freedom House
and say, well, you know, yes, they were the first,

(01:38:57):
but they didn't keep up and the world has passed
them by, so we need this needs to be advanced.
Clearly not the case because they were selected by the
US president to serve as a national standard. You know,
their physician would go on to create the exact same
program in other countries. These were people who had been
on an ambulance for seven years, have been responding to calls.
We're incredibly well experienced, and we're from the neighborhood who

(01:39:20):
knew the city. Many of the people that they brought
in were not from Pittsburgh. They were from outlying areas.
So they were bringing in inexperienced people who didn't know anything,
who were terrified, and who needed essentially, who needed to
have their hands held. I mean, there's this an incredible
story of John Moon, one of the first medics. You know,
he sticks it out, he gets on with the city.

(01:39:41):
He gets he's placed as a third man on an ambulance,
which is a two man crew by any measure. He's
told don't talk to him, but he don't touch anybody.
You just carry our bag. This by two people with
no experience, who had less training than he did. And
he sits there and he's holding their bag. He's literally
holding their bag until they get a critical call. They
walk in on a man who is in cardiac arrest.

(01:40:05):
These two brand new medics with no experience, who are
technically now his superiors, who don't let him touch or
talk to patience, turn him in a panic and say
do something. And John in that moment realizes his power.
You know, I am well trained, I am experienced, I
know what's going on. And he basically tells these guys
sit down and shut up. He gives them pointers. You

(01:40:25):
do this, you do that, He runs the code. They
get this person back. They get to the hospital, having
saved this life and he turns to them and he says,
for now on, things are different and I'm in charge.
But that shows you the fact that he had to
go through. That shows you how ridiculous this just how
the ridiculous the whole thing is. I mean it, there's

(01:40:48):
no other way to explain why they were treated the
way they were treated.

Speaker 1 (01:40:53):
But again, but it's America. It shows you exactly who
America is. It shows you exactly how people feel about
this and how you know the work of African Americans
has been grossly underappreciated in this country. Are any of
these individuals still alive.

Speaker 12 (01:41:13):
Yeah, there's about a half dozen. And you know, when
when I began working on this program or this project,
this story had been dormant for decades. All of this
happened before I was born, and you know, I think
largely they were resigned to the fact that nobody was
going to know. And you know, over the last couple
of years, people have started to pay attention. People have responded.

(01:41:36):
You know, the just last year, the city the mayor
read a proclamation in which he publicly thanked them the
thing that they requested in nineteen seventy five that nobody
had done. He did it. You know, they were several
of them were invited to Congress for the State of

(01:41:58):
the Union with President Biden. You know, they have been
given honorary degrees at universities, so they you know, people
are now reaching out to them, People are recognizing them,
their their contribution is being recognized. You know, the EMS
community and as a whole, did not know this existed.
If you talk to people and you said, how did

(01:42:19):
this all begin, they would have said, well, you know,
in Los Angeles or in Miami and Seattle, there were
all these different little programs that began, and there was
this TV show called Emergency that everybody saw I loved,
and it created a generation of kids who wanted to
grow up paramedics. None of them knew this, and the
EMS community, the medical community, is really embracing their story.

(01:42:40):
So yeah, there are some of them who are still
live with many you know, who died before they had
the chance to get recognition.

Speaker 1 (01:42:47):
I was.

Speaker 12 (01:42:47):
There was one woman I spoke to who said, you know,
my husband died without his kids really knowing what he
had done. And it's tragic to hear somebody say that,
you know, and all you can do is say, well,
you know, I'll do everything I can to, you know,
to help carry the torch for you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
Indeed, and well I got to ask this here. Have
they gotten recognition from black organizations? Has h you know,
the n double a CP UH nationally ever recognized Freedom
House in these brothers? Uh, let's you know, black medical organizations.

Speaker 12 (01:43:29):
I don't know specifically about that. I know that, you know,
a lot of medical organizations have recognized them. But if
has that happened? Has the nuble A c P done something?
I don't, you know, I don't know specifically that that
has happened. I think there are organizations locally in Pittsburgh,

(01:43:50):
that Hillhouse Foundation being one that has recognized them. But
have they gotten their due on a national level? You know,
I don't, I don't. I don't think that's you know yet.

Speaker 8 (01:44:02):
The case.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):
Amazing. Uh, it's just amazing again to uh to to
hear this story. Uh, these these unsung heroes. Uh. Has
Pittsburgh what that forget? What that mayor did? Has the
city ever corrected that error? Uh? And acknowledge these Is

(01:44:24):
there a monument, is there a statue, is there a plaque? Anything?
In Pittsburgh?

Speaker 12 (01:44:30):
So the the original Freedom House building has been saved
because the the Hill District is a historic area and
there's a there's a plaque there. There's a plaque at
Presbyterian University Hospital, which now is a different name, but
it's no up MC. At times there have been medallions
placed on the ambulances, but as new ambulances came in,

(01:44:52):
the medallions weren't always placed on the new ones. The
new chief of E. M. S as I said she
was an acolyte of John Moon. She has done as
much as she can and she's worked tirelessly to get
this story out and to get it, you know, so
that it can be recognized. You mentioned pitt earlier. Many

(01:45:15):
of the physicians who are advisors and consultants on that
show know the Freedom House people. They they do what
they can to help them out. They you know, they
bring them to two conferences, they have them speak to
medical students. So the medical community in Pittsburgh, the Heins
Museum has set up a there's a portion now in

(01:45:38):
the medical part of the Heins Museum that talks about
Freedom House. So you know, the city is is waking
up to it. But you know the first time I
went there, I would talk to cab drivers or people
in restaurants who say you like, oh, what are you
doing in town? And I would explain it and I
would just get back black back blank stairs. People didn't

(01:45:59):
people had heard of it, you know, which which I
think is quite frustrating for everyone involved.

Speaker 1 (01:46:04):
But that you know that that is changing, well absolutely,
and you know it's just the fact that, uh, these
young brothers stepped up to become America's first paramedic set
the standard for the rest of the nation. Uh, and
the nation not recognize them and honor them, to me

(01:46:28):
is an absolute travesty. But you do with this book.
I have to ask this question. I asked of every
book author, what was your wow moment? What was your
wow moment as you were researching, as you were interviewing
with There's something someone said or you discover the cause
you to go wow, this is crazy.

Speaker 12 (01:46:50):
I mean, there are so many, so many moments like that.
There's uh, gosh, So there's as a guy with the
name of it, you know, keep mentioning John Moon. He's
the first person, he's believed to be the first person
to intubate somebody onside of the hospital. And you know,
he he had just been trained how to do it,

(01:47:11):
and he gets told by his medical director, go ahead
and do this. They get it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:15):
He does it.

Speaker 12 (01:47:16):
He's you know, he's terrified. Indicating someone is a very
difficult thing to do, but he's able to calm his nerves.
He gets into the hospital, he arrives. When you arrive
at a hospital with a cardiac arrest, it is very
much It is totally chaotic. There are doctors, there are nurses,
there are texts, there are people who are trying to
gain insurance information. There's all kinds of it's noise, a technic,

(01:47:37):
there's a life on the line. There's CPR that's happening,
you're trying to change hands, there's all the there's there's
a beeping, and there's the yelling of orders and medicine
being given. It's very very chaotic. So they come in,
they enter into this world, which you know, immediately all
this noise and chaos starts up. And the doctor who's
standing there just points a finger across the room and goes,

(01:47:57):
what is that? And everybody freezes, and what he's pointing
at is this et tube that is sticking out of
the patient's mouth. And John's partner, George McCarey is sitting
there squeezing the ventilation bag, you know, breathing for this person.
And the doctor says, what is that? And the room
suddenly gets incredibly quiet, and John says, that's a need

(01:48:17):
t too. And the doctor says, who told you to
innovate him? Or who innovated that person? He said, I did,
And the doctor says, and who are you? And in
this great moment, you know, I mean, John could have
could have been angry, he could have been cow and
he could have been anything. But in this great moment,
he sort of stands up and he goes, my name's
John Moon, and I'm a Freedom House paramedic. And that
is one of those mic drop moments that that just

(01:48:41):
you don't get a chance to do or to see
very often. That was this incredible, like you've got to
be kidding me. But there's a litany of things that
these guys did first that the rest of the world
immediately took onto, whether it's the design of the ambulance,
what's inside the ambulance, how paramedic has trained, the use
of narcan, the fact that the president names them the

(01:49:04):
national standard months before the mayor SUTs them down, the
fact that Israel's EMS program is designed after them, programs
all over the world are designed after them. It is
incredible what these guys did in just seven years. And
they were largely a bunch of a bunch of young kids,
high school graduates, you know, fathers, sons, friends, guys who

(01:49:28):
were just who didn't even realize at the time what
they were doing in terms of how much they were
changing the world, but they were. Every day when they
showed up, they were notching a new first. And and
to see all the things they went through, how poorly
they were treated, and the grace with which they did
it every time, it blows my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
That is incredible. I always love to see for the
Cotton Club where this racist guy is jamming up Laurence
Fishburn who's backstage talking one of the dancers, and then
fishburnh turns to him and says, who are you and
what are you doing talking to me? I always loved

(01:50:14):
that quote, and just when you were describing that that
that's what reminds me. You know, who are you? And
basically I don't need to explain to you who I am.
Here's my name, here's who I'm with, and most importantly,
I'm saving this man's life.

Speaker 13 (01:50:48):
Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene white nationalist rally
that descended into deadly violence, soil.

Speaker 1 (01:50:57):
White people are losing their their minds me as an
angry proach frum mob storm to the US Capital Show.

Speaker 15 (01:51:05):
We're about to see the rise of what I call
white minority resistance.

Speaker 1 (01:51:08):
We have seen white folks in this country who simply
cannot tolerate black folks voting.

Speaker 16 (01:51:14):
violent denial.

Speaker 8 (01:51:19):

Speaker 14 (01:51:21):
real or symbolic, there has been but Carold Anderson at
every university calls white rage as a backlash.

Speaker 1 (01:51:31):
This is the right of the proud boys and the
Boogaaloo boys America.

Speaker 15 (01:51:34):
There's going to be more of this.

Speaker 17 (01:51:38):
This country just getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and

Speaker 18 (01:51:46):
The feo that they're taking our jobs, they're taking out
our resources, they're taking out women.

Speaker 1 (01:51:51):
This is white being. Were there any you mentioned narking?

(01:52:21):
Were there any other breakthroughs? Are or are uh historic?
Things never never done before, Things that that they created.
Uh that still is the standard today.

Speaker 12 (01:52:37):
Oh yeah. So if you look, if you get into
the back of an ambulance, the way that the stretcher
is laid out, there's a seat directly behind the patient's head,
and immediately to the right of the seat is the
suction unit.

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
That is so that a.

Speaker 12 (01:52:51):
Paramedic can manipulate and have access to the patient's airway,
which is something that's important to suffer. And so he
brings that in and test it out with the paramedics
and learns, oh, okay, these guys can do this, they
can innovate, they can manage an airway that becomes Now
if you walk into any ambulance, now, that's exactly the
way it looks and the way that the training went.

(01:53:12):
You know, because Saffer was a physician, he looked at
it as a truncated version of medical school, and he said,
what we're going to do is you're going to get
all the book learning, and then I'm going to take
out into the world. You're going to go to the ER,
the o R, the ICU, you're going to go to
the morgue, and then you're going to write another ambulances
just so you can get an idea of what this
this stuff that you've learned looks like in practice. That's

(01:53:34):
done in every paramedic program around the world today. The
idea of of a medical director, you know, Saffer begins
this program and it hits him immediately. Medicine changes every day.
You need somebody involved. You need a physician there to
have the guys come back in from a call and say, hey,
this this worked, or this did not work, or you know,
I think this other thing might actually work if we

(01:53:56):
change what we're doing and try this instead. And so
you need a physsition to kind of bounce those ideas
around and turn those into law. Nobody was doing that
until Freedom House and so everything that they there's nothing
that they touch from the radio dispatch on down, there's
nothing that they touch that doesn't become national standard.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
Absolutely unbelievable, a fascinating story. The book is American Sirens,
the incredible story of the black men who became America's
first paramedics. Kevin Hazard outstanding and I'm sure that a
lot of people will learn so much about again this

(01:54:44):
missing and untold piece of American history, which is of
course black history, is American history. Kevin will appreciate it.

Speaker 12 (01:54:53):
Thanks a lot, Thank you, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:56):
Spoke an incredible conversation there with Kevin. Be sure to
get his book American Sirens, and I hope y'all appreciate it.
The conversation with Kevin as Will as Ellie Mischield. This
is why we do Rolling Martin Unfiltered in the Black
Study Network, bringing you deep, thoughtful conversations you're not gonna
get anywhere else. All right, folks, now listen, lots going on,

(01:55:16):
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"Bad Law": Ten Laws Ruining America Exposed | "American Sirens": First Paramedics Were Black

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Roland Martin

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

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"Bad Law": Ten Laws Ruining America Exposed | "American Sirens": First Paramedics Were Black