NIH Cuts Impact On Birmingham, Al., RFK Sworn In, U.S. Attys Resigning, 2024 Post-Election Analysis

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Today's Thursday, February of thirteen, twenty twenty five, coming up
on Roland Mark on Bookler streaming live on the Blackstar Network.
I told y'all the nonsense that Elon Musk, the co President,
is dealing with Donald Trump is going to have an
impact on a lot of red states, especially when it
comes to the National Institutes of Health. It could have

(00:33):
Maja ramifications in Alabama. Talking with Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin
about that sports entertainment mogul and longtime back of supporter
Linda McMahon faced lots of tough questions from Democratic senators
on Capitol Hill today regarding her leadership with a partner
of Education. She vowed, though, to follow Trump's orders to

(00:54):
destroy the Department Vaccine skeptic Robert F.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is now Secretary of Health and Human Services because Republicans
are scared to death of Donald Trump, and prosecutors are
resigning at an alarming rate.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
In New York City when it.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Comes to the Department of Justice ordered them to drop
the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
A mutiny is at hand.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
We'll talk with Congressman Glenn Ivy A former Maryland a
former US us A prosecutor about what's happening plus South
Africa it's pulling its business and mineral resources out of
the United States. Good and Black Voter Project co founder
will be here to review their twenty twenty four post

(01:41):
election of post election analysis on the Black vote. Folks's
time to bring the phone a rolling markin unfiltered on
the black network. Let's go.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
The sonate whatever plays right on top isming best belief.
He's going.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Loston news to politics?

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Would entertainment just book keeps.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
He's stolen, it's roll in contact, He's booky stress, she's
real the question, No, he's rolling Monte.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
On Monday, federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administration changes
to how the National Institutes of Health funds by medical research.
This decision pauses the proposed cuts to federal research funding.
If implemented, these cuts could have resulted in a loss
of about seventy million dollars for the University of Alabama
at Birmingham and millions of cuts all across the country.

(03:06):
Birmingham Mayor Randall woodfin joneses right now, I'm mayor whoofin
glad to have you back on the show Frat This
is real simple. Donald Trump and Elon Musk as co
president have no idea what the hell they're doing. They're
just slashing stuff really nearly they're not thinking about the
consequences of this, and what I kept saying repeatedly to folks,
these idiots are going to impact the folks who also

(03:27):
voted for them. The reality is Alabama voted for him
in huge numbers, and if these cuts go forward, it's
going to really jack up medical research they are in
the state of Alabama.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
There are three immediate issues of concern. One is the
economic impact of not just to the city of Birmingham,
but to the state of Alabama. I remind people that
UAB is not just the largest employer in the city
of Birmingham, it's literally the largest employer in the state
of Alabama. So this has a negative impact from the
entire state. Two, we're talking about life safety, medicine and

(04:00):
at the third largest public hospital in our nation, and
so this doesn't just impact jobs, this impacts the ability
to save life with this groundbreaking research that UAB Hospital
has been at the forefront of. Third I think people
need to consider from a national standpoint when we talk
about advancements in medicine and research and life saving medicine,

(04:23):
we're not competing with states. We're competing with countries like
China and countries like Russia. We have to be at
the forefront. That requires federal investments and we should not
be cutting that money. And so at a small level,
these cuts were made before there was even a secretary
over HSSYS, which tells you they didn't even say do

(04:48):
cuts need to be made. They just made a decision
without even having leadership at the top of the of
the position.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
So that makes no sense to me. And what they're
doing is they're just like, oh, we see this cuts.
Oh hey, y'all, we saved a whole bunch of money.
No consideration on the impact of those cuts, no consideration
on the good being done, none of that. All they're
looking at is a spreadsheet. All they're looking at is
just a number going to something, and they're like, yep,

(05:18):
cut it.

Speaker 6 (05:19):
I would say this, Roland.

Speaker 5 (05:22):
I think all Americans agree that there is wasteful spending
in the federal government and it can be done better.
As it relates to our tax pan dollars that come
out of our pocket.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
No one is fighting that.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
I think what the concern is is that the question
should be asked first, is there wasteful spending? The answer
is yes or no, and then the answer is yes,
please go through a process of identifying it, finding it,
and presenting to us in this matter of NIH they
did not do that.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Again, when they made.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
This decision, there wasn't even a secretary over the actual department.

Speaker 7 (06:00):
How could you make a decision, but.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
It's it's not even a secretary. These people are not
forensic auditors. They're not They're just sitting here. There are
a bunch of tech folk who know nothing about science,
nothing about health, and nothing about the specific grants. They
just sit there and they see it, Oh money goes
to this. We don't like that cut as opposed to

(06:23):
what is the grant's purpose? What does it do? What's
the impact short term, long term? There's no analysis given whatsoever.
And then they come out say it in the Oval office,
Trump repeats the people going, hey, you're doing a great job.
And there's no backup information. You go to doge dot com,
there's no doge dot gov. There's no backup that says,

(06:47):
oh this money is going to UAB, this is what
is for. This is why we think is bad. It's
none of that.

Speaker 5 (06:56):
No, it's if you're gonna make cuts to them things
that save lives, it should be surgical pun intended.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
But they're just taking a swath.

Speaker 5 (07:07):
They've just taken a large brush and saying this is
the percentage everybody can get it. This has a negative
ripple on in cities like Baltimore where there's John Hopkins.
It has a negative impact in cities like in Arbor
where there's the University of Michigan. And you think of
all the top research facilities that are attached to universities

(07:29):
and medical facilities. We are really talking about cutting the
ability to be in advancements of groundbreaking research that will
save lives. All right, this is literally a life and
death situation. I'm not trying to be an alarmist. I'm
just stating an actual fact. When you cut money and

(07:50):
you don't know the repercussions, one of the repercussions will
be slowing down and or stopping the advancements in research
that leads to ground baking medicine that will save lives.
Think diabetes, think heart, and think so many other diseases
that affect everyday Americans.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, they don't care, and then what ends up happening,
Oh you're Republican senators from Alabama go hey, well, I
don't know about one of them because he's nuts, but
you got one of.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Them who's like, hey, can y'all slow down and look
at what you're doing.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
I will say this, there are two different ways to
look at this. I think there's a stick in the
form of a lawsuit where we see that has already happened,
asking forward judge to stop or slow this down following
a lawsuit. But I want to be encouraged by the
carrot right. I want our US senators, I don't care
what part is they're in, to say, hey, we control

(08:50):
the purse streams. There is a reason why the American
government exists of checks and balances.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
We decide the moneies that go.

Speaker 5 (08:57):
Out and miss President, you sign our We want our
elected officials, particularly in the US Senate and the House representatives,
to actually step up and lead and protect the decisions
they've made with the purse strings that has an impact
on their districts, related to their places of employment, that
have a negative impact on jobs, that have a negative

(09:19):
impact on the economy, have a negative impact on a GDP.
These are real life changing issues that are affecting their
districts in a negative way, and so I want to
be encouraged that they will fight on our behalf and
step up.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Well, reality is they're not on the Republican side. They
literally are. Hey Trump's doing it, Musk's doing it. Hey
we're good.

Speaker 5 (09:45):
Well, look, we have to organize, we have to over communicate.
We have to tell the story of how this negative
will negatively impact families, will negative impact jobs, will negative
impact the economy, will negatively impact our edge and advancements
in research related to competing with other countries such as

(10:08):
China and Russia.

Speaker 7 (10:11):
Do we want to lose that edge?

Speaker 5 (10:12):
Do we want to continue to make the necessary investments
in research to save lives?

Speaker 1 (10:18):
I agree with that, and hopefully you can communicate this
to your Democratic Party leaders.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I'll be perfectly honest.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
I think how Congress has been responding so far has
been lackluster. Weak, has been ineffective. The messaging has been
all policy wonk. It hasn't been people oriented. And one
of the things that we said a week ago on
this show, Ashley at Tienna was here, who ran the
war room for Nancy Pelosi. One of the things that

(10:46):
we said is that there should be Ken Martin should
have a major war room with the Democratic National Committee.
They should be looking at these decisions and then seeing
how they're affecting different states, getting that word to their
their state directors, their state chairs, then get into work
to their county chairs.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
So you're driving media on how.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
These cuts are going to impact each specific city, town,
and state. Because and again this is not to ignore
the federal workers, but I fundamentally believe you have to
first talk about the impact of the cuts on people
constituencies first, and then you get to the people who

(11:30):
actually do the work, are those federal workers who deliver
those things. Then thirdly, the impact on the cuts on
these workers impacts they have families, husbands, wives, children, people
in college. And then you have an economic impact, because
if you're just whacking folks willy nilly, all of a sudden,
you're now going to have people who are filing for bankruptcy,

(11:50):
people who are going to be sitting here getting evicted
from homes. You have an economic impact as well, And
so to me, that's how it should be stacked. So
I hope Mayor's like you in the African American Mayors Association.
I hope y'all are telling Democrats in DC, namely Minority
Leader Hakim Jeffries and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said Hey,

(12:12):
what y'all doing right now? Ain't it?

Speaker 7 (12:16):
I will tell you this.

Speaker 5 (12:17):
You have a powerful point and there's not much to
add but simply saying this, there was ever a time
to have bipartisan engagement in the form of we are
the legislative branch of government. We control the purse strings,
we dictate finances, we have rules, we have checks and balances.

(12:39):
This is not the way it is. This is the
way it should be. We want our leaders to lead.
We need our leaders to lead. We need them to
step up. That's just bottom line.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, absolutely, gree so we'll see what happens here. Mayor whooping.
We appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Thanks a lot, Thank you, folks.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Gotta go to Breakle'll be right back talk to this
without panel. Lots of stuff to talk about, especially the
craziness happening in New York City in the Southern District
where lawyers are resigning left and right because they are
objecting to the thuggish actions of Donald Trump's Department of
Justice as it relates to dismissing the indictment against New

(13:21):
York City Mayor Eric Adams. You're watching roland markin unfilched
right here on the Black stud Network.

Speaker 8 (13:33):
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Speaker 9 (13:47):
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Speaker 12 (14:43):
Hey, let's up the Sammy Roman is Sean Murdy exactly,
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Speaker 3 (14:47):
If me, Sherry Schebra and you know what you're watching?
Roland Martin unfailthy.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
All right, folks, let's bring in my panel joining me
right now. Doctor Gregg Carr, Department of Afore America Studies
at Howard University joined it from DC. Rec Cobt, hosts
of the rec Cobrat Show and Serious XM Radio, also
out of DC, and will be joined in the moment,
but by doctor Nola Haynes, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service,
also out of DC. You heard me there talk rec

(15:21):
to Mayor Woofin about in terms of how Democrats should
be responding. The other day, the story was done saying
that the House Democrats are whining and complaining of set
because Indivisible as well as move On, has been blowing
their phone lines up demanding that they act. I'm sorry,
I don't think it's a good idea to shit on

(15:42):
your supporters, the people who staying with you. This is
a moment where you should be organizing and mobilizing them
and actually listening to them as to how you should
be communicating and messaging and having a narrative and storytelling
coming out of d C. When it comes to the
action of these thugs in the Trump administration, right, I mean, what's.

Speaker 13 (16:05):
All a bitch asking this about?

Speaker 14 (16:07):
You should have known I was going to be a
fight as soon as Product twenty and twenty five was
put in PDF. So before the Trump administration became a thing,
there was always the blueprint for all these actions that
were going to be taken, whether Trump was an officer
or not. If there was a Republican Senate and Republican Congress,
these are the issues that would have been at the forefront.
And so the fact that they've been kind of caught

(16:29):
flat footed and just flailing about is actually really kind
of just pathetic on the part of our party. I'm
tired of being on the losing team. I really hate
that for us and the way that we just can't
get our act together. While there are a lot of people,
I will say, in the Democratic Party that are getting
it right with their messaging, with their fighting spirit, there

(16:51):
still does not seem to be an overarching plan on
not just how do we tackle this in terms of
moving the needle with how society is viewing these but
also what is the plan? Why would anybody want to
put you in charge in two years when you don't
seem to really have a backbone against what's going on
right now. So I think that there's a lot of
work to be done on the Democratic Party. And it

(17:13):
is certainly not the base that is the enemy. It's
not your supporters that are actually doing more to put
a little bit of backlash to some of these things,
and they have forced them to kind of retract some
of these damaging things that have come out.

Speaker 13 (17:28):
They're not the enemy.

Speaker 14 (17:29):
But the reality is, I will say, in terms of
what must and what Trump and obviously we are doing.

Speaker 13 (17:37):
I don't think that this is a.

Speaker 14 (17:38):
Matter of them not necessarily knowing the impact of what
they're doing. I believe that they absolutely know the impact,
and I think that the impact is to be as
destructive as possible, to inflict as much cruelty as possible,
and to do as much damage as possible to people
who are vulnerable in this country. Because we do not

(17:59):
have in charge this broligarchy, this autocracy, these billionaires that
value the lives of individuals in this country. They believe
that we're all put here to be in servitude to
their wealth building.

Speaker 13 (18:12):
That's it.

Speaker 14 (18:12):
So if there are not advancements in medical technology or
in healthcare and research in the United States, that time,
Eli Musk can go catch up light to China or
all these other people. They are not concerned about the
citizens of the United States. They're only concerned about their pocketbook.
So once we realize that this isn't a matter of well,
let's just get them to put a process in place,

(18:33):
let's just get them to be more precise about it.
We have to defeat them and their lack of humanity
and their approach to governance all together, not just their
individual tactics.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Well, I absolutely agree, because this idea that you didn't
see it coming is kind of stupid, Greg. I mean,
they literally have been working on this since twenty twenty one.
And I remember, of course, after the election was it
was two or three days later and somebody hit me up.
They text me, and I saw the comments. They say, roll,

(19:05):
I don't understand, how have you moved on? I said,
what are you talking about? The Election's over? I said,
the election is over. She lost. I said, they lost
the House, they lost the Senate. I said, now now
it's time to get for a fight.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
You know what they're going to do. They literally gave
you the blueprint.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
And so I don't understand what the hell, what the
hell Jeffrey's office, Schumer's office, and all of them were
doing November six through January twentieth, because you knew what
was coming, you knew what they were anticipating. You should
have had lawyers lined up ready on day one, filing lawsuits.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
You should have been able.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
You should have been meeting with labor leaders explaining, hey,
they're coming after your federal workers.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
All these things were happening there and.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
They're just sitting here like, oh, what to do.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
And not only that, let me also extend this.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Let me extend this because I'm gonna say this right now,
I don't know what the hell black leadership is doing.
I don't know what the hell these organizations are doing. Okay,
because here's what's crazy to me. And you may say, well,
you know what, and this is not about being arrogant
or cocky. This is this is truth. Not a single

(20:19):
black civil rights organization has actually hit me to say, hey,
we want to come on and talk about this here.
What's your strategy, what's your plan? What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Have no idea?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
So none of those things are happening, and so people
are I hear more Black people say, Yo, who's doing what?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
What's the plan? What's the action? Where do we go?

Speaker 1 (20:40):
What do we do? And folks you're like, well, you
know we shouldn't, you know, chase every little thing they
threw out. Yeah, this is all hands on debt because,
like I said on this show, they want to completely
destroy the civil rights infrastructure, the economic infrastructure. They want
to destroy grants, they want to destroy money, they want

(21:02):
to destroy contracts. They're executing their strategy, and we're over
here bullshiting.

Speaker 15 (21:10):
Yes, unfortunately, And I find no pleasure in saying what
I'm about to say.

Speaker 7 (21:15):
It sounds like a broken record.

Speaker 15 (21:16):
But either people don't understand or simply choose to reject
the reality that we live in a white supremacist state
called the United States of America that has never yielded
anything that benefited African people except that we got into

(21:40):
a bloody fight for it. There is the illusion that
we live in a nation we do not and by that,
I mean there is no common definition of American, there
is no common commitment to a joint project. There is
only power, capitalism, and racism. And to agree that African

(22:00):
people have made progress in this criminal enterprise called the
United States of America, we have done so when we
have not only remained true to our values, but when
we have acted on those values. You can't name a
single historical event that I'm aware of anyway where that
is not the case.

Speaker 7 (22:16):
And let me just say this.

Speaker 15 (22:19):
We've been talking a long time about this cold civil
war that is heating up. The concept of federalism is
deeply rooted in white supremacy. The fight between the federal
government and the states is informed, first and foremost poured
into the foundation of the Nasitis Constitution by slavery. This

(22:39):
was the compromise. So when you see what were happening
now fast forward to this situation we're in right now,
the white nationalist playbook, You're absolutely right.

Speaker 7 (22:46):
They told us what they were going to do.

Speaker 15 (22:48):
We talked about it, add infinitum, and people chose to
reject it, or, in the case of ninety million or
so people in this country set the election out so
that it could be stolen, either through voter suppression or
this information of both. As one day we'll wake up
and understand as they crow in our faces about how
they did it, and as.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
They shut down the DJ office to stop election interference
from foreign actors, and they want to steal further elections.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Let's be real clear, all of it.

Speaker 7 (23:20):
All about it.

Speaker 15 (23:20):
And of course, as we saw the news this week
that they are now flattening the law that allows them
to interfere foreign governments to interfere in contemporary politics by
taking our bribery. I mean, it's like, no, you can
do it. But I think the playbook here though, is
also crystal clear. We're seeing it already. Here's the playbook

(23:41):
Trump Musk really and Trump his his signing tool. As
you know, Musk's son appearently wiping bookers on the resolute
desk for it. So his employees consternation. You eviscerate everything,
you take all the money if you.

Speaker 7 (23:55):
Can in the courts.

Speaker 15 (23:56):
Of course, Now I finally refused, and then your white
national's friend ask you for carveouts. What I would have
asked our good brother mayor Wolfin is that when he
was saying, you know, I don't care who it is, Democratic, Republican.
I'm sure that's the case because Senator Katie Britt yep
has already approached Robert Francis Kennedy for a carve out
for that five hundred and eighteen million dollars, which includes

(24:17):
you ab what we saw Jerry Moran in Kansas approach
Marco ruby Or about the USAID money because he understands
that seven hundred and thirteen million dollars of farmers' crops
went to Food for Peace. And Lisa Murkowski, who had
chairs the Indian Affairs Committee and Senate, went and said,
you know, can you exempt the Native Americans? And so

(24:39):
what you see is their plan was take everything and
then give it back to the white national states. Twenty
two attorneys general in this country have gone to court,
all of them Democrats. The Republicans aren't going to court
because they are going to ask for carve out yep.
And guess what they may get those carveouts. This is
the Cold Civil War is heating up. Finally, I'm talking
now to all the idiots in Ohio who voted for

(25:02):
this car Salesman Bernie Moreno Bredie Moreno said, Ohio gets
a billion dollars. That's Ohio state gets a billion dollars
in some of this funny you know what he said?
He said, if you're gonna do child cancer research, I
don't understand why any of that money doesn't go directly
to child cancer research and not sixty percent to indirect costs.
Then he said, our indirect costs are twenty eight percent.

(25:23):
And you use car Sealman. You don't even know what
it is. But y'all wanted him and not Sherry Brown. Okay,
that's fine. Ted Budd in North Carolina, Duke in North Carolina.
They get billions in research money in age. He's saying, well,
you know, I agree that these things need to be
right sized.

Speaker 7 (25:42):
But guess what.

Speaker 15 (25:43):
He's also back there saying, can we get a carve out?
But he's in a purple state. This civil war is
about white supremacy versus everybody, and these white boys gonna
turn around and try to get a carve out. Now,
if you're the mayor of Birmingham, what do you do,
Because if you can get that car out, do you
hold yours and go for it? But then what does
that do to the long range project of black liberation?

(26:04):
In this funky criminal enterprise because you've made a compromise.
You saved that billions now, but at what cost? And
that's where we are now.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Well, we have a yeah, white nationalist Christopher Ruffo, who,
of course, who attack critical rights theory and all of that.
So you're gonna love this here. So he's posting stuff
regarding the Apartment of Education. He promised, Oh, I'm gonna
do all kinds of stuff. So he goes the apropment
Education granted eight million dollars to this NGO, which argues
that America is a racialized structure of power, privilege, and oppression,

(26:35):
and suggests that Republicans are violently fighting for the maintenance
of white supremacy. It advises public schools in thirteen states.
I responded to him, no lies told, I just see
any lies told?

Speaker 7 (26:49):
That's all you have to do what you have to do.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, I mean, I'm like, no lies told. Greg, you
talked about people who sat at how on the couch,
And the reality is when we look at the numbers,
the fact of the matter is a lot of black
folks sat at home.

Speaker 7 (27:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
We love to talk about we love to talk about percentages,
we love to talk about this number at how many
voted Black men, black women. But it's important for us
to go under the hood and look at the numbers
to understand what is going on. And you have to
look at black voters in a totally different way. You
cannot look at black voters in the monolith in terms

(27:25):
of in the macro. You must look at them a micro.
Y'all have heard me say that African Americans sixty five
plus the more likely to identify as Democratic voters. Sixty
people sixty five or older are also going to vote
at a higher rate than anybody else. The second group
is gen x Really, that group is fifty five to

(27:46):
sixty four. There's only one demographic that Donald Trump won,
it was Gen xers. When you get below fifty five,
you begin to see the huge drop off in participation
in voter registration in all all of that. And so
joining us right now is Chris Tol And Chris of
course has been working on this with the Black Voter Project.

(28:07):
They have been quite busy laying out what the numbers
look like and what was interesting. Of course, last year,
so many mainstream white media we're just ignoring Black voters,
annoying the data we had Chris on the show a lot.
Then all of a sudden late in the season, then
they started realizing that, oh my goodness, we may want

(28:28):
to have people like Chris on to talk about the
numbers of black voters. He's the project director and co
founder of Black Insights Research, joining us from Sacramento.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
So, Chris, y'all have done your analysis.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
What's the verdict.

Speaker 16 (28:42):
So we completed a series of longitudinal surveys throughout the election,
and I talked about the first.

Speaker 6 (28:47):
Three waves on your show a number of times. We
now have our post election survey complete.

Speaker 16 (28:53):
We completed it towards the end of the month of December,
gone through, done the results.

Speaker 6 (28:57):
I want to hire that a few things.

Speaker 16 (28:58):
First and foremost, our survey mirrors exit polling, showing that
black support in vote choice for Harris did not detract
from twenty twenty numbers. She got pretty much the same
amount of support as Biden did in twenty twenty. And
we look at the breakdown of men and women, that
number remains for men as well, where she actually, according

(29:20):
to our survey, got a bit more support from black
men this year around than Biden did in twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Oh stop right there, Stop right there. According to all research,
Vice President Kamala Harris got a higher percentage of the
black male vote than Biden did in twenty.

Speaker 17 (29:37):
Twenty, slightly.

Speaker 16 (29:39):
The exit polls in twenty twenty have it around seventy
nine eighty percent. Our survey has it around eighty two percent.
It is within the margin of air, so it is
statistically the same many and that black men showed the
same amount of support, if not more for Harris than
they did for Biden in twenty twenty. We just really
have to move on from this conversation that black people

(29:59):
are not supporting Democrats, that black people are not voting
for Harris, or.

Speaker 6 (30:04):
Black candidates or a black women in this case, and
moving to Trump.

Speaker 16 (30:06):
As you mentioned, the real conversation here is about turnout
and focusing in on how to get black people who
didn't vote in this election back engaged, back to the polls.
Other analysis we've done shows that throughout across the country
and even in battleground states, the more black accounty is
so as the percentage black of accounting increases, turnout drops

(30:29):
and the turnout in counties that are less black is
much higher than turnout in counties that are more black.
Suggesting that compared to twenty twenty, Right, this.

Speaker 6 (30:38):
Is an issue that needs to be dealt with. It
needs to be focused on. It's getting people out to.

Speaker 16 (30:43):
The polls, not necessarily focusing on who they're going to
vote for. And we asked on the survey about who
the Harris campaign contacted, and we found that of all
the people we surveyed, about forty one percent said that
Harris did not contact them whatsoever. And sadly, as you
mass mentioned, the eighteen to twenty nine that youngest age

(31:03):
group had fifty two percent people saying they were not contacted.
And then again when we look at sort of zoning
in on who was likely and who is unlikely to vote,
of those that did not vote in twenty twenty, fifty
six percent said that they were not contacted. And so
there is a disconnect here between what I believe needed
to happen to get the.

Speaker 17 (31:22):
Black community out engaged in voting.

Speaker 16 (31:24):
Not worrying about who they're going to vote for, but
worrying about if they're going to get out on the
couch and what actually happened, and.

Speaker 17 (31:29):
We're seeing some residue of that in our poll as well.

Speaker 16 (31:34):
When we look at the attitudes towards the Democratic Party,
as we see the Black attitudes towards how welcoming the
Democratic Party is towards Black people were increasing throughout the campaign,
shifting from about twenty eight percent saying the party was
extremely welcoming to a hire forty two percent right before
the election.

Speaker 6 (31:53):
Well, that tapered off to back down.

Speaker 16 (31:55):
To thirty five percent following the election and likely will
continue to fall meeting that. You know, there was some excitement,
some feeling of inclusion in the Democratic Party amongst the
Black people with Harris at the top of the ticket.
Post election, that's starting to reverse and Democrats are going
to have to work.

Speaker 6 (32:11):
Extra hard to get people engaged and involved.

Speaker 16 (32:14):
And then lastly, when looking forward, we asked respondents whether
or not a second Trump presidency will motivate them to
become more committed to politics or whether it has proved
and will prove exhausting and they just want to be
left alone. And you know, not surprisingly, only twenty three
percent of respondents said that they are motivated to participate
in politics. We're forty three percent said that they are

(32:38):
exhausted and just want to.

Speaker 6 (32:39):
Be left alone.

Speaker 16 (32:40):
After the election, And when you look at this breakdown
amongst men and women, fifty one percent of women that
we survey said that they are exhausted, they will that
they feel like they just want to be left alone
after this election, and they're not motivated to continue to
be committed to politics m during this Trump second term.
And so, as you mentioned, there's a lot of work
to be on. Democrats, especially Black Democrats, have to step

(33:03):
up and take the battle here and really motivate voters
to get involved and to re engage voters looking forward
right twenty twenty six, campaigns have already started. If Democrats
won any chance to take back the House, to fight
in the Senate, to win local elections, there has to
be some strategy and it has to start now.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
So let's talk about the turnout. Guys, pull up the
county level turnout and the reason I think that is important.
This is what I said directly to Vice President Kamala
Harris in November twenty three. This is what I said
to the deputy campaign manager of the Biden Harris campaign,

(33:42):
Quentin Folks, beginning in January, and I sent that message
to Cedric Richmond, to Jen O'Malley Dylan, to the leadership
of the Biden Harris campaign and then in July as well.
And what I'm saying here ain't like it's confidential, because
literally said it on this show. And what I said is,

(34:03):
you cannot wait till July, August, and September to engage
black people because first and foremost, the mistake that people
make is oh, we got to get out and vote, Okay,
throughout early voting voting. The election is in November. Well,
before I can get you to vote, I got to
get you registered. Before I got to get you registered,

(34:25):
I got to get you interested and make you aware, enlighten,
educate you on the issues, to explain to you why
you need to get registered and then why you need
to vote. That to me is the process that Democrats
keep skipping over. And I said, there should have been
I said, the Biiten Hairs campaign beginning in January.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
There should have been every single week.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Across this country townholls being hosted by mayors, city council members,
county commissioners, state senators, governors, members of Congress, educating people
on what they accomplished. So if you do that January, February, March, April, May, June, July,

(35:09):
then folks to sew, you know what, I need to
get registered, and then if I'm already registered, I need
to focus on then voting and getting other people. That
is the process. If you wait, I kept saying, your
runaway is running out, your runaway is running out. Then
Biden has the debate June twenty seventh, Okay, totally screws up,
drops out July twenty first. That completely changed the game.

(35:32):
And so now it was all over the place, and
that to me, I just keep saying, they got to
spend more time and more money speaking to black people
for a longer period of time than just how they
used to run traditional campaigns.

Speaker 16 (35:49):
And if you look at this in the sort of
timeline of things since pretty much Obama's tenure, the writing
was on the wall in twenty sixteen, and the only
reason things really reversed in twenty twenty, my opinion, was
twofold one. Four years of Trump motivated people in ways
that they were not typically motivated through campaigns. And also
there was the summer of towards Floyd in twenty twenty

(36:11):
that really engaged with black community and politics unlike anything
else four years.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Also, Chris, I gotta throw in twenty twenty is an
aberration because it was COVID, So all of these laws
were changed to actually make it easier for people to
vote because they could not go in physically the moment.
Come twenty four, they're like, oh, hell no, we're going
back to the old way and so ballot dropboxes, absentee voting,

(36:38):
and so that's so we can't I just think that
we can't look at twenty twenty the same we look
at twenty four, sixteen, twelve, eight and four, because again
they changed the way we vote, which made it easier.

Speaker 16 (36:56):
Absolutely, and so by the time twenty twenty four rolls around,
you know, people are looking at twenty twenty saying, oh.

Speaker 7 (37:02):
We got this.

Speaker 6 (37:03):
We're going to have more voters than we did in twenty. Yeah,
we're going to keep motivating people.

Speaker 16 (37:06):
But that's just wasn't the case, and there was no preparation,
especially as you said, no investment in the black community.
And if there's a serious want to win elections in
twenty twenty six and then the presidency in twenty twenty eight,
the investment needs to start now, and it needs to
be a multi year, sort of continuous and prolonged.

Speaker 6 (37:25):
Investment in the black community to get things going right.

Speaker 16 (37:28):
We're still waiting on official turnout data to come out,
but in some states where we do have it, such
as Georgia, the only group, the only racial ethnic demographic
group for which turnout fell was black people. Every other group,
especially white American size a tick upwards in turnout in Georgia.
Black Georgians turnout dropped. And so that's going to be
a continued problem, as the post election Black Voter Project

(37:50):
data suggest as there's even less motivation now.

Speaker 6 (37:54):
To get involved and participate.

Speaker 17 (37:55):
And we're only right a month in. It's just going
to keep getting.

Speaker 6 (37:58):
Worse, and people are going to continue to become more dissolutioned.

Speaker 16 (38:01):
Than apathetic towards politics as more and more chaos and
sees and what we have.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
To recognize black voter turnout Again, folks, the numbers do
not lie. If you look at the midterm elections twenty fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty,
twenty two, twenty four, what you have seen is you're
actually seeing Black voter participation going back to pre Obama levels.

(38:27):
And so that's the other mistake. I saw somebody, I
saw some idiot, and I blasted this dumbass, But well,
blaming Obama for what's going on. Now, there's a lot
of blame there for Obama in different areas, but here's
a mistake. You have to look at Obama also as
an aberration. So when he runs, the numbers go up tremendously,

(38:49):
But the question is do you maintain that level? And
what I have been yelling on this show, and I've
been saying that if black people vote, if we maximize
our number, if our target goal is seventy percent, if
we try to hit seventy percent of our eligible black
voters in the counties that we are in, we sweep elections.

(39:13):
But we will always lose if we're voting at fifty five,
fifty two, fifty forty five. We have to counter the
white turnout who came out for Trump and recognize it's
a bunch of white people who are not going to vote.
But if black turnout is at seventy seventy five, eighty,
you can actually counter white turnout in some places like Georgia.

Speaker 16 (39:36):
North Carolina, absolutely, And I think you know, speaking of
the Obama era, there's there's a lot of research, political
science research suggesting that black people are empowered by the
first the first to break through barriers and Obama was
exactly that. There was some worry I expressed a lot
of worry actually prior to the election that when Harris
took over the ticket, there was just going to be

(39:58):
the same sentiment that black people were going to be
excited and fall in line because she's another black candidate.

Speaker 17 (40:03):
But it's not the same.

Speaker 16 (40:04):
Research suggest that the empowerment for the second is much
different than that that ceiling that's already been broken through.
And we saw, you know, extreme support and excitement, especially
from black women, but there were other segments black the
black men in the community.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Who supported her, but the excitement wasn't there.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Right.

Speaker 16 (40:21):
We already had that ceiling broken with Obama, and there
was a sense that we could just rely upon this
black candidate to get out Black voters. But no, again,
Obama is the exception to the rule. The rule needs
to be spending resources, time and money in the community,
mobilizing folks.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Question from my panel, I'm going to start with Greg first,
Greg Young, There you go, there you go, there you go.

Speaker 7 (40:48):
Thank you, brother, and thank you.

Speaker 15 (40:50):
Doc told me really reading through the executive summary and
listening to you, and I'm thinking about the late Martin Kilson,
who last book just came out.

Speaker 7 (41:05):
Slimson.

Speaker 15 (41:05):
He says that somewhere in the seventies and eighties, what
he began to track was, or think he observed, was
a shift from black politics organized around power to black
politics that began to kind of trend toward culture. He
didn't say celebrity, but I thought about that. How can we,

(41:30):
particularly given the results of the survey, y'all survey where
you see this really radically different worldview coming out thinking
about Ron Walter as saying the very same thing, you know,
pursuing to this idea, we really don't live in a nation.

Speaker 7 (41:44):
I mean, these people think very differently.

Speaker 15 (41:46):
We think differently about immigration, we think differently about all
of those things, mass deportation. How important is it for
us to spend time rebuilding the network of independent black institutions,
or at least black controlled institutions in between these election cycles?
Would that have an impact rather than trying to build

(42:07):
these political coalitions scratch from scratching and spending dollars to
go to churches and go to Since we have collectively
a different worldview, how important is it for us to
concentrate on these black spaces where we are unapologetically in
debate and conversation as a strategy for then building voter participation,
and as the election cycles come, I think.

Speaker 6 (42:30):
That's mentally important.

Speaker 16 (42:31):
What you said reminds me of Catherine Tate's work from
Protests to Politics, and really that our contemporary understanding of politics,
and Black politics in particular is really encompassed with.

Speaker 17 (42:42):
Voting, when the political sphere in Black.

Speaker 16 (42:45):
Political history has defined politics so much more broadly, right
with protests, with boycotts, with resistance, revolts, revolutions, and I
think under the Trump administration and looking forward right there's
going to have to be a broader definition of politics,
and we're going to need organizations to re engage people
understanding that voting is the ultimate sort of democratic outcome,

(43:09):
but re engage people in participating in engaging politics in
a number of different ways, and a lot of focus
groups we've ran, we speak to people who are engaged
in politics, who are knowledgeable about politics, who know their
local representatives and their local politics, but they don't feel
like their vote matters.

Speaker 17 (43:26):
And so these are the people who we need to
find a way to talk to and relate to about.

Speaker 16 (43:29):
Power in politics that they see and then help them
relate it back to voting with an understanding that there's
a long term goal of bringing up voting numbers, of
bringing up turnout so that we can build political power.
But it starts first in the community and thinking about
politics is something.

Speaker 6 (43:45):
Much broader and much more historical for Black Americans.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Thank you, thank you Racing, Thank you, Doctor Taller.

Speaker 13 (43:54):
I'm curious.

Speaker 14 (43:55):
I looked at the survey, but I didn't see anything
about how black people people are getting their news and
their information. But whether it's in this pulling or other
research that you all did, did you find that there
was any impact in the way that black voters were
receiving news or even disinformation and their voter attitudes.

Speaker 13 (44:16):
Rice, That's something you might want to look into in
the future.

Speaker 16 (44:20):
So we asked a number of questions in previous ways
of the survey about how people receive their information. And
there's a dramatic shift, and the shift is conditioned upon
different demographics such as age and geography. But more and
more people are receiving their information online through the Internet
through social media, particularly younger individuals and even older cohorts

(44:41):
and Black Americans. When they use social media, they're on
things like Facebook, where younger cohorts are on things like
TikTok and Instagram and Twitter. And so the way that
the campaign approached this right probably was right to emphasize
social media, but you have to then tone the message
on social media to the different demographics that are engaging
with your campaign and with your ads based upon the

(45:02):
apps and the internet sources that they use. And so
there's a lot of information to pull apart here. We
haven't done any type of analysis yet that looks at
whether or not different information sources led to different levels
of participation or support, but we do know that there's
a vast variety of information people are taking in, but
it tends to be far more online and social media
driven now than ever before. And the role of black

(45:25):
media right is hard to find. There's a lot of
respondents who know about black media, but they don't say
that they use black media or look towards black media
for most of their political information. And again that goes
back to these parties and campaigns partnering with and investing
in media that actually speaks to and has the black
community in mind, that is focused on black issues, rather

(45:48):
than partnering with media sources and pundits that are just
talking heads trying to send their messages to the black community,
because those don't hit right. Those messages do not resonate
the same as messages that come from media sources and
research that has really looked at how to hone in
on what's going to resonate and what people are going
to hear.

Speaker 18 (46:09):
Nola, thank you so much, doctor Toler.

Speaker 19 (46:13):
I'm always excited to talk to a fellow political scientist,
and I'm a big fan of the work that you
do on j REP. My question is about if you
all were able to capture anything that's driving apathy in
terms of why voter turnout was what it was in
some places. I know that I've when I talk to
my family in Louisiana, one of the first things they'll

(46:35):
say to me is is that, well, Trump's gotten away
with everything, So what's the point. You know, there's this
level of apathy because there wasn't a level of accountability
where that people were able to see. You know, when
he said that he could go and stand on the
middle fifth Avenue and shoot someone and nothing would happened
to him.

Speaker 18 (46:55):
It seems like that that might be kind of true,
and the fact that he's.

Speaker 19 (46:59):
Technically a convictvellin and he's still the president of the
United States. I'm wondering if you all captured anything around
accountability and what's driving apathy.

Speaker 17 (47:08):
Thank you, Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 6 (47:11):
That's a great question for us.

Speaker 16 (47:13):
We've looked at a whole bunch of things and actually
modeled some things driving turnout.

Speaker 17 (47:18):
One thing that I want to focus on is something
that we've been.

Speaker 16 (47:21):
Trying to highlight for years now, but absolutely since the
start of the campaign is the power of threat and
understanding that if a black voter thinks that there is
a threat to their group, to their community, to black
people at large, and ultimately right we identified that Donald Trump.

Speaker 17 (47:39):
And MAGA could be this threat, they were more likely.

Speaker 16 (47:42):
To vote, they took action, and a lot of our results,
especially in the post election wave, we find that those who.

Speaker 6 (47:48):
Were the least likely to vote, those who were not
engaged in.

Speaker 16 (47:51):
Politics, were those who looked at Donald Trump and said, oh,
I don't think he's actually going to do these things.
I don't see Donald Trump as much of a threat
as other voters who then participate. And so one of
the most sort of central factors to understanding for us
what got people out to vote in What kept people
on the couch, what drove this sense of apathy was

(48:11):
whether or not they saw that their actual lives and
their resources.

Speaker 17 (48:15):
Were in jeopardy, because, as we know from a number.

Speaker 16 (48:20):
Of these conversations, there's already sort of this built up
resistance to thinking that the Democrats.

Speaker 15 (48:24):
Are going to do.

Speaker 17 (48:25):
Anything for them, and so the other side of that
coin is.

Speaker 16 (48:28):
Okay, but are you going to lose something as someone
else gets in power? And if you're able to drive
up that appearance of perception of threat, people are more
likely to participate and get engaged. And so one thing
that was driving apathy was just sort of this sense
of this nonchalantness.

Speaker 17 (48:44):
They're nothing's going to happen. Trump won't actually.

Speaker 6 (48:46):
Do these things.

Speaker 16 (48:47):
This is not something that's in danger of happening in
the Democrats right, absolutely could have done a better job
making the case that you need to vote, even if
not just for sort of policy outcomes. This around to
techtivy policy gains that we've had over the last few decades.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Well that's that's what again. But the only way that
happens with no one when none were just laid out
it has to be repetitive. It has to be repetitive.
It has to be over a period of time, and
it has to be it has to have a level

(49:23):
of specificity that I don't think they did. So let
me just let me just go back and again. I'm
gonna go back to June. Uh for the folks who
don't know, BT got eleven million dollars from the Bide
Harris from the Biden Harris Harris Wall's campaign. The big

(49:46):
the most money well spent was the money they spent
on ads that ran during the BT Awards. When Taraji
Henson and I've been told point blank that the Viacom
Paramount people beet people were pissed that she did that. Well,

(50:07):
she talked about Project twenty twenty five. The searchers shot up,
and what we saw June, July, August. Then you saw
at the convention the focus there. You saw a three
month period where Product twenty twenty five was top of
mind for a lot of people, and then all of

(50:28):
a sudden, from the Harris Walls campaign, it sort of disappeared.
It kind of came up, but it's sort of it
was no longer a central They shifted to a reproductive
rights fight. For democracy argument, which we now know was stupid,

(50:52):
an absolute failure. But if you're going to talk about
preduct twenty twenty five, what you can't do is here's
this nine almost one thousand page document. Now what's in it?
What are they saying? What are they going to do?

(51:13):
Even when they were like, we're going attacking DEI no
what I keep saying. No, they're attacking black contracts, they're
attacking black jobs, they're attacking federal workers. That's the black
middle class. You did not have the drilling down that
has to be repetitive. We're supposed to go damn really really,

(51:34):
That to me is also how you have to speak
to voters. And to Grant's point, you've got to have
black organizers doing that too.

Speaker 7 (51:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (51:47):
Absolutely, rolunteer.

Speaker 16 (51:48):
Last point, all of our research suggests that when we
look at the power of threat for black.

Speaker 6 (51:54):
Voters, it is a racialized threat.

Speaker 16 (51:57):
And so yeah, these broad attempts to paint Project twenty
twenty is a threat are ineffective. These broad approaches to
try and say, you know, Trump is a threat to
democracy are ineffective. Even arguments saying Trump is an economic
threat are ineffective. The only way that these messages are
effective is if you are drilling down, as you said,
the way that these threats will affect the black community

(52:17):
and will affect people as Black Americans in their lives
because they are black.

Speaker 6 (52:22):
That's when it resonates, that's when they get out to vote.

Speaker 16 (52:25):
And so yes, the Taraji message was probably one of
the best messages on message that I've seen doing this.
But it needed to happen all the time, constantly throughout
the campaign, coming from the campaign of super packs and
anywhere they could spend.

Speaker 6 (52:39):
Money on this, they really needed to and that just
didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Absolutely, we're going to talk more about this. We're going
to have you back, Chris. I appreciate it, thanks a lot.
Where can people go read the report for themselves?

Speaker 16 (52:51):
Yeah, the results are online two places at www Dot
Black Voter Project dot com and also at www Dot
Black Insightsresearch dot com, which also has a number of
other research reports related to the election and other issues
related to black politics.

Speaker 6 (53:08):
Thank you again for having me, all.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Right, Chris, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Folks will
take a short break. We come back. We're gonna talk
to Congressman Glenn Ivey.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Forming this thoughts shooter about the absolute craziness happening in
the Southern District Office of the US Attorney in New
York City. The thuggish behavior that we're seeing from Trump's
DOJ is crazy, and they're fighting back, and so we're
going to do that. We're also fighting back, which is
why your support is needed. When you join I Bring

(53:35):
the Funk Fan Club, your resources are going to us
to be able to do this show, do other shows,
launch other shows. And I'm gonna say it again, all right,
we're going to have new episodes of the Black Table, right.

Speaker 7 (53:47):
Greg, We're gonna get that up and running.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Berry.

Speaker 7 (53:52):
We can't we can't afford that too.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (53:54):
All right, gets there to put you on the spot.
There so necessary.

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Speaker 8 (54:57):
Hey, y'all, Welcome to the Other Side of Change, only
on the Black Star Network and hosted by myself.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
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What's up? Keith Tony in a place that you got
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Producer of Fat Tuesday's and are hip hop comedy.

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Rolling with Roland Martin unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable him.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Folks, it is an unbelievable thing happening in the Southern
District Office of the United States Attorney's Office in New
York City, a stunning shakeup. Three top federal prosecutors have
resigned after refusing to drop corruption charges against New York
City Mayor Eric Adams. The acting US Attorney in Manhattan,

(56:16):
Danielle Sassoon, and two senior prosecutors in Washington, d C.
Have stepped down after Trump's Justice Department ordered them to
dismiss the case. At the center of the controversy allegations
that Adams, a former police captain and the city's second
black mayor, took illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals.

(56:39):
The DOJ says keeping the case alive would interfere with
Adam's ability to tackle crime and immigration issues. But these
attorneys are saying, no, they actually broke the law.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Now, who was also crazy?

Speaker 1 (56:55):
The prosecutor wrote.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
The NBC has obtained a letter.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Where Danielle's as Soon has said that the Adams legal
team was asking for a quid pro quo quote, with
the DOJ saying Hey, if y'all want to see y'all
drop the charges, I'll follow through when it comes to
fighting immigration. Not only that this is a letter from

(57:20):
this is a former law clerk of Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia, who wrote this here, who laid out who
said he said, I do not repeat here the evidence
against Adams that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he
committed federal crimes. Mister Bow rightfully has never called into
question that the case team conducted this investigation with integrity

(57:43):
and that the charges against Adams are serious and supported
by fact and law. Mister Bow's memo, however, which directs
me to dismiss an indictment return by a duly constituted
grand jury for reasons having nothing to do with the
strength of the case, raises serious concern learns that render
the contemplated dismissal inconsistent with my ability and duty to

(58:05):
prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor, and to advance
good faith arguments before the courts. When I took my
oath of office three weeks ago, I vowed to vow
to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office
on which I was about to enter. In carrying out
that responsibility, I am guided by, among other things, the

(58:26):
principles of federal prosecution set forth in the Justice Manual
and your recent memoranda instructing attorney for the Department of
Justice to make only good faith arguments and not to
use the criminal enforcement authority of the United States to
achieve political objectives or other improper aims. This is what
he lays out to Attorney General Pam Bonding.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Folks, it is unbelievable what is happening there.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
In joining us right now for Maryland State's attorney for
federal prosecutor and now Congressman Glenn Ivy, I'd glad to
have you here. Have you ever?

Speaker 2 (59:04):
I think the only thing that's.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Comparable to what's happening here is when you had the
actions taken by Richard Nixon against the Attorney General and
you had other other attorneys saying I'm not gonna follow
through with your orders.

Speaker 20 (59:26):
Yeah, that was the Saturday Night massacre, and Archie Cox
was the attorney that they were trying to have fired,
and you know, they refused to move forward with the
firing just because he was investigating Richard Nixon and they
were trying to curtail that investigation and protect Nixon from prosecution.

Speaker 7 (59:46):
Now you know, ultimately they ended up just like they
did here.

Speaker 20 (59:49):
They sort of fired the ones that refused to do
it Cox and well that William Weld, who later became
the governor of Massachusetts.

Speaker 7 (59:57):
But you know, it's the same kind of deal. They'll
find somebody to do it.

Speaker 20 (01:00:02):
But it's still wrong, it's still unethical, and it still
violates basic principles of prosecution prosecutorial ethics.

Speaker 7 (01:00:11):
The attorney here, I thought, did the right thing. She
did it the right way.

Speaker 20 (01:00:14):
She submitted something in writing raising her concerns about it.
But as you pointed out, this was not a decision
that you know, Bouvet and Bondi were making on the merits.
This was just based on they want to try and
essentially reward Eric Adams apparently for him taking a position
that was positive with respect to immigration during the campaign

(01:00:36):
and the presidential campaign cycle. And as Hakim Jeffries has suggested,
the fact that they dismissed it but without prejudice, which
means they could bring it back later, means they can
hold this over Eric adams head as long as he's
in office and basically, as Hakim said, keep him on
a short leash and make sure he continues to do

(01:00:56):
the things that the Biden, the Trump administration wants him
to do.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
This right here, this is what she wrote. Rather than
be rewarded, Adams advocacy should be called out for what
it is, an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in
exchange for a dismissal of his case, she says, she
lays it out right here.

Speaker 7 (01:01:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 20 (01:01:20):
Absolutely, and it's an improper thing to do because you know,
if you're going to drop a case of this magnitude,
you know, you bring federal charges against the mayor of
New York City.

Speaker 7 (01:01:32):
That means this, this very serious case is gone through
all of the channels at.

Speaker 20 (01:01:36):
The Department of Justice, there at the US Attorney's office
in Manhattan, but also up to Maine Justice, where the
former Attorney General I'm sure reviewed this case before it
was decided upon, and they decided to go forward based
on the merits. There's a sufficient evidence to prove guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt, as she states in her letter there,
and in fact, they were about to bring a superseding indictment.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Yeah, but they were about to hit it with another end.

Speaker 20 (01:02:00):
Yeah, they're going to add charges because they found new
evidence that indicated additional criminal charges should be brought. They
were about to do a superseding indictment instead of going
in that direction, though, the Trump administration reverse course totally
and told him to throw the case out. Not all
the way, so you've got to keep it over his head,

(01:02:21):
but enough so that the federal charges don't go forward
now unless he carries out the immigration policies that they want.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
For the people at home. Explain what a superseding indictment is.

Speaker 20 (01:02:33):
Superseding indictment when a case first goes to a grand jury,
the prosecutor presents evidence and asks the grand jury to
return charges on particular criminal accounts, unless say, they bring
I don't know, four or five counts, and that indictment
is returned. That means it is presented in court, so
the defendant knows what the charges are, and then the

(01:02:54):
case begins moving forward in public. As as the case
goes forward, if prosecutors find new information or new evidence
that more crimes were committed, they can add more charges
and they bring a second indictment or called the superseding indictment,
which adds.

Speaker 7 (01:03:08):
The new charges to the old charges.

Speaker 20 (01:03:10):
So in this instance, it looks like what happened was
the prosecutors in Manhattan found more evidence of more criminal conduct,
or they found evidence that sufficiently bolstered charges that they
thought about bringing before but didn't think we're strong enough yet.
But they found strong enough evidence to add more charges

(01:03:31):
to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt against the mayor
in New York City, and that's why they were seeking
a superseding indictment.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
So what was crazy here? They found additional charges of
him ordering people to destroy evidence. They have all of
this and go to my iPad again. The acting Deputy
Attorney General Emil Bove sends a letter say hey, drop
the charges, and these user attorneys are like, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
We literally have a judge like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
How are you in DC making this call when we're
sitting here with the information. What the hell is going on?
This is then, of course, when he was asked about it,
and the overlall of Trump goes, oh, I know anything
about it.

Speaker 17 (01:04:16):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Eric Adams has been trying to suck up to Donald
Trump since election day to do this very thing right here,
and these attorneys, multiple attorneys have now quit saying what
the hell y'all doing in DC is just wrong and corrupt.

Speaker 7 (01:04:35):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 20 (01:04:36):
And you know, this was an effort that Adams lawyers
had been working with the Trump administration apparently for some
time to try and get this kind of an outcome
so that he could avoid criminal prosecution at least to
get through his election apparently. But I'm sure he's hoping
that if he continues to work with them and do
what they want them to do on immigration and other things,

(01:04:57):
they just won't bring the charges again. So you know,
we'll have to see how it plays out. But I
thought these prosecutors who took a stand and resigned, I thought,
you know, it was really profiles and courage. You know,
these are these are young attorneys. She's thirty eight. Uh,
she's come a long way to Yale Law school grad.
As you pointed out, she was a Scalia clerk Federalist Society,

(01:05:19):
So that means she's conservative. This is not some you know,
wild eye liberal, you know, trying to buck the Trump administration.
She's she's one of those ones they're grooming for higher things.
But she decided to give that up potentially and take
a stand on this in a principled way.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
I mean, what's crazy is she actually said, uh, stick
with the shot here she said that. She says, mister
Bowle admonished a member of my team who took notes
during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes
at the meeting's conclusion.

Speaker 20 (01:05:52):
Yeah, don't don't leave a paper trail. That's you know,
apparently what Bubba was concerned about. But you know, this
stuff's gonna come to light, and it did quickly here,
and I think she was right to preserve that in
writing in the letter that she sent to them.

Speaker 7 (01:06:05):
So now it's all on the record.

Speaker 20 (01:06:07):
But you know, this shows the shady stuff that the
Trump administration is doing and the way they're trying to
convert the Department of Justice to a tool that's totally
political and just serves his political ends. And you know,
he's got the retribution list, he's going to go after
the J six prosecutors. He's got the effort going forward
to go after the J six FBI special agency that

(01:06:28):
investigated those cases. This is part of his total corruption
effort of the rule of law and the way the
federal prosecution system should work in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
And I want folks to understand that again, typically you
have checks and balances when it comes to the FBI,
when it comes to the US marshals what you have here,
especially if he's able to get cash patail as an
FBI director, he is going to have a team that
will not resist him, that will do whatever he wants,
that will suck up to him, and then they will

(01:06:59):
ignore you issue orders. I don't trust these people at all.
And you know, we've never had a situation, frankly, where
you will have the entire Department of Justice, which is
the law enforcement mechanism for the federal government, be completely
controlled at the whims of an evil, monihacal individual sitting

(01:07:20):
in the Oval office who wants to exert retribution against
any of his real or perceived enemies, whether they are journalists,
whether they are corporate America, whether they are other countries.
It will be heil on wheels if cash purttails FBI
director paying Bondi's attorney general and these Sinkle fans are

(01:07:42):
in control.

Speaker 7 (01:07:43):
Yeah, thirty of us in Congress came out.

Speaker 20 (01:07:45):
We did a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee two
days ago asking Grassfully and all of the Republicans on
the Senate Judiciary Committee. We know the Democrats are going
to vote against Fatel, but for them to vote again
him as well. You know this guy he published an
enemy's list in his book. He's done these like children's
book calling Donald Trump King Donald. So you know where

(01:08:08):
he's going with that. You had the Trump Attorney General
Bill Barr say this guy that over his dead body,
should he even be deputy director of the FBI, much
less director of the FBI. It's clear he's not quality.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
Oh, I forgot.

Speaker 20 (01:08:21):
This guy had to take the Fifth Amendment so to
try and avoid grand jury testimony about Trump. Then they
immunized him to force him to testify, and then at
his confirmation here he refused to talk about what he
testified about. I guess it was just so embarrassing and
bad for him. So this is the guy they want
to lead the FBI. Well, yeah, because he'll do whatever

(01:08:42):
Trump wants. So you know it's it's Bondi, who was
you know, another Trump sincophant. Her staff is going to
be Trump's former criminal defense team in the criminal cases
that he had going before. Petel's going to be running
the FBI, And he got jd Vance threatening the federal
judges who are coming out with the injunctions against Elon

(01:09:04):
Musk and those efforts advance, and those guys in Musk
are saying, well, you know, we might have to impeach
these guys.

Speaker 7 (01:09:10):
That's how he's.

Speaker 20 (01:09:11):
Trying to do a total takeover of the rule of law,
the pros, federal prosecution process, and the federal judiciary.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
All right, then, Consint and Glenn Ovis really appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (01:09:21):
Thanking so very much, thanks for having me, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Democrats are earlier today, the vote was taken to confirm
Robert of King. You do the same Roberts having takeingta
of healthy services. One Republican, one Republican mis Baccamma voted
against him, and he lit him up as being completely unqualified. Well,
the Trump the Trump administration did was they threatened I

(01:09:44):
was sendor Jony Ernst.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
They threatened North Carolina Center Tom.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Tillis to actually run canvas against them in the in
their primaries next year. What does that tell you all
they care about is holding onto their jobs. Again, what
do I keep saying? And Conservatives and Republicans have no honor,
no integrity, no decency, no morals, no morals no values,

(01:10:09):
no principles, None of that stuff matters.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
It's about power.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
And when you have folks, Republicans standing up saying if
they're going to vote for Cash Buttail, knowing full will,
you have members of Congress saying that privately, privately, Kennedy
would not have gotten ten Republican votes, but they are
scared to death of Donald Trump's retribution and they are
threatening them. They threaten Republicans to vote for Peter Heseth

(01:10:37):
as Secretary of Defense he was confirmed. They threatened them
to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Junior, he was confirmed.
They are threatening them to vote for Linda McMahon. They're
threatening them to vote for Cash Buttail. And do you
have a profile encourage of any of these Republicans shockingly
other than Mitch McConnell, The answer is no, not Lis,

(01:11:01):
not Susan Collins, not Tom Tillis. This is right here,
Senator Corey Booker in the committee hearing when it came
to Cash Patil.

Speaker 21 (01:11:10):
This is one of the more perplexing nominees for me personally.
I've seen the pendulum swing back and forth in this
committee now over eleven years. I've seen my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle rightfully take up a
politically charged tweet about a nominee, whether it's for the
bench or for significant offenses. It's like this one, as

(01:11:34):
have we. I've seen back and forth, but I've just
never seen something like this for a candidate, and I'm
surprised that there's not more people who are calling some
of this out in the most objective way possible. I
do not understand how we're moving forward at this At
this point, it seems.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Booker literally said that Cash Patil lied, he perjured himself.
They have a whistleblower who says Cash Batail was involved
in the targeting and the firing of various FBI agents,
and Chuck Grassley and others are like, oh, y'all just
sort of bringing this thing up. He's a perfect example
of this racist right here. Cash Batail sat in a

(01:12:15):
hearing and see it. He couldn't remember who this guy was,
you though, he went on his show eight times and
they have each other's cell phone and they exchanged messages.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
This man is a known liar.

Speaker 22 (01:12:26):
Watch fight with Cash came to the aid of Stu
Peters and a Stut Peters show because of Cash Ptel
personally who personally knew me because of multiple appearances on
this program, and then we exchanged contact information and we
directly text via personal cell phones constantly, and we're on
the phone with each other as Fight with Cash was

(01:12:46):
hiring a team of attorneys to represent stup Peters and
the Stu Peters Network against the Rolling Stone. So he
absolutely knows who I am. If I go on a
show eight times, I don't care if I've had ten
thousand appearances. If I go on a show eight times,
I'm not going to deny knowing the person.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
Guys, this is a known racist, a man who has
praised Adolf Hitler, who goes on his own show and says, yeah,
the dudes lying we know each other. If a Republican
is like, I don't see nothing, I don't hear nothing,
I don't know what's going on, that's literally what they're saying.

(01:13:29):
Here is Adam Shift speaking in the hearing.

Speaker 23 (01:13:33):
It seems my colleagues are determined to confirm him on
the Senate floor. And to all those FBI agents I
worked with over the years, to all that are there
now that I've not had the privilege of working with,
my heart breaks for what you're about to go through
with leadership that you cannot respect, who has not earned

(01:13:57):
your respect, who will not earn your respect. I know
you will put your head down and do your jobs
because you're professionals. I hope you stay at the FBI.
I hope you don't leave, because if you're committed to
the mission and you leave, then it's going to just
leave behind people who are less committed to the mission.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
So I hope you'll stay.

Speaker 7 (01:14:19):
I hope you'll gut it out.

Speaker 23 (01:14:21):
I hope the same is true of the career professionals
at the Department of Justice, who are the subjects of
a similar witch hunt. I spent almost six years in
that department. I venerate that department, and we need the
career civil servants public servants who serve in both those institutions.
But it will be a sad day, indeed, when we

(01:14:42):
confirm the likes of Cash Betel, knowing what we are getting,
we will have.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
The man is an idea logue who is crazy and
the ranged. There's no other way to put this. Nola,
That's who he is. And I was on Peters Morga
Show yesterday and Clay Travis Nola he's sitting here praising

(01:15:09):
the diversity of people and ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
In Trump's cabinet. He's like, oh, look at Robert F.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Kennedy, who they were talking about should have been in
the Obama cabinet. And I was like, I don't know
what the hell you talking about? What about talking about that?
Then he was like, look at Toci Gabbard, who used
to be a Democratic congresswoman and she ran for president
and she's now there, and look at look at this person.
And I said, I'm sorry you think that level of

(01:15:39):
crazy somehow is great for the people Nola who sat
on their couch, for the people who said, oh, no,
Trump is not he's no threat, He's not gonna do
these things. These people are about to unleash the FBI,

(01:16:01):
the Department of Justice, the irs against all of their
known and unknown.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
And perceived enemies.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
And if they think a lot of black people in
black organizations don't have a bulls eye on their back,
they've got to be on crack and meth together.

Speaker 19 (01:16:29):
Well, I don't think they necessarily care about our lives.
I mean, they've proven that time and time again. They
have very different ideas and definitions of diversity and I
can tell you, you know, I'm showing up this evening exhausted.
I've been at a space conference all day, and I
can tell you, sitting in a room filled with people

(01:16:49):
in a space sector where we're talking about national security
things all day in civil.

Speaker 18 (01:16:53):
Space, it is both.

Speaker 19 (01:16:58):
It's daunting daunting because what I realized sitting in that
room today is that there are people that are pro
burn it all down. There are people that are pro
bringing the chaos. There are people that believe that there's
too many regulations and that there must be a jackhammer
taken to those regulations, so our lives targets on our backs,

(01:17:24):
you know, the lives of federal workers. None of that
matters for the bottom line. So in terms of them, them,
you know, them caring about the career worker at the FBI,
or the career worker at USAID, or the career worker
at Department of State, or the career worker at you know,
at Justice.

Speaker 18 (01:17:43):
They do not care because we don't. We don't fit
into their end goal.

Speaker 19 (01:17:49):
And their end goal is to produce some sort of
product quickly, cheaply, without regulation. And you know, many many
folks revere elon Musk because that's his way of thinking.
That's the technical way of thinking. If you've got to
break stuff, break it as long as you get that
product at the end. And so many Americans will suffer,

(01:18:11):
not only because it's about whatever result you need, you
need to get that product made, and that's including the
legal pipeline and everything else, but it's also it doesn't
matter if you break democracy, if you break this country,
if you break the judiciary, it doesn't matter because that
product is going to get made at the end of it.

Speaker 18 (01:18:32):
It's about the end use game.

Speaker 19 (01:18:34):
And so you know, sitting in that room today, I
really had an education on where a lot of this.

Speaker 18 (01:18:40):
Stuff is heading.

Speaker 19 (01:18:41):
And the little guy, the cog and the wheel, I mean,
that's just collateral damage. And so once you wrap your
head around this, then you understand what we are really
dealing with. They could care less about the optics in
terms of, you know, telling New York to let Eric Adams,

(01:19:03):
you know.

Speaker 18 (01:19:03):
To drop the case.

Speaker 19 (01:19:04):
They could care less, right, They could care less about
the pushback or the people protesting in the streets. They
could care less because in.

Speaker 18 (01:19:14):
Their minds they control the whole thing.

Speaker 19 (01:19:17):
They have the executive, they have the Supreme Court, they
have the legislative who's gonna stop me?

Speaker 22 (01:19:23):
Boom?

Speaker 18 (01:19:26):
That's that's where we are.

Speaker 14 (01:19:30):
Yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I really
don't give a damn about Republican senators feelings, what they
would say behind closed doors. What matters is how you
exercise your power, how you abdicate it. The reality is
that they are all foot soldiers and accomplices. They're not hostages,
and they're not helpless. A lot of these people would
have no problem winning a primary challenge. I'll remind people

(01:19:50):
that a lot of the candidates that Donald Trump supported
in the primaries got their assets handed to them and
they did not beat the incumbents. And so I'm not
buying this idea that all these people are so scared.
I think that that's good pr for them to try
to make them feel like, well, it was to me,
what do you say me to do?

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
He won?

Speaker 14 (01:20:06):
I have to go with the program. They're part of
the program just as much as Donald Trump is. And
so the fact that they are willing to see their
side of the branch, the legislative branch newtered to advance
these more extremist and expedited radical white crystal nationalist views
is an indictment on them, but it certainly does not

(01:20:27):
absolve them from their responsibility for allowing these things to
come through. They might believe that all well, like you
talked about earlier in the show, we'll get a carve
out of we're getting exception, or we'll figure out how
to put the pieces back together just for our little
neck of the woods. But the damage that it's being
done is going to far exceed that. I believe that
they're in on it, and in the off chance that

(01:20:47):
they're not, they're going to be in for a rout
awaykening just as long, just right along with the rest
of their constituents, and we're all going to be sitting
up here saying we told you so.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
You know, Greg, this is a danger of of the
burn it down folks, And let me walk through this.
I look at a lot of Bernie Sanders' supporters. I
don't think it's a coincidence there are people who have
transitioned from supporting Bernie Sanders to supporting Donald Trump, because

(01:21:17):
when you look at the language things along those lines.
Do I believe there should be massive changes to the system. Absolutely,
do I believe that it should be a question of
fairness and inclusivity. Absolutely. But the danger is when you
sit across from somebody who's a mag of Loven's Second Amendment.

(01:21:42):
You know when they start talking and it's like, well,
you agree together. Let's like every time I hear Jank
Yuger talk, Oh, how we got to sit down and
talk to these people, I'm like, dude, you getting played.
You're getting played. Well, we both agreed, we both three
on cutting the Pentagon budget. If you show me a

(01:22:04):
so called if you show me a so called Republican
that is going to advocate for cutting the Pentagon budget,
I'm gonna show you somebody who's playing your ass like
a fiddle.

Speaker 6 (01:22:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
The reason I say we have to be very careful
is because when someone argues burn it down, they forget.
There are some arsonists who know how to burn just
that one building. There are some people who have no
regard for the whole block, and it'll be like, yeah,

(01:22:40):
the whole block got torched, Ah my bad, but I
still got that one house. These people, they don't want
to torch a house, they don't want to torch a block.
They literally want to torch neighborhoods, cities. They actually want
to torch every Blue state. They want the Blue States

(01:23:04):
to suffer. They want them to beg, they want them
to gravel. Donald Trump wants Pritzker. Donald Trump, I believe
praise that a natural disaster hit Blue States, so he,
like a king, can sit there and go beg. Beg

(01:23:25):
you peasant, beg, crawl to me, kiss my ring. That's
who this man is. And he has now by having
control of the entire apparatus by having a party, they
will let him do whatever he wants from the House
and the Senate for at least.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
The next two years.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
He could literally say to American world, get on your
knees and beg and kiss my feet to do what
I want, and you have no choice. That's who this
man is.

Speaker 15 (01:23:59):
He absolutely, he is wrong, and he's the president this
country deserves. He is an accurate barometer I think of
the rapid decay of American politics. He is the second
spokesmodel president after Ronald Reagan, and that should have set
off the alarm bells when Reagan won the office. As

(01:24:22):
Gil Scott Hearing said, this man is a bad actor
from a B movie and he's the president of the
United States. First of all, Mitch McConnell, you can go
to hell. This is all on you, baby, yep. So
your your little street theater. You can count to your
feckless bastard. So you knew that the man was gonna
get confirmed just because you had Polaro at a child.

(01:24:42):
Look at me, no sympathy for you, Citizens United. You
pumped your friend McConnell, Beer Kavanaugh.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
You did this, and he did it by not voting
to convict Trump. Had he voting to convict he could
have never run again.

Speaker 7 (01:24:58):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 15 (01:24:59):
So if you think voters going to keep you out
of hell, let's find out together anyway that haven't been said, Roland,
you really put your finger on it. Of course, many
voters who voted for Sanders voted for Trump.

Speaker 7 (01:25:17):
And you know, I understand the argument.

Speaker 15 (01:25:20):
Bernie Sanders, who was Jesse Jackson's the leader of the
Jackson the Rainbow Coalition campaign in Vermont when Jackson ran
president of eighty four, who has always put class at
the center, not ignoring race, but almost always glossing over.
Bernie's an old school socialist, old school democratic socialists with
Marxist leanings, and I absolutely understand the argument.

Speaker 7 (01:25:42):
Have a lot of friends that way.

Speaker 15 (01:25:43):
They will argue that if you don't force the crisis
ultimately you can't get to the resolution. And there's a
lot to be said for that argument, but they seem
to forget that there are people in harm's way and
those people are going to suffer right now.

Speaker 7 (01:25:58):
Now.

Speaker 15 (01:25:58):
You know, we're Southerners, Nolan, know what I'm talking about.
You know what I'm talking about out of Texas, Rowland.
We ain't got to like white people and they ain't
got to like us for us to pull together and
do some things together. We all know folks like that,
people who you know, people who would look at us
and say, why are you talking to so and so?
I side jail ain't gonna bother us. He gonna vote
the same way. Those are the Jimmy Carter people. Those
people are dying now that most of them did, These

(01:26:20):
people that Jimmy Carter was able to corral for one
last walk in the sun, for the possibility of an
America that America died with James or Carter friends that
haven't been said. What we are faced with now is
probably the inevitable. What mayor woodfind said about the fact
that scientific research in the United States are not competing

(01:26:41):
just with people in the United States, but the world.
He's absolutely right. But here's where I think we have
a problem, and this is where I think this will
ultimately read the death of the United States of America.
Doctor King talked about this when he said that when
America dies, the autopsy part of it will read Vietnam.
And he also talked about it when he said that,
you know, ourhip with Canada isn't based on us being

(01:27:01):
an Americans. Our friendship with Canada's based on other than
being black people and that being the place where the
North Star was. The problem we have is we believe
in this patriotic myth making so much so that even
Corey Booker, good old good brother Corey Booker, will continue
to talk about colleagues and these people not your colleagues,
my friend, just because of where they came out their
mother's womb and they're working on birthright citizenship, and do

(01:27:22):
not believe for a second that that is safe. You
better go read that Kim case from the late eighteen
hundreds where that Chinese guy came over here, and they
are really not aiming at the beginning of where you
came out your mother's womb. But the second part of
that sentence, which is subject to the authority thereof, they
might be able to get birthright citizenship, which would add
them to the majority of countries in the world, because
only about twenty percent of the countries in the world

(01:27:43):
actually deal with birth right citizenhip. Much of his bloodline.
We have never been Americans, and we will never be Americans.

Speaker 7 (01:27:49):
Okay. I don't care how clever and how.

Speaker 15 (01:27:51):
Brilliant and how remixing Kendrick Lamark and do us havelftime
show with Stars and Stripes and Uncle sam can come out,
Samuel L. Jackson, You're never going to be an American
in the eyes of these white nations. To pretend that
you are, however, works to their advantage. And I'll tell
you why. There are people who believe in this country.
I believe the young lady that you talked about earlier
with a Congressman, Ivy Daniell Sassunda. She is a died

(01:28:13):
in the world federal Society. She's thirty eight years old.
She is rocketed up to the top of the Sudden
District of Manhattan, New York, the so called independent federal Prosecutors,
and she did it without compromising any of her rock
solid values. Antonin Scalia going and she was promoted in
serial democratically appointed attorneys in New York. She made her

(01:28:36):
advances in AG's who were appointed by the by the
Obama administration, the Biden administration. So this is a kind
of ideologue who is believes in the rule of law.
What you just saw is that these white nationalist, as
you said, they don't believe in any law.

Speaker 7 (01:28:52):
They're going to purge the very federalists.

Speaker 15 (01:28:56):
This is why John Roberts probably wearing a diaper to
work every day because he's he's defecating in his pants
because he realizes with Citizens United, you want unleash this beast.

Speaker 7 (01:29:05):
You made the mistake of thinking that they believe in
this country.

Speaker 15 (01:29:08):
They do not, Which is why Elon Muskint gonna have
no beef with China because they just opened a mega
battery factory in China this week. Understand. So it comes
down to this, if we're gonna fight these people, we
have to understand. And what we just heard doctor Haynes said, say,
she's sent a chill through everybody. These white boys see
the earth as a material resource to cannibalize and move forward.

(01:29:34):
Elon Musk sees it as a means to an end.

Speaker 7 (01:29:36):
The end is Mars.

Speaker 15 (01:29:37):
They're gonna leave your ass here. The bottom line is
the only people who believe in the possibilities of America
are either naive or so willing to put themselves in
harm's way. And that's a lot of people in the
black powered civil rights movement wanted to do it, or
they simply are stupid. And so what we have to

(01:29:58):
do at this point, what we have to do at
this point is understand our history so deeply that when
we move forward combined with this factory and you talked
about this every time, Roland, you talk about it all
the time. Reverend Barbara did something today he had never
done in public that I've seen in the last few
which has come out on a political side. You know,
don't do that in the prayers of the breach. We've
got to understand we have the numbers. I'm not just

(01:30:20):
talking about black people, but it's gotta come out of
a black base. We have the numbers to stop this.
And I don't mean to stop it in a short
term only. I mean to achieve a type of vision
that of Bernie Sanders or a Jesse Jackson or a
Nina Turner, or for that matter, of the congressional Black Caucuses.

Speaker 7 (01:30:36):
Actually believe in.

Speaker 15 (01:30:37):
But in order to do it, we got to drop
this pretense that we're talking with colleagues and comrades. These
people are our open enemies, and they are the open
enemies of everything except their agenda. They will throw the
white people overboard, just like they did with Danielle Says Soon.

Speaker 1 (01:30:50):
Today something some idiot so called pastor he's a part
of the right wing Project twenty one and some other
dude posted this clip of him criticizing me, Revendel Sharpton,

(01:31:12):
and I forgot the third person who was on there.
I listened to it cause I don't listen to stupid people.

Speaker 6 (01:31:17):
And.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
All these negroes were on the Instagram page like that's right,
that's right, But a lot of them were like, he
sounded like a damn fool. And I was sitting here
laughing because I'm going to all of y'all who agree
with this fool, who's not even worthy of me mentioning
his name. I'm going have y'all even bothered. Look at

(01:31:40):
his resume. The dude worked for five years as a
corrections officer put a book out. That's it, y'all. Let
me help the people out at home. And this goes
back to sort of when we were talking to Chris Toler.
If you ever hear somebody who criticizes folk who plan boycotts,

(01:32:11):
who are working to do that, if you hear anybody criticize, oh,
you trying to get us to vote Democrat? You trying
to I want y'all to ask. I want you all
to do a very I don't want you to do
a forensic audit of them. I just want you to
do a cursory audit. Have you ever organized anything?

Speaker 2 (01:32:36):
See, y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:32:37):
I have a very simple rule when it comes to
this show. Folks like you need to have so and
so on your show man. He understands economics? Has he
built anything? Has she built anything? If they're so smart

(01:33:00):
and so genius about economics or education, what if they
actually done.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
What you have ab out here? And this is what
the problem with social media not use this all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:33:14):
We used to go to the barbershop and was always
those two or three loud mouths out there who would
say stupid stuff, had no facts, but because they could
spin a phrase, because they had a silver tongue.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
We're like, yo, man, he making some sense.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
One of the greatest things about black people is also
the bane of our existence is that is, we have
black people who can talk very well, who can enunciate,
who can articulate who It sounds like they are speaking

(01:33:56):
the truth, as if they were handed on two stones,
like Moses coming down from the mountain.

Speaker 7 (01:34:04):
Not Moses.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
But then if you actually listen and you fact check
what they say, they don't know what the hell they're
talking about. Thing, it's good at talking. And see back
then that was the barber shop. We can just go home,
okay whatever. Now now they joined together with the other
crazies on YouTube. Now they on Instagram, not on TikTok.

(01:34:28):
Now they're on Twitter, they're on fan Base, they're on Snapchat,
they're on Flicker, they're on Tumblr, they're on Facebook, they're
on all They're on Spillspoutable, club House, they all over
the place. And a lot of us are falling for
those false prophets because all you're actually doing is helping

(01:34:52):
them make a profit.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
And that's what we're dealing with.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
So earlier and when Greg talked about we've got to
go back to what you saw in the seventies and eighties,
where you had black, true black organizing and mobilizing around
a series of very specific interests. And I love, I
love when these simple simon negroes you ain't nothing but

(01:35:22):
a tether, which is crazy, because I love how y'all
think that's an insult. But if you're gonna call me
a tether, which is a lie, then you're calling Stokely
Carmichael a tether. Then you're calling Shirley Chisholm a tether.
Then you're calling Sidney Partier a tether. Then you're calling

(01:35:42):
Harra bella Fonte a tether. You're calling you're calling Marcus
Garvey a tether. See, I love all you anti immigration
negroes who then act like y'all black nationalists with a conscience.
But then y'all skipping over all these black folk who

(01:36:04):
have contributed to the African American experience, who were not
born here or whose parents are not from here. Can
let me help y'all out while y'all at it, y'all
can praise Wes Moore. I guess y'all gonna call him
at the tether.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
Two look at his roots.

Speaker 1 (01:36:25):
See this is the stupidity that we're seeing take place
across our community. These people don't believe in organizing. These
people don't believe in mobilizing. All they believe in is
tearing down somebody who is doing something. And I just
want y'all to understand, Mama and Daddy, grandmother and Papa

(01:36:45):
and Mama, Papa and mother, Fortified rolland Sebastian Martin. I
don't give a damn what y'all think. We know what
we're doing, we know who we're impacting, we know who
we're educating, and what we are facing right now is
an existential threat to the future of Black America.

Speaker 2 (01:37:09):
And some of y'all think this is a game.

Speaker 1 (01:37:15):
It's not.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
Recie the time that we spend here. This ain't just hey,
let's just what the hell pass past two hours?

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):
No, it is literally trying to warn people what is
coming down the pipe. We try to warn these folks.
Don't play around in twenty sixteen and let this man
appoint some right wing, crazy, deranged Supreme Court justices. But
now a whole bunch of folks said, I mean, I
saw you dancing with the Hilary you sitting shit in

(01:37:45):
with the Democrats, and guess what. This man has locked
the Supreme Court down with some of the most egregious
decisions we've seen in the past decade. Then we give
this fool a shot to come back to replace two
of the hardcore folk when we could have it voted
for Vice President Kamala Harris. And then if Alito and

(01:38:05):
Thomas decide to resign, flip the court. It's too many
folk who look like us, who don't know shit about politics,
who ain't done nothing, who ain't organized nothing, who ain't
mobilized nothing, and all they doing is sitting around. And
some of our folks listen to these charlatans, say, you

(01:38:27):
ain't gonna get nothing for your vote. I don't know
why you gonna sit here and vote that stuff. Ain't
gonna do nothing when RESI, you ain't never seen a
white person in a so called leadership position. Tell white
people y'all need to stay at home. Y'all don't need
it to vote. They ain't gonna do nothing for you.
They ain't never done nothing for you. Y'all just need

(01:38:51):
to go ahead and ignore election day. Only loud mouth,
ignorant negroes say that bullshit.

Speaker 17 (01:39:00):
Clock it.

Speaker 14 (01:39:01):
Let them know because the reality is you do not
have white people tell them white people just stay.

Speaker 13 (01:39:07):
Home, don't worry about it, nothing is gonna change.

Speaker 14 (01:39:09):
They a lot of white people don't believe anything's gonna change,
but they're not believing that because people are telling them that.
So the reality is that we have a segment of
the population that is all about chaos. But the allure
of these Charlottans, as you put it, is that they
allow people who really don't want to do shit but

(01:39:29):
sit on the ass and be checked out and disengaged.
They allow them the allure of feeling like they have
the moral high ground, that they are the ones who
have it all figured out, and those of us who
are actually activated and engaging and trying to do a
little something something to move this place forward and protect
the gangs that we may that have been hard fought,

(01:39:51):
that we're the ones hold on't We're gonna know what
the hell we doing. So that's why it's so attractive.
That's why disinformation is so attractive. That's why these people
are so popular, Because we have a lot of people
who are lazy fucks, but they don't want to just
own it and sit in and be like, well, I
don't want to vote because I'm lazy.

Speaker 13 (01:40:08):
I don't want to vote because I just don't know shit.

Speaker 14 (01:40:10):
And that's just too much work for me to listen
to somebody who knows what they're talking about. And so
for those people, yes, let's let's have somebody come and
tell me. I'm the one who has all the answer sway,
and I'm the one who's figured it out.

Speaker 13 (01:40:21):
And that's the problem that we have to get over.
We have to get over the way that we have been.

Speaker 14 (01:40:26):
Targeted in our community by these chaos agents, which by
the way, are funded by right wingers if you look
at follow the money, Okay, as well as target that
they benefit, they have profit motives. They sit on YouTube
and all these other channels which they get paid for
to get the subscribers, and they get and they get
rewarded for this this this chaos that they're injecting. And

(01:40:46):
we're the ones who are stuck in these communities that
are not advancing because the Sensus was stacked against us
because of Jerry Manderin, because of them using DEI as
a pretext to get rid of our still rights infrastructure.
We're the ones that are going to suffer for it.
But at the end of the day, we're not gonna
save everybody. We're not going to reach everybody. We just

(01:41:08):
have to try to reach out and touch the people
that maybe they like, Oh, well, which.

Speaker 13 (01:41:13):
Way should I go, Shaul I listen to them? Or
should listen to them?

Speaker 14 (01:41:16):
Maybe we can do a little something to try to
reach those people. But everybody ain't gonna be with the
advancement of our community because there are a lot of
people who just don't want to lift a finger, and
even something as simple as voting is asking too much
of those people.

Speaker 13 (01:41:32):
That is the problem that we are consistently faced with.

Speaker 14 (01:41:34):
We don't want to fight for enough as a as
a whole community that has the capacity to make change.

Speaker 1 (01:41:40):
Let it be clear, Nola, there are a lot of
people who frankly, look, they don't consume information like we do.
They don't talk to folks, they're they're not following this stuff.
It's a lot of people like that. It's a lot
of people who would like that growing up in Clinton,
part in that community in Houston, it's a lot of

(01:42:03):
those people. Fly those people and I say this all
the time, Okay, and this is the thing that because
it goes to what Chris Toler was talking about. It
goes to what Greg is talking about. What I need
black folks watching to understand. And I need the black
folks who are watching to I need you to share

(01:42:24):
this and spread this to folk who are from the
age of twelve all the way up to the age
of forty.

Speaker 2 (01:42:33):
I'm being specific for a reason.

Speaker 1 (01:42:36):
Let me say it again. I need everybody you got
to spread this from twelve up to the age of forty.
Here's why, Nola and we don't want to think about this.
This is February. My dad is seventy eight. In April,

(01:42:58):
my mom is sety eight in November. Amen, my wife
turns sixty today. I'm fifties six. So here's what I
need people to understand. My parents' generation. They are tired,

(01:43:22):
they are retiring. With a lot of us who were
in our fifties and forties and thirties and twenties don't understand.
Is that that generation put in the work. They were
the poll watchers, They were the precinct judges. They were

(01:43:46):
the NAACP chapter presidents. They were the ones who showed
up with picket signs. They were the ones who worked
phone banks. They were the ones who put signs up
in yards. They were the ones who started neighborhood clubs,
civic clubs. They were the ones who went down to
the city council meeting and the county commissioners meeting, who

(01:44:09):
went to the state legislature, who would come to nation's
capital of calling on the elected representatives to do what
was right. They were the ones who went to the
committee meetings. They were the ones who were doing the work.
These are the people who we don't know, who were
not in the newspaper, who were not on television, who
were not on radio, who was doing that groundwork. They

(01:44:31):
were the ones who were going doughor door in neighborhoods.
They were the ones who were raising money for Sick
of Silaninia when there was a national telethon in the seventies,
in the eighties. They were the ones who were putting
in all of the work. They were the ones who
were holding up the black community in the wake of
the death of doctor King and the seventies and the
eighties and the nineties and the two thousands, and what

(01:44:53):
we are seeing is the generation after them, and the
generation after them and the generation after them are not
doing their part to hold up the black community, because
you know what a lot of us are twenty six
and twenty eight and thirty two and forty and forty five,
and we're saying today, I'm fucking tired. I'm tired.

Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
But you're not tired of going to brunch on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
Oh come on, now, you're not tired of taking multiple
vacations a year. You're not tired of taking from the
Bank of Black Justice and constantly making withdraws from people

(01:45:40):
who are constantly making deposits. And now we sit in
twenty twenty five and you see your simple simon asses going,
I don't know what's going on. I'm frustrated. I don't
get it because all you've done is take and take
and take and take. You made no deposits, you made

(01:46:01):
no investments, And now you are wondering why the bank
account is so low of the Black Justice Fund because
your ass didn't make no deposits. And the potters are
not made with your money. The potters are made with
your time and with your talent and with your presence.
Because it's real easy to be present, but you need

(01:46:24):
to have some presence.

Speaker 19 (01:46:28):
Oh okay, I gotta follow that all right, So this
to my mind is this is about values, right. You know,
I was a guest speaker this week with Today's Today Thursday,
my goodness is felt like a month. I was the
guest speaker at AFGA afg's civil rights luncheon the other day,

(01:46:49):
and I told this story about how my mother and
father met at LSU on the satellite campus in New Orleans.

Speaker 18 (01:46:55):
And one of the things that drew my mama.

Speaker 19 (01:46:57):
To my daddy was the fact that he had this
black panther mistique, like he would wear all black you know,
he had come back from Vietnam, and he just had
this swag. Right, And so I grew up in a
very civil rights snick student movement.

Speaker 18 (01:47:14):
Environment, right.

Speaker 1 (01:47:17):
Went.

Speaker 18 (01:47:18):
I grew up in an all black city.

Speaker 19 (01:47:20):
I went to private school, but it was a black
private school and it was off the you know, like
our teachers were no joke.

Speaker 18 (01:47:26):
You know, pro black history was all day, every day.

Speaker 19 (01:47:29):
So in terms of you know, I agree with you
about I'm going to use the word apathy again in
terms of what we're seeing from generations that get younger
and younger. But also you got to wonder what was
happening in the homes too. It makes me remember this
conversation with Obama about this post racial America, and I
remember being one of those people on the other side saying,

(01:47:51):
there is no such thing. And as I still sit here, still,
you know, having the kind of prophetic eye to be
able to see beyond the veneer, at that time, people
didn't want to hear that. So we are having the
people that, yes, all they want to think about is
going to brunch with the grass on walls. I wish
we lived in a country where all we can think

(01:48:12):
about is going to brunch with the grass on walls,
but that is not the reality of the country in
which we live in. So, you know, when I engage
with young people, you know, even when I ask my
own students, you know, how you're feeling, how you're doing
with everything that's going on.

Speaker 18 (01:48:27):
We're right in the middle of things. We're in DC.

Speaker 19 (01:48:29):
They don't want to think about it. They don't want
to engage in the messy politics. They just kind of
want to do their work, put their head down and
hope that things will work out right.

Speaker 18 (01:48:38):
And I think that's kind of like the overall.

Speaker 19 (01:48:41):
Feeling with a certain age group is to put your
head down and think and hope that things will work
out because to your point, role and they have always
worked out since they've been on the planet because of
the people that came before them, the sweat equity that
came before them, the people that were put in jail
before them, the people like my father. You know, he

(01:49:02):
had to fight for years to get an honorable discharge
from the Air Force because he got into it with
a very very racist commanding officer in the Air Force.
And so it's these very real things, you know, my
grandfather having to escape rule Louisiana because him and his
twin was about to get hanged. People aren't coming from
those narratives any longer, and they just want to go

(01:49:25):
to brunch with the grass on the walls. And I'm
not going to sit here in front and be like,
I don't like doing the same thing, you know what
I'm saying, Like I wish we lived in the country
where that's all we could focus on. I just want
people to be engaged and understand what's at stake. And
because I do spend a lot of time with young
folks that exhaustion, you know, they're thinking about all the

(01:49:46):
things that they had to go through with school shootings
and all these things. And the last thing that I
want to do is play oppression, you know, olympics about
the things that I had to go through as a
forty something, or the things.

Speaker 18 (01:49:57):
That parents and grandparents had to go through.

Speaker 1 (01:50:00):
Them.

Speaker 19 (01:50:01):
They live in a country where they shouldn't have to
go through those things, and that's the lens they are thinking,
I should not have to experience any of those things
because the people that came before me told me that
I was living in a post racial America. My parents
told me when they put me in that white private school,
that I was living in a post racial America. And

(01:50:22):
all I had to do was focus on getting into
Harvard or getting into Howard so I can go to
brunch with the grass on the walls. I want to
say two quick things. I am really worried about this
Trump over America moment that we are living in. It

(01:50:43):
is really disheartening to me, as you know someone, I'm
not just a political scientist, you know, just because that's
what my degree says. I really am a student of
history and politics. And when I think about those brave
Republicans regarding Richard Nixon, you know, I figured out today
Roland and Greg as a historian here, they weren't brave.

(01:51:05):
You know what it was the evidence was irrefutable. That
has been the problems from day one with Trump, the
things in which the multiple crimes that he's committed.

Speaker 18 (01:51:16):
It's been too challenging and too difficult to explain to
the public.

Speaker 19 (01:51:20):
What Nixon did That man was all tight. It's that
there has not been a situation yet where where the
case has been brought to the American public that was irrefutable.
That's one thing and the last thing that I will
say to Reese's point about misinformation and disinformation. I firmly

(01:51:40):
believe that conspiracy theories is the philosophy for the lazy.
It is so easy, it is so seductive to believe
in conspiracy theories.

Speaker 18 (01:51:49):
Is true because it's too hard to know the truth.
And that's all I have.

Speaker 1 (01:51:54):
Listen for the folk who don't understand understand this is
is there an issue.

Speaker 2 (01:52:04):
We're going to brunch?

Speaker 1 (01:52:05):
Nope, Tomorrow I'll be in San Francisco, NBA All Star weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:52:11):
A lot of people were just in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (01:52:13):
Super Bowl weekend next week in Los Angeles NAACP Image Awards.
These things happen, but let me remind people, Black folks
in the late eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds, Robert Abbott, Chicago Leans,
Chicago Defender, you know we did. We went dancing on

(01:52:33):
Friday and Saturday with the church on Sunday. Black folks
during Jim Crow had parties, had get togethers, had clubs, drank, smoke, ate,
had fun. But they also understood that partying doesn't happen
seven days a week. Great, they also understood work still

(01:52:56):
has to be done. And what I'm saying right now,
it's not oh, you calling out young people. No, I'm
calling out anybody who believes that their work is done.
I'm calling out.

Speaker 2 (01:53:14):
Anybody who believes that, Oh I can just check out.
I can just rest.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
And let me be real clear. Rest is good, Rest
is important, meditating, relaxing, all those things are critical. But
it can't happen for three months, six months, a year,
two years, five years, ten years, and then go, okay,
let somebody else do all the work. Greg to Nola's point,
she's absolutely right. Thank goodness, I have parents who said

(01:53:40):
that stupid stuff to me. One I was calling out
that post racial bullshit. When they were saying it. I
was like, now, y'all white. I was saying white minority
resistance is happening while Will Blitzer was saying that bullshit
on CNN, and I was on the air saying, yes, sir,
but the reality is this greg Our history says it.

(01:54:04):
There's been no period of black success. Ain't been found
about white blacklash. So anybody who's raising their kid their
black kid, they're African American kid, they're black immigrant kid.

Speaker 2 (01:54:20):
Who will say that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:24):
The America that used to be is not the America today. Oh,
there have been some changes, but don't think for a
second that that America has been completely eradicated, erased, because no,
it is trying to come back, roaring.

Speaker 2 (01:54:47):
Fast as all get out.

Speaker 1 (01:54:49):
And we cannot be confused by what is happening before
very eyes. And if we are ignorant about history, then
we have no way of fighting the present day battle.

Speaker 7 (01:55:05):
For the future.

Speaker 15 (01:55:07):
That's right, it is correct. It's humanity. It is our
common humanity versus those who would exploit human beings. That
seems if that seems overbroad, it's because it is hard

(01:55:29):
to get our minds around the things we've been socialized
to believe are real that are only real because we
give it give these concepts our power. One is the
concept of the nation state. You know, that region of
the country that you all are from, that Gulf region, Louisiana, Texas.
Every time I go to New Orleans, I'm reminded that

(01:55:50):
that city and that region has more in common with
Haiti in Jamaica than it does with Iowa, because it
is a Latin based city. The Africans who are there,
the indigenous people who were there, they didn't speak English.
That's one of the reasons why, you know, I kind

(01:56:10):
of depart with my friend and colleague Nicolehanna Jones. This
isn't a sixteen nineteen project. You're trying to pour our
common humanity into a framework that can't hold it.

Speaker 7 (01:56:22):
There is no United States of America as a concept.

Speaker 15 (01:56:25):
What there is is a setlar crime stitch together with
a lot of different people in it who The only
way you keep those people together is two basic ways,
force or by committing to a common humanity. Clearly, white
nationalism is not interested in common humanity, so they've got
to go with force. The white nationalists love the federal

(01:56:46):
government when they're in charge, and they hate it when
they're not. There are no principles holding this country together.
There's no rule of law holding together. There's no holding
any country in the world together. Right as we are
sitting here in Arendo, most he just finished meeting with
Donald Trump at the White House and modi.

Speaker 7 (01:57:02):
The only words in.

Speaker 15 (01:57:03):
English he said the press cons after the meeting they
had was make India a great again because he is
a Hindu nationalist trying to hold together the biggest democracy
in the world through force.

Speaker 7 (01:57:17):
That is the case.

Speaker 15 (01:57:19):
In Central Africa, where you see the President of Rwanda,
Paul Kagami, backed by all the millionaires necessary and bigionaires
necessary because they want those precious minerals in eastern Congo,
launching forays into eastern Congo and millions of people are dying.
That's what's going on in the Sudan as the Russians
have just signed a deal to develop a port in Sudan,

(01:57:42):
as twelve million people displaced. The biggest genocide going on
in the world right now. That isn't Gaza, It is
in Congo and Soudan.

Speaker 7 (01:57:50):
What we face is a dilemma that is that all
humans face.

Speaker 15 (01:57:57):
You know, I was at I was at a library
the other day and yeah, I'm not against brunch or
any that either, but you know, I will admit that
I trend toward a different kind of thing.

Speaker 7 (01:58:06):
I'd look at life like life is short.

Speaker 15 (01:58:07):
We got too much work to do, and maybe I
can eat brunch the next time I come right around.
And I ain't got no shape anybody who does. I'm
just saying that's my personal thing, so I would respect.
I respect that, y'all respect me. I'm just gonna work.
But I was at the library and they have a
basketball court, indoor basketball court, and they had set up
for indoor soccer. It's cold outside, and I looked at

(01:58:29):
all these children. I guess the youngest may have been
seven eight years old, and the oldest were maybe early
teens if that, and they were in there laughing, probably
about forty or fifty kids in there, just you know,
kicking the ball and the other one standing around watching.
All of these children would be classified by a white
nationalist or a black face nativist as immigrants.

Speaker 7 (01:58:49):
And I asked myself, who could stand against the child? JD.

Speaker 15 (01:58:54):
Vans young children came out to woman with a woman
who's worn and race, who's from India. Who can stand
against the child? I tell you can stand a child
against a child. A chinless, self hating, deeply insecure, fear
driven white nationalist like Junior Varsity vance or Stephen Miller,
a person who has failed at life and continues to

(01:59:18):
try to justify that failure by projecting their self hatred
outward like well, I'm not going to name any names.
You feel in the blame, But at the end of
the day, we have a choice to make. Are we
going to stand and say we are human and as
African people, we have values, we have cultures, the various

(01:59:39):
cultures that have blended together and formed their way into
a resistance, into an identity that while we don't share
the same identity exactly, we have a common identity that
is global. I'm sorry you black faced nativists and you
people who really don't study history as much. You probably
ate a little bit too much brunch as you glossed
your way over to whatever hot take you just vomited
out on social media. They're by proving you haven't studied

(01:59:59):
much at all. When you pick a flag or a
place you came at your mother's womb over our common humanity,
you have demonstrated that you are incapable as yet of
any form of leadership or representation for the rest of
us on this ball we call Earth. The Chinese aren't

(02:00:21):
our enemies. The Russians aren't our enemies, and there will
be people who say they are, but that's because you're
picking a flag and you're picking a territory.

Speaker 7 (02:00:28):
And guess what.

Speaker 15 (02:00:29):
The people who are in those places who call you
their enemies, they aren't the rank and file people. They're
the people who play a game called I'm going to
exploit these lines for my individual benefit. Whether it be
Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or anybody else. They
are all the same and in history shows us that
they do great damage, but ultimately they fall, and this

(02:00:52):
country ain't no different than any of the country in
the world.

Speaker 7 (02:00:54):
It will dissolve because they come and go.

Speaker 15 (02:00:56):
The only question is how are we going to survive
so that we can build something better when whatever it
comes next comes next?

Speaker 2 (02:01:04):
Folks.

Speaker 1 (02:01:05):
This is why it is critically important for you to
watch this show, to share our videos, to contribute to us,
to pass the word on because the conversations that we
have here are not happening, not just in mainstream white media.
It's not happening in Black targeted or Black on media.
It is not happening at all at BT. BT got

(02:01:26):
one news show that airs one hour a month. You
know what we do forty hours a month just this show.
It's not happening ebony. Ebony is basically an Instagram page.
It ain't happening at Essence, at Black Enterprise, at Blavity,
it ain't happen Degrill, It'll laid off all they people

(02:01:49):
buying out lay to everybody self four people. We have
to understand that black people got to this point because
of the black because of black newspapers and black magazines.

Speaker 2 (02:02:07):
That was not social media.

Speaker 1 (02:02:09):
That was a Chicago defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, that was
the Memphis Trout State defender. That were black papers in Arkansas,
in Texas and Mississippi and Alabama, in Florida, all over
the country, the Pisburgh Courier. That's how we got here.
We are not going to be able to mobilize and

(02:02:30):
organize if we do not have the information first that
educates us, that enlightens us and informs us. And that's
why black on media is so critical. Yes, for all
y'all understanding, and I've had people come to me who, Hey,
they wanted to buy an equity stake, Hey, what can

(02:02:51):
we do?

Speaker 2 (02:02:52):
You should do a raise? Let me explain to you
what then happens.

Speaker 1 (02:02:56):
And I'm not against that, but then that means that
their business interest may be harmed by what I say.
And then they might say, man, do you have to
go so hard on that? The reason we can do
what we do here because there's one owner with one
hundred percent, with freedom and flexibility to do what we do.

Speaker 2 (02:03:22):
In the book, the people that we do.

Speaker 1 (02:03:25):
I've had people say, I don't know why you got
that cussing woman reci Ar. I said she gonna be
back next week.

Speaker 2 (02:03:33):
Man, you got that?

Speaker 1 (02:03:34):
You got that day Shiki Waining brother Greg Carr I
said he gonna be back in next week and even
though she can't cook Dumbo, No, they're gonna be back
next week. What I'm making here is this here, y'all
don't understand. Robert Abbott could not do what he did
at the Chicago Defender if black folks didn't buy the paper.

(02:03:57):
Chlada Bass couldn't do what she did in California if
they didn't buy the paper. John H. Johnson couldn't do
what he did. Whatever they eject and they didn't buy
the magazine. We ain't asking you to buy nothing. We
are asking you to support to make sure that we

(02:04:18):
don't have to answer to somebody else telling us what
to do.

Speaker 2 (02:04:22):
And also I don't have to address it.

Speaker 1 (02:04:26):
I have before all of y'all simple simons who actually
think that if a campaign actually takes out political ads
and you think I'm not gonna call them or their
party out, you should get drug tested. Because the philosophy

(02:04:46):
here is the same for everybody. If you do good,
I'm gonna talk about you. If you do bad, I'm
gonna talk about you. At the end of the day,
I'm gonna talk about you. Re see greg No. I
appreciate you all being today's YO. Thank you so very much, folks.
If y'all want to support the work in club, your
contributions are critically important to our work, not just this show,

(02:05:08):
but the network. Speaking of that, folks, I want all
of y'all to stay tuned because coming up next you're
going to see a new show that we are launching.
It's called the Other Side of Change. It's Jamie or Burley,
Bria Baker. We're going to stream that right after I
get done here, And so I told y'all, we got
more new episodes of The Black Table Company, we got

(02:05:29):
Balance Living with Reverend Doctor Jackie Hood Martin, We've got
other shows that we're developing. This is about creating a
news and information network that covers the things that matter
to us. So we're not having to sit here and say,
I ain't no, I ain't know about that. I wish
I knew. I wish somebody would have said something, why

(02:05:49):
don't we know about that? Well, guess what. This is
what we do every single day, and we're gona apologize
than anybody for it. And so if you want to, so,
the goal is very simple. We want to get twenty
thousand of our members contributing on average fifty bucks each.
That's foot dollars a year. That's foot dollars and nineteen
cents a month, thirteen cents a day. If you can't
do that, we understand it doesn't matter what your contribution

(02:06:10):
level is. It doesn't matter. If you could contribute more,
that'd be great as well. I'm literally sitting here and
I've got checks in front of me for fifty dollars
twenty five dollars, ten dollars, five dollars, one hundred dollars.
Somebody send us ten one thousand dollars cashiers checks, and
I appreciate that. I'm literally depositive this right here. So
as we do electronic, we also do it a checking

(02:06:33):
money orders for y'all. Gills Scott to heir it wrong said.
The revolution will not be tell about it, but it
will be streamed. And I'm telling you right now we
got to have information that's factual and correct. Contribute via
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(02:06:54):
If you want to contribute to cash or checks in
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Speaker 2 (02:07:11):
Unfiltered dot com.

Speaker 1 (02:07:12):
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Speaker 2 (02:07:34):
QR code there as well.

Speaker 1 (02:07:35):
Also get my book all proceeds go right back into
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(02:07:58):
gonna roll right into our new show with Baker and
Jamia Burley. Let me think all of you folks, so
we'll be We'll have a guest host tomorrow. I'm going
to be flying to San Francisco NDR Star Games celebrating
Jackie Martin's sixtieth birthday. It is today, that's right, this
is when we were in Jamaica. So she is a

(02:08:19):
Delta and the links and all that good stuff. So y'all,
y'all go on social media. We're sure, Happy birthday, folks,
I will see y'all tomorrow.

Speaker 8 (02:08:28):
Hello, Hello, Welcome to the Other Side of Change, only

(02:08:50):
on the Blackstar Network. Asada Shakur talks about being weapons
of mass construction, something that's only possible when we plan
for a world where we actually win, and that's exactly
what we do here at the Other Side of Change.
This show moves beyond the world as it is to
where it could and should be. I'm Bria Baker here
with my brilliant co host Jimmy or Burley, and we're

(02:09:11):
just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics,
gender and pop culture.

Speaker 9 (02:09:17):
We don't settle for commentary. This space is for solution
driven dialogue and reimagining. We hope to activate the next
generation of change makers existing in the unbalanced world where
profit conflicts with what is best in the best interests
of the community.

Speaker 8 (02:09:32):
And later on today we're going to talk about that
in the context of environmental disasters and systemic exploitation, how
these disasters are turned into profit opportunities at the expense
of the most vulnerable.

Speaker 3 (02:09:42):
That's right, Bria.

Speaker 9 (02:09:43):
From the wildfires in California to the unexpected snowstorms in
the South, extreme weathers is becoming the norm. But what
is even more alarmed is how quickly some of those
people move to take advantage of those tragedies.

Speaker 8 (02:09:55):
Yeah, one million percent. That's the American way ry like
taking advantage of.

Speaker 3 (02:09:58):
How much like get out of people constantly. It's really obnoxious, Yeah,
very much.

Speaker 6 (02:10:04):
So.

Speaker 8 (02:10:04):
Well, let's start with the news, because there's been a
lot of obnoxious news. What's the craziest headline you've seen
this week?

Speaker 9 (02:10:09):
I mean the craziest headline is we've all probably seen
information go around regarding the ICE raids. And for those
who don't know what ICE means, it's the Immigration and
Custom inform enforcement.

Speaker 3 (02:10:20):
They are, you know, the.

Speaker 9 (02:10:21):
Police of the government to round up folks who are
here undocumented. And we've seen raids happen all over the
country due to the direction of the President Donald Trump,
and now he's challenging birthright citizenship, which is beyond crazy
to me, but not unexpected.

Speaker 8 (02:10:39):
And that's the crazy part because what you talked about
is like ICE is designed to round up undocumented people,
which is its own messed up thing anyway, But these
recent raids have also been attacking Native Americans. It's like,
how are you making anyone who is indigenous to this
country prove their citizenship? But also right citizenship affects black people.

(02:11:02):
That's actually where it was designed, was the fourteenth Amendment
after the Civil War, to give black people's citizenship because
we were previously property.

Speaker 3 (02:11:09):
So it's just dangerous precedent that's come in with this.

Speaker 9 (02:11:12):
I mean, it's also a recognition that America would not
be where it is today without immigration, without the diversity
of folks from all over the world who come to
this country with the idea that they want better for
their families. But also a lot of immigrants who come
to this country come here because we have decimated their
communities elsewhere. And I think that's a reality that people
refuse to address. And so whether the reality that we

(02:11:35):
stole this land from the indigenous populations of the Native
Americans who were here first or were forced enslaved folks
to build this country, and now we're trying to question
their citizenship. It's a prime example that this is an
administration of white supremacists only want a country that looks
like them, regardless of those who made this country what
it is, which we know are the indigenous and the

(02:11:58):
immigrant population that have come here as well as the
enslaved population. But yees, it definitely implists black people. So
for black folks who are like, this is not our issue, girl.

Speaker 3 (02:12:07):
I've been tussling on Facebook all week about it.

Speaker 8 (02:12:11):
I have been so shocked that people I grew up
with who I grew up in New York, it's a
community that is mostly black and brown, and even the
black folks are are immigrants from the Caribbean, from West Africa,
from lots of different places. So it's just been wild
to get on Beyonce's Internet and see black people and
particularly black women, Like I've really been a comments section

(02:12:33):
warrior lately because I've just been so alarmed at it,
and also like what you brought up is they're not
in defense of all citizens and saying we're going to
protect all citizens from the dangers, Like that's just the
excuse they're using to get support.

Speaker 3 (02:12:47):
But in reality, Elon Musk is indock.

Speaker 9 (02:12:50):
He came over illegally and we also violated his visa
yes here and working during his student visa, so but
he was an immigrant.

Speaker 3 (02:12:59):
In South Africa.

Speaker 9 (02:13:00):
To let's keep it real, Alania, that's the scary part
about it all is that people are assuming that this
is about the rule of law and it's not. It
is about rounding as many people who do not look
white in this country up and letting people get mixed
up in the shuffle. And I mean there was just
a Jamaican American who was just arrested. There was a
Native American. I mean, there was an indigenous member of

(02:13:23):
the Navajo Nation rested by Ice. There are people who
just speak a different language, speaks or who are being
targeted by Ice.

Speaker 3 (02:13:31):
This is not about the rule of law.

Speaker 9 (02:13:33):
This is about being very much a racist policy that
is trying to rock people of color.

Speaker 8 (02:13:39):
Because if it was about dangerous people, we'd be starting
with the white supremacist the dealers.

Speaker 3 (02:13:43):
Were starting with the administration. Girls, you're starting with them.

Speaker 8 (02:13:48):
So it's just alarming, like, oh great, you're trying to
keep us safe and you're going to elementary schools to
do it, like in Chicago and Georgia and my father
in law is a principle. So it's just definitely alarming,
and people are really learning like we have to be
very vilens.

Speaker 2 (02:14:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:14:01):
And also if we're saying that these folks are coming
over here to freeload then the question is why are
ice going to workplaces, right, why they're going to schools?

Speaker 16 (02:14:09):
Right?

Speaker 9 (02:14:09):
These are people who are contributing to our economy, they're
contributing to the culture of our society, and I think
we can't minimize the impact that they've made, but also
how this policy is in the long run.

Speaker 8 (02:14:21):
Percent And speaking of freeloaders, the actual freeloaders are the
damn US military and Pentagon. Because the other insane headline
from this week is that there was this plane crash
with an American Airlines commercial jet and then a black Hawk,
which how much are black hawks? There's a military right.

Speaker 3 (02:14:43):
Yeah, I reached.

Speaker 9 (02:14:45):
I saw that a black Hawk could cost anywhere between
five point nine million dollars to build. That doesn't mean
that's the operational cost to actually continue it. So in
addition to the life of the loss of life from
the commercial jet and those who are on the black Hawk,
we're also talking about money that has been thrown down
the toilet, basically because of the incompetence of the US.

Speaker 3 (02:15:06):
Government, right.

Speaker 8 (02:15:07):
And Trump has been trying to say that the crash
was that D and I is to blame, which it's
like mind blowing that they just pulled out d and
I as a boogeyman. But he fired the head of
the TSA, he fired the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and
he rose hiring of air traffic controllers, all within his
first forty eight hours in office. And now is surprised

(02:15:30):
that people are confused on what's going on over there,
like why was a military plane or helicopter doing a
training near a dear Reagan airport?

Speaker 3 (02:15:41):
Like that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 9 (02:15:44):
And we don't have incidents like this like this is
not occurring every other day. I think there has not
been a crash of a commercial flight on the US
soil since two thousand and nine, so this is very unusual.
And for this to happen a week and a half
into the new administration after to your point, he made
all of these extreme cuts and preventing a very prominent
tuition from doing its job, especially in our nation capital.

(02:16:06):
I think it's extremely dangerous. But it just goes to
show you that this is an administration that is chaos
and confusion.

Speaker 3 (02:16:12):
Very unseerious, extremely unserious. They're serious, We're just also racist
and stupid. So there's that that part.

Speaker 8 (02:16:21):
That part well, speaking of stupid and racist and all
of the things. I mean, we've also seen that really
play out with a lot of these weather related madness
that's going on right Oh, I mean, what a week.

Speaker 9 (02:16:33):
I think if we look at the weather related madness,
as you mentioned, we'll start really questioning what is happening
with our environment, especially with the lack of direction that
is coming from the administration all the way down to
the state level.

Speaker 3 (02:16:47):
One million percent. I'm here in Georgia.

Speaker 8 (02:16:49):
We've had two snowfalls already in this year, and I've
lived here for five years, and this is the most.

Speaker 3 (02:16:53):
Snow I've seen my entire time being here.

Speaker 8 (02:16:56):
It left thousands without power, cars stranded, highway is just
completely unusable. And then meanwhile on the other side of
the country on your coast, you've got California still reeling
from those devastating wildfires, and like it consumed media attention
for a bit, and then people sort of forgot those
fires were just contained and that's even scary.

Speaker 3 (02:17:17):
And when they were contained, it.

Speaker 8 (02:17:18):
Was just in time for this huge rainfall that was
threatening like floods and mudslides. So it's just been feeling
very apocalyptic.

Speaker 3 (02:17:25):
Yeah, and it's the.

Speaker 9 (02:17:26):
Same story every single time, Like too often, we look
at these incidents in very isolated moments, right the wildfires
or the snowstorms that are happening in Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (02:17:35):
I didn't even know Atlanta.

Speaker 9 (02:17:36):
Could get could get snow, So seeing some of the
images reminded me of like the nineties in Philadelphia when
we had these huge snowstorms. So the idea that the
South is now experiencing these extreme weather threats I think
is really really devastating because all of the families that
are losing right now, right because of the lack of
government assistance and the lack of government direction that is

(02:17:57):
preventing them from being able to properly prepare for these
type of devastations.

Speaker 8 (02:18:02):
Yeah, well, million percent, even what you just talked about,
because again, growing up in New York, I'm used to
big snowstorms like two plus feet. Atlanta got like three
inches both times. But it's the lack of infrastructure. There's
no there's no support for actually getting out there clearing
those roads, making sure that people can get around safely.
But then you're still mandating that they're coming into work.

(02:18:24):
They're they're keeping people from working from home. There's no
public transportation investment here, which is also by design, so
it's it's very alarming.

Speaker 3 (02:18:32):
And I feel like that's what we're.

Speaker 8 (02:18:33):
Going to unpack today is how these disasters expose those
systemic inequalities and lead to what's known as disaster capitalism.
And I mean, I don't love to give a white
woman credit for coining something, but I do think that
Naomi Klein did coin the term disaster capitalism in her
book The Shock Dotrine.

Speaker 3 (02:18:51):
And so we're gonna get into that.

Speaker 8 (02:18:52):
And the segment is where we're going to pick apart
the headlines, though, what are they getting right?

Speaker 3 (02:18:56):
Where the gaps in news coverage? And jamiir you and
I can.

Speaker 8 (02:19:00):
Yeah, mostly what they're getting wrong, what they should be right, Like,
let's remix some of this and be like, yeah, revise
across that out wide, out all of that.

Speaker 3 (02:19:10):
Yeah, that's so.

Speaker 9 (02:19:11):
I think the one that really stuck out to me
is there's one headline that came up in CBS News
that said, for many who lost homes and Los Angeles fires,
insurance companies insurance won't cover entire costs of rebuilding. The
reality is those insurance companies have been taking premiums from
those families for decades right, requiring them to have insurance,

(02:19:32):
and now all of a sudden they are picking up,
closing up their wallets, and leaving the state without any repercussions.

Speaker 3 (02:19:40):
And so that for me just goes to show you
that this is a prime example of like just you know.

Speaker 9 (02:19:44):
The transfer of wealth and the lack of government accountability
for those insurance companies who were required to operate and
now all of a sudden are not, you know, fulfilling
their end of the bargain.

Speaker 3 (02:19:55):
Like I want my money.

Speaker 9 (02:19:56):
I would want my money back if I've if I've
been paying paying into these premium for years only to
be told that actually you're not getting anything or yeah,
and I gets my money.

Speaker 8 (02:20:05):
And I need it now, like for real, That's exactly
where I'm at. I think it's just also as I'm
aging myself JG. But actually though, it's like insane for
you to collect the money and then be like what
money rebuilt?

Speaker 1 (02:20:21):
Huh?

Speaker 3 (02:20:22):
Like sorry, I'm somewhere on vacation.

Speaker 8 (02:20:25):
It's also been alarming because there's a death toll, and
I think there's been a lot of attention on property
destruction rightfully so because people are losing everything, but there's
a death toll that has risen to twenty nine. That's
dozens of people who've lost their lives in these fires,
let alone all the people who have lost their primary homes.
And yet page six ran a piece that said all
the celebrities impacted by the Los Angeles fires, and it

(02:20:47):
goes down the list, naming people like Paris Hilton and Belahadide.
And again, I'm not going to say that anyone you
know who loses their home isn't feeling grief around that,
But I mean, there's some people losing one of their homes,
and there are some people who are losing a home
that has housed multiple generations of black and brown people,
And we're just centering white celebrities when there are people

(02:21:09):
who who are not going to be able to bounce back,
who are not going to have some big project next
year that's going to make it all up in one sweep.
Like there's real loss here, like a black Air Force
vet was just running for his life towards what who knows.

Speaker 3 (02:21:23):
But like where are those stories? Why are we so
focused on a listers?

Speaker 1 (02:21:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (02:21:29):
And it's also pretty I mean it's pretty heartbreaking because
a lot of those we know that one of the
ways to build wealth in this country is through home ownership.
And we know a lot of folks who lost their homes,
particularly in those black and brown communities, have had those
homes and their families for generations. This might be the
only plot of land that they had to their name,
and to watch them lose their homes and the lack

(02:21:52):
of coverage of that, but then more importantly seeing all
those folks who are trying to come in and sweep
in and buy those homes for pennies on the dollar,
it's pretty it sucks, right because now not only are
you out of your home, you can't even go to work,
right what is like your your children's schools.

Speaker 3 (02:22:08):
May be non existent.

Speaker 9 (02:22:10):
You're trying to pick up the pieces, and you lost
all of the memories, the pictures, the photos. I when
I was younger, we had a house fire, and I
don't even have that many baby pictures anymore because of
all we lost. Like so, I can imagine like so
many folks who have nothing else, have nothing to call
their own, and all they see on the media is

(02:22:31):
celebrities who, to your point, are maybe this is their
second third vacation home and they'll be able to rebuild overnight. Right,
it's they're not going to be the ones truly impacted
minds of another article that came out regarding the president's visit.

Speaker 1 (02:22:50):
The president, I don't know.

Speaker 24 (02:22:55):
Your president, y'all.

Speaker 13 (02:22:56):
President, not my president.

Speaker 18 (02:23:00):
He visited.

Speaker 3 (02:23:00):
He visited parts of La so La.

Speaker 9 (02:23:03):
Times rand a story talking about how President the President
Donald Trump toward the Pacific Policy fire devastation, but did
not go to the predominantly black and brown neighborhoods, intentionally
intentionally further marginalizing those communities and not drawing awareness to
the fact that they were lacking the resources and tools

(02:23:23):
to be able to rebuild.

Speaker 8 (02:23:25):
So yeah, yeah, that was really I mean, I saw
a video of Attorney Ben Crump hosting a town hall
and there were just black elders just sobbing.

Speaker 3 (02:23:34):
And crying like we are waiting for relief. Who's coming
for us?

Speaker 8 (02:23:38):
And I've seen an outpouring through like go fundmes and
things of that nature. But we shouldn't have to crowdsource
when this federal government collect again to collecting our premiums.
You collect our taxes every year swiftly, okay, if you do,
you can get arrested with haste and then when it's
time to do something, it's like, sorry, I can't go everywhere.

(02:23:59):
I can only visit the rich people, which is really frustrating.
So yeah, that headline definitely needs to be shipped. It's
not that Altadena residents feel forgotten. They were forgotten. They
weren't invisibilized, they were ignored. And you brought up all
of the systemic racism that a lot of these black
elders had to survive to even get those homes, the redlining,
they had to survive, the employment discrimination, they had to
survive all to buy these homes that are their version

(02:24:23):
of the American dream, and to have it literally burned
to ashes before their eyes and then have to turn
around and beg the President to even stop by, even
pay attention.

Speaker 3 (02:24:32):
Need them to see that they exist. Yeah, it's really sad.

Speaker 8 (02:24:36):
And then lastly, I know everyone was praying for rain
and we got to get some water in here, which
was needed to help contain the fires because the firefighters
were working non stop, thirty percent of them being incarcerated firefighters.
But then it was wild because then the rain came
and it was like flooding and mud slides, and so
it's just very alarming what is happening in California, and

(02:24:58):
that the climate scientists, the climate activists have been sounding
the alarm that this is a state that is really
in need of deep rehabilitation, like it's dry but also
cannot handle what water.

Speaker 3 (02:25:11):
And it's just it's scary. This is scary time.

Speaker 9 (02:25:15):
It is scary, and we're gonna We're gonna hold on
to that thought and take a quick break so the
other side of change will be back after this break,
only on the Blackstar Network.

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Speaker 9 (02:27:20):
Hi everyone, we are back on the other side of change,
only on the Blackstar Network. You know, before we took
a break, we were discussing the La fires, but also
the really the climate that is happening all across the country,
the extreme weather that we're seeing both on the West
coast where I'm at, but also in the southern side
of the state and the southern side of the country

(02:27:41):
where Bria is. And I want to talk about disaster capitalism,
which you brought up earlier in the show. You know,
disaster capitalism thrives on crises. Landlord spike will hike up
the prices, corporations will buy out and burn down communities
and longtime residents are now displaced right. They have nowhere

(02:28:01):
to go to be able to rebuild, to recuperate what
they lost, or even to find a safe place for
their families to sleep. Many of these folks are either
sleeping on their loved ones couches, are finding brief rentals.
Some of them are sleeping outside or in their cars.
So it is extremely extremely dangerous times. And one stark

(02:28:22):
example of this is the hands off I don't know why,
out the Dina. Yeah, out the Dina movement that is
happening in California, where families are fighting back about these predatorial,
predatorial investors that are coming in trying to swoop in
and take up their properties.

Speaker 3 (02:28:38):
What are you hearing from, folks?

Speaker 8 (02:28:40):
Yeah, I mean, disaster's big business unfortunately for us. But yeah,
I have a few friends who you know, my good
friend Kimberly and Bolton, her family has lost six homes
in that area because she has a lot of aunts, uncles,
parents who are all living in the same community, who
have done that for safety.

Speaker 3 (02:28:58):
Who is saying, let builds community.

Speaker 8 (02:29:01):
With one another, live close to one another, and now
we had to all watch our houses burn with one another,
and it's really scary. It's also it's heartbreaking, but it's
also inspiring because these communities are resisting, they're resilient. It's
a reminder that resilience is not just about the rebuild,
but about making sure that people know alta Dina is ours.

Speaker 3 (02:29:18):
You can't take what is rightfully ours. And that has
been beautiful.

Speaker 8 (02:29:22):
Another person is Blairmani, who is the creator behind Smarter
and Seconds, and she's also a beautiful author. Her family
lost some homes there as well, and so they have
multiple generations nieces, nephews, uncles, grandparents, all staying in the
same home as they wait for a rebuild, which who
knows how long something like that actually takes.

Speaker 3 (02:29:43):
It takes years.

Speaker 9 (02:29:44):
I mean, if anyone has ever seen anything build anywhere, right,
you have to go through all of these governmental rent tapes.
You have to one be able to hire the staff
to be able to do this, and we have this
much devastation. To your point, we don't know how long
it's going to take. I also think it's really important
to note that many of the folks, particularly in those
black and brown communities that lost homes, these are people

(02:30:04):
considered even Blarrymani. These are people who are providing services
and resources to their people, like many of them lead
organizations and nonprofits that you serve us to those communities,
So those nonprofits and organizations are also.

Speaker 3 (02:30:17):
Feeling the impact of that.

Speaker 9 (02:30:20):
And this is not just about housing, right this since
at the intersection of race, class, climate justice, what happens
when they're building rebuilding efforts excludes those people, those stories
in those communities from being able to fully be able
to thrive again, especially as they're dealing with like these
predatory investors that are like whispering their ear telling them, hey,

(02:30:40):
you know, if an insurance company leaves your state, maybe
you should sell what like not how much, it's not
how much they should have never been allowed to leave
in the first place.

Speaker 3 (02:30:49):
One percent. And I think the scariest thing is, like,
if that's how bad it is.

Speaker 8 (02:30:53):
For people who are homeowners who own the land that
the house sat on, then imagine for those who are
renters who don't own any of their housing, who are
at the mercy of the rebuild of the developers and
the management buildings who own their spaces, or even for
people who depend on these spaces for employment, Like what
happens to farm workers who are who are picking and growing.

Speaker 3 (02:31:13):
Our food and we're doing so with masks on because
the smoke is still in the air.

Speaker 8 (02:31:18):
I mean they've been giving out these warnings around what
the air quality is going to look like for the
next several months because you're not just I mean we
think about it. It's like, yes, people's houses are burning,
which means plastic is burning, steel is burning, brick is burning,
wood is burning, trash is burning.

Speaker 3 (02:31:34):
Chemicals are burning. Cars were burning.

Speaker 8 (02:31:36):
To have to read that in it's scary to understand, like, Okay,
even after people rebuild their homes and have their schools
and community spaces rebuilt, their health is going to be
affected for much longer than probably is going to be tracked.
And again I remember this as a New Yorker after
nine to eleven, I mean, people were not breathing right,
and there were later suits around the air quality and

(02:31:59):
improper warning for people about like how they should be
protecting themselves.

Speaker 3 (02:32:03):
In a state and in a city that just was
banning masking literally, I mean, well in.

Speaker 9 (02:32:09):
A country that's banning masking, right, as if all of
the diseases and viruses have now evaporated into the thin air.
But to your point with not like we also have
to think about like Katrina, right, this country continues to
never learn, it is lessen It never thinks about infrastructure.
And it's so frustrating seeing how much money is just
being wasted in our federal government, how much money is
being sent out aside of the United States to do

(02:32:32):
harm elsewhere. But yet we have black the desire and
the political will to be able to strengthen our infrastructure
for the various citizens who who put money into that,
those into the coffees of the American dollar.

Speaker 3 (02:32:44):
I mean, yeah, government bank, right, yeah, no one million recent.
I'm glad that you brought up Katrina.

Speaker 8 (02:32:49):
This moment feels very reminiscent because even in Katrina, like
it was that, yes, you have this flooding. And that's
the thing about disaster capitalism, because people are sort of like,
why are you bringing up raised, why are you bringing
up It's.

Speaker 3 (02:33:00):
Not political, We're all in this together, and it's like, no.

Speaker 8 (02:33:03):
The natural disaster comes, and that the natural disaster itself
is not racist.

Speaker 3 (02:33:07):
It's the response that our government does or does not
give that is racist. That is very discriminatory.

Speaker 8 (02:33:12):
So in Katrina, it was like, let's break the levees
and sacrifice black residents and their communities and their homes
have them be climate refugees in stadiums, while white residents
are being flown out as long as you can afford to, right,
And like, I think that's what we're seeing here, is
that when they were evacuating folks, it was at the
mercy of you being able to fly out and have

(02:33:34):
somewhere to go. There was no real coordinated response of
here is where you go, and we are we have
planes ready to fly people out to safer spaces. And
it shouldn't be this way, Like why are we always
the first ones to be deemed the collateral damage and
the last ones to be protected.

Speaker 9 (02:33:48):
Yeah, I'm trying to stop myself from crying because I
just remember the images from Katrina of people like standing
on their roofs and on top of cars and like
waving signs, and they went days without fresh water country
that literally has sent people to the moon, right, Like
we can't get water and food to folks who are suffering.

(02:34:09):
Reminds me of Kanye West saying, you know, George Bush
doesn't like black people that the United States government doesn't like.

Speaker 8 (02:34:16):
No, truly, truly, we need that Kanye back, because we
need truth sellers right now, we need people to say
and I feel like, what's frustrating? Yeah, I missed the
old Kanye, but you know, actually, and what's scary is
like we have a million documentaries and books and expose's
and investigative articles explaining just how much the government failed
black people during Hurricane Christrina, where what like nearly twenty

(02:34:39):
years out from that, and now we're still facing situations
where the same thing is happening, And it's like, at
what point do we learn? At what point does it
not become entertainment that someone gets to prop it off of.
It's not a Netflix documentary, But at what point are
government officials actually learning how to better protect us?

Speaker 13 (02:34:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:34:56):
Yeah, especially let's not forget California. It be eating up
the paycheck.

Speaker 9 (02:35:01):
Okay, they take those taxes out, like we pay for
that infrastructure and the You know, a lot of things
can be true at once, right, Like a lot of
things can be true at once, But what we do
know is that the devastation also always impacts black people
vastly different, or black and brown communities vastly different than
it does our white counterparts. You mentioned books I just

(02:35:23):
finished right before the LA fires. I just if anyone
has ever heard of Octavia Butler, phenomenal, phenomenal writer, And
for years I was afraid to read Parable of the Sewer.

Speaker 3 (02:35:35):
I heard so many stories.

Speaker 9 (02:35:36):
About it, and to be honest, since COVID, I just
haven't been able to what I think is like trauma porn.
I'm not saying that about this book, but a lot
of like books where it's just the reality is just
too hard.

Speaker 3 (02:35:48):
I can't consume it.

Speaker 9 (02:35:49):
But I read it right before the fires, and I
can't tell you how Airie Arie it is to read
that book, especially because you know, Octavia says she's not
predicting the future. She is looking at the patterns of
the past. Yeah, make conclusions about what we know to
be true. Just talked about Katrina patterns of the past
and the lack of government infrastructure or the lack of
political will to give a damn about these communities right

(02:36:13):
stage for it to happen again.

Speaker 8 (02:36:15):
Yeah, that's the part, And I really appreciate her saying that, like,
I'm not actually predicting the future. I'm just putting our
current problems thirty years into the future and saying what
happens if we let them persist?

Speaker 3 (02:36:27):
And so the challenge is, like, I mean, if y'all were.

Speaker 8 (02:36:29):
Reading the book back then, we could have avoided some
of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:36:32):
Like I read the book. I read Her Girl.

Speaker 8 (02:36:35):
I read the book last year, because the book begins
in July twenty twenty four, and I was like, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:36:38):
What, let me read it on the timeline.

Speaker 8 (02:36:40):
And it was so eerie and strange to be like,
why is so much of this so spot on down
to there being a president running for office talking about
making America great again? And she's bringing that up because
that's what Reagan was saying. So it's like we've allowed
that to shape shift and transform and evolve into Donald
Trump when we could have nipped it in the b
and cut.

Speaker 3 (02:37:00):
It at the knees back then.

Speaker 8 (02:37:02):
And so it's just frustrating to realize, like in an
ideal world, I'll Tavia Butler would be considered outdated work, like, oh,
that was before al Gore, that was before we were
serious about climate, but we didn't. We got Bush and
everything else that comes after that. And it's like, this
is what happens when you let the problem persist.

Speaker 9 (02:37:22):
So memory, as far as I'm concerned, we like the
pain to the extent that we want to experience it
over and over and over and over again and then
look up and be like, well, how did this happen?

Speaker 3 (02:37:34):
Yeah, it hap actually we've But hopefully this time is different.

Speaker 9 (02:37:38):
I mean, we're seeing communities pull themselves together much faster
than our government is acting, and I think that is
giving me hope, especially at a time where it feels
like so much of our country is divided across political
lines because of just the hate that is running rampant
and right, like, if we're with ourselves at the core
of the decisions and the political decisions that people are making.

(02:38:00):
It's rooted in hate, it's rooted in discrimination, it's rooted
in racism, and it's playing out across a multitude of ways,
including how our government responds to the Climate to Climate Act.
But one thing about climate is that it's eventually going
to impact all of us. Right, it's no color, it sees,
social economic class. You might be able to respond differently

(02:38:22):
after it happened, but when that storm hits, when the
fire starts, we're all at the mercy of its natural direction,
So all.

Speaker 8 (02:38:31):
Of us, and so hopefully we learned the lesson that
Octavia was trying to teach us, which is that community
is the only antidote we have to keep one another safe.
We have to stop thinking about individualism and actually move
to a place where we recognize how interdependent we are.
So I'm excited to dig into that. And we have
a good guest later who we're going to talk to
that about. But before we bring him on, let's go
to a break again.

Speaker 7 (02:39:16):
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Through the jobs at.

Speaker 8 (02:40:19):
We are back with the other side of change, only
on the Blackstar Network.

Speaker 9 (02:40:24):
So before we went on break, we were talking about
the climate implications that are happening all across the country
and to help us understand this moment from a bird's
eye view. We have our friend and colleague, Dorian Paul
blathers to here to help us really discuss and get
into the nitty grid of this Dorian, you know, is
not only a handsome man, but he also is very

(02:40:44):
qualified to talk about this issue. He is the former
Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the Environmental Protection
Agency the EPA, and entered this role with a decade
of experience of electoral and issue based campaign politics. Dorian
previously served as the public Engagement Program Officer for Climate
Action Campaign, and he is now the CEO and founder

(02:41:05):
of Good Rebel. Welcome to the other side of change, Dorian.

Speaker 24 (02:41:09):
Ah, thank you for having me. It's good to see you,
Jamira and Bria. Thanks for inviting me into this conversation.

Speaker 8 (02:41:15):
Yes, I'm so excited and I feel like we got
a good freckled light skin sandwich for you.

Speaker 3 (02:41:19):
Jamira too. I know, I'm really happy. We appreciate it.

Speaker 18 (02:41:25):
Dorian.

Speaker 9 (02:41:26):
You know I always checking you during the height of
the LA fires.

Speaker 3 (02:41:31):
I mean, and I see hype.

Speaker 9 (02:41:32):
It's still going on, unfortunately, but I remember you showing
me like the outside of your balcony. Can you tell
us a little bit more about like your experience of
what is happening one in LA but also what is
happening regarding climate change in general across the United States,
but also the world.

Speaker 3 (02:41:47):
Right we just saw the US pull out of the
Paris Climate Agreement, So what are those implications that you're seeing.

Speaker 12 (02:41:53):
Absolutely, it's it's fascinating that this all just happened two
weeks ago.

Speaker 24 (02:41:59):
I remember remember the night of the night that we
had that conversation.

Speaker 12 (02:42:05):
I was on my balcony and at this point, the
Palisades Fire had already been burning. The Eton Fire where
the community of Altadena is was also burning. But we
saw with those extreme wind events, those Santa Ana winds
that come in off the mountains, there were literally little
fires everywhere all across Los Angeles County.

Speaker 24 (02:42:26):
I live in Tytown, which is just on the edge
of Hollywood and a.

Speaker 12 (02:42:30):
Very popular hiking destination that some of your favorite influencers
hike all the time. Caught on fire, and that is
right here in the heart of Hollywood. We had a
fire situation where nearly one hundred acres were burning. But
for the first time I had to consider what it

(02:42:54):
would be like to actually leave my house to have
a go bag pat and ready to know. I could
see a small orange glow that began to increase in
just a matter of minutes. And funny enough, I was
actually hosting friends from other parts of the county that

(02:43:15):
were escaping fire to only have to you know, evacuate
here from Hollywood, you know, and find another place to
go for the night. But what I realize is that
like we are in the climate collapse, So for climate
activists and organizers like myself who have been talking about

(02:43:36):
these issues as something that is looming or something that
is coming, it is absolutely here and it's been here,
and we're going to see that happen.

Speaker 24 (02:43:45):
You know, as you stated earlier.

Speaker 12 (02:43:47):
In communities across the country, these extreme weather events are
becoming more disastrous, and it's so important to contextualize that
it is black and brown communities that are often hit
first and worse. And I'm not just talking about you know,
physical property in space. I'm talking about the impact of

(02:44:07):
the fallout of these disasters. They are there's certainly loss
of life that we're seeing. The highest number of casualties
came from Altadena, right another historically black community. But also
when we think about you know what happens after the fires.
There are so many people, thousands of people who are

(02:44:30):
out of work in both the Palisades community and Altaedina. Right,
there are thousands of people who are now displaced and
considering what they can do with the forty three thousand
dollars that they're eligible to receive if they qualify for
it when applying through FEMA. That doesn't go very far
in California. When you've lost your vehicle, you've lost your home,

(02:44:54):
maybe you've lost your job. Right, We're still learning about
the stories that are happening, and it's important for us
to you know, talk about this in a global context.
I'm happy that you you raise that because when we
think about who climate refugees are, who folks are who
are often on the front lines of just the of
the pollution that causes these disasters, but also the fallout

(02:45:17):
from the extreme weather that climate change exacerbates, it's people
that look like us. It's black people first, right, it's
brown people. We look at island communities who are experiencing,
you know, hurricanes that are larger.

Speaker 24 (02:45:32):
Than they've ever been.

Speaker 12 (02:45:33):
This is something that we're experiencing as a global society,
and it's important that we get this right now as
we kind of shift from you know, the long held
conversations on mitigation to adaptation, how do we.

Speaker 24 (02:45:51):
Live while these things are going on?

Speaker 12 (02:45:54):
And how do we rebuild and have resilient communities that
allow us to still live with dignity in these really
scary times.

Speaker 8 (02:46:04):
Yeah, I'm so glad that you said that, because especially
that global context, people don't think when they think of
the terms climate refugees, that sounds like something in the
third world, which I don't even use language like that,
but like that's we are we in a Gucci that
was me two weeks ago, right, Like we never think
it of us until it's us, And then you're the

(02:46:25):
one thinking what do I put in the book bag
and what's worth taking and seeing people like making split
second decisions of this is the only photo I have
of my mother, or this is you know, my child's
memories or whatever, like.

Speaker 3 (02:46:37):
I can't imagine. I mean, it made me and my wife.

Speaker 8 (02:46:39):
Get really serious about we have to get our to
go bags ready because we certainly don't have infrastructure down
here if something really hit. And people always think, well,
I don't live in a community like that, and and
that's what a lot of people think until it hits
your community.

Speaker 3 (02:46:52):
So it's definitely so scary. I mean, when you think
of this rebuild, what is just and fair.

Speaker 8 (02:46:59):
When it comes to rebuilding Alta Dina with black and
brown residents at the center, what is what needs to
be considered that maybe people are not talking about or
are only talking about in little whispers, but not on
a mainstream scale.

Speaker 24 (02:47:11):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 12 (02:47:13):
I don't know if you all saw that viral Instagram
video that went out. There was a young woman named
Shelley Bruce who happens to be a friend of mine
who grew up here in Los Angeles, and she's making
you know, kind of this desperate plea and appeal to
all of her followers and everyone who's paying attention around
the world on Los Angeles that like, especially black folks

(02:47:36):
who she's speaking to. She's like, we are going to
make these communities whole again. You know, the Alta wildfires
didn't just destroy homes, It put an entire black community
at risk of permanent displacement. And this is a community
that was built on the backs of folks who you know,

(02:47:57):
were seeking home ownership and econ prosperity because of redlining, right,
they were pushed to Altadena and made it a safe
haven of activists and artists and professionals who had worked.

Speaker 24 (02:48:11):
Very hard to build this community from the ground up.

Speaker 12 (02:48:15):
So when I think about making this community whole, I think, uh, first,
in any context, it's important for us to allow those
communities to first speak for themselves. I was so happy
to see you know, Shelley talk about her family. I
was so excited to see you know viral you know,

(02:48:39):
uh influencing influencers and artists from Altadena, people like the
celebrity vocal coach Stevie Mackie right, who's from Altadena, talk
about you know, what his family was going through in.

Speaker 24 (02:48:53):
That over these past few weeks.

Speaker 12 (02:48:56):
But first, I think we're gonna have to pause and
acknowledge that Altadena will never be the same Altadena as
it was, will never be like that again, and it's
gonna be on us too, you know. To steal from
from a former boss uh and president to build back better,

(02:49:20):
you know, we're gonna have to do that and be
mindful of how we first stop, you know, the stem.
We need to stem the predatory practices that are actively
kind of lurking and waiting to pounce on the economic
opportunity that is an entire black city city that's been erased.

Speaker 24 (02:49:45):
The governor has you know, instituted.

Speaker 12 (02:49:47):
Now a three month uh baner moratorium on developers being
able to offer below market value for these properties.

Speaker 24 (02:49:58):
We need to question is three months long enough?

Speaker 12 (02:50:01):
You know, people are still trying to find clothes to
put on their back, People are still looking to uh,
you know, get back in their doctor's office and to
to get their kids back into school.

Speaker 24 (02:50:15):
To think that they are having to.

Speaker 12 (02:50:16):
Also contend with you know, the vultures, right, which is
capitalism coming to profit off of their pain is the
first thing. And there are a number of different things
that I think we can do. You all talked about
Katrina earlier this episode, and you know, we know that
there are a lot of mishaps for how you know,

(02:50:39):
the Lower ninth ward you know, yeah, rebuilt. But we
need to be asking questions about like what does a
you know, a buyback program look like. Right if the
state of California or if La County is able to
purchase these properties at you know, market rate and then

(02:50:59):
to hold these properties for these families to be able
to come back when they.

Speaker 24 (02:51:04):
Have the resources.

Speaker 12 (02:51:05):
Right, those are the type of questions and conversations we
need to be having so that we can retain you know,
that safe haven that they've created over nearly a century.

Speaker 9 (02:51:18):
Yeah, And I think thing that's being lost in this
shuffle right now is this idea that in addition to
the fires, there's the economic implications of the moment.

Speaker 1 (02:51:27):
Right.

Speaker 9 (02:51:27):
We know that last year there was an eighteen percent
increase in homelessness across the country. We know that unemployment
is on the rise. We know that mini tech companies
have been laying people off all across California, and for
this to happen in the midst of that, as well
as we see so much as happening with the tariffs
and how that's going to impact more jobs.

Speaker 7 (02:51:47):
Right.

Speaker 9 (02:51:47):
So, the fires is one thing, but people's livelihoods across
so many different issues are being like the pressure is
being put on them, and they're not in a place,
to your point, to make decisions about the long term
implications of their property while in the midst of trying
to find clothes and food to support their families.

Speaker 3 (02:52:06):
It has to be devastating from what you've seen.

Speaker 9 (02:52:09):
I mean, we've talked about this early in the show
as well, like the community response, like communities are almost
showing up much quicker than government agencies and institutions that
are supposed to be prepared for devastation devastating moments like this.
How do we sustain that kind of momentum long term,
knowing that there's probably going to be more devastation that

(02:52:30):
will continue to happen because we're not making the right
decisions regarding climate change, especially during an administration that seems
almost hostile to even talking about climate change because maybe
he thinks it's a part of the DEI strategy.

Speaker 3 (02:52:43):
I don't know.

Speaker 24 (02:52:45):
That's right.

Speaker 12 (02:52:46):
I think that, you know, while this has been just
a tragic couple of weeks for LA and for the country,
I've also, as someone who has been in LA for
two years now, seen the best of who we are.
And it's actually young black millennials that I've seen step
up and lead on the recovery and restoration efforts.

Speaker 24 (02:53:10):
That has been so inspiring. So, you know, I mentioned
Shelley Bruce.

Speaker 12 (02:53:14):
She has an organization called the Heart Department, and this
organization is literally taking up space in and around in
the surrounding communities in Pasadena and Altadina, you know, so
that folks can come in and get things like counseling
services so that they can practice in you know, breath
work and movement. Right, they're looking at the whole person

(02:53:37):
that's been impacted by this. And then I think of
folks like Etienne Maurice with his organization Walk Good La Right,
which also has been providing direct services, but taking that
a step further and saying like, we need to make
sure that people are whole mental, mentally, socially.

Speaker 24 (02:53:56):
And emotionally in this time because restoration.

Speaker 12 (02:53:59):
Is not going to happen overnight, and us coming together
and taking care of one another the collective, I think,
in the immediate term is one of the most important
things that we can do. And there's been an outpouring
of people who have been volunteering and showing up.

Speaker 24 (02:54:18):
But in a disaster, in any disaster, there are a
few things that we know that we can do. The
first thing is to show up right, So that's volunteering
with organizations like the NAACP right, who are providing advocacy
avenues for folks to show up and speak to our
representatives here locally and at the federal level. They're also

(02:54:40):
working with attorneys.

Speaker 12 (02:54:42):
In the legal community making sure that these families and
communities have representation. So showing up right is one thing
that we can do using our own labor our bodies
to respond to this. The other thing that we can
do is funded. For those of us that do have
resources to to donate or to contribute to these organizations,

(02:55:03):
be it dollars or other kind, resources and services that
we can offer Black and brown organizations that have historically
been underfunded are going to be under even greater strain
during this disaster. The next thing that I would say
we can do is what we're doing right now, which
is speaking up and utilizing our platforms to talk about

(02:55:26):
these issues and to educate the public. When the President
of the United States spends hours on the other side
of town talking to residents in the Palisades but doesn't
mention by name the city of Altadena, which is in
La County, we know it's incumbent upon us to take

(02:55:47):
our own platforms and to utilize them to do the work.
And I know that folks are tired coming out of November.
In these last couple of months have felt like a
year in and of itself. But for everyone wait for
the cavalry to come in, for the Democrats to come in,
for Kamala Harris or Barack Obama or whoever to come

(02:56:07):
in and save the day.

Speaker 24 (02:56:09):
My message to folks is that we are the cavalry
and it starts with us.

Speaker 12 (02:56:14):
The other piece that that I think is important for
us to do so it's showing up right, it's funding it,
it's speaking out, and it's also fighting back. There's a
lot of misinformation and disinformation percolating online in mainstream media
coming out of the White House. We've got to call
that out. And we also have to roll up our

(02:56:35):
sleeves and decide what part of this elephant we're going
to focus on and just be diligent about accountability, about
calling out bad actors, and about asking for more right so,
whether that's the governor and extending this moratorium on uh,
you know, the the offers that can be delivered to

(02:56:59):
these to these communities for buying their homes. Whether it
is Congress who hasn't done anything yet. I don't know
if folks realize this, but there has been no federal
aid bill delivered for the state of California yet. Mike Johnson,
the Speaker of the house said that, you know, he
thinks that there should be conditions placed on the aid.

(02:57:21):
That to me is indicative of where we are and
it starts with us. So speak out, fund it, show up,
and fight back.

Speaker 24 (02:57:30):
That's that's where we're at.

Speaker 8 (02:57:31):
Yeah, oh, he's I mean, we are the Calvary. I
want that tattooed on my forehead.

Speaker 3 (02:57:36):
That's so real.

Speaker 6 (02:57:37):
It's so.

Speaker 3 (02:57:44):
And I think it reminds me too of to go
back to Octavia Butler.

Speaker 8 (02:57:48):
But there is a bookstore, Octavia's Bookshelf, in Altadena and
very close to Octavia's adult home, and the founder of
Octavia's Bookshelf, Nikki High, has also opened up the bookstore
to be refuge. They've been doing mutual aid, they've been
housing people, they've been collecting donations and disseminating, and it
just reminds me that we can always come together and

(02:58:09):
do the thing that needs to get done faster than
the government was red tape, and.

Speaker 3 (02:58:14):
We have to be the ones doing the thing that
needs to get done. So I just really love that
you said that.

Speaker 8 (02:58:19):
But then you brought up something that's making me a
bit nervous, which is we have to be wary of
the misinformation and the disinformation, which feels like it's going
to be even harder to do when all of the
tech CEOs are fleeing from the responsibility to field and
moderate that on their platforms, I mean Zuckerberg, obviously, Elon Musk.

(02:58:40):
So like, do we stay on these platforms and continue
to sound the alarms? Do we need to be doing
this outside of the context of these digital spaces, Like
where does digital strategy and digital spreading of information fall
into where you see as this need to be speaking
truth to power?

Speaker 12 (02:58:58):
That's right, Well, I love of you know, a good newsletter,
and there was a period in time, a point in
time when I was on my church, my church's list serve,
and they would send out information about any sort of
boil water advisory, any public health crisis that was happening

(02:59:21):
in the community, any opportunities right for folks to get
assistants or resources.

Speaker 24 (02:59:27):
I think that we're coming to a point.

Speaker 12 (02:59:29):
Now where we're going to have to give up some
of these the tactics that have like helped us spread
our messages through big tech, through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera,
and get back to you know, direct primary source avenues
of sharing information so whether that's email newsletters again, whether

(02:59:50):
that's public meetings and showing up in person, I think
that we're going to have to, you know, think about
the most basic or organizing principles that gave us the
freedoms that we have in this country now in resorting
to those efforts where you know, the algorithm can't impact

(03:00:10):
you know, what's being said, where we can't be suppressed,
and I think that it's a both and approach. I
know that, you know, when I think of my aunts
and uncles that are on Facebook, I don't think they're going,
you know, anywhere anytime soon. But if they heard from
me directly, right as someone who's on the ground, as

(03:00:32):
someone who's seen the fires, as someone who has worked
for the federal agencies that are providing some of the
aid and response, right, that carries a lot more weight
and value than information that folks can't even trust right
as being credible or viable anymore.

Speaker 24 (03:00:50):
I think we've got to come back to those those principles.

Speaker 3 (03:00:53):
Yeah, it has to happen on and offline.

Speaker 9 (03:00:55):
Like it's the reminder that for many of us millennials
who are online chronically online like I am, we are
oftentimes the biggest source of information to our relatives. So
anytime we see information, we consume information, we should be
asking questions like why, how, when is this true? Should
I check another source? Because if we're sharing bad information,

(03:01:16):
especially we had like large platforms, we can do more
damage than good. And so it's constantly questioning the information
we're consuming with the recognition that it's going to be exhausting.

Speaker 2 (03:01:26):
Right.

Speaker 9 (03:01:27):
One of the reasons why our opposition wins so often
is that they want to bombard us with so much
tragedy and information at the same time, to the.

Speaker 3 (03:01:35):
Point where we don't know how to respond.

Speaker 9 (03:01:36):
But you mentioned earlier, Dorian, the idea that you know,
anyway to tackle an elephant, we have to each choose
a side and eat it bit by bit.

Speaker 3 (03:01:44):
We can't do it all.

Speaker 9 (03:01:45):
There isn't the expectation that we can do it all.
But in this work we can definitely. Working in collaboration
with folks, we can definitely hit our target.

Speaker 3 (03:01:54):
So thank you so much, Dorian for coming on. Tell
folks where they can find you and.

Speaker 9 (03:01:59):
Tell us more about Good Rebel as we close out
this segment.

Speaker 12 (03:02:03):
Yeah, of course you can find me at good Rebel
dot co online. I'm also on Instagram at Goodrebel dot
co and at Dorian Paul.

Speaker 24 (03:02:15):
That's Dorian with an E not in the A. But
we are working.

Speaker 12 (03:02:19):
We work with brands, nonprofits, influencers and individuals UH to
really effectuate.

Speaker 24 (03:02:25):
The change that they want to see in the world.

Speaker 12 (03:02:27):
I started this work as an environmental justice activist on
the campus of Howard University, where you know, I was
afforded the opportunity, UH.

Speaker 24 (03:02:36):
To sharpen you know, my toolkit to be ready for
a time like this.

Speaker 12 (03:02:41):
And you know, I'm excited that you all have this
platform for us to you know, talk about these issues,
for us to really give the resources and point folks
in the direction that we see to be, you know,
a viable direction for progress. But look forward to staying
connected with you all and all the folks listening as well.

Speaker 3 (03:03:02):
Sadly enough, yeah, sadly enough.

Speaker 9 (03:03:05):
I'm sure there's going to be more climate issues, so
we'll definitely have later on.

Speaker 3 (03:03:10):
But it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 9 (03:03:11):
I mean, this episode was clearly very heavy because we
know the fires are still happening, people are still devastated,
and our government still lacks the ability to respond accordingly.
But thank you for being on a shining light on
this devastating issue, not just happening what's happening in LA,
but also what's happening around the country and why we
should take climate change a little bit more seriously because

(03:03:34):
it can and will.

Speaker 3 (03:03:35):
Impact all of us.

Speaker 9 (03:03:36):
So pick up Octavia Butler's book Parable of the Sower
for those who have not read it yet.

Speaker 3 (03:03:41):
It will be very enlightening about the current moment that
we're in.

Speaker 8 (03:03:46):
Yeah, and don't forget to support moments like hands off ALTADNA,
mutual aid networks, go fundmes and anything grassroots because again,
we keep us safe.

Speaker 14 (03:03:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (03:03:56):
So until next time, thank you for tuning in for
on the other side of change only on the Black
Star Network. You can find both Bria Baker and i
Her on Freckles while Black, Freckles while Black, on Instagram, Threads,
and TikTok, and you can find me on all social
media platforms at Jamira Burley. It's been a pleasure and
have a good day.

Speaker 4 (03:04:36):
Hello,

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