Replay* Education By Any Means Necessary

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Tamika d. Mallory and the.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Ship Boy my Son in general.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
We are your host of TMI.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, Motivation.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
And Inspiration, New Energy.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
What's going on, my son, Lennon, how you ma? I'm
doing good? Drum road, drum roll. I'm just laughing because
I'm so tired, so tired that it's just trying to.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Hold it together.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Well, you know, the season has begun where it's time
to travel around this country and were just saying, God,
shit to work with, Like honestly, like it's really really
hard because well, and I think that what we do
have and the only thing we have is the issues

(00:53):
that matter to our communities, Like we really have to
be focused on local people, local issues, and then how
those local issues play into the larger narrative in terms
of what's happening in our communities because every which way
we turn, there are I mean, these folks that we

(01:16):
fight against every day are extremely strategic and so every
city around this country there's some type of dynamic where
they have begun to make shifts in the politics on
the ground, whether it be inserting there is a new

(01:38):
it's not new in terms of it's never happened before,
but there's a reignited effort to bring black people who
don't align with our issues and put them in position
in communities. And so what we're dealing with now is
combating the Daniel Cameron effect. That is the Attorney General

(02:02):
was the Attorney general of Louis I mean of Kentucky
who tried to become governor black man, and we had
to sit him down. And so we have you know,
this is a situation where all around the nation we're
seeing these types of black people popping up, and it's
it's it's a trying time because at the same time

(02:25):
trying to sell people that we still can do this,
like we still can continue to fight, we have we
don't need to give up that there is in fact
so much possibility in us like staying together and staying
on the wall and continuing to do the work.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
It's really hard right now. People not interested.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
People.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Let me not say people. It's just some people.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
There's a lot of people who are very interested, but
there are some who and they are it's the ones.

Speaker 5 (02:58):
That contact with the people that we've seen that have
really put blood, sweat and tears into trying to fight
for our people, right, and they just sometimes you just
get deflated.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know.

Speaker 5 (03:09):
You see certain things and you feel like you're making
strides and you feel like you're going forward, and then
there are certain things that just take wind out of yourselves.
And you know, and I say that all the time.
I see what happened to a lot of our elders
and our ancestors that fought and just got tired. You know,
there were some of them that made history and continued.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You know.

Speaker 5 (03:31):
I was watching Harry Belafonte's one of the movies that
they put out of following Harry and just looking what
he went through in different generations, right, Like I watched
him as a young man fighting with Doctor King, right,
and he was there, and he was he was funding

(03:52):
the movement.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
He was right with him.

Speaker 5 (03:53):
And then doctor King told him, I feared that, you know,
I've integrated our people into a burning building. Hearing Doctor
King say that, right, and then he's still fighting. He's
he was confused, like what do you mean? And then
as he started to continue, he started to see that, right.
I seen him having conversations with you. I see them
having a conversation with the dream defenders. I see them

(04:15):
having conversations with March for Our Lives, like different generations
of freedom fighters and him explaining to what is happening,
like this moment is for now, what are you gonna do?
And each one of them like we're gonna fight, We're
gonna fight, And then you just see another and him
constantly explaining to you that they're trying to dismantle this,
They're gonna do everything to dismantle this. And then you

(04:38):
see it play out in each one.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Of those movies.

Speaker 5 (04:40):
They're gonna attack you, they're gonna do these things, and
then watching it continue to play out. So when you
see that and that man died right, still trying to
give that knowledge and still trying to fight for those things.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
But you could tell that there.

Speaker 5 (04:54):
Was this this this feeling of are we actually gonna
see freedom?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Is it?

Speaker 5 (05:01):
Like We're still gonna fight. I'm going to fight and
I'm going to give you this energy and I'm going
to talk. But you've seen the vigor, right that you've
seen it vigor. Now it was just an elder who
was knowledgeable just giving it to you, saying hopefully you
could take this information and do.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
What we haven't been able to do.

Speaker 5 (05:20):
Right, you know, And I understand how that happens, because
you just fight so long and you just feel like,
you know what I'm saying, you dig in a hole
and you don't find the bottom, you know, but you
when you're a fighter, you just keep digging.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, And that's exactly what we have to spread.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
But when you're on is this beginning of the summer,
at least three days, I've been in a loop of
canceled flights and delays and six hours in this airport
and whatever. And I don't know that people understand the
tire tracks on your back when you're trying to get

(05:57):
this work done. And then when you're talking to people
who are like, don't come over here with that. I
don't want to hear it, and you want to be frustrated,
like man I traveled, you know. I'm trying to really
get us to be under to be sold not on candidates,
not even on any of that, but to be sold
on our possibility that even you could run, like Killer

(06:19):
Mike said at the BET Awards, if you could run, Like,
how can we use this energy to set it up.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
For you to run?

Speaker 2 (06:27):
You know?

Speaker 1 (06:28):
And and and and then you.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Just and you have to deal with people who are
so frustrated you can't even get upset with them, because
I understand.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I feel that way.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
So today is one of those days where I'm just
like pulling the train along. But tomorrow I'll be back
in there doing what I have to do.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
I'm with you, man, you know some days I get
that and you gotta. That's why we got each other, right,
That's what we got in this movement. We feed off
each other's energy. Some days you're gonna have more energy
than I have. Some days I'm gonna have it for you.
So today I'm gonna you know, but you shout out
to my black print. You know what I'm saying. See
what it said, You see what to say. Run run

(07:09):
us ode reparations. Man, shout out to them for the
shirt I got one for you, got one for you too.
And that's what I feel like. We gotta fight for
our reparations. We're gonna have to. They're not gonna give
us our reparations. Every every day is a fight for
our reparations. And that's what our people got to understand.
We deserve certain things. You know what I'm saying. We

(07:29):
were denied certain things, and we built this back, this country.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
On our back with our for free, for free, so
run outside reparations.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
I know that's right. So let's see my thought of
the day today.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
You know, last week awful, awful, awful, awful debate, and
you know some people that want to jump to awful
debate because Biden his performance was not at all where
it should be. Well, his performance is not where most
people would want it to be, but it actually is

(08:07):
where it should be for eighty something year old man
who has been in public service for a long time,
dealing with extreme stress, and also he has a stuttering disability,
and therefore he has some you know, a trifecta of challenges.
So no, it's not where people want it to be,

(08:27):
but he's actually not that far off from most eighty
year old people that you put them on the stage
and tell them that they need to debate.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
At nine o'clock at night.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
So, and I'm not even making excuses for it's not
my point, let me get to it. I'm just saying
people want to say that that's the only reason why
the debate was so terrible. But I'm also not into
listening to somebody who's.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Real quick with lies.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
So and By the way, there's been some fact checkers,
even President Biden a few times, some of the things
they he said it's not one hundred percent accurate. So
it's not that one person that every that the president
was this great on this great moral standing, and then
Trump wasn't. Trump just is an habitual liar and a

(09:16):
very dangerous individual, and then you have him up against
a man who I believe there's some issues that President
Biden has, some blind spots that he has and in
some areas that he's committed to that I just don't
agree with and could never ever, ever ever comfortably say like, oh,
I'm for Biden because of some of his decisions and

(09:38):
the ways in which his administration has carried out their duties.
But in addition to that, I also know he's an
older man. So what it basically says to me is
the whole shit is a mess. Like it's a mess.
You got, lion, You've got a person who needs rest
and relaxation. That's what people at eighty years old, people

(10:00):
should be resting from working their entire lives trying to
get up there, and everybody's putting this pressure on you
that your responsibility is to save democracy and all of
this and that, and yet the democracy that you are
engaged or supposed to be engaged with across the seas
in the Middle East, you are part of destroying that

(10:23):
little piece of whatever slither of democracy those folks may
have had.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So it's just all of it is.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
I can't find super positive things anywhere, right, But here's
what I was going to talk about. Because then, of course,
the first thing that happened, which is also disingenuous, All
these newspapers and op eds came out quickly saying that
Joe Biden needs to resign. I mean, he needs to
step aside. And I don't know exactly what that means.

(10:50):
I mean, I've read a few articles. Some of it
means just go to the convention with a different candidate
as the as the nominee for president, or allow the
process to take place where there is another candidate can emerge.
Some people want him to he that they believe he's
in such bad shape at this moment that he should

(11:12):
not even be able to to he should not be
able to continue to be the president, which we know
is not going to happen. And also, you know, we
know people that work in a white House, people who
have audience with President Biden all the time, and they
say there's literally nothing wrong with him. And I'm talking

(11:34):
about people that's my friends that would tell me, girl lord.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
They've told me other things, but they they say.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
There's literally nothing wrong with him, like you could sit
down and have a conversation with him.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
But when a person.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Stutters, and they're older, and again the stress of the
job when they are when they are speaking, sometimes they
need extra time to process, remember and then be able
to have the conversation. That that's just a natural thing
that happens to you as you start to get older.
So so with that being said, no, he should not

(12:07):
be the nominee, not now. Now we're all the way
far down the road before with what he said when
he ran the first time was that he would not
run for reelection. And that's what they should have stuck
to because at that time he was a little bit younger.
He was a he was an older white man up
against an older white man, which probably was a good man,

(12:29):
I mean obviously because he won. But now he was
he's too he is too much in his senior years
and it is too much of a stress on his
whole system to try to stand up there and have
the type of debate with a man who is a
straight lunatic like you gotta be on your lunatic to

(12:51):
talk to the lunatic for real and not and not
for nothing. This this is my real thought of the
day about what I want to say. I'm not you know,
I want to focus on black folks right in our issues.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
One.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
People are talking about third party candidates. So first of all,
the way the system is set up, they have long
time ago rigged it to where trying to get a
third party candidate elected at this point they already know
is damn there impossible because you have the Democratic Convention

(13:27):
coming up. You also, and I get it, some people
will say, well, I'm gonna still vote for them. That's fine,
But the third party candidate nine times out of ten,
unless we can move an exodus of people, and it
ain't just black people, it's not just black people. You
need people from all races, everybody to come together. And
if we already divided within the black community because you

(13:48):
have people who are saying we don't want Donald Trump
so much that we cannot afford to take the shot.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Now I'm with it. I'm with it.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
If we had, if cornell Us was.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
A real, real, real, real real.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Shot for us to win, not only would I be
behind him. And I'm still willing to listen to somebody
tell me on what we can do to get Cornell
on the stage at the Democratic Convention and figure out
how we can support him and move votes in his direction.
I'm with it, But I also sit around and talk

(14:23):
to our people, and I realized that in conversations with us,
we still need a lot of work to get to
the point where all of us and then some other
folks make that shift.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
And this was done to us, and it's wrong. It
is wrong that we live in.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
America in a place where we cannot look at the
two top candidates and say I don't want them. I mean, right, like,
I'm sure we can talk about that later on or
another day. But here's the thing, the reason why I
know about the challenge that.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
We face as a people.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Kamala Harris is the vice president, which means that in
the proper world, she would advance because of if the
president was incapacitated or decides that he does not want
to run again, she would have quite And it's supposed
to naturally advance to being at the head of the ticket.

(15:23):
Here's the issue if the Democratic Party and the white
folks that's over there, and the black and brown people
and other people that go along with white folks who
are in charge of every damn thing, if they go
along with this process.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Of them needing a new candidate.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
At first those articles was coming out, they weren't even
mentioning Kamala as the person. So what they would attempt
to do is find some other person, which Gavin Newsom
couldn't really necessarily be it because he's from California and
so is Kamala, and that never works in any scenario
that there's two people at the top and second on
the ticket from the same state. Right, But if they

(16:02):
go and find some other person, more than likely a
white person to put over Kamala, black people will most
a lot of black people, a lot of large majority
of black people would lose our minds that you have
disrespected a black woman. And again it would be race.

(16:23):
And then, as I have said a million times, when
you take race and couple it with sex and sexism,
that sexism piece can be even more damning because we
already had a black president. So we know almost any
kind of man can win, right, almost any kind of man,
but a woman, any race, number one, definitely black. It

(16:48):
is very it is very difficult. Do I think that
she could have debated Donald Trump and kicked his butt?

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Do I think that she could run the country and
do the thing and and and and really be a
strong powerful voice around this world.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
I think that she's educated, she's talented, she has all
the things. But do I understand the challenges of a
black woman being at the top of the ticket?

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Of course, and so do they know that.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Within the party, which is why they would attempt out
of sexism also and racism, but ultimately just practicality, they
would attempt to put somebody over her.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
So you know what would happen.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
The Black people would be like, this is disrespectful and
go crazy about how Kammala is being disrespected. But then
if they did put her at the top of the ticket,
you know what some of them saying, Black people say,
she's not black enough. She was a prosecutor and she
put black people in jail.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
She did this, she did that, She's not enough of this.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
She don't know how to dance properly, she know she
looked like she never danced before.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
She's married to a white man.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
So no matter which way you start trying to go
and which which way you start shifting, we will find
a reason to try to discredit that black woman. Which
is why right out of ego they are ill advised.
Some of it is disrespect, other parts of it is

(18:18):
an attempt to preserve the dignity of the current president
and also the dignity of the United States, because when
these things happen, it's it's it's history forever.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
People will be saying they had to remove or President
Biden had.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
To step down or whatever, and out of their ego,
and again some of it being the disrespect for black women,
some of it being just made. It just ill advised,
and they made a bad decision to allow him to
run for president again.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
They I don't believe.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
I believe that that makes them feel that they have
no choice but to take this man all the way
to the end and hell Mary that he wins while
killing babies in Palestine. While people have serious questions over
especially the marketing, of what they have been able to
accomplish in a time when inflation is killing people, I

(19:14):
don't care what they say. They keep saying jobs is
at the highest number I know at least twenty people
that have been and continue to search for work. They
are struggling, people are homeless, people are hurting. So you
got all that happening, and then you got a liar
who knows how to market and twist and say crazy
things that makes people feel like, well maybe, and then

(19:38):
and then people get so frustrated about either one of
them that they start talking about taking their votes and
splitting them and going to another place. It's a hot
ass mess. And I don't care if people could get
mad at me. They can say whatever they want. But
part of why we are here is because when Joe
Biden said he would not run for reelection, that's what
he should have done. We should have figured this out

(19:59):
from four four years ago when he became president. They
should have decided how they were going to make sure
that Kamala was able to get to the end and
become the nominee with people really behind her. That's what
we should have done, because that's who they chose for
vice president. And if they weren't gonna do it with Kamala,
which by I support one hundred percent, that a black

(20:19):
woman be at.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
The head of the ticket.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
But if they weren't gonna do it with Kamala, it
should have been somebody else. This should have been the
plan since even before he became president, and they did
not do that. And now we are in a situation
where we're dealing with a man who has the court
stack in his favor to be able to do the
most unconscionable criminal bullshit ever and we're sitting up here
with another man over here that is in charge, that

(20:44):
is not in charge of excuse me, that is helping
to fund a genocide.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
It's too much for me.

Speaker 5 (20:49):
I said from the beginning, we're not choosing, We're not
picking an ally. Were picking an opponent, right who we
got to battle against. So our whole mind state with
this president and he should have been building up for
the next four years, who do we actually want to
see in president? When they said he was only going
to do four years, then we should have been making

(21:09):
sure that if we wanted Kamala to be the president,
that people supposed to get behind Kamalin. We're supposed to
demand that she had more of a president were supposed
to be. You know, we're supposed to demand that she
she did things that led to people to believe that
she was prepared to be the president.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Right.

Speaker 5 (21:24):
People see right now, like you see her talking here
and there, and she's very smart. But since she's been
vice president, she has not been vocal. She has not
been She hasn't been. I mean, she hasn't been exactly.
She doesn't get she doesn't have the presence, right, she
doesn't have the presidence that that she once had. And
she doesn't and she's not speaking in a manner in

(21:47):
which she once spoke because now as the vice president,
you have to speak, you have to be a lot
more careful.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
So, right, Joe Biden saying, yeah, she used to talk
stuff about the president.

Speaker 5 (21:59):
She like, she was very vocal. So, you know, a
lot of people don't have faith in it. The system,
the structure that we have right now, people don't have
faith in And that's why I said we need something different.
We were supposed to go from state to state and
build up our network and build up what we wanted
to see in our next president, what we wanted exactly
what we wanted, right, and we were supposed to find

(22:19):
that candidate that you know, that embodied everything that we wanted,
you know, or for.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
It's not.

Speaker 5 (22:27):
But I'm saying that embodied the most we have because
we understood. Now we got a ship show, you know
what I'm saying. It's literally a ship show.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
And everybody is admitting that now, which before people wouldn't
say we have a ship show.

Speaker 6 (22:41):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
It's really.

Speaker 5 (22:44):
It's more than mess ups. It's actually horrible because when
you look at what you have to, like you said,
we have to choose between you know, genocide, you know,
and what's going on in guys that we have to
choose between that, and then we have to choose between
a fascist dictator who pretty much had said that he's
going to get in office and rewrite the constitution that

(23:05):
pretty so it benefits him that he's pretty much above
the law and put police above law. So this is
what this is what we're faced with. These are you
know what we have to sit here and say, you know,
I gotta choose.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
I gotta contend with these.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
But I know one thing, Donald Trump, if I have
anything to do with it, he can't be the president
of the United States, not not for me. From my position,
I'm making it very clear. You know, I've struggled, I
have struggled.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
I have cried.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
It hurts a lot that we're in this situation that
we're in, and I see that now the rest of
the world's coming to the place where we were because
we were saying that the same stuff about Biden, not
we us, not wanting Joe Biden to continue on and
become president.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
We were saying all of that, and people were like,
how can y'all do this?

Speaker 3 (23:51):
You know, you you're gonna get You're gonna mess around
and make Donald Trump the president. You know, y'all are
being traders basically to our community because you you're so
worried about a war that's happening over there, and now
we're watching because again, as Senator Nina Turner said, what
happens over there happens over here. So if you're taking
our money and you're invested in a war that it's

(24:14):
not even a war, an assault that is happening over there,
and then not doing what needs to be done for
the people over here.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
That is where the connection is made. And we have
been sounding me along.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
We are always ahead of our time because we were
always calling out the State of Israel. We were always
doing that and been punished greatly for talking about the
occupation that we know is happening there in Gaza because
we were there and in the West Bank and what's
happening to the Palestinian people. But we were punished greatly
for that, and now the rest of the world, people

(24:47):
you would never even imagine, are saying the same thing
because they can see it now that it's on mainstream media,
playing out right before our eyes and of course on
your cell phone. And it's the same thing with Joe
Biden before the war. But certainly since since October seventh,
we have been saying he is not the right person
to lead us through something like this, because yes, he

(25:09):
has an allegiance to Israel, he has an allegiance to
Jewish constituents that you know, need safety as well. And
we haven't argued that Jewish people need safety. We have
not argued that. What we've argued is that safety comes
from everybody being safe, not.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Just one group of people.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
And his commitment and his Zionism and all the things
that he said, we always knew that it was going
to lead us to this place, and now here we
are with age plus the support for genocide coming together,
and it is it is, it's destructive, It's dangerous, and

(25:48):
I just don't know what's gonna happen. But I do
know that I've made a very conscious decision within myself
that I cannot allow for my granddaughter's benefit, Joe, I mean,
excuse me, for my rand daughter's benefit. Trump cannot be
the president of the United States of America. Where we
go from there, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe

(26:09):
the convention will be broken and somehow a leader will emerge.
Of course, they still probably will support genocide, which is horrible.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
But even the Muslim community.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Is saying if Joe Biden steps aside, they ready to
get in line. That's literally what some Jewish I mean,
excuse me, that is literally what some Muslim organizations have
been putting out there.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
We're ready to get in line, but not behind Joe Biden.
I mean, it's a mess.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
All right, Look, well, we should get into our guests.
I'm excited about these two beautiful young ladies who are
joining us today. They're doing something really, really incredible.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Childhood you.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
All right, so new friends to me, friends of yours?

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yes, sometimes absolutely, I've been blown away by the experience
when you asked me to accompany you to a program
with these beautiful women and learning more about what is
happening with this program that they have.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
I wonder where in the world was it when I
was like cut in school.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
I needed somebody to come get me and bring me
to class and help me with so many of the challenges,
especially when I got pregnant. I mean, the story goes
on and on, and so I'm really really excited to
have here these two powerful, powerful black women, Tiffany Law
and Tijuana Butler bats And they have a program called

(27:37):
Learning and it's excuse me, it is a business called
Learning and Educational Solutions, Inc.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Which is l EES.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
And I think for the purpose of folks really understanding
what you all do, is better for you to talk
about it so that our audience can really understand what
Learning and Educational Solutions is is and what powerful work
you all do.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
In the community.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Well, Learning and Educational Solutions, Inc. Started off to solve
the dropout rates throughout New York City, and then we
extended it to solve the dropout rates across the world,
one student, one school, one community at a time. So
when we started doing it, originally we started off from

(28:23):
one program we had which was called our Roads program,
which was removing obstacles and achieving dreams role to graduation students
who were struggling to come to school and they were
about to graduate, but something was going on and the
schools just did not have the capacity to figure out
what was going on with them, so they would just

(28:45):
fail them and they won't graduate, and then you never
hear about the student. So when I tested the pilot,
it was just about me seeing what was hindering these students.
I got my own child together. It was my personal experience,
and I asked the Department of Education, what can you
do to help me? Like I need an educational crisis

(29:07):
management team? And they laughed and said there's no such thing.
Did you make that up? They was like, we don't
even have the capacity for that. So I thought, I said,
you know what will my credentials after I get my
child on point. I will definitely be an advocate for
other parents going through what I'm going through. So that's
what I did. A principal gave me an opportunity. She said,

(29:29):
I have some students they are not going to graduate.
I don't know what's going on with them. She said,
I'm going to give you these students, if you can
help them by any means necessary, let me know and
then we'll be on to something. And what I did
was I worked with each individual student and I made
a lot of discoveries. Some students wasn't coming to school
because they were homeless. Some students was pregnant and needed

(29:52):
a babysitter. Some students just didn't feel like coming to
school because they had some drama or something in the
school and they didn't feel like, you know, they were
getting the attention they needed somewhat in gang related activities.
The list goes on. So what I did was what
we call our roles, removing obstacles and achieving dreams. I

(30:12):
worked with each one of their families because I had
to connect the school with the family, and I worked
with them. I mean, I had parents who was like,
if you could give me a section eight listing with
apartments and then you could focus on my child, that
would be great. And that's what I did. I did
whatever I had to do to bring that student back
to school. Some students couldn't graduate from the school they

(30:34):
was in because they couldn't read, or they had other challenges.
Social and emotional factors played the role I had to
figure out what it was. And then I partnered with
transfer schools that had great programs, accelerated courses, and I
went with the family to the interviews, helped them get
into the school. And next thing, you know, every last

(30:54):
one of those students graduated. If they didn't graduate from
her school, they graduated from a school. And then that's
when we were like, oh, we got something big here,
this is what's needed. And then city council got wind
of it and they say, hey, wonder what you could
do with a team, and then that's when I started
to panic. And then here comes Tiffany. So it started

(31:17):
in twenty sixteen. I even did it before I had
the name. Maybe it was like towards the beginning of
twenty seventeen, and I said, L yes, L yes, I
think that sounds good. But yes, it started around that time.
And then after the year of doing good, because we
were bringing this particular school came from one point to

(31:39):
the next. Everybody wanted to know, like, how could you
be a school on watch list? And you just jumped
so fast, so it had to be explained. How So
once it was explained that, you know, the methods, that
was usual to make this happen. They was like, let's
see what you can do with a team, and then
after that it was about getting helped with findings. And

(32:00):
then that's why I always tell my story, because Tiffany
came on board simply to just help me with the
finance part, so when I have a team, I'll be
able to manage it. And then I said, Tiffany, I
want to pay you to do finance with me, and
she said, oh, I don't know if you could fod me,
but I can help you. I like what you got
going on here. And next thing you know, you know,
she loved it so much she came on board and

(32:23):
we just the sky was not the limit because this
footprints on the moon. She said, let's do two, three, four, five,
six schools. Now we're in over twenty five schools wearing
all the burrows, and we worked directly with superintendents and
the Chancellor's office, and now it's just time for us
to really expand to the point where everybody knows who's

(32:45):
behind all of what's going on.

Speaker 5 (32:49):
You have a background in finance, what made you want
to be a part of this education?

Speaker 6 (32:59):
For me, obviously, just a little black girl from the Bronx.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
I always felt like Aybridge.

Speaker 6 (33:06):
I've been in finance for a long time, and specifically
education operations on the university level since I was out
of college, and I always felt like I'm over here
managing two hundred million dollar budgets, right, but it's for
causes that I just didn't believe in. But I had
to feed my kids, right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna
do this job. I'm gonna take these benefits. So when

(33:26):
Tawana came to me with the idea, I just it
just it just filled my soul, Like I just was like,
where was this when my brothers needed it?

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Right?

Speaker 6 (33:34):
I mean, I'm one of five and I'm I'm the
only one that went to college and make it through,
but the other four didn't. So it's like we needed
some help. We needed this, My cousins needed this help.
So I don't know, it just filled me. Even though
she couldn't afford to pay me, we did it anyway.
I just I knew it was more than it just
it mattered to me more than money did. So I
was able to come in and kind of take Tauanta's ideas,

(33:55):
which were great, right, and turn this into a business. Honestly,
that's what That's what I was able to come in
here and do. I mean, and I think it takes
two people, like two different kinds of people. We are
very different to Wanta is like ideas through the moon,
and I'm like, how much that's gonna cost? You know,
how much is that gonna cost? How do we make
that happen? How do we make it profitable? Right? But
how do we serve our communities? So yeah, that's how

(34:16):
I started. We took that one program, she was calling
it one program. I think I've I've expanded that to
about seven to ten programs. That's not one program. She
was given that away for one. You know, that's one thing. Said, girl,
that's not one, this is ten things. This is how
we're going to do this. I was able to digitize
these things she was doing on paper, you know, flip

(34:37):
some time, and I said, we got to be able
to allow people to work from Zoom, allow people to
work from Georgia like wherever we can hire people from.
But we need to digitize this. We need to make
this computerized. So that's what I've been able to do,
is to help expand l e s and to honestly
make it profitable because we are doing great work, but

(34:57):
now we thankfully are being pig to do it as well.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Yes, yes, And I would just like to add also
creating a team. I would go do our dropout prevention
services by myself, and it was also about safety, so
I would literally go to these students' homes, sit down
with their parents, talk to them and figure out a
plan on how they can get back to a school
and what they needed. But then Tiffany was like, Okay, well,

(35:22):
we gotta be safe when we're doing this. We got
to get a team out there, two people. Let's do
this because we want to. We don't know how everybody's
house is. And I guess I was just so I'm like, listen, passionate.
Everybody's gonna do what I say to do because they
know I love them and I'm gonna make this happen.
But I had to make sure. I mean, it's times
I was running up the hill and hells from a

(35:44):
dog and she says, see, you can't be doing this.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
So that's I mean, a story is beautiful and I
want to hear more about like just that, like what
it felt like for you to have another black woman,
not there to take away, talk it down, tell you
what it can't work, but instead to invest in it
before you get to that. Though, would love to hear

(36:08):
about your own child because one of the things that
I find interesting, and I'm the mother of a twenty
five year old son, and my son obviously has his children,
it's really hard sometimes to get your own child together
while working with so many other people's children. So I
find it interesting that you said first you had to

(36:30):
focus on that and you were successful.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yes, So what happened was it was two things I
want to talk about. One with my child. It was
about me having social and emotional role factors that played
a role in my life. I had just I was
with her father from pretty much my teenage years to adulthood,
and the transition was a lot for her, and with

(36:55):
us bickering back and forth, everybody's thinking about themselves and
not really what's happening with her. So it became a
shock when she wasn't doing well in school, and I
felt so horrible about I felt like I neglected, you know,
her education, because it was like the focus was us
tuggle warning her, and I felt like there was had
to be something in some way that I can get

(37:16):
her back on track. And then I just assumed that
there was schools that would be able to just say,
you know what, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm
going to monitor her, handhold her through these classes, and
then men she does have a little panic attack or
a breakdown, we'll pull her out and see what's going
on and see what we can do. And the reason

(37:36):
why I thought that is because let's go back to
when I was younger. I messed up in school and
my mom put me in a transfer school. And I
sat in that transfer school with my arms crossed and
I said, I'm only coming to school because you're making
me and my mother was like, well, it's okay. You
still got to come to school. And the people did
not judge me so much that they allowed me into

(37:58):
their school and I was an honor roll and it
changed my life. So I was like, I got a chance.
Do they still have these chances, because now fast forward
years later, I'm going through this with my own child.
So I just assumed the help that they sort of
gave my mom with me, and it changed my life.
I was the child who said I wasn't going back
to school. Not only did I graduate, but I went

(38:20):
to college. And then I told my mom and I'm
getting my master's and I did. And she was like,
the girl who don't want to go to school is
going to get her bachelor's and masters And I did
it all. So I said, maybe, you know, but the
times have changed and it just wasn't like that, Just
like it wasn't like people back in the days, remember
when when the they'll come with the car and make

(38:40):
you go to school and pick you up, chew and see.
So I was just taking it back and they was like,
we don't even do any of that. So I was like,
what like so if.

Speaker 6 (38:49):
She yeah, we did, I do?

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (38:55):
Yeah wow with the age ten, eighteen and twenty three.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Oh okay, so you have big yeahs too, so you
know all about what needs to be done. So talk
about that as women, like how this came together and
you know, and just what for you has been you know,
sort of like the most heartwarming part of having this
other black woman to help you expand and I guess

(39:20):
the same for you.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
Having Tiffany come in and give in and work with me.
I feel it was a blessing. I gave my husband
a hard time because I felt like I had someone
that I was going to work with, and you know,
they it just didn't work the way that I wanted
it to. And I was so invested and I needed
someone that can believe in this, like I did, you

(39:44):
know what I mean. So when my husband introduced me
to Tiffany and said, no, listen, she's about her business
and she's very strategic. She's gonna be able to break
this all down for you. She's gonna be able to
help you, I was like, all right, you know, But
when she moved forward and started doing it and then
telling me that you selling this program for this when
you should have seven, and started you know, getting into

(40:07):
the logistics of things and the details, it was. It
was a great fit. It was a great fit. It worked,
and we were able to expand so much so that
we went on to a whole nother level. We became
part of the four percent minorities. I think it's probably
under four percent now that actually has an m TAC,

(40:27):
which is which is what's it? A multiple task award
contract contracts? Yeah, for New York City right now.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
If you don't have that, you can only get one
contract at a time.

Speaker 6 (40:37):
You can get more than one contract at a time,
but the cap you at twenty five K per school, right,
per program, And that's what we had for five years straight. Yeah,
just hustling, you know, trying to make that happen in
multiple schools. But now once you have that MTACH, you
can charge whatever you want. A school can have all
ten of your programs. There's no ceiling anymore.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
And what exactly all the programs that you guys offer
to the school.

Speaker 6 (41:02):
So we have the role to graduation that Tawana talked about.
We also have the role to alternative, which is like,
if this program isn't working for you, right, let us
find an alternative for you. So it's not really like
we know, we have so many different things. We do
whatever is necessary. You might need an online school right
in New York City. I don't know if you guys
know that, but post pandemic, they banned the online schools.

(41:23):
So we had to be strategic, right. I do a
lot of reading all at night. I do a lot
of reading of the Chancellor's regulations, the Mayor's initiatives, and
I find loopholes in almost anything. So I found several
loopholes to make these things work. So we have kids
that are in the online schools now, even though we
don't have much support from the districts to do this.

(41:44):
But we just had our first graduate.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
I think I.

Speaker 6 (41:46):
Discovered this back in November. We had in March. I
think I started to enroll. I think I enrolled about
sixty kids into the online school. It's very expensive. Also,
this isn't free, y'all. We took the money out of
our parkt to do this. But I wanted to pilot it.
I wanted to see what we could do. And we
just had our first graduate June twenty eighth. This boy
hadn't been in school for two years.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Wow, okay, he finished Generally black and brown, these are.

Speaker 6 (42:10):
Black and brown children, these are our children. And in
sixty days he got a high school diploma.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
Yes, he did a high school diploma.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (42:18):
Just so that's some of what we do.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Again.

Speaker 6 (42:20):
We transfer to transfer schools depending on what you like.
We might have kids who want to dance, who want
a filmmate. We connect you with schools that are going
to give you what you need, not just a school
just to go to, just because we really want to
see these kids be sustainable citizens, right, do whatever it
is that you want to do. We encourage them.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
We have our attendance program. We have schools that have
very low attendance, so they hire an LS team to
bring their students back to school because they can do well,
they just need to come into the school. So a
lot of times we go to the homes and discover
they move, they don't even live here anymore. So we
do a lot of coal heart cleaning up for the

(42:58):
schools to where if the schools, if the student is
no longer there, they can come off the court, you
know what I mean. They just need an address. So
we do all of that. They call us investigators. We
have our safe and secure hallways to where we have
mentoring on a goal. The mentoring on a Goal program
is a major hit because it all started with to

(43:18):
be in supportive of school safety. Just you guys haven't noticed.
Didn't know this about me, but I used to be
school safety for years. I transferred to become a cop
and then I was like, this is not for me.
I took the teacher's test and became a teacher. So
I had many different careers, yes that led me into this.
So I went back into school safety mode. And I

(43:40):
discovered that school safety, they don't have them doing the
things they used to have us doing. So with the mentoring,
I noticed that the students wanted someone that looks like them,
the auntie, the uncle that can relate to them, and
we created that and we were able to make sure
that the mentoring on a goal was getting to know
the students in transition to class, making sure that Johnny

(44:03):
who's always late, you're not late because I'm walking you.
This is how we're doing it, and it's so great
to the point where they actually tell the principles will say, oh,
the teacher's coming to you because you know today about
what happened.

Speaker 6 (44:17):
What I love the most is that these are just
like they're big brothers and sisters. We're literally taking people
out of the community and bringing them in like we
have open houses in the community. We have people that say, oh,
I haven't worked before, Oh I don't know if I
have the tools. It's like, we give you the tools
you do if you have a passion, if you want
to help kids, we'll help.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
You get to that next figure it out.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (44:37):
I mean, of course, there's some hindrances with New York
City that we tend to phase because again, if you
have ever been convicted of a crime, you can't work
in New York City.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
I ever been convicted.

Speaker 6 (44:47):
I've ever been convicted, even if you had a misdemeanor,
So we have to then deal with that. So it's
an investigative side on the other hand, where I have
to write these letters and get these people clear, which
takes a really long time. It's like it feels like,
I mean, we do our best, but there's several like
hindrances I think within the system that could be fixed.

Speaker 5 (45:07):
I'm just so proud of Tiffany, like know, since she
was like in elementary school like four and five years old,
we went to the same like knowing has growing up
and just seeing her growing to this this is just who.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Do Yeah, it's amazing. I Mean, the entire program to
me is precisely what we need. And one of the
reasons why we wanted to have you all on the
show so quickly after visiting the graduation ceremony is that
around the country, we're in a time where everybody is
trying to figure out what do we do while we're

(45:42):
under attack?

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Right, Like we as black people, as black.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
And brown and vulnerable communities, even white communities are suffering
and are at the cross section of real attacks against
our education, attacks against our health, everything, our economics, everything,
and models that people can use in their particular cities

(46:09):
that will help to keep afloat. And this has happened
throughout history, if we you know, if you think back
through history, there've always been times when there was a
recession and people had to figure out how to feed themselves,
or how to travel and spend less money to get
to work, or you've always had to have models pop
up that would give folks hope that we can do it.

(46:32):
And I think l Ees is one of those models.
You know, I really truly think that. And so so
talk about what does it take on the financial side
to keep a program like this going.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
It feels like it's expensive.

Speaker 6 (46:46):
It's very expensive, extremely expensive. It's very expensive because we
don't have just one person right on the ground for
one program. Like we said, we have the team that's out.
They have to be out in a duo. That was
something that we had to implement two people time. We
also have to have attendance people who are like analysts
they say, behind a computer, but they're calling constantly excuse me.

(47:09):
We were literally searching for these kids. We find kids
in Texas, we find kids in yeahmen, we find kids
in Africa.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Here supposed to be here, and they went wherever.

Speaker 6 (47:18):
So that's also helping to decrease that drop off.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
What was some of the worst stories that you found, like,
you know, you know, give me a story of something
that you all had to work through that was really
really challenging.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
So a lot of the families during the pandemic did
not know how to work the Google classrooms, so we
had to put our team in place to make sure
that they went to some of the houses. Could you
imagine they had to suit up and do all types
of zooms to help families. We discovered a lot of
kids were raised by their grandparents, so the grandparents was
like on the Tyler Prairie, I don't know about that

(47:49):
algio what you're talking about. So we had to figure
it out to help them. And I remember this one
specific story that there was a student who was he
was pretty much an a student, and the school called
us and said he was not coming to school. They
don't know what was going on, and we was like,
we gotta find him. So I remember I didn't have

(48:10):
a partner to go with me in the field at
that time, and Tiffany was busy doing a lot of
the other stuff with the staff behind the scenes. So
I made my husband go with me and we put
on our out offense. He helped me. We geared up
and he said, put your mask on. We put our
mask on. We put everything we needed to and we
went to the house and we asked him what happened,

(48:32):
and he said, my mother lost her jobs during the
pandemic and I have to help her and I have
to help her some way. And then I was like, okay,
where's your mom. The mom came down, she was crying,
and I said, mom, he only has a few more
months to go. I said, what is it we need
to do to help? Because he has a promising career
and at this particular time, he was up for internship

(48:54):
with BMW and Mercedes Bens because he's a mechanic. He
grew up being a mechanic and fixing cards with his grandfather.
So the mom was like, I don't know, I'm just
you know, I don't want him to quit school. He's
just depressed. Here with me. So I said the first
things first, that you have all your basic necessities, and
she says she didn't have really a lot. So my
husband and I we took a list what do you need?

(49:16):
We went and we got the list of stuff and
we went and bought everything for her. And then Tiffany
was like, yeah, we could swing a couple of dollars too.
Let's give them something. Try to hold them over because
he's graduating. And that's what we did. We came back
and they cried and they hugged us, and I said, listen,
I need you to go and log on. He logged
on to school and he graduated. I mean, he was

(49:38):
a successful graduate. And I think that was a great
story because we had to get up no matter what.
We didn't even care. Everybody was scared in the house,
like we was like, no, we gotta go there.

Speaker 5 (49:49):
I love this because it intercepts the school of prison pipeline, right.
This completely gives our kids an opportunity because I remember
when I went to school in king I remember that
there was a day that all the kids that didn't
go to school, they just kicked you out the school,
Like that's how it is. Literally, it was one day

(50:09):
like you be going and we be having fun. And
the next thing you know, they just had made a
bigger announcement and told you to come to the office
and said you're no longer in this school, no more,
and they sent you to one of those schools that
nobody went to. Like it was like the fifty or
sixty of my friends just completely got kicked out of
the school. So when you look at programs like this
and you see that these opportunities, it could have saved

(50:31):
a lot of a lot of them.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Not here, a lot of them.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
In prison, you know what I'm saying, because they just
threw them out in the street and there was nobody
there that really kid enough. So when I look at
your program, it's really going to make real change.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
And the kids that come from prison, oh, we get
them soon as they And when we find out that
there's a student that may have gotten locked up, we
tell the school please keep us posted, and then we
reach out to the family let us know, especially if
it's a student that we know. Have a couple of months,
we keep them on our list and then we revisited
again and as soon as they get out, we're right

(51:05):
there to get them back acclimated with a school. And
what's going on. Now the school that they were in
may not work for them, but we find a school
and sometimes you have kids, We have kids we worked with.
We had to meet them where they were, meaning at
their house, like they were not trying to come out
for whatever reason or something that happened. So we had
to send a tutor to the home and we was like,

(51:26):
help us get this work now, Tiffany. Find loopholes and
that's the problem when we find those loopholes all the time.
They Department of Education seems to forget that they have
that loophole. Butt like, where did you find this? Who
said like we have to use this? And we're like
really pressing them and pressing them, like you said this,
you created this. We just went to a press release recently.

(51:49):
Were one of the loopholes we found that they said
they were rescinding and not using which is the online school.
They just announced that they're going to do it. So
we were very confused because they do.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Listen, people watch you eat.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
You don't think that they do, but they watch you
and they watch your work and then they start saying
they want to implement things that you're doing. Yes, do
you all have a relationship at all with the Chancellor directly, or.

Speaker 6 (52:15):
I think it's indirectly. We work with Project Pivot, which
is the Chancellor's initiative, so we work with his team,
which are some great ten black men who are like
on the ground with us every day. So it's an
indirect relationship. But I think because we do have a
black mayor and a black chancellor, I think they need
to know about this. They need to definitely invest in
this because what I find is the most horrible thing

(52:37):
is that these programs that this program is great, right,
but there's not a lot of programs that you can
give for these teenage students. It's kind of like they
want to help them until they get to be about
thirteen is and then when you get to high school,
there's nothing. There are no programs for them. Why not
these are tomorrow's leaders. Why are we not investing in them?
Why are we just they're just like letting them drop out.

(52:58):
I mean to be honest, there's a lot of principles
that will give us a list and they will be like, oh, here,
work with these five. That's another thing that started when
I got here. They were like these seven of these
five and town is like, yes, great, and I had
to dissect that and say, let me see your data.
So I require the data.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Now.

Speaker 6 (53:13):
I want to see how many kids on this that
are enrolled in this school are not coming to school,
and I want to know what.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
You give me your.

Speaker 6 (53:19):
Seven because what happened to the other and I always
having the kids, they're like, oh, he doesn't come. Oh
he's just all these excuses, and I'm like, no, in
order to work with us, you have to give me
all fourteen of them.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
That's what that's the one I want.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
I mean, that's how exactly when we do our organizing
work in communities around the nation, we always are like, okay,
where they you said they shooting and killing over there?
That take us over there and drop us off and
we'll see. We're gonna we're gonna work with our own people.
And we have to find the people who because if
there is violence or you know, some sign of like

(53:57):
a real uh, what's the word I'm looking and for,
if there's violence, or if the community seems like it's
really really like a stress depressed neighborhood, we know there's
a lot of promise there because that means that people
are hurting. So we don't look at violence as it's
just criminals. We look at violence as somebody's in pain

(54:17):
and therefore they need the resources we actually.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Should be focusing on that.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
It's funny that so many elected officials and otherwise. Is
one of the kind of the challenges that I had
with Bernie Sander's my son that was his candidate. It
wasn't it wasn't mine. Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren was my candidate.
But one of the issues that I had with Bernie
was this idea that if we start at the bottom,

(54:43):
like if you know, we just like kind of like
what do they say, all rods and tides raises, all
ships or something like that. So that's cool, that sounds great,
but he would never identify the who was at the
bottom by saying black folks, because we are the one
that no matter how you you could take the data,

(55:03):
flip it upside down, shake it out iron it is
always going to come back that our communities are the
ones that are suffering the most in every single category.
And so I do believe that that strategy can work.
But then that means that you have to be able
to name our people, you know.

Speaker 6 (55:20):
You have to be able to be one of our
people well too.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
That's that too.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
And I only bring that up because, you know, I
feel like, then I need to talk to Poky Pooky Pooky,
not just Pooky because Pooky.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Might just be a nickname for Robert, who has.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
A good job, who's doing I'm talking about Pooky Pooky's
Pooky Pooky right. You might not even have a house.
He's living from the house. That's where we have to go.
And that's what my song does every day is work
with the ones that I see them, and I'm like,
who this this is tough? G until Freedom run programs
in Newark, and I was watching the kids the other

(56:00):
day and then listening to what the instructors were saying,
and they were like they started looking for him, those kids,
those same kids that would have seen him coming before
or probably did like I'm not doing this, so you
know whatever. But then because he was consistent, they were like,
well where.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Is he at?

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Like how young boys?

Speaker 5 (56:21):
You know, they they are able to see you, right,
because I remember being a young boy, and that's why
I mentor from that position. I don't mentor from where
I am. My mentor from where I was, and what
would it have taken for me to identify with somebody,
or trust somebody, or change the direction that I was
going to for somebody. Right, it would have to be consistency,

(56:42):
it would have to be that you earn respect, it
would have to be honesty, it would have to be
that I sense all of those things in you. Right,
So that's how I try to mentor. And I think
this is what this program is like. When you when
I listen to you, it's not you didn't say we
try to figure out how to make some money. No,
you you've seen in this necessity out of something that
you actually were dealing with, and said, people really need

(57:05):
these things, right, and then y'all connected those dots and said, well,
while we're doing this, we still have to survive, and
we got to make sure and while we survive, and
we got to be able to provide for the people
that were helping because a lot of these things are financial.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
I say all the time, poverty is violence.

Speaker 5 (57:19):
And when we look at we're dealing with levels of
violence on so many different levels. It's not just physical violence,
it's emotional is you know, it's help all of these things.
So when you when you start tearing back the layers
and you talking to these parents, you realize, like, damn,
it's deeper than just a kid don't want to go
to school. Like it's way deeper because I remember when
I wasn't going I remember the things that was going

(57:40):
on in my house. I was an age, I was
a top student, and then the things that was going
on in my house stopped me from going to school.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
You know, I had to focus on you all. I
gotta survive, Like it's just me and my sister. What
do I gotta do? How? You know, so it takes
you out of it.

Speaker 5 (57:54):
And if I'd had somebody that could come and gave
me resources and help my mother go through what she
had to go through, like I's no telling where I
would have been. I wanted to be the president. I
wanted to be one of the best lawyers, Like I
went to is. I was one of the best mock
attorneys in my school, like when they when we had
those attorneys and we had those mock trials, yea King,

(58:15):
and man, I was what, Yeah, she went to King.
So what I'm saying, like I really was one of
the best of those. Then I went to John Jay
and I was doing mock trials and writing up closing arguments.
My teachers was like, Yo, it's nobody better than you
with this. But life was calling the things that was
going on in my household and me trying to survive.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
I was like, I can't even get to school no more.

Speaker 4 (58:35):
And that's what we go through with the students and
their families. A lot of times they will say things like,
you don't know what I'm going through. So because I
always like to say every single part of every single
program we have of l S, I've actually done it myself.
So when I love when they tell me that because
I know person, I always tell them I have personal experience.
When they go, oh, you don't know it's hard to

(58:57):
have a child. That's this, I'm like, what I tell
them my story or the children. The children always say
to me, you don't know how it feels when you
go to a new school. I tell them my story.
And when I tell them my story about what happened
when I went to that new high school, they said,
and now you work for L E s Smiss, I say,
now I own L E S. They say, sign me

(59:17):
up a man. So it's always a story that I'm
telling them and they're like, wow, oh this happened because
they want you. They want to know that you know,
you're not just talking.

Speaker 6 (59:28):
We make sure that we hire genuine people who want
to be a part of this cause. I mean, you
can have all the degrees in the world, and we're like,
we've turned away so many people and I'm like, they
just don't fit, or is like they don't fit and.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
We want so you too have to agree.

Speaker 6 (59:43):
We agree on people, we do because we look for
different things and we just want to make sure that
people are out here who understand the mission and who
are here not just to get pad because we understand
everybody has to be paid, but really want to help
these kids.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Do y'all hire family members?

Speaker 4 (59:58):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (59:58):
Yes, did it work? It does?

Speaker 6 (01:00:00):
Sometimes it doesn't. It's harder obviously with your family members
because I can't separate the fact that, you know, to
be honest, our husbands work for the company.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Well, that's right, they're invested.

Speaker 6 (01:00:10):
They invested, but they get on our nurves too, Okay, right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Different, it's a different, but you have to feeling.

Speaker 6 (01:00:16):
You got to go lay down with them to night
and you're like, I just had to tell you to
go do this, and I know you didn't like it,
but you know, let's separate it, so it gets hard.
My sister is one of the people who's been with
us since day one, Right, She's been a loyal employee.
I don't do day to day with her on purpose,
so we also make sure that we're not directly involved
with our family to Wanta takes on her more. But

(01:00:37):
she's been amazing, right, And I think just for us,
our mother came from public service and worked for Social
Security and HRRA her whole life.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):
My mother always she worked at a local community center.

Speaker 4 (01:00:48):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:00:48):
My mother was everybody's mom. She just are growing up.
So I think it's just natural for us to feel
like this is where we belong.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
And I forgot to mention. I got to shout out
my Queens. I'm from jam I'm from Okay. So I
was raised in South Jamaica, Queens by way of Queensbridge Projects. Okay, Okay,
So you know out there, yes there?

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
So what do you need? How can people help and
where can they find you?

Speaker 6 (01:01:12):
I think we need awareness, We need to We just
want people to know what l E S is. We
need people like you guys who allow us on your platforms.
I know, mice talk to me about just like joining
we need ambassador, our ambassadors in every borough. Like, so, Mike,
you helped my ambassador for the Bronx I got. Cameron
reached out to me the other day. He wants to
be the ambassador for Harlem.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:01:34):
He's excited about doing a back to school event with
us immediately, like he wants to do it this summer.
I have Jada Kiss reached out. He wants to do
you because he's like, I know y'all do New York City,
but I'm like, we do wherever. You know, we got
people reaching out in Philly. My friend, one of my
best friends, lives in Philly, so she's she has a
hair salon, so she has a lot of teachers and

(01:01:55):
principals who have been reaching out. So we definitely want
to make it there. But I think our goal right
now is to con New York. We want to get
ambassadors for all of the burroughs. We want to get
the Chancellor's ear, the Mayor's ear. Yeah, we want to.
We're working on RFPs this summer. You guys know what
those are.

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
Yeah, and we need to really get the Mayor's air,
meaning that I've been going to a lot of them.
We're MWBE right. So I've been going to the MWBE
events they have and I see them all. I mean
it's times where the chancellor have seen me and he's
telling the mayor come over here. I want to hear.
I want you to hear what they have going. But
then they get so busy after they hear it, and

(01:02:32):
then they give you all these numbers and say let's
set up meetings, and we.

Speaker 6 (01:02:36):
Know that, and they send other people.

Speaker 4 (01:02:38):
And then they send other people and then it's like,
but they don't realize that the numbers that they're getting
is because of people like us. We find hundreds of
students who have dropped out of school and bring them
back in. They're coming, They're not just going back. We're
getting that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:57):
Specifically me and we can have a little bit of
connection here and there that we might be able to
do something. So I really want what y'all do to
be implemented in every school Like this is really important,
you know, and I just want to commend y'all for
the work that you do. You know, it's amazing, and
it started out of necessity. It started out of you

(01:03:18):
seeing what was missing, and that's what I tell these
kids all the time, if you want to do something
to find out what's missing, when you see that something
that's missing, fill that void, you know. And this is
a void that definitely needs to be filled, especially in
our community. So I want to commend y'all and thank
y'all for joining us. Tell them where to find y'all.

Speaker 4 (01:03:34):
Email us at NFO at l E sink dot org,
or you can go to ww dot l E sinc
dot org.

Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
I'm at just Tiffany twenty five, and you are and
I am.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
I am Coco bats, but I would rather them go
to Hey, let me follow that. Please follow Learning Underscore,
Educational Underscore Solution and Twitter, which is learning Edu.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Thank y'all so.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
Much for having whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
We could do. I like Elliot, I love Elliott.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
I like young ladies. I'm so grateful to you for
introducing me to them. I feel I always feel so
excited when I know I could do something to help
somebody really.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Like it's it's you know.

Speaker 5 (01:04:21):
As soon as I heard the program and then I
knew I know, Like I said, I know Tiffany since
she was a baby, like literally and just knowing how
she's always been focused, been driven, she was the girl
that was never into none of the bull stuff, always
smart and all of that. And just when I heard
her name involved and we got to pay attention to this,

(01:04:43):
you know, and her husband is my friend, shout out
to j T. So these is like brothers and sisters
to me. So just and then seeing that what they're doing,
it's just amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Man. We need this. We definitely need this kind of program.

Speaker 5 (01:04:56):
This. This is what I've been talking about when we're
talking about community doing things for the community and community
like policing the community, taking care of the community, entrepreneurship,
educating the community.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
That's what it is.

Speaker 5 (01:05:08):
Is they've created an ecosystem that you each level of education,
they are able to do something for, you know, when
it's public safety, you know, getting.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
The kids back.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
I don't use the word policing in our community.

Speaker 5 (01:05:24):
Most publicly, Okay, I'll change the word, you know, public
safety in our community.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
I think that, you know, the more that we help
them to get the awareness out there, I think that
they can go that other people in other states can
really look at their model and people are already doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
It was done.

Speaker 5 (01:05:42):
We just taken back, they took or this is why
I had this conversation shout out to may Adams that
we had because I know that it was there. Like
me and her were talking about, there was a program
in our community called the Mosaic in which they had
every level. They had entertainment, they had mentorship, they had sports,
they had education, they had after school on programs where

(01:06:03):
the kids, there were daycare centers, that everything that the
community needed was in there, and they hired everybody from
the community to work in this. So it was a
beautiful thing. And then they just cut the funding and
now it's not even it's a shell of what it
want was.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Well, I'm not even thinking so much about the programs.
I think the programs are important, and you have programs
all around the country, specifically their road removing obstacles achieving dreams.
That is what I'm talking about. The idea that they
literally go find a kid. They say they found kids
in Yemen in Africa, and you know, probably in the

(01:06:41):
school building, right and then you find out that these
kids have a variety of problems or issues they're dealing
with their family members, and now here they are working
to try to solve problems so that the young person
can get back in school. We know of a few
programs like that. I know certainly Erika Ford at Life Camp.

(01:07:01):
That's something that I that they definitely they figured out
through years and years of research that you can't even
help the child until you help the mother. You can't
help the mother and not the father. You can't help
the mother and father, and the grandmother is living there
and doesn't have the medical needs that they may have,
or other children in the home, so incarceration can become

(01:07:24):
an issue. So there's so many barriers, and I think
what they're doing is something that if you are a
person who's in you know, I don't know Alabama right now,
and you're like, wow, the dropout rate is so high,
because you know the stats are in New York that
since the pandemic, there's a real struggle to get young
black boys to go back to school. And so if

(01:07:45):
you're in Alabama, you're in North Carolina, you're in Wisconsin,
you're in Michigan, you're wherever, and you realize that that's
an issue, then perhaps looking at l Ees and the
model and then using your own spice, because every local
community has its own issue someplace. New York it's buildings,
so we have a different strategy. Some places his houses,

(01:08:07):
some places trailer parks. I mean, everywhere has something different.
I think Lis and what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Is brilliant, brilliant man, brilliant for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:08:15):
I appreciate him, love him. That brings me to my
I don't get it. We're talking about children and we're
talking about parents. Lebron James, who is arguably too many
the goat greatest of all time basketball. Not really my goal,
but he's he's up there, he's in the top five
to me. His son, Ronnie James, you know, just got

(01:08:40):
drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, and there is this
big uproard. Oh you know, he's he doesn't deserve it.
It's people that deserve that spot. They just got him
there because it's Lebron's son and this and that, and
I say, that's right, right, that's and that's.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
What they should like.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
You don't think he deserves.

Speaker 5 (01:08:58):
It, No, I think he deserves it. But I think
that he's Lebron's son, and that's why he got on
the team because Lebron said, I want my son to
play with.

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Me and Lebron if if he was good.

Speaker 5 (01:09:08):
No, he is good, you know what I'm saying. He's
not no better than anybody, no worse than at fifty
threet went. He went at fifty five, the fifty fifth pick,
Like that's like barely making the team. But the fact
is that people, yeah, that's what And the thing was
he was a Mcdonaldhall American. He was he like he
was at the toppest level, you know, in basketball. And

(01:09:30):
then he got an injury in which you know, he
had a heart injury in which you know, Lebron didn't
even know if his son was going to survive, let
alone play basketball. And to ignore what he did to
rehab hisself, to work himself back in the position to
be able to play on the NBA team, to ignore that,
just that in itself, like forget everything else, the fact

(01:09:52):
that you were on to the point where you thought
you would probably never played basketball again, and you defied that.
You work hard, you practice, you exercise, you did everything necessary.
Then you went to those combines and you impressed those
people and people seeing you you played hard, you did
all those things. You know, what else should a father do?

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):
If I tell my son all the time, I just
if you want me to help you just show me
the initiative, because if you show me that you wanted
like that, And I heard Lebron say, Lebron James said,
he asked his son, what do you want this?

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
What do you want with this?

Speaker 6 (01:10:29):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
What do you want to do? An m MEA He said,
I wanted to play in the pros. That's what I want.

Speaker 5 (01:10:35):
And he said, he said that and then he showed
me that. So as a father, that's what you're supposed
to do for your kids when they put the work in.
You supposed to be able to if you are in
a position to make things easier after they put the
work in and put them the doors to where.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
When they get in there, and that was up to you.
I can get you in the door. You know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (01:10:53):
You showed me that you're willing to do it, and
I'm willing to put my name, my everything on the
line because you worked hard enough. That's what we're supposed
to do as parents. You know, I heard Stephen Stephen Jackson,
Stephen jacks he said, black privilege. Black privilege.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
I love it. You know.

Speaker 5 (01:11:07):
We put yourself in a position because that's what's been
happening in these leagues for years, the white people, I
mean just everywhere everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Peoples department, the elected officials passing down a seat to
their child. Corporate leaders, they you know, their their kid
or their nephew or someone becomes the new CEO once
they get, you know, to a certain point. And so
I think that I personally don't think it's that it's
not that I don't think it's that big of a

(01:11:36):
because you and like some of y'all on social media
that then got upset about them, are the only people
that's talking about it around me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
Around me, they saying.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
I mean around you.

Speaker 5 (01:11:47):
But I'm saying, if you go through the sports world,
they got people in the lists on you know, on
ESPN and all the sports world. You got people they
can't know, they ain't gonna get him nowhere. And I
shout out to the bron shot out to Bronnie James,
and you know, and I hope this right here gives
us to understand that what we should be doing right,
We should be we should be creating generations, setting up

(01:12:10):
our own foundations. Give everybody else a chance. But I'm
I'm going I'm not going to act like if my
son or my family member is qualified to do a job,
just as qualified as somebody else that I'm not gonna
give them that opportunity. And that's how we create generational wealth.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
If we don't own nothing well but talented.

Speaker 5 (01:12:29):
They do need to be talented, because the thing is,
you can only get him somewhere talent. The rest of
that got to take him somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:12:35):
I can get you to the interview, I can get
you to try out, but your skill is gonna get
you in the game. If Ronnie James don't perform, you know,
they say, they talk about it now, they talking about
what's his name?

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
Giannis Gianni's brother is on the team.

Speaker 5 (01:12:50):
He don't play at all, but he get paid a
check and for five or six years, however long he
been on that team, his brother got a check because
he made sure that his brother got a check in
order for me to sign.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
You gonna sign my brother.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Well, I'm not against making sure your family members and
other people, friends or whomever, or just someone you met,
that they are taken care of.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
But I do think that the person should.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
Be qualified for the job, and or at least on
a trajectory to become qualified. Because I do believe I
don't think that people should be surpassed that have skills
so that you can make a space for your lazy
nephew or oh yeah, madic daughter. That I don't. I

(01:13:38):
don't agree with that. They need to have a benefit. So,
like you said, even if he's not playing, perhaps there's
something that he's doing behind the scenes. I don't know
what they I mean, I'm assuming that what has people that, Yeah,
he hugs.

Speaker 5 (01:13:51):
His brother up, he gets on. He has this energy
that comes up whenever he's in a huddle.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
You see him.

Speaker 5 (01:13:56):
He's more energetic, and that provides something for the team.
People need that. They want that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
So Lebron, you have that on all teams, like people
that don't play.

Speaker 5 (01:14:05):
Yeah, there's certain people on the team that you don't like.
They rally around inside the locker rooms. They the voice
in the locker rooms. He might be the best practice player.
You know he out there filing hard. You know he
gonna bring everything. So every team has someone that other
people might not think it's good enough or but they
provide something for the team.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
But I've been on teams before where children or family
member or associates have been problematic, you know, messy and problematic,
and then you and then you know if they're there
because it's a part of like your contract or it's
a part of the relationship that you have with the boss,

(01:14:49):
that's problematic. And I never wanted that. In fact, I'm against,
you know, as we just finished talking to these two
sisters about hiring family members, I have been against.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Having people who work for me, I mean people who are.

Speaker 3 (01:15:06):
In my family work for me, and or suggesting them
for other jobs. It's not so much against, but very reluctant,
because everybody that walks in the door with my name
on them, I want my name to be held just
the same way that I try to perform in jobs.
And I'm not saying that I've always done the great jobs.
There's been some places I'm like, wow, I remember that

(01:15:28):
I was going through man problems, or my kid didn't
really have the right childcare, or babyfather died or this happened,
or I was just outside, and I know I didn't
really really really focus on that opportunity the way that
I should have.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
We all have to be able to admit that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
But I also know that whoever helps me get it,
I become an extension of them. So I think we
should not be asking people to hook us up.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Yeah, I don't want the one to hook up.

Speaker 5 (01:15:56):
If you come to me and you got the you know,
you have the right requirements, if you got the resume
and it shows that you can do something, and I'm
able to utilize a resource that I have or know
somebody that can put you in a position that you
can you can apply the skill set that you have,
you know, to the fullest of your ability, and I
know that you're going to maximize on that situation, then

(01:16:18):
by all means, that's that's what we have related.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
They say all the time, it's not what you know,
it's who you know. You know, that's a fact. That's
a fact.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
That's the one.

Speaker 5 (01:16:28):
Nobody else gonna help us. Man, And what that said
brings us to the end of another beautiful episode. Shout
out to Twyna and Tiffany from l E S. The
work they're doing is amazing. Make sure you follow them, Mayor.
We need to make sure that this is everywhere. We
got to make sure we get these people in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
This is what it is. This is what I was
talking about right here.

Speaker 5 (01:16:48):
Make sure that you hit us up d m us
give us the information at TMO underscore show, hit us up,
d m us. Let us know what you like, what
you don't like. Give us some people you want us
to interview, give us some shows, let us know some
topics we want to hear from you. We appreciate you
for continuing to make us the number one show in
the world, the best show in the world. Tm I

(01:17:11):
were doing our thing tmb tm I And.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
With that said, I'm not gonna always be right. Tamika D.

Speaker 5 (01:17:17):
Malory's not gonna always be wrong, but we will both
always and I mean always, be a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
So we check out the video version of tm.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
I every single Wednesday on Iwoman dot TV.

Speaker 3 (01:17:38):
That's how we

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Mysonne

Tamika Mallory

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