The Breakfast Club sit down with comedian and actor Tommy Davidson. He opens up about his efforts to reduce the homicide rate among Black boys. He also delves into his natural comedic abilities. Listen for more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Breakfast Club yeps, the world's most dangerous morning show, The
Breakfast Club. Charlamagne to God, Lauren Lero says, guest hosting,
because you know, Jess Hilarious is on maternity leave. Envy
is on his way back from fifty Cents Humor and
Harmony weekend. But we got somebody here who knows the
thing or two about humor. Mister Tommy Davidson, how are.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You, sir? Thank you, Absolutely good to see you.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Man, Hey man, haven't been here since the I guess,
I guess there was a writer strike on your show.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yep. Yeah years what was the writer's great damn two
three years? Two years ago, Lauren, the writer scratch about right, yeah,
just about yeah, right after the pandemic. Yeah, I'm glad
to be back. It's like we just went through that and.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You gotta You're doing a one man comedy show at
Sony Hall. Oh yeah, Tuesday, August thirteenth. Oh yeah, tomorrow,
back New York. Back is is the camera?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah? Back New York? In New York, they say, Derek Everic,
Derek and Eric in dc A.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Derek and Eric tonight O thought tomorrow so to night,
you'll be there. Yeah, tonight, I'm gonna be there. New York,
watch out.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm back. I'm back. You still get nervous when you
got to go on stage and tell jokes? Nah, okay, no,
it's a mortgage attached now. Yeah. So yeah tuitions. So
so does the feel more like a job? Was it
still something that you love to do?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And it's still man, it's it's it's I'm gonna stand
up first official, it's it's the love of my life.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
During the pandemic, I worked, I worked in the clubs,
and I worked in the clubs that I worked at
for like thirty five years already, and they were saying, hey,
come out here and save our club. So I went
to all these all these different clubs where everybody was
a hanker down and looked like hockey games. They had
(01:51):
the plexi glasshop and mask and even some of my
friends were outside like you know, you know, I will
come in. They had their mask, I will come in,
but I just I just wanted to come and see
you run back by the way. And it's always been there,
you know. If I'm doing a movie, if I'm in
my movie phase, you know, I could do stand up,
(02:12):
getting my cartoon phase. Whatever I do in my career,
stand up's always there, you know, always there.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I saw something recently they say they remake your wu
not that I know of. Did you see that, Yeah,
said they remaking woo. Okay, yeah, well maybe three people
to see it by then. Who's the brother you got
with you? Ah?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
This is This is Don on Northcross, a really good
friend of mine.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
He has a program called the Okay Program. Now.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The way I got exposed to it was a friend
of mine told me about the program Okay, And years
later I was at a comedy club and he walks
into the green room and I go, you' the dude
with the program, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So he invites me to their yearly national convention.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And I walk in and there's like thirty grown black
men and young black men hugging this man and crying
and I sit back and they got degrees and some
of them my sheriffs and all these people that I said,
I gotta know more about this, and I just I
got involved because it's a very important thing happening here, you.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Know, talk to us more about the program.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Brother, Yeah, hey, thanks for having me on man.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, he ain't never been in New York either, but
they said, they said he'd never been to a big city.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Yeah, I'm from Arkansas, Okay. I live in Sacramento now though.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
All right.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
I left Arkansas and went to California, became a sheriff's deputy,
and I retired as a sheriff deputy, and it leads
me to what I do today, be honest with you. Though,
as a sheriff deputy, I got tired of sending black
men and boys killing each other and going to jail.
I look around for a solution to the problem, and
I didn't see one other than building more prisons and
hire more police officers. And so I used to come
home after my shift every night and I wouldlamit to
(04:03):
my wife about what I witnessed on my shift, you know,
on my watch. And then I'd always finish up by saying,
somebody gotta do something about it. And then one night,
in mid sentence, it dawned on me, I was somebody.
I'm the one I've been waiting on. I realized nobody
else is gonna start black men and boys I'm killing
each other, but black men and boys. And so I
started this organization and that's our main goal is to
reduce harmice that rate to black men and boys. And
(04:24):
so yeah, we do it through what we call a
life sports system.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
We've developed.
Speaker 5 (04:28):
We recruit, training, organize black men to work with black
police officers that we interview and carefully select those officers
because I realized that if you get their own black
officer in the community, he can do more harm than good.
So we go through a process of vetting these officers
as we interview them, and then we select that officer
to run the program full time. We take him out
of patrol or wherever he's working, and he worked, we
dress him down and playing clothes. He has a Plaine
(04:49):
vehicle and he works specifically with the OKA program and
that's his full time job. And then we again we
go into the community where you're recruit and where you
train up these black men. In Oakland, we've trained over
six hundred actually my last training took seven hundred black
men in Oakland that we were trained to work.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
With these officers.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
And so we call a life sports system because it's
a life sports system. We don't hook them up too.
You know about the one that once they catch a
bulleting in here, we run and hook them up to
a life sports system to try.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
To save their lives.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
I realize that we need a life sports system that
we hook them up with, you know. And that's what
we do. We hook these boys up with the life
support system, which is an interconnected network of black men
that bring together our knowledge, our wisdom, experiences, and our
resources to provide support in the daily lives of black boys.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
That's why we call it a life support system. And so.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
We do this, man, I tell you, we support them
in the school that officers on campus every day giving
these boys support, talking to their teachers about how they're doing.
Their teachers fill out consent forms where the parents feel
our consent forms so that school to give the officer
permission on the boards how they're doing in school every day.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
And so we recruit these boys. We go by their houses,
We recruit them in the schools.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
And so we don't just hang assign on the door
say hey, we own forbidness. We actually go get a
We let know we love them, we believe in them,
we support them, and when we enterreew that officer, we
make sure that he can say that he loves his people,
he loved black boys he understands the state of that
we're in and he's willing to work with these boys
and these men to help change the course of our boys.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And so, like I said, we folks specifically on that.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
So we support them in the school. The teachers communicate
with us how the boys are doing. If they're doing great,
we like to we like to acknowledge that and encourage
that good behavior, but were also on there to correct
the negative behavior. The officer supports them after school hours,
win their neighborhoods. You know, we go to the ball
games with the men. We build that relationship with those boys.
We support them on weekends with every Saturday from ten
(06:34):
to two we have the boys and the men. That's
when the mentors come together, and we were with those boys.
We have a curriculum about thirty five different topics that
are deal with issues of the Germaine to black community,
to particularly black men and black boys. We look at
the problem, the contributing factors to the problem, and then
what we have to do to change that situation, our
own situation. And so we do that with the boys,
and we get them in the sixth grade, and we
follow the same boys all the way through twelfth grade.
So we can build that long term relationship with those boys.
(06:56):
So we support them like that on weekends. That's every
weekend we have those boys and those men, and so
the men don't have to come every Saturday. Uh, the
same man doesn't. I'm a country boy, so I learned.
You know, a lot of hands make quick work. You know.
I don't know if you guys ever shell peas before,
but if you get a bush, oh yeah, you're from
South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, I've never.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Seen Charlomagne shell shell pe You know what I'm talking about,
a lot of folks thinks peaces.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
We did that too.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
But I'm gonna tell you why you shell shelling piece.
As an analogy, if you got a bush of basket
of peace and you by yourself.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
You got a long day.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
If you get three or four people sitting around a
bushel basket of peace and they all reaching their shelling
peas and they laughing and talking, man, it's that that's
done before you know it. I see these old women
in my hometown, they be talking and they reaching the
bottom of that barrel for the bucket for some peas,
and they said, Lord, you look at everybody's watched pain
on their left. They fill the peas A lot of
hands make quick work. So I designed the program where
(07:55):
you get a lot of men doing a little, you
get a lot done. You can't get a few people
doing a lot, you burn them out. So you gott
get a lot of people doing a little bit. That's
why we say we got over seven hundred men now
in Oakland, or we've actually done. We went and we
recruited those men. But we only ask them to come
up to show three times every year. But they can
come as many times as they want to.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
A lot of men come every Saturday. But I know
if I ask a brother to come five, six, seven,
eight times, oh God damn, I'm gonna lose them. Charlemagne.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
No.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
But but if I say, hey, broes up, all we
need you to do is show for three times and
we train all the men. All the men have to
be on the same page. I don't need one hundred
brothers out there saying a hundred different things. I just
need brothers out on the same page. We have to
know how we're gonna present ourselves.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
That boys.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
We ain't talking about no sexual stuff. We're not using
the end where we're not cursing. We have to show
these boys a different kind of man that they used
to admit of their community. You know, seventy some percent
of our households hit about single mothers. So we make
sure that we recruit these black men. And I keep
saying black men because we don't make no exceptions. All
of our men are black, all by boys are black.
We're not trying to solve all the problems in America
right now. We're just trying to reduce homiciday to black
men and boys. And can't nobody to stop black men
(08:52):
and boys and killing each other, but black men and boys.
We have to be serious about this.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Man, how can we hope this program? What's the what's
the website that they can go to?
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Okay program dot org. Go to okay program or and
check us out. You know, we've been around a long time,
been fighting this battle a long time. Man. It's not
hard to get me in the grassroots level because black
men look for a message like this, not only a message,
but something that's attached to that message, like a plan.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
That's why we call a life sports system. It's actually
a plan.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
You know we talked about we put these boys in
terms of when they get in high school. Now program,
remember we get them in sixth grade. By time they're
in high school, now we have a.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Uh we have pathway advisors.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Now we have other black men uh in Oakland there
there they're with the Probation Department. They assigned to the
program full time. So these men and we select them too.
But these men actually now they work with our boys
in ninth grade. Start helped them get their driver license.
Before we get our high school, they're social Security card
exposing them to different career paths when they get out
of school, whether it's all of our boys, they get
out of school, they know that they've experienced uh this
(09:45):
this this career path thing. Now, so we want them
to either go to college, uh, trade school, codeing of military.
So they we focused on these different areas so that
when they get out of high school, they're just not
going to stand on the corner. Now that's a life
sports system and we get them in that. In that system,
we know that that's gonna save their life because they're
not gonna be out the streets hustling, and they're less
(10:06):
likely to go to jail, they're less likely to kill
somebody else. Because our curriculum is dealing with For example,
we talk about some of the things we talk about again,
we got thirty five sessions, and one of the things
we talk about we're heavy on is at homiciderty black
men and boys. You know, we only six percent of
the nation population and we'll count for fIF percent of
homicides each year. How can in black men, black men,
we six percent of the nation population. Look at the
(10:27):
Center for Disease Control, We six percent of the nation population,
but we will count for about fifty percent of homicides
this year. Of Charlo Maane, there's no way in we're
six percent of the population to all count for as
many homicides and ninety four percent of.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
The population and we okay with that.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Nobody is talking about, let's reduce homicide rated black men
and boys. Defination number well in conspirations is just as
bad almost you know.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
But but but nobody is talking about in particular black men.
I don't expect their body to talk about it. But
it hurts my heart. That's why I've been doing this
for thirty some years now.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
It hurt my heart to see black men don't have
a plan to reduce homtary black man.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
We have a cause.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
We jump on every cause out there.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
This should be our number one cause because if we
can reduce homicide rate to black men and boys, it's
gonna reduce valid crimes in our city. In order to
reduce homicide rate to black men and boys, you got
to love our boy.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
We love each other. Man's nothing gonna it. All starts
with love. And as you begin to love each other,
you begin to change the crime rate in our city.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
More jobs come in, more businesses come in, everything changes.
If we can reduce a homicide rate of black men
and boys, nobody can do it but us.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
The one of the biggest things that you said, uh,
you know while you was talking is that you were
a police officer. Yeah, but you felt like you couldn't
change anything being a police officer.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Wow, I can't do it man, No, man, I mean,
policing is not designed to do what I'm talking about doing.
I'm just being unch with.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Policing is not designed to reduce the homicide rate to
stop black men and boys from going to jail.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It's not the police officers are there to uh, to
respond to crime. Basically, they forgot the.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Label that we have.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Has been a community serviervice or a peace officers protecting,
protect and serve been a peace officer. We look at
an enforcement officer because enforcement is how you promote. Enforcement
is how you get a name in law enforcement. So
we value enforcement over serving the community, and.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So we have to we You know, I didn't like
the police at all when I was growing up because
I grew up a small southern town. You know, I'm
up one in.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
The fifties, so you can imagine I'll put a desegregation
in the South, which is where a lot of my
mentality comes from.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
You know, I lived in the colorful quarters. I lived
on the other side of town.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
I just see my first black police officer my hometown
till like nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I believe it was Wow. Yeah, yeah, And I'm sixty
five years old. I appreciate that.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
Man.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I'm trying to keep up with Tommy Davison.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
So I got my question for y'all and the work
that you're doing because you're working with the program to
tell me is like, so, in the state that we're
in right now, with like the political climate, do you
guys think that KAMA is best for the Democrats and like,
you know, moving forward the conversation, the mission that you
guys are talking about with like just black men and
them fighting for causes that are going to make sense
for them at the end of the day.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Absolutely, I mean for the other choice, she's said, yeah,
oh my hands down, no doubt.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I mean, you know that you.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Don't want police you don't want immunity for all your
fellow officers.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Oh no, no, they don't.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
No, No, that's that's one of the worst things I
think that you can do is get some one total
immunity from their own responsibility.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You can't.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
You can't do that. It creates a problem, you know.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
There's I was telling Danny, a friend of I just
met Danny, but he Danny seemed like I've been doing
a long time. But we've stand outside talking first time
I ever met him. We've sent outside talking about the
business law enforcement, you know. And I was telling him,
you know, Dan, I said, look, if someone if you're a.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Police officer on a police officer, we come.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
Up on a scene and we have to fight a guy,
legitimate fight, you know, and we fight him and then
we get him under control and I get the cuffs
on him, and there's other people standing on across the
street watching just citizens. And once we had the cuffs
on him, Danny, you stand up and you give him
another kick. You kick him, and I don't say anything, Danny,
I said, you know how many bad police officers on
the scene.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
For those people concerned, there's two bad police officers on
the scene.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
But if you kick that guy and I push you back,
say dad, and I tell you no, they don't have
to hear my word, but they see my action. There's
only one bad police officer on the scene. But that's
what I'm saying. The good officers stand by and allow
the bad officers.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Get away with it, over and over again.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
That's why we have so many bad officers because we
allowed to happen. The good officer is allowed to happen,
and it costs all of us in the long run.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
What do you think, Tommy about the question, Lauren? Just
about the political climate.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You know, it's always been the same for US African
American community.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I mean, we got a choice between the two right,
And you know, if if personally you know who's for community,
you know who's.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
For us, you know, and I say who's for us,
who's for the people? The working people. You know, what's
going to be the outcome. Is it going to feed
the billionaires?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Is it going to is it going to take the
money to them and take it away away from all
the services that we need.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
It's been a battle, you know, the whole time.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
But we you know, you know, we do the best
we can with our syst with our political systems, you know.
But you know, it's just like the tild and Hayes compromise.
You know, we got a choice between the two of them.
But when we're gone, they conspire together. Yeah, you know,
Tildenhaye compromise. I think it was eighteen fifty six, I
think right after the Civil War, you know, and they
(15:25):
got together with the Tilden and Hayes compromise. The same
thing happened in Miami, you know, in Florida, and they
were going to have another civil war over that. So
they got in together and they made the Tildan and
Hayes compromise and they said, if you make our party
the president, you know, we'll release the federal troops from
(15:46):
the South. And then Jim Crow started. We didn't get
out of that until nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So they're political parties, but you know, we're the group.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
We're the group of African We're the group that came
here and built basically the imperial wealth of the country.
You know, all that cotton and all that tobacco and
all that rice and all that work, it was all
for free and it was for four hundred years. So
the people that are sitting on top of that money
right now are are the same people, you know, and
(16:15):
that they're a small consortium. My mother, who's a white
woman at Wyoming and Colorado and we grew up in DC,
said well, the people united will will never be defeated,
you know. So so we do the best we can
with the systems that we're in, but it does come
down to us. It comes down to what we do.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And you know, my total look at it is that
we're we're doing just fine. You know.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
We got to look at the linear comparison of where
we are now, you know. And and they've gone after
the head of our families with heroin and cocaine and
all this other stuff, you know, But they went after
the wrong head because the head is the female, you.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Know what I mean, everybody's grandmother is the one.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
You know, so your mother was white, Oh, yeah, oh yeah,
biological mother.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, okay, no, not my biological mom.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Got my mother that found met Yeah. I think she's
black now that I think about it, you know, but
you know, it's just one of those things where you know,
I go a day at a time and and try
the best I can, you know, and so you know,
I hear hip hop. You know they're not like us.
They are mm hmmm, I'm gonna talk about the okay program.
(17:28):
You know, they're not like us, and I got they're us,
you know, and when it comes down to it, you know,
we've always been the best thing for.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Us, absolutely, you know. So that's where I'm coming from.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
You know, it's interesting you want to you you you
want to have a conversation with doctor Umar.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
No that was supposed to be doing me and you no.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I was no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Because we made a comment that you don't you don't
respect any any black man to get married to a
white woman.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And you know, I was just you know, he's a doctor.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
So I was like, hey man, you know, watching that,
watching that, it kind of just made me made me
want to say something. You want to say something because
you know, we we we do that and then we're
we're we're doing the same thing that got done to us.
You know, isn't it them that said that, you know,
(18:28):
you're not to marry a black person. As a matter
of fact, they started out saying they can't get married
at all, you.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
So so and the way I see it, you know,
with with my mother and my family raising me and
love me so much, the only good are well meaning
white people in this country, you know, John Brown, and
we can we can go on and on and on
and on, you know, so we start that discussion with us,
you know, we need to do this and do that
and do that, you know what I mean. And because
(18:59):
we're African and where this where that where that First
of all, Africans aren't outside of humanity.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
We're part of humanity. You know, We're an.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Essential part of it. Because everybody walked out of Africa
and changed colors based on geography and where they were,
you know, so at the root of mankind is Africa.
So you know, if we trip on color, were tripping
on ourselves because it's just really a mirror of us anyway,
you know. And I grew up in the seventies, right,
(19:31):
So peace was in style in the seventies when I was.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
A kid, hippie era. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Vietnam kids were coming back from Vietnam and women's were
getting their rights, and there was bussing and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
We're years and years away from that, and now we're
on our march. You know. I just really.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
I love my job because I dispense happy and I
go to every corner of the world, military bases and
all kind of stuff and dispense happy.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
I got a great job. You know.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
It's not like I work at the uh at the
baggage claim in the airport.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
The first thing is what a my day bage? You
know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
When I show people, go, man, would you take a
picture with my grandmother?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Or you know, uh.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Uh this is this is uh, this woman's son just
got killed, you know, would you talk to her? You know,
and and those kind of things, you know, And I'm
just I'm just fortunate.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
I'm on full scholarship right now. My great great great
great grandmother and grandfather who took the lash, Yeah, they
took the lash and prayed.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Us look at it. Full scholarship from my grave year
and I like that.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
You know, That's what I love about Tommy because of
understands that how he just explained it about you know,
we have to be able to you know, to respect
everybody and understand. But he also understands that as black people,
and particularly black men, we have responsibility to our own community.
And that's what that's what fascinated me about him because
I know about how he was he came up, and
I know about being found by his white mother, you know,
(20:59):
and take the men and loving him and raising him
with a white.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Sister and a white brother.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
But at the same time, and even through that, he
never forgot that he still have a responsibility to his people.
And there's some unique challenges that black men facing this
country and black people in general, but we focus on
solving black man problems because if we can solve this problem,
then our whole community gonna benefit from that. And so Tommy,
this is one of the free brothers I know that
has a spotlight that that totally embrace what we do
(21:26):
because he understand that, you know that we're not Temmy
understands I think that, and you can correct me from wrong,
but I think he understands that just because you love
yourself don't mean you got to not like nobody else,
and so we and he never shot away.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I've been trying to get brothers a long time.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
I've been trying to contact athletes and entertain as black
men who have some influence and have some resources that
we can expand this program across the country.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
It's this life sports system around the country. It's hard
to get to those brothers, you.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
Know, and it's hard for them to sit down and listen.
That's why I appreciate Charlottage for giving me a chance
to come on and talk about this because Quarter and
a brother like Tommy who have never backed away from
it in spite of him.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
He said finish.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
Yeah, I have a question for you, Tommy, just backing
up with what you said. So, I know at one
point you had said, like, at one point in time,
you didn't even know that you were black, and that
comes from you know, having your adopted white mom. How
do you when going into the even working with a
program like Okay or like just anything that you're doing, Like,
how do you go into rooms and have conversations about
(22:29):
just being young in your upbringing and knowing it at
one point you didn't know that you were black, But
then you realize that, like that upbringing is a lot
different than like my brother, who like has always been
a black man. I mean you've always been a black
man too, But you know what I mean, Like just
it seems like you're You're a lot more optimistic from
what I'm gathering from you, and I think a lot
of people so like when we talk about a doctor Umar,
(22:49):
I don't think that he's not optimistic, but I think
his background is a lot different than yours. So how
do you even engage in those conversations because it's different
for somebody else who didn't have a white adopted mom.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, well, you know when it comes to when especially
African Americans, you know, our breadth is white, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
I when I when I when I found out that
I was black and my family was white, I started saying, well,
what what is black?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And so to me in my neighborhood, I grew up
in TC, so what was what was what was black?
To me was hey, man, you sell drugs, you go
to jail, you come back and you'd be like this
is how it was in there.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
You know what I mean? You you you you fight people.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You know, you you take stuff, and I saw that
in my neighborhood, and that was identified as like, hey,
that's a positive thing.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
I need to be down. That was the only examples
of blackness, you know what I mean. No, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
But but but in that neighborhood we had to band
together to protect ourselves from just what was happening in general.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So that was that was around when I was.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
About ten, because a lot of a lot of the
the city people moved to in the city, blacks moved
to my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
So it changed.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
You know, I was just a little eight year old,
little eight year old boy that had friends of all colors,
you know. But then when it came down to it,
there was a distinction, you know, and there was me
and my boys, you know, and I. And then then
through lessons that I that I learned just personally, like
my mother, she wasn't having it, you know. I say,
she looked under my bed and saw money and saw
(24:26):
all this other stuff and said.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
You got to get out. You were selling drugs. Yeah,
you got to get out the house, you know what
I mean. You remember when I was a very good
drug dealer.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Do you remember when you turned Yeah, I remember the day, well,
you know, I had been called you know.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Your nigga.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, and that was the first time grown i mean
a grown white man chased me home and teenage teenagers.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I'll be riding my bike they jump out of truck,
killed the nigga and all of this.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
So I went to my mother, was like, ooh, these
niggas right to your white mom.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, she said that's what people are color called people
your color.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
And that's when the color thing came up, you know,
And I said, well, what about the people that are
my color?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I mean, she said you're you're black? I said, nowhere brown.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So when I started investigating this, that was one of
the dimensions that I went into was that if I'm
like this, that makes me legit. But it's it's a
it's it's a it's a social stage.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
If you take a woman, uh raper, kick her in
the face, throw her in the dirt, you know, stomp her,
and she her family comes and gets her and washes
her off and and gets her back to normal. The
first thing she's going to want to do is put
on the dress, get her hair done, and get back
(25:52):
get back her her sanctity. You know what I mean
and and that's how societies are, That's how groups in
the groups are in the country.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
You know, we're coming here. We've been kicked down. The
Irish went.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Through it, you know, they were the dogs of the whole,
the bottom of the line, you know, they you can
see it through the movies.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Once upon a time in America, right right, that was
about when the Jews were out in.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
The street as gangsters.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Uh uh, the Godfather. You know, you see them out
in the street. They're they're they're doing their thing, you know,
in in Pittsburgh gangs, you know, the white gangs, the
gangs of New York.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Right. So, so so that's different to survive.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, it's a stage, you know, and and and and
you know, our our coming coming out for us was
was not after World War World War two.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
It was in the sixties. So there we are now
and we're in the stage that we're in.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
But at that stage, the government creative programs for the youth.
There was Roosevelt's program, the Work Program, and included taking
all of the youth and put them into camps.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
There's the y m c A.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There's the Boys Clubs of America. You know, there's there's
a four H club, and there's all these things that
were created to keep them out of the streets, you know,
and we had never benefit fitting from those programs. That's
one of the reasons why I gravitate towards this one,
because it's organized, it works.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I see, they're grown men. They're grown men, now, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
So, you know, if anybody in this country has just
been kind of bombarded by problem at the problem, at
the problem, at the problem at the problem, you know,
it's it's it's our community. But the good, the best
thing about it is is that we're forgiven. We're forgiving people.
We're loving people. You know, we're we're, we're we're.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And we got the tools to heal ourselves, to help us. Right. Yeah,
So it.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Turns into into the conversation turns into something simple for me.
You know, as long as this country is dealing with
the human race, we're gonna be racing. So it's gonna
be you know, the whites racing for of resources, in
the Mexicans racing, in Puerto Ricans racing.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
But the second that.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
This country becomes mankind, you know, man being kind, then
we're gonna get that change. But until then, it's gonna
be the human race. And it always it always has been.
But the wonderful thing I love about the human race
is this early early in our in our in in
early in our history, way back, when a band of
(28:45):
humans that was one color saw a band of humans that.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Was another color. The guys would say, the girls look
good over there.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Of that color, and the girls would say, the guys
look good over there that color.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And that's how we got colored dress.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Always a green on the other side, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
It looks it looks better because because they're over here
going those guys over there that are that color look good,
and they're going those girls over there that color look good.
That'sle we are all the colors in the in the
in the Bible, they call it be gatton, they call
it gatten.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, you know, he bet he begat this. He'd be
goat that. You know who's got on his shirt? Oh
this is cat? But that is cat. Okay, okay, let
me stand up, because this is for the algorithm. You know,
I wanted to bring the numbers up, you know what
I mean. Now, But but but that's.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Been a cool cool Speaking of comedy, let me talk
about comedy wife, you ain't talking about Gotty. You got
to show the Night at Sony Hall. Yeah, yes, one night,
only one night. And being in New York City, people,
are you coming back to New York? You're coming back
in New York. Yeah, I'm back.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I'm back.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
And I partly grew up here, you know, because my
cousins lived here and grew up here, and so New
York I've been, you know since forty second Street, the movies,
the whole nine yards, you know. But uh, I mean
it's things have been going really well in Cat Cat Cat.
The Cat Tour is like.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Family, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
We we we went around this country, did some big things.
He went on shanding, blew up, you know, never changed
the attitude. Yeah, I was, yeah, yeah, and it was.
It was a great tour, one of the best tours
I've been on, because everybody's like family there.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
What's the biggest misconception about Cat Williams?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
You think, hmm, that he's not compassionate, you know, And
that's the first thing I know about him, you know
what I mean, he teats everybody to say, me and him,
I have a lot of similar qualities, you know, treats
everybody the same, you know, at face value.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
He he loves when you call him directly. You know.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's one of the problems I've had in Hollywood, you know,
calling someone directly, you know, and really talking.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Or talking to them at a club or something. You know, Hey,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
He I'm fine. I'm over here, you know, and you're
over there. He not like us, He not like us,
you know. So you know, you know, you know, but
but you know, you know, I'm we are where we are,
and and and and we're in a really good place.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I'm one of the people that looks at us.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
At where we are. You know, Hey, the lowly slave
spent two terms in the White House, you know what
I mean. We wasn't good for nothing, right, okay, and
now we're now we're circling back, and we have one of.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Our sisters there too, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
So black women around the world are going, little black
girls are going, I can, I can, I can do this,
you know. And it's not as important here. It's important
out there in the in the global perception of who
we are, because like I said, we're not outside of humanity.
(32:08):
We're part of it, you know, And that influences people
when when when Obama won, I was in all these
different countries to go to you know, the cab driver.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
You you and Obama? Are you Obama? I like it
that guy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
And it's just you know, we're we're influencing this world
and in in a million different ways.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
You watch the.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Olympics, you know, you you you you see the surgeons
and the doctors that are that are doing their thing here.
You know, whatever we touch, you know, we can we
can turn it into gold, We can spin it into gold.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So this is this is, this is where we are,
the fifth the fifth dimension.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Back in the early seventies saying.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
You know, we're in the dawning of the age or
wherever the age of where we're in it now the
age of enlightenment, you know what I mean. And we're
part of that, that that whole enlightenment. And that's the
good thing about about us is that we're kind of
like a barometer for for mankind. Because if anybody can
(33:12):
go from where we are to where we are, then
that means anybody who sees that can go from where
they are to where they are.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
I think we're in a place too of like really
getting to teach people how to treat us, and that
that's important as well too.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
For sure they're saying, we got a wrap.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I do want to ask you one thing, comed What
were your thoughts when Oprah talked about how.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
She was weight shamed by a skin on a living color.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
If I were he, I would take it personal, really,
I mean, if you need, you're going to laugh, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Trying to laugh.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You know, some might say, you know, you know, somebody,
this might be the skin of me, you know, and
tell me look like he's starving, and I'm I'm in
a little loin cloth and somebody handing me a naw later,
you know, and I'll be laughing.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I'll be laughing my asshof. Yeah, because I love to laugh.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And and and and that's the core of it, you
know what I mean and and and what we do
in comedy is we take something and we blow it
to its extreme.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
And that's what makes it funny. Now we're in it.
We're we're in a we're in a we're in a climate.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Of a mob of a mob. We're in a mob climate.
You know, mind me of Frankenstein. You know, Frankenstein wasn't
the monster it was a doctor. The doctor dug the
body up. He knew ego cut the brain, you know.
And and so the mob came to get the monster.
(34:49):
And the only reason why they hated the monster.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Is because he looked different. Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
One more question.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
So speaking of that Proud Family remake got a lot
of pushback for a couple of different reasons. One of
the episodes, there was a a male influencer who was
promoting like makeup and there was a gay couple on
the show. People were upset about that mob culture. People
don't like when things changed in general, but especially not
(35:18):
when you talk about sexuality and how people identify.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
What are your thoughts on.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
That today, Sugarbama, Hey, listen, who out here is perfect?
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Right?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
So if we go an eye for an eye, everybody blind,
you know, had had had we not stood up for
our rights, we lost lives over that, you know, Had
the Irish not stood up for their for their cause,
had the Chicanos not done that, the migrant workers that
were picking and doing that kind of stuff. You know,
(35:54):
I was raised in the kind of household where we
had to look at everything equally. And if we even
if we said a slur we get punished, you know,
like I was saying, you know, the mob went after
the monster, right because the monster looked different and was different.
But actually actually that that monster was really kind, was
(36:16):
really compassionate, was handing the little girl's flowers, and he
understood what was happening. I'm a part of this society
in every way.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
My brother was a gay male.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
He was white, you know, the opposite of my neighborhood
and what was black, what was black and masculine.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But he was my best friend.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
He was my best best friend, you know, and and
and could you understand how that.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Could have alienated me?
Speaker 3 (36:45):
And it did when I was young because I didn't
have a brother to help me out there in the
streets fight and stuff like that. But as I understood
more and understood what love was, you know that that
was one of my biggest advocates.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And this is all about purpose, individual purpose. What are
we going to do while we're here? Right? He went
down with his with his gay and lesbian friends in.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
In capital city, Seattle, went to the government, made the
government pass a law where AIDS was turned into a
legal disease so that people who had it can be ensured.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
You see, what I mean, So we are you know
what is our purpose?
Speaker 3 (37:33):
You know, our purpose is like the pandemic, to survive, right,
it's only when we're at the precipice, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
A survival that we pulled together. But while wait till then,
let me.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Tell you I respect Tommy Davis's ability to answer the
question without answering the question, because you still be dropping,
like what did you do?
Speaker 1 (37:56):
This was the website again for the Okay program. Okay
program dot org.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
All right, yep, Okay program dot org.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And Tommy Davison will be at Sony Hall to night.
Is it sold out already or it's sold out?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Nah?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
No, No, it's still tickets. Okay, well, it's still some
tickets available in New York. You know they're gonna walk up.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
You know you can go check out Tommy Davison tonight
at Sony Hall. What time the show start, Tommy eight,
eight o'clock. Don't make it so stranger, man, it's been
too long between conversations, my guy.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
It's the Breakfast Club. Wake that ass up in the morning.
The Breakfast Club
Wake that ass up in the morning.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Breakfast Club yeps, the world's most dangerous morning show, The
Breakfast Club. Charlamagne to God, Lauren Lero says, guest hosting,
because you know, Jess Hilarious is on maternity leave. Envy
is on his way back from fifty Cents Humor and
Harmony weekend. But we got somebody here who knows the
thing or two about humor. Mister Tommy Davidson, how are.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You, sir? Thank you, Absolutely good to see you.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Man, Hey man, haven't been here since the I guess,
I guess there was a writer strike on your show.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yep. Yeah years what was the writer's great damn two
three years? Two years ago, Lauren, the writer scratch about right, yeah,
just about yeah, right after the pandemic. Yeah, I'm glad
to be back. It's like we just went through that and.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You gotta You're doing a one man comedy show at
Sony Hall. Oh yeah, Tuesday, August thirteenth. Oh yeah, tomorrow,
back New York. Back is is the camera?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah? Back New York? In New York, they say, Derek Everic,
Derek and Eric in dc A.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Derek and Eric tonight O thought tomorrow so to night,
you'll be there. Yeah, tonight, I'm gonna be there. New York,
watch out.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm back. I'm back. You still get nervous when you
got to go on stage and tell jokes? Nah, okay, no,
it's a mortgage attached now. Yeah. So yeah tuitions. So
so does the feel more like a job? Was it
still something that you love to do?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And it's still man, it's it's it's I'm gonna stand
up first official, it's it's the love of my life.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
During the pandemic, I worked, I worked in the clubs,
and I worked in the clubs that I worked at
for like thirty five years already, and they were saying, hey,
come out here and save our club. So I went
to all these all these different clubs where everybody was
a hanker down and looked like hockey games. They had
(01:51):
the plexi glasshop and mask and even some of my
friends were outside like you know, you know, I will
come in. They had their mask, I will come in,
but I just I just wanted to come and see
you run back by the way. And it's always been there,
you know. If I'm doing a movie, if I'm in
my movie phase, you know, I could do stand up,
(02:12):
getting my cartoon phase. Whatever I do in my career,
stand up's always there, you know, always there.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I saw something recently they say they remake your wu
not that I know of. Did you see that, Yeah,
said they remaking woo. Okay, yeah, well maybe three people
to see it by then. Who's the brother you got
with you? Ah?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
This is This is Don on Northcross, a really good
friend of mine.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
He has a program called the Okay Program. Now.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The way I got exposed to it was a friend
of mine told me about the program Okay, And years
later I was at a comedy club and he walks
into the green room and I go, you' the dude
with the program, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So he invites me to their yearly national convention.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And I walk in and there's like thirty grown black
men and young black men hugging this man and crying
and I sit back and they got degrees and some
of them my sheriffs and all these people that I said,
I gotta know more about this, and I just I
got involved because it's a very important thing happening here, you.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Know, talk to us more about the program.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Brother, Yeah, hey, thanks for having me on man.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, he ain't never been in New York either, but
they said, they said he'd never been to a big city.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Yeah, I'm from Arkansas, Okay. I live in Sacramento now though.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
All right.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
I left Arkansas and went to California, became a sheriff's deputy,
and I retired as a sheriff deputy, and it leads
me to what I do today, be honest with you. Though,
as a sheriff deputy, I got tired of sending black
men and boys killing each other and going to jail.
I look around for a solution to the problem, and
I didn't see one other than building more prisons and
hire more police officers. And so I used to come
home after my shift every night and I wouldlamit to
(04:03):
my wife about what I witnessed on my shift, you know,
on my watch. And then I'd always finish up by saying,
somebody gotta do something about it. And then one night,
in mid sentence, it dawned on me, I was somebody.
I'm the one I've been waiting on. I realized nobody
else is gonna start black men and boys I'm killing
each other, but black men and boys. And so I
started this organization and that's our main goal is to
reduce harmice that rate to black men and boys. And
(04:24):
so yeah, we do it through what we call a
life sports system.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
We've developed.
Speaker 5 (04:28):
We recruit, training, organize black men to work with black
police officers that we interview and carefully select those officers
because I realized that if you get their own black
officer in the community, he can do more harm than good.
So we go through a process of vetting these officers
as we interview them, and then we select that officer
to run the program full time. We take him out
of patrol or wherever he's working, and he worked, we
dress him down and playing clothes. He has a Plaine
(04:49):
vehicle and he works specifically with the OKA program and
that's his full time job. And then we again we
go into the community where you're recruit and where you
train up these black men. In Oakland, we've trained over
six hundred actually my last training took seven hundred black
men in Oakland that we were trained to work.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
With these officers.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
And so we call a life sports system because it's
a life sports system. We don't hook them up too.
You know about the one that once they catch a
bulleting in here, we run and hook them up to
a life sports system to try.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
To save their lives.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
I realize that we need a life sports system that
we hook them up with, you know. And that's what
we do. We hook these boys up with the life
support system, which is an interconnected network of black men
that bring together our knowledge, our wisdom, experiences, and our
resources to provide support in the daily lives of black boys.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
That's why we call it a life support system. And so.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
We do this, man, I tell you, we support them
in the school that officers on campus every day giving
these boys support, talking to their teachers about how they're doing.
Their teachers fill out consent forms where the parents feel
our consent forms so that school to give the officer
permission on the boards how they're doing in school every day.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
And so we recruit these boys. We go by their houses,
We recruit them in the schools.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
And so we don't just hang assign on the door
say hey, we own forbidness. We actually go get a
We let know we love them, we believe in them,
we support them, and when we enterreew that officer, we
make sure that he can say that he loves his people,
he loved black boys he understands the state of that
we're in and he's willing to work with these boys
and these men to help change the course of our boys.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And so, like I said, we folks specifically on that.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
So we support them in the school. The teachers communicate
with us how the boys are doing. If they're doing great,
we like to we like to acknowledge that and encourage
that good behavior, but were also on there to correct
the negative behavior. The officer supports them after school hours,
win their neighborhoods. You know, we go to the ball
games with the men. We build that relationship with those boys.
We support them on weekends with every Saturday from ten
(06:34):
to two we have the boys and the men. That's
when the mentors come together, and we were with those boys.
We have a curriculum about thirty five different topics that
are deal with issues of the Germaine to black community,
to particularly black men and black boys. We look at
the problem, the contributing factors to the problem, and then
what we have to do to change that situation, our
own situation. And so we do that with the boys,
and we get them in the sixth grade, and we
follow the same boys all the way through twelfth grade.
So we can build that long term relationship with those boys.
(06:56):
So we support them like that on weekends. That's every
weekend we have those boys and those men, and so
the men don't have to come every Saturday. Uh, the
same man doesn't. I'm a country boy, so I learned.
You know, a lot of hands make quick work. You know.
I don't know if you guys ever shell peas before,
but if you get a bush, oh yeah, you're from
South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, I've never.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Seen Charlomagne shell shell pe You know what I'm talking about,
a lot of folks thinks peaces.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
We did that too.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
But I'm gonna tell you why you shell shelling piece.
As an analogy, if you got a bush of basket
of peace and you by yourself.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
You got a long day.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
If you get three or four people sitting around a
bushel basket of peace and they all reaching their shelling
peas and they laughing and talking, man, it's that that's
done before you know it. I see these old women
in my hometown, they be talking and they reaching the
bottom of that barrel for the bucket for some peas,
and they said, Lord, you look at everybody's watched pain
on their left. They fill the peas A lot of
hands make quick work. So I designed the program where
(07:55):
you get a lot of men doing a little, you
get a lot done. You can't get a few people
doing a lot, you burn them out. So you gott
get a lot of people doing a little bit. That's
why we say we got over seven hundred men now
in Oakland, or we've actually done. We went and we
recruited those men. But we only ask them to come
up to show three times every year. But they can
come as many times as they want to.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
A lot of men come every Saturday. But I know
if I ask a brother to come five, six, seven,
eight times, oh God damn, I'm gonna lose them. Charlemagne.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
No.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
But but if I say, hey, broes up, all we
need you to do is show for three times and
we train all the men. All the men have to
be on the same page. I don't need one hundred
brothers out there saying a hundred different things. I just
need brothers out on the same page. We have to
know how we're gonna present ourselves.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
That boys.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
We ain't talking about no sexual stuff. We're not using
the end where we're not cursing. We have to show
these boys a different kind of man that they used
to admit of their community. You know, seventy some percent
of our households hit about single mothers. So we make
sure that we recruit these black men. And I keep
saying black men because we don't make no exceptions. All
of our men are black, all by boys are black.
We're not trying to solve all the problems in America
right now. We're just trying to reduce homiciday to black
men and boys. And can't nobody to stop black men
(08:52):
and boys and killing each other, but black men and boys.
We have to be serious about this.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Man, how can we hope this program? What's the what's
the website that they can go to?
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Okay program dot org. Go to okay program or and
check us out. You know, we've been around a long time,
been fighting this battle a long time. Man. It's not
hard to get me in the grassroots level because black
men look for a message like this, not only a message,
but something that's attached to that message, like a plan.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
That's why we call a life sports system. It's actually
a plan.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
You know we talked about we put these boys in
terms of when they get in high school. Now program,
remember we get them in sixth grade. By time they're
in high school, now we have a.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Uh we have pathway advisors.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Now we have other black men uh in Oakland there
there they're with the Probation Department. They assigned to the
program full time. So these men and we select them too.
But these men actually now they work with our boys
in ninth grade. Start helped them get their driver license.
Before we get our high school, they're social Security card
exposing them to different career paths when they get out
of school, whether it's all of our boys, they get
out of school, they know that they've experienced uh this
(09:45):
this this career path thing. Now, so we want them
to either go to college, uh, trade school, codeing of military.
So they we focused on these different areas so that
when they get out of high school, they're just not
going to stand on the corner. Now that's a life
sports system and we get them in that. In that system,
we know that that's gonna save their life because they're
not gonna be out the streets hustling, and they're less
(10:06):
likely to go to jail, they're less likely to kill
somebody else. Because our curriculum is dealing with For example,
we talk about some of the things we talk about again,
we got thirty five sessions, and one of the things
we talk about we're heavy on is at homiciderty black
men and boys. You know, we only six percent of
the nation population and we'll count for fIF percent of
homicides each year. How can in black men, black men,
we six percent of the nation population. Look at the
(10:27):
Center for Disease Control, We six percent of the nation population,
but we will count for about fifty percent of homicides
this year. Of Charlo Maane, there's no way in we're
six percent of the population to all count for as
many homicides and ninety four percent of.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
The population and we okay with that.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Nobody is talking about, let's reduce homicide rated black men
and boys. Defination number well in conspirations is just as
bad almost you know.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
But but but nobody is talking about in particular black men.
I don't expect their body to talk about it. But
it hurts my heart. That's why I've been doing this
for thirty some years now.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
It hurt my heart to see black men don't have
a plan to reduce homtary black man.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
We have a cause.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
We jump on every cause out there.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
This should be our number one cause because if we
can reduce homicide rate to black men and boys, it's
gonna reduce valid crimes in our city. In order to
reduce homicide rate to black men and boys, you got
to love our boy.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
We love each other. Man's nothing gonna it. All starts
with love. And as you begin to love each other,
you begin to change the crime rate in our city.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
More jobs come in, more businesses come in, everything changes.
If we can reduce a homicide rate of black men
and boys, nobody can do it but us.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
The one of the biggest things that you said, uh,
you know while you was talking is that you were
a police officer. Yeah, but you felt like you couldn't
change anything being a police officer.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Wow, I can't do it man, No, man, I mean,
policing is not designed to do what I'm talking about doing.
I'm just being unch with.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Policing is not designed to reduce the homicide rate to
stop black men and boys from going to jail.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It's not the police officers are there to uh, to
respond to crime. Basically, they forgot the.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Label that we have.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Has been a community serviervice or a peace officers protecting,
protect and serve been a peace officer. We look at
an enforcement officer because enforcement is how you promote. Enforcement
is how you get a name in law enforcement. So
we value enforcement over serving the community, and.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So we have to we You know, I didn't like
the police at all when I was growing up because
I grew up a small southern town. You know, I'm
up one in.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
The fifties, so you can imagine I'll put a desegregation
in the South, which is where a lot of my
mentality comes from.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
You know, I lived in the colorful quarters. I lived
on the other side of town.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
I just see my first black police officer my hometown
till like nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I believe it was Wow. Yeah, yeah, And I'm sixty
five years old. I appreciate that.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
Man.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I'm trying to keep up with Tommy Davison.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
So I got my question for y'all and the work
that you're doing because you're working with the program to
tell me is like, so, in the state that we're
in right now, with like the political climate, do you
guys think that KAMA is best for the Democrats and like,
you know, moving forward the conversation, the mission that you
guys are talking about with like just black men and
them fighting for causes that are going to make sense
for them at the end of the day.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Absolutely, I mean for the other choice, she's said, yeah,
oh my hands down, no doubt.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I mean, you know that you.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Don't want police you don't want immunity for all your
fellow officers.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Oh no, no, they don't.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
No, No, that's that's one of the worst things I
think that you can do is get some one total
immunity from their own responsibility.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You can't.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
You can't do that. It creates a problem, you know.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
There's I was telling Danny, a friend of I just
met Danny, but he Danny seemed like I've been doing
a long time. But we've stand outside talking first time
I ever met him. We've sent outside talking about the
business law enforcement, you know. And I was telling him,
you know, Dan, I said, look, if someone if you're a.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Police officer on a police officer, we come.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
Up on a scene and we have to fight a guy,
legitimate fight, you know, and we fight him and then
we get him under control and I get the cuffs
on him, and there's other people standing on across the
street watching just citizens. And once we had the cuffs
on him, Danny, you stand up and you give him
another kick. You kick him, and I don't say anything, Danny,
I said, you know how many bad police officers on
the scene.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
For those people concerned, there's two bad police officers on
the scene.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
But if you kick that guy and I push you back,
say dad, and I tell you no, they don't have
to hear my word, but they see my action. There's
only one bad police officer on the scene. But that's
what I'm saying. The good officers stand by and allow
the bad officers.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Get away with it, over and over again.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
That's why we have so many bad officers because we
allowed to happen. The good officer is allowed to happen,
and it costs all of us in the long run.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
What do you think, Tommy about the question, Lauren? Just
about the political climate.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You know, it's always been the same for US African
American community.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I mean, we got a choice between the two right,
And you know, if if personally you know who's for community,
you know who's.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
For us, you know, and I say who's for us,
who's for the people? The working people. You know, what's
going to be the outcome. Is it going to feed
the billionaires?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Is it going to is it going to take the
money to them and take it away away from all
the services that we need.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
It's been a battle, you know, the whole time.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
But we you know, you know, we do the best
we can with our syst with our political systems, you know.
But you know, it's just like the tild and Hayes compromise.
You know, we got a choice between the two of them.
But when we're gone, they conspire together. Yeah, you know,
Tildenhaye compromise. I think it was eighteen fifty six, I
think right after the Civil War, you know, and they
(15:25):
got together with the Tilden and Hayes compromise. The same
thing happened in Miami, you know, in Florida, and they
were going to have another civil war over that. So
they got in together and they made the Tildan and
Hayes compromise and they said, if you make our party
the president, you know, we'll release the federal troops from
(15:46):
the South. And then Jim Crow started. We didn't get
out of that until nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So they're political parties, but you know, we're the group.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
We're the group of African We're the group that came
here and built basically the imperial wealth of the country.
You know, all that cotton and all that tobacco and
all that rice and all that work, it was all
for free and it was for four hundred years. So
the people that are sitting on top of that money
right now are are the same people, you know, and
(16:15):
that they're a small consortium. My mother, who's a white
woman at Wyoming and Colorado and we grew up in DC,
said well, the people united will will never be defeated,
you know. So so we do the best we can
with the systems that we're in, but it does come
down to us. It comes down to what we do.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And you know, my total look at it is that
we're we're doing just fine. You know.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
We got to look at the linear comparison of where
we are now, you know. And and they've gone after
the head of our families with heroin and cocaine and
all this other stuff, you know, But they went after
the wrong head because the head is the female, you.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Know what I mean, everybody's grandmother is the one.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
You know, so your mother was white, Oh, yeah, oh yeah,
biological mother.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, okay, no, not my biological mom.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Got my mother that found met Yeah. I think she's
black now that I think about it, you know, but
you know, it's just one of those things where you know,
I go a day at a time and and try
the best I can, you know, and so you know,
I hear hip hop. You know they're not like us.
They are mm hmmm, I'm gonna talk about the okay program.
(17:28):
You know, they're not like us, and I got they're us,
you know, and when it comes down to it, you know,
we've always been the best thing for.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Us, absolutely, you know. So that's where I'm coming from.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
You know, it's interesting you want to you you you
want to have a conversation with doctor Umar.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
No that was supposed to be doing me and you no.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I was no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Because we made a comment that you don't you don't
respect any any black man to get married to a
white woman.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And you know, I was just you know, he's a doctor.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
So I was like, hey man, you know, watching that,
watching that, it kind of just made me made me
want to say something. You want to say something because
you know, we we we do that and then we're
we're we're doing the same thing that got done to us.
You know, isn't it them that said that, you know,
(18:28):
you're not to marry a black person. As a matter
of fact, they started out saying they can't get married
at all, you.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
So so and the way I see it, you know,
with with my mother and my family raising me and
love me so much, the only good are well meaning
white people in this country, you know, John Brown, and
we can we can go on and on and on
and on, you know, so we start that discussion with us,
you know, we need to do this and do that
and do that, you know what I mean. And because
(18:59):
we're African and where this where that where that First
of all, Africans aren't outside of humanity.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
We're part of humanity. You know, We're an.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Essential part of it. Because everybody walked out of Africa
and changed colors based on geography and where they were,
you know, so at the root of mankind is Africa.
So you know, if we trip on color, were tripping
on ourselves because it's just really a mirror of us anyway,
you know. And I grew up in the seventies, right,
(19:31):
So peace was in style in the seventies when I was.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
A kid, hippie era. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Vietnam kids were coming back from Vietnam and women's were
getting their rights, and there was bussing and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
We're years and years away from that, and now we're
on our march. You know. I just really.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
I love my job because I dispense happy and I
go to every corner of the world, military bases and
all kind of stuff and dispense happy.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
I got a great job. You know.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
It's not like I work at the uh at the
baggage claim in the airport.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
The first thing is what a my day bage? You
know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
When I show people, go, man, would you take a
picture with my grandmother?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Or you know, uh.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Uh this is this is uh, this woman's son just
got killed, you know, would you talk to her? You know,
and and those kind of things, you know, And I'm
just I'm just fortunate.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
I'm on full scholarship right now. My great great great
great grandmother and grandfather who took the lash, Yeah, they
took the lash and prayed.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Us look at it. Full scholarship from my grave year
and I like that.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
You know, That's what I love about Tommy because of
understands that how he just explained it about you know,
we have to be able to you know, to respect
everybody and understand. But he also understands that as black people,
and particularly black men, we have responsibility to our own community.
And that's what that's what fascinated me about him because
I know about how he was he came up, and
I know about being found by his white mother, you know,
(20:59):
and take the men and loving him and raising him
with a white.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Sister and a white brother.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
But at the same time, and even through that, he
never forgot that he still have a responsibility to his people.
And there's some unique challenges that black men facing this
country and black people in general, but we focus on
solving black man problems because if we can solve this problem,
then our whole community gonna benefit from that. And so Tommy,
this is one of the free brothers I know that
has a spotlight that that totally embrace what we do
(21:26):
because he understand that, you know that we're not Temmy
understands I think that, and you can correct me from wrong,
but I think he understands that just because you love
yourself don't mean you got to not like nobody else,
and so we and he never shot away.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I've been trying to get brothers a long time.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
I've been trying to contact athletes and entertain as black
men who have some influence and have some resources that
we can expand this program across the country.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
It's this life sports system around the country. It's hard
to get to those brothers, you.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
Know, and it's hard for them to sit down and listen.
That's why I appreciate Charlottage for giving me a chance
to come on and talk about this because Quarter and
a brother like Tommy who have never backed away from
it in spite of him.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
He said finish.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
Yeah, I have a question for you, Tommy, just backing
up with what you said. So, I know at one
point you had said, like, at one point in time,
you didn't even know that you were black, and that
comes from you know, having your adopted white mom. How
do you when going into the even working with a
program like Okay or like just anything that you're doing, Like,
how do you go into rooms and have conversations about
(22:29):
just being young in your upbringing and knowing it at
one point you didn't know that you were black, But
then you realize that, like that upbringing is a lot
different than like my brother, who like has always been
a black man. I mean you've always been a black
man too, But you know what I mean, Like just
it seems like you're You're a lot more optimistic from
what I'm gathering from you, and I think a lot
of people so like when we talk about a doctor Umar,
(22:49):
I don't think that he's not optimistic, but I think
his background is a lot different than yours. So how
do you even engage in those conversations because it's different
for somebody else who didn't have a white adopted mom.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, well, you know when it comes to when especially
African Americans, you know, our breadth is white, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
I when I when I when I found out that
I was black and my family was white, I started saying, well,
what what is black?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And so to me in my neighborhood, I grew up
in TC, so what was what was what was black?
To me was hey, man, you sell drugs, you go
to jail, you come back and you'd be like this
is how it was in there.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
You know what I mean? You you you you fight people.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You know, you you take stuff, and I saw that
in my neighborhood, and that was identified as like, hey,
that's a positive thing.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
I need to be down. That was the only examples
of blackness, you know what I mean. No, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
But but but in that neighborhood we had to band
together to protect ourselves from just what was happening in general.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So that was that was around when I was.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
About ten, because a lot of a lot of the
the city people moved to in the city, blacks moved
to my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
So it changed.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
You know, I was just a little eight year old,
little eight year old boy that had friends of all colors,
you know. But then when it came down to it,
there was a distinction, you know, and there was me
and my boys, you know, and I. And then then
through lessons that I that I learned just personally, like
my mother, she wasn't having it, you know. I say,
she looked under my bed and saw money and saw
(24:26):
all this other stuff and said.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
You got to get out. You were selling drugs. Yeah,
you got to get out the house, you know what
I mean. You remember when I was a very good
drug dealer.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Do you remember when you turned Yeah, I remember the day, well,
you know, I had been called you know.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Your nigga.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, and that was the first time grown i mean
a grown white man chased me home and teenage teenagers.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I'll be riding my bike they jump out of truck,
killed the nigga and all of this.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
So I went to my mother, was like, ooh, these
niggas right to your white mom.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, she said that's what people are color called people
your color.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
And that's when the color thing came up, you know,
And I said, well, what about the people that are
my color?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I mean, she said you're you're black? I said, nowhere brown.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So when I started investigating this, that was one of
the dimensions that I went into was that if I'm
like this, that makes me legit. But it's it's a
it's it's a it's a social stage.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
If you take a woman, uh raper, kick her in
the face, throw her in the dirt, you know, stomp her,
and she her family comes and gets her and washes
her off and and gets her back to normal. The
first thing she's going to want to do is put
on the dress, get her hair done, and get back
(25:52):
get back her her sanctity. You know what I mean
and and that's how societies are, That's how groups in
the groups are in the country.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
You know, we're coming here. We've been kicked down. The
Irish went.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Through it, you know, they were the dogs of the whole,
the bottom of the line, you know, they you can
see it through the movies.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Once upon a time in America, right right, that was
about when the Jews were out in.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
The street as gangsters.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Uh uh, the Godfather. You know, you see them out
in the street. They're they're they're doing their thing, you know,
in in Pittsburgh gangs, you know, the white gangs, the
gangs of New York.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Right. So, so so that's different to survive.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, it's a stage, you know, and and and and
you know, our our coming coming out for us was
was not after World War World War two.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
It was in the sixties. So there we are now
and we're in the stage that we're in.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
But at that stage, the government creative programs for the youth.
There was Roosevelt's program, the Work Program, and included taking
all of the youth and put them into camps.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
There's the y m c A.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There's the Boys Clubs of America. You know, there's there's
a four H club, and there's all these things that
were created to keep them out of the streets, you know,
and we had never benefit fitting from those programs. That's
one of the reasons why I gravitate towards this one,
because it's organized, it works.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I see, they're grown men. They're grown men, now, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
So, you know, if anybody in this country has just
been kind of bombarded by problem at the problem, at
the problem, at the problem at the problem, you know,
it's it's it's our community. But the good, the best
thing about it is is that we're forgiven. We're forgiving people.
We're loving people. You know, we're we're, we're we're.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And we got the tools to heal ourselves, to help us. Right. Yeah,
So it.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Turns into into the conversation turns into something simple for me.
You know, as long as this country is dealing with
the human race, we're gonna be racing. So it's gonna
be you know, the whites racing for of resources, in
the Mexicans racing, in Puerto Ricans racing.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
But the second that.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
This country becomes mankind, you know, man being kind, then
we're gonna get that change. But until then, it's gonna
be the human race. And it always it always has been.
But the wonderful thing I love about the human race
is this early early in our in our in in
early in our history, way back, when a band of
(28:45):
humans that was one color saw a band of humans that.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Was another color. The guys would say, the girls look
good over there.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Of that color, and the girls would say, the guys
look good over there that color.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And that's how we got colored dress.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Always a green on the other side, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
It looks it looks better because because they're over here
going those guys over there that are that color look good,
and they're going those girls over there that color look good.
That'sle we are all the colors in the in the
in the Bible, they call it be gatton, they call
it gatten.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, you know, he bet he begat this. He'd be
goat that. You know who's got on his shirt? Oh
this is cat? But that is cat. Okay, okay, let
me stand up, because this is for the algorithm. You know,
I wanted to bring the numbers up, you know what
I mean. Now, But but but that's.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Been a cool cool Speaking of comedy, let me talk
about comedy wife, you ain't talking about Gotty. You got
to show the Night at Sony Hall. Yeah, yes, one night,
only one night. And being in New York City, people,
are you coming back to New York? You're coming back
in New York. Yeah, I'm back.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I'm back.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
And I partly grew up here, you know, because my
cousins lived here and grew up here, and so New
York I've been, you know since forty second Street, the movies,
the whole nine yards, you know. But uh, I mean
it's things have been going really well in Cat Cat Cat.
The Cat Tour is like.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Family, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
We we we went around this country, did some big things.
He went on shanding, blew up, you know, never changed
the attitude. Yeah, I was, yeah, yeah, and it was.
It was a great tour, one of the best tours
I've been on, because everybody's like family there.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
What's the biggest misconception about Cat Williams?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
You think, hmm, that he's not compassionate, you know, And
that's the first thing I know about him, you know
what I mean, he teats everybody to say, me and him,
I have a lot of similar qualities, you know, treats
everybody the same, you know, at face value.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
He he loves when you call him directly. You know.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's one of the problems I've had in Hollywood, you know,
calling someone directly, you know, and really talking.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Or talking to them at a club or something. You know, Hey,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
He I'm fine. I'm over here, you know, and you're
over there. He not like us, He not like us,
you know. So you know, you know, you know, but
but you know, you know, I'm we are where we are,
and and and and we're in a really good place.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I'm one of the people that looks at us.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
At where we are. You know, Hey, the lowly slave
spent two terms in the White House, you know what
I mean. We wasn't good for nothing, right, okay, and
now we're now we're circling back, and we have one of.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Our sisters there too, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
So black women around the world are going, little black
girls are going, I can, I can, I can do this,
you know. And it's not as important here. It's important
out there in the in the global perception of who
we are, because like I said, we're not outside of humanity.
(32:08):
We're part of it, you know, And that influences people
when when when Obama won, I was in all these
different countries to go to you know, the cab driver.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
You you and Obama? Are you Obama? I like it
that guy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
And it's just you know, we're we're influencing this world
and in in a million different ways.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
You watch the.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Olympics, you know, you you you you see the surgeons
and the doctors that are that are doing their thing here.
You know, whatever we touch, you know, we can we
can turn it into gold, We can spin it into gold.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So this is this is, this is where we are,
the fifth the fifth dimension.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Back in the early seventies saying.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
You know, we're in the dawning of the age or
wherever the age of where we're in it now the
age of enlightenment, you know what I mean. And we're
part of that, that that whole enlightenment. And that's the
good thing about about us is that we're kind of
like a barometer for for mankind. Because if anybody can
(33:12):
go from where we are to where we are, then
that means anybody who sees that can go from where
they are to where they are.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
I think we're in a place too of like really
getting to teach people how to treat us, and that
that's important as well too.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
For sure they're saying, we got a wrap.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I do want to ask you one thing, comed What
were your thoughts when Oprah talked about how.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
She was weight shamed by a skin on a living color.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
If I were he, I would take it personal, really,
I mean, if you need, you're going to laugh, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Trying to laugh.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
You know, some might say, you know, you know, somebody,
this might be the skin of me, you know, and
tell me look like he's starving, and I'm I'm in
a little loin cloth and somebody handing me a naw later,
you know, and I'll be laughing.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I'll be laughing my asshof. Yeah, because I love to laugh.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And and and and that's the core of it, you
know what I mean and and and what we do
in comedy is we take something and we blow it
to its extreme.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
And that's what makes it funny. Now we're in it.
We're we're in a we're in a we're in a climate.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Of a mob of a mob. We're in a mob climate.
You know, mind me of Frankenstein. You know, Frankenstein wasn't
the monster it was a doctor. The doctor dug the
body up. He knew ego cut the brain, you know.
And and so the mob came to get the monster.
(34:49):
And the only reason why they hated the monster.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Is because he looked different. Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
One more question.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
So speaking of that Proud Family remake got a lot
of pushback for a couple of different reasons. One of
the episodes, there was a a male influencer who was
promoting like makeup and there was a gay couple on
the show. People were upset about that mob culture. People
don't like when things changed in general, but especially not
(35:18):
when you talk about sexuality and how people identify.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
What are your thoughts on.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
That today, Sugarbama, Hey, listen, who out here is perfect?
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Right?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
So if we go an eye for an eye, everybody blind,
you know, had had had we not stood up for
our rights, we lost lives over that, you know, Had
the Irish not stood up for their for their cause,
had the Chicanos not done that, the migrant workers that
were picking and doing that kind of stuff. You know,
(35:54):
I was raised in the kind of household where we
had to look at everything equally. And if we even
if we said a slur we get punished, you know,
like I was saying, you know, the mob went after
the monster, right because the monster looked different and was different.
But actually actually that that monster was really kind, was
(36:16):
really compassionate, was handing the little girl's flowers, and he
understood what was happening. I'm a part of this society
in every way.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
My brother was a gay male.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
He was white, you know, the opposite of my neighborhood
and what was black, what was black and masculine.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But he was my best friend.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
He was my best best friend, you know, and and
and could you understand how that.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Could have alienated me?
Speaker 3 (36:45):
And it did when I was young because I didn't
have a brother to help me out there in the
streets fight and stuff like that. But as I understood
more and understood what love was, you know that that
was one of my biggest advocates.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And this is all about purpose, individual purpose. What are
we going to do while we're here? Right? He went
down with his with his gay and lesbian friends in.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
In capital city, Seattle, went to the government, made the
government pass a law where AIDS was turned into a
legal disease so that people who had it can be ensured.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
You see, what I mean, So we are you know
what is our purpose?
Speaker 3 (37:33):
You know, our purpose is like the pandemic, to survive, right,
it's only when we're at the precipice, you know.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
A survival that we pulled together. But while wait till then,
let me.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Tell you I respect Tommy Davis's ability to answer the
question without answering the question, because you still be dropping,
like what did you do?
Speaker 1 (37:56):
This was the website again for the Okay program. Okay
program dot org.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
All right, yep, Okay program dot org.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And Tommy Davison will be at Sony Hall to night.
Is it sold out already or it's sold out?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Nah?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
No, No, it's still tickets. Okay, well, it's still some
tickets available in New York. You know they're gonna walk up.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
You know you can go check out Tommy Davison tonight
at Sony Hall. What time the show start, Tommy eight,
eight o'clock. Don't make it so stranger, man, it's been
too long between conversations, my guy.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
It's the Breakfast Club. Wake that ass up in the morning.
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