Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small Dunce help from this small Small dun Human areals
small and it's so funky.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome Smallos podcast. I'm excited about today's guest. Did you
know that Meta was found to have literally removed ninety
four percent of the posts that Israel asked them to
remove from pro Palestinian accounts or people that were posting
pro Palestinian content ninety four percent. They also, apparently allegedly
(00:41):
whatever said that in the past they always use human
review on determining posts to be removed, but when it
came to Palestinian content, they just let it ride with AI.
And I can speak to that myself because I had
posted an image remember that Chinese are from the Olympics,
Like they had a picture of her, but someone had
(01:04):
kind of like drawn the picture into a Palacitian flag
and I posted it and got flagged from Instagram saying
that I am posting false content, and then my whole
account got flagged as an account that is known for
posting false content. I said, wow, ah wow, Well on
(01:26):
the Instagrams, I came across someone who does not post
false content, and that is a Fenny aka at Facts
and Fire, and she really is facts and fire. I mean,
she's just a really fiery, bold sister who I really
fell in love with because I really saw a lot
of myself in her delivery, in her points of view,
(01:47):
and in her performance. I mean, I know that it's
not fake. So I don't mean performance like she's being phony,
but just in her not even just delivery, but in
how she shows up in the space.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Her charisma is unquestioned.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And we're gonna be talking about being young and talking
about it in the context of now what that means,
what does that look like? What does it mean to
be young, black and radical in twenty twenty five, And
much of this episode is meaning is letting her talk
because I want y'all to hear where she's coming from
and how she's coming with it, because I know a
lot of us who are probably like like forty and over,
(02:23):
we may not be really hearing from this sector of
the community as much as we should be. And I
know that there are folks that just be on the
internet's talking, But this is somebody who is also in
the streets. She's an organizer, she is an activist, She
is about about it right it rout it, And so
without really hearing where the young people are coming from.
(02:45):
We just, baby, we can't really be effective in continuing
to sturdy and fortify the bridges that they are going
to be walking over.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And we need to know.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
We need to know because we need to know where
they're headed so that we can meet them there. And
I don't think enough of understand that they are not
supposed to be meeting us.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
We're meeting them.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
The youth are the ones who are driving the ship.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Okay, they have the vigor.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
They also have the responsibility because they are the ones
who are inheriting the earth.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, So it only makes.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Sense that those of us who don't have that much
time as they do and who don't.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Have that mud entity as they do.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Do our work to support and that we do so
in ways that are actually supportive.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
So I'm really happy to be platforming her today, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Also really happy to be just honestly getting to speak
to somebody who as a young person whose voice I
really am just inspired by. Not all twenty eight year
olds are created equal, honey. Okay, so let's get into
it and let's talk to ms A Fennie. Listen close,
(04:04):
because she's gonna be saying a lot, and she talks
fast and we're not slowing it down.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Let's go very very pleased today because she's here.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
She's brilliant, she's massive. As my mother would say, she's
that girl. She's that girl. She's a girl. I died,
I came back to life, and she was that girl.
Y'all give it up for AKA at Facts on fire, Fenny.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Oh wow, this is surreal. It's excited to be here, lucky.
Why is it surreal because you're you?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
What do you mean you? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I think the cultural figures that are also willing to
like lead in radical thought that is so rare and
so like, you're you, Like this is surreal, this is
so cool.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I appreciate that, and I love that I get to
connect with the generations because now I'm old. Now I'm
the elder Like people be trying to call me auntie
and I'm like, chill, chill, but I'm forty three. I'll
be forty four probably by the time this airs, So
you know, I really think it is imperative that we
(05:27):
connect with the brilliance of voices and minds like yourself,
who are ahead of your time.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
How old do you think you were when you got here?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Honestly, I know exactly how old I was. Like, so
I started doing this when I was twenty three, So
two weeks into me organizing and doing activism when you.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Got to Earth? How old do you think you were
when you got to Earth?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Oh? When I got to Earth? Oh yeah. Sometimes I
feel like I don't know, Like maybe I was already
like thirty.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Ish, wow, really thirty yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Because I love inies music. I love seventies and sixties clothes.
Like a lot of my wardrobe is very like that
inspired like a here for being, this earth, wind and
fire like. I listened to a lot of Earth.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I listened to Reasons this morning, the reason Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I was at a restaurant in New York and I
was sitting there and I was like that man is
very familiar and I was just.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Looking and I was just looking and I was like,
it's that burday. I think that's burden.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
And so he caught me looking, and the person he
was eating with turned around and was like visibly annoyed
that I was looking.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Like it was a brother.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
He was like.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Ah, And so then I was just like I'll see
you birthday and he got up and like came over
and was like, hello, how are you?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
What is your name? Man? I said, my name is
Amanda Siel's big damn huge.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
And the other person is also a member of Throns
the Fire, Ralph Johnson. But he's the drummer, so he
You know, drummers in general just be saying. But yes,
even a mirror like drummers just be saying. But Verdin
was lovely.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
He was like, would you like to take a picture? Yes,
yes I would, and his edges was blade mm hmm.
I love that. Yes, I love that. So thirty, that's
impressive because you know you're an old toll, right I.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Feel old sometimes?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So yeah, definitely like you can be sometime a young
spirit like you have like a youthfulness about you. Of course, absolutely,
But I think sometimes I be thinking to myself, I'm like,
I don't know what I did in my last life,
but to be like an empathetic, marginalized person.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
In this lifetime, on this plane, it feels like a punishment.
And I'm trying to think, like, Okay, what was I
what was I on that last time? Because wow, I
don't want to repeat it again. I can't do this.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Maybe you were a white man.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Maybe you were not think about that.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Black and radical. Maybe you were old, white and.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Scraggly, and you know when you went back up, they
was like, let's give you something different.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
You're doing your next human experience. Run.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
We're gonna switch it up, and you're gonna have three
piercings in one nose. We gonna pierce this up. How
can you have three piercings in one nose? I don't
even understand.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
How are you there? But you're blowing the nose? Dude?
Are you blowing the nose?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes? I mean sometimes I like take this one out, okay,
like completely, because.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
I'm afraid to.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I just got this one in November, and I'm afraid
to take it out for any amount of time.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Well don't. Now, you have to wait until it doesn't
hurt anymore and then you can start taking it out.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right, it hurts forever, right, it doesn't hurt forever.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
It hurts for like I would say, like seven months solidly, Okay, Okay, because.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
It got caught on a towel.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Ooh, that hurts all the time, no matter what healed
or not.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Okay, because my soul left my body.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Prepare yourself.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Someone in my perion had toarn me.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
They were like, just be careful because if it gets
caught on the towel, it's death defying stunts. And it
did happen, and I was like, so we're gonna have
a real conversation. I've had such affinity for a fenny
from a distance that I just really am soaking up
our time together. But you were answering the question in
(09:33):
a different contexts. That is still a question I was
gonna ask you. So when I said, like, how old
were you when you got here? You started to talk
about like you and you got here. I guess in
your radicalism, go for it, let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah. So, like when I first started this and Trump
was still president twenty twenty, George Floyd Uprising, I was
very much a different person politically, Like I wanted to
be a policy advisor. I was a full time college student,
like doing political science, was gonna go to law school,
and I was gonna work on campaigns like Bernie Sanders
and AOC's campaigns, and I like, that's really what I
(10:05):
wanted to do. I wanted to create progressive policy. So
when I first came out and like I would speak
a lot. It would be like very reformists. It would
be very peace police, very much. The police just need
more mental health and more training, and they just they
need more care. They human beings. There are so many
fucking photos of me, like, I have to be honest
(10:26):
about it because there are so many photos of me
like fist bumping, fucking National Guards folks like I have
to be honest about it. Because nobody could cock my
tea but me, nobody. It took me like three weeks
of number one getting my ass v by the police.
That was happening a lot pretty frequently, okay. And also
(10:47):
I joined an organization called Freedom Fighters DC. They were
very much abolitionists. They were very radical. They were very like,
sit down, girl, read the book.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
What made you join their organization?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I think, to be honest, I think at first I
was just like I want somewhere to be and I
kept running into them and liked into different members of them,
and I think that they could see. They were like, sister,
you're almost there, You're so close, You're so close. Come
over here, sit down and read these books and shut
up right until you get it. And that's exactly what happened.
(11:16):
So I was with them for about two and a
half year until the organization dissolved, And I've done like
lots of other work, like nationally, so a lot of
work locally with police brutality stuff and whole different types
of things.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
What books did they give you to read that helps
you turn the corner?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think the first one definitely was Our Prisons Obsolete
by Angela Davis. I have my own thoughts about Angela Davis.
You know, I love her, but you're the only one
that's here and where everybody else is going ex out
in jail.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Not the women's Anna La Nikki Giovanni was still here.
A Fenny Shakor was still here. Elaine Brown was still here.
Eric No, that's a side of Shakur.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I finish.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Shakor is Tupac's mom, and she was also a panther
saw I was in Cuba, but we got Erica Hudgens.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
We got whereas her name alluding to me right now?
Oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed. This is the thing.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I think that part of the reason for that is
because this state still feels a way about killing women
who are very public. They'd rather just torture us they'd
rather just like diminish us, because I mean, Correna was
in the streets, Dan Nash was in the streets.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Family was in the streets. They was there.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
But I'm not going to also knock your conspiracy theory
because they all, you know, we don't know, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I don't swear for nobody. I don't swear for nobody
but me. Angela.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
She definitely opened my eyes to the prison abolition thing
because I really couldn't imagine a world without prisons. I
knew that the police didn't do much because in the
past when I had called the police like prior to
like all this stuff, they didn't do shit then. So
I like always had that idea that the police, as
far as like what could actually be helpful in situation,
(13:00):
they don't.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Sorry, I was still there. That was fine.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Sometimes you just really need to give it out, like
you need to get the thought out or to bother
you for the rest of the day. Like that happens
to me all the time, so I get it. But yeah,
and also Kwameterray, like I started to watch his speeches,
I read his autobiography sas biography, and honestly, a lot
of what shaped my political thought in the beginning was
(13:27):
Kwame Terray and listening to his like different lectures. I
don't know. It was just the way in which he
talked about the intersections of capitalism and like militarism and
like bringing into you know, and look in language. I
was very plain, and I'm a military veteran. I got
kicked out in after a year did him obstacle course
I wasn't supposed to do. Apparently get kicked out for that.
(13:48):
Didn't know, but wait, you.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Got kicked out for doing more than you were supposed
to do.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I got kicked out for doing an obstacle course I
was not supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
How'd you end up doing an obstacle course you're not
supposed to do?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
So Basically, one one my platoon sergeant told me that
I could not do the obsticle course because I was injured.
I was on profile, like that's what they call it
when you're injured. And then I was gonna sit it out.
And then a higher ranking officer or NCO told me
that I could do it and that I should do
(14:19):
it and told me to get my ass out there.
But he hated me. He was trying to set me up.
But I mean, I think that from that experience also
being in the military, and that was the army, knowing, yeah,
I was in the army.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Wait pause, time out, time out, time out.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Why were you in the army?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Oh? Because I was homeless and my mom was in
the army. My dad was in the army, like my
stepdad's in the army, Like we're a military family. My
sister was in the army. So like my mom was like,
I'm not gonna let you live with me again, and
you can't keep CouchSurfing and sleeping outside and shit.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So why you couldn't live with your mama again?
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Because me and my mom wasn't getting along.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Why he wasn't get along with your mama?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Let me change my judgmental tone because mama's be acting
up to why weren't you getting along with your mom?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Damn, we're getting deep. But it's fine. I'm pretty vulnerable.
So in high school I just went through a lot
of stuff like I got sexually assaulted and stuff like that,
and my mom didn't believe.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
End of story, effort, end of story, end of story.
You don't got to say anything else.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
So then it turned into like a bunch of other stuff,
and it kind of like, yeah, it progressed into different things,
mistrust all that stuff. So by the time I got
to graduating high school, like, she just didn't want me
there no more. And in some ways I get it.
In some ways I don't.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
She didn't want you there because she knew she was wrong,
and you were in her face every day as an
example of her being wrong, and that's why she didn't.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Want you there. But you deserved to be there because
home is home. Okay, but as somebody has gone through
this things, but yeah, that's why I go in the military.
But now you're making your own home and that's what
we end up having to do. Good.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I can't do my girl like that. We are locked back.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
She ever apologize for that.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
She apologized, but you know how like black mamas do,
Like she apologized, but it was never like an apology.
But my mom has a five year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Now I need her to do that. Though I need
her to do I'm gonna need her to do that.
I'm gonna need you to need her her own way.
I'm gonna need you to need her to do that.
And I'm telling you this as an old person because
it's still in the back of yr that he like,
we good, Okay, that sits with you.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
I mean, I think for me because I've done like
a lot of personal transformation work and like I've just
done a lot of healing work over the past like
three years and unpacked a lot of the ways. While yes,
my mom and my stepfather have a lot to do
with a lot, for sure, I became an adult and
I was carrying like really like toxic, fucked up things
(16:45):
as well. So I think, just based off of that
and the fact that like now I show up differently
than I used to, I hold a lot of grace
and space for my mom like in those ways, just
because I mean, she was getting abused, just like we
were getting abused. She was stressed up. It was like
we were stressed out, Like there was a lot of
stuff happening. So that culminated ultimately into me being a
very angry and destructive person overall self destructive and otherwise.
(17:10):
And when I by the time I joined the military,
I was, like I said, I was really just there
to be somewhere. And also I don't know, like I
kind of always knew that I wasn't going to work,
but I just didn't want to fail at something again.
But I think at this point now I realized what
the structure of the military was. Then that's why I
didn't want to join initially, but to sit in rooms
(17:31):
and classrooms and sit with people, and they're like, there
are only three places in the country where we fully
like inductrinize and institutionalize you, and that's prisons, mental institutions,
and the military, and everybody else is not an agree in,
you know, touching an agree in. And I'm looking at
things niggas like what the fuck are y'all talking about?
Like did you just hear what she said? Did you
(17:52):
just hear what she said? So, like I always knew
that the institution of the military was only too serve
like US empire. I just don't think that I had
like a full analysis of like what that meant until
I got tapped in with Kwame Terre with Family Hammer,
(18:12):
and also like Miriam Kaba and ANDREWA. Richie, because I
did a fellowship with Andrew Richie. So I don't know
a lot of people lended to the radical thought, and
they're still learning to the radical thought. I'm still learning
and growing and reading a lot of shit, But yeah,
that was a lot.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Well, all of that is relevant to being a young
black radical person. All of that, your experiences, your family,
how you think about the world, how you think about yourself,
all of that is empirical evidence that you were always
a warrior like and it's just part of the journey
(18:57):
is being able to figure out how to refine the
raid and pointing in the direction away from you, you know.
And for some that just takes longer than others, and
it takes community, and it may take you know, it
may take having a kid. You know, there's many different
factors that end up being catalysts. But to be a
(19:17):
black radical person is a choice that's not like a
life of ease, you know, Like no one says, like,
you know what, I'm trying to relax, let me be
a black radical. No One, those two things don't align
because you are always.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Not a real black, not a real black. There are
lots of lots of rest folks out here, lots of
resting folks out here.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Listen, ninety.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
This is why when I watch a video, I was like, oh,
look that's me. I was like, I'm watching your videos like,
oh look, Because the truth comes out of you. I
don't like when people say things like it's like no filter.
It's like, no, there's a real serious filter here. The
(20:09):
filter is I'm not gonna say bullshit. I'm not going
to protect you. Like our filters are different. They're filtered though,
like I'm gonna filter it through. The lies is going
to stay behind. The bullshit is going to stay behind.
The truth is going to get through, and so is
the passion. And you speak at a volume that I respect.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
And that I related play trombone as a kid, and
I remember, like I'll never forget because I was in
like band class. I played the cello before that, I
played trombone because I was in band class. And I'm like, ooh,
plicking up the little flute in the clarinet. And she said, actually,
my man teacher said, actually I have the perfect thing
for you. You have a lot of lunger.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Right right. We're gonna get you on that brass YEP.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So that's why it went deep for a little bit,
because this is deep and ultimately, particularly where we are facing,
I mean, you are.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Up, how old are you twenty eight?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
First of all, you're about to hit your sad in return,
So I hope you ready for that? Do you know
what that is?
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yeah? And I feel like I'm already in it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
You are, probably because twenty eight is it, So you know,
stay grounded, stay clear, or try your best too.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I'm getting made up for sure.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Good.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Something's chewing on me to be in a Saturn return
at the time that the nation is in a Saturn
return and the world.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
So that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So I'm gonna give you my phone number because that's nuts.
I don't even know how to and doing all that
while social media exists just feels terrible. So if you
think you crazy, it's because shit is crazy, like being
in a Saturn return is a crazy time. But I
was gonna say that your generation is going to be
(22:01):
the elders for the leaders of the young generation that
I think is going to actually turn shit over.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
You're gonna be.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The means, and I'm gonna be in Grenada like do
your thing. I'll be on a hologram. We won't we'll
be past FaceTime. I'll be a hologram like Princess Leia
and I'll be like me American. Come, I need to
mango because I'll be out of here by then.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Oh my goodness, And you know what, I really hope
that and like this is no shade, but I really
hope that we are better elders than the past generation
has been to the next generation, because I mean, girls,
they're not even.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Good oulders to each other. These elders ain't even good
elders to each other.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I'm like, why y'all be hating on me so much?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Aga is mean? Niggas mean so mean.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So there's so like actual mean girls, And I'm like,
oh my god, why ya like this way? I like this?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
My homegirl sent me a voice note and all I
said was I ran into so and so.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Why she liked that? Why she liked that?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Why she liked that? No, why is she like that?
That was the voice note.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I really genuinely I believe Number one, Like, in a
movement context, I think a lot of I think a
lot of people, Yeah, let me speak generally. I think
a lot of people are stuck in a state of shock,
Like they really believe that the society and they've been
in shock since twenty twenty. The society that they believe
is coming back, that was pre twenty twenty, pre COVID,
(23:35):
that's never returning. And I don't think that a lot
of our elders are really deeping that well do you.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Consider elder I'm just contextualized, like who do you consider
to be elders like age wise?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
To be honest with you, like when I talk about
my movement, elders, I'm talking about like fifty and up,
like maybe somewhat in the sixties. Like the people that
are still outside with us, like mentoring us, talking to us, Like,
so they're between their fifties, their sixties, some of them
are in their seventies. That's what I mean by others.
I think that Gen X, what's that Generation X?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
We're millennials.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, y'all right there, witty, y'all right there, We're so close,
so close, so close. I feel like it's just going
to take one more like world ending event for the
older millennials to be like, all right, fuck it.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Well, you know what the issue with the older milens
is is that they we were the real taste of
money for real in blackness, in black culture, Like our
generation was twenty when vibe popped off and the Source
popped off and hip hop popped off, like we saw
(24:40):
black culture get truly commodified on a global major level
where black people were a part of it, and so
some of them, a majority of them believed the lie
that that was advancement. And then Obama got elected and
they was like, well, and as much as they would
love to tell you, they don't believe in a post
(25:02):
racial America. And they didn't think Obama solved everything. They
absolutely thought he solved something, and that itself was the
lie that we were telling ourselves. So just like you
have the pictures of you fitzmumping National Guards girl, I
got the pictures of me and Obama shirts.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I got them. I was there at the NAG. I
was on the mall with the flag.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I remember Obama's inauguration because I was in sixth grade
band class. I was really locked into that band, really
locked in We're ensemble and all that second chair AnyWho, Hayes,
I loved it. But yeah, like I remember watching Barack
Obama get inaugurated, and you know, and I think that
(25:45):
that's like the error that a lot of our movement
odors and a lot of our folks are stuck in.
Like people genuinely believe that we are in a society
where a black man can be elected on a hope
and change message. We just watched with Kamala Harris that
her hope and change message was we need more guns,
we need less trans people. Girls.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
We're gonna be the most fleaful army in ma'am.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Like that was Kamala Harris's cold campaign rockets in America, Oh,
I have gun, you know I'm talking. And I think
that that's the same approach that a lot of our
elders are taking. Where it's like, I am used to
an America where we could at least be cordial, we
could disagree, But I have like semi conservative black friends
(26:32):
and like blah blah blah, Like a lot of black
people themselves are conservative. Seventy percent of black people live
in the Bible Belt, that is the South, seventy percent
of us live down there. And those conservative values on
the land that our ancestors was enslaved in for real,
for real.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
So the conservatism is built so strongly into the ways
that they even engage with the idea that America is America.
Band yes, but that America is capable of the genocide,
that America is capable of doing all these things in
our name with our tax dollars, and not only that,
(27:08):
but we are capable of being complicit in it. We
are capable of being so comfortable that we are willing
to sacrifice all of the humanity, wor ruling, to sacrifice
all the resources, ruling, to sacrifice all the waterways, just
to say that we are American, just to say that
we are protected by our American identities in our American passports.
And a lot of us are about to very quickly
(27:29):
find out because Trump said what homegrowns are next, what
we're about to quickly find out is that this next
phase of American fascism, a lot of this violence is
going to be insulated within our borders. America's been fucking
up the global South. They've been on that, they've been
on that there's too much to send within the borders.
Now now the Trump administration, they're seeing there are too
(27:50):
many of us that have talked negatively about this administration.
That's the line, y'all. It's not immigrants. It's not if
you're pro Palestine now, if you're undocumented. The line is
if you have spoken negatively about this administration, if you
do not agree with their pro America, white supremacist and
are co capitalist agenda, then you are not pro America,
(28:14):
and so because of that, you are an enemy of
the state and they're able to treat you as such.
Our elders are disconnected from that reality because for some reason,
y'all are clinging on to the hope that the courts
will save you. Ma'am, you're clinging on to the hope
that the same march and singing, clapping that we've been
doing for generations. I love a good parade, now, don't
(28:35):
get me wrong. We love a good chance, but that
is not gonna get us free. And so many of
y'all think that one election, one election is what got
us here, because you're not paying attention to all of
the little steps that fascism took before we got to
full belong authoritarianism. We've been here, we've been slowly walking here,
(28:57):
and now it is a full sprint and you don't
know what to do. That's the part that is frustrating
and confusing to me with our elders is because the
civil rights movement, y'all saw loves of violence. Y'all saw
those things like y'all grandparents are still here, those people
ruby bridges are still around. Even some of the movements
that were happening then are more radical than what y'all
(29:18):
are willing to do right now, y'all are not y'all ancestors.
That is correct, That is very very very correct. But
sitting and resting and hoping and praying that the fascism
will just pass you because you're pro America enough and
you support the agenda just enough, and you hate immigrants
just enough. That's not gonna cut it. It's not going
(29:38):
to cut it. So yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Over here with the proud mama face.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Just tell them, tell them they mad when I say it,
So you tell them everything you just said. You know,
it's beautiful to hear you speak this way and do
so with such clarity, because I feel like a lot
(30:09):
of times, even when the heart is there, there's a
lack of knowledge, or there may be a lack of
facts to be able to really get the message through
and cut to the chase.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
And that's where folks.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Get hung up on, and then they can try to
undermine the validity of the message by like, oh, well,
you know, it's like if you read somebody and then
you actually use the wrong version of there, and there.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
They're like, if you're gonna actually and this relax, relax, relax.
I was typing fast.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I ain't supposed to be speaking this language, so don't
don't check me on shit.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
This isn't my native tongue.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
So in this mindset, where is your community these days?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
So? I mean, I think that that's the thing that
is kind of interesting about DC, right because there is
a lot of black radical Are you from DC that
live here? No, I'm not from DC. I just live here.
I was born in Germany, Kansas military anyway, you know. Yeah. So,
and also I do some national organizing, so I get
(31:16):
into like a lot of national convenience spaces with people
that are like minded, and we talk about and strategize
on how we can continue to expand and build shared
political thought with other black people. And we found that
a lot of that work exists in like the healing space.
I work with a national organization called Mass Liberation Network.
I'm a national trainer with them, and through their programs,
(31:39):
I've been able to go on like a sematic journey
in the sematic art because of their programs. I'm eighteen
months Ober. Like, there are just so many different things.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Congratulations, but it's a space that like really centers I
mean right now, Wow, it feels like I want to drink.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Okay, what do you do to not?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
If I'm being honest with you. To be honest with you,
I think that I had a very long standing and
unhealthy relationship with alcohol. My stepfather really popped off my
alcoholism at like fourteen years old, Like that was the
way that we bonded. Wow, is like just sitting on
the couch and drinking a lot. Yeah, I know, right,
(32:21):
So I drank for most of my teenage years, all
of them really except for thirteen. Yeah, so pretty much
all of them, and then a majority of my adulthood
that I've lived so far, I was drinking a lot.
And I was, like I said, when you're harmful and
self destructive and you're destructive in other ways and you
(32:42):
don't cope with your emotions and you don't cope with
the things that have happened with you and the traumas
and stuff like that, you don't have the space of
the resource to do that either. It comes out in
the way that it wants to. And I've just I
feel like at this point I stay sober, not necessarily
for me, but I stay sober for the people that
are around me. I'm a community with it's because like, wow,
I've done some thanks for sure that I'm not sure
(33:05):
people should have forgiven me for that they did. And
so I think that my way of like being accountable
to them and being accountable to like my healing journey
is not drinking because I know that I'm harmful when
i'm when I get like that, and so that's what
keeps me from drinking.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Beautiful.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
If it was a selfish decision, it would be right.
It's just like popping bottles express on martinis.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Espresso martinis. That was the one. I would not beg
you for express on martini. That's so specific. I don't
drink either. I don't drink, I don't smoke, do nothing.
I'm raw dog in life. Well now I'm not row
dogg in life because I take lexapro. But at the
time of October seventh, I was raw dog in life
(33:50):
and my I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it.
Four months later, I got a psychiatrist and was like,
give me something, give me something, because I'm over here.
I said, ma'am, I can't. I created ibs in my body.
I just was like, I'm not gonna be stressed no more.
That's what I've decided. My body was like, oh for real,
(34:12):
So you're not gonna poop.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
For two weeks and then when you do, it's gonna
kill you.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Like just the brain, the body, all the things is
really a doozy. But I commend you, Sis, I commend you,
stay the course. Stay the course. Do you have an
AA that you go to?
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Honestly, mass clib is kind of like my AA because
they use like a similar kind of program and engagement.
It's called maxlib Mass Liberation. Oh yes, yes, yes, And
so one of the co founders of the organization, he's
also like a recovering alcoholic who went through AA. So
a lot of like the healing programming is like very
much like built around that. And I think that the
(34:53):
really important part about that space is it's not necessarily
about self care or taking care of you, but it's
about healing in the way that our ancestors did healing collectively,
moving through conflict collectively, moving through trauma collectively. And we've
been able to expand the number and the different types
(35:14):
of black people that we're able to reach through actually
healing the parts of ourselves that have been poisoned and
indoctrinated by white supremacy. So much of our trauma, and
so much of the trauma that comes up from like
our parents, are the things that we're passing down generation
to generation. That generational trauma started with a slave master, yep.
And we've been just passing. We've been passing that, saying
(35:34):
white cermaces bullshit down over and over again. That disconnection
from yourself, from your body. That's the generational trauma of
knowing that our bodies have never in this country, have
never belonged to us. Even now our labor technically does
not belong to us. And to be able to reclaim
like some of that preclaim some of that autonomy, and
(35:56):
to heal some of those parts of you, it helps
you actually open up to like the imagination. And I
think so much of what is radical and what is
I don't know, like quote unquote like so left and
so out there is just radical imagination. It's just being
able to see beyond and see past the society that
we live in, YEP. And in order to do that,
(36:17):
there is some healing that needs to happen, because we
can't carry these same white Spriss traditions if America, if
the Empire falls tomorrow, we're going to rebuild the same shit.
We're gonna rebuild America two point zero, but make it black.
It's still gonna be oppressive, it's still going to be
ungrounded and uncentered. We're still gonna treat lower class people
like they're less than yes, because y'all get these black
(36:38):
owned businesses, y'all don't be paying y'all workers, right, what
is that white supremacy culture? So like we're going to
rebuild this thing back over again. So in order to
access our radical imagination, in order to access that self actualization,
that collective actualization that we need to get to. There
is a little bit of healing work that we need
to do. But it's not just on an individualized basis.
(36:59):
We need to start building healing community. Yes, And so
that's why I really love mass Live. And honestly, as
we talk about and we think through, we theorize about
what the next iteration of society looks like, we really
need to not only interrogate what we're against, but we
need to start talking to people about what we're for, Like,
what are you actually willing to build?
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yes? You know, yes, what do you actually believe in.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Like when people are talking about with the best of intentions,
they're like, you know, we need to be out here fighting,
and I'm like, what are you fighting for? Like, what
are you fighting for? Are you fighting for things to
go back to how they were? Because in your mind,
I think that's actually what you're fighting for. You may
not really admit that, but you have to be willing
(37:47):
to dissect that, because if you're still on the Internet saying, see,
they got what they voted for, then you actually are
fighting for where we were. Right if you're still on
the internet responding to the bs that's happening with Kamala
memes and Kamla GIFs, you're cool with things being how
they were before and it's worse now, But that also
(38:10):
wasn't great. That also wasn't it. And a lot of
us are still not fully there yet. Like you said,
it's like we almost we almost there, but we're not
fully at the point where we're willing to admit that
we are complicit. We're complicit in all of this, and
the blacks, the blacks, we don't want to admit it.
(38:35):
We don't want to admit that. You can be a
victim and a villain at the same damn time. All
of us are victims and villains at the same damn time.
You just laid out for us, and that in your
personal experience you have been a villain and a victim
at the same damn time. So that's not like a
sign of necessarily weakness or of a lesser value or
a lack of purity, But it is when you're able
(38:58):
to acknowledge it, a sign of clarity and strength that
you can actually apply your rage to in a refined
way that can actually like build and create a better
space and world for you.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
And because we are the world, we are the ah,
the children.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And so here's a question for you, because I've been
really thinking about this a lot lately. So I believe,
and I want to get your young black radical opinion
on this. I believe that what we are in the
midst of is the next expansion of white supremacy via Zionists.
There has been an expansion of white supremacy in the past,
to extend it to the Italians, to extend it to
the Irish. First it was to extend it to white women,
(39:47):
and so now they're extending it through to Zionists. Now
Cubans thought it was going to be them, it didn't happen.
The Asians thought it was going to be dam it
didn't happen. The Indians was like, is it us?
Speaker 3 (39:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
But the Zionists have acted actively taken space in the
white supremacist access as well as are taking space. It's
like they've taken the identity of what black people really
should have been getting in terms of how the response
to racism should have been. Is what they're getting for
(40:17):
anti semitism as they commit anti semitism against their fellow
Jewish people. So my theory is that this isn't a
last stand for just America. This is the last stand
for claiming Black American identity because the effort that is
happening surreptitiously only for now, because I don't know, I mean,
it's not going to be much longer below the radar,
(40:39):
But there is a very concerted effort at erasure that
is not simply about just making white people look good,
but it's about making Black people disappear as an entity,
as an existence, as an identity that deserves protection, that
deserves acknowledgment, etc. And I feel like there are so
many black people who are fine with that as long
as they're getting access to capitalism.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Your thoughts, Yeah, I think that what black people need
to realize is the same ideology that led us to
this point, is the same ideology that is fueling your
desire for black capitalism. It's the same thing. It's rooted
in the same shit. Barack Obama showed us that actually
(41:22):
this is a Barack Obama showed us that you can
have a black face of the empire, but it is
still going to operate as the empire always has. Barack
Obama dropped bombs on some Walia. He wasn't dropping bombs
on Ukraine. He wasn't dropping bombs on France, he wasn't
dropping bombs on Belgium. But he did drop bombs on Somalia.
He did drop bombs on Syria. He did drom Strike
(41:43):
all up and down the global South. He did participating
coups in South America.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
He did do that.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
And all of those things are to serve what white supremacy.
And you said something earlier about people wanting that society back,
They want that old thing back. Said old that old
thing is what seated the ground for this thing to exist. Correct,
If we're being so honest. Let's crank it all the
way back Hitler's Germany. Hitler looked at the racial castism
(42:11):
in America. He said, Oh yeah, I feel what ch'a
got going over there. I kind of liked that for real.
He quoted Henry Ford in mindcom He looked at our
racial caltism. He was actually like, whoa, whoa, whoah, y'all
actually want a little bit, Maybe won't go that far.
This country has always has always been this brutal. The
difference now is this country will switched to being a
(42:34):
global empire for a while after World War Two, when
Britain could no longer be the mantle of white supremacy,
it was passed on to America. So America had to
assert its dominance outside of its borders. And in order
to do that, they had to increase the patriotism. They
had to make sure that you felt as black and
proud and as American as you could, so you can
continue to support this agenda. They have been seating the
(42:57):
ground for this ever since then, probably even before then,
because we are living in a white man's wildest dreams.
You want to talk about self actualization, you want to
talk about what it looks like when you can live
in your wildest imagination. This is a white man's wildest
imagination that we are currently living in. So the society
(43:18):
that we lived in in the nineteen sixties is a
white man's imagination. In society we lived in in two
thousand during white two k's white man's imagination. Barack Obama's
presidency as much as the Bible Belt and them racists
as white folks hate him, that's what their programmed, the
conditioned to do. He's still carried out a white man's
(43:39):
imagination of what an American agenda looks like. There was
no reparations, no reparations for black people, no reparations on
your arm, okay, no housing vouches on your arm, no
letout of y'all pipes like be.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
For real, be for real.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
So when you talk about, oh well, if I just
invest in the America system, if I just invest in
a sort of black capitalism, if I invest in a
black patriotism, then hopefully maybe one day that it will
be me. I hate to break it to y'all, but
this entire society, this entire thing, is predicated on the
(44:17):
fact that they hate you. The expansion of white supremacy,
the expansion of whiteness as a socio political system, and
the contraction of whiteness and the socio political system. It
is all to be antithetical to blackness, to be opposite
of you. And I say that to say, no matter
how hard you try, you might be scooped up with
(44:38):
your Haitian neighbor. When they get to the port Nations.
They talked about them a lot there and in the election.
Don't forget that when they start scooping up American citizens
that are black, because you happen to live in a
city that has a lot of black immigrants in it,
you will realize in that moment that your black capitalism,
your black investment, your black patriotism, your black American passport
don't mean nothing, mean anything. We cannot continue to invest
(45:03):
in a system that was built on the destruction and
the subjugation of us. We will never ever ever get
to the mountaintop in this system. It's just not going
to happen.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Okay, But you didn't answer my question. All of that
was really good, though, that was really good.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
My question is, so the reason I'm talking about erasure
is because we're seeing the efforts to erase. First there
was affirmative action, then there was DEI. Then there is okay,
we're gonna erase black history, right, We're gonna come up
with this CRT thing, make it the boogeyman, erase it.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Then it became all.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Right, like if you look at Tennessee, which I consider
Tennessee and Texas to be ground zero of what they
want the entire country to actually be.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
So Tennessee politics, Tennessee just passed.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
An anti DEI bill where they did not allow any
debate on the bill.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
So they literally pushed it through.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
They laughed about it while they pushed it through, and
then all the black Tennessee state representatives went and talked
about how annoyed they were about it.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
After Now, Justin Pearson, I.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Will tell you, was in there like this, this is ricius,
this risis, which I appreciate because Justin be looking like
he not gonna fight.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
But then he'd be like you RSIs, and they were like.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Mister Pears.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Pear said, you're on the floor, you're on the Did
you hear what he said? Did you where he's at?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Now?
Speaker 1 (46:24):
I don't know where Jones was because I didn't see
a linen suit, but there's a but lid.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
No, Pearson is giving you dashiki and a blazer with
an afro. Jones is giving you a ponytail and a
linen suit.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I had a mixed up
in my brain.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Yes, Jones is giving you a ponytail in a suit.
Pearson's giving you dashiki in an afro, but with a
blazer because they would not let him wear the dashiki.
So he said, fine, I'll just wear the dashiki and
a tie and a blazer. I'm sure he had to
have the dashiki Taylor to be able to fit in there,
but he said, I'm gonna do it though, I'm gonna
do it.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
So what I'm saying though, is so there's a racier there.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Then.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Of course, Trump just passed an executive order called the
Restore Sanity and Truth to American History Executive Order where
he is now taking over the Smithsonian so that includes
a National African American History Museum of Culture. And he
is also in the executive order says we are going
(47:21):
to be addressing exhibits that have actively worked to frame
American history as racist, misogynist, and irreparable. And the example
he gives is, for instance, at the Smithsonian Museum of Art.
I believe there's an exhibit that talks about race, and
we are going to be correcting points of view like
(47:43):
this one which says race is a social construct and
not biological. So he is literally saying in this executive
order that race is biological, which we all know is
not the case. What I'm trying to say is that
this idea that we are Black Americans is being controlled
(48:03):
by people who need us to be the antithesis for them, right,
Like what you were saying, if I understand what you
were saying, is like their whole existence is predicated on
having us to hate and having others to hate, right,
and they will create other others. I mean, you see
this one over here is now talking about autistic people, Okay,
(48:24):
and we got to get rid of them too, because
he gonna solve it in seven months. He gonna solve autism.
Ain't that amazing? And so my concern is that the
identity of being black American is so deeply entrenched in
capitalism at this point that we don't even realize that
we're going to have to fight for our literal identity
(48:46):
while also fighting fascism. And I just wonder if, as
a young person, do you even see that as a concern.
Do you feel like your peers are grounded in their blackness?
Do they care about their blackness like or is it
just like we're all one. I'm curious because I feel
sometimes very siloed in who I'm around.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
And we're all like beat and back yard.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
But it's like, you know, but then you'll see on
the tiktoks that they'd be like, this is my white husband,
this is my white boyfriend, and he says nigger, and
you're like.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Ah's the norm. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So I like, dose being black matter to you?
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, being black matters to me very bad, right, But
I don't see myself as a black American. I've grown
up here my entire life. I was raised in black culture.
I was raised a lot in the South, which I
would say is the bashing of Black American culture. That's
gotta be honest about it. And I think for me,
I don't think it makes any sense to claim the
(49:44):
identity of a country that does not claim us. The
erasure of black history, the black history that they was
teaching us to begin with, was already watered down. It
was already altered, like, they leave out so much about
the brutality of childle slavery. They downplay the destruction that
they caused right after reconstruction, They downplay the brutality of
(50:05):
Jim Crow, like the history that we were being taught
initially was not that great. Okay, if we are relying
on our identities to be linked to American institutions who
have already seeked to dilute and dismiss and brutalize our
Black identities and pretend like our contributions actually do not matter,
(50:29):
when we all know, we all know that there would
be no America without black labor and Native American blood. Okay,
there would be no this. We have to focus on
creating our own institutions, our own institutions, and if they
are our own institutions, if they truly center blackness, they
cannot be American because America was built as a white
(50:51):
supremacist country. It was built as a safe haven for
Protestant white people that wanted to come and escape their
own quote unquote religious persecution.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Where they was at.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
This was never for the veneration of black people. We
were never meant to be citizens, We were never meant
to be equal. I just genuinely believe that if we're
talking about reclaiming our black identity, if we're talking about
fighting fascism, we have to talk about building alternative systems
that actually serve black people. We have to talk about
what it looks like to divorce ourselves from the American identity,
(51:24):
because no matter how we want to chop it up
or not, America's global standing, the value of the dollar
is falling. Our soft power with our allies is waning,
but's starting to look very dangerous for our allies to
be allied with us, like we've already been on some
foolishness with them to begin with. So the mistrust that
(51:45):
so many people have for this country on the outside
of our borders is a problem for us. The mistrust
that is being bredded within this country between black people,
white people, whoever immigrants. It's like a mixture of Nazi
Germany and Civil War times in here. This thing, whatever
society we thought we were going to be living in
(52:05):
or maintaining, is over. It is over. And so what
how are we like building things that actually serve black
people that is not directly attached to an American identity.
That doesn't mean that we don't have to tell our
own stories and contributions of what we did on this land.
That doesn't mean that we don't have to venerate our
ancestors that lived here, died here, fought here, doesn't mean
(52:26):
any of that. But the American experiment is ending, block
will exists in the future. So what is next for us?
How are we going to make sure that we have
what we need to survive this next phase? And that
does not exist in an American identity, it just does
it not? To me?
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Well, what I would say is that there is the
United States of America, and then there is America, and
so there is what it is to be in this country,
the United States. But if we're just calling, I think
that the concept of the country as it exists on
the continent of North America does include us in various forms.
(53:06):
That isn't necessarily just attached to institutionalization and isn't just
attached to the government concept of the United States. So
it's like if we look at the first nations, you know,
they would say like, well, we are American, We've been here,
we started here, and we connect to this land, like
this is our land. For black people who were taken
(53:27):
and brought here within the context of the now, we
are indigenous to this land, the actual existence of Black
Americans who were born within this piece of land. I mean,
there's been many names, right, I mean, I'm saying Black
Americans as just a generic name. But we were Negroes,
We was African Americans, which is my least favorite. We
(53:49):
are a people that is a unique, particular type of people.
We had to form an existence and ethnicity, a culture
within a framework that no one else did, within a
very part existence that I do think holds value that
is constantly divided, conquered, and dissolved. In order to divide, conqueror,
and dissolve our ability to effectively resist against the same
(54:11):
framework and infrastructure that essentially we had to be formed
in spite of.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
So, I think as.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Much as it is imperative to understand that we are
not where we were and we are going forward, I
do think that at the root, there's that root thing.
I do think at the root of it, it's what
is connecting us to even be in that fight together.
Because that's what I get frustrated about more than anything
when I'm watching where We're going, is that I feel
like there isn't anything cohesively really connecting us, because the
(54:38):
concept of even the United States is not like when
you look in other nations. You look at Korea, they're like,
where Korean? We are South Korean, and that is enough
to connect them. Right, you look in other places, they're like,
we're Muslim, we are Muslim.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
That is enough to connect them.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Here, to your very valid points, the Unit States has
always been a piece of shit, trash place. There is
no reason to connect to that as like the force
that we're fighting for. So I'm like, well, then where
are we connected to. We're not connected to a spiritual body.
The church is connected to the dollar now, so we're
(55:17):
not connected to that. So then we, in my opinion,
have to be the spiritual bodies. And just like you said,
we are carrying all of this with us from these
past generations. We are the soil we have had to
carry within us.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
This vision of something better.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
And I don't think it has to be limited to
only existing here. But I do think that there is
a great shortsightedness when we don't acknowledge that there is
an impetus and a catalyst that was born here of
a particular kind of people that have existed and given
to the world in a particular kind of way that
no other group of people has given.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
And I'm worried.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
That that is not being acknowledged enough by us, because
these other motherfuckers do see it, and they do use it,
and they use it against us. And the amount of
effort that the Zionists have put into trying to bring
Black Americans to their cause is not by accident. So
essentially they decided, well, instead of trying to shut black
(56:16):
people out, let's try and bring them in. And that's
how we get all these folks in the establishment, right, Like,
that's how we start getting all these legislators and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
That's how I sit here and watch a.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Black army general maybe general, sit there and speak shit
on Ibrahim Troy's name in Burkina Faso, talking about, oh,
he's taking money, and I'm like, really, that's how we
sit here and watch Barbara Johnson raise her hand to
keep constantly vetoing Palestine ceasefires at the UN like, they
(56:44):
just started using us against us, they just started weaponizing
us against us.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
So that's where my head is at when.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
I'm seeing certain things taking place that are particularly around
black people because I'm always trying to figure out how
we can more effectively fight for each other. And then
I started realizing, I don't think enough of us even
understand what each other is and the value of what
it means to be us. And that's what the whole
Black Power movement was about. This is what we are,
this is where we come from, where we're about. So
(57:12):
that's something that's deeply concerning to me that I feel like,
is that I'm going to be called to work with
in these next I mean I say years, but maybe
it could be weeks. We don't know, we don't know,
we don't know. But I want to get your response
in our special Patreon segment. So we're going to head
on over to Patreons. So all of my sales squad
coming over here. What a Fenny's response is going to be?
Speaker 1 (57:32):
That's the fire.
Speaker 3 (57:40):
The last.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
So tell me this young blood, what is a day
in the life of a young black radical?
Speaker 3 (57:51):
Honestly? So, I work at a nonprofit, so on like
on a day to day basis, I'm doing leadership developed
with people that are in the community, like basically skill sharing,
like hard skills for organizing how to do advocacy. I
also I create both.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Projects, like how does that teaching? How is it actually applied?
Like do you go to the community in like canvas,
Like what does it look like?
Speaker 3 (58:17):
So within my organization, we have in a program called
the Constituent Leadership Program where it's like an eleven month
program and I'm like the lead facilitator on it because,
like I said, like I'm a national trainer, so I
have I went to a training program. I trained like
a week long training with like forty formally incarcerated people.
So now with the Constituent Leadership Program, it's like bi
(58:38):
weekly sessions. Some are in person, some are like hybrid.
There's like twenty five folks, and like we're building shared
political analysis number one, because I can teach you like
what it means to organize, I can teach you what
building power means. I can teach you what the levels
of power are and how the levels of power show
up in our society. But if you don't have the
political analysis to accompany that, you're not going to be
(59:01):
able to like really do anything with that information. So
not only are we giving those people like those kind
of skills, we're also giving them the opportunity to like
apply it practically, whether that's like planning actions, whether that
is meeting with elected officials, and like they actually be
able to conduct the meetings, whether that is shit co
facilitating a session with me, Like this is the curriculum
(59:21):
we're teaching today, Like do you want to like hold
some of this with me and like be a part
of that. And Also I work with a popular education model,
so a lot of the I don't do a lot
of like one directional training. It's just not how I
was trained. So like a lot of it is like
generation from the room, connecting, like building political analysis through
people shared life experiences.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
Lovely. Yeah, so yeah, that's dope.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
Okay, So the reason why I'm asking this question is
because I know that a lot of people feel like
organizing an activism work does not involve rest or enjoying
things or like I know that people think that, and
so that's why I'm like, what does the day in
the life look like?
Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Or maybe a week in the life.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Oh, I just like a regular Oh I thought you
were asking me about workshit. To be honest with you,
a girl loves to party and shake her ass. Now,
all right, I love a good concert. I'm gonna be
at the Kudricklomar concert. You're gonna catch me at the
keem Ali concert in DC. Okay, okay, Like I love
love live music because you know, I played in the band,
so like, I just I love music in general. I
(01:00:27):
dance on my balcony like nobody's watching. I read a
lot of books. I read a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Are you a fast reader?
Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
I am a fast reader, but also like I have
language processing issues, So like I'll read something and I'm like, okay,
well let me run that back so I can read pretty.
I feel like I read fast, but what slows me
down is back and I'm like, well, let me read
that one more time. Yeah, just to make sure that
I actually got everything.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
I'll be reading and like I'll realize, I don't know
what that page see, because I started thinking about dolphins
and something on this page made me think about dolphins,
and I kept reading and then I got to the
end and I'm like, I'm here, but I don't know
what none of this is. But I was thinking about dolphins.
They's so dope. Remember that last time you had seen
(01:01:14):
dolphins and laguna? Yeah, then I'm lying, Equality of Nations,
what what is the quality of nations?
Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Continue?
Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Sorry, no, I'm just but I just would have tapped
into something that you say, like the anti joy, Like
you can't enjoy nothing, you can't do nothing, you can't
you can't laugh, you can't smile. It's real strict over here.
Everybody that keeps saying that does not actually organize for.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Because that, to me, my favorite part of the movie
Selma that I thought was probably you know, the most
authentic was showing them cut up. Was showing Martin and
his squad cutting up, because that is required. Bodies are
on the line, there's gotten to be some kinda gotta laugh.
Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
And something we say all the time in like the
organizing space is that like power is built at the
speed of relationships, and our relationships are built in the
speed of trust. So if you are.
Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
In our relationships are built at the ships are built
at the.
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Speed of traveling. And so if you are not actually
in relationship with your folks, if you're not laughing, dancing, giggling, crime,
grieving with your folks, you're not really in relationship. And
you're not like any type of radical movement, radical thought
that you might have. It's just all going to stay
in theory because you're not building real relationships or building real
power toward that happening. So I do a lot of
(01:02:35):
outside organizing outside of just my mortgage job, but that
requires me to be in relationship with folks in like
a real way, you know what I'm saying, Like I
have to be at the nonprofit with them, folks, I
have to show up and talk to y'all every day.
But the people that I'm building, like nationally, with the
people that I'm building with locally, and like the people
that I'm doing training with and like co training, Like
(01:02:55):
we have to go out and get lunch together. Shit,
I don't drink, but I definitely get a good mocktail
happy hours, you know what I'm saying, Like, we have
to do these things. Sometimes maybe you have to show
up to your friend's house in middle night because they
about to get into a fight with theay partner. It's
like stuff like that that feels like beyond divorce. Yeah, yeah,
you know, are we friends or not? Really is? And
(01:03:18):
then I know it sounds like that. But even before
all of this technology, before the social media, before like
the Internet really popped off, people had to be in
third spaces with each other. It might seem like this
hyper individualist isolation is gen z culture that we have now,
where it's like you only need yourself, you don't own
anybody anything.
Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
That's that's some new ship, y'all. That's some new ship.
Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Yes, you do people like I hate that. I hate it.
Community is in your bedia.
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
You owe people a lot, yeah, and you want a
lot from people.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
You owe people a lot, a lot, a lot. Well,
you gave us a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
You've given us a lot, and I can't wait to
see what else you've got in store. And I just
want you to know that I'm a co conspirator and
I'm an ear for you and a resource. And I
really feel like those who don't know about you and
your work, who have just been introduced to you via
(01:04:16):
this platform are going to be also in the streets,
like go there, Go there. So if you find yourself
ever like I just feel alone, just know that there's
a whole squadron of people from Amanda Sios's camp that
are like.
Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Go aig go squabbal up, squabble up.
Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Where can people learn more about mass libration movement and
about other work that you're doing And how can they
follow you.
Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
So you can follow me on everything at Fax and
Fire everything is the same. And then mass lib so
it's mass lib m A ss lib l I B
network and no space is no, no, none of that.
But yeah, like please support them, please support their work.
Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Oh you're saying on Instagram it's mass lib network. Yeah
on Instagram, Okay. And then probably I'm sure it's probably
a dot com too, So it's mass libproject dot org.
Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
That's them, that's them. And yeah, like also we're trying
to open up the Ghana trips and like some of
the trainings that we have to people that don't just
organize but to this larger black community. We're trying to
build out infrastructure for that. So please like continue to
follow their work. Eggs is seventy five dollars, y'all. But
if you have the capacity to donate to the girls,
(01:05:36):
they're trying to create a diasporic center in Ghana for
black people and directly impact people to go and to
have a place of refuge outside of this country. You know,
if you have the funds donate to the girls.
Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Well, good job, says y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Follow at Fax and Fire a fenne keep up the
work and stay woke and stay firing
Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Eight
Small Dunce help from this small Small dun Human areals
small and it's so funky.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome Smallos podcast. I'm excited about today's guest. Did you
know that Meta was found to have literally removed ninety
four percent of the posts that Israel asked them to
remove from pro Palestinian accounts or people that were posting
pro Palestinian content ninety four percent. They also, apparently allegedly
(00:41):
whatever said that in the past they always use human
review on determining posts to be removed, but when it
came to Palestinian content, they just let it ride with AI.
And I can speak to that myself because I had
posted an image remember that Chinese are from the Olympics,
Like they had a picture of her, but someone had
(01:04):
kind of like drawn the picture into a Palacitian flag
and I posted it and got flagged from Instagram saying
that I am posting false content, and then my whole
account got flagged as an account that is known for
posting false content. I said, wow, ah wow, Well on
(01:26):
the Instagrams, I came across someone who does not post
false content, and that is a Fenny aka at Facts
and Fire, and she really is facts and fire. I mean,
she's just a really fiery, bold sister who I really
fell in love with because I really saw a lot
of myself in her delivery, in her points of view,
(01:47):
and in her performance. I mean, I know that it's
not fake. So I don't mean performance like she's being phony,
but just in her not even just delivery, but in
how she shows up in the space.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Her charisma is unquestioned.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And we're gonna be talking about being young and talking
about it in the context of now what that means,
what does that look like? What does it mean to
be young, black and radical in twenty twenty five, And
much of this episode is meaning is letting her talk
because I want y'all to hear where she's coming from
and how she's coming with it, because I know a
lot of us who are probably like like forty and over,
(02:23):
we may not be really hearing from this sector of
the community as much as we should be. And I
know that there are folks that just be on the
internet's talking, But this is somebody who is also in
the streets. She's an organizer, she is an activist, She
is about about it right it rout it, And so
without really hearing where the young people are coming from.
(02:45):
We just, baby, we can't really be effective in continuing
to sturdy and fortify the bridges that they are going
to be walking over.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And we need to know.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
We need to know because we need to know where
they're headed so that we can meet them there. And
I don't think enough of understand that they are not
supposed to be meeting us.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
We're meeting them.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
The youth are the ones who are driving the ship.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Okay, they have the vigor.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
They also have the responsibility because they are the ones
who are inheriting the earth.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, So it only makes.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Sense that those of us who don't have that much
time as they do and who don't.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Have that mud entity as they do.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Do our work to support and that we do so
in ways that are actually supportive.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
So I'm really happy to be platforming her today, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Also really happy to be just honestly getting to speak
to somebody who as a young person whose voice I
really am just inspired by. Not all twenty eight year
olds are created equal, honey. Okay, so let's get into
it and let's talk to ms A Fennie. Listen close,
(04:04):
because she's gonna be saying a lot, and she talks
fast and we're not slowing it down.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Let's go very very pleased today because she's here.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
She's brilliant, she's massive. As my mother would say, she's
that girl. She's that girl. She's a girl. I died,
I came back to life, and she was that girl.
Y'all give it up for AKA at Facts on fire, Fenny.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Oh wow, this is surreal. It's excited to be here, lucky.
Why is it surreal because you're you?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
What do you mean you? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I think the cultural figures that are also willing to
like lead in radical thought that is so rare and
so like, you're you, Like this is surreal, this is
so cool.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I appreciate that, and I love that I get to
connect with the generations because now I'm old. Now I'm
the elder Like people be trying to call me auntie
and I'm like, chill, chill, but I'm forty three. I'll
be forty four probably by the time this airs, So
you know, I really think it is imperative that we
(05:27):
connect with the brilliance of voices and minds like yourself,
who are ahead of your time.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
How old do you think you were when you got here?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Honestly, I know exactly how old I was. Like, so
I started doing this when I was twenty three, So
two weeks into me organizing and doing activism when you.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Got to Earth? How old do you think you were
when you got to Earth?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Oh? When I got to Earth? Oh yeah. Sometimes I
feel like I don't know, Like maybe I was already
like thirty.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Ish, wow, really thirty yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Because I love inies music. I love seventies and sixties clothes.
Like a lot of my wardrobe is very like that
inspired like a here for being, this earth, wind and
fire like. I listened to a lot of Earth.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I listened to Reasons this morning, the reason Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I was at a restaurant in New York and I
was sitting there and I was like that man is
very familiar and I was just.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Looking and I was just looking and I was like,
it's that burday. I think that's burden.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
And so he caught me looking, and the person he
was eating with turned around and was like visibly annoyed
that I was looking.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Like it was a brother.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
He was like.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Ah, And so then I was just like I'll see
you birthday and he got up and like came over
and was like, hello, how are you?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
What is your name? Man? I said, my name is
Amanda Siel's big damn huge.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
And the other person is also a member of Throns
the Fire, Ralph Johnson. But he's the drummer, so he
You know, drummers in general just be saying. But yes,
even a mirror like drummers just be saying. But Verdin
was lovely.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
He was like, would you like to take a picture? Yes,
yes I would, and his edges was blade mm hmm.
I love that. Yes, I love that. So thirty, that's
impressive because you know you're an old toll, right I.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Feel old sometimes?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So yeah, definitely like you can be sometime a young
spirit like you have like a youthfulness about you. Of course, absolutely,
But I think sometimes I be thinking to myself, I'm like,
I don't know what I did in my last life,
but to be like an empathetic, marginalized person.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
In this lifetime, on this plane, it feels like a punishment.
And I'm trying to think, like, Okay, what was I
what was I on that last time? Because wow, I
don't want to repeat it again. I can't do this.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Maybe you were a white man.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Maybe you were not think about that.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Black and radical. Maybe you were old, white and.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Scraggly, and you know when you went back up, they
was like, let's give you something different.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
You're doing your next human experience. Run.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
We're gonna switch it up, and you're gonna have three
piercings in one nose. We gonna pierce this up. How
can you have three piercings in one nose? I don't
even understand.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
How are you there? But you're blowing the nose? Dude?
Are you blowing the nose?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes? I mean sometimes I like take this one out, okay,
like completely, because.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
I'm afraid to.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I just got this one in November, and I'm afraid
to take it out for any amount of time.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Well don't. Now, you have to wait until it doesn't
hurt anymore and then you can start taking it out.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right, it hurts forever, right, it doesn't hurt forever.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
It hurts for like I would say, like seven months solidly, Okay, Okay, because.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
It got caught on a towel.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Ooh, that hurts all the time, no matter what healed
or not.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Okay, because my soul left my body.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Prepare yourself.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Someone in my perion had toarn me.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
They were like, just be careful because if it gets
caught on the towel, it's death defying stunts. And it
did happen, and I was like, so we're gonna have
a real conversation. I've had such affinity for a fenny
from a distance that I just really am soaking up
our time together. But you were answering the question in
(09:33):
a different contexts. That is still a question I was
gonna ask you. So when I said, like, how old
were you when you got here? You started to talk
about like you and you got here. I guess in
your radicalism, go for it, let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah. So, like when I first started this and Trump
was still president twenty twenty, George Floyd Uprising, I was
very much a different person politically, Like I wanted to
be a policy advisor. I was a full time college student,
like doing political science, was gonna go to law school,
and I was gonna work on campaigns like Bernie Sanders
and AOC's campaigns, and I like, that's really what I
(10:05):
wanted to do. I wanted to create progressive policy. So
when I first came out and like I would speak
a lot. It would be like very reformists. It would
be very peace police, very much. The police just need
more mental health and more training, and they just they
need more care. They human beings. There are so many
fucking photos of me, like, I have to be honest
(10:26):
about it because there are so many photos of me
like fist bumping, fucking National Guards folks like I have
to be honest about it. Because nobody could cock my
tea but me, nobody. It took me like three weeks
of number one getting my ass v by the police.
That was happening a lot pretty frequently, okay. And also
(10:47):
I joined an organization called Freedom Fighters DC. They were
very much abolitionists. They were very radical. They were very like,
sit down, girl, read the book.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
What made you join their organization?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I think, to be honest, I think at first I
was just like I want somewhere to be and I
kept running into them and liked into different members of them,
and I think that they could see. They were like, sister,
you're almost there, You're so close, You're so close. Come
over here, sit down and read these books and shut
up right until you get it. And that's exactly what happened.
(11:16):
So I was with them for about two and a
half year until the organization dissolved, And I've done like
lots of other work, like nationally, so a lot of
work locally with police brutality stuff and whole different types
of things.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
What books did they give you to read that helps
you turn the corner?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think the first one definitely was Our Prisons Obsolete
by Angela Davis. I have my own thoughts about Angela Davis.
You know, I love her, but you're the only one
that's here and where everybody else is going ex out
in jail.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Not the women's Anna La Nikki Giovanni was still here.
A Fenny Shakor was still here. Elaine Brown was still here.
Eric No, that's a side of Shakur.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I finish.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Shakor is Tupac's mom, and she was also a panther
saw I was in Cuba, but we got Erica Hudgens.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
We got whereas her name alluding to me right now?
Oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed. This is the thing.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I think that part of the reason for that is
because this state still feels a way about killing women
who are very public. They'd rather just torture us they'd
rather just like diminish us, because I mean, Correna was
in the streets, Dan Nash was in the streets.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Family was in the streets. They was there.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
But I'm not going to also knock your conspiracy theory
because they all, you know, we don't know, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I don't swear for nobody. I don't swear for nobody
but me. Angela.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
She definitely opened my eyes to the prison abolition thing
because I really couldn't imagine a world without prisons. I
knew that the police didn't do much because in the
past when I had called the police like prior to
like all this stuff, they didn't do shit then. So
I like always had that idea that the police, as
far as like what could actually be helpful in situation,
(13:00):
they don't.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Sorry, I was still there. That was fine.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Sometimes you just really need to give it out, like
you need to get the thought out or to bother
you for the rest of the day. Like that happens
to me all the time, so I get it. But yeah,
and also Kwameterray, like I started to watch his speeches,
I read his autobiography sas biography, and honestly, a lot
of what shaped my political thought in the beginning was
(13:27):
Kwame Terray and listening to his like different lectures. I
don't know. It was just the way in which he
talked about the intersections of capitalism and like militarism and
like bringing into you know, and look in language. I
was very plain, and I'm a military veteran. I got
kicked out in after a year did him obstacle course
I wasn't supposed to do. Apparently get kicked out for that.
(13:48):
Didn't know, but wait, you.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Got kicked out for doing more than you were supposed
to do.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I got kicked out for doing an obstacle course I
was not supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
How'd you end up doing an obstacle course you're not
supposed to do?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
So Basically, one one my platoon sergeant told me that
I could not do the obsticle course because I was injured.
I was on profile, like that's what they call it
when you're injured. And then I was gonna sit it out.
And then a higher ranking officer or NCO told me
that I could do it and that I should do
(14:19):
it and told me to get my ass out there.
But he hated me. He was trying to set me up.
But I mean, I think that from that experience also
being in the military, and that was the army, knowing, yeah,
I was in the army.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Wait pause, time out, time out, time out.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Why were you in the army?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Oh? Because I was homeless and my mom was in
the army. My dad was in the army, like my
stepdad's in the army, Like we're a military family. My
sister was in the army. So like my mom was like,
I'm not gonna let you live with me again, and
you can't keep CouchSurfing and sleeping outside and shit.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So why you couldn't live with your mama again?
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Because me and my mom wasn't getting along.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Why he wasn't get along with your mama?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Let me change my judgmental tone because mama's be acting
up to why weren't you getting along with your mom?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Damn, we're getting deep. But it's fine. I'm pretty vulnerable.
So in high school I just went through a lot
of stuff like I got sexually assaulted and stuff like that,
and my mom didn't believe.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
End of story, effort, end of story, end of story.
You don't got to say anything else.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
So then it turned into like a bunch of other stuff,
and it kind of like, yeah, it progressed into different things,
mistrust all that stuff. So by the time I got
to graduating high school, like, she just didn't want me
there no more. And in some ways I get it.
In some ways I don't.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
She didn't want you there because she knew she was wrong,
and you were in her face every day as an
example of her being wrong, and that's why she didn't.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Want you there. But you deserved to be there because
home is home. Okay, but as somebody has gone through
this things, but yeah, that's why I go in the military.
But now you're making your own home and that's what
we end up having to do. Good.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I can't do my girl like that. We are locked back.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
She ever apologize for that.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
She apologized, but you know how like black mamas do,
Like she apologized, but it was never like an apology.
But my mom has a five year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Now I need her to do that. Though I need
her to do I'm gonna need her to do that.
I'm gonna need you to need her her own way.
I'm gonna need you to need her to do that.
And I'm telling you this as an old person because
it's still in the back of yr that he like,
we good, Okay, that sits with you.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
I mean, I think for me because I've done like
a lot of personal transformation work and like I've just
done a lot of healing work over the past like
three years and unpacked a lot of the ways. While yes,
my mom and my stepfather have a lot to do
with a lot, for sure, I became an adult and
I was carrying like really like toxic, fucked up things
(16:45):
as well. So I think, just based off of that
and the fact that like now I show up differently
than I used to, I hold a lot of grace
and space for my mom like in those ways, just
because I mean, she was getting abused, just like we
were getting abused. She was stressed up. It was like
we were stressed out, Like there was a lot of
stuff happening. So that culminated ultimately into me being a
very angry and destructive person overall self destructive and otherwise.
(17:10):
And when I by the time I joined the military,
I was, like I said, I was really just there
to be somewhere. And also I don't know, like I
kind of always knew that I wasn't going to work,
but I just didn't want to fail at something again.
But I think at this point now I realized what
the structure of the military was. Then that's why I
didn't want to join initially, but to sit in rooms
(17:31):
and classrooms and sit with people, and they're like, there
are only three places in the country where we fully
like inductrinize and institutionalize you, and that's prisons, mental institutions,
and the military, and everybody else is not an agree in,
you know, touching an agree in. And I'm looking at
things niggas like what the fuck are y'all talking about?
Like did you just hear what she said? Did you
(17:52):
just hear what she said? So, like I always knew
that the institution of the military was only too serve
like US empire. I just don't think that I had
like a full analysis of like what that meant until
I got tapped in with Kwame Terre with Family Hammer,
(18:12):
and also like Miriam Kaba and ANDREWA. Richie, because I
did a fellowship with Andrew Richie. So I don't know
a lot of people lended to the radical thought, and
they're still learning to the radical thought. I'm still learning
and growing and reading a lot of shit, But yeah,
that was a lot.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Well, all of that is relevant to being a young
black radical person. All of that, your experiences, your family,
how you think about the world, how you think about yourself,
all of that is empirical evidence that you were always
a warrior like and it's just part of the journey
(18:57):
is being able to figure out how to refine the
raid and pointing in the direction away from you, you know.
And for some that just takes longer than others, and
it takes community, and it may take you know, it
may take having a kid. You know, there's many different
factors that end up being catalysts. But to be a
(19:17):
black radical person is a choice that's not like a
life of ease, you know, Like no one says, like,
you know what, I'm trying to relax, let me be
a black radical. No One, those two things don't align
because you are always.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Not a real black, not a real black. There are
lots of lots of rest folks out here, lots of
resting folks out here.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Listen, ninety.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
This is why when I watch a video, I was like, oh,
look that's me. I was like, I'm watching your videos like,
oh look, Because the truth comes out of you. I
don't like when people say things like it's like no filter.
It's like, no, there's a real serious filter here. The
(20:09):
filter is I'm not gonna say bullshit. I'm not going
to protect you. Like our filters are different. They're filtered though,
like I'm gonna filter it through. The lies is going
to stay behind. The bullshit is going to stay behind.
The truth is going to get through, and so is
the passion. And you speak at a volume that I respect.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
And that I related play trombone as a kid, and
I remember, like I'll never forget because I was in
like band class. I played the cello before that, I
played trombone because I was in band class. And I'm like, ooh,
plicking up the little flute in the clarinet. And she said, actually,
my man teacher said, actually I have the perfect thing
for you. You have a lot of lunger.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Right right. We're gonna get you on that brass YEP.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So that's why it went deep for a little bit,
because this is deep and ultimately, particularly where we are facing,
I mean, you are.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Up, how old are you twenty eight?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
First of all, you're about to hit your sad in return,
So I hope you ready for that? Do you know
what that is?
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yeah? And I feel like I'm already in it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
You are, probably because twenty eight is it, So you know,
stay grounded, stay clear, or try your best too.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I'm getting made up for sure.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Good.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Something's chewing on me to be in a Saturn return
at the time that the nation is in a Saturn
return and the world.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
So that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So I'm gonna give you my phone number because that's nuts.
I don't even know how to and doing all that
while social media exists just feels terrible. So if you
think you crazy, it's because shit is crazy, like being
in a Saturn return is a crazy time. But I
was gonna say that your generation is going to be
(22:01):
the elders for the leaders of the young generation that
I think is going to actually turn shit over.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
You're gonna be.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The means, and I'm gonna be in Grenada like do
your thing. I'll be on a hologram. We won't we'll
be past FaceTime. I'll be a hologram like Princess Leia
and I'll be like me American. Come, I need to
mango because I'll be out of here by then.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Oh my goodness, And you know what, I really hope
that and like this is no shade, but I really
hope that we are better elders than the past generation
has been to the next generation, because I mean, girls,
they're not even.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Good oulders to each other. These elders ain't even good
elders to each other.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I'm like, why y'all be hating on me so much?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Aga is mean? Niggas mean so mean.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
So there's so like actual mean girls, And I'm like,
oh my god, why ya like this way? I like this?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
My homegirl sent me a voice note and all I
said was I ran into so and so.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Why she liked that? Why she liked that?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Why she liked that? No, why is she like that?
That was the voice note.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I really genuinely I believe Number one, Like, in a
movement context, I think a lot of I think a
lot of people, Yeah, let me speak generally. I think
a lot of people are stuck in a state of shock,
Like they really believe that the society and they've been
in shock since twenty twenty. The society that they believe
is coming back, that was pre twenty twenty, pre COVID,
(23:35):
that's never returning. And I don't think that a lot
of our elders are really deeping that well do you.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Consider elder I'm just contextualized, like who do you consider
to be elders like age wise?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
To be honest with you, like when I talk about
my movement, elders, I'm talking about like fifty and up,
like maybe somewhat in the sixties. Like the people that
are still outside with us, like mentoring us, talking to us, Like,
so they're between their fifties, their sixties, some of them
are in their seventies. That's what I mean by others.
I think that Gen X, what's that Generation X?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
We're millennials.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, y'all right there, witty, y'all right there, We're so close,
so close, so close. I feel like it's just going
to take one more like world ending event for the
older millennials to be like, all right, fuck it.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Well, you know what the issue with the older milens
is is that they we were the real taste of
money for real in blackness, in black culture, Like our
generation was twenty when vibe popped off and the Source
popped off and hip hop popped off, like we saw
(24:40):
black culture get truly commodified on a global major level
where black people were a part of it, and so
some of them, a majority of them believed the lie
that that was advancement. And then Obama got elected and
they was like, well, and as much as they would
love to tell you, they don't believe in a post
(25:02):
racial America. And they didn't think Obama solved everything. They
absolutely thought he solved something, and that itself was the
lie that we were telling ourselves. So just like you
have the pictures of you fitzmumping National Guards girl, I
got the pictures of me and Obama shirts.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I got them. I was there at the NAG. I
was on the mall with the flag.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I remember Obama's inauguration because I was in sixth grade
band class. I was really locked into that band, really
locked in We're ensemble and all that second chair AnyWho, Hayes,
I loved it. But yeah, like I remember watching Barack
Obama get inaugurated, and you know, and I think that
(25:45):
that's like the error that a lot of our movement
odors and a lot of our folks are stuck in.
Like people genuinely believe that we are in a society
where a black man can be elected on a hope
and change message. We just watched with Kamala Harris that
her hope and change message was we need more guns,
we need less trans people. Girls.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
We're gonna be the most fleaful army in ma'am.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Like that was Kamala Harris's cold campaign rockets in America, Oh,
I have gun, you know I'm talking. And I think
that that's the same approach that a lot of our
elders are taking. Where it's like, I am used to
an America where we could at least be cordial, we
could disagree, But I have like semi conservative black friends
(26:32):
and like blah blah blah, Like a lot of black
people themselves are conservative. Seventy percent of black people live
in the Bible Belt, that is the South, seventy percent
of us live down there. And those conservative values on
the land that our ancestors was enslaved in for real,
for real.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
So the conservatism is built so strongly into the ways
that they even engage with the idea that America is America.
Band yes, but that America is capable of the genocide,
that America is capable of doing all these things in
our name with our tax dollars, and not only that,
(27:08):
but we are capable of being complicit in it. We
are capable of being so comfortable that we are willing
to sacrifice all of the humanity, wor ruling, to sacrifice
all the resources, ruling, to sacrifice all the waterways, just
to say that we are American, just to say that
we are protected by our American identities in our American passports.
And a lot of us are about to very quickly
(27:29):
find out because Trump said what homegrowns are next, what
we're about to quickly find out is that this next
phase of American fascism, a lot of this violence is
going to be insulated within our borders. America's been fucking
up the global South. They've been on that, they've been
on that there's too much to send within the borders.
Now now the Trump administration, they're seeing there are too
(27:50):
many of us that have talked negatively about this administration.
That's the line, y'all. It's not immigrants. It's not if
you're pro Palestine now, if you're undocumented. The line is
if you have spoken negatively about this administration, if you
do not agree with their pro America, white supremacist and
are co capitalist agenda, then you are not pro America,
(28:14):
and so because of that, you are an enemy of
the state and they're able to treat you as such.
Our elders are disconnected from that reality because for some reason,
y'all are clinging on to the hope that the courts
will save you. Ma'am, you're clinging on to the hope
that the same march and singing, clapping that we've been
doing for generations. I love a good parade, now, don't
(28:35):
get me wrong. We love a good chance, but that
is not gonna get us free. And so many of
y'all think that one election, one election is what got
us here, because you're not paying attention to all of
the little steps that fascism took before we got to
full belong authoritarianism. We've been here, we've been slowly walking here,
(28:57):
and now it is a full sprint and you don't
know what to do. That's the part that is frustrating
and confusing to me with our elders is because the
civil rights movement, y'all saw loves of violence. Y'all saw
those things like y'all grandparents are still here, those people
ruby bridges are still around. Even some of the movements
that were happening then are more radical than what y'all
(29:18):
are willing to do right now, y'all are not y'all ancestors.
That is correct, That is very very very correct. But
sitting and resting and hoping and praying that the fascism
will just pass you because you're pro America enough and
you support the agenda just enough, and you hate immigrants
just enough. That's not gonna cut it. It's not going
(29:38):
to cut it. So yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Over here with the proud mama face.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Just tell them, tell them they mad when I say it,
So you tell them everything you just said. You know,
it's beautiful to hear you speak this way and do
so with such clarity, because I feel like a lot
(30:09):
of times, even when the heart is there, there's a
lack of knowledge, or there may be a lack of
facts to be able to really get the message through
and cut to the chase.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
And that's where folks.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Get hung up on, and then they can try to
undermine the validity of the message by like, oh, well,
you know, it's like if you read somebody and then
you actually use the wrong version of there, and there.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
They're like, if you're gonna actually and this relax, relax, relax.
I was typing fast.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I ain't supposed to be speaking this language, so don't
don't check me on shit.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
This isn't my native tongue.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
So in this mindset, where is your community these days?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
So? I mean, I think that that's the thing that
is kind of interesting about DC, right because there is
a lot of black radical Are you from DC that
live here? No, I'm not from DC. I just live here.
I was born in Germany, Kansas military anyway, you know. Yeah. So,
and also I do some national organizing, so I get
(31:16):
into like a lot of national convenience spaces with people
that are like minded, and we talk about and strategize
on how we can continue to expand and build shared
political thought with other black people. And we found that
a lot of that work exists in like the healing space.
I work with a national organization called Mass Liberation Network.
I'm a national trainer with them, and through their programs,
(31:39):
I've been able to go on like a sematic journey
in the sematic art because of their programs. I'm eighteen
months Ober. Like, there are just so many different things.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Congratulations, but it's a space that like really centers I
mean right now, Wow, it feels like I want to drink.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Okay, what do you do to not?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
If I'm being honest with you. To be honest with you,
I think that I had a very long standing and
unhealthy relationship with alcohol. My stepfather really popped off my
alcoholism at like fourteen years old, Like that was the
way that we bonded. Wow, is like just sitting on
the couch and drinking a lot. Yeah, I know, right,
(32:21):
So I drank for most of my teenage years, all
of them really except for thirteen. Yeah, so pretty much
all of them, and then a majority of my adulthood
that I've lived so far, I was drinking a lot.
And I was, like I said, when you're harmful and
self destructive and you're destructive in other ways and you
(32:42):
don't cope with your emotions and you don't cope with
the things that have happened with you and the traumas
and stuff like that, you don't have the space of
the resource to do that either. It comes out in
the way that it wants to. And I've just I
feel like at this point I stay sober, not necessarily
for me, but I stay sober for the people that
are around me. I'm a community with it's because like, wow,
I've done some thanks for sure that I'm not sure
(33:05):
people should have forgiven me for that they did. And
so I think that my way of like being accountable
to them and being accountable to like my healing journey
is not drinking because I know that I'm harmful when
i'm when I get like that, and so that's what
keeps me from drinking.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Beautiful.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
If it was a selfish decision, it would be right.
It's just like popping bottles express on martinis.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Espresso martinis. That was the one. I would not beg
you for express on martini. That's so specific. I don't
drink either. I don't drink, I don't smoke, do nothing.
I'm raw dog in life. Well now I'm not row
dogg in life because I take lexapro. But at the
time of October seventh, I was raw dog in life
(33:50):
and my I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it.
Four months later, I got a psychiatrist and was like,
give me something, give me something, because I'm over here.
I said, ma'am, I can't. I created ibs in my body.
I just was like, I'm not gonna be stressed no more.
That's what I've decided. My body was like, oh for real,
(34:12):
So you're not gonna poop.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
For two weeks and then when you do, it's gonna
kill you.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Like just the brain, the body, all the things is
really a doozy. But I commend you, Sis, I commend you,
stay the course. Stay the course. Do you have an
AA that you go to?
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Honestly, mass clib is kind of like my AA because
they use like a similar kind of program and engagement.
It's called maxlib Mass Liberation. Oh yes, yes, yes, And
so one of the co founders of the organization, he's
also like a recovering alcoholic who went through AA. So
a lot of like the healing programming is like very
much like built around that. And I think that the
(34:53):
really important part about that space is it's not necessarily
about self care or taking care of you, but it's
about healing in the way that our ancestors did healing collectively,
moving through conflict collectively, moving through trauma collectively. And we've
been able to expand the number and the different types
(35:14):
of black people that we're able to reach through actually
healing the parts of ourselves that have been poisoned and
indoctrinated by white supremacy. So much of our trauma, and
so much of the trauma that comes up from like
our parents, are the things that we're passing down generation
to generation. That generational trauma started with a slave master, yep.
And we've been just passing. We've been passing that, saying
(35:34):
white cermaces bullshit down over and over again. That disconnection
from yourself, from your body. That's the generational trauma of
knowing that our bodies have never in this country, have
never belonged to us. Even now our labor technically does
not belong to us. And to be able to reclaim
like some of that preclaim some of that autonomy, and
(35:56):
to heal some of those parts of you, it helps
you actually open up to like the imagination. And I
think so much of what is radical and what is
I don't know, like quote unquote like so left and
so out there is just radical imagination. It's just being
able to see beyond and see past the society that
we live in, YEP. And in order to do that,
(36:17):
there is some healing that needs to happen, because we
can't carry these same white Spriss traditions if America, if
the Empire falls tomorrow, we're going to rebuild the same shit.
We're gonna rebuild America two point zero, but make it black.
It's still gonna be oppressive, it's still going to be
ungrounded and uncentered. We're still gonna treat lower class people
like they're less than yes, because y'all get these black
(36:38):
owned businesses, y'all don't be paying y'all workers, right, what
is that white supremacy culture? So like we're going to
rebuild this thing back over again. So in order to
access our radical imagination, in order to access that self actualization,
that collective actualization that we need to get to. There
is a little bit of healing work that we need
to do. But it's not just on an individualized basis.
(36:59):
We need to start building healing community. Yes, And so
that's why I really love mass Live. And honestly, as
we talk about and we think through, we theorize about
what the next iteration of society looks like, we really
need to not only interrogate what we're against, but we
need to start talking to people about what we're for, Like,
what are you actually willing to build?
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yes? You know, yes, what do you actually believe in.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Like when people are talking about with the best of intentions,
they're like, you know, we need to be out here fighting,
and I'm like, what are you fighting for? Like, what
are you fighting for? Are you fighting for things to
go back to how they were? Because in your mind,
I think that's actually what you're fighting for. You may
not really admit that, but you have to be willing
(37:47):
to dissect that, because if you're still on the Internet saying, see,
they got what they voted for, then you actually are
fighting for where we were. Right if you're still on
the internet responding to the bs that's happening with Kamala
memes and Kamla GIFs, you're cool with things being how
they were before and it's worse now, But that also
(38:10):
wasn't great. That also wasn't it. And a lot of
us are still not fully there yet. Like you said,
it's like we almost we almost there, but we're not
fully at the point where we're willing to admit that
we are complicit. We're complicit in all of this, and
the blacks, the blacks, we don't want to admit it.
(38:35):
We don't want to admit that. You can be a
victim and a villain at the same damn time. All
of us are victims and villains at the same damn time.
You just laid out for us, and that in your
personal experience you have been a villain and a victim
at the same damn time. So that's not like a
sign of necessarily weakness or of a lesser value or
a lack of purity, But it is when you're able
(38:58):
to acknowledge it, a sign of clarity and strength that
you can actually apply your rage to in a refined
way that can actually like build and create a better
space and world for you.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
And because we are the world, we are the ah,
the children.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And so here's a question for you, because I've been
really thinking about this a lot lately. So I believe,
and I want to get your young black radical opinion
on this. I believe that what we are in the
midst of is the next expansion of white supremacy via Zionists.
There has been an expansion of white supremacy in the past,
to extend it to the Italians, to extend it to
the Irish. First it was to extend it to white women,
(39:47):
and so now they're extending it through to Zionists. Now
Cubans thought it was going to be them, it didn't happen.
The Asians thought it was going to be dam it
didn't happen. The Indians was like, is it us?
Speaker 3 (39:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
But the Zionists have acted actively taken space in the
white supremacist access as well as are taking space. It's
like they've taken the identity of what black people really
should have been getting in terms of how the response
to racism should have been. Is what they're getting for
(40:17):
anti semitism as they commit anti semitism against their fellow
Jewish people. So my theory is that this isn't a
last stand for just America. This is the last stand
for claiming Black American identity because the effort that is
happening surreptitiously only for now, because I don't know, I mean,
it's not going to be much longer below the radar,
(40:39):
But there is a very concerted effort at erasure that
is not simply about just making white people look good,
but it's about making Black people disappear as an entity,
as an existence, as an identity that deserves protection, that
deserves acknowledgment, etc. And I feel like there are so
many black people who are fine with that as long
as they're getting access to capitalism.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Your thoughts, Yeah, I think that what black people need
to realize is the same ideology that led us to
this point, is the same ideology that is fueling your
desire for black capitalism. It's the same thing. It's rooted
in the same shit. Barack Obama showed us that actually
(41:22):
this is a Barack Obama showed us that you can
have a black face of the empire, but it is
still going to operate as the empire always has. Barack
Obama dropped bombs on some Walia. He wasn't dropping bombs
on Ukraine. He wasn't dropping bombs on France, he wasn't
dropping bombs on Belgium. But he did drop bombs on Somalia.
He did drop bombs on Syria. He did drom Strike
(41:43):
all up and down the global South. He did participating
coups in South America.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
He did do that.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
And all of those things are to serve what white supremacy.
And you said something earlier about people wanting that society back,
They want that old thing back. Said old that old
thing is what seated the ground for this thing to exist. Correct,
If we're being so honest. Let's crank it all the
way back Hitler's Germany. Hitler looked at the racial castism
(42:11):
in America. He said, Oh yeah, I feel what ch'a
got going over there. I kind of liked that for real.
He quoted Henry Ford in mindcom He looked at our
racial caltism. He was actually like, whoa, whoa, whoah, y'all
actually want a little bit, Maybe won't go that far.
This country has always has always been this brutal. The
difference now is this country will switched to being a
(42:34):
global empire for a while after World War Two, when
Britain could no longer be the mantle of white supremacy,
it was passed on to America. So America had to
assert its dominance outside of its borders. And in order
to do that, they had to increase the patriotism. They
had to make sure that you felt as black and
proud and as American as you could, so you can
continue to support this agenda. They have been seating the
(42:57):
ground for this ever since then, probably even before then,
because we are living in a white man's wildest dreams.
You want to talk about self actualization, you want to
talk about what it looks like when you can live
in your wildest imagination. This is a white man's wildest
imagination that we are currently living in. So the society
(43:18):
that we lived in in the nineteen sixties is a
white man's imagination. In society we lived in in two
thousand during white two k's white man's imagination. Barack Obama's
presidency as much as the Bible Belt and them racists
as white folks hate him, that's what their programmed, the
conditioned to do. He's still carried out a white man's
(43:39):
imagination of what an American agenda looks like. There was
no reparations, no reparations for black people, no reparations on
your arm, okay, no housing vouches on your arm, no
letout of y'all pipes like be.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
For real, be for real.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
So when you talk about, oh well, if I just
invest in the America system, if I just invest in
a sort of black capitalism, if I invest in a
black patriotism, then hopefully maybe one day that it will
be me. I hate to break it to y'all, but
this entire society, this entire thing, is predicated on the
(44:17):
fact that they hate you. The expansion of white supremacy,
the expansion of whiteness as a socio political system, and
the contraction of whiteness and the socio political system. It
is all to be antithetical to blackness, to be opposite
of you. And I say that to say, no matter
how hard you try, you might be scooped up with
(44:38):
your Haitian neighbor. When they get to the port Nations.
They talked about them a lot there and in the election.
Don't forget that when they start scooping up American citizens
that are black, because you happen to live in a
city that has a lot of black immigrants in it,
you will realize in that moment that your black capitalism,
your black investment, your black patriotism, your black American passport
don't mean nothing, mean anything. We cannot continue to invest
(45:03):
in a system that was built on the destruction and
the subjugation of us. We will never ever ever get
to the mountaintop in this system. It's just not going
to happen.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Okay, But you didn't answer my question. All of that
was really good, though, that was really good.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
My question is, so the reason I'm talking about erasure
is because we're seeing the efforts to erase. First there
was affirmative action, then there was DEI. Then there is okay,
we're gonna erase black history, right, We're gonna come up
with this CRT thing, make it the boogeyman, erase it.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Then it became all.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Right, like if you look at Tennessee, which I consider
Tennessee and Texas to be ground zero of what they
want the entire country to actually be.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
So Tennessee politics, Tennessee just passed.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
An anti DEI bill where they did not allow any
debate on the bill.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
So they literally pushed it through.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
They laughed about it while they pushed it through, and
then all the black Tennessee state representatives went and talked
about how annoyed they were about it.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
After Now, Justin Pearson, I.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Will tell you, was in there like this, this is ricius,
this risis, which I appreciate because Justin be looking like
he not gonna fight.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
But then he'd be like you RSIs, and they were like.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Mister Pears.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Pear said, you're on the floor, you're on the Did
you hear what he said? Did you where he's at?
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Now?
Speaker 1 (46:24):
I don't know where Jones was because I didn't see
a linen suit, but there's a but lid.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
No, Pearson is giving you dashiki and a blazer with
an afro. Jones is giving you a ponytail and a
linen suit.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I had a mixed up
in my brain.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Yes, Jones is giving you a ponytail in a suit.
Pearson's giving you dashiki in an afro, but with a
blazer because they would not let him wear the dashiki.
So he said, fine, I'll just wear the dashiki and
a tie and a blazer. I'm sure he had to
have the dashiki Taylor to be able to fit in there,
but he said, I'm gonna do it though, I'm gonna
do it.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
So what I'm saying though, is so there's a racier there.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Then.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Of course, Trump just passed an executive order called the
Restore Sanity and Truth to American History Executive Order where
he is now taking over the Smithsonian so that includes
a National African American History Museum of Culture. And he
is also in the executive order says we are going
(47:21):
to be addressing exhibits that have actively worked to frame
American history as racist, misogynist, and irreparable. And the example
he gives is, for instance, at the Smithsonian Museum of Art.
I believe there's an exhibit that talks about race, and
we are going to be correcting points of view like
(47:43):
this one which says race is a social construct and
not biological. So he is literally saying in this executive
order that race is biological, which we all know is
not the case. What I'm trying to say is that
this idea that we are Black Americans is being controlled
(48:03):
by people who need us to be the antithesis for them, right,
Like what you were saying, if I understand what you
were saying, is like their whole existence is predicated on
having us to hate and having others to hate, right,
and they will create other others. I mean, you see
this one over here is now talking about autistic people, Okay,
(48:24):
and we got to get rid of them too, because
he gonna solve it in seven months. He gonna solve autism.
Ain't that amazing? And so my concern is that the
identity of being black American is so deeply entrenched in
capitalism at this point that we don't even realize that
we're going to have to fight for our literal identity
(48:46):
while also fighting fascism. And I just wonder if, as
a young person, do you even see that as a concern.
Do you feel like your peers are grounded in their blackness?
Do they care about their blackness like or is it
just like we're all one. I'm curious because I feel
sometimes very siloed in who I'm around.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
And we're all like beat and back yard.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
But it's like, you know, but then you'll see on
the tiktoks that they'd be like, this is my white husband,
this is my white boyfriend, and he says nigger, and
you're like.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Ah's the norm. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So I like, dose being black matter to you?
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, being black matters to me very bad, right, But
I don't see myself as a black American. I've grown
up here my entire life. I was raised in black culture.
I was raised a lot in the South, which I
would say is the bashing of Black American culture. That's
gotta be honest about it. And I think for me,
I don't think it makes any sense to claim the
(49:44):
identity of a country that does not claim us. The
erasure of black history, the black history that they was
teaching us to begin with, was already watered down. It
was already altered, like, they leave out so much about
the brutality of childle slavery. They downplay the destruction that
they caused right after reconstruction, They downplay the brutality of
(50:05):
Jim Crow, like the history that we were being taught
initially was not that great. Okay, if we are relying
on our identities to be linked to American institutions who
have already seeked to dilute and dismiss and brutalize our
Black identities and pretend like our contributions actually do not matter,
(50:29):
when we all know, we all know that there would
be no America without black labor and Native American blood. Okay,
there would be no this. We have to focus on
creating our own institutions, our own institutions, and if they
are our own institutions, if they truly center blackness, they
cannot be American because America was built as a white
(50:51):
supremacist country. It was built as a safe haven for
Protestant white people that wanted to come and escape their
own quote unquote religious persecution.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Where they was at.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
This was never for the veneration of black people. We
were never meant to be citizens, We were never meant
to be equal. I just genuinely believe that if we're
talking about reclaiming our black identity, if we're talking about
fighting fascism, we have to talk about building alternative systems
that actually serve black people. We have to talk about
what it looks like to divorce ourselves from the American identity,
(51:24):
because no matter how we want to chop it up
or not, America's global standing, the value of the dollar
is falling. Our soft power with our allies is waning,
but's starting to look very dangerous for our allies to
be allied with us, like we've already been on some
foolishness with them to begin with. So the mistrust that
(51:45):
so many people have for this country on the outside
of our borders is a problem for us. The mistrust
that is being bredded within this country between black people,
white people, whoever immigrants. It's like a mixture of Nazi
Germany and Civil War times in here. This thing, whatever
society we thought we were going to be living in
(52:05):
or maintaining, is over. It is over. And so what
how are we like building things that actually serve black
people that is not directly attached to an American identity.
That doesn't mean that we don't have to tell our
own stories and contributions of what we did on this land.
That doesn't mean that we don't have to venerate our
ancestors that lived here, died here, fought here, doesn't mean
(52:26):
any of that. But the American experiment is ending, block
will exists in the future. So what is next for us?
How are we going to make sure that we have
what we need to survive this next phase? And that
does not exist in an American identity, it just does
it not? To me?
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Well, what I would say is that there is the
United States of America, and then there is America, and
so there is what it is to be in this country,
the United States. But if we're just calling, I think
that the concept of the country as it exists on
the continent of North America does include us in various forms.
(53:06):
That isn't necessarily just attached to institutionalization and isn't just
attached to the government concept of the United States. So
it's like if we look at the first nations, you know,
they would say like, well, we are American, We've been here,
we started here, and we connect to this land, like
this is our land. For black people who were taken
(53:27):
and brought here within the context of the now, we
are indigenous to this land, the actual existence of Black
Americans who were born within this piece of land. I mean,
there's been many names, right, I mean, I'm saying Black
Americans as just a generic name. But we were Negroes,
We was African Americans, which is my least favorite. We
(53:49):
are a people that is a unique, particular type of people.
We had to form an existence and ethnicity, a culture
within a framework that no one else did, within a
very part existence that I do think holds value that
is constantly divided, conquered, and dissolved. In order to divide, conqueror,
and dissolve our ability to effectively resist against the same
(54:11):
framework and infrastructure that essentially we had to be formed
in spite of.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
So, I think as.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Much as it is imperative to understand that we are
not where we were and we are going forward, I
do think that at the root, there's that root thing.
I do think at the root of it, it's what
is connecting us to even be in that fight together.
Because that's what I get frustrated about more than anything
when I'm watching where We're going, is that I feel
like there isn't anything cohesively really connecting us, because the
(54:38):
concept of even the United States is not like when
you look in other nations. You look at Korea, they're like,
where Korean? We are South Korean, and that is enough
to connect them. Right, you look in other places, they're like,
we're Muslim, we are Muslim.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
That is enough to connect them.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Here, to your very valid points, the Unit States has
always been a piece of shit, trash place. There is
no reason to connect to that as like the force
that we're fighting for. So I'm like, well, then where
are we connected to. We're not connected to a spiritual body.
The church is connected to the dollar now, so we're
(55:17):
not connected to that. So then we, in my opinion,
have to be the spiritual bodies. And just like you said,
we are carrying all of this with us from these
past generations. We are the soil we have had to
carry within us.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
This vision of something better.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
And I don't think it has to be limited to
only existing here. But I do think that there is
a great shortsightedness when we don't acknowledge that there is
an impetus and a catalyst that was born here of
a particular kind of people that have existed and given
to the world in a particular kind of way that
no other group of people has given.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
And I'm worried.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
That that is not being acknowledged enough by us, because
these other motherfuckers do see it, and they do use it,
and they use it against us. And the amount of
effort that the Zionists have put into trying to bring
Black Americans to their cause is not by accident. So
essentially they decided, well, instead of trying to shut black
(56:16):
people out, let's try and bring them in. And that's
how we get all these folks in the establishment, right, Like,
that's how we start getting all these legislators and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
That's how I sit here and watch a.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Black army general maybe general, sit there and speak shit
on Ibrahim Troy's name in Burkina Faso, talking about, oh,
he's taking money, and I'm like, really, that's how we
sit here and watch Barbara Johnson raise her hand to
keep constantly vetoing Palestine ceasefires at the UN like, they
(56:44):
just started using us against us, they just started weaponizing
us against us.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
So that's where my head is at when.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
I'm seeing certain things taking place that are particularly around
black people because I'm always trying to figure out how
we can more effectively fight for each other. And then
I started realizing, I don't think enough of us even
understand what each other is and the value of what
it means to be us. And that's what the whole
Black Power movement was about. This is what we are,
this is where we come from, where we're about. So
(57:12):
that's something that's deeply concerning to me that I feel like,
is that I'm going to be called to work with
in these next I mean I say years, but maybe
it could be weeks. We don't know, we don't know,
we don't know. But I want to get your response
in our special Patreon segment. So we're going to head
on over to Patreons. So all of my sales squad
coming over here. What a Fenny's response is going to be?
Speaker 1 (57:32):
That's the fire.
Speaker 3 (57:40):
The last.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
So tell me this young blood, what is a day
in the life of a young black radical?
Speaker 3 (57:51):
Honestly? So, I work at a nonprofit, so on like
on a day to day basis, I'm doing leadership developed
with people that are in the community, like basically skill sharing,
like hard skills for organizing how to do advocacy. I
also I create both.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Projects, like how does that teaching? How is it actually applied?
Like do you go to the community in like canvas,
Like what does it look like?
Speaker 3 (58:17):
So within my organization, we have in a program called
the Constituent Leadership Program where it's like an eleven month
program and I'm like the lead facilitator on it because,
like I said, like I'm a national trainer, so I
have I went to a training program. I trained like
a week long training with like forty formally incarcerated people.
So now with the Constituent Leadership Program, it's like bi
(58:38):
weekly sessions. Some are in person, some are like hybrid.
There's like twenty five folks, and like we're building shared
political analysis number one, because I can teach you like
what it means to organize, I can teach you what
building power means. I can teach you what the levels
of power are and how the levels of power show
up in our society. But if you don't have the
political analysis to accompany that, you're not going to be
(59:01):
able to like really do anything with that information. So
not only are we giving those people like those kind
of skills, we're also giving them the opportunity to like
apply it practically, whether that's like planning actions, whether that
is meeting with elected officials, and like they actually be
able to conduct the meetings, whether that is shit co
facilitating a session with me, Like this is the curriculum
(59:21):
we're teaching today, Like do you want to like hold
some of this with me and like be a part
of that. And Also I work with a popular education model,
so a lot of the I don't do a lot
of like one directional training. It's just not how I
was trained. So like a lot of it is like
generation from the room, connecting, like building political analysis through
people shared life experiences.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
Lovely. Yeah, so yeah, that's dope.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
Okay, So the reason why I'm asking this question is
because I know that a lot of people feel like
organizing an activism work does not involve rest or enjoying
things or like I know that people think that, and
so that's why I'm like, what does the day in
the life look like?
Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Or maybe a week in the life.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Oh, I just like a regular Oh I thought you
were asking me about workshit. To be honest with you,
a girl loves to party and shake her ass. Now,
all right, I love a good concert. I'm gonna be
at the Kudricklomar concert. You're gonna catch me at the
keem Ali concert in DC. Okay, okay, Like I love
love live music because you know, I played in the band,
so like, I just I love music in general. I
(01:00:27):
dance on my balcony like nobody's watching. I read a
lot of books. I read a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Are you a fast reader?
Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
I am a fast reader, but also like I have
language processing issues, So like I'll read something and I'm like, okay,
well let me run that back so I can read pretty.
I feel like I read fast, but what slows me
down is back and I'm like, well, let me read
that one more time. Yeah, just to make sure that
I actually got everything.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
I'll be reading and like I'll realize, I don't know
what that page see, because I started thinking about dolphins
and something on this page made me think about dolphins,
and I kept reading and then I got to the
end and I'm like, I'm here, but I don't know
what none of this is. But I was thinking about dolphins.
They's so dope. Remember that last time you had seen
(01:01:14):
dolphins and laguna? Yeah, then I'm lying, Equality of Nations,
what what is the quality of nations?
Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Continue?
Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Sorry, no, I'm just but I just would have tapped
into something that you say, like the anti joy, Like
you can't enjoy nothing, you can't do nothing, you can't
you can't laugh, you can't smile. It's real strict over here.
Everybody that keeps saying that does not actually organize for.
Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Because that, to me, my favorite part of the movie
Selma that I thought was probably you know, the most
authentic was showing them cut up. Was showing Martin and
his squad cutting up, because that is required. Bodies are
on the line, there's gotten to be some kinda gotta laugh.
Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
And something we say all the time in like the
organizing space is that like power is built at the
speed of relationships, and our relationships are built in the
speed of trust. So if you are.
Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
In our relationships are built at the ships are built
at the.
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Speed of traveling. And so if you are not actually
in relationship with your folks, if you're not laughing, dancing, giggling, crime,
grieving with your folks, you're not really in relationship. And
you're not like any type of radical movement, radical thought
that you might have. It's just all going to stay
in theory because you're not building real relationships or building real
power toward that happening. So I do a lot of
(01:02:35):
outside organizing outside of just my mortgage job, but that
requires me to be in relationship with folks in like
a real way, you know what I'm saying, Like I
have to be at the nonprofit with them, folks, I
have to show up and talk to y'all every day.
But the people that I'm building, like nationally, with the
people that I'm building with locally, and like the people
that I'm doing training with and like co training, Like
(01:02:55):
we have to go out and get lunch together. Shit,
I don't drink, but I definitely get a good mocktail
happy hours, you know what I'm saying, Like, we have
to do these things. Sometimes maybe you have to show
up to your friend's house in middle night because they
about to get into a fight with theay partner. It's
like stuff like that that feels like beyond divorce. Yeah, yeah,
you know, are we friends or not? Really is? And
(01:03:18):
then I know it sounds like that. But even before
all of this technology, before the social media, before like
the Internet really popped off, people had to be in
third spaces with each other. It might seem like this
hyper individualist isolation is gen z culture that we have now,
where it's like you only need yourself, you don't own
anybody anything.
Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
That's that's some new ship, y'all. That's some new ship.
Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Yes, you do people like I hate that. I hate it.
Community is in your bedia.
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
You owe people a lot, yeah, and you want a
lot from people.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
You owe people a lot, a lot, a lot. Well,
you gave us a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
You've given us a lot, and I can't wait to
see what else you've got in store. And I just
want you to know that I'm a co conspirator and
I'm an ear for you and a resource. And I
really feel like those who don't know about you and
your work, who have just been introduced to you via
(01:04:16):
this platform are going to be also in the streets,
like go there, Go there. So if you find yourself
ever like I just feel alone, just know that there's
a whole squadron of people from Amanda Sios's camp that
are like.
Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Go aig go squabbal up, squabble up.
Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Where can people learn more about mass libration movement and
about other work that you're doing And how can they
follow you.
Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
So you can follow me on everything at Fax and
Fire everything is the same. And then mass lib so
it's mass lib m A ss lib l I B
network and no space is no, no, none of that.
But yeah, like please support them, please support their work.
Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Oh you're saying on Instagram it's mass lib network. Yeah
on Instagram, Okay. And then probably I'm sure it's probably
a dot com too, So it's mass libproject dot org.
Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
That's them, that's them. And yeah, like also we're trying
to open up the Ghana trips and like some of
the trainings that we have to people that don't just
organize but to this larger black community. We're trying to
build out infrastructure for that. So please like continue to
follow their work. Eggs is seventy five dollars, y'all. But
if you have the capacity to donate to the girls,
(01:05:36):
they're trying to create a diasporic center in Ghana for
black people and directly impact people to go and to
have a place of refuge outside of this country. You know,
if you have the funds donate to the girls.
Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Well, good job, says y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Follow at Fax and Fire a fenne keep up the
work and stay woke and stay firing
Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Eight
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CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.