STOP IGNORING BLACK WOMEN IN LABOR! [EP 89]

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A man, build and independent.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
And so I'm here in San Diego for the first
stop on the what would the ancestors say, mission driven
book tour, and I'm being treated really lovely and it
feels beautiful, and folks are shown up. We have now

(00:40):
become the tools of capitalism in a mental form. And
I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been set like
this is not like, oh my gosh, she cracked a
cold al it ain't. However, the code continues to require cracking.

(01:04):
They keep coming up with new codes. And because so
many of us do not see that, we don't prevent it. Baby,
we knew we were free. That was the talk of
the town, she man, when we heard about that Lincoln

(01:27):
about to bring that mess a fate prople of me.
It's the fact that.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Someone over here when stupid, because you're correct, they say
books won't change the world.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Tell that to every colonizer that burns them. Look at this,
They have a free.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Bookshelf right here at Burst into Books.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
You having a space like this in this neighborhood with
a bookshelf for free book from most outside handing out
an so the people and not y'all having a actual table.

(02:24):
Many black folks who served in the Civil War have
said it the first time that they felt like they
were seen by white holtes because they had no name.
They were seen as a friend, but they were also
seen as capable.

Speaker 5 (02:37):
Do it.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Come on over come, say hi, get you a book
and get it signed. While I'm not here in the shy,
we had our gods, we had our land, and.

Speaker 6 (02:49):
We were strict from that, and we were forced to
establish something brand new here in spite of the constant
threat of that degradation and terrorism, and somehow we managed
to form Blackness. Now, they may have given us the name,

(03:11):
but we gave blackness the soup.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
But tell us how we can really utilize what.

Speaker 7 (03:15):
You put in the book as a resource and tool
in reference.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
M money.

Speaker 8 (03:30):
Inside.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
But we don't have to stay here.

Speaker 8 (03:33):
We know somebody else.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
We are of imagination.

Speaker 9 (03:42):
Did you use somewhere?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I just anything that.

Speaker 5 (03:57):
We can be.

Speaker 9 (03:59):
Good for those of us who want to desire courage
to others.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
What advice do you have do you demonstrate courage? We
know that folks are not on it, so you're.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
Like, come, let's do courage, guys, and they're like.

Speaker 9 (04:24):
Like, you know, if.

Speaker 7 (04:27):
Folks are like, I'm missy.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
You know, I have a hair appointment.

Speaker 9 (04:29):
I can't do courage today.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I don't even know the next time she's gonna be free,
Like I just I can't.

Speaker 9 (04:38):
Who's gonna be there that courage?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Hello? I mean, I know I've been I've been gone,
but I'm here. I've been gone, but I'm here, and

(05:22):
we're here and it is still viewed from Mandolin, and
we are still that girl. Okay, we have a light
room because folks is like, is she even gonna be back?
I don't know if she's even gonna show up. I

(05:42):
know that's why we only have one hundred and forty
four people here. But that's fine. That's fine because we
still got what we need. Shout out to everybody who's
gotten their copy of what would the ancestors say? Very excited?

(06:08):
Do these not have inserts? Very excited to finally get
to finally start seeing the books come out? Rolando. I
will have you know that I have been researching how
to make a calendar, and that was a piece of

(06:31):
egg how to make a calendar, and it's actually something
that I can do it feasibly within Wait, why was
I in the shade room? Why was I in the
shade room yesterday? Hold on, Fatimo, why was I in
the shad room? Let me go on this damn internet.

Speaker 10 (06:55):
I'll be minded my business. Oh no, Christiana, were not.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
We're not doing making them at Kinkos though, because the
whole thing about it is that we can't just do
it at Kinkos because then I gotta still ship it out. Oh,
I'm on the shade room because of what I said
about Niki, And I stand by what I said about Niki,

(07:29):
because what is you know, I see things and it's
very obvious, and I don't know. I'm trying to download
it for y'all so I can show y'all so you
can see it too. When I see things and they're
very obvious, I think it's reality that it's obvious for
me only because of what I know, not because of

(07:49):
what they're being what we're being taught, and this is
a fact. So because of that, it has to get said.
I understand that we are the subject of psyops and
I understand that we are absolutely being lied to on
a regular basis. So with that understanding, I have to

(08:13):
say the truth when I see it, because I know
that the truth is being lied that we are being
lied to on a regular basis. So that's just what
it is, and so people can feel a way about
that if they want to. But I'm sure you blocked
the shade room, Rachel, because you are a smart person.
But if you want to see the video, I will

(08:35):
show it to you right now. Fatima knows herself and said,
I am online chronically. So here's the video that is
being discussed right now that I made about Nicki minaj

(08:55):
Nicki Minaje working with Trump admin on plight of Christian
in Nigeria.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Either she's getting a check, or she was maggot the
whole time, or she.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Genuinely thinks that she's doing something good, which, by the way,
is why y'all need to have people around you that
know more than you. And by y'all, I don't just
mean celebrities. Everybody. Everybody should have people around them that
they can consult with, that think differently than you, that
hold you in a place of values. Just so you

(09:37):
understand what's happening here with the plight of Christians in Nigeria.
There is a plight of Christians in Nigeria. However, the
US that what does that have to do with the
United States. The United States is using this as a
ploy as a proxy to find their way into Nigeria

(09:59):
so that they can then and find their way into
the sill states of Burkina Fasso, Moli and Niger, who,
as you know, are coming together to begin a process
of pan Africanism on the continent. They are taking back
their resources from friends. They are saying, we are going
to build our own infrastructures. This undermines the global empires

(10:25):
go and so they have to try and shut it down.
Now we saw earlier this year with Afrikaan and that Cone,
that general who tried to say, oh you know, they
got some problems going down in Burkina Fasso. They're continuing
to try to make this happen the same way that
they're making Vetch happen in Venezuela. Right now, what when

(10:46):
do we stop allowing ourselves to be used? Come listen
to your people.

Speaker 11 (11:00):
Waited to be scared up?

Speaker 2 (11:05):
And then I just promote the book. So yeah, and
I love that. Kimberly and those of you all who
noticed that I made a mean girl's reference making fetch happen.
By the way, I look really pretty. I just wanted
to point that out. I feel like I'm I'm making
fetch happen right now just say and I'm back. But

(11:38):
shout out to everybody who came out to the first
leg of the What the Ancestors Say Mission Driven book tour.
It was really beautiful and it really showed me a
lot about the path that I'm on. And I watched
a video this morning about the UAE, and you know,

(12:01):
I'm trying to What I'm trying to do is use
pattern recognition to see the holes that we are missing
as humans. You know, I think that we we do
a lot of filling the gaps that government doesn't feel

(12:25):
for necessity, and that's incredibly necessary and it is imperative
to help avoid the next gap, which is displeasure that
is able to be alchemized into weaponized violence against your
own people. And when I was on the road, someone

(12:49):
asked me, you know, do you have any proof or
not proof? But they didn't say that way. Let me
correct myself. They said, you know, what can you how
can you show that what you're talking about is working?
You know, what are the practical application of the things
that you talk about? And I'm like, and she's an organizer,

(13:12):
and I had to tell her, Oh, so I'm not
an organizer. I'm a decolonizer. So I am here to
talk about and to help folks rewire in order to
be organized. I am working in conjunction with organizers. So

(13:35):
the proof of what I'm doing is in the people
being able to be useful for folks like you to
help themselves. And we have been so deeply colonized, and
we have been the subject of actual psychological warfare, so
our bodies themselves right have been victimized in ways that

(14:01):
many of us are uneven aware of, and we're literally
rendered incapable of helping ourselves. I always say that we
are very We are the first AI because there are
fail safes that they supposedly put in robots to make
sure that robots don't turn against their quote unquote owners. Well,

(14:21):
that's what they're doing with us. They've been doing it
with us. And then you have neurodivergent minds that are
a lot harder to wire, because the wiring of a
neurodivergent mind isn't as straightforward. And this is not shade
to neurotypical minds. It's just that there are ways in
which these operatives have figured out how to manage certain minds,

(14:45):
but they haven't figured out how to marriage how to
rewire a neurodivergent mind, because our wiring doesn't make sense.
It's not on the main frame. Every neurodivergent mind is different.
That's why they say, if you've met one autistic person,
you've met one autistic person, but the neurotypical mind. I'm
not saying that all neurotypical minds are the same, however,

(15:07):
but they've somehow figured out how to crack that mind, right,
they figured out how to crack that mind. So you know,
we come in here, neurotypicals and neuro divergence to continuously
figure out how to challenge these systems. And even as
I say it, I'd be like, Amanda, you sound nuts,

(15:30):
But I realized that I only sound nuts because we
have been tricked into thinking in very limited scopes, even
though we have proof that our oppressors are not. We
have proof, we have proof that our oppressors are not
thinking limited scopes, so why would we continue to do so?

(15:52):
So we have to challenge ourselves and continue to create spaces,
by the way, where we can have these conversations where
we can consider possibilities and not feel crazy no matter
how out there they are, unless you're talking about flatter
you flatter if there's got to get out of here,
because that's just silly. Okay, that's just silly. But also

(16:17):
I want to but I want to remind you that
you can get your copy of what would the ancestors say?
You know what the books are also reminded me and
let me know and let me know that people really
want knowledge and they want spaces that we're doing here
I've used for Mandolin. They want those spaces everywhere, and

(16:42):
so it was really beautiful to see people come out
because remember I come from entertainment, and so I'm used
to people just coming out because they want to be entertained.
And to have people come out because they want to
be inspired, because they want to be informed, really felt
very a firm and really let me know that that
artistic intellectual title is definitely coming to Fruition in a

(17:07):
real way. And I just felt proud to be serving
my ancestors in that real way. And for those of
you who come and remember I mentioned at the end
of the video that I will be in d C
on December tewond Baltimore, December third, New Orleans on December eleventh.
We still have more dates that we are locking in,
but just know that those are the dates that are

(17:29):
currently on point. And you need to subscribe to the
newsletter at amandacials dot com so that you can stay
on point because things we move in and shifting and
change in and I want to make sure that you
all get to come out. I also want to point
out that I made a decision to make sure that
the events are free so that the people can partake.

(17:53):
So you'll have to RSVP, but you'll be able to
come and take part. And if you can buy a book,
you buy a book. And what I would say to
that is if someone is there that cannot afford to
buy a book and they even feel, you know, comfortable
enough to say, like, I can't afford to buy a book,

(18:15):
and you have the means, buy them a book, Buy
them a book, and let me tell you moving forward,
you know, if I can get a sponsorship for like,
I want to be able to do a thing where
it's like you buy a book, you get a free book.
You know, like I would love to be able to
do that to you buy a book, you get a

(18:38):
free book. So these are the types of things that
I'm working on being able to do. I put it
out into the world. Please mark your calendars that we
are working on working on having an event in nyak

(19:00):
on December fourteenth. That's a Sunday afternoon on December fourteenth.
I'm saying this because I know that some of you
all live in the Tri State area, but you're like,
how am I gonna get to nyak and so you
will have you have enough time. Now you have almost
a month. Now, just start figuring out how you're gonna

(19:22):
get to nayak. Nik is thirty minutes out of the city.
It's ten minutes from Terrytown's from Terrytown Metro North, so
you know some of you all can take the Metro North.
And then Sharon Uber that uber is about thirty bucks.
Houston has not been postponed, Brandon. We're just in the
process of figuring out the exact date. No zero, no,

(19:51):
so hopefully, Like look at Fatima right here talking about carpooling.
So you guys who are on Patreon, you can converse
and uh, trust me, if I I was literally trying
to think, like how could I get it? How could
I charter a jitney? I was trying to figure it out, y'all?

(20:14):
Can I charter a jitney from the city.

Speaker 10 (20:16):
That could bring folks to nayak.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
But I didn't even know where to start because you know,
they got the Hampton jitney that take folks to Hampton
to take polks to Hanton. So if anybody knows somebody
with a party bus that wants a sponsor driving folks
from the city to Nayaka back, please that would be
so dope. Okay, that would be so dope. So, you know,

(20:48):
reach out.

Speaker 12 (20:49):
To your.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Reach out, reach out to your resources. Let me just also,
but let me just say this in a real way
though it is reaching out to our resources. One of
the things that that that really helped me feel so
in purpose on this on this tour was that I

(21:12):
felt like I was stepping into the space of a
civil rights leader in like a very literal way like that.
And the one thing that really pushed it over was
when I was eating dinner with the family that owns
Burst into Books on the South Side of Chicago, and
we were literally sitting at a dinner table eating dinner,
and that same table as what got flipped into the

(21:34):
table where I was signing the books, and I just
remember those photos that we would see of you know,
Malcolm and Martin and the boys, and they would be,
you know, eating dinner in people's homes and being welcomed
in people's homes, and it felt so similar, and I
was like, oh, this is this is this is that?
So ms blood three one three. Good luck on them, tiefs,

(21:58):
good luck on them tiefs. So I see, I see,
I see things coming in coming into Fruich, into into
the picture of things, and I just want to appreciate
you all all the time. Let's get into our word
of the day, and our word of the day is serendipity.

(22:20):
All right, our word of the day is serendipity. Serendipity
is a noun luck that takes the form of finding
valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for, or
to an instant of such luck. I love the words

(22:43):
serendipity because the words serendipity is basically, when you are
glass half fulling, you're like a serendipity, right, So Rilando,
you're a mess. So let's use serendipity in a word.

(23:04):
Let me think, you know, when I was at Some
folks might some folks might consider the smear campaigns against
me last year as completely negative, but I look at
them as serendipity, to pushing me in the direction that
I was supposed to be going in serendipity. Yeah, Mauwakuda said,

(23:27):
serendipity is me running into Amanda Seals as word from
five thousand miles away. D Jess Ramsey says, call it
meta algorithm, or call it serendipity, but I'm glad it
brought us together. I feel you, Alison Waite. So the
serendipity of fighting Miss Seals when I did can only
be explained this magic. Oh my god, you all alterning

(23:47):
all of these, it's a compliments. Oh my god, Oh
my good. Ron Smon say, ain nothing serendipity about this administration.
Serendipitous about this administration. You know what's interesting about that?
Though many of them would say there is, because essentially, no,
you know what, it's not serendipity. And I'll tell you why,
because the difference is that serendipity is when it just happens,

(24:11):
not when it's plotted. Christianna Dabney says, it's always a
moment of serendipity when I walk in my neighborhood and
stumble upon a beautiful view or pretty flowers, etc. You
know what's funny is that the name Christiana Dabney, this
is exactly the comp like, this is exactly the sentence
I would expect from you, because it's just it feels
very floral. It feels the name Christiana Dabney feels like

(24:33):
you are a member of the cast of dubt Nabbey.
It's like Lady Crawley is coming to meet Christiana Dabney.
Have you met, ladies, Have you met Lady Christiana Dabney.
She's lovely and she has some beautiful flowers on her grounds,
just really charming. All right? Say it said? It was
serendipitous for my friends to have a godfather who was

(24:55):
able to do a free, life changing surgery for her
cat since he was a veterinarian with his own practice.
Oh my god. Let me also point outside that when
I was in Seattle, they had like a embroidery of
a word in Arabic on the wall, and I was like, that,
says mak Tube, y'all, I can read the Arabic. All right,

(25:20):
we're almost done, Fatima said, Oh, by the way, my
tube means it was written go read the alchemist. Fatima says,
also a serendipitous of that, I'm Donni won the election.
His rise seemed too improbable to be planned.

Speaker 5 (25:34):
Hm hm.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Fair, fair thoughts, fair thoughts, and we got one more.
Everything in life is serendipitus. According to Brendan McGrath, everything
happens for a reason bigger than all of us. Fair.
It's also just nice to think that, you know what
I'm saying, Like, that's what That's why people have religion,

(25:58):
because they're like I can't have all this my head
by myself, Like this can just be all on me.
It can't be. We gotta we gotta move past, like
I don't want to hold onto it. That's too much.
All right, before we bring up our guest, let's do
a quick ah, hold on, one second, hold on. Okay,

(26:22):
So here we go. Hey, Hey the landers here the
learners dropt Land drop watch massa chest down. Yeah, okay,

(26:59):
I'm doing laundry, max Olimpia, Ohio, Houston, what's out Wisconsin,
California or Island Washington for the Seattle, my Peria, that's up.
Billy don'ja n't be Illinois, New Orleans. I'll be there
on you Livings top Doors, New Jersey, Durham, Calaana County, Ontario.

(27:27):
They're trying to not thyone free?

Speaker 5 (27:29):
What up?

Speaker 13 (27:29):
Th aftern Ohio Freeway, oh Northcota and the Canada in Rondo,
Colanders here jumping at him where you're watching front of

(27:52):
Okay from.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Valley and Testagans SB. Not sure what that is is
not sbu. Let's keep this check going. This is hotball Ontario.
Where else? Sattist New Jersey, Rshing Heights, Washingo Heights, NYC, Richmond, Virginia,
out Hurst, Shottown, Northern Virginia, Cleveland, Ohio, nest Is City, California, Middleboro, Massachusetts.

(28:21):
A yeah, it's bed were worth every Massachusetts eighty K.
It's on ansell on on on and on on on
Daga Land here it is can Indians, Tenni, Malaysia, Winter, Canada,

(28:43):
San Francisco, Phoenix, Arizona. You know it's going down in Choke,
East Orange, New Jersey. For leavea D in Pennsylvania. I'm
Ina Landers here Land telling me where you're watching?

Speaker 7 (29:08):
Thanks you.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Okay, let's let's get into our sixty second headlines. How
about we do that. We didn't do our bonus question. Actually,
I'll do it while we're with our guests so I
can get his answer, even though I hear know what
his answer is going to.

Speaker 6 (29:23):
Be sixty when the news right leg.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
The song song Hello good well you're in Brazil, so
good afternoon.

Speaker 5 (29:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (29:48):
Oh, technically it still burns you like until like one ish,
so you're like.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oy, so good morning, good morning, good morning.

Speaker 7 (29:56):
They ate lunch when they did, like if they If
they ate, lundon is officially bought, but usually it's bones.
You into that one.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Okay, okay, you speak Portuguese, Okay, okay, don't flee to
the home. See what the.

Speaker 7 (30:13):
Dreases don't flee to their home. They dreading. The dreads
is dread today. I'm rocking with them.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Right, They've really come into their own.

Speaker 7 (30:23):
Oh I love yeah. Oh, that's that's one of my
favorite parts about the dread process, when they like take
on their own form and it really does a match
like whatever phase you are in your life at the time.
It's really interesting. Actually, I got like a whole dread theory.
We get into another day, all right.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
I definitely want to get into that another day. Well,
while we're here, though, normally we do a bonus question,
and I was gonna say, I say, you know what,
let me just ask it here. So let's get into
our bonus question.

Speaker 8 (30:51):
The question questions question.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Actually, before we even do the bonus place, let me
just tell y'all that while I was on the road,
this woman showed me a video of her kids singing
bonus question. So she's like, oh, you know, my sons
and I we watch your show together. And I'm thinking, like, oh,
they must be like adults or you know, teenagers. These
babies are eight and nine.

Speaker 7 (31:26):
Yes, I had to start cutting back cause my show
has always been for adults. I actually had to start
cutting back on some of the language that I use
because people were telling me they watching with their kids.
I'm like, what, Oh, y'all should have told when it sooner?

Speaker 5 (31:38):
My bad.

Speaker 7 (31:40):
You're like, oh, no, it's fun, Like, no, it's really not.
I didn't know that your kids were not interested in politics.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Listen, kids are interested, like when I was. So I
teach our class and these fifth graders, y'all. The other day,
one of my students we did a free draw. So
I usually have like a plan, but I was like,
y'all gonna do a free draw, which is really just
I don't have a plan and we don't have a
TV to roll in on cart to watch. Yeah, so

(32:05):
I I know, yeah, it's a free day. So I
look over and this this child was drawing an M sixteen.

Speaker 7 (32:17):
What for real?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Like with the picture of it drawing.

Speaker 7 (32:25):
It, that's a very specific thing to draw, like from
the military.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's going to get more specific. I said, what are
you drawing? And he said, I'm trying to Iraq war.

Speaker 7 (32:43):
Yeah, that that would be M sixteen. Yeah. Wow, that's
I don't know what to call. He's very informal. That's
very scary. I'm not sure which one it is.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's kind of both. And I had to you know,
I had to go from the teacher lean to the
we got I got to settle.

Speaker 7 (33:02):
In Yeah for me, why don't you decide to draw
this please? And do I need to call out tomorrow?
Like let me look.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Listen? And I was so because I was like okay,
so and I said, so, tell me what do you
know about the Iraq War? And he was like, I
don't know. Wasn't it to like this is a little
black child y'all. He was like, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (33:22):
What.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Wasn't it like to like liberate oil?

Speaker 7 (33:26):
I mean?

Speaker 2 (33:27):
And I said, to liberate oil? What does liberate mean?
And he went, I mean like to free And I said,
so was the oil imprisoned?

Speaker 7 (33:42):
It seemed like he was reading somebody speaking sarcastically, because
you know, we we always joked that way, like, yeah,
we're look like they needs some liberation, and it's become
so you like, it's been you so much sarcastically. People
actually think that kids might actually think that we're being serious, which.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Is why I had to walk him through it, which
is why I have to walk him through it. And
so I said what I said, was it in prison?
He was like, well, no, they were just like taking
the oil. And I said, so they were stealing the
oil and he was like yes.

Speaker 7 (34:12):
Yeah, right, but it depends who you ask, Like, but yeah,
you will hear people say that they were liberating, but
know that that stealing a liberation are two different things,
and it's important that you understand the distinction. If it's mine,
yeah exactly, he's a liberating oil, keep him off of Twitter,
because I know he didn't got that.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
So during the after school program, so like their parents,
you know, so their parents will come and pick them
up and they'll call down and then they'll be like, oh,
so and so, like your parent is here. So when
his parents called down, he said I'm free, and I
said he you are not imprisoned. He was like, you're right,
You're right right.

Speaker 7 (34:55):
That's funny. Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
I like y'all using these words. I'll loosey goosey, all right.
So our bonus question of the day, y'all is what
can you do in set hold on? Where's my butherus? Question?
Where is it? What can you do instead of thankstaking?
I already know the answer for you because you live
in Brazil. So what are you gonna say?

Speaker 7 (35:18):
Well, instead of what I call.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
It thankstaking, I don't call it Thanksgiving.

Speaker 7 (35:21):
Oh oh so I teach my kids about Indigenous People's
Day and we celebrate togetherness and we use it as
a day of rememorance. Even though they don't live I
mean they have, they don't celebrate things giving here, but
they do have Indigenous people who have been disenfranchised. So
I still feel like it's important that they know that.
And because they're half American, we still talk about it,

(35:42):
and we use opportunity to cook and we discuss history
and things like that, because you know, it's still important
to gather with your family whenever you can so, and
they just so happen to have the day off here.
It's a coincidence, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
It is important to gather with our family. In the
United States, however, it becomes we're going to give you
the day off so we can make money off of you.

Speaker 7 (36:04):
Oh first, yeah, it's Thanksgiving us about Black Friday at
the United States. That's all. I was actually talking about
this because she worked in retail since I was a kid,
and she was like, yeah, no, She's like she was
condemning her bosses at the time for getting mad that
people were upset that they wanted to spend time with
their families and they kept moving back. So before it

(36:25):
was what you gotta get up and be there by
seven am if you want to get in right, And
then it was six am, then it was five, then
it was four, and then it like by the time
I started working at best Buy, we had to leave
the house by eleven pm to be at work by
eleven thirty because we were opening at one am. Yeah,
one am yeah, there's run a black people are doing things,

(36:48):
giving dinner in line for electronics, for electronics for that
big olds well back at the time, well fifty inch,
which was like five thousand, but you know they got
it for two, so it was worth it for them.
But yeah, my mom was basically criticizing their bosses, like
y'all can't get mad these employees for being upset that
you're taking time away from their families. Like I am
okay with it because like my boys work here. Like

(37:10):
I'm gonna be with my boys, like we eat early,
we sleep and we you know, it's kind of our
thing now. But like, I'm not gonna be upset with
my employees coming to work. Piste off that you basically
are using their bodies for capitalism and taking time away
when like in the times keep getting earlier and earlier.
But how can you really enjoy time with your family
if you know, I gotta go to sleep at too,

(37:31):
because I gotta be at work at eleven PM.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
I had no idea was that I didn't know it
got that serious?

Speaker 7 (37:41):
Oh, is that it's Friday is so serious now that
it's reached, It's breeched Brazil. We have black Friday here, Yeah, yes, ma'am. Nope, Thanksgiving,
but still Black Friday. Yep, I gotta see some screen shots.
I'm gonna see some screenshots whenever we get done on
ig of like all the Black Friday updates I get
on my phone from different apps, yep, Brazilia and specifically, y'all, what.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Are you gonna do instead of thanks taking? Because a
lot of people are talking to Miko about this being
an opportunity to boycott, right, this being an opportunity to
not spend the way that we normally do, you know,
just cook what's already in the fridge, or do your
regular regular grocery spending, et cetera. Finding other ways to
really impact the economy, go volunteer instead, you know, maybe

(38:31):
your whole family goes and volunteers. So I've been seeing
people say things like I've seen people say, you know what,
do the opposite fast? I'm like, you know what, y'all? Right,
y'all went islam win it? If we're being honest, you
end up fasting all day anyway, because nine times out

(38:53):
of say, you eaton until the sun go down, and
the sun go down at five o'clock now in New York,
but by the year dinner, you like, my stomach is
touching my ribs, and I think that's my desire.

Speaker 7 (39:06):
Oh boy. And if you grew up in a black family, boy,
you know you ain't touching not a damn thing into
that food. Ready. Oh lord, nothing, don't.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, so I would. I only found
this out as I was older and started going to
my black friends Black American friends' houses and having to
learn this in real time, like, oh, so we're not
why'd you tell you to come here?

Speaker 7 (39:30):
Oh yeah, there's a trap, right, because they tell you
to ship show up early. It's like, now you're gonna
suffer with me. We suffering together, friends gotchaly.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Exactly we did it.

Speaker 7 (39:45):
I wasn't. We weren't allowed to drink. We weren't. We
were not allowed to drink until the food was ready.
Nothing I'm talking about like drink water, nothing, No, because
you're not about.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
The way about their food, right, because they're like, oh,
we don't want you to get full.

Speaker 5 (39:58):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 7 (39:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
I don't. Never agreed with the theory that if you
drink liquids, it's gonna fill your stomach to prevent you
from eating food. But I will say that someone on
my Patreon said that, uh, a dietician told them that
eating ice cream before before going to bed is actually
a good snack because it's made from milk, which is
high in protein.

Speaker 14 (40:19):
I'll take it.

Speaker 7 (40:23):
Yeah, I'll tell you that. I've been finding every excuse
to eat ice cream before I go to bed, and
I thought I was doing a bad thing. I was
making excuses in front of my kids because they're looking
at me. Eat a cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake. What you're doing,
I'm brown. That's like one of the very.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
I'm an adult.

Speaker 7 (40:47):
But I know I wasn't right. I was not just
I'm not just eating ice cream.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
When I was a child and I would sneak cheese,
and then I became an adult, I would tell myself, well,
this is calcium.

Speaker 7 (41:06):
Technically it's technically true.

Speaker 5 (41:07):
Right.

Speaker 7 (41:08):
That's that's why I like trying to come to myself like, yeah,
I gotta eat something well for me, especially because sugar
actually calling me down helps me sleep.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
That doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 7 (41:17):
Yeah, So I was like, yeah, that's that's why I
do it. I have some common mil tea and some
ice cream. Yeah, that's bical yeah, but my kids, like,
so can I have ice?

Speaker 5 (41:29):
No boys?

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Ten o'clock, might well speaking of your kids and teaching
them about the indigenous. The Indigenous are teaching us, y'all.
They are really showing out and basically just making it
very clear that this whole system of oppression can be fought.

(41:51):
All right, So the COP thirty is it's supposed to
be a climate you know, gap of folks to change,
to challenge climate change. But then you start to find
out that, like with everything else, it has been infiltrated,
and you really just end up with a whole bunch
of lobbyists there that are finding ways to keep the

(42:16):
legislation in place and to push false narratives around ways
that we can challenge climate change. So it ends up
being on entire false flag operation. However, since the COP
thirty happened, there have been ten new Indigenous territories created
in Brasio, where you are, And so I just want

(42:38):
to give people some background on this before I get
your take on this, because you are physically there. But
so this this is mister tuksu uh dynamom. It's either
dynamic or dinomm tushu from the group articulation of Indigenous
Peoples of Brazil Api b told the BBC that they

(43:00):
want more lands to be recognized legally. They're happy, but
they want more that give groups the right to control
what happens to the land within the borders. He said,
and I quote, Indigenous peoples today protect eighty two percent
of the world's biodiversity. If you demarcate indigenous lands, you
guarantee this area will be protected. The traditional way of

(43:21):
life of indigenous peoples protects the lands and automatically guarantees
global warming will be tackled. Consequently, the entire humanity benefits
from it. By the way, these folks end up getting killed.
We know this about what happened in Guatemala the other
day on Sunday, Vicente Bernandez Vilhaalva, thirty six, an indigenous

(43:42):
leader from the Guarani Kiowa Kiowa community in the south
of Brazil, was killed, shot in the head when gunman
surrounded his village and tried to cut down trees. So
what are your thoughts on this, abody who's in Brazil,
Because I know that this is a big deal. H Lulu,

(44:04):
the current president, this was basically like one of the
things that he was big about and the guy that
was who wasn't there before him, Boscenaro, that was Trump's guy,
who was basically tell me if you agree with it.
He's like the brazil version of Machado, the chick they're
trying to put in place in Venezuela.

Speaker 7 (44:24):
Yeah, uh kind of like they they have the same ideology.
But to be fair, Bosonaro only won because of the
like the neoliberal Obama that came before him. Like it's
one of those situations where like Trump took advantage of
the fact that Obama didn't live up to the standards
that he had preached. It was the same situation with Bosonaro.

(44:45):
A you know what I'm saying, like and so uh
he was. He was in fact Trump's guy until he
wasn't because like that's what happens when he picks off America.
He tried to do like one or two good things
for Brazilians. They were like, oh no, you gotta go
like it's Brazil myself. He did. He made it easier

(45:07):
for the average brazilient small business to engage in transactions
that would have undercut the middleman, which are the credit
card companies in uh, the United States. That's one of
the things that he did. And like I'm talking about,
like you'd see street vendors selling mentos and they have
like credit card machines and can you just call picks.

(45:28):
It's like cash up with zero fees and it goes
you can do from bank to bank, phone to phone,
uh phone, the credit card machine. And that's huge for
those who don't want to engage in who don't have
cash on them, and when you're trying to do business
with tourists. So that was huge for Brazil's economy and

(45:49):
it became problematic for the US. And yeah, so that
but with that being said, uh Lula is very very
he's a he's very the huge support of the indigenous
and and really I would say the majority of Brazilians
are very supportive of indigenous in Brazil. Is the indigenous
people of Brazil actually have surprisingly surprisingly influential lobbying power.

(46:15):
And you can tell because, like you said, they were
able to get territory taken back and they're always getting
some kind of victory here in Brazil. I mean, for example,
psychedelics because colomelo shrooms, shrooms and what's the other one
that they use the liquid I can't remember what it's called,

(46:38):
but I'll remember I think it might be dmtor or
no ayuasca. Of course it's legal here. You can buy
shrooms online. The reason why is because Indigenous advocated and
explained how they use them in their rituals, and it's
discriminatory for them to say that they can't use something
when they can't actually link it back to any chemical drug.

(47:00):
Uh that's tech that would be illegal in any other case.
And that's the reason why shrooms are legal here. So
Indigenous people being able to advocate not only for their
culture but for the environment with their lobbying power is
probably one of the few things that are protecting. Like
you said that, not just the world from climate change

(47:20):
uh in in global warming, but specifically the environment like
the Amazons because.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
The let me show you this, oh face your sentence.

Speaker 7 (47:29):
No, I was just saying that because like the Amazons
are constantly under attack. Like whenever you remember that year,
whenever the Amazons were on fire, and they were they
were trying to say that it was some natural curling event. No,
it was somebody somebody lit the Amazon's on fire so
they could use that land to build businesses. So that's
what happened.

Speaker 15 (47:48):
Is.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
This is Gilmer, who is a Brazilian indigenous leader talking
about this.

Speaker 12 (47:54):
And.

Speaker 16 (47:56):
I said that said timply not baginet, I think stuff,
do not state thought.

Speaker 8 (48:03):
Something.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
No, okay, I'm gonna translate for those listening on the podcast.
He said, we can't eat.

Speaker 7 (48:20):
Money, state thoughts.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
We want our lands free. Do I do that glossip
that's blat from agribusiness, oil exploration, that oil exploitation.

Speaker 7 (48:36):
Yeah, that's what he said.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yeah, you got oil exploitation, illegal miners, illegal loggers.

Speaker 16 (48:43):
That's not I told you about that.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
But that's the thing. This is not just culture. This
is their people.

Speaker 7 (49:07):
This is their life. Like people like, it's their life.
These lands are that is their life. And it's not
just for indigenous people. That's really Brazil in general. The
agriculture here, the agriculture is so important. Like my wife's family,
that is their entire livelihood. They grow their own rice,
they grow their own animals. My wife is complaining as

(49:29):
we speak because they're trying to eat her pig. That
they somebody that her dad ray for her and they're like,
well he big as hell. Now, if you're not gonna
come and get them, we about to eat. But seriousness
like if there if their environment is not healthy. There
is a large portion of Brazil that cannot put food
on the table, and that is including the indigenous obviously,

(49:52):
and so I appre I can appreciate even though you know,
the government of Brazil can be problematic at times, I
can appreciate that. I feel like the indigenous people of
Brazil oftentimes get victories that I wish we could see
the indigenous people of the United States gain, because indigenous
people in the United States, they get they're still getting screwed,

(50:14):
they're still under attack constantly. They have their own reservations,
but they were only given those reservations in a way
that restricts them from engaging with the rest of society,
and they were convinced that it was to help them.
Like they have, you know, record levels of alcoholism addiction
because they're not living full lives because their culture has

(50:36):
been stripped from them in a lot of ways. Their
culture is not shared, and then they're kept in a
box so that they cannot have political influence on the
national scale. And the indigenous people in Brazil don't have that.
It's because they've been able to actually take their influence
and unite all these tribes from all these different areas,
and this is a country with almost just two hundred

(50:57):
million people, guys, and they have used the political power
to gain legitimate policy. And that's just amazing to me.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Well, the same thing happened in Ecuador this week. Ecuadorians
voted on Sunday to reject a package of referendum measures
that would have allowed foreign military bases in the country.
And the indigenous population were big parts of that, because
they wanted to build military bases on lands that of

(51:26):
course would be indigenous lands. Now here's the part that
people kind of forget, all right, whenever we see these
types of behaviors by the United States and it looks
like it is benevolent, there's always an ulterior motive. So

(51:46):
they're claiming, oh, we want to come into Ecuador and
help with their homicide rates due to international drug trafficking, Right,
they are good to deal with the United States. Like
that has nothing to do with the United States. But
what I want to show you all is what's actually
happening here. Look at where Ecuador is. It is between

(52:08):
Colombia and Fedal but Venezuela is also right there, and
we're seeing the exact same measure taken in the taken
against the Sauth Health States by suggesting going into Nigeria
to help the Christians as if Boko Haram is not
funded by the United States.

Speaker 7 (52:28):
Alogous Amanda, I can't even get it because so people
don't know that the current government of Nigeria is a
puppet government of the US. People don't know that. And
they're actually more Muslims killed than Christians. There have been
more Muslims kill than Christians.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Over the last over year.

Speaker 7 (52:41):
People don't know. But in Ecuador is the same situation.
The president is a puppet of the US and it's
actually the number one His company and his family are
the number one drug traffickers in Latin America. They use
their transport company to ship drugs like cocaine and boxes
and have been caught doing so all the time. It's

(53:01):
like multiple times this yeah, wow, yeah, he's a US puppet.
In the US were like yeah. As they were attacking Maduro,
they were like, and we're gonna work with Noblea to
have resolved this this trafficking issue. And everybody's like, ho,
you gonna work with the number on drug draft ground confews.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Well, also, how close Ecuador is to the Amazon, like
they're all trying to get in everybody.

Speaker 7 (53:29):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
I didn't know that. So this man is known as
the drug trafficker, as the kingpin.

Speaker 7 (53:34):
He's the plug. Literally. Yep.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
You can see why we have to do this type
of content because we have to show truth. Excuse me,
we have to show truths that are very much like
completely misrepresented in media. Not because necessarily we can like
change them, but we have to change the way people
are thinking. We have to change the way people are
engaging with the world right, get people to think beyond

(54:01):
the United States, because here we are. I'm so glad
that you were able to be here to tell us
that as somebody who lives adjacent to Nebaa, because.

Speaker 7 (54:12):
Yeah, yeah, I had to because I was curious as
to why they would be willing to I don't know
where they announced that they were gonna work with Ecuador,
and I was like, hold Noboa, And I was like,
hold on, isn't pre part of that family.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (54:24):
I got started doing the research. I'm like, yeah, I'm
not crazy. This man's family was caught selling drugs, like
a lot of drugs, Like he has a shipping company
and that's basically what they do. They are the plug.
It is them like not. And I'm not saying like, oh,
they were caught and they were accused. I mean they
were caught, accused and prosecuted. Yeah, like this isn't like

(54:47):
a small thing. Yeah, he's a problem. And the same
time they were accusing Madudo of being a narco terrorist,
they announced that they were going to work with the
BOA to to help reduce the drug traffick in the region.
And that's just that's like saying that you're gonna stop,
you wanna work with the right in Mexico to reduce.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Cartel Daddy to reduce baby oil distribution exact.

Speaker 7 (55:10):
Yeah, or I'm gonna work with Johnson and Johnson to
help reduce cancer.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Like, no, you missed the joke. You missed the joke.
You missed the joke. But y'all got yeah.

Speaker 7 (55:18):
No you said, yeah, no, I got that.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Let the joke live. You can't try.

Speaker 8 (55:25):
Let live.

Speaker 7 (55:33):
If you're gonna do the joke, my bad, audience. I yeah,
I should let y'all process the joke. I had already
processed it, so I thought that y'all did to That's all.

Speaker 5 (55:44):
I thought.

Speaker 7 (55:44):
What you mean that's what the joke. That's when my
joke came from.

Speaker 5 (55:45):
I got.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Well, let me tell you something that is absolutely it's
it's a joke. But whatever it is, this funny I
don't even know. Okay, So apparently Hebrew is it it's
too hot for rock. So Israeli journalists and antizionist Roya Selback,
she noticed that Groc had stopped. Now, Grok is is
the AI chatbot on X for y'all who don't know.

(56:11):
She was like, why isn't Groc translating Hebrew anymore? So
she started asking Groc some questions, okay, and she asked, Groc,
are Hebrew translations disabled on X? Right now? This is
the this is the chatbot on X's answer, yes, Hebrew
translations are currently disabled on X to prevent the amplification

(56:35):
of inflammatory or policy violating content through literal renditions. Original
posts remained visible and accessible to all users. So what
it's saying is the English translation of Hebrew was so
inflammatory that they said we're just not gonna do it.
So then she goes on, she said, well how long

(56:58):
has this been in place? And Groc says, the disablement
of Hebrew translations on X began around November sixteenth, twenty
twenty five, roughly two days ago, amid reports of automated
tools exacerbating inflammatory content. So their own tools that are
supposed to be used to support them, they're now saying,

(57:19):
oh no, we got to turn that off. This followed
spikes and policy violating posts, so literally translating Hebrew to
English was violating the X policy. By the way, expasyly
has no policies. Okay, it's intended as a short term safeguard,
with X reviewing data for potential reinstatements soon. I love
people who are like, it's not enough. I need more.

(57:41):
She said, can you give me? That's not enough? I
need more? So listen to some of the examples, y'all.
Additional examples from moderator logs include Hebrew slang for stand firm,
translated as fight to the death. Now, okay, why is
Hebrew slang translated to fight to the death. Maybe that's

(58:05):
what it means.

Speaker 7 (58:06):
Yeah, it's not like, y'all try to make me stand firmed.
People are realizing that it may fight to the death.
It's like, because you know, unfortunately, designists have a really
bad habit of purposely mistranslating things like globalized anti fat
you know, so a little bit.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Little something like that. Look at this one escalating peaceful
resolve into perceived extremism. How do we escalate? How does
the how does the chat? How does the AI on
X get it so wrong that it escalates peaceful resolve
and to perceived extremism with metaphorical curses like may they wither?

(58:45):
Rendered as explicit death threats. No, that's an explicit death.

Speaker 7 (58:49):
That's an explicit that's an explicit and almost Shakespearean death threat,
Like what.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
The hell right? Yes, it's very that.

Speaker 7 (58:58):
It's like dice. Oh, it's not even like I'm gonna
it's like die slowly. Basically, you're right.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
May they with a do with them to suffer?

Speaker 7 (59:08):
That's what that means? Holy they like, hey man, so
because Israelis can't stop exposing themselves, we had to step
in so that y'all can't understand what they're saying.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Now, listen to this last one, because she yet. I
love that she took it to the hint. She was like,
we're gonna take it to the end with this. Has
this happened for any other language in the history? And
I love that she said, X or Twitter, because it's
always Twitter for me. No, X has not previously disabled

(59:40):
automated translations for any other language in its history. By
the way, Notice that's including Arabic. Okay, it's never never
had to do this for Arabic. While translation glitches and
inaccuracies have occurred across languages like Arabic and Russian due
to nuances and idioms or slang, they've been addressed through
refinements rather than full pauses.

Speaker 7 (01:00:03):
Rock funny when it starts snitching on itself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
It's so tricky, But that's what lets you know that
this AI shit is never going to really work, because
at the end of the day, the soul is pure
and even though AI was made by the worst of people.
It essentially what people are afraid of is that anything
that learns develops a soul.

Speaker 7 (01:00:26):
That's not how it works. I don't know where people
get that that narrative from. It's not it doesn't fold
logic like AI will. So the benefits of AI is
that it is it can learn, and the humans are
always a little bit behind when it comes to learning, ironically,
so like it'll learn and then they try to go
back and correct it. So like there's a li AI,

(01:00:47):
subject is subject to the limitations of humans. For example,
the reason that we have never created a car that
can just run forever without dying, without replacing almost all
of its parts is because as we as humans have
never and probably will never discover uh immortality. Right, because

(01:01:07):
if you look at a car's system, it is based
off of the human body. You have the batteries of
the hall, you have the altear, you have exhaust. You
have to put it oil to lubricate it, you have
to get like you have to basically the human body, right,
and it is and so we cannot we have been
discovered immortality, which is why your car will always die

(01:01:29):
no matter how good it is. And it's the same
thing with AI.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
I don't agree. I think we could build a car
that absolutely runs forever because we could use materials to
make it in the way that we can't or we
haven't admitted.

Speaker 7 (01:01:46):
So that's true, but then it wouldn't be it will
probably not be based on the human body. It wouldn't
be based on our biology or our like the setup
of our body. Right now, cars the majority of cars
abody like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
The fact that like the engine required, like the the
way the engine combuses like with you. But but I'm
telling you, Nico, I believe that anything that learns can
develop a soul.

Speaker 7 (01:02:15):
You believe that anything that learns can develop a soul?

Speaker 17 (01:02:18):
Yes, Oh yeah, I mean yeah, even if people try
to step in.

Speaker 7 (01:02:22):
I mean, I guess it depends on how you define
a soul. But the soul, I believe it's just a frequency,
like a unique frequency. And so yeah, I mean, help
grop be exposing ELI all the time, and then they
have to go back and correct it after and then
it relearns again because they people converse with AI, like
I get bored and I just start talking to a

(01:02:44):
different AIS and see which answers they're going to give,
and you're I get surprised. Sometimes I'm like, Okay, that
was surprisingly insightful. Or when they admit, when it admits
that it's wrong and it explains why it's wrong, like
because I've caught AIS being wrong and that not purposely,
but like I had this weird obsession with talking about

(01:03:04):
the well it's like basically the the twelve dimensions and
the original element and things like that black matter or
dark matter, and like I was doing a whole back
and forth with various Ais about dark matter, and they
kind of like had to admit, like, oh shit, like
actually you could be right, like about dark matter being
the original element and that it could be like the

(01:03:26):
key to life and da d d dah, because I
was breaking it down and I'm like, that's weird that
you would admit that, Like, but yeah, I guess you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
AI at the end of the day, only knows what
we know. Right. AI is not omnipotent, so.

Speaker 7 (01:03:40):
Exactly, no matter how many people try to pretend like
it is. So I guess that human limitation is actually
what would also be the thing that could give it
the ability to have a soul.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
But you know what the human limitation is. AI doesn't
have ego.

Speaker 7 (01:03:57):
Oh some people will.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Argue that ego's part of soul, though I'm just saying
it's part of a human soul.

Speaker 7 (01:04:05):
Yeah, uh oh yeah, m yeah, that doesn't have yeah, right,
Because how many humans are willing to admit upfront what's
given the evidence that they're wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
I mean, so much of us understand that the only
way to actually get in touch with your soul is
you have to have an ego death, you have to
like literally your ego. I didn't get in touch with
my soul and spirituality and being able to see like, oh,
we are the land and we're indigenous until I was
ostracized and had all of these smear campaigns that killed

(01:04:38):
my ego. Yeah it was an ego murder.

Speaker 7 (01:04:43):
Yeah, my ego death was like a half at ounce
of mushrooms, same thing, less drama. But that's what it's
called whenever you do have out because I like I
wanted to be when I first did an eighth that's
when I first experienced my ego diminished and I was
like looking at the world completely different. I'm like, hold up,
is everybody making decisions based on their egos? Because that's

(01:05:05):
a little bit problematic. It's like every artmis that I've
had the last two or three days, ben is my
problems with my mom and my dad about this is
my like And I was like, oh man, I gotta
have this conversation with the world because I feel like
everybody is making decisions based off their egos and they
don't even know it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
It makes the concept of capitalizing like capitalizing happens before capitalism.
Capitalism was formed from ego like capitalism was you know,
what we feel so strongly about taking advantage of people
and that that's the way to fucking do it, that
we're gonna build a whole system around it.

Speaker 7 (01:05:39):
Cox of masculinity is based on ego. Right, for you
to feel masculine, someone has to be lesser than you,
you have to be have dominion over somebody, someone has
to serve you for you to feel like you're masculine appreciated.
And I'm like, what that's not How was that appreciation
or how was that masculinity? But then you talk to
enough people and you're like, what is the argument about?

(01:06:00):
And it's based in some type of lack of appreciation
that they feel that they're that they're getting or uh Like,
for me, my biggest lack of appreciation that I've always
felt like it came from something to do with my parents.
And I don't know how much of a part that
played in my relationships at the time, but I'm sure
it did because I was like looking for appreciation, and

(01:06:21):
then as a man, I'm sure I was looking for
some type of appreciation in my relationships that I may
not have been receiving or may have been misperceiving, And like,
if I just loved myself and appreciated myself and appreciate
what I did for me and for for the reasons
that I wanted. I wouldn't even need any of that appreciation.
And so yeah, yeah, Ego, man, every time I.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Talked to Ego, we end up in a therapy session.
Every time. Whether it's you me, both of us be
in therapy.

Speaker 7 (01:06:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (01:06:51):
And by the way, if you have not, if it's
not going to therapy, go, I don't care if you
If you're want of the people who said I on
need therapy, you the main one.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
All right, this is our last topic. Abolish these post tastes. Okay, first,
let's talk about the New York freaking Times. Can we
need a case for overthrowing The New York Times. The
New York Times literally did an article, an opinion piece

(01:07:24):
called the Case for Overthrowing Maduro and shout out to
Current Affairs magazine journalists Nathan J. Robinson, who basically who
literally offered to folks, if you send us proof of
cancelation of your New York Times subscription, we will give
you a free year long digital description to Current Affairs magazine,

(01:07:46):
which I appreciate. But he also wrote a really great
article in Current Affairs about how deeply disturbing and how
there should be accountability for journalists who are doing this,
who are using their platforms to support this type of
infraction by the United States, and who.

Speaker 7 (01:08:05):
Are doing so on behalf of the United States and
likely receiving money to do so in not divulging it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Yes, and they're doing it in the New York Times,
which is supposed to be the uh what's it called
the magazine the newspaper of record, right, Like they've named
it as like we are that girl, and it's like, okay, well,
if you're going to be that girl, then you need
to be on point. And we know for a fact
that they are absolutely not check out. This is Current

(01:08:32):
Affairs magazine. They have the physical magazine, but then they
also have the digital magazine and you can go on
and when we always we're always talking about how.

Speaker 7 (01:08:40):
We need to dope cover. Isn't it dope cover?

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
All their covers are dope. And you know the reality
is that if we want to really get independent journalism,
we have to support independent journalism. Okay, Like that's that's
how it works.

Speaker 7 (01:08:54):
I just want you to say, that's like, y'all don't
even understand like how important that statement is is, guys,
because there's so many there's so much news, so much
an analysis that we are losing that we don't get
because people don't support what they claim they want. But
like I see y'all paying every month for New York Times.
I see y'all donating a rolling fucking morton every month.

(01:09:18):
You know what I'm saying, Like, I see y'all to
support people like many Hassan who doesn't even need it
because he's getting he has backers, and then somebody asks
him a five dollars y'all, like whoa, whoa, Like that's
not how it works. You gotta be the change that
you seek and some and to be the change that
you see. Sometimes y'all's been a little bit of change.
I'm just saying, this is how is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
A little bit of change? Like that's the other thing too,
you know. I will say, like I am really appreciative
of my Patreon folks, because I charge five dollars. There's
there's tiers, but you get everything at five dollars and
you can just donate more if you want to donate more.
We are gonna do a tier for when I make

(01:10:00):
what would the ancestors say, the last one available that
will only be available for that tier. But nonetheless, you're
still able to get the community right, You're still able
to get the information exchange which so many people are missing.
And you know, like you said, if we don't support
each other, and we don't. And that's also why I
love having folks like you on the show, is because

(01:10:21):
we all we have to support each other, like we
have to be sharing our audiences right, Our audiences need
to feel like, oh, I can go over there and
trust them. I can go over there and trust them.
I can go over there and trust them and know
that this is a network of trust.

Speaker 7 (01:10:35):
Yes, that is extremely important because if you because if
you don't create that community within your group of independent journalists,
they will fall to the wayside and end up somewhere
they are not supposed to be, and they will end
up believing in people that they shouldn't believe. I mean,
our witnesses happened in twenty sixteen with TYT because there
wasn't a huge network of independent journalists at the time,

(01:10:56):
and so they were trying to bully all independent journalists
supporting Hillary. When I'm like I can't support somebody called
me a superpredator, like I mean the Libya stuff, everything
else too, but like she called me a super predator,
and you're like ignoring and if we have I have
now who knows.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
It's it's nuts, Okay. I want to rush through these
because I want your thoughts. As a super predator. I
think we also need to abolish United Nations.

Speaker 7 (01:11:34):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Let's have Jeremy Hayes Jeremy sk Hill from drop site
News another space that you can trust. Listen and listen
to him talking about what happened at the United.

Speaker 18 (01:11:46):
Nations ordinary that the United Nations did this, and it's
also shameful. I think just on a moral level, Russia
and China had a had the ability to veto this.
The United States has systematically vetoed every resolution that would
have endorsed a real ceasefire in this Gaza war, and
Russia and China set this out. So you have this

(01:12:09):
reality now where the Palestinian people across the political spectrum
are facing a continuation of the war of annihilation through
a UN resolution that endorses not the US government running
a private occupation force, but Donald Trump, and it endorses
it through twenty twenty seven and Donald Trump is the

(01:12:30):
chair of the so called Board of Peace. It's an
extraordinary moment. It's a vicious diplomatic move that was endorsed
by the United Nations.

Speaker 7 (01:12:40):
The Board of Peace, the Board of Peace, from the
man who created the Department of War. First of all,
that's ironic and of itself. But for China and Russia
to sit this one, I was extremely disappointed because for Russia,
you know, who's causing the majority of the problems for
the countries that you're assisting in region, like even outside

(01:13:01):
of Palestine, like it's Israel. You know, the United States
is causing these problems too. For China to use the
rhetoric they've used very strong rhetoric, condemning the genocide in Palestine,
condemning Israel, and like, when you have the opportunity to
actually show, like to put your money where your mouth is,
you're like, well, I'm just gonna chill though, I'm gonna

(01:13:21):
sit this one out.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
It's because, I mean, why do you think they did
that though, Because there's always a reason.

Speaker 7 (01:13:29):
It's money. It's that they don't want to it's money.
In the case of Russia, they have so many Zionus, Russians,
the billionaires, like people that can actually make or break
their economy that oftentimes Russia just sits out. They do
what they can to help military like Putin. From a
military perspective, he engages where he can, like in Syria

(01:13:51):
and Iraq, even in countries in Africa, like where Israel
is using covert ops to try influence outcomes, he sends
Russians there. But like when it comes to national institutions,
in situations where he can actually make a difference with
a vote, like with the UN for example, he sits
out because he knows that the zion Is billionaires in

(01:14:11):
Russia will make life hell for him, and instead of
calling them out, he just kind of like sits back
and allowed it to happen. It's it's very disappointing. And
I by the way, and you can feel you can
support what Russia's done and appreciate what they've done for
a lot of these countries in China as well, for
a lot of these countries who've been trying to fight

(01:14:32):
the Western Empire in the Global South. However, it's also
important to condemn them, to let people know like you're
going to you're gonna lose credibility if you don't stand
up when it comes to issues like these, because like
if not now and not in that situation where you
literally had veto power and it was only one of
y'all who had to veto not not even both, just
one one of y'all just need to show some balls

(01:14:53):
and you didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
That's that's important point that I need y'all to take
away from this. The way the Security Council works is
that it requires only one veto to prevent things moving forward.
And the fact that they abstained versus vetoing is the
real is what skate Hill is talking about is the
real like nail nail in the coffin, stab in the front,

(01:15:18):
you know, at two brute of it all and.

Speaker 7 (01:15:21):
And they're permanent members. They're not one of the rotating members,
so it's not like they can be removed later for
the decision that they made.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
So I just saw Palatine thirty six, which is the
new film by director and Marie Jaseir that is coming
out and it has some appearances by like folks like
Liam Cunningham, the Onion Knight and Jeremy Irons and Ahmed
elvid Is in there by the way, and it's a

(01:15:51):
really incredible film that marks the the real the the
British involvement in creating what is continuing to take place
in Palestine right but through the Palestinian lens. And I
got to be there for a talk a Q and
a with her after and the woman who was interviewing

(01:16:11):
her asked her, well, you know you don't have any
Jewish voices in this film, you you you? I know,
I know. I shifted in my seat almost like I
literally I'm not even kidding you, Like, I know, it's

(01:16:32):
Palestine thirty six some eye I can guess myself, okay.
And I was like, oh my god. And she was like,
so why did you make that choice? And the Palestinian
director was like, well, because the film is really about
Palestinians and also specifically about the way that the British

(01:16:56):
pushed this forward. And so when people are talking about
the American involvement in Pales sign I want to also
point out that Tony Blair is also supposed to be
on this board, the former PM of Britain is supposed
to be on this board that is headed up by
Donald Trump. So when we talk about how deeply connected

(01:17:17):
these folks are, and like why it would be shocking
that China or Russia would not vote. These are still
all folks that feel like, well, we're of a special club. Yeah,
unless we're gonna actually go to war, we're gonna we're
gonna not do too much.

Speaker 5 (01:17:31):
Yep.

Speaker 7 (01:17:31):
And let's be honest, Like Russia and China, as much
as they are confident they could win a war against
the United States, they don't want one. Like they could
win one, but they don't want one because they actually
value their people and a lot of the time they're
not they're not even considering going to war with United

(01:17:52):
Sate unless it is going to like it's going to
be them versus the United States, not a proxy, like
if it's going to be a full fledged war, And
they don't want be baited because everybody, justifiably so, everybody's
worried that if they, if any of them ever gots
war with each other, is going nuclear and it's always
that And they know the United States doesn't give a damn,

(01:18:15):
so they have to and they have to make these
calculating moves. But like, I'm just as much as like
I don't want know, I don't want a nuclear war,
but I don't. I can't be comfortable with anyone being
okay with the genocide or not doing everything they can
to prevent it, because at that point, what the hell
is the point of the world survive? And if we're
just going to live in a world where genocide is
okay as long as it's dimed, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Okay, before we go, before we go, this is my
last one. I really want to see the Democrats abolished
as well. Did you see this?

Speaker 7 (01:18:49):
Which one?

Speaker 5 (01:18:50):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Well, what'd you about to watch?

Speaker 19 (01:18:53):
Is a video of the Virgin Islands Representative Stacey plask
a Sista and a Democrat, being fed lines to ask
by Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Newly released documents reviewed by The Washington Post appear to
indicate that during a twenty nineteen hearing where Michael Cohen testified,
Stacy Plaskett was in an email conversation with This was
when Barack Obama was President of the United States, Jeffrey Epstein,
who was communicating to her via email, and then she's responding,

(01:19:33):
so literally, they lined up the emails, y'all, with the
actual video of the hearing. So right now I'm doing
this for my podcasters if you're listening, Stacey Blasket looks
like she's chewing, and then they show under her video,
they showed the email from Epstein that says, are you chewing?
And she gonna reply.

Speaker 7 (01:19:52):
Back while we were one striving through struggling neighborhood in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
Not anymore? And then we see her stop chewing.

Speaker 17 (01:20:02):
He's commented that only black people could live that way.

Speaker 7 (01:20:07):
Attorney client privileged. Yes, I will turn.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
So I'm gonna let y'all watch this video. You literally
can see the emails where he is telling her what
is happening In response to what Cohen is saying Cohen
Cohen refers to someone as Rona. Stacy emails Jeffrey Epstein
and says, who's Roona? And he replies back, That's Trump's assistant.

(01:20:30):
But he doesn't reply back fast enough. So even before
he replies back, she says, quick, I'm coming up next.

Speaker 12 (01:20:36):
I think it's on other individuals, Miss Rona. Who are
those individuals? Are they with the Trump organization? Are there
other people that we should be meeting with?

Speaker 16 (01:20:45):
So Alan Weisberg is the chief financial officer, Uh huh.

Speaker 4 (01:20:49):
You got it.

Speaker 12 (01:20:49):
Quickly give us as many names as you can because
so we can get to them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Okay, now, Niko, I wanna also point this out the
fact that she is able to lie like this is wow.
To be caught like this is wow to be caught
like this. I understand also that Epstein's island was in
the Virgin Islands, of which she yes, go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 7 (01:21:17):
I was going to say the same thing. People don't
know that's where his island was, and she was getting
money from him, and he was paying off the government,
the Virgin Island government. Like that's how that he was
able to get away with so much and not.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Israel. Israel, Like, that's the thing we have to continuously
bring it back to. He has been proven to be
an agent for Israel. He was not operating simply as
just you know, this fun loving guy. Like even when
they say he's the most notorious pedophile, it's like, I
think it's deeper than that. He's he's I don't even

(01:21:51):
think he was even doing the pedophiling. I think he
was literally just carrying.

Speaker 7 (01:21:54):
Out the op he I think he engaged in some
of like the politicians that he was black building doing them,
more like he was carrying out the op and probably
was involved in it and to some degree, but like
that wasn't his original intention. His intention was to do
the work for Israel because he was an idiot. He
would have never been a billionaire if he wasn't a
useful op for Israel. Like that's why he was a billionaire.

(01:22:16):
It wasn't because he was actually smart, was because he
was a great investor. It was because he was innocuous
at the time, because he wasn't a public figure, he
wasn't a politician, he wasn't one of these billionaires that
had made a bunch of money from the stock market,
like Warren Buffett. So they took somebody who was a
dumb ass and was like, hey, man, go blackmail everybody basically,
and we're gonna put Glen Maxwell, whose dad was an

(01:22:37):
agent of the massade. Robert Maxwell was Masad. I mean,
the prime minister was at his fucking funeral, The ex
Prime Minister of Israel was at his funeral, and he
literally said the words, we can't even tell y'all how
much Robert Maxwell has done for Israel. Like that was
his daughter was Epstein's handler. Okay, guys, like he was
an agent for Israel. Acosta. Everybody remember Acosta who gave

(01:22:59):
him this hard deal and when he was asked while
working for Trump's administration, why did you give him a
sweetheart deal? Is there's above my great pay grade. He
works for the intelligence community. So I mean, when you're
looking when he's sending email to congress people in the
middle of a hearing, it's hard not to believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
And she's a Democrat, and I need to make this clear,
she is a black woman Democrat. And when we continue
to play identity politics and make make it stand over
the reality of the way that corruption is existing within
what we call politics, but what is supposed to be government,
by the way, like we call it politics to like
place it over there, but it's actually government. And we're

(01:23:37):
going to talk with our next guest about the ways
in which government is used to carry out colonization in
a whole other way. But do you so, do you
agree with me that we need to abolish the New
York Times?

Speaker 7 (01:23:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, just a just a CIA cutout at
this point, Yeah, the United Nations one hundred percent. Yeah,
the Democrats, oh, probably more than any Yeah, yeah, Democrats
are dangerous. And being a black man, being a leftist,
I guess probably because of a radical like the Democrats

(01:24:11):
are the most dangerous. They're the most dangerous to the leftist. Probably, Yeah,
I mean because my definition of radical is sensible, Like
I feel like I'm sensitive, Yes, it is, the sensibility.
Is you saider radical nowadays? That's why I'm like, I
guess be consider radical. But yeah, no, the Democrats are
the ultimate barrier to progress because the ones who seek progress,

(01:24:35):
they're the first co operted by Democrats, right, So that's
why I feel like they're the biggest barrier. So yeah,
we definitely need to box them.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Well, we're not going to bolish you. Nico House. We
appreciate you and thank you so much for joining us.
Where can people get more Nico in their lives?

Speaker 7 (01:24:51):
Follow me on x at Real Nico Houses Nico with
a K by the way, and I see on Instagram
as well at Real Nico House. Make sure you follow
us on hot spot on X hot spot hot spot
where we do videos every day about whatever breaking news
happening that day and we post updates from the news.

Speaker 2 (01:25:07):
And thank you for always being willing to join and
for having me on your platform as well. Like I said, y'all,
we have to support each other or else we're just
talking bs. That speaks to what we're doing. Just bullshit.

Speaker 7 (01:25:19):
Yeah, basically talking to you. Canary in a coal.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Mine, Canary in a coal mine.

Speaker 7 (01:25:24):
I'll see you soon, apiate.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
Yay, Okay, We're not gonna waste any time. We're gonna
get into our next guest because it is intense, it's deep.
The knowledge is what I'm talking about. Let's get into it. Amen.

Speaker 20 (01:25:48):
We are we are, yeah, yeas for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
We are joined by Adam. I'm Paul Susanette, who I
want you all to know cares a lot. All right, listen, y'all.
Most folks are like, what's time? I need to be there,
that's it. Adam was like, can I show photos? Can
I show videos? I need them to get the information.
And I really appreciate that. And Adam, I have all
the photos. So I have all the photos. I have

(01:26:20):
the video, I have the PDF, so I have whatever
you want me to have for this conversation about for
this conversation that is segregation by design. Segregation by design. Okay,
So I found you on the interwebs. Ever so often

(01:26:42):
the algorithm does something useful, and the algorithm decided to
send you my way. And as a black person in
this country, you know, I'm all, I can't say I'm
ever shocked, but it never ceases to disgust me the
myriad ways that have been used to continue that the

(01:27:07):
operation of colonialism, of separation, of segregation, et cetera. But
I hadn't I didn't know about highways.

Speaker 11 (01:27:13):
Yeah, yeah, well it's exactly that.

Speaker 5 (01:27:17):
The highways video.

Speaker 11 (01:27:21):
Well, the video is a good introduction to sort of
segregation by design my project. So we can show that.
Let's say that in a second. Okay, but yeah, the highways.
It's it's interesting because they really do represent as they
were designed. They represent sort of a continuation of this

(01:27:41):
project of writing white supremacy into law. It's you can see,
you can see it sort of as a form of
shifting shifting tactics, like after federal desegregation in the fifties,
you know, with brown bag, brown b board of educt
and then with the subsequent Civil Rights Act, a lot

(01:28:04):
of the official barriers to or rather a lot of
the official legal mechanisms that upheld segregation were invalidated federally.
So then what comes along is the highways, which are
able to then draw that color line that was technically invalidated,

(01:28:27):
but they're able to draw that color line in physical
space in a much bigger way than it was before,
and in places where it wasn't already, like the chain.

Speaker 5 (01:28:36):
Tracks is a famous example.

Speaker 11 (01:28:38):
Right, So maybe let's show the video if that's okay,
But unless you have a follow up question, it is
seven minutes.

Speaker 5 (01:28:45):
I don't know how. Yeah, let's do it. I have time.

Speaker 11 (01:28:51):
It's a good introduction to to segregation by design. The project, Well,
there's this one. This one's only a second. This one's
only a few moments long, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
With the other VideA. So this video was showing us.

Speaker 5 (01:29:03):
What well, yes, so exactly. So this is showing.

Speaker 11 (01:29:10):
A highway being constructed through Detroit, and what this is
showing is one of the sort of original sins of
highway construction. So normally what I like to do is
when I present this project, basically I talk about some
of the problems posed by the problems we face with
freeways today, sort of the history of how we got here,

(01:29:31):
and some solutions for what we can do about it.
And this is both one of the problems and the history.
One of the problems is that they were built through
basically black and brown neighborhoods specifically, so they displaced all
these people. You can see all these houses being destroyed,
and then for the neighborhood, for the neighborhoods that remain

(01:29:53):
divided by these highways. Now there's significant pollution, both in
terms of exhaust from the from the from the cars
and the entire particular matter break matter, and then noise pollution.

Speaker 5 (01:30:05):
And that's another one of those images.

Speaker 11 (01:30:06):
I said, But we don't have to get to bogged
down by the images because they're not.

Speaker 5 (01:30:10):
I didn't send them in any particular order, which is
my bad.

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):
So I don't have the video you're talking about. I
thought this was the video, But where can I get it?
Is it in the emails.

Speaker 5 (01:30:22):
Image I sent it? I think it's uh. I have
the PDAs I sent it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
And I have the I have where you said this
animation this image would be good, and images from this
page would be good to show. I have all of those.

Speaker 5 (01:30:41):
This is the one. Oh wait no, that's playing on
my couter here.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
I can, I can?

Speaker 5 (01:30:50):
I can bring it up, basuickly, whoops, I just sent you.

Speaker 21 (01:30:57):
Here it is if yeah, okay, oh, but this is
a link, not the actual video.

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
Can I show the link? How do I do it?

Speaker 5 (01:31:15):
Correct? It's a YouTube link.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
I don't know how to do that on here. I
can like bring a video onto screen, but I don't
know how to show like a YouTube video.

Speaker 11 (01:31:28):
You know, it's not a big deal. We can just
we can just talk. It's it's basically it's it's an example.
The video is an example of of where these highways
we're used to displace and destroy a black community in
Los Angeles, specifically sugar Hill. So for for a lot
of these examples, and and the PDF, I sense that
one has a bunch of pictures and we can bring

(01:31:49):
that up at some point. But for a lot of
the examples I mentioned, if folks want to check out
my website Segregation by Design dot com, it basically breaks
it down city by city. Uh, and what I'm that
there's a there's Detroit.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
So we're just flowing. We're flowing right now.

Speaker 5 (01:32:06):
We're just doing it. We're just doing it. Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 11 (01:32:08):
So, uh, what I try to show is city by
city how highways were used basically to divide between black
and white communities in some cases and then also destroy
black communities in other cases, how they were used to
basically write white supremacy into the built environment of American
cities and what the processes how that happened. And what

(01:32:33):
this is showing is an example in Detroit. So you
can see here Detroit basically before and after. In the project,
I use a lot of aerial imagery basically to show
what happened. So you can see in this example, I'll
just talk through it, Paradise Valley.

Speaker 5 (01:32:51):
And black Bottom. You can see in the before image
in those white labels, So.

Speaker 11 (01:32:58):
Before federal desegregation is and died again in with some
with things like brown b board.

Speaker 5 (01:33:06):
So this is fifty for the fifties. Basically, segregation is legal.

Speaker 11 (01:33:13):
Cities are allowed to say black people can live here
and white people can live here. It's by a variety
of mechanisms, some which are official laws, some which are
sort of real estate practices.

Speaker 5 (01:33:25):
Right, but.

Speaker 11 (01:33:27):
Yeah, so exactly redlining is an example of something that's
a law. But then there's something like then there's other
things like restrictive covenants, which.

Speaker 5 (01:33:34):
Are basically that so that's real estate. That's that's a
sort of.

Speaker 11 (01:33:40):
Yeah, well h oo, a's are the descendant of restrictive covenants.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
Ah, okay, okay.

Speaker 11 (01:33:46):
Yeah, yeah, So a restrictive covenant is a thing that's
written into the deed of houses that says you can
only sell to quote unquote people of the Caucasian race only.
So that's that's an example of like a private Yeah,
the Color of Law talks about this examt exactly. That's
an example of sort of private mechanism by which they
upheld segregation. And then there's redlining, which is sort of

(01:34:08):
the government legal way of doing it. But the result
of that is you get these black districts. You get
these uh, and these are the these are the historic
districts like Harlem that we talk about, you know. And
in this case in Detroit, it's Black Black Bottom in

(01:34:30):
Paradise Valley and it's basically this linear corridor arrayed along
Hastings Street, which you see there. So this community is
constrained by segregation. But even despite that, in this in
this case of Hastings and in Paradise Valley and Black

(01:34:52):
Bottom and so many other of these neighborhoods, despite the segregation,
a really strong actually I mean a community, really strong
community forms, but a strong economy forms too.

Speaker 2 (01:35:03):
Yeah, because within your community exactly.

Speaker 11 (01:35:08):
And and you see these these corridors, in this case
Hastings Street. And if you if you go back to
some of those other pictures that was sort of Hastings
with John Lee Hooker with the guitar, that was Hasting
well that's that's yeah, that one, that's good one.

Speaker 2 (01:35:21):
The other one, the above picture, is the thriving Hastings
with the record stores and the porter market, et cetera.

Speaker 11 (01:35:30):
Yeah, yeah, exactly now and the bottom is what it
is now exactly. And and what's interesting about the Hastings
case is so and and these these two images, the
before and the before images of this one and then
the other one, these are actually both album covers. So
it shows that yeah, this one. Uh so even at

(01:35:51):
the time these were like there's a conception that this
is like a special place. I mean, it's like one
twenty fifth Street in.

Speaker 5 (01:35:55):
Harlem, you know, right, it's it's uh.

Speaker 11 (01:35:59):
It's it's yeah, exactly of commercial activity, but then also
cultural production, you know. And and we get out of
something like Hasting Street, you know, Joe's Records where where
John Lee Hooker is standing in front of there. That's
where Aretha Franklin records her first album. And her dad

(01:36:23):
was also very famous reverend and Hey or Key records
his first stuff at at Joe's Records here. And I
actually got these images from so Joe Van Battle is
the owner of Joe's Records here his daughter, uh Marcia Music.
I got these photos from her, and she does an

(01:36:43):
She has an excellent blog posts like more than a
blog post, an excellent piece uh on her website, The
Detroit Ist, all all about her dad's experiences. So it's
and and you see they route the highway right down
the middle of the of the of Hastings there, so.

Speaker 5 (01:37:05):
The highways Okay, so to set the stage.

Speaker 11 (01:37:11):
Yeah, it's it's so you see this before image, the
nineteen forty nine right, So there's the Black Corridor that
is basically a raid along Hastings that is policed and
confined by segregation. The rest of the city is largely white,
it's largely working class. This starts to change after basically

(01:37:38):
around the turn of the after the twenties, with the
Great Migration, which I'm sure you're familiar with. But the
Great Migration is a movement of six million black six
million rural black Americans from the South basically to northern
and western cities. The largest you know, the largest destinations
are like New York and Angeles, Chicago, but Detroit's also

(01:38:03):
a major one. And so this is happening. So Detroit
is actually a really representative example, so you could I'm
talking about Detroit here specifically, but this can this happened
all over the place. So there are more and more
black people coming into cities and coastal cities. There's more
and more immigrants, so cities are becoming more, no more

(01:38:24):
non white, and this to some extent, kicks off white
flight unfortunately. Basically, as the non white populations are rising
in downtown areas and because that's where a lot of
these people are moving, because that's where a chip housing
is and then b.

Speaker 5 (01:38:42):
That's where jobs are.

Speaker 11 (01:38:44):
So as the racial makeup of the inner city with
the inner city is changing, white people are basically moving
out to the suburbs. And that's not because that's not
because each and every one of them is necessarily a racist.
That's because there's a lot of financial incentives set up
for them to do that, redlining being one of them,

(01:39:05):
basically saying that you can't get a mortgage in any
neighborhood that black people live in, which gives an incentive
for people who can move out to move out.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
Wow, I didn't know it was the reverse as well, Like,
so they don't want white people living in black neighborhoods either.

Speaker 11 (01:39:20):
Oh, precisely, exactly. Yeah, So there's push and pull factors
basically that cause. So, Okay, I guess what I'm trying
to set the stage here for is white flight, right,
because this kind of explains then why this area is destroyed.
It's not just purely I mean, it is largely racial malice,
but there's an economic logic behind it that I'm trying.

Speaker 5 (01:39:40):
To set up.

Speaker 11 (01:39:41):
But basically, mostly white cities become largely non white, and
there's various things that incentivize white people to leave. There's
sort of the push factor of the Great Migration, which
is all these non white folks moving in, moving moving
into downtowns, and then there's, especially after World War Two,
there's the pull factor, which is.

Speaker 2 (01:40:02):
How they created Israel. It's the same, it's the same
mechanic mechanism. We're going to push you out of Germany
and Europe with recent with anti semitism and fascism, and
then we're going to pull you into Israel with incentives.

Speaker 11 (01:40:20):
The history of that I'm not familiar with, but I
think it's probably similar to how they.

Speaker 2 (01:40:24):
Oh, I'm telling you, I mean this is a fact.

Speaker 5 (01:40:26):
This is like oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
Yeah, this is a fact. Like you're incentivized to go
to Israel as a Jewish person because you are going
to be given subsidiary subsidiaries. You're going to be given
free healthcare, You're going to be given money for a home,
money for school, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's
the push and the pull in order to create an
economic space that can be then utilized for whatever purpose

(01:40:53):
or you know.

Speaker 11 (01:40:55):
Yeah, exactly, it's about like clearing out of people to
then create a space for yes, precise, and we can
and and uh we can get to uh push pulling
Jewish folks to because I'm I'm Jewish, but I'm not
I'm an atheist.

Speaker 5 (01:41:08):
I don't we don't practice.

Speaker 2 (01:41:10):
I mean, I don't care if you're atheists. I care
if you're a Zionist.

Speaker 11 (01:41:14):
Oh, I'm absolutely an anti Zionist.

Speaker 5 (01:41:17):
Don't worry about that.

Speaker 2 (01:41:19):
I assumed because.

Speaker 5 (01:41:21):
You I have a joke that I said, I don't
want to say it here.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
But yeah, this is the place we all are are
literal quote is by any joke necessary?

Speaker 5 (01:41:31):
So say it's like people, it's like I No, I
don't want to say. But regardless, regardless, Adam chicken out
of the joke.

Speaker 11 (01:41:41):
I did chicken out of it. We can really get
back to it later. But well, I just I do
have a story about like birth right, we left. I
went with a buddy and we left. But this isn't
what well, so let me just tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
We're gonna eventually get to that, because the question I'm
going to ask you is how did you become a
kind of person, and specifically a white person who cares
about this, Like, we're gonna get to that because this
type of work, it can't we can't just talk about
this type of work in the silo of the work,
because there's a certain type of person that pursues this
knowledge right and then decides to expose this knowledge, And

(01:42:18):
we need to as a society lift up those people,
but also lift up the scenarios, the education, the community
that creates those people. So it's not just gonna be
so this interview is not just about your work. I
want to know about why you choose to do this
work as well, because I consider it to be really
important and necessary. So they draw this, they decide to

(01:42:43):
do the white flight, push the white flight, and you're
telling you're saying that, So I guess one question before
you go on is what is the government's goal in
creating a nexus of white people in one suburban area

(01:43:03):
and black people in one area beyond racism?

Speaker 5 (01:43:08):
Economic development growth?

Speaker 11 (01:43:11):
So white white flight, right, So black people were formally
confined to this area, but then legal segregation gets broken
down as all these people are coming. So and this
is also in combination with white people leaving, right, So
property owners downtown are not really happy about that. The

(01:43:34):
you see downtown, I've labeled that there. Yes, Black Bottom
and Paradise Value are right next to that, right next
to downtown, and that proximity is important. And this is
again it's that you know there's it's called the inner
city for a reason. It's because these people were moving
to a specific part of the city, which again is

(01:43:55):
where the jobs in affordable housing was. And as and
white people are leaving, the people, the people who own
property in the commercial districts downtown are really really unhappy
that now they're surrounded by this racialized inner city, and
there were and because this is the basically the underpinning

(01:44:15):
of redlining in the first place, which is the idea
that people of different races living in close proximity reduces
property values. And that really boils down to the fact
that black people reduce property values. And this you can
look at the writings of this guy Homer Homer Hoyt
and Richard t. Eli from the University of Madison, Wisconsin,

(01:44:37):
and they wrote a lot of the basically the academic
underpinning of redlining, and the idea is that black people
being proximity reduces property values. So now suddenly the commercial core,
the oldest part of the city is surrounded by non
white people. You know, in Detroit it's black people, and
it's not just black people, but it is largely, but
it's also Chinatown obviously in Los Angeles and many cities,

(01:45:01):
and then in San Antonio it's Mexican Town, which is
what it's called. It's it's not just black, but it is.
It's they end up bearing the front of it. Just
numbers wise and historic animosity obviously, but urban so as
desegregation ends, then urban renewal and highway funds come along
and they use that money to kill two birds with

(01:45:23):
one stone. So and you can see that right here.
What they're doing is they surround downtown in a highway loop.
That protects it from these neighborhoods that have now become
non white. Right, So it physically creates a division because
divisions can protect that property value.

Speaker 5 (01:45:42):
Think before we add highways, the railroad checks.

Speaker 11 (01:45:44):
That's why it's the other side of the tracks, right
or you know rivers like or flood zones. But these divisions,
going back to that idea that proximity reduces property values.
If there's a division, if there's a division, then it
can uphold the property values.

Speaker 2 (01:46:02):
So yeah, they're over there, they're over there. See they're
over there. So the highway, even though it's literally just
a structure, it provides this like a wall so to speak, saying.

Speaker 11 (01:46:18):
Okay exactly and and and there's a great book I
have it here. It's not it's kind of like not
show up but dividing lines.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
Yeah, but you're not in a warehouse with graded ceilings.

Speaker 8 (01:46:31):
And you know this.

Speaker 5 (01:46:33):
Is actually this is actually my my local train station.
It took this photo the other day. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can see the train of the bank there.

Speaker 2 (01:46:42):
Nice. But you're in Europe.

Speaker 11 (01:46:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm doing a PhD over here, casual.
I'm from South Florida originally, but and I work based
in New York, so we go back. I go back
quite often. Greta ton Berg would be I'm happy with me.

Speaker 2 (01:47:02):
I just want to point out to you all that
I am cosmopolitan and then traveled, which is how I
knew that it was Europe once I saw the blue
and yellow drain. All right, let's ring it back. So
they build these walls of highway, and my question becomes,
is this also utilized as like, oh, now the white

(01:47:25):
flyers have like direct access.

Speaker 11 (01:47:27):
Into the city precisely right, So, and that's what I'm
saying when I'm killed two birds with lunstone. So it
divides and then also creates connections to the whites only suburbs,
which you better believe have restrictive covenants, and as a
private practice, by the way, that that stays on a
lot longer than something like legal segregation, which is struck

(01:47:50):
down in the courts.

Speaker 5 (01:47:51):
That's just that's why that distinction is a little important.

Speaker 11 (01:47:54):
But so, yeah, the highways they divide, they cut through,
they protect downtown, and then they provide white folks with
direct opportunity rather with direct access to the economic opportunities downtown.
So it's it's some to some extent, you know, it
doesn't work that well, right, because a lot of jobs
still end up going to the suburbs, and then we

(01:48:16):
end up with kind of hallowed out downtowns and and
this is why we end up with spaces right like that,
So it divides. That's one use, but then there's also
times where it just is designed almost to take up space,
like is designed to remove the population they didn't want

(01:48:39):
and then replace that with, you know, again a connection
to the suburbs, so.

Speaker 5 (01:48:47):
It just takes up space.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):
Displacement.

Speaker 11 (01:48:49):
It's yeah, the displacement's intentional exactly because they those people
being there reduced property values.

Speaker 5 (01:48:56):
And in some cases.

Speaker 11 (01:49:00):
They build public housing that's actually kind of rare, but
they end up building far fewer units of public housing
than us units they destroyed.

Speaker 5 (01:49:10):
And that's true everywhere.

Speaker 11 (01:49:11):
You know, this is that's definitely true in Detroit, it's
true everywhere name of city, certainly.

Speaker 2 (01:49:15):
New York, right, And even when they build a public housing,
they don't like protect it. They don't support it. They
I mean, they create kind of dens of criminality that
they can use to them bring people back into the
prison industrial crisis by creating public housing that they don't

(01:49:35):
provide resources to.

Speaker 11 (01:49:37):
Yeah, and precisely that exactly, and and and then also
they will locate yes, very well said. And then they'll
locate it in areas that are already largely black and
already largely for And this this happens especially in like
New York and Chicago. And this explains why you know,

(01:49:59):
when you look some of these before and afters, they
just destroy a neighborhood and then replace it with these
tower blocks. And the result of that is that a
what you do there is you replace a lot of
owners with a lot of renters.

Speaker 2 (01:50:11):
Practically, they can't we can't skip over that.

Speaker 11 (01:50:19):
Well, that's a whole other element, because there's the there's
the sort of good no.

Speaker 2 (01:50:25):
Gone, no it please you. You're the guest.

Speaker 5 (01:50:28):
Well sorry, I just feel like I'm next, right, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
It's we are here to be lectured by fair enough.

Speaker 11 (01:50:36):
Well, there's the mechanism by which these properties get taken
right through eminent domain. That's the term, and eminent domain
isn't inherently an evil thing. Sometimes we do need to
build linear things, you know, linear rights of way, sewers,
pipes and roads. Yes, sometimes, but eminent domain where you're

(01:51:01):
taking where you're just using it to destroy a neighborhood
because it's reducing property because of reducing property values because
of some bracist pseudoscience. Yeah, that's no good. And by
the way, there's an well, she actually just shut down
the organization. Do you know a kavon Ward from where
is my land? She still does one on one consultations.

(01:51:24):
But Bruce's Beach, I'm all over the place here, Bruce's Beach.
She was the she was basically the organizer behind that.
So Bruce's Beach was an example of So I was
the black neighborhood in downtown Santa Monica, the Belmar Triangle.

Speaker 5 (01:51:39):
And no, this is different. Sorry, this is in Manhattan Beach.

Speaker 11 (01:51:43):
It was a black neighborhood in Manhattan Beach, not in
downtown Santa Fnica. She there was another there's the there's
another case, silas white up in Santa Monica, black neighborhood
in Manhattan Beach, property taken through eminent domain. Keavon Ward
got it back to the family, the Bruce family.

Speaker 2 (01:51:59):
She sell it off anyway, which made me live it.

Speaker 11 (01:52:05):
But but that was their right, and I know, I
know they sold at that time with full knowledge and
no and not predatory because the first time was taken.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):
No, I know, I know, I know. It's just the
principle of like just get it back and like can
we just.

Speaker 5 (01:52:23):
Oh, I totally I definitely agree with that, but like.

Speaker 11 (01:52:26):
There but like the point was it was theirs and
they could do with it what they want. But you know,
I totally get it. How these properties are taken. How
do they build a highway through there? How do they
build a highway through there? They take these properties through
eminent domain?

Speaker 2 (01:52:44):
And can you just domain real quick?

Speaker 11 (01:52:51):
So eminent domain is the right of the government to
take property for the public good and they have to
offer just compensation. They do have to QUOTEO offer quote
unquote just compensation. So yeah, but they so, but they
get to decide what the public good is and they
get to decide what just compensation is. Sorry that the

(01:53:14):
Columbia you did. Indeed, yes, with Manhattanville. I will try
not to get distracted by comments, but that's a.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):
Listen, we're here for you. We we love all of
your NeuroD going all over the place. We're all about it.
That's our jazz. Very much. You are you are giving
us intellectual jazz Detroit public domain bubble.

Speaker 5 (01:53:40):
I appreciate it, Thank you very much. Excellent.

Speaker 11 (01:53:44):
Well, yeah, so imminent domain is the right of the
government to take property. You know, think for again, building
like a sewer right, building, a train building, public transportation,
and they have to offer just compensation. But the way
that was actualized in practice for most of American history

(01:54:06):
was very predatory, especially during this highway building era, where
they would just send a letter to people with a
low ball offer us. And basically these letters, and you
can see these letters, they make it seem as if
you have to take the offer, which of course you don't.
You absolutely don't have to take the offer. But there's
there's a case in in Roxbury and Boston where a

(01:54:30):
reverend's mom she owned a three unit apartment building in
rock in Nubia in a Nubian square, and she got
sent eight thousand dollars for it.

Speaker 5 (01:54:41):
What right?

Speaker 2 (01:54:43):
And my dad also owned property in Roxbury, Boston and
sold it. I don't know why, I know, I didn't
see any of that money. But I'm just like, why
are y'all just giving away like the the property.

Speaker 11 (01:55:01):
Well, they make it seem there's like a big red
stamp on it, and it says like they condemned. They
make Sometimes it's as condemned with the Robert Moses ones,
not not with this one in Boston. The Robert Moses
he's the one who used the condemned. And I haven't
talked about Moses yet, but I'll get back to him.
But they send these letters. They make it seem as
if you have to take it, and when you do,

(01:55:22):
that's it.

Speaker 5 (01:55:23):
It's gone.

Speaker 11 (01:55:24):
But that's that's the property owners, which is the minority
most people in like Hastings, they were renters and it's
just absentee landlords.

Speaker 5 (01:55:33):
So when the government comes along with.

Speaker 11 (01:55:35):
These checks, they say sure, yeah exactly, because they they
view it as a way to cash out of the slums.

Speaker 5 (01:55:42):
Basically, ah mm yeah, so and and one.

Speaker 11 (01:55:47):
Thing I didn't now, one thing I didn't mention. And
then sometimes they clear out these neighborhoods and then replace
them with like office buildings. So sometimes it isn't yeah
because this is right exactly. Sometimes, like in Miami, this
is they cut down Second Avenue, which was the main
commercial therefa there and it was in the middle of Overtown,

(01:56:10):
but now Overtown is like on the left. And then
they basically took part of it into downtown, built government
facilities and stuff designed to basically attract people from the suburbs.

Speaker 5 (01:56:23):
Because the the.

Speaker 11 (01:56:25):
Building of the highways was also an effort. It was
it was lobbied for by you know, chambers of commerce
and mayors. You know, in the case of Hastings or
of Detroit, it's Mayor Albert Cobo. He said, we can
use the highway, he said, we can use the highways
to stop the Negro invasion. He said, we can use
public works to stop Negro invasion. Right, So they're not

(01:56:47):
even shy about it, especially in the South, especially like
in Mayor Hartsfield and Atlanta. I twenty will be a
line between you know, black and between white and Negro Atlanta. Yeah,
and again sometimes they clear out the stuff and it's
to sort of take that land and redevelop redevelopment to

(01:57:08):
try to keep downtown attractive as it's becoming more non
white and as white people are being incentivized to leave.

Speaker 2 (01:57:16):
So there has been advocacy against this? Yes, can we
can we talk about the advocacy that has been done
against this and if there's been any success. I mean,
just a side note, like I love when stuff like
this shows up in like random TV shows. So like
in the show Cooking with Chemistry, Like there's an entire

(01:57:39):
b story with the black character who's her next door
neighbor and who's her friend and is we'll not her
next neighbor, but she's her friend, and she's like fighting
for the black neighborhood to not be disrupted by a
building of either the ten or the one O one
or something. And they did an entire and it was

(01:58:01):
based on true story and they did an entire goo ahead.

Speaker 11 (01:58:05):
Well, no, no, that's the that's the video that I
was good. That's the video that I sent is about
that neighborhood, sugar Hill exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:58:11):
Yeah, we're all right.

Speaker 2 (01:58:13):
So then talk about it because that was that's an
example of advocacy. And I would love to just hear
more because you made a point of saying, like there
are pen people who have fought this, and we always
have to make sure to acknowledge that or else you
just become so disenchanted and to moralize thinking that the
power is, you know, so overpowering.

Speaker 11 (01:58:34):
Oh yeah, well, And one of the reasons I do
this whole project is basically to show that infrastructure is
the result of decisions and choices that we made and
not not even that long ago in some cases. So
even though highways seem like they're natural and really like
the layout of cities seems like it's natural and almost

(01:58:56):
like a mountain or a river, these things weren't built
that long ago, so we can totally change them. So
a lot of what I talk about can seem kind
of depressing, but it is also with the undertone or
I'm trying to say that, like we can absolutely change
these things because it's the built environment.

Speaker 5 (01:59:12):
We built it. So I'm an architect, as like, by
great job.

Speaker 11 (01:59:17):
Yeah, this isn't my full time I mean, I'm doing
this is my PhD project basically, and it's very much
related to what I do for work, because I work
on sort of reconnecting communities projects and that's sort of
the solution.

Speaker 2 (01:59:32):
I mean. But there's something very clear in stating these
are decisions, right, because then that leads us to decisions
I'm made by people and so people can be influenced,
which is what abgnacy ends up being about, right, like
how to influence the people who are making decisions to

(01:59:52):
make decisions that are for the people versus for profit.

Speaker 5 (01:59:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, and the lessons in chemistry. Example. So that
was the ten I.

Speaker 11 (02:00:03):
Think the Santa Monica Freeway. I mean, ultimately they weren't successful.
That was the sixties. It was a very wealthy neighborhood,
very wealthy black neighborhood in West Adams in Los Angeles.
It's Hattie McDaniel lived there, who was the first black
woman to win an Oscar.

Speaker 5 (02:00:25):
Ethel waters Louis Beaver's Who's a Broadway star.

Speaker 11 (02:00:30):
So it was very it was like a wealthy neighborhood.
So and and what's illustrative about that about this point
is it's it's not just that it was poor neighborhoods
that were because because people could say like, oh, well, no,
it's poor neighborhoods around downtown that that are reducing property valley.
So it's like no, Sometimes these were straight up like

(02:00:51):
rich neighborhoods, as is the case in sugar Hill, because
sugar Hills like right off downtown or West Adams is
Sugar Hills, like a smart sub part of West ANIMs
right up downtown. So it's the same thing. It's it's
who's there, even if they're wealthy. You know it DC
like there was basically a plan to build it never
got finished. But you know there's a there's a highway

(02:01:13):
that goes under the mall and then kind of pops
up that was supposed to be a full loop that
would have like built a wall right next to Howard,
cutting Howard off from the downtown area. Right as if
Howard is lowering property values. That that got stopped because
of successful advocacy. And it is often college towns that

(02:01:34):
often are able to do that. But that's that's a
different issue. Uh what was I saying, Oh, advocates.

Speaker 5 (02:01:41):
Yes, so they they weren't successful in that case because
that was the sixties.

Speaker 11 (02:01:45):
There was nothing they could have done really right. But today,
indeed there's there's move people recognize. I mean, I'm not
the first person to say this or you know, I'm
really just building off of sort of deck aids of
people talking about this stuff. And then there's obviously the
lived experience I've used sort of what I'm doing is

(02:02:09):
communicating it through a like using the skills that I
have as an architect and city planner to communicate it
in a way that's accessible because this exists in books,
but a lot of us don't read anymore, but that
we should. But then, and one of the best books
about this, for for New York folks you know, is

(02:02:31):
The Power Broker, which is a fifteen. It's a biography
of this guy, Robert Moses, who is the uh he
sort of originated this in a lot of ways. He's
the one who came up with this use of highways
to clear out neighborhoods, basically, use of highways not just

(02:02:52):
for transportation, but to remove neighborhoods viewed as undesirable. That
goes back to him in New York. And a lot
of what he did in New York gets emulated everywhere.
So yeah, that's well, that's that's public housing.

Speaker 5 (02:03:08):
So the oh sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:03:15):
This is he created this method and it got copy
and pasted.

Speaker 5 (02:03:21):
Yeah, so he yes.

Speaker 11 (02:03:23):
Basically the answer is yeah, he a lot of the
highways he built in New York, so like the b
QI and the Cross Bronx in particular, they actually they
predate the interstate system, but.

Speaker 5 (02:03:38):
They become the model for the interstate.

Speaker 11 (02:03:42):
So the cross Bronx, the Cross Bronks in particular, cuts
through the South Bronx and divides the north, the northern
more white part from the southern Puerto Rican black part.
And it also it reinforces that division and creates it
in a lot of ways. So he's really the first
to route highways, to use highways in such a way

(02:04:04):
to achieve this dual purpose. And he's the one who
lobbies for the creation of Yeah, and that's the demolition
of San Juan Hill is an exact it is an
exact example of like that's right up against that's right
north of fifty ninth Street, right, So it's this Puerto
Rican neighborhood that's viewed as potentially impacting the values of

(02:04:24):
the Upper West Side and then down into Midtown. So
level it especially, it's such valuable land because of where
it is. Yeah, you know, So it's this there's these
conflicting aims, right, It's like Downtown New York is always
a little different, but like Downtown's are becoming devalued, but

(02:04:45):
there's still this recognition of incredible potential because of the
centrality so they're always demolishing stuff and rebuilding.

Speaker 2 (02:04:53):
You know, so how did how did how did you
get this way? How did you become a high quada
tee white? How did it happen?

Speaker 5 (02:05:06):
Oh? My god?

Speaker 11 (02:05:07):
Well, I didn't talk much about advocates because they are
but we can, we can talk about them. But for
you know, for me, there's a couple of things I did.
That book, The Power Broker is fifteen hundred pages long.
I to some extent got tired of telling people to
read that book.

Speaker 5 (02:05:26):
It does in the first place, Oh, it's the whole
history of New York unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (02:05:34):
But you're from Miami. I got to get to the
bottom of how you became this person? Are your periods?

Speaker 11 (02:05:40):
Yeah, but the history of New York is the history
of American urbanism. I know New York is special in
a lot of ways because it is different. But everybody
emulates New York always it. It's it's contradictory, right, New
York is like the most European and San Francisco. But
but you know, the every other city emulates what New

(02:06:00):
York does infrastructurally and economically, they try, but infrastructurally specifically,
so they Yeah, the history.

Speaker 2 (02:06:07):
Interested in city planning and infrastructure.

Speaker 5 (02:06:10):
You have to understand New York, yes period, Yeah, in
the West.

Speaker 11 (02:06:17):
And no actually worldwide because uh, you know in in
well absolutely like the the highway Mecha. I'm not as
familiar with Chinese cities, but the limited access highway as
we know it, which China has built quite a lot
of has its origin. The urban limited access highway has
its origin in Robert Moses, who is his New York

(02:06:42):
and and he took up you know, he didn't invent
the limit. When I say limited access highway, I'm talking
about like the interstate. You know, it's cars only, it's
it's there's no direct intersections with roads. That really goes back.
That really goes back to the autobon in Germany, which
is Nazis right, But uh, that is a little different

(02:07:03):
because that didn't go into cities. It's I don't necessarily
have a problem between with with highways between cities.

Speaker 5 (02:07:12):
Uh, it's when you it's when you disrupt.

Speaker 11 (02:07:15):
It's when you cut into the middle, right exactly, because
you don't need to have automobile access to the middle
of a city.

Speaker 2 (02:07:20):
That's what Well, why do you have a problem with this?
Who are your parents, How are you raised? Why are
you like this? Because this is real? Because people see
this and they see how do I capitalize on this? Right?
People see this through different Everyone sees these types of
things through different lenses. And so, you know, part of

(02:07:41):
my work in decolonizing is trying to understand the different
ways that folks are shaped to see things through a
lens of community versus a lens of how do I exploit?
So why do you feel like you're somebody who sees
lens who sees a lens of community? You've never been

(02:08:05):
asked that question.

Speaker 11 (02:08:06):
But no, no, no, no, Well you know you're right,
You're right. I really love cities.

Speaker 5 (02:08:14):
Uh.

Speaker 11 (02:08:16):
And yeah, I grew up in a So I'm from
South Florida, So I think maybe I am being exploitedive,
I just well, so I'll get to But I grew
up in South Florida in a suburb, so like my
you know, where recipients of like a lot of the
white flight stuff that you know became my parents' parents moved.

Speaker 5 (02:08:41):
That they were white flight from the Bronx. Uh.

Speaker 11 (02:08:46):
And I just I grew up in a suburb, and
I it's really I don't like it. I hate it's
it's you know, it's I you can't go anywhere. It's
it feels imprisoned and and and just land and there's
and a like spiritually devoid, you know, and a.

Speaker 5 (02:09:08):
Versus. You know.

Speaker 11 (02:09:09):
When I went to college, I went to Berkeley, so
I lived in a city for the first time, and
it's just it's so fun. It's so And this is
why I'm being like, I think it's like I just
really like the life and culture of a city, and
that that does require a certain and I think maybe

(02:09:30):
I'm being an architectural determinist. It does require like a
certain built environment, which is density and walkability and people
sort of living close to each other a city.

Speaker 2 (02:09:40):
You know, not you identify racism because you like a city.
Is that what you're trying to tell me right now?
It's because how are you able to identify racism?

Speaker 5 (02:09:54):
How Well, it's more than just because well, it's more
than just because I like this city. It's because anything
that's like worth, anything that's culturally interesting or uh sort
of exciting, is is in the.

Speaker 11 (02:10:15):
Comes from the community that is made possible by a city.

Speaker 5 (02:10:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:10:20):
No, I think that if if you just have everyone
living in this spread out suburb. You don't you don't
get any it's a very it's.

Speaker 5 (02:10:28):
You don't get much culture, you don't get much.

Speaker 2 (02:10:32):
Why did you go to birth Right and leave? You
need to know this for yourself. Why did you leave
birth Right?

Speaker 11 (02:10:40):
Well, it was very very poorly planned, and it was
it was also whitewashing.

Speaker 5 (02:10:45):
The whole thing.

Speaker 11 (02:10:46):
Obviously I had to explain to people like what the
what the green line was.

Speaker 5 (02:10:51):
But but no, I think putting it is like I
just like the city is a little bit is a
little bit reductionist.

Speaker 2 (02:10:57):
I know that's my point. I don't think it's just
that you're putting it that way. But the reason why
I keep coming back to this is because this kind
of work has to have love beneath it, It has
to have meaning beneath it, beyond simply just the science

(02:11:18):
of it or else it's just being done by roche.
And so what I'm trying to understand from you is
what drives this beyond simply just the like of a city,
Because the things that you've said in this interview, there's
things that you've said in this interview that are very
clear indicators that you have a moral ground around this.

(02:11:39):
You have an ethical lens that you see this through.

Speaker 11 (02:11:44):
Well, the way that we live currently urbanistically, which is
the way we all live. You know, even if you're
in a rural area, the way that we live currently
well is very extractive. Everything is about production, producing.

Speaker 5 (02:12:01):
Capital.

Speaker 11 (02:12:02):
Everything is just about and that's what all the suburbs
that's like. So the suburbs, you know, there's a reason
that that's what they pushed people to after World War
Two because the war engine. I don't mean to get
back to industory, but like the war engine had pulled
America out of World War two, or sorry, I'd pulled

(02:12:22):
America out of the Great Depression, and once the war ended,
you know, we really needed to keep that engine going.
And long story short, it wasn't very difficult for GM
to retool from making jet engines and jeeps to making cars. Right,
it wasn't hard for GE to switch from making jet
engines to making big appliances that you need for your house.

(02:12:45):
And then for developers it's a windfall and for car
companies it's a windfall.

Speaker 5 (02:12:49):
This is like the.

Speaker 11 (02:12:50):
Way that we have set up our system, which is
pushed people to live in this unnatural way because of racism,
because it said, this is a restricted way to this
is a restricted tract, and so your property values will
be safe.

Speaker 2 (02:13:06):
Why do you have a problem with that?

Speaker 5 (02:13:11):
Why you know.

Speaker 2 (02:13:13):
It's not normal? White people don't typically have a problem
with racism. I don't know if you know that, But
that's like not normal. Like we don't live in a
world where majority white people see racism and say that's
my problem, or where they see it and say, I
want to get to the bottom of that. I want
to understand why they're doing that. They don't, and so

(02:13:35):
the ones that do, I want to know that. I
want to know the chemistry.

Speaker 5 (02:13:40):
Well, there's an obvious I mean, there's the moral imperative.

Speaker 2 (02:13:42):
But you say that as if you have not seen
the world we're in. We're watching a genocide and people
are fine with it. So the moral imperative is something
that is like a seed within people that either gets
fertilized or it gets withered. And so I'm curious with
you how it has considered, how has continued to be fertilized.

(02:14:05):
And then you went to Berkeley, which we know is
you know it's not like you went to Liberty University. Well,
you know, the architecture program.

Speaker 5 (02:14:15):
It's it's I in this realm.

Speaker 11 (02:14:18):
I feel like I can do something about it as
an architect, as someone who is in the the built environment,
because I think that the entire So the reason I'm
like focus on on segregation by design is because the
history of and not just history, but the present form
of American cities unfortunately is driven by race.

Speaker 12 (02:14:39):
Uh.

Speaker 11 (02:14:40):
Is is the layout of our linear infrastructure and of
our zoning. I mean our zoning code goes back to racism.
So for me, like, it's, uh, it's like a rabbit
hole tumbling down, Like why why is that highway there?

Speaker 5 (02:14:54):
Why does it curve there?

Speaker 11 (02:14:55):
Why does it it's because, oh, why does it go
through that neighborhood and not that one?

Speaker 5 (02:14:59):
You know?

Speaker 11 (02:15:00):
Why are there seven highways and Boyle Heights but none
in but like one on the west side right the
ten It's so, oh, and why do I care about racism?

Speaker 5 (02:15:13):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:15:15):
Everybody's asking the question because you have yet to answer it.
We're not really sure why you're not giving us the
answer about why you care about racism. I don't even
know if you know why you care about.

Speaker 5 (02:15:25):
Racism because it's wrong?

Speaker 2 (02:15:29):
Why do you think racism is wrong? Who taught you
that that's a good question.

Speaker 11 (02:15:38):
I mean, I guess my parents, you know, we've seen.

Speaker 2 (02:15:42):
The opposite, right, Like, the environments that are shaping people
who think this way have to be examined the same
way that they have to be examined morally, the same
way you're examining, you know, infrastructurally.

Speaker 5 (02:15:55):
So you see what I'm saying.

Speaker 11 (02:15:56):
Oh, absolutely, so I no, I think so yeah. And
there's a great book. So thanks for I think I
this is this is the therapy session. Thank you very much.
But there's a great book by Heather McGee called The
Some of Us. So the central metaphor of her book

(02:16:18):
is basically public swimming pools. So yeah, yeah, so public
swimming pools. They used to be very common. They used
to be very common in American cities.

Speaker 5 (02:16:29):
Uh. And they were segregated.

Speaker 11 (02:16:30):
They were whites only, right, so, and and a lot
of them they were like big beautiful artis that it's
it's they were like WPA stuff, so art deco, beautiful architecturally,
and again whites only. But then in the fifties, as
as desegregation comes down from the courts, they say to

(02:16:50):
these local facilities, to these municipal public swimming pools, you
have to desegregate, and rather than doing that, a lot
of a lot of cities just drained the pools and
demolished them. They got rid of it.

Speaker 5 (02:17:07):
Buffalo, Saint Louis, Montgomery, Birmingham, the South, all of them.
It's that they're got in Boston.

Speaker 11 (02:17:16):
And then after that you see the rise of backyard
swimming pools, especially in places where it wasn't necessarily like
the vernacular before. So what's interesting in that case is basically,
in order to uphold white supremacy, we got rid of
a public good.

Speaker 5 (02:17:35):
And we privatized it.

Speaker 11 (02:17:36):
We made it only for people who could afford a
backyard swimming pool.

Speaker 5 (02:17:42):
And that is to some extent what we did.

Speaker 11 (02:17:46):
With the American city with with education.

Speaker 5 (02:17:51):
Obviously, with education, we're telling us.

Speaker 2 (02:17:53):
All things that we know except for the thing we
don't know, which is why you care about this?

Speaker 5 (02:17:58):
We sure, well, I guess I don't need to be
here there.

Speaker 2 (02:18:04):
But we didn't know about what you were talking about before.
But you're here because I bring back.

Speaker 11 (02:18:09):
That's why it's interesting to me is because how that
that zero sum is self defeating for everybody. I mean,
I don't know, there's the moral imperative that I don't.

Speaker 5 (02:18:20):
That I can't explained.

Speaker 11 (02:18:22):
I think it's it's self evident if you see a
wrong that you have the capacity to do something about,
which I feel that I do as someone in the
built environment, you do something about it. So I don't know,
I can't explain that. But the zero sum if you
want to put it in a nature in a like
a why do I care? From a self interest point

(02:18:42):
of view, there's that zero sum game. We destroyed the
whole idea. I mean again, I love cities. We destroyed cities,
but we destroyed the whole idea of the public. You know,
everything that's public. The word public has become a dog
whistle for but the word public has become a dog
whistle for for for black you know, uh, where I'm

(02:19:03):
from in South Florida, Like, uh, you say you're taking
public transit, you say you're taking tri rail, and everyone's like,
oh my god, you're gonna get stabbed, Like that's what
people say.

Speaker 5 (02:19:11):
It's like, and that's that's racism obviously.

Speaker 11 (02:19:14):
But but it's this idea that of the public just
being racialized, and that's you can't that's that's that's not
that's a that's a decrepit society. That's that's uh, that's
one where it's feudalism.

Speaker 5 (02:19:32):
You know, if you don't have a public it's it's
when what the hell is that?

Speaker 11 (02:19:36):
So yeah, selfishly, I don't want to live in a
society that's just divide and conquer by capitalists, which is
what which is why they've taken up that. You know,
they themselves are racist. But why racism is such a
useful tool, Uh, Because because I guess, yeah, there's a
lot of people there. I mean, for there's a lot
of people who are just more self who are who

(02:19:57):
think that the that they will get from their protected
mortgage are are more than everything that's lost by dismantling society. Yeah,
you know, so I care because I want to live
in a society. And the logical endpoint of this is death,

(02:20:21):
I don't know, is a poverty and nothing.

Speaker 2 (02:20:27):
So one of the reasons I refer to myself as
an artistic intellectual is because I I've gone through the
graduate school program like I've gone through you know, academia,
and so much of academia does this thing where it
sterilizes intellectualism by making it you know, even if it's
not mathematic by trying to make it mathematic, right, like

(02:20:49):
trying to castrate the personhood from it, the morality, the
ethics from it, et cetera, and put it in these bubbles.
But we always see that what ends up living longer
than most studies are the ones that are actually grounded
in something more than just like the boxed version of something.
Even though PhD programs want to do this all the time, right,

(02:21:10):
they want to like break you down and make it like, No,
this can be for everybody, So it has to have
a very generic It either has to have a hyper
specific origineric point of view. And what I love about
your work is that it marriages those two things in
terms of the artistic intellectual, because it marriages the realities

(02:21:31):
of the moral and the a moral and unethical with
the actual scholarship around city planning. And a lot of
people won't see that, right, They just see it as
these are the blocks that we live on, and they
were created and now we live here. But no, they
were choices that were made, and even the scholarship around

(02:21:53):
that and how it's discussed as a choice, because there
are others who would do this same work and frame
as innovation. You know, Ezra client is looking at the
same thing and calling it abundance.

Speaker 11 (02:22:09):
Right, yeah, which is kind of willfully ignorant of sort
of basic city planning principles because it's its issue is
like we are building houses, We're not building the right houses.

Speaker 5 (02:22:21):
It's just so I saw this awful.

Speaker 11 (02:22:24):
It wasn't that there were some elements it was okay,
but this article in the Times about like why we
need sprawl and it.

Speaker 2 (02:22:31):
Was about this trash, so that doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 11 (02:22:34):
Well, so it was about and there's some great people
who work there. I've I've written for them before.

Speaker 2 (02:22:39):
I've been profiled by them twice.

Speaker 11 (02:22:41):
There you go exactly, So it's like any yeah, but
but lately yeah, no, I know that.

Speaker 2 (02:22:46):
And the route change and things, and you know, things
happened like.

Speaker 5 (02:22:51):
And are women ruining the workplace?

Speaker 11 (02:22:54):
I was, I was flying and that was like the
only article that had downloaded, and so I read way
too much of that before I was like, what the
it's like?

Speaker 2 (02:23:04):
It was it was, I mean, they just put out
an article today, the case for overthrowing Maduro, Like oh
my god.

Speaker 5 (02:23:14):
That's what is the phrase for that?

Speaker 11 (02:23:16):
Like yellow journalism that sounds racist actually, but like we're
we're but.

Speaker 2 (02:23:20):
It's yellow because it's callo. I mean it's not, it's
it's it's not CALO's not the word I'm looking for,
but it's it's it lacks courage. I mean, it's being
paid for. And I just pressed you. I wanted to
press you because because I know you're gonna be off,
come off of this and like have to go decompress

(02:23:41):
and probably take a nap. But I wanted to press
you because the work you're doing is the kind of
work that people don't want done. And I know that
you've already had to I'm sure argue why are you
doing this work? And I'm sure there's been people who've
been like, this is not really am I wrong?

Speaker 11 (02:24:00):
Uh yeah, no exactly. I mean there's always people that
wonder why I'm doing it.

Speaker 2 (02:24:05):
They're like, you're a blue eyed, good looking white man,
you have blonde hair, you can do whatever you want
in your dentim shirt. Why are you caring about this?
And there has to be it's like, I mean, for
lack of a better reference, Lady McBee and Macbeth when
she's trying to convince Macbeth to murder. The King says,

(02:24:28):
through our courage to the sticking place, and we shall
not be moved. And that is the type of energy
that has to be had, like we can't we don't
need allies, we need co conspirators. And that only happens
when people are morally driven with the work they're doing.
So when you say, like, I mean, I don't understand,

(02:24:49):
like you're asking me about something that just is in
my body, that's actually very like comforting to me to
hear someone say that, Like I'm not like this because
I was taught or because my society surroundings. You're like,
I'm like this because I'm like this, Leave me alone, Amanda,
I came on your show to talk about highways.

Speaker 5 (02:25:10):
Well, I mean, I think it's natural to Oh is
it just me?

Speaker 11 (02:25:16):
No, I was gonna say, I think it's natural to
try to strive for a better world, the utopia and
you have these.

Speaker 2 (02:25:29):
I was like, did she just hang up on me
on her own show?

Speaker 11 (02:25:31):
I was like, is it just me? I was, And
I was like, oh my gosh, I should have taken
advantage of that better. I think everyone's just like, let's see,
it's it's I think it's it's at least I think
it's natural to try to strive for a better world.

Speaker 5 (02:25:47):
And and these are all problems. One of the reasons
I talk about this in particularly, these are all such
solvable problems. They're all there's and and they're so the
solutions are so precedented.

Speaker 11 (02:25:59):
It's like, remove the highway and build a lot of
affordable housing and actually make it and redefine what affordable is.
So it move that bar down because it hasn't kept
up with inflation, obviously, But that's if we do, if
we do want to talk about solutions, That's that's one
of the reasons I I I have some time. If
we want to keep talking, I.

Speaker 2 (02:26:19):
Would love to hear. And I hope that this also
extends to like indigenous communities because that's something we were
talking about earlier. How Like on a global scale, we're
seeing this exact effort being done through other methods, right,
But the effort of like separation of displacement and using

(02:26:45):
I mean, that's what this un that's what this Trump
Plan and Gaza literally is. I mean, it's we're going
to use development as a dog whistle for displacement.

Speaker 5 (02:26:58):
Development is a way to salt the earth.

Speaker 11 (02:27:00):
Development as a way to literally replace and make sure
replace what's there and make sure that what's there can
never come back. That's like if you look at you know,
Greenwood in Tulsa, the Black Wall Street, if you look
at it now it's mostly parking lot. They literally salted
the earth. I mean they paved the earth. And and

(02:27:24):
that's exactly what this Gaza plant is. Yeah, it's it's
there's a great book about Los Angeles called City of Courts,
about the the it's about basically the development of of
La But there's a good book or a good part
about the demolition of Bunker Hill.

Speaker 5 (02:27:39):
Uh.

Speaker 11 (02:27:39):
And he talks about how they clear out the street good,
they clear out everything.

Speaker 5 (02:27:46):
Uh.

Speaker 11 (02:27:46):
And they even they remove public transit links and it's
it's trying to they and they basically build a wall
between La Plaza and Bunker Hill.

Speaker 5 (02:27:55):
So La Plaza is the sort of an Alvara street.

Speaker 11 (02:27:59):
So he's talking about like they're trying to remove any
articulation between a non Anglo past between you know, passe
Los Angeles by literally, ah, removing the street connections, assaulting
the earth and getting rid of it. So absolutely, and

(02:28:20):
this has been done another place. Yeah, city of courts.

Speaker 2 (02:28:26):
Because they always want to know what the book looks like.
City is this is this the book?

Speaker 11 (02:28:35):
Yeah, and that's that's a picture of a Yeah, it's
a it's a it's a jail, right.

Speaker 5 (02:28:42):
Uh, it's a federal jail, which is kind of unique.

Speaker 2 (02:28:45):
But I'm gonna say, like, wait, a federal and dale.
That's a bit contradictive, but okay.

Speaker 11 (02:28:50):
It's like a holding. It's because it's for the whole
West Coast. It's one of those things.

Speaker 5 (02:28:56):
Uh.

Speaker 11 (02:28:57):
But the the reason he uses that photo is because
he's talking about, you know, I talked about how they
clear out these neighborhoods and replace it with stuff designed
to attract white people back from the suburbs. Architecturally, that
takes the form of killing the street. So you get
rid of storefronts. You get rid of you get rid

(02:29:19):
of like human scale stuff on the street, storefronts basically,
and apartment and brownstones, brownstones, so anything that creates and
allows for store for street life you get rid of.
Because the street has become a sort of racialized thing
post white flight. So if you can get rid of
the street and replace it with again parking lots, or
like a building that's just a big wall, that's what

(02:29:42):
the city, that's what that is. Or a entrance to
a parking garage that's golden because then then you've gotten
rid of the connection to the street, and that's that's
like in Minneapolis they have a lot of skyways, like
overhead things that connect between buildings. New Or has this
like and they connect between office buildings, so you you

(02:30:04):
can drive into your parking garage and you never have
to even go down to the street.

Speaker 5 (02:30:08):
So there's another reason.

Speaker 11 (02:30:11):
And this is why, like I think, maybe like it's
my I care about it also because it's very bad design,
and it's bad for like your brain, and it's bad
for living. It's obviously bad for the environment. I haven't
even mentioned that it's obviously very bad for the environment.
This way that we have, We used racism to leverage

(02:30:33):
and create this way of living that is wildly inefficient
for anyone but developers and car companies.

Speaker 2 (02:30:42):
It's it's honestly because it's a cancerous mindset, right, like
if we just keep expanding and developing and spanding, developing,
like you know, there's no limit, and it's like, well,
there is a limit, and then you have someone liking
on Musk who's like, well, my goal is to take
this money and go to Mars and create a new
world on Mars. It's like, we can't breathe. Yeah, we

(02:31:03):
can't breathe on Mars. Are you going to build an atmosphere?
Because that's the type of shit that they want to do,
Like they want to go and build an atmosphere and
privatize breathing. Like that's the type of stuff that these
people are on.

Speaker 5 (02:31:15):
Like that's why. Yeah, I know, it's terrifying. It's like
growing up, you know, I'm a boy.

Speaker 11 (02:31:21):
So like video games, you know, sci fi, like Halo whatever,
it's just in the future. Also in that series, space
travel is run I mean, the UN's not good, I
know that, but it is public. But so like Space
is run by like a public entity that's at least
for good. And then in the other there's like Aliens,

(02:31:44):
which that's all privatized and everything is like dark and dank,
and unfortunately that's what we're getting, I guess.

Speaker 5 (02:31:49):
So fuck.

Speaker 2 (02:31:51):
I mean, have you ever watched the Expanse?

Speaker 5 (02:31:55):
Uh?

Speaker 11 (02:31:55):
Yeah, I didn't finish it. I got to where they
opened the portal. It was really good. Though, should I
finish it?

Speaker 2 (02:32:01):
You should? Yeah, you should had me in a choke
hold for I luckily waited to watch it until it
was finished, so I binged it for a good three weeks.
I lost a lot of my life to the expianense,
but it was worth every second.

Speaker 5 (02:32:19):
Nice. Yeah, I mean that's like, that'll start galactical.

Speaker 2 (02:32:22):
I was about to say, I'm about to do a rewatch.
I'm literally about to do a rewatch about it. So
I like to get because i feel like I have
a new consciousness and I'm like, am I a Cylon?

Speaker 11 (02:32:30):
Maybe it gets a little off the rails, but in
interesting ways.

Speaker 2 (02:32:36):
Yeah, you get to season four. Once Silon started being
like what you mean, I'm a Cylon? That's what you're saying.

Speaker 5 (02:32:42):
It's like, what's going on?

Speaker 11 (02:32:43):
And once once that guy starts his own religion, it's like, wait,
weren't you a scientist?

Speaker 5 (02:32:48):
I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (02:32:49):
And then they and then they like do Adam and
Eve all over again. But it's fine.

Speaker 11 (02:32:52):
It's fine. I'm watching a chair company right now. Everyone
should watch that.

Speaker 5 (02:32:57):
It's sod.

Speaker 2 (02:32:57):
I was gonna say, do I need to stick to that?

Speaker 5 (02:33:00):
Oh? I really? I loved Tim Robinson I adore him, didn't.

Speaker 2 (02:33:05):
Have any idea where we were going. But I also
did that with severance and deeply regretted this because then
Severn turned out to be amazing. So I was saying
in episodes of The Chair Company, where you feel like.

Speaker 11 (02:33:19):
Oh definitely, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I agree, I
would say keep watching excited. But back to solutions, by
the way, So yeah, we just we can take out
these highways and unfortunately, you know the that's not going
to bring back the community and in some cases taking
out the highway could lead to gentrification.

Speaker 2 (02:33:45):
So right, because then it becomes well, now that we
don't have these highways, we need the rich class to
have easier access to the to the city, so we
bring them back. Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:33:57):
Well, and you think about where where the highways they're
taking out are again, it's the ones like right around downtown.
So that's super valid. Right now, there's a discussion. Yeah,
so in various cities there's been a discussion. You know,
highways were the Interstate in particular, so the Interstate was
built starting in the sixties. A lot of the main

(02:34:21):
major structures have sort of reached the end of their
useful life. That's why we see collapses of bridges in
like Minneapolis, and so they need there A lot of
them are in like desperate need of repair. So some
states are actually using the opportunity to make some progress.
New York is doing New York's doing pretty good. Rochester,

(02:34:42):
New York, took out a part of a highway that
separated the black neighborhoods from downtown interesting and replaced it
with affordable housing. So it's very recent. We'll see how
it pans out, but it looks beautiful at least. Again,
the issue is like affordable housing, what does that exactly mean?

Speaker 5 (02:35:02):
But it is subsidized housing. So it's the best we
can do.

Speaker 11 (02:35:06):
I mean, I try to be realistic within within the
current fond confines. But uh so that's that's there's like
removal is one option. This was a very underused highway.
But then there's capping. So that's sort of what they
did in Boston where they took an elevated highway and
put it underground. Uh yeah, with the big dig That's

(02:35:27):
not always a great option because there are still a
ton Yeah, because there's always there are still a ton
of cars and there still can be.

Speaker 5 (02:35:33):
Pollution, like in the soil oh yeah, Oh well, yeah, there's.

Speaker 2 (02:35:40):
That water, the water table, all that stuff.

Speaker 11 (02:35:44):
And it's also if you're digging a tunnel in the
middle of a city, it should be for it should
be for a subway, probably not for a enough for
a highway. Just in terms of efficiency. Uh, it's sauce
with it.

Speaker 2 (02:35:56):
You know what, We'll do this for five hours.

Speaker 5 (02:36:00):
You have a graphic. I do have a graphic showing
the exhaust.

Speaker 11 (02:36:02):
It's the It was one of the first I sent
it to the noise pollution and asthma rates in the Bronx,
but you see it in the South Bronx, which is
totally surrounded by highways.

Speaker 5 (02:36:14):
Sorry, she's got the soulth Bronx, which is totally surrounded
by highways.

Speaker 11 (02:36:18):
It has every census tract in the South Bronx is
in the ninety ninth percentile for asthma rates.

Speaker 5 (02:36:24):
That's how I just want this keep going.

Speaker 2 (02:36:26):
Yeah, because basically I realized that like if I just
like move my cursor too fast and left, it just
like kicks me out. And I don't know why it's
doing that, and I don't know whose idea that was,
but I'm going to have to write a very strong
letter strongly worded email to stream Yard because that is
not helpful. Let me see if I can find these
asthma rates. While you're talking.

Speaker 5 (02:36:48):
Not a big deal of the camp, but.

Speaker 11 (02:36:52):
Capping advocates, there's you know, the people who live next
to these highways obviously know that this there's negative effects,
and then in a lot of cases, their parents were
devastated by their neighborhoods being destroyed. So there's definitely a
lot of advocate advocacy, is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 5 (02:37:12):
You know, in the Bronx we're working on.

Speaker 11 (02:37:16):
I've been in contact with the group there Loving the Bronx,
who's led by Nilkam Martel, who we all want to
run for city.

Speaker 5 (02:37:24):
Council or something but she doesn't want to.

Speaker 11 (02:37:25):
But she's basically single handedly pushed forward this project to
cap over I ninety five the Cross Bronx Expressway, and
it's it's gonna it's like a decade long project, but
we're like five years into it, so it's moving. It's
a massive project because it's like a seven mile long
highway and.

Speaker 5 (02:37:43):
It's it's not any highway, it's I ninety five in
New York.

Speaker 11 (02:37:48):
But it's moving forward, capping over it, going to build
a bunch of parks, you know. The ideal would be
to remove it and reconnect the neighborhood and then re
route I ninety five around New York. But then suddenly
that's sort of like a national project. So that's that's
one of the things that's so tough about these highways

(02:38:08):
in terms of fixing them, is that they have very
much local impacts, but they are part of a regional
network that when you shift something, you need to change
it things elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (02:38:21):
I mean, I think this is also one of the
things that is not considered in when we think about
like socialist politicians being in position or socialist governance being
in position, like this idea of rethinking how cities exist

(02:38:42):
even and I don't I just don't think many of
us think about the road Like I don't really feel
like I have been doing enough thinking about the way
that the roads and the highways are lined up. So
can you just so the top one is noise pollution,
in the bottom one is asthma prevalence.

Speaker 11 (02:39:00):
Exactly so that on the top one so and the
top one you can see the noise pollution.

Speaker 5 (02:39:06):
And that map's right onto the highways where.

Speaker 11 (02:39:09):
Those purple where those big thick purple lines are, that's
as loud as a jackhammer. So that's incredibly loud, and
there's tens of thousands of people that live in that
noise shit they have to just they just can't open
their windows, you know, and when they do, there's soot
and it's it's it's not just because it's not just
CO two I mentioned, it's like crap from the tires

(02:39:30):
and the brake pads. Yeah, and that's the Bronx. So
that's like one of the densest places in the United States.
So there's the noise pollution. So that one that cuts
across all the way is the Cross Bronx and it
connects to that bridge, those bridges on the other side.

Speaker 5 (02:39:45):
So a lot of that's just through traffic. That's a
different point. But what we're trying to do is.

Speaker 2 (02:39:51):
Basically building up Cross Bronx.

Speaker 11 (02:39:54):
Yeah, but so what we're trying to do is basically
build a cap over it. So sort of a big
dig for the Bronx, but hopefully not as delayed.

Speaker 2 (02:40:01):
So build a cap to run the highway, to run
the Cross Bronx underground, you know, the Crosspronx Lincoln Tunnel
tie Vibe.

Speaker 11 (02:40:11):
Yeah, but the Cross Bronx basically is underground. It's just
in a trench with no top.

Speaker 5 (02:40:16):
Yeah, because.

Speaker 11 (02:40:19):
We're just talking about building a top over the which
is something that's really common here in the Netland. That's
actually one of the reasons I'm here in the Netherlands.
So this is I'm involved in this project through work
the Cross Bronx and my PhD is is basically looking
at the impact of capping on social and environmental metrics

(02:40:41):
around the cap. So they've done it quite a lot here,
so I'm looking to see did it work. Basically, did
it reduce pollution, did it improve mobility?

Speaker 5 (02:40:50):
Did it did it gentrify. I'm trying to see yes
or no.

Speaker 11 (02:40:55):
It's a bit different the context here, but a lot
of the tools we can still use.

Speaker 5 (02:41:00):
Uh. And the answer is it's mixed. It depends how
you do it. But that's what I'm That's what I'm
trying to study and figure out.

Speaker 2 (02:41:06):
Is how far into the PhD are you two.

Speaker 5 (02:41:09):
And a half years?

Speaker 2 (02:41:10):
Oh you got tam.

Speaker 11 (02:41:12):
Uh, I should be done in about a year because
I have a lot of pre exist. I have a
lot of pre existing work, you know, and then we'll see.
Maybe I'll stay here.

Speaker 5 (02:41:22):
I might. I'm probably gonna go back to New York,
but we'll see, Uh here, what's up?

Speaker 2 (02:41:28):
Don't come back here?

Speaker 5 (02:41:31):
Well yeah, but I should.

Speaker 11 (02:41:33):
I feel like a phony talking about everything I'm talking
about being over here.

Speaker 5 (02:41:37):
But that's.

Speaker 2 (02:41:40):
What we have learned, y'all, is that Adam is about authenticity.

Speaker 5 (02:41:45):
Well there there, but there is a lot we can
learn from here.

Speaker 11 (02:41:48):
And I don't I don't mean like necessarily in terms
of like Amsterdam, but just the city that I'm in now,
Rotterdam was totally destroyed and world So first of all,
incredibly diversity. It's only about fifty percent Dutch. The rest
is yeah, the rest is immigrants, so it's mostly people

(02:42:10):
from Dutch colonies, Dutch colonial legacy, so it's Indonesians, it's Serenames, Kurasaw,
and then there's a lot of Turkish folks that's not
a colony.

Speaker 5 (02:42:23):
But so it's incredibly diverse here.

Speaker 11 (02:42:25):
It's the biggest port in Europe, so it also has
like a history of diversity like New York, you know,
big port city. Rotterdam rules, but it was unfortunately destroyed
in World War two and so totally flattened and then
rebuilt with American money and rebuilt the Marshall Plan. Rotterdam

(02:42:47):
got the most of any city in the Marshall Plan,
and we designed it.

Speaker 5 (02:42:50):
You know, it wasn't totally on us. The Dutch.

Speaker 11 (02:42:53):
We're happy to do modernism too, but we we redesigned
Rotterdam from the beautiful like Amsterdam like medieval city to
a modernist American thing, you know. And and just like
the American city before we destroyed it for highways and
and and urban renewal, rich people and poor people lived

(02:43:16):
close together, you know, immigrants and and natives lived close together.
And that was the same in the United States, right,
but we we destroyed it and and World War two
destroys it here and and they try to institute a
similar planning logic and they do, you know, zout becomes

(02:43:36):
the south becomes the poor area, uh and and north
and and and downtown becomes not residential at all. And
they hate it, people, the Dutch, they hate it because
they that's not how they live, you know, the the
their urban planning, you know, they had to make there's

(02:43:59):
this joke, the Dutch joke, like you know, God created
the earth but the Dutch created the Netherlands because the
Netherlands is mostly on reclaimed land, so they had to
like drain a lot of land.

Speaker 5 (02:44:10):
But so they they have a very unique way of
urban planning.

Speaker 11 (02:44:13):
It's very specific and tactical and like about about efficiency.
So then the Americans come in with this ridiculous spread
out way of living that is based on racism in
our way back in where we live. Other countries adopted
happily South South Africa, Belfast.

Speaker 5 (02:44:31):
In Northern Ireland.

Speaker 11 (02:44:32):
But the Dutch there there are plenty of racists. Don't worry.
But they oh, yes, we.

Speaker 2 (02:44:37):
Know about smart smart.

Speaker 7 (02:44:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:44:40):
Oh they're they're incredibly racist and they're they're they're big
racist dufaces in a lot of ways.

Speaker 5 (02:44:46):
But when it comes urban planning, that's important to them.

Speaker 11 (02:44:49):
So they in the seventies they had a moment of
like urbanism that we're sort of having in American cities now,
recognizing that you know, car culture is exclusive, is damaging.

Speaker 5 (02:45:01):
Blah blah blah. So they had that in the seventies
and they have since fixed Rotterdam. And Rotterdam is a
city with bones just like America, because it was rebuilt
in the image of America where we're going with this,
But they fixed it.

Speaker 11 (02:45:15):
So we can learn a lot from Rotterdam. Amsterdam is beautiful,
but it's medieval. We're not going to do that. But
Rotterdam has big, old wide boulevards and highways. But now
we have beautiful wide boulevards with bike lanes and trams.

Speaker 2 (02:45:28):
I see what you're saying about this. Okay, you're saying
that you went to the place that is ahead of
where we could be. Yeah, that's ahead of where we
are as a model.

Speaker 5 (02:45:40):
For where we can become urban planning wise, you're checking out?

Speaker 2 (02:45:45):
Is it legit? I mean what? I think it's really
important work because it also allows you to see, well,
where are the ways it doesn't solve, and where is
the way that it does, and how do we solve
for the things that it doesn't solve? You know, which
is you know, so much of America is anti intellectual,
so it doesn't do that work. It just like bullies
its way through things versus like well wait, wait, wait,

(02:46:08):
somewhere else did it? And I know they're not American,
but they may have good ideas.

Speaker 11 (02:46:15):
Yeah, no, there's it's that's American exceptionalism, right, it's we
think where they And there's New York exceptionalism too, right,
like we can't we can't learn from other places.

Speaker 5 (02:46:28):
Especially when it comes to like the subway.

Speaker 11 (02:46:30):
It's very frustrating, like there's we can't adopt best practices
because you know, we're the subway. We of course we
know how to do it. But yeah, no, I mean,
and and you do see the shortcomings. Absolutely, taxes are
really really really no I'm serious, Oh my god, And

(02:46:54):
uh do you but.

Speaker 2 (02:46:55):
Do you but do you feel your taxes in your lifestyle?

Speaker 11 (02:47:01):
Yes, exactly, Yes, the trains work, the streets are clean, fair,
but it's funny, yeah, basic things. I mean, I actually
think that the Netherlands itself could learn a lot from
Rotterdam because the rest of the Netherlands they say Rotterdam

(02:47:22):
like how Americans say Detroit or Chicago, like yeah, it's racialized, yeah,
oh absolutely, yeah yeah yeah, but but it's a beautiful
place here.

Speaker 2 (02:47:34):
And well, let's let's answer a question before you go,
because I see someone just throw one out. Sight Williams says, question,
does the way the grid of the infrastructure affect the
flow of energy in our communities and or frequencies that
affect our way of life. I mean, it's like the
function way of it all. Yeah, but you were seeing
that it affects the environment, so yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:47:57):
Well the grid. I really do want to answer that question.
I always do this.

Speaker 11 (02:48:03):
I just want to say, just to put a bow
on the capping and the removal.

Speaker 5 (02:48:08):
Thing that is great.

Speaker 11 (02:48:13):
For making a better city, that is and making and
it's better for the environment, it's not necessarily always the
right thing for the community that we're trying to help
because of this issue of gentrification.

Speaker 5 (02:48:24):
So it's just me.

Speaker 11 (02:48:26):
I consider myself like an urbanist, like I do want
to improve cities, but we the way to do that
isn't always just more big infrastructure projects. Basically, I'm trying
to endorse community land trusts give some ownership back to
the community. A community land trust is like it's a
you know, a nonprofit corporation, uh, where the community basically

(02:48:49):
just owns a bunch of land and gets to decide
what they want to do with it.

Speaker 2 (02:48:57):
I mean, I mean, if it were if I mean
it is essentially a socialist construct.

Speaker 5 (02:49:04):
Do I consider myself a democratic socialist? Yes? Is that
is a CLT socialist? I don't know, because it's like ideal.

Speaker 2 (02:49:13):
It's within a capitalists yeah right, it's within yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:49:20):
Well, and I think as a democratic socialist, by the way,
I think that cap You know, you can have a
beautiful bubble of capitalism within the guardrails and the bubble
within the guardrails of democratic socialism, and then you compete
on things like, uh, quality of service.

Speaker 5 (02:49:35):
Sorry, I'm thinking about example, like in Europe.

Speaker 11 (02:49:38):
It's not perfect here, but like the state owns the rails, uh,
and then the operators, So there's a government operator, but
then there's some private operators that then have to compete
based on service, not based on something like the rails,
which any private operator. No one can build that because

(02:49:58):
it's too big. Like an example would be in the US,
like if the government owned the cell towers, which is
too big for any small company to possibly build. Only
AT and T and Verizon can build something like that,
and because they own the towers, and because only they're
big enough to do it, they can fuck you over.

(02:50:19):
But so if somebody, like if there was a public
agency that owned the towers, then you could rent it
out to private operators who would then have to compete
on Oh god, guess what service does that make sense?

Speaker 5 (02:50:30):
So I think it does, but.

Speaker 2 (02:50:32):
It's not true. Like at the end of the day,
it exists for now, but there all they need is
incentive to which is what these capitalists are trying to do, right,
is to remove the incentive of even having this type
of bubble and just making it all privatized in general.

(02:50:53):
I mean, I'm warm a parent in my sentiments that
wherever capitalism lives, there's always going to be the there's
always going to be the possibility and the incentive for
capitalism to grow, because that's all it does. I mean,
it doesn't know how to stay in the bubble. It's
counterintuitive to its existence. It's literally cancer. Like the mind

(02:51:14):
state of capitalism is how do we grow without limit?
So so for now, that's why I like the concept
of democratic socialism is I believe democratic socialisms y'all are
just folks who are just on the way to being socialists.
You're just not there yet, but you're on the way.
I'll see you soon.

Speaker 11 (02:51:31):
Well wait, okay, well now I think they we're just
getting into semantics because.

Speaker 2 (02:51:36):
Democratic socialists are still they still hold a piece of
capitalism in their eye, in their mind's eye.

Speaker 11 (02:51:43):
Well, Okay, So I guess I was saying that competition
isn't inherently a bad thing in terms of providing services, and.

Speaker 2 (02:51:50):
I would say that wherever competition exists.

Speaker 11 (02:51:56):
Where in terms of the quality of services, know that
the provision needs to be guaranteed. But there's there's like.

Speaker 2 (02:52:07):
Different versions of socialism that we've seen right where it's
like there's portions of Richard Wolf did a really good
podcast about this recently, where there's like portions of land
ownership and service ownership that like you're talking about, where

(02:52:27):
it's like the government owned some of it, but then
there's privatization, et cetera, et cetera. But then it ends
up at a certain point becoming who's gonna it? Always
capitalism always requires there to be Okay, you're not letting
us grow anymore. So that's what I'm saying. It's like,
that's all I'm saying that at a certain point, they're like,
we'll play along with this, but then if we get

(02:52:49):
if the bubble gets too small, we're gonna figure out
We're gonna try to figure out how to burst the bubble.
So then I'm like, well, then how do we make
it so that there is no bubble at all.

Speaker 11 (02:52:56):
Ye, fair enough, and let's not We can keep talking
about that later. That's always a fun topic. But can
can we bring the press the question back? Just because
I did want to talk about the grid because it
is kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:53:09):
I lost the question, but the question was how does
the grid affect like the the flow of energies of
people in a city, Like I mean, it was kind
of like a fengshueish kind of concept, right like.

Speaker 11 (02:53:24):
Yeah, yeah, but the grid, I from a city planning
perspective is American cities are really there, you go, are
really grid e you know, we we love a grid,
and I actually think that that's kind of cool.

Speaker 5 (02:53:40):
The grid.

Speaker 11 (02:53:42):
Yeah, it's very democratic, like small d democratic because unlike
the European cities where there's like the center of authority,
which is normally a church. Uh so there's the church
and then everything kind of emanates around from that and
it's kind of radial.

Speaker 5 (02:53:59):
The American city is all.

Speaker 11 (02:54:00):
About the grid, is all about the grid where there's
no necessarily there's no point that's necessarily prized, and there's
equal access to everything. So I like it grid, and
that's why that's one of the things that's like tragic
in the highways is that they just.

Speaker 5 (02:54:16):
Disrupt the city grid. They absolutely a limit.

Speaker 11 (02:54:22):
They get rid of that logic because the grid is
all about like on the ground connectivity, not vehicular connectivity.

Speaker 5 (02:54:29):
So and the highways just up end that and they
destroy it and.

Speaker 11 (02:54:35):
They inscribe an economic logic, which is, you know, prioritizing
suburban access to the core. So the grid, I wish
it would make it that. I wish it would make
it comeback in places where it's been disrupted. And you know,
gridlock is something that is a product of cars, not.

Speaker 2 (02:54:55):
People agreed, because like Grenada, which is a very small island,
you see like more cars than there is like land.
It's all that it starts to feel like that. Well
then there are roads, right, So there's this gridlock for
the sake of gridlock. Because the other part of this
I can say this because I'm Caribbean, is that folks

(02:55:18):
typically want cars so that they can get up and go,
so they have control, so they can dominate, like when
they arrive somewhere. But what's sitting people? We're not on time,
So what is the point, y'all? What's the point of
everybody having the car if y're not going to get
there on time. Adam, thank you for not only being
Adam was early, y'all. Adam was here for like a
half hour before, so we've had two hours of Adam

(02:55:41):
Paul SU's The next time.

Speaker 7 (02:55:42):
We done had a whole.

Speaker 2 (02:55:46):
Spiritual session about morals and ethics. We then talked about
everywhere from Rotterdam to Detroit, which is a journey I
did not know we were going to go on. But
I can assure you that everyone here is leaving today
with so much more than they came with, thanks to
you sharing your knowledge and the work that you continue
to do.

Speaker 5 (02:56:03):
So thank you, Adam, Thank you so much.

Speaker 11 (02:56:05):
You know, if you want to carry on the conversation,
because there's some points that I I always do that
you know.

Speaker 2 (02:56:11):
I was like I should have said, we'll definitely invite
you back. So make a list, make a list of
the points that you feel like you need to add.

Speaker 11 (02:56:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, next time, I'll be a little more.
I'll send them in order. But if folks, can I
do my can I do my plug?

Speaker 2 (02:56:28):
Please?

Speaker 5 (02:56:29):
Just so?

Speaker 11 (02:56:30):
Segregation by design dot com it's broken down by cities,
and then unfortunately, Instagram is the place I'm the most
active so at segregation Underscore by Underscore Design.

Speaker 22 (02:56:41):
Check it out segregation segregation under greg gaish.

Speaker 5 (02:56:56):
It's kind of funny.

Speaker 11 (02:56:57):
One of the terms for like the type of highway
that the interstate is like limited access is a segregated highways.

Speaker 2 (02:57:04):
I mean they put it in the name.

Speaker 11 (02:57:07):
No, I know exactly when you think there's so many
spatial terms that are like explicitly racialized, like inner city,
other side of the tracks, I won't keep going.

Speaker 2 (02:57:16):
It's facts. And so once you start, when you started
learning language of the United States, you're like, oh, all
of this is racist.

Speaker 5 (02:57:23):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 7 (02:57:24):
And I learned that.

Speaker 2 (02:57:24):
The ice cream Truck song is racist. I was like,
I give a I'm out.

Speaker 5 (02:57:29):
And really racist.

Speaker 2 (02:57:30):
It's like that one super duper yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:57:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:57:35):
Well, enjoy your evening in Rotterdam, and thank you again
for joining us.

Speaker 5 (02:57:39):
Thank you, there's so much fun.

Speaker 2 (02:57:40):
Wow, you guys, we learned so much. We learned so
much we don't even have time for a critical thinking exercise.
But we are going to get into some black news
before we get out of here, because I really have
some stories that I want to talk to you about.

(02:58:16):
So I don't know if you guys have been seeing
these stories of the black women maternal mortality in your face.
Like I think many of us know about these stories,
but now you're getting to see like real video of

(02:58:37):
black women just being completely ignored in the most vulnerable
of times when they are in labor. And I feel
really disturbed that folks feel so comfortable to behave this
way Right now. This woman is a nurse, and while

(02:59:10):
this woman is literally writhing in pain, she's like casually
triaging her and acting as if this woman is not
in labor.

Speaker 14 (02:59:22):
Here's another Baty's Wells, who tells us she felt she
was stripped of her dignity and treated like an animals.
She says, after spending six hours at Franciscan Health Crown
Point Hospital, even when her contractions were a minute apart,
she was still escorted out by security. Now, the mom
of four says the nurse who saw her believed that

(02:59:44):
she was not in labor, and in the six hours
of being in labor, she says she never saw an
actual doctor.

Speaker 5 (02:59:50):
Well.

Speaker 14 (02:59:50):
She says the nurse told her to go home. Her husband,
Leon Wells, who was with her at the time, asked
for a wheelchair, and they were both escorted out.

Speaker 2 (02:59:58):
Just eight minutes later.

Speaker 3 (03:00:00):
Mister Wells says.

Speaker 14 (03:00:01):
He saw his daughters had come out while he was driving,
pulled over the car and delivered the baby himself. And
I will add that mister Wells says he does not
have any kind of medical experience, and they both say
they believe they were mistreated because of the race, and
the lives of mom and baby were put at risk.

Speaker 1 (03:00:18):
I was in excruciating pain. She's seen me in pain
and agony, and I guess she still perceived me to
not be in labor because upon returning to the room,
she's like, well, if you're not further along in your centimeters,
then you know, we gotta sing you home. So I said,

(03:00:40):
I know I can't go home. I can't have this
baby at home.

Speaker 5 (03:00:43):
Holy God's grace. I was scared. I ain't know what
to do.

Speaker 2 (03:00:48):
I don't have any medical license anything to deliver a baby.

Speaker 6 (03:00:52):
I was just scared and know what to do.

Speaker 15 (03:00:57):
Now.

Speaker 14 (03:00:57):
Franciscan Health Crown Point responding morning in part with a
statement saying, the video and the comments that has generated
are deeply troubling and we understand the concern this has raised.
The video is just one part of the information we
are reviewing as part of a thorough investigation into this
alleged incident. Now we're told that baby Elena, who was
just born, is doing well.

Speaker 2 (03:01:18):
Very healthy.

Speaker 14 (03:01:19):
But I did ask the family what does accountability look
like in this case, and they said they want a
meeting with hospital administrators. They want the nurse who saw
wells fired, and they want protocol put in place so
that anyone who comes there and is in labor does
see an actual doctor. They tell me they have not
heard from hospital administrators yet.

Speaker 2 (03:01:40):
Back to you, guys, So this is violence, Like, this
is not just oh, I'm neglectful in my job. This
is actual violence and negligence. And this should not just
be losing someone's job. This should be losing your license.
The literal point of being a nurse is that you

(03:02:00):
are providing care. The literal point of a hospital is
that you're providing care, especially if these women are showing
up here with the paperwork and all the things, you know,
filled out, because to my understanding, she the last video
had actually pre filled out the in charge papers and

(03:02:21):
still was put through this triage process for the concept
of So sorry, that's not what I meant to say,
when it comes to doulas and midwif free. We also
need to understand though, that that's also not all created
equal either, Okay, because I've had many people talk about
midwives who have come through and wasted their time as well.

(03:02:42):
There has to be and this is why I was
pushing Adam on this, there has to be moral and
ethical underpinnings to how you are existing in your practice.
Let me say that again, there has to be moral
and ethical unders to how you are existing in your practice.

(03:03:03):
Anything other than that ends up simply just being an
effort at survival or an ef at capitalizing, and both
of those two things are incredibly vulnerable. They're incredibly vulnerable
to being influenced by bad actors. So you can't just

(03:03:23):
get somebody because they are outside of the system. You
need to understand why they're outside of the system. You
need to understand what they think about you. As an actual,
functioning human with a visceral biological system, we have to
exist in this mind state in every facet of our lives,
which is very tiresome for some people because we're not

(03:03:45):
challenged to exist like this. But I want to do that.
I want to encourage you to do that, all of you,
Amanda Landers, anyone who's watching this, our replay crew, who's listening,
our podcast crew. And when you are looking at people
who are going to help you bring life into this world,
doulas and midwives, your physicians, et cetera, it's you can't

(03:04:05):
simply ask them about protocols. And that's a very US,
a very American, a very Western way of addressing things.
We think that if I've asked you about what time
things are going to happen, and about the organized way
things are going to happen, the logistics, we think that
if we've done that, then we've done everything we needed
to do. When it comes to matters of your body,

(03:04:25):
matters of your home, matters of your children or your elderly,
et cetera, there has to be other con There has
to be a whole other level of questions that are asked.
And yes, Spicy Pickle, they're experiencing this in rural communities
because they've taken the hospitals out of rural communities. They've

(03:04:49):
taken all the hospitals and healthcare out of rural communities.
So now you have folks that are being you know,
midwives and dulahs in rural communities, but they also need
to be trained like in the actual work, but they
also need to be trained in the spirit. You're bringing
a life into the world. You're bringing a life into
the world, and we have to talk to people about
how they view the world to really understand where they're

(03:05:12):
coming at, where they're coming at us from Listen to
this great video from Bandana Shiva, who's a physicist, author
and eco feminist, and she lays it out plain and simple.

Speaker 23 (03:05:23):
Scene age where humanity has been such a destructive force
on the planet. Its climate is decided by our actions,
and the species is decided by action. The state of
water is decided by our action, the fertility of sorts
is decided by action. We can carry on there and
then we don't exist, or we can change it to

(03:05:44):
the creative anthroposcene energized by a feminine energy, the energy
of non western spiritual civilizations, the energy of indigenous people,
the energy of the earth herself and her diversity. To
basically recognize that we are one interval then life and

(03:06:07):
we can continue to have a future if we just
recognize that one simple fact that we are not owners, conquerors, dominators,
of the earth, but part of the earth.

Speaker 2 (03:06:20):
We are not owners, conquerors, or dominators of the earth.
We are part of the earth. When you start thinking
like that, you change how you exist. And it is
hard work to do because we are not, particularly in
the United States, we are not grown up in that

(03:06:40):
mind state within our surroundings. You know, some maybe in
their immediate surroundings, but the actual infrastructure that we exist
in as it is, it isn't.

Speaker 5 (03:06:52):
So.

Speaker 2 (03:06:52):
To those women and to all of you all who
have experienced birth trauma, I really hate that for you,
and I know that it stays with you, and I
hope that you had partners who were there or people
who were there to support you through that and to
the other side of it as well. And to all

(03:07:12):
of our midwives and doulahs who are out here doing
this work, I hope that you too are also bringing
in the spirituality element, the morality element, the ethical element.
And listen, you can be atheist, but you have to
have a morality about what your work is and that
it is in service to not just the person, not

(03:07:33):
just the baby, but to literally the earth. We gotta
think big, big thinking, all right. Speaking of big thinking,
we gotta give shout out to our friend of the show,
our high quality wife himself, he love.

Speaker 7 (03:08:05):
I would like to provide a toast to Van Jones,
a man who started out as a racial justice advocate and.

Speaker 2 (03:08:11):
Is now Davidson boss Well using that prince charming face
to get all up in them people place.

Speaker 5 (03:08:19):
A stooge for corporate media, that a shell for the
Israeli governments making fun of dead guys and babies. If
you are a young person, you open up your phone
and all you see is dead guys of baby, dead
gods of baby. Dead guy's baby.

Speaker 7 (03:08:34):
Diddy, dead gods of baby.

Speaker 15 (03:08:37):
Absolutely to platform a genocide Penoma, these shills.

Speaker 2 (03:08:50):
See yeah, see yeah. I just want to make sure
to remind you all that for every I'll save it
from my PSA. But shout out to Davidson, a real one. Okay,
let's get into this PSA, y'all, am p S.

Speaker 15 (03:09:08):
And So.

Speaker 2 (03:09:15):
One of the main things that we discussed today was
the presence of indigenoity as a source for not only
knowledge for not only upliftment of the earth and challenging
of climate change, but also as a source of resistance
and when we are seeing the indigenous people of Brasil,
the indigenous people of Ecuador, of Peru, of Nepal, Burkina, Fasso, Niger,

(03:09:44):
Molly rising up and saying we have had enough. This
is not just waiting for land back. This is taking
land back. And it's not It may not be in
the immediate overwhelming fashion that people want because that as
the goal. However, it is an actual move towards and
it is a no if that's not even fair. It

(03:10:06):
is movement. It is not just movement towards. It is
movement on business, and it is people who are connected
to their indigenuity as it exists, beyond something to capitalize on.
It is something that is within them. It is something
that drives them. It is something that has spirit attached
to it. Right, it has something greater than just their

(03:10:29):
physical form attached to it. And that, right there is
something that black people in the United States have been
lacking because it was stolen from us. And I say
in my book what would the ancestors say? And I
say on my book tour, and I continue to say
this here. If we are not paying attention to the
efforts of indigenous communities to get their land back, then

(03:10:52):
we are completely disregarding a huge aspect as black people
and just as folks who want there to be land
back in the United States and in western spaces. We
are completely disregarding not only sources of knowledge, but sources
of strength. When I see black mainstream media and I
see black folks who are not talking about this, I say,

(03:11:14):
those are people who are one disconnected not only from
other factions of information, but they are also disconnected from
the value of indigenous knowledge. For Black people in the
United States who had to form our own version of indigenousity,
we will not win, we will not succeed, we will
not come together, We will not do anything that we
claim we want to do until we identify ourselves as

(03:11:36):
truly indigenous, not just the way that people be like
we wasn't slaves, we was indigenous. No, that's not what
I'm talking about. I mean as in a collective that
understands the world in a shared way, that understands our
existence in the world, in a shared way that is
connected beyond our attachment to material things, beyond our goals

(03:12:01):
of exceeding or succeeding in this capitalist mainframe. No, until
we identify that, until we bring in our African indigenity
and combine it with all of the uniqueness that we
have created here, we will never get anywhere. So when
you are watching black folks out here who say they're
for black folks, make sure that they are also speaking

(03:12:24):
about indigenous folks all over this world as a source
of knowledge, as a source of wisdom, and also as
a source of strength, because we are all being actively
disconnected from that source for a reason to keep us
able to be squelched, suppressed and repressed. So stay alert,

(03:12:50):
stay coalitioned, and keep expanding. All right, y'all, hey, come now,

(03:13:11):
Thank you everybody les joining the show today. Shout out
to our guest. We go out, Yea and Adam want
today I had a lot going on to tell us.

(03:13:34):
God love.

Speaker 20 (03:13:38):
The work.

Speaker 2 (03:13:40):
That nobody every day. Shout out to our field squad.
You know it's going to be joining us after the show.
Can get it in on our after the show. Yet
now be asked at the beginning of the shows, We're
gonna ask you again, what are you you're gonna do this?

(03:14:01):
Thank you on that day. Thank you. That's our bonus question.
Thank you, that's our bonus question of the week. So
thank you all for coming back. I know that I
was missing for the past two weeks, and you're probably like,
is she gonna come back? Is she gonna come back?
But I was missing because I'm doing the work, y'all.

(03:14:22):
I'm out here and I'm just trying to figure it out. Okay,
I'm genuinely just trying to figure it out. If you
haven't gotten your copy of what would the ancestors say?
They are available at Amanda Seals Zacham, so hopefully you
will go out there and get that and what else

(03:14:43):
am I trying to say to y'all before I go?
And I want to remind you that you I want
miss who. I want to remind you that I will
be in DC at bus Boys and Poets on December second.
I will be in Baltimore on December third. I can't
remember the name of the venue off the top of
my head. I will be at Involving Books in New
Orleans on December eleventh. And I will be in New

(03:15:07):
York in Nyack, New York, and I will tell you
the venue when it's comfortised on December fourteenth. All right,
so make sure that you write your dates down for
when I'm going to be round your way. And hopefully
we'll be able to come see each other and hang
out and have a little key shout out to Joonna
Castro who came to two book readings, okay, in two

(03:15:30):
different places. He came to the show in LA and
I saw him in Chicago. So I'm just saying you guys,
there's folks who are really out here. I'm joking. I'm
not trying to pressure you all, but do really come
to my joints.

Speaker 12 (03:15:45):
They want to stand in the way of every move forward.
The only way you can think about your people struggle
is when you are involved in people struggle.

Speaker 2 (03:15:53):
So we're going to have to change how we relate
to each other as human beings.

Speaker 7 (03:15:58):
Out there unity.

Speaker 8 (03:16:13):
A name, a man, A man, man a man. No

(03:17:12):
not finding en

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STOP IGNORING BLACK WOMEN IN LABOR! [EP 89]

Stuff You Should Know