Judge Pat Dugan: From Veterans Court to DA Candidate

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Voice, Rise and Light story sold.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
We talk weekly. Is the vivor's share plugging, lean back
fill the air. We talk weekly.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
The rhydom flow.

Speaker 4 (00:09):
From a hard streets to the studio, blow soon, then
fill the closet to the scene. It's more than the
Show's the in between. We talk weekly, we talk weekly,
We talk weekly, and it's more than a show. Is
the end between wixalk weekly, we talk weekly, wixalk weekly,

(00:29):
and it's more than the show. Is the end between.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Turn of doubt.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
We're light and light stories that sparking stead lines are
light sa based through the stream road talk.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
No cap.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
It's more than a dream like so far will break
in the hold for it, says Rise and Life story sold.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
We talk weekly.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
Is the rible share plugging leap back.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Fill the air?

Speaker 6 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, we talk weally. It's definitely in the building.
We talked weekly after the talk on the w P
P M or p philade FA one on six point
five FL. We talked weeklies after the talk with boy
Charlee girgetting beautiful and beautiful, I can't hear you one
more again. It was on There we Go, It was on,

(01:12):
It was on, that was on. It all a dream uh,
so we got a dynamic show for you today. I've
been super busy today, man, I can't even get my
thoughts together. I'm super excited about the day though, because
we have a dynamic interview coming in that we have
been anticipating for a long time, and we're super excited

(01:33):
about just everyone who has been watching. So if you're
watching right here now, make sure you share, like and subscribe,
make sure you become a friend to a friend a
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of headway lately, so we want to make sure that
you guys are following some of the things that we
have been doing. So I'm super excited about that. So

(01:55):
before I start with at anything, why don't start with
you said, well, how was you thay? How was you thinking?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
My day was pretty cool?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Had a lot of stuff to do.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
So just want to shout out to everybody for all
your birthday wishes and all that.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (02:16):
Hold on one second, we just had a this is
just acting out real quick. Hold on, we'll be right back, y'all.

Speaker 7 (02:22):
Happy bestday to you, Happy bestday to you, Happy bestday,
Happy bestday, Happy bestday to you.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
So I'm at.

Speaker 7 (02:50):
Happy best.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
I love your more.

Speaker 6 (02:54):
I love that. So how about your birthday? What did
you do?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Actually my birthday was yesterday, but.

Speaker 6 (03:05):
Your events everything you celebrated this today.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Right, I kind of did that yesterday. I did that
yesterday and then.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Today tomorrow, I'm gonna do some stuff. You know, my family, no.

Speaker 6 (03:20):
Doubt, no doubt you're going away again.

Speaker 8 (03:22):
What you're doing.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Hanging out and stuff?

Speaker 3 (03:26):
No, no, I had some other plans, but I kind
of got changed, you know, some family issues.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Okay, you know it's not a birthday, it's a birth week.

Speaker 5 (03:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Spread out, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:39):
Exactly, that's what you're supposed to do. I mean, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
You get man, you gotta spread the floor right exactly.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
You can't it can't. You can't limit it to this
one day.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
I know.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
I ain't been one day.

Speaker 6 (03:53):
For a wow m hm, that's funny. And so yeah,
another lap around the sun. So I wish you more.

Speaker 9 (04:03):
You know that.

Speaker 6 (04:05):
We'll say, Millie Moore, one hundred years be one hundred
years old? What would you do at a hundred be
it they called it? You would then become a centenarian.
I think that's what they call it, centurian centenarian or
something like that. And so what would you do if
you reached the hundred what would you do?

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Drinks?

Speaker 6 (04:29):
Drink?

Speaker 2 (04:29):
I know right that?

Speaker 8 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, what do you do?

Speaker 6 (04:34):
You sit down laying on the beach, still getting your
teen something like that, right, no he nah, no doubt,
no doubt. What Happy birthday to you and all like
this stuff. B yeah, absolutely, all right, lady at me,
how's your day? How was your day?

Speaker 1 (04:51):
My day was great for me. It was filled with
s L E E P.

Speaker 9 (04:57):
That's what I mean right now, so much needed our
E S T. That's what I'm about these days. I
just got on a crazy, crazy work schedule about twelve
hour days from last six weeks. So today was the
first day I had nothing on my schedule early in
the morning to where I had to wake up, and

(05:18):
I took advantage that, like nope, nope, nope, phone off everything.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I just needed one of those days.

Speaker 6 (05:26):
So rejuvenation, yeah, as it should be, as it should be.
Uh yeah for me, it's just been a long day,
too long, a couple of days no sleep at all.
I'm dragging to today. So hopefully once up you know
our interviews come in, I'll pipe back up. I should

(05:46):
have got my coffee.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Durry and rainio. You know, I was sleeping. I don't
even know. It's know what's happening.

Speaker 6 (05:54):
Definitely. I tried not to drink call. I try not to,
but I won't drink. I try not to drink coffee
at night because then I'll be up and then have
to get up early again in the morning, and I
can't get sleep. Yah, and I'm tired.

Speaker 9 (06:09):
That was the only thing I wanted to stay with Starbucks,
but I ain't.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
I ain't get that.

Speaker 10 (06:16):
I was back to sleep, get some sleep, all right.

Speaker 6 (06:20):
So before we get to you, you're doing a sizzle early.
What you're wanna what you're gonna do? What time is?
Can you do the sizzle early? You ready for that?
All right? So let's go to a break real quick
so you can get prepared. Let's go to one of
our folks. We're gonna go to my Lineo Lina. We've
seen her in an event where she was talking having
a nice little conversation, sit down conversation, which was pretty cool.

(06:43):
Line on day rules. So she is a designer here
in Philadelphia. She mostly designs a lot of at leisure
where casual clothing for uh from Philadelphia, and I thought
that was pretty interesting on summer talking. So you can
see a lot of this on of course we talk weekly.
But here's a little clut. We'll be right back at

(07:04):
the show.

Speaker 11 (07:05):
I'm their club. Say it again, mamair Club, mam and
there it's.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
A hard word, mamonere can y'all say that.

Speaker 11 (07:12):
The Mamoner Club. I started the mamon Air Club when
I was pregnant with my son. I was learning so
much and I didn't realize how many options that we had.
Like growing up in the hood, you don't options not
really presented to you. You just feel like you gotta
follow suit or whatever people say you gotta do. And
as I started to do my research, I'm like, okay,

(07:32):
a lot of people could benefit from this information that
I'm research and so I would just share all of
the information that I was learning so other people can't
realize that they got.

Speaker 10 (07:40):
They got options.

Speaker 11 (07:41):
It don't matter where you're from, it don't matter what
your income level is, you got options.

Speaker 10 (07:45):
So describe what the Mamoner Club is.

Speaker 11 (07:47):
So the mammon their Club is a club for moms.
That's on the mission that make their James a reality.
A lot of times when you have kids, you feel
like your world is over, and no, that's when your
world just began, because like the true blessing to your
children is a mom that's fulfilled.

Speaker 10 (08:03):
You know.

Speaker 11 (08:03):
So I don't believe in stopping your dream for anything.
You gotta figure out how to balance both. And I
don't like to say balance because when you think of balance,
you're thinking like this right, and you just never really steady.
I like to harmonize, like see how we can all
flow together. And I just think that as a mom,
you don't have to stop your life.

Speaker 6 (08:22):
Men don't stop their.

Speaker 11 (08:23):
Life when they have kids. That's when they go harder.
And I feel like we can do the same thing too.
So that was that. It was just an encourage moms.
You got this, Listen, you got this. You done birth
the whole human and you figured it out. That's the
hardest job in the world. Nobody ain't telling me that
you have to figure that out. I'm sure you can
figure this business out.

Speaker 12 (08:43):
You know.

Speaker 6 (08:46):
We talked these after talking about eppm on to keep
Philadelphia one on six twenty five US and we talked
we these after talking with the boy break and Beautiful
and the Beautiful and you already know what's coming up next, buddy.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, we got the.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
Girls.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yes, sir, it's your favorite show.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
We Talk Weekly, so catch us on all social media
major podcast platforms and subscribe so you never miss an update.
You want to stay connected, stay entertained, and keep the
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Speaker 2 (09:15):
Support our content by making a donation on.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Cashf at dollar stime, we Talk Weekly, or go to
we talkweek dot com and donate via PayPal. No donation
is too gray or too small. All right, so I
guess third time is the charm. Congratulations are in order
for Rihanna nasap Rocky, who welcomed a beautiful baby girl.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
So.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Rihanna made the announcement on September thirteenth in a sweet
social media post debut on the first photos of her
holding her new baby, who was dressed in a pink
onesie with cute pink ruffle stocks that took.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Me all the way back to Easter when I was little.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
And then the second picture showed a pair of tiny
pink silk baby boxing glove which was so cute, and
the caption Red Rocky, Irish mayor September thirteenth, twenty twenty five,
So the baby's birth comes four months after Rihanna's twenty
twenty five that gall of red carpet baby bump revealed,
and in an interview with Vogue for it's May twenty

(10:18):
twenty two cover issue, Rihanna said, I always thought it
would be marriage first, then a baby, But who the
f says it has to be that way. I'm certainly
not gonna let it get in the way of me
being a mom. So Rihanna and A said racky. A
is sad Rocky racky?

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Maybe that might be a name for the next.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Baby, or if they had twins, it could be Rocky.
They got three now, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's see. But
Brianna and Asad Rocky already shared three share sons, three
year old Riot and twenty three month old Riza.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
So we'll be the last one.

Speaker 6 (11:02):
They're gonna have enough. They got enough money to have
another I think.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
So they're gonna have a trip.

Speaker 6 (11:07):
That's how much money they have? Another trial?

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah? Why not?

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Speaking for the woman's body is not about money. She
might be like, yeah, how much money she.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Got, Yes, that's great. Pregnant for what? How many years long.

Speaker 10 (11:29):
Straight.

Speaker 8 (11:30):
No.

Speaker 9 (11:30):
But back in the day, you know, women had a
lot of kids.

Speaker 10 (11:32):
They had.

Speaker 9 (11:35):
It wasn't I heard women today saying I ain't doing that.

Speaker 6 (11:43):
My pap Pap had like nine kids something.

Speaker 10 (11:46):
Crazy like that.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Kids.

Speaker 9 (11:49):
My grandfather wanted ten, and my grandmother said, not, how
to hear you want? So she had two girls and
she adopted two boys.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Close enough, all right.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
So.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Kim Kardashian has seemingly responded to Rayj's claims that he
is working with the federal government to drop the RICO
case against her and her mother, Chris Jenner So. In
a viral video circulating on x RAYJ can be seen
during a livestream stating the federal rico I'm about to
drop on Chris and Kim is about to be crazy.

(12:29):
I'm talking about I'm on the news every day. I'm
going to say a lot of ish. Ray J also
adds that if anybody knows Kim and it's cool with her,
they need to tell her now because this is worse
than Diddy.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
So.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Racketeering Influence Corrupt Organization laws were enacted to eliminate the
infiltration of organized crime into legitimate organizations. The Department of
Justice takes several takes several things into consideration when indicting defendants,
including the decision to prosecute reco charges to combine related

(13:05):
offenses which would otherwise have been prosecuted, they have to
be prosecuted separately in different jurisdictions. So, according to sources,
Kim Kardashian does not believe Regge's claims that he's working
with the Feds and this is just another one of
his stunts. Meanwhile, her PR team is not even addressing

(13:26):
these allegations. So if they're not ramping up efforts to
put out any statements, they're not trying to have reached
out to any lawyers or anything like that, then you
know they pretty much think this is just a bunch
of you know, shenanigans. But this isn't the first time
ray J has mentioned racketeering. When referencing the Kardashians during

(13:48):
the interview on TMZ Presents the United States versus Sean
Combs inside the Diggy Trial, ray J said, if you
told me that the Kardashians are being charged for racketeering,
I might believe it. So, you know, ray J has
had a long standing beef with ex girlfriend Kim Kardashi
and her mother Chris Jenner since the two thousand and
seven beliefs of ray and Kim sex tape, with ray

(14:11):
J claiming Chris Jenner orchestrated the sex tape and even
threatened to sue them in the past.

Speaker 6 (14:17):
So interesting.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, you got a lot of people saying this is
not going anywhere, and you got some people saying, hey,
we'll wait and see.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
It might be something.

Speaker 6 (14:29):
It's ray J is known for his little so it
is hard to believe what's going on over there, but we'll.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
See that instead.

Speaker 9 (14:37):
Because right issue just saying that my thought process was,
it's ray J. It's exactly exactly right, right right sometimes
now it's it's it's sad that every time I hear
a story with him now, I'm like, I feel like
he just is seeking attention, Yes, exactly, anything to remain relevant,

(15:03):
all right. So on a sad note, little somber but
political activist and god mother Tupac Shakur Asada Shakur has
died in Cuba and many you know, celebrities are paying
tribute to her.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Assida Shakur, whose.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Real name was Joanne Deborah Chesmarar Cheese Mark reportedly died
from health conditions and advanced age on September twenty fifth.
But on May second, nineteen seventy three, Asida Shakur and
two others were involved in a shootout with New Jersey
State troopers doing a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

(15:44):
Black Liberation Army member Zaid Malik Shakur and State trooper
Warner Forrester were killed and Asida where Asada was critically injured.
So in nineteen seventy seven, Asida was found guilty and
convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In
seventy nine, Black Liberation Army members posed as visitors to

(16:08):
the Clinton Correctional Facility where Asada was confined. They held
two prison guardener prison guards hostage and assisted in her
escape from custody. So she was on the run for
several years before appearing in Havana, Cuba, after being granted
asylum by then President Fidel Castro, and in twenty thirteen,

(16:32):
the FBI placed Assada Shakur as the first woman on
his most Wanted terrorist list, with a two million dollar
reward for her capture. But while in Cuba, Asada Shakur
had many writings detailing her life, her political activism, and
maintaining that both her arms were up in the air
during that traffic stopping that she did not shoot anyone.

(16:55):
And then her book titled Asada and Autobiography, she wrote,
it is our duty to fight for our freedom. It
is our duty to win. We must love each other
and support each other. We have nothing to lose but
our change. A. Sada was seventy eight.

Speaker 6 (17:11):
Fantastic, fantastic. Let's give her a uh, let's give her
a moment of silence real quick, sir. I respect her legacy,
all right, Dan, give a shout of round of applause. Man,

(17:35):
no doubt. She's just such an amazing work. And I
think that I don't think she got her flowers enough,
but I'm glad that you did this story on her
to give her flowers. She's getting her she's definitely getting
her flowers lately. Her due dillance just to birth such
a phenomenal artist as well.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
So yeah, shout out to the side of she according, yeah, yeah,
And I'm lilel Lawrence.

Speaker 6 (18:01):
And that was a sizzled ladies and gentlemen, I'm your boy.
TEUs Gurdon with the beautiful and beautiful and this is
we talk. Weecause after there talking the WPPM on p
Philadelphia one six point five US and we talked weeklies.
After the talk, we're gonna cut to a breaking when
we come back, we got a dynamic interview. I don't
want you to go anywhere because when we're talking about
hip hop and we're talking about doing some amazing things

(18:23):
in the community, we have a gentleman that's going to
talk a little bit about that and some of the
things that he's doing. So we're gonna go to one
of our dynamic journalists. We'll be right back y'all after this.

Speaker 13 (18:35):
Hi, I'm Willow Jordan with you Civic News and I'm
here with my.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Grandfather Willie Jordan and g Pop.

Speaker 13 (18:41):
What brings you out tonight?

Speaker 10 (18:42):
Well, I'm here to discuss the importance of the election
that's coming up and important the responsibility that we have
to do is out, get out the vote.

Speaker 13 (18:53):
What is your role?

Speaker 10 (18:55):
I have wear many hats, but one is a community activist,
and that means to keep people aware and make them
informed on the issues of the day so they can
come out and make a real good choice on voting
for the right candidates.

Speaker 13 (19:13):
What are some of the issues you.

Speaker 10 (19:14):
See, housing, education, transportation. There's a lot of things. Anything
that we do in our lives, it has to do
with elections, politicians, elective officials making those decisions. The amount
of time that you stay in school and the amount

(19:34):
of days you stay in school is based on what
some elective officials came up with.

Speaker 13 (19:39):
How important? How important is it to vote?

Speaker 10 (19:42):
It is very important. It's not just important, it's responsible.
Voting shit is not a selfish activity. It's a selfiless
You vote to help others. So as you help others,
people help you and be a better world, a better city,
a better country to live in.

Speaker 13 (20:02):
Where do some of your beliefs come from?

Speaker 10 (20:04):
Well, my belief is based on I guess I would
first come from my home training. My parents told me
the importance of civic responsibility, caring, loving, sharing, being involved,
being responsible on your actions.

Speaker 13 (20:21):
Is there any positive knowledge you would give to the
people who don't vote.

Speaker 10 (20:25):
I would tell them if they can't come up with
a reason why they should vote for themselves, come up
with a reason why they should vote for someone else,
for their parents, for their children, for more street lights,
how they want a better community? Do it for someone else.

Speaker 13 (20:46):
I'm Willow Jordan reporting from you Civic News, and I'm
here with my grandfather Willie Jordan.

Speaker 10 (20:51):
Thank you, You're welcome.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Hmm.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
That's our future we talked, because that's they're talking. A
round of applause for that for the future. One more again,
real quick.

Speaker 7 (21:01):
Happy best day, j Happy best day j you.

Speaker 14 (21:13):
Happy best day, Happy best day, Happy best day Jui.

Speaker 6 (21:28):
Whatever that was all right? So who do we have today?
Who do we have to day?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
So we have the phenomenal doctor Greg Watkins aka Grouchy Greg.
He is the founder of All hip Hop dot Com.
With his partner Chuck Jigsaw Creekmer, Grouchy Greg built All
hip Hop dot Com into the Internet voice of hip
hop culture. Grouchy Greg attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia

(21:55):
studying audio engineering and marketing and graduated from an with
an Associated Association's Associates degree in Music, Business and Advertising.
All hip Hop dot Com officially launched in nineteen ninety eight,
winning numerous awards, including the Black Enterprises Rising Star Award

(22:18):
and a coveted BET Award for Best Hip Hop Website,
in addition to twelve be Et Website Award nominations, so
please give a round of applause, a warm we talk quickly.
Welcome to mister doctor, Greg Grouchy, Greg Watkins, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Are super excited to have you.

Speaker 12 (22:42):
Thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And
happy birthday.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Thank you, thank you so much. They said, I'll call
my teeth happy best today. That is scary great. Yeah,
so how are you today?

Speaker 12 (23:03):
I'm doing good. I'm doing well. I cannot complain. How
do I sound?

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Oh you sound phenomenon?

Speaker 12 (23:11):
Okay, yeah, no complaining, no complaining, you know, just working hard.
You know, this is our twenty eighth year in business
of running all hip hop. So you know, I'm thankful
that as I was listening to you read the news,
you know just how much hip hop culture is still

(23:32):
driving everything in the mainstream. You know, I always joke
I'm glad that I didn't decide to do alljazz dot com. Well,
disrespect your jazz. I love jazz.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, I was already saying, not that there's anything wrong
with jazz, like, yeah, because I love me some jazz,
but ye I love me some hip hop too. Yeah yeah,
but but you know you just said, what was it
you said thirty eight, twenty eight years almost thirty, just
a little shy. But but your journey started at the

(24:05):
age of six with you being intrigued by that, right, correct.

Speaker 12 (24:09):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I don't want to date myself,
but I was around when hip hop, you know, kind
of landed in everybody's community. You know, right now, it's ubiquitous,
you know, it's the way we dress, it's the way
we talk, you know, it's it's everything. Now it's part
of you know, cultures worldwide. But there was a point

(24:31):
in time where it was new, you know, where it
was landing in the neighborhood. And so you know, you
could identify people at the time by the way they
dressed or the kind of music they listened to. You
knew what they were into, you know. And I was
a very you know, yeah, I was in maybe fourth
grade when I caught on to hip hop, and I

(24:53):
started off breakdancing, moved on to DJing, I wrapped, you know,
it did a little bit of graffiti on paper, not
not on walls or anything, you know, and you know,
it just became my identity and my lifelong passion. And
you know, I was lucky enough to start a record

(25:14):
label when I was in high school. Right, I'm from Delaware,
so I'm from from the area, and you know, the
record label didn't do what I thought it was going
to do. And you know, I ended up registering all
hip Hop dot Com thinking that it was going to
be an internet type of record label, and it turned

(25:36):
into something much bigger than that. When I linked up
with my partner, Chuck Chicksaw Creekmer and we you know,
launched All hip Hop at nineteen ninety eight and here
we are twenty eight years later.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
And could you have predicted that hip hop would have
the success that it's having now, especially when it started.
When you look at hip hop when it first started
and how you know, our I want to say, non
black counterparts was trying to put it in a certain

(26:13):
light to where almost trying to demonize it. Like where
you see now is being respected with the fifty years
of hip hop being celebrated. What are your thoughts on that,
like the contrast and how it started out and how
it was portrayed in the media and to how it's
celebrated now.

Speaker 12 (26:32):
Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing transformation. You know, I
was around when they had the no wrap work day,
and you know, hip hop was not played on television
at all. And it's amazing to see the journey that
hip hop as a culture has taken around the world,

(26:56):
and not just from the previous verticals mentioned, but now
it's also used as a form of teaching. So teachers
are making curriculums out of hip hop culture, They're using
it to teach mad, they're using it to teach science.
You know. So in addition to you know, it providing

(27:18):
a living for many, you know, for hundreds of millions
of people, you know, when you factor in record labels,
record label owners, artists, graphic designers, you know, the entire
hip hop industry provides a living for people like myself.
But it's also you know, now being used to teach,

(27:40):
which you know, if you know hip hop culture, there's
five elements, breakdancing, turntablism, wrapping, dancing, and the fifth element,
which is knowledge, you know, being educated. So it's great
to see that all five of the elements of hip
hop culture touched and made a mark on the world,

(28:01):
you know, I mean, you know, here is an art
form that was started by young you know African American
young black kids in the ghetto and here it's gone
all over the world. It's a very unique form of
American expression born out of African Americans experiences here in
the United States.

Speaker 6 (28:24):
Absolutely fantastic. I'm curious there's still conversation about who actually
started hip hop? Right who actually started hip hop? If
someone was to ask you that question, how would you
lay out that framework?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Oh?

Speaker 12 (28:45):
Well, I mean it's pretty simple to me because I'm
working with a professor at the University of Delaware. We're
actually writing a book about this that trace the lineage
of hip hop and what made hip hop what it is,
and it's very clear, you know, this was an art
form that was started. You know, you can trace the

(29:07):
roots of this hip hop culture back to slavery and
the tales that slaves, slaves and former slaves would tell.
They're called bad man tales, they're called trickster tales. And
if you trace this type of storytelling through the late

(29:31):
nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, it's very clear
that it's an African American art form. So not to
say that other people didn't contribute to it, or that
other people weren't there when it was quote unquote king
born black and brown people obviously are you know, one

(29:53):
and the same in many regards when you trace the
transatlantic slave trade into the different islands that are here,
you know, Brazil, where slavery didn't end until the nineteen twenties.
I mean, I don't want to go too far into me.
You know, all of that that makes it up, but still,
at the end of the day, the root form of
it and the way it's expressed, the words that were used,

(30:16):
the dialogue it, you know, it goes all the way
back to bondage.

Speaker 10 (30:22):
You know.

Speaker 6 (30:22):
The funny thing about you saying that is I recently
saw a video of a tribe in Africa that was
doing something that was really close to what we would
consider breakdancing, and it blew my mind that this is
where and this was early this. I mean they traced this,

(30:45):
I mean, you know, before we even thought what hip
hop could be, right, and so you're talking about watching
early videos from Africa of them literally really break dancing,
you know, and that actually blew my mind. So when
we think of ownership of this art, this craft of

(31:11):
hip hop, there's there's conversation of do we actually even
own it anymore?

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Right?

Speaker 6 (31:18):
I mean, we have when we the music that come
out of it. We own the record labels and all
of that. And then you know our Asian counterparts, they're breakdancing,
just as you know they totally embraced the hip hop
culture over there. Right, where do we fall in line
with the ownership of the art and craft?

Speaker 12 (31:42):
So let me break this down a little bit. Right
when it comes to ownership, if you trace the music
business back to its origins, its origins start with the
printing press, which was invented in Journey in fourteen eighty

(32:03):
five or something like that. I don't know the exact year.
But at the same time in that same century, the
fifteenth century, and towards the end of that, you had
the church, the Catholic Church, issuing what's known as the
Papal Bulls. The Papal bulls gave Christians the right to

(32:27):
go out and enslave people, specifically people in Africa who
weren't Christians. So as the printing press is being developed
and the first music starts getting printed as sheet music,
which is why it's called publishing, right, you have a

(32:49):
whole group of people who are being put into bondage
as an industry is growing. Now as you follow this
up into let's say, the sixteenth century, or excuse me,
the seventeenth century, into the late sixteen hundreds, where you
have the American colonies being established and slavery being established

(33:13):
with it. There were laws that said slaves could not
own slave owners owned anything that slaves produced. So when
copyright laws were created in the sixteen hundreds to combat piracy,
we were already in bondage and we could not participate

(33:34):
in that industry. So as the industry grows all the
way up into the eighteen hundreds and into the early
nineteen hundreds, you've already been systematically excluded from it. So
when you talk about things like ownership and you look
at the time frame, you know, we're talking about maybe

(33:54):
four generations, three four generations of people. When you trace
it and you look at it like that, in this manner,
in this infrastructure manner. This is why most of the time,
young African American artists, young black artists, and even the
brown artists, you know, you get locked out of it

(34:15):
because you've been historically locked out of it on that
level from the founding of it. And so the ownership
question is very tricky. You know, you can't have a
victim mentality. So you know, we have a lot of
great examples of people who have taken ownership of their careers,

(34:35):
you know. But at the same time, when you look
at the current music industry, the structure of it, the
supply chain, it's all being consolidated, even in this digital world,
it's all being consolidated, and it's now concentrated into the
hands of you know, there's only three major labels left.
Just this week, the only African American CEO of any

(34:58):
of the labels, Sylvia own STA Down. So not only
is there no African American women, there's no women that
are CEOs in the major label ecosystem. So ownership is
a tricky thing, you know. Yeah, but but I will
say that, you know, even in my journey, it was

(35:18):
very important for me to be an entrepreneur and to
own something, you know, which is why we still own
one hundred percent of all hip hop. You know, we
haven't sold any of it. We've never taken investment. You know,
it's still in the hands of myself and my partner.
It's a much more difficult path, I mean, but yeah,

(35:40):
you know, we still own it. So ownership is important.

Speaker 6 (35:44):
Yeah, yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
When it comes to a different type of ownership, which
I guess we could call quote unquote bragging rights.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
When you have.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
Certain people saying that we shouldn't include our non black counterparts.
And when it comes in the conversation of top ten
greatest or top even top fifty greatest or any greatest
for that matter, hip hop artists, what are your thoughts

(36:16):
on that? And that's just me, you know, without trying
to name any names, because this conversation has been had before. Yeah,
what are your thoughts on that? Should should we be
including none?

Speaker 12 (36:28):
Absolutely? I mean, this is a gift that we created
that the world has embraced, you know. I think the
more important thing is just to make sure that the world,
over the course of time, which is the purpose of
what we're going to be talking about soon, you know,
should not forget about the origins, the origin story. It's

(36:48):
okay for everybody to embrace it. You know. It's the
same thing with jazz. Everybody has embraced jazz uniquely, a
unique another unique form of African American expression, just like
do wop music, you know, is another unique form of
African American expression that was created here in the United
States based on the cultural experiences that we were having.

(37:11):
You know, we just should not forget that. But the
world has embraced hip hop. I mean there are amazing
rappers from every race, creed color, all around the world
and every nation, you know, So you just can't exclude
people based on on their race.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
You know, absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
So can you tell us a little bit about, you know,
your skills, because you had this group that you were
a part of, the Outfit, right, Yeah, we talk a
little bit about that.

Speaker 12 (37:43):
Yeah, that was a group that was on my label.
My label was called Oblique Recordings, which is why I
pitshed it out for all hip hop because people can't
remember it much less spell it. And we were putting
out records. I was putting the skill that I learned
at school in Philadelphia to work, and we were releasing

(38:04):
twelve inches. We were released to c D in nineteen
ninety eight, which is a collector's item. Now you know,
it's selling for two three hundred dollars on eBay. And yeah,
I was producing music. I was a studio rat, you know.
I thought I was going to be, you know, the
next big hip hop producer in the game. And as

(38:26):
I was distributing our records locally and nationally. I had
a small office down here in Delaware, and I wasn't
so business savvy. I mean, looking back, I was only
maybe three years out of high school, right and the
records that we were releasing were selling, but the distributors

(38:48):
weren't paying me fast enough. My bills were coming in faster, more, more,
more bill at the end of the month than money,
and I didn't know anything about billing and receivables at
the time. I didn't really understand the concept of NET
sixty ninety, much less trying to negotiate some sort of
upfront payment. So the records would go to the distributor,

(39:13):
the distributor will put them in the store, the store
would sell them, the store would pay the distributor what
they owed the distributor was supposed to pay me. And
it just didn't work out. So I turned to selling
the music on the internet around nineteen ninety five, and
from ninety five to ninety seven I realized, oh, man, listen,

(39:35):
I know people sometimes think when you're sitting on the
computer all day that you're into some weird stuff or
you're a nerd, and I don't know what people were thinking,
but I was selling records all around the world and
I just I was completely sold. I was like, Yeah,
this internet thing is is it? This is going to
be the wave of the future. And it was.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
And you were able to launch it in nineteen ninety eight.
That's right, and your hard work paid off, you know
with all of the nominations and the awars that you've
been winning. Talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 12 (40:13):
Well, that's a team effort. Let's just start that. You know,
always got to get props to the team. I mean,
we've been blessed since we launched All Hip Hop to
have had many amazing journalists come through our doors. They've
gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes, They've gone on to

(40:34):
write for Time, Billboard, you know, they're editor in chiefs
at some of our competition now, you know. So it's
amazing to see the impact that we've had, not just
from a hip hop the mark that we've made on
hip hop and artists in their careers and telling their stories,

(40:56):
but also from the journalism side and the writers who
have come through our doors. So I mean, it's just
been incredible. It's been an incredible ride. You know, I
always felt that because of hip hop culture, I was
going to be able to do something great with it.
I was on my path to being an entrepreneur. You know,

(41:18):
I was going to make my music succeed no matter
what it took. You know, I'm very resolute in that.
I mean, you know, I've been doing it for so long,
since childhood. I mean I was in my first recording
studio professionally when I was in eighth grade, you know
what I mean, paying my own money and recording and

(41:39):
learning the process. So this has been my life's passion,
but all hip hop, you know, really, I mean just
amplified everything. I you know, to be so well respected
around the world because of the brand and what we've

(42:00):
done with it, it's just it's mind blowing. You know.
I don't think my other career would have turned out
this way, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, and with you know a lot of changes and
things going on when it comes to AI and how
that's like interrupting the industry, you know, with film and
some things going on with R and B and different
AI artists being created. How do you think do you

(42:28):
think what that will have an impact on the hip
hop industry?

Speaker 12 (42:33):
Almost definitely, you know, I'm a member of the Recording Academy,
which is the governing body for the Grammys. And just
this past Thursday was Music Advocacy Day, and the three
pillars that we went to our local Congress and our
local senators to talk to them about. Number one was AI.

(42:55):
Number two is something called the No Fakes Act, which
stands for Nurture, Original Foster or Keep Entertainment Safe no fakes.
And that's an act that Congress is there's bipartisan support
in Congress to prevent deep fakes. So, right now, if

(43:16):
somebody changes jay Z's voice, because he's given over his
right of publicity in some regards by being a celebrity,
people can use his voice and make different versions of
jay Z. Maybe they can't exploit it commercially, but I
guess you know. There is a certain level when you

(43:39):
become a public figure of surrendering your image and likeness
over to the public, which is why the pop ROSSI
can come up and take pictures of people and then
sell them sell those image. Right if you are a
private citizen and somebody creates a deep fake of you,
let's just say, cussing out your boss, and you get fired,

(44:02):
there's no real protection for you or your voice in
those scenarios. And so we saw that play out in
the last election, where there were robo calls going out
faking Joe Biden's voice and other people's voices to try
to sway the election one way or another. And so
this act is trying to give the general population some

(44:26):
protection against deep fakes. From the AI standpoint, we were
advocating for better protection of artists intellectual property, which is
now being sucked up by Suno and Udio, which are

(44:47):
the two biggest AI music generating platforms.

Speaker 7 (44:53):
Now.

Speaker 12 (44:53):
Don't be wrong, I like I use them. I use
Suno for a variety of experiments and different use cases, right,
but it should not be allowed to, you know, suck
up somebody's whole catalog, train on it and then you know,

(45:14):
generate money from it. I mean, these are companies that
have billion dollar valuations. We're going through this battle right
now with open AI perplexity. You know, these companies that
come in and scrape our content. They say they're going
to give you a citation. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't,
but it's worthless because the citations don't drive any traffic

(45:37):
back to us. Google just recently introduced zero click searches,
so you get all your answers there. You don't have
to leave Google where they used to synthesize our information
and then send people back to us. And so now
you're seeing lawsuits Billboard Penske, which owns Billboard, Vibe, the

(45:57):
Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, a bunch of big mass because they
just filed a lawsuit against Google. I mean Google, as
you know, twenty different webs but Google is suing pseudo
for training. I mean, it's the irony of it all,

(46:22):
you know what I mean. And so if you are
a smaller operator, you don't have the money to sue
Open Aye there worth fifty billion dollars, you know what
I mean. They've got deep pockets. So what recourse do
you have? So you know, I work with about one
hundred and fifty black owned publishers with an organization called
bo mecI Black Owned Media Equity Sustainability Institute, and you know,

(46:47):
we work together to work as a collective to try
to fight for our rights when it comes to this stuff.

Speaker 6 (46:54):
You know, you bring up an interesting conversation as it
relates to AI right and all of the conversations that's happening.
I think AI is innovating so fast that some of
the policies and laws that they're trying to create with them,
you know, it's already dated.

Speaker 12 (47:16):
Right.

Speaker 6 (47:16):
So I think what they're trying to do is trying
to broadly find some type of policy a law that
will cover all of all of the potential issues that
it may face. Right. Because now there's a huge conversation
based around uh that that that that I've been hearing

(47:38):
a lot based around the the training model of it, right,
because if you're training and it's a safe example yourself
and you're going using it, do you then relinquish, right,
some of that I p if you're using a platform

(47:59):
that's made the train on the information that you're giving it, right,
And I see a lot of the debates. I see them,
and all of it is relevant. It's just hard to
it's hard to put in words something that's innovating so
fast that may be different when you started the conversation initially,

(48:22):
you know, and so yeah, I think it's definitely something
to continue to have conversation about. And then you know,
well we'll definitely yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 (48:34):
Man.

Speaker 6 (48:34):
So that said, right, you're in the space of the
ecosystem of educating and you're going into the schools and
colleges and you're in you're talking about a lot of this,
right is part of the conversation based around AI. Is
that in like your lectures, is that in a lot

(48:55):
of your training, your training model.

Speaker 12 (48:58):
Absolutely, you know, we talk about it because the students
are using it, and you know, sometimes the faculty are
the ones who are behind on using it.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 12 (49:13):
For the students are use in it. The faculty may
be from an older generation and they either don't understand
it or they hear these types of conversations, and it
can be quite over quite frankly, could be overwhelming for anybody, right,
But at the end of the day, it's here. It

(49:34):
has to be used. And already there are studies out
there that show how fast our communities are falling behind
and adopting it. And what ends up happening is you've
got whole job sectors that are going to be replaced
by automation and AI that may have been jobs that

(49:55):
we were going after, you know. And so I just
think it's a important that the younger people do study it,
do learn it, do understand what vibe coding is and
all of these new types of ways of using AI
to create and run a business. You know, there is

(50:20):
definitely positive uses for it as a business owner. But
then there are, like you were saying, there's this whole
evolving industry that's moving faster than the legislation. Not to
turn the subject to drugs, but it's very similar to
synthetic drugs. They create a law banning a certain combination

(50:46):
of compounds for a synthetic drug. The drug guys are
out there making a new combination that's not covered by
the law that they can get away with selling.

Speaker 6 (50:57):
Hundred That's a great parallel. Uh, this is my last
question on it, and and I didn't mean to jump
into this, but it was a natural progression with the
conversation that you were having. There's uh, Timberland have been
part of this conversation. And now when we talk about

(51:19):
to to in context, because I want to put this
in context, right, the idea of fair right, what is fair?
What is what is on a level that we understand
what that is emotionally right? When we have people that
are now or platforms that are now creating, uh, these

(51:40):
AI avatars that are artists now that potentially are receiving monetary,
you know, support because they're producing and creating you know,
hip hop or even just music per se. What what
is your take on that?

Speaker 12 (51:57):
You know, do you.

Speaker 6 (51:58):
Feel like that's still a creative concept? What do you
feel like it's still issues there because now you have
models that are trained off of everyone else's music that's
making funds that now these artists are no longer getting
potentially placing them out of the market at this point.

(52:18):
If that makes sense, Yeah, it makes total sense.

Speaker 12 (52:21):
So let's put this into two buckets. Okay, bucket one.
When we talk about fair is fair use right. Fair
use is a law. So the fair use law says,
if I am using a piece of copyrighted work and
I transform it into what's called a transformative work where

(52:45):
the original work is so different than the transformation into
the new work, then this is a brand new work
and that's considered fair use of an original piece of content.
And so what's happening is the AI companies are using

(53:05):
the fair use doctrine on any number of levels, whether
it's music, video, writing, anything, and they're saying, we're sucking
up all of this information, all this intellectual property and
it's being transformed into something new. So this falls under
fair use right now on the AI avatar side of

(53:30):
things with what Timberland did when we talk about fair okay,
Now that's a different bucket where it's more of a
moral conversation that you can have an opinion on. You know,
I think it's creative to create an AI artist and
make something that's different and new and it's smart and

(53:51):
it doesn't talk back to you, and you keep one
hundred percent of the money and you know you don't
you manage it totally different. I get it, But is
it fair when if that artist, say it gets a
million plays on Spotify. The way the money is counted
up is the money goes pretty much into a big

(54:13):
bucket and you may have you know, five thousand artists
who only got one thousand plays on Spotify. Their money
isn't gonna come out of that bucket. They're not gonna
get anything because there's minimal thresholds AI artists is gonna
get money. So, you know, how do you get to

(54:34):
a point where first of all, Dzer, Spotify, all of
these DSPs digital streaming platforms, there's and any one of
those probably about twenty five percent of the music is
AI generated. They try to fight it, they take it down,
it comes back up. Spotify was caught making fake artists

(54:57):
and putting them on playlists and pushing those playlists to
people because it's a way to generate revenue. So, you know,
it becomes this whole h question of legal framework and
then what is your moral stance on it? You know,

(55:22):
you may want music that's only created by humans. There
may people be people who don't care. I can tell
you one thing though, after sitting in with the Congress
peoples where I told them, I said, if you don't
change these laws so that artists, real artists can have
a livable wage from their music career, all of the

(55:45):
music you consume is gonna be AI generated because eventually
artists are gonna say this isn't worth it? What am
I doing this for? We're still gonna consume music. And
then it rolls up into these bigger questions of now where,
feeding into maybe five companies who have a monopoly or

(56:05):
music and streaming and the record labels, because you know,
the record label's own pieces of all of these companies.

Speaker 6 (56:14):
So yeah, no, you know we're gonna I'm gonna bring
you back on the show because I think this, this
conversation alone can have its own lane, right uh. And
so I appreciate you digging in or having this discourse
with me as it relates to that, because I think
this is a new thesis that needs to happen.

Speaker 12 (56:34):
Right.

Speaker 6 (56:36):
So, so I'm gonna put a I'm gonna put a
peg right there because I want to get into some
of the things you're doing and the event, right, I
would be remiss if I didn't do that, because that's
why we have you on here, brother. But the the
you know, the academic conversation I love to have, especially
with you know fellow you know brothers that's really in

(56:58):
those spaces that can have that kind of conversation. So
kudos to you, my friend.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
So let's talk.

Speaker 6 (57:03):
I'm gonna pull this up real quick. I'm want to
talk about your event that's coming up, and I thought
that it was amazing hip Hop Cultural Summit, So let's
talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 12 (57:15):
Yeah, So this is our third year. So I'm on
the State Council for the Arts here in Delaware. I
was a say is humbly, but I was appointed by
the governor and the mission. We look at where all
of the money for nonprofit organizations, where it's going, how
it's going there, who gets what? You know. I work

(57:37):
with a board of people who you know, have input
into that. And so one of the things that I
wanted to accomplish immediately going in was more hip hop
related events that center around educating the general, you know,
the community about what hip hop acts actually is. It's

(58:01):
not just what you hear on the radio. It's way
more than that. It's not just what you see on
social media. It's obviously way more than as we've been discussing.
And so I approached the Delaware Art Museum, which is
the biggest art museum in the state of Delaware, and
a friend of mine works there running cultural programming is Valletto,

(58:25):
And as said, is, you know, what do you think
about having an event here centered around hip hop where
we treat hip hop like what it is. It's an
art form, it needs to be in the museum. And
he was with it. The museum director, Molly Giordano, she
was with it. And year one we celebrated the fiftieth

(58:47):
anniversary of hip hop culture and we had Grand Master
Kaz founding father you know, Cold Crush Brothers. We had
mc shah Rock, we had Joe Gonzo, we had Grand Wizards,
Theodore and year two the theme was hip Hop and Activism,

(59:08):
hip Hop and social justice, so we had Flavor Flame
from Public Enemy was the keynote. We had Hakim Green,
who does twenty four hours of piece in Newark, New Jersey,
member of Hip Hop Channel Live. We had Do It
All Kelly, who's a councilman in Jersey City. We had

(59:32):
Pam Africa as a panelist and Mumia Abu Jamal called
in and we discussed hip hop as a change for
an agent for social change. So this year the theme
is hip Hop and Race, illustrating race through hip hop culture,

(59:53):
and so we take over the entire museum. The museum
is going to have artwork all around the walls centered
around race, and then all throughout the day there are
panel discussions. Panel discussion one I'm doing about a beach
here in Delaware, a black owned, segregated beach where Patti LaBelle,

(01:00:16):
Stevie Wonder Account, Basie, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cook, they all
performed here. It's gone now, but we're doing a history
on that. The second panel is hip Hop and Race
where we have a multicultural group of panelists. Roxy Romeo
from Power ninety nine is moderating it. Steve Lobel, white

(01:00:37):
Jewish manager who's worked with everybody from Bone Thugs and
Harmony to Bad Baby, I mean just eight. He's run DMC,
He's a legend. We've got DMC as the keynote. My
partner in all hip Hop Chunk Jigsaw Creekmer going to
be doing a Q and A with DMC and run

(01:00:57):
DMC as you know, first hip hop group to cross over,
first hip hop group to be on the cover Rolling Stone,
you know, really groundbreaking group when it comes to putting
hip hop on the world stage. So the whole day
is filled with hip hop culture. We've got an all
female breakdance and Truth that's going to be doing exhibits

(01:01:19):
throughout the day right in the museum. We've got food
trucks outside, food in the museum. You know, it's a
whole day of hip hop culture. It's a really dope,
evet fantastic man.

Speaker 6 (01:01:30):
I think that's one of the events that I believe
that we were talking. I believe we talked weekly. May
pop up up there and get some get some footage
and talk to you guys. If you're just tuning in,
ladies and gentlemen, this is this is a gentleman with him.
We have a tremendous amount of respect for very educated
brother from All hip Hop dot Now that that in itself,

(01:01:54):
All hip Hop dot Com has been part of I
will say that you guys are the culture. Are part
of the culture. You guys have been at this for
a long time, and so I just want to appreciate
you for coming on the show. And one thing that
we say on the show is once you come to
the show, you're a friend to the show. So you're
always welcome to come back. But because of your platform,

(01:02:17):
let's talk a little bit later and we'll definitely connect.
Let's see what kind of partnerships or things that we
can do to you know, support each other because I
like what you guys are doing and we can cement
that in some type of way. You know, I love
those to you, my friend, absolutely absolutely, So why don't
you let everyone know how they can get in contact
with you. Let's talk about the event one more time,

(01:02:40):
because there's something that I don't want anyone to miss.
But how can they get in contact with you and
all that little stuff.

Speaker 12 (01:02:46):
So if you're listening and not watching, which could very
well be happening, it will be all All hip Hop
dot Com slash Summit a su MMI. You can go
there and register its own ten dollars, you know, and
it's a full day of hip hop culture. DMC is
gonna be there signing autographs, signing books and all that

(01:03:07):
kind of stuff. So it's a good opportunity to, you know,
get in touch with a real hip hop legend. And
the event is October eighteenth from ten am to five
pm at the Delaware Art Museum that's in Wilmington, Delaware.
And again you can go to All hip Hop dot
Com slash Summit s u m m I T on

(01:03:31):
social media. I'm at Grouchy Greg g R o U
c h y g r e G. On Facebook. You
can find me. It's just Grouchy g R o U.

Speaker 6 (01:03:41):
C h y fantastic, fantastic. And you know I'm already
biased because you know my name is Greg to my friend.

Speaker 12 (01:03:49):
Greg's shout out to that.

Speaker 6 (01:03:52):
So one, I want to wish you much success in
my brother and anything that you believe that we could
we talked weekly can do for you or with you
in addition to you, let us know and we'll definitely
make sure we make that happen. Man, kudos to you,
my friend. Is it something else you would like to
say to the people who are listening, watching and engaging

(01:04:13):
before you leave?

Speaker 12 (01:04:14):
I would like to just say thank you till we
talk weekly for having me. It's been a great conversation.
I'm very appreciative of you lending your platform for me
to come on and talk. And anytime you want to
work together or do anything, it's always with and never before.
I'm always with it, brother, So thank you very much.

(01:04:34):
I just want to say thank you and happy birthday.

Speaker 7 (01:04:41):
Happy best day, no doubt.

Speaker 6 (01:04:47):
All right, my brother, we're gonna reach back out because
we have our end of the year wrap up. I
think you would be good to come on board and
just you know, spend some time. But it's coming come
over to Philly. You're not too far. It's coming to Philly,
you know, all right, no doubt. All right, y'all, thanks
for tuning in on with you guys to come go anywhere.
When we come back, we have another dynamic interview someone

(01:05:07):
with my tremendous amount of respect for and we're gonna
talk a little bit definitely about civic so we'll be
back y'all after this. I appreciate you, my brother. You
take care of yourself.

Speaker 13 (01:05:16):
Yeah, no, Reporter Ella presents a new recipe that can
help me looking over to you, Ella.

Speaker 15 (01:05:22):
Thanks fellow. Now that follows upon us. What's not a
better way to start the fall season than an easy
and simple recipe. Pumpkin bred is the most delicious and
easiest food you can make for yourself, family, and friends,
and your community. Take a look, right, we're gonna make
pumpkin bread, so make sure you screenshot this recipe and
let's get started. First, preheat you out into three fifty
degrees in one of your bowls. Mixture flour, baking soda, bacon, powder, salt,

(01:05:45):
and pumpkin pie spice with your fork. Mix now, if
you're second full, mix your sugar, oil and apple sauce
with a whisk. Once everything is mixed together, at your
pumpkin and mix again. When everything is mixed evenly, combine

(01:06:06):
both mixtures together. Make sure you scrape everything out so
nothing is wasted. Now mix evenly until there's no lumps.
After that, you want to set that aside. And grab
your breadpan. Lather some butter all around and add a
little flour and spread it around until it looks like this.
Now you want to pour the bread batter into the breadpan.
Sure you scrape everything out so nothing is wasted. Cut

(01:06:27):
a line in the middle, and it's ready for the oven.
Make sure you were up and mix and let the
bread bake for sixty minutes. Once the sixty minutes is up,
take it out of the oven and let it sit
for a few minutes. When the breadpan is safe to touch,
use a straight edge to separate the pan and bread.
This stuff is optional, but if you have.

Speaker 5 (01:06:43):
Like sliced the bread into thick slices and it should
look something like this, you are all done. Dig in
and enjoy your pumpkin bread.

Speaker 15 (01:07:01):
This pumping about it is a perfect way to feed
your family, friends and your community. WELLA, what did you
think about this recipe?

Speaker 13 (01:07:08):
I think that this recipe is perfect for the horizon
fall weather. Substituting the egg with the apple sauce is
a great option for others with an egg allergy. Thanks Wella.

Speaker 15 (01:07:16):
I'm Ali Kanzon, reporting for Youth Civic News.

Speaker 6 (01:07:19):
Back to you, Ello, We talk weeklies after they're talking
to WPPM and P Philadelphia one O six point five FM.
We talked weeklies after they talk with your boy Charles
Gregory and beautiful and a beautiful lady. And we are
here today with another dynamic interview which I'm super excited
about because we're gonna talk a little bit about some civics.
We're gonna talk about the importance of community. We're gonna talk,

(01:07:41):
We're gonna do the work that we have always been
doing for the community. Yet sometimes you don't have the
opportunity to hear the voices and understand how people really
are humanizing people instead of seeing all of the noise
that's out there. And so what we'd like to do
is just bring them here so you get opportunity to
hear who they are. And without further Ado says, who

(01:08:05):
do we have to date? Who do we have to date?

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
So we have the awesome honorable Judge Patrick Dugan. He
is a former president judge of Philadelphia Municipal Court, a
decorated Army veteran, and a lifelong public servant. Raised in
Frankfort by a devoted single mother, he went on to
earn his jurisd doctor from Rutgers Rutgers Camden, before serving

(01:08:29):
over twenty three years in the Army in Army Reserve,
where he earned the Bronze Star in more than two
dozen awards. Appointed to the bench in two thousand and seven,
Judge Dugan served seventeen years, creating nationally recognized diversion programs,
including Philadelphia's renowned Veterans Court, which effectively reduced recidivism to

(01:08:53):
under ten percent. As President Judge, he led the Court
through pandemic. Through the pandemic, authorized the groundbak breaking Eviction
Diversion program, which saved more than forty six thousand families
from displacement. In twenty twenty four, he stepped down to
run for District Attorney. Now he's here with us to

(01:09:14):
discuss his life, journey and campaign. So let's get a
warm we talk. Wekly Welcome to the honorable Judge Patrick Dugan.

Speaker 6 (01:09:23):
How are you, How are you, my friend? How are
you well?

Speaker 8 (01:09:27):
Thank you for that introduction and the applause. Thanks for
having me.

Speaker 6 (01:09:31):
Absolutely absolutely one. I'd like to welcome you to the show.
And you know, one thing we like to talk about
or like to discuss, is, you know, just some of
the things that's happened in the communities, right, things that
are affecting the community. Try to disrupt those news deserts,
so to speak, the information that people are not getting

(01:09:54):
and sometimes tend to just you know, turn on social
media and this is what it is and they believe it,
you know. And so we'd like to say, you know,
this is the person, This is who this person really is.
You know, this is who you potentially will be voting for.
This is the person who will be in a leadership
position that you may need to talk to a come
in front of one day. So I'd like to welcome

(01:10:15):
you here for being a part We talk weekly, you know.
So before we get into all of that, let's talk
a little bit about one. You know, who are you
when you think of you as honorable judge? Right before
the judge? Right, who are you?

Speaker 8 (01:10:35):
Who are you? Well, my mother said, my first name
is not judge. My first name is pat. When I
was a kid, I was called Patty. Patty Dugan born
in Fairmount. We moved to Frankfurt when I was about
ten years old. My mom thought she was moving on up.
She was a single mother. We moved to sixteen hundred

(01:10:58):
block and Margarett here to martat writer or a dox
hell stop. So I'm a kid that played on the
l I'm a kid who played wire ball, stickball, half ease,
played basketball at the playgrounds, was right there at the
Whitehall Projects. So I'm a city kid. I've lived here
my whole life. The only time I didn't live here

(01:11:18):
in Philadelphia is when I was serving our nation, which
were at least I had five years overseas Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama,
South Korea. So I'm Philly born and bred. I mean,
my campaign literature since I've been running the very first
time always says that Dallas sucks. I'm sorry to those

(01:11:39):
cowboy fans, but I'm gonna die hard. You know that's
who I am. A sports fan. But I just love
our neighborhoods and I want to do the best thing
that I can. My mom, God rest her soul, is

(01:12:00):
is my hero. When we talk about who's our heroes,
that Mike Schmidt, Michael Jordan Now and Iverson, Oh, I
love those I love those guys, but my mother was
my hero. So when I was a kid in Fairmount
late sixties, you know there's tensions in our street. We
had the demonstrations up at Gerard College. We had riots

(01:12:20):
on broad streets, all that stuff going on. So we're
in Fairmount. I'm on sitting on the steps at twenty
two eleven Paris Street, just where my grandmother lived, and
it was one of those times where her mom needed
to be at her mother's house. So that's where we were.
And there's a kid riding a bike, a young black
kid riding his bike as fast as he could in

(01:12:40):
front of our home down the street, and he's being
chased by the old heads in the neighborhood and they
catch them. And we had to eat those those riot
boards that were outside, those things that the police put
up when there's a parade, and all those big old
yellow wooden ones. And they picked up one of those
boards and they started beating them. I'm sitting on stuffs

(01:13:00):
with my mom. My mom jumped up, ran down, gotten
between that board and those old heads and protected that
little kid. Brought that kid to our steps, pushed those
old heads away, brought them over with his bike, and
waited till the police arride. So my mother didn't have
to tell me what to do. She showed me what
to do. And that's what I've been as a man,
as a power trooper, as a judge pretty much is

(01:13:24):
the reason why I'm running for DA getting off the
damn step to do this.

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
You know, I wanna I know, right shot, I'm gonna
send the pauls real quick and shout out the mom
right there, you know, because my mom, Jackie shout out
to mom. You know. Uh yes, so so moving so
with that as an understanding, right and still pulling back

(01:13:52):
the layers of yourself, Who Patrick Dugan is? What ins
from that? What influenced you that from the beginning to say,
you know what, this this justice, this criminal justice space
or this law base space is something that I believe

(01:14:15):
I want to be a part of. What influenced that.

Speaker 8 (01:14:19):
So it's being a city kid, it's hadn't been in
the army saying that, you know, Pat, Pat Dugan from
the neighborhood of in Philadelphia. I'm the same as that
kid who was living in rural Alabama, or the guy
who was riding horses in Texas, or the kid from Oakland,
because we lived together. No matter what our race, what

(01:14:41):
our religion was, what are what kind of economic background,
We're all the same. We all want the same thing.
I just want to be safe. We want to be
with our families, we want to be able to provide
for them, we want to be able to laugh and dance.
And I saw that particularly in the army, and I
brought that back with me as a man, that we're

(01:15:02):
all the same, we don't want the same thing, so
we got to cut through our differences. And as a judge,
that's why I love the diversion programs that I was
heavily involved in, because we were able to peel the
onion away. What's making this guy go in and steal
stuff from a store, what's making this guy being violent
with his family members. Why is this person driving his

(01:15:25):
vehicle under the influence. So you get into the root
causes and then we try to help fix those root causes,
help that individual figure it out as well provide them
with the tools, and that's what I love to do.
We did these wrap around services and we helped so
many people. We involve their families and we turned around

(01:15:46):
and saved so many lives. And as a judge having
that power up there, it just felt so good to
be able to help people that I just again, it
was such a passion of mine. But I was also
one of those guys when somebody came in and they
were being violent, that we had to make sure they

(01:16:06):
were being held accountable. To go around shooting people carjacking,
then yes, you have to be held accountable. But people
who we could help and people who deserve that second chance,
people who we could seriously help, let's do it. So
one of the things I did I went into Greaterford Prison.

(01:16:26):
I would take my people in front of me in
my courtroom in Veterans Court. We'd get in a van
and go to Greaterford. It's called sci Phoenix now and
we'd go behind bars and talk to the lifers. Those
men comer glasses up there. He's an eighty year old man,
he's blind, he's in there for murder. Well, what a

(01:16:46):
great mentor he is to other people in the criminal
justice system because he's trying to teach them don't be
my sell me and he took peer mentoring classes. He's
got a bunch of guys in jail, and he would
speak to the guys in front of me so that
they would would not be his cellmates. And that's the
kind of things that I love to do to help

(01:17:08):
people turn the life around, so we're not destroying them
plus all their family members. Because you put one man
in jail, there's ten to fifteen other people affected by
that person being in jail. So we got to stop that.
But we got to put those people who run around
shooting our kids as well. We got to put them
in jail.

Speaker 6 (01:17:24):
I agree with that, and that's fair. I want to
talk about this because this stood out for me. Say,
in twenty nineteen, Judge Dugan was elected President Judge by
his peers. During this time, he guided the court through
the challenges of the twenty twenty pandemic, authorized the eviction
Diversion program. You talked a lot about the version, but
this program helped over forty six thousand families remain in

(01:17:47):
their homes and secure nearly three hundred million dollars in
the rent. We have to talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 8 (01:17:54):
Yeah, that's something I'm super proud of. And I had
a great team in Philadelphia Municipal Court. My fellow judge
who was my supervising judge, I was the president judge
and he more or less worked for me. But him
and I with our staff, as well as the landlord
tenant lawyers, all the folks out there were trying to
assist people as there were you know, people were looking

(01:18:15):
to a victim. City Council we got together and came
up with the Eviction Diversion Program. So, yes, forty six
thousand families in the City of Philadelphia were not evicted
during COVID. And the part that I insisted on a
lot of people who weren't getting paid the rent are
people with one house, one investment house. So if they're

(01:18:36):
not getting the mortgage, if they're not getting the rent
to pay their mortgage, they're going to lose that house.
They're going to lose that investment. So I said, we
got to have a program where they're getting paid. So
three hundred million dollars over three hundred million dollars went
to the landlords. So we pleased both sides. I mean,
it was COVID people couldn't pay the rent, but we
can't go ahead and stiff the landlords. So we got

(01:18:57):
together and did it for both and that program is
still going on evictions now in the City of Philadelphia.
There's a great process that people go through that people
try to step up and help both sides, and I'm
super proud of that I'm super proud of Judge Matt
Wolf who's up on the Commonwealth Court now and all
the staff members who assisted and that I'm very proud

(01:19:18):
of that.

Speaker 6 (01:19:18):
Now you talk about the diversion programs and the things
that you've been involved with, which I think is an
excellent transition to talk about to start going to start
talking about some of the things you're doing now. But
when one of the things that we pride ourselves in
is the discussion about civics and how important that is

(01:19:39):
to the community. When someone asks you what civics is
to you or what does it mean to you? Right,
what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
And let's talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 8 (01:19:52):
Yeah, first thing that comes to my mind is being
involved in your own community right there where you live.
And I'm talking about the simplest thing is, So there's
trash on the street near your home, trash on the
street near your school. You know what, pick it up.
You didn't put it there, But we all can bend
down and pick up that trash and put it in
a can. We can also all come out and vote.

(01:20:16):
Elections have consequences. We see that every day. Sixteen points
sixty one percent of the people in the city of
Philadelphia that are eligible to vote voted in the springtime.
To me, that math is eighty three point six thirty
eight three point thirty nine percent of the eligible voters
stayed home in the springtime. Your civic duty is to vote.

(01:20:40):
Not every human being that's walked this earth has had
the ability to vote. It's a privilege. We need to
take advantage of it. We all have opinions, we all complain,
we all say this is that we all got folks,
get out and vote. Get out and vote. I think
that's super important. But get involved, mingle, talk to your neighbors,

(01:21:02):
cross the street and talk to that guy who you
don't politically go along with. Just go talk to them
because his views there might be way different than yours,
but we agree on about eighty percent of the stuff
out there. So talk to your neighbors. I think that's important.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
Yeah, what do we say to like, because sometimes we
hear from the community, Like we hear people that say, like, well,
my vote doesn't count, So why am I even going
out to even vote? Because they're gonna elect who they
want to elect anyway, No.

Speaker 8 (01:21:34):
They're not. That apathy has to stop. If you look
at the numbers you come out to vote, and each
one of us have ten twelve people in our sphere
that we could pull out to vote. I know that
I could call up my kids and I'm proud. I
got six grown kids. They all have spouse's significant others. Wait,

(01:21:58):
you're gonna give me a standard old I got thirteen grandkids.

Speaker 6 (01:22:02):
Wow, and my family. I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 8 (01:22:06):
When we take a photo looks like the United Nations.
So we're just our thanksgivings are great. But I know
I could call them all up and say, listen, tomorrow,
you need to go vote, and they will. We all
have those folks in our life. You're coworker, drag them
out to vote. We have to get in mild because
if sixteen percent of us continue to vote, I think

(01:22:28):
that's one of the problems that we have in politics
is two party system. We get extremes on both sides,
and again, the vast majority of those who are kind
of closer to the mill, you know, we stay home,
we shrug, and we wind up with extremities in politics,
and the two sides will not compromise anymore. And that's

(01:22:50):
just a shame that does happening in our society. So
I'm urging people get involved. Let's take it back all
of us and it can be this side, that side,
but we all need to come together unify my political
party right now. I'm a Philadelphia That's truly who I am.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
Yeah, so you you ran in the primaries, and you
you didn't win in the primarys banked well, a lot
of people didn't come out to vote, and that was,
you know, the issue that we were just discussing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
So what I guess, is there a plan.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
That you've already been working on to do differently from
a campaign plan, you know, going out and you know
maybe knocking on more doors or has anything changed and.

Speaker 8 (01:23:45):
You've been talking to somebody because knocking on doors is
our number one thing that we're doing. Doing more digital,
more social media and canvas, and we're going to be
banging on doors where you get a little army starting
out there, where you go hit every every door that
we possibly can. In the general election, there are now

(01:24:05):
two hundred and fifty thousand more people eligible to vote
than we're in the primary because in Pennsylvania it's a
closed primary, so all the independents were not able to vote.
So with a quarter of a million more people eligible
to vote, there's a whole new pot of voters that

(01:24:27):
are out there. So I'm certainly going to try to
appeal to them and urge those who stayed home to
come out again. We all have an opinion on it,
what's going on in the direction to city, and you know,
come on out and let your voice be heard. If
it's not with me, I'm not even going to tell
you to stay home. I want people to vote, I
really do. And I saw it firsthand. I was in

(01:24:48):
Iraq in two thousand and four and I was part
of the program there to help local Iraqis vote. They
walk through bombs, you know, they stood in line where
death threats were there to vote, be the first group
of people who could vote in their country. And what

(01:25:10):
they do is they'd come in after they voted, they'd
put their finger in a purple ink well and come out.
So they'd come out showing their purple ink on their finger.
And people died to vote and it was just an
amazing process. It was over eighty percent of the people
came out to vote there for the first time, and
it just felt so good to be part of giving

(01:25:32):
that voice, and when I was quoted in the paper
by Jill Porter, one of the Philadelphia Daily News reporters,
years ago, saying, I want to come home to Philly.
I want to have a cheese steak, it's the Eagles,
and get people out to vote. And it truly is
something I want to do. And it's out there. I
said it, and it's in the paper, so it must
be true.

Speaker 6 (01:25:52):
All Right. I want to because you brought that up.
Because you brought that up, I might get you in
trouble with this question. But cheese steak. Who has the
best cheese steak?

Speaker 8 (01:26:03):
Fill?

Speaker 10 (01:26:05):
You know?

Speaker 8 (01:26:06):
I gotta tell you there was a place that shut
down years ago. It was Biados at twenty fifth in Paris.
That's really old school, but that's been shut down for years.
I like Gym's at Fourth and Yeah. I like gyms
fourth and South.

Speaker 6 (01:26:20):
That's safe. Okay.

Speaker 16 (01:26:23):
There's ten other places that if I'm driving by them,
stop And whether it's uh the one on Snyder John's,
whether it's Max's, whether I'm telling you I was at
Larry's uh out of Saint Joe's College, the other than
at belly Busters.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
Man, that put me.

Speaker 16 (01:26:45):
That put another into on my waist whiz without for.

Speaker 8 (01:26:49):
Me, it's a mess. But that's what I love.

Speaker 6 (01:26:54):
That's funny. Well, at the very least you share like
interest but with somebody ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
Yeah, and we we've had, you know, several candidates that
have come on the show and and they've run you know,
different capacities. And one of the things that they often
talk about is when it comes to voting down down ballot.
So you're running as an independent, what does voting down

(01:27:25):
ballot look like for maybe somebody that might be a
Democrat but they want to vote for you, And like,
how did they.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
How does that look like?

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):
If I guess you're you're running as a Republican candidate,
but it's the other and I don't I don't know
how that works.

Speaker 8 (01:27:54):
So let's the The Republicans did a write in campaign
in the springtime for me. I was like, you know what,
I'm going to win the primary and I became the
Republican nominadever seven thousand, more than seven thousand writing votes
that were cast for me, and it was successful in Pittsburgh.

(01:28:18):
The last cycle, the same thing happened in the district
Attorney's office. The losing candidate and the Democratic primary, they
wrote him in on the Republican side and he won
in the general. So that's where somebody came up with
this idea and they did it. It wasn't something I
sat down and talked with anybody or something I'm not
going to do, you know. But then after the primary,

(01:28:41):
I had so many people come up to me. I'm
trying to sit down in North Walwood on the beach
with my grandkids, or I'm in a grocery store or
target here and filling people kept coming up with me,
you got to do it, you got to do it,
you got to do it. And I said, well, you
know what, I'm going to do it, and I'm running.
I'm calling it a unity campaign. If you're a DEMOC,
if you're a Republican, if you're part of the Forward Party,

(01:29:03):
to Working Families Party, a Libertarian, I don't care what
party you are. My main purpose is to be the
disc attorney for all people. I am not. When I
win this thing, I'm not going to be the disc
attorney for Republicans. I'm not going to be the district
attorney for Democrats. I'm not going to be the disc
attorney for Working Families Party. I'm going to be the

(01:29:24):
disc attorney for Philadelphia, all Philadelphia. There's nothing about the
political party when it comes to what are we going
to do with these allegations of a crime. It's all
about the justice on the streets. That's really what it is.
So I'm truly running as a Philadelphia It's got nothing
to do with a party.

Speaker 3 (01:29:43):
So what you're saying is how that looks is for
the voter when they go to vote, if they're voting
for you, and they do like say they vote Republican.

Speaker 6 (01:29:54):
For ye, they are Democrats voting.

Speaker 3 (01:29:58):
But they vote for you as the Republican candidate for DA,
but everything else is Democrat, You'll still be working with
if those Democrats are elected in the other positions, you'll
still be working with.

Speaker 8 (01:30:14):
Absolutely. I mean so as a judge, I worked with
Republicans that you know, in terms of fellow judges and
anybody else in the system. Of course, I didn't talk
to elected officials trying to talk about, you know, the
directions of the law and all that. So absolutely, party
it's blind to me. And you know, it's it's fine

(01:30:37):
for people to come in and vote for the Republican
nominee because it's truly only a name only, that's what
it is. I'm still Pat Dugan, so I'm truly running
for all Philadelphians.

Speaker 6 (01:30:49):
Fair enough, fair enough, you know. One of the things
that sometimes I get, I get fussed that, but I say,
one of my favorite Republicans Republicans was David.

Speaker 8 (01:31:01):
A good friend of mine, fellow pirate trooper.

Speaker 6 (01:31:05):
Yeah, he was. He's such a non traditional Republican and
he used to do or be in spaces that most
Republicans wouldn't be in. And I actually seen him do
a lot of work, right, And I always said that
although I'm a registered Democrat, that I'm for the people
who are doing the work for the people, right and

(01:31:26):
so so to that point though, right, because you are
giving me that vibe right, the non traditional Republican at
that point, because that's what you're running for. So for
someone I want you to just walk people through that process.
For a staunch Democrat, right, that that understood that you

(01:31:48):
used to be a Democrat, right, technical technically right or
formerly a Democrat, now you're running as a Republican. So
for a launch Democrat that will be looking at this interview,
how do you explain that you switched parties into now

(01:32:09):
vote for you when you're no longer who they identified with,
so to speak, the party who they identify. How do
you explain it to someone?

Speaker 8 (01:32:18):
Right, So people, you know, think I switched jerseys.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):
In wait, did you switch?

Speaker 8 (01:32:24):
You're still I am still a registered Democrat and I
am a registered Democrat who won the Republican nomination. It
wasn't something I saught they presented it to me. So
my the alternative was that I turned down the being

(01:32:45):
on the general election ballot, and then the current disc
attorney would be unopposed, and you know, the Republican Party
could have put somebody else on it. There was no
plan to do that.

Speaker 6 (01:32:57):
Interesting, So I just felt that.

Speaker 8 (01:32:58):
Democracy, in the birthplace of America, there should be somebody
else running in the general election for such an office
as the district attorney's office. So that's why I'm doing it.
And again, I know what people, I hear people. I
know how the politics are left right, so many fanatical people.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
And you're a Democrat who the Republican.

Speaker 8 (01:33:25):
Yes, exactly, I'm still Pat Dugan from Fairmount and Frankfurt,
still the powatroopers, still the guy who did diversion courts.
I just want to make sure that those diversion programs continue.
They haven't really continued much in the last eight years.
And they also want to hold those people running around
shooting our kids on the playground. I want to hold
them accountable the first time.

Speaker 6 (01:33:47):
So for so for those who might have fear, right,
since you were written in by Republicans, but those who
may have fear that you may share life views, right,
what do you say to those people that are extremely nervous,

(01:34:09):
especially as it relates to a certain party that has
galvanized certain people to fill a certain way, because because
for me, you know, we try to ask questions that
some may ask, right, we don't judge right because again
for me, if you're working with the community and you're

(01:34:31):
doing right by the community, that's who we want out
there protecting a community.

Speaker 12 (01:34:35):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:34:35):
But then you have the life the lifers, so to speak,
of a party who's affiliated to a party that no
matter what it is, who it is. If you're a Democrat,
I'm voting Democrat. If you're Republican, I'm voting Republican. Right,
you're in this hybrid kind of position. So I guess
it's trying to understand or trying to get people to

(01:35:00):
understand that your views are your views, right, will they
have to worry about certain parties that potentially have wrote
you in that you might share those same exact views,
if that makes sense. Not that is wrong, right, but
just that you understand.

Speaker 8 (01:35:19):
So I'm getting it from both sides. I'm sure on
the left. On the right, Democrats Republicans are saying I'm
not going to vote for you because you're a Republican nominee,
and I get Republicans saying I'm not going to vote
for you because you're still a registered Democrat. And I'm
just asking people to open up their minds again. I'm
Pat Dugan. I am the guy who did the eviction

(01:35:41):
diversion program. I'm the guy who's a paratrooper. I'm the
guy who gets off the step like his mom did.
I'm the guy who did the eviction diversion I'm the
guy who did Veterans Court. I'm the guy who did
COVID Court. I went into the jails to take care
of the people who are stuck in jail with just
a mask, to make sure we had their hearings so
they weren't sitting in jail lingering while we were trying

(01:36:04):
to wait for COVID to go away. I wanted to
have them to have their cases so they're either released
or the case moves forward. But I'm also that guy
that says, you know, I sat in a murder room
for you know, I was on seventeen years. I sat
in there probably fifty percent of the time, and I
saw murders all the time. And I just see young
people all the time getting killed in our city, and

(01:36:26):
I want to try to help get in there so
that we don't have so many murders. But unfortunately, we
still have to hold those people accountable who are doing it.
And I believe I can help all that. I'm the
man I am, and I don't have a label, but
I know who I am. And that's what I'm asking
people to just, you know, put your differences down, to

(01:36:46):
really take a look at what's best for our city.
Who can be a good partner for Commissioner Bethel and
Mayor Parker, who could be that third person to really
work together to help to be safer so kids can
go to the playground, so you can walk to the
corner store and do't being afraid. That's that's all, I
want you to really open up your eyes, open up

(01:37:08):
your minds, please, folks.

Speaker 3 (01:37:10):
So, since you've mentioned those entities, it's let's say you've
been elected, it's day one.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
What does this you know?

Speaker 3 (01:37:23):
What does this look like? You know, your first one
hundred days? Because you mentioned you know Mayor Parker and
you mentioned the police commissioner. How will you work with them?
How will you work with the community as far as
the diversion programs, in those community programs, the outreach, working

(01:37:47):
with victims? How what does that look like?

Speaker 6 (01:37:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:37:50):
Because you you are you sound like you are this
great person, right.

Speaker 6 (01:37:54):
But sound like a great person.

Speaker 4 (01:37:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
But I mean, I'm just gonna say this.

Speaker 9 (01:37:59):
I had someone say me once it's not who you know,
who knows you?

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
So if people don't know you, how do they know
to vote for you?

Speaker 4 (01:38:06):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
How do we get everyone to know who you are?

Speaker 8 (01:38:08):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
That's usually the biggest.

Speaker 9 (01:38:10):
Thing, Like you're written in and usually, like Charles was saying,
people will go with Democrat just to their Democrat.

Speaker 1 (01:38:17):
And a lot of times people just go with the
names that they know.

Speaker 6 (01:38:19):
That's right, That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
So how do we get everybody to know your name?

Speaker 8 (01:38:23):
Well?

Speaker 6 (01:38:23):
We weekly so there you go off.

Speaker 3 (01:38:27):
So one of the audience, yeah, so with their head
they have a clear picture.

Speaker 8 (01:38:31):
So I haven't been a judge for seventeen years and
pretty much the vast majority of those days, or at
least one hundred people in my courtroom every day. So
I know a lot of people. Every time I go
out to a civic meeting, somebody stands up and says,
you know, I was a defendant in front of you, judge,
or my kid was in front of you, and you
know what, we didn't get maybe what we wanted that day,
but you were fair. And I had so many people
tell me that every time I go out to a meeting.

(01:38:54):
But so Commissioner Bethel and Mayor Parker, they'll have a
person who's going to be the third partner with them.
I love what the commissioner coming from the school police,
the programs he tried to do with the schools. He's
trying to bring that into the police. He wants to
train as police officers to handle crisis a lot better,

(01:39:15):
to give them some training and how to deal with
people in the throes of addiction, a mental health crisis.
That's part of the stuff that I want to be
involved with as well. Mayor Parker came on board saying, listen,
we got to really start getting a handle on his crime.
And I think they've been doing a pretty good job,
and I think they need that third partner, and I
think that's me who's willing to work with them. Mayor

(01:39:37):
Parker started the Director of Public Safety this office and
Adam Gear is in charge of it, and right now
the current disc attorney is not working with that office.
He said it out loud at a forum. I will
work with him because there's a lot of things we
could do to work together. On day one, what I
will do is I will start hiring local attorneys from

(01:40:00):
Penn Temple, Widner, Trexel, Rutgers, Cam Then, you know, bring
the local law students back Villanova, because the current disc
attorney was hiring all these people from Stanford and Harvard.
And that's great. Let's bring the big, best and brightest.
Mind's problem is when they came here, they studied the

(01:40:23):
law of California. So they came here, they didn't pass
the bar right away, and sixty eight out of seventy
eight in one class did not stay. So they're coming
there's high turnover. They don't know that Broad Street is
not called fourteenth Street. They don't know that Front Street
is not called First Street, and I had to correct

(01:40:45):
some of them in court. Now, outsiders come on in,
but I want people from here because they're going to
stay here. So I'm going to hire locally. But one
of the other big things that I'm going to do
is because eight years ago, on day one, what we
had prosecutors who were geographically located. So you had a
senior assistant District attorney in the northwest, one in the southwest, west,

(01:41:09):
one in central, one in the east, one of northeast,
et cetera. And they were assigned up there to communicate
with the community, with the ped acts, with the wards,
with the civic associations, with the churches. So if there
was a shooting in a corner store, that DA would
communicate with the locals to let them know what's the

(01:41:29):
status of that case. So you, as a community member
or a block captain could call up this specific DA
and say, Hey, Mary, what's going on with the shooting
that happened at fifty second in Delancey And the communication
was direct. They were all pulled back into the office,
So we didn't no longer do we have the geographic,
geographically assigned assistant district Attorneys. And I think that's part

(01:41:53):
of the problem with the communication that's currently going on
with the DA where victims are not being called, neighbors
are not being told that shooting at the playground is
this coming Tuesday? And geez, how good would it look
if the community came in so the judge the jury
could see, Wow, this community is concerned about what happened

(01:42:14):
in her neighborhood. That's a very important factor in court hearing.
So just simple things like that can go a long way.
And I will also bring back I called boot camp
training for the DA's. There was a lot of allegations
and I sault firsthand in court over the last seven

(01:42:34):
years of a completely different style of training in a
DA's office. There were a couple seminars about touchy feely things,
but nothing to do about the nuts and bolts in court.
Nothing to do about how to communicate with the police
officers and make sure they show up. Nothing to do
about how do you call missus Jones whose son was
murdered and now we want her to come to court

(01:42:56):
so she can represent her son. That stuff ceased and
all that stuff is just common sense. I want to
bring back to boot camp to teach the new DA's
how to put on a direct examination, how to cross
examine a witness, how to put in evidence, how to communicate,
how to address the court instead of telling them. And

(01:43:19):
this is what they told me. The attorneys told me
that they were recruited to come to Philadelphia and be
a public defender with a budget. Well, I want you
to come and be a prosecutor who can walk and
chew gum. When you see somebody that we need to
put in a diversion program, you need to recommend that
and let's do it. But when you see a person

(01:43:42):
who's a danger to our community, you know, I mean,
we've had thirty two hundred murders in the city of
Philadelphia in the last eight years. Over ten thousand people
have been wounded. Now, I did say I went to Afghanistan, right,
that was a twenty year war. We had two four
hundred fifty nine military personnel killed in Afghanistan in twenty years.

(01:44:05):
Twenty four hundred thirty nine in less than eight years.
We've had over thirty two hundred people murdered in the
city of Philadelphia. That is just something we should not tolerate.
Philadelphia is like a war zone. And I'm glad the
numbers are started to go down. They need to keep
going down. But you know, we're talking about the whole
picture here, the whole picture here, folks. We need to

(01:44:27):
stop the insanity going out and frankly, the vast majority
of the victims out there are young people of color.
And you know, I mean when Strawberry Mansion and North
Central and Tioga, when those neighborhoods are four hundred percent
more dangerous than the average neighborhood in the United States

(01:44:50):
of America, or three hundred percent or two hundred and
eighty or Frankfurt's two hundred and six percent more dangerous
than the average neighborhood in the United States of America,
I don't care what the numbers are coming down. That
is not acceptable that our neighborhoods are three or four
hundred percent more dangerous than the average neighborhood in America.

(01:45:10):
And that's something I want our das to focus on that.
But I also want to help people that need help.

Speaker 1 (01:45:16):
I kind of answer the question not to change the subject, but.

Speaker 9 (01:45:21):
This is how much of you wanting to help and
change things. After nine to eleven, I mean you are
a honorable, decorated veteran. Yeah, but after nine to eleven
you re enlisted into the army too. I want to
know what, of course, I mean we all probably felt

(01:45:43):
like we could have wanted to do something right, but
you actually did. What was your driving force and what
was your goal? Like what did you feel like you
could do or what areas did you want to help
in or feel like single handedly you could do something?
And I just want to know, like just like the
mindset of I don't want to do something because this

(01:46:04):
is how much this man wants.

Speaker 8 (01:46:05):
To do something. Yeah, so my mother was my driving force.

Speaker 6 (01:46:11):
Another round close, he's.

Speaker 8 (01:46:12):
Getting off the step, and obviously we saw the towers
go down. You know what a moment for all of
us that were you know, alive and we witnessed that
live on TV or if you were closer to it
and you saw the dust and you were in New York,
how that really impacted us all. So at the time,

(01:46:33):
I'm a lawyer, i haven't been in the Army in
fourteen years, and I'm probably weighing over two hundred and
fifty pounds. Well, the Army ain't taking you in. Is
a two hundred and fifty pounds so and.

Speaker 1 (01:46:45):
You were forty three.

Speaker 8 (01:46:46):
I was forty three years old, and so I went
to a recruiter and they laughed at me because I
was prior service, and they said, no, we can't get
you in. And they said, first thing you had do
is god lose some weight. So that was one of
the things that I started to do. I wanted to
be part of it because in the eighties I was
this grunt. I was an eleven Brible, which is in
the infantry. I was a paratrooper and reaccount platoon. I

(01:47:10):
was on the DMZ in South Korea. I was stationed
in Panama for two years. I was in the eighty
second Airborne. So I was one of those bad guys,
right I was a paratrooper. Well, now I'm a lawyer,
fat out of shape, so I knew I could help though,
because all those young people that were being called upon,
I knew my experience could help them. I was able

(01:47:31):
to lose some weight talk the doctors into letting this
forty three year old man get in, and I went
to a civil affairs unit where they bring lawyers, doctors teachers, engineers,
and the deal is you're going to go win hearts
and minds. So I wanted to go over to Iraq
to be that person in uniform who's dealing with the government,

(01:47:55):
who's dealing with the schools, who's dealing with the hospitals.
And that's what I did. We were digging wells, we
were trying to help give more materials for education. I
let a, I let a a send me toys, soccer balls,
prenatal vitamins, pencils. I sent that home and I got
into dated with thousands of packages that I was giving

(01:48:16):
out to local Iraqis. I started a woman's Empowerment Zone
not women's empowerment group, where we helped women start their
own businesses at home in Iraq, which is unheard of.
I was able to do that, and I was able
to do this with some great young people eighteen nineteen,
twenty twenty three, twenty five, and I was that sage

(01:48:38):
old man and I was that pop and you know,
it was good to beat their big brother and help
got him through some really some very rewarding times, some
horrific times because it was still a war going on
over there. But I'm very proud of my service, and yes,
I'd do it all over again.

Speaker 1 (01:48:54):
Mom took us a way to jump off the.

Speaker 8 (01:48:55):
Step, yes, and now off the bench of bench.

Speaker 9 (01:49:00):
Into the streets of Philadelphia for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
And and I did have another question.

Speaker 3 (01:49:09):
I just wanted to know, you know, with all of
the work, you know, because we did say that now
you're you know, it's day one, first hundred days and
all of the things that you're planning to do, are
there any concerns with some of the executive orders that
are being passed? Are there any concerns with those, you know,

(01:49:31):
getting in the way of any of the plans that
you have to do that you're you know, that you
want to do for the community or or working with people.
Now we have you know, the issues with immigration, and
we have ice and all these things. Are there any concerns?

Speaker 12 (01:49:52):
You know?

Speaker 8 (01:49:53):
I think that if I was looking for clicks and
donations from AFAR, yeah we could. I could talk about
all these national issues, but that's not what I'm trying
to do. This election is me versus the current district attorney.
And in reference to immigration, I'm going to treat people

(01:50:13):
who might have immigration issues the same as people who
reside and who are citizens who live in Philadelphia. If
you're going to break the law, we have to sit
down and look at follow the evidence. And if you
have bad papers and the law says that that violent
crime gets you deported, then that's what has to happen.

(01:50:35):
But I'm not going to seek out You don't need
to be seeking out somebody because they look like something.
They think you have bad papers and all that. But
I will not do something that I know happened because
I saw it while I was on the bench. Here's
a guy who goes in to rob a bank, right,
puts on a note, I'm want to rob the bank,

(01:50:55):
Give me all the money or I'm going to kill you,
hands it to the teller, gets arrested. Now that person
is not here with legal documents. I'm not going to
be the DA who downgrades that charge down to a
possession of an instrument of crime. For the pen It's
still a bank robbery. You still scared the heck out

(01:51:18):
of that woman who is the teller. It needs to
be charged as a bank robbery. There was also a
case that I know about where a man has had
sixty eight or seventy eight bundles of heroin and he
was dealing it on the street. Again, he had illegal papers.
The current district attorney downgraded it to possession of marijuana.

(01:51:41):
Now I'm sorry, but he's not floored and he's not
changing water into wine. So how the heck are you
changing a bundles of heroin down in the possession of marijuana.
I am not going to do that because you know,
we want to be dignified about folks who have bad
papers who are here under some issues with him migration.
So I'm going to handle it as what did this

(01:52:04):
person allegedly do and then deal with it just like
I'm going to do it for the guy from West
Philly or from Port Richmond. What are the facts? What's
going on with you? So I think we got to
be above the board, across the board for everybody.

Speaker 6 (01:52:20):
That's fair. That's fair when we think of since you,
since you brought up the current DA, what separates you
from the current DA? Like what would be you know,
your your picture, your selling point versus the current DA.

Speaker 8 (01:52:37):
So when Larry became the district Attorney, I'm going to
tell you I was excited because I was in there
doing all these diversion programs and I actually said, to man,
we could do this on steroids. We could help so
many more people. I got to give a shout out
to Seth William Seth had all kinds of issues and
all that, but he embraced the version programs, and I thought,

(01:52:58):
the guy who says I'm the most progressive in the
country is going to really embrace our our diversion programs.
It was the opposite. He actually's obstructed them, and our
numbers have gone way down. Some of the programs are
have shut down, some are probably going to be shut down.
And there's only one that he really started. It's called

(01:53:18):
the Emerging Adult Program. And every judge in the building
has asked him for an explanation of it and we haven't.
None of us have gotten it yet. It's in shambles.
There's nothing going on. So most diversion programs are a
partnership between the public Defender's office, the private bar, the prosecutors,
the courts, and it works. The community is involved. But

(01:53:43):
if you're not all on the same page, they're not
going to work. I mean, we had some great programs.
We had one for Dolan's Court, which were for prostitutes,
and it's not like pretty women. The women who are
out there on the streets right now selling their bodies
for five or ten dollars. They're being sex trafficked, they're abused,

(01:54:07):
they're addicted to drugs, and they're selling themselves for five
or ten dollars. It's horrible, and Doin's Court would actually
have a great success when they were able to come
in and be in our courtroom. We could save their lives.
In one year, we had eighteen women who were arrested
for prostitution while while they were in the program, gave

(01:54:31):
birth to drug free babies, which is unheard of because
most of them wind up in Temple. These babies come
out addicted to cocaine or heroine and it's terrible. In fact,
my wife and I fostered one of those kids a
few years back, and it's just it's an amazing journey
for those babies and it's something they shouldn't have to
go through. But so we were able to help these ladies.

(01:54:54):
What's happening now is they're not getting arrested, and I
understand that because they're victims. The problem is there's nothing
else set up to help them. Because the court we
could force them to get help in the beginning, and
then they embrace it and we have all kinds of
testimony from how well it helped their lives and we
were able to help people. And those are programs that

(01:55:14):
where are these people getting helped now? And they're just
withering to die on Lancaster Avenue, Tarzan Avenue, Kensington, they're
winding them in bodybags. And I just think there's so
many more programs that we could be helping these folks
who are just they're victims of the whole damn system,
but we could help them a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:55:35):
Yeah, I know, I know the current DA has a
few programs that assist our returning citizens and those who
are pushing against you know, gun violence, and so there
are some programs out there, right, So do you believe
that they have merit?

Speaker 8 (01:55:53):
So, as I was saying before I go into sci Phoenix,
and I talked to convict murderers. So yes, those who
get out of jail, who walk that tough life, who
were violent human beings at some point in their life,
if they come out and they want to be mentors

(01:56:14):
to help turn people's lives around. They've shown us that
through what they did, whether it was in prison or
when they get out. All they want to do is
keep those young people from going to jail. Oh my god.
We have to embrace them because having a guy who's
a professor who's going to say, I don't know, you
shouldn't do that, that doesn't work. The guy who's who
hung on the same corner thirty years ago or twenty

(01:56:37):
years ago, who went to the same high school, who
walked in the same neighborhood, who can now tell me,
don't do the same stuff that I did, because it's
going to ruin your life. You know, I got three
kids that I didn't see. They're now forty years old.
Now I see them. I didn't see them through their teens.
I wasn't around to be their father them. Those kind

(01:56:59):
of folks helping him race our communities to help us
turn it around. I think that's fantastic. And that's one
of the things. As a DiscT attorney you have access to,
you know, tens of millions of dollars for all these
little micro grants, and you know what, Yes, they need
to be placed. Well, we need to help people in
the community. We need to make sure how these what

(01:57:20):
can we do with these kids when their baby so
that you know, they're they're they're getting schooling early. The
what is nursery school? They show if you go to
nursery school, how much that's going to help you later
in life. After school programs, lunch programs, these alternatives that
they have in the schools for when there's a disturbance.

(01:57:42):
How can we handle it instead of taking them out
in cuss What can we do? No? I love it.
And then these kids who are highly at risk, how
we can bring those folks almost like a scared straight
Having that forty year old guy who just got out
of jail coming and said, man, I was you don't
be like me? It goes a long way.

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):
Yeah, because I think even though you know, over the past.

Speaker 3 (01:58:05):
A few years the numbers have come down when it
comes to the homicide.

Speaker 2 (01:58:12):
Rates, we still have the.

Speaker 3 (01:58:15):
Increase in the school age victims of being gunshot victims.
You know, those are increasing as well, So that's also
becoming a concern. So just having those programs for you know,
some of the students and the kids, yeah, you know,

(01:58:39):
I think it will be important.

Speaker 8 (01:58:41):
Yeah, yeah, those kids need alternatives.

Speaker 2 (01:58:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:58:45):
The streets is such the streets are such a hard
pull on them and We've had some folks over the
last you know, eight ten years who were actually grabbing
these kids at thirteen fourteen years old, putting a gun
in her hand and ask them to go shoot somebody.
You know, here's a couple hundred bucks, go shoot somebody.
And you know, I mean, men's brains aren't developed to

(01:59:07):
science says twenty three. I say it's much older than that.
But I mean young teenagers, their brains aren't ready to
handle that, ye, and they're going to do it for
a couple hundred bucks. And it's a shame that, you know,
they've been led down that path and we've lost so
many young people to this violence, you know. I mean
some of the criminologists say part of it is because
these young men have done a pretty good job of

(01:59:28):
killing each other too. So it does have and flow
in terms of who's available to be a victim.

Speaker 6 (01:59:34):
Yeah, I have to give you. I have to acknowledge
your work because outside of the service you have been doing,
I have heard of many who have been in your
courtroom that you have done fairly, you know, and they
and they say it, you know, so that deserves the flowers.

(01:59:56):
And I believe that you would run not only a campaign,
but if or when you win that you would do
what's necessary to continue to protect consert of community. So
at this point, I believe, you know, it's about which

(02:00:17):
side do you like like the best right, And I
think that it's one of those things. If you if
you know the information, if you if you become informed,
then you can make informed decisions. Right. Oftentimes most people
don't get the information that's necessary to make those informed decisions. Right.

(02:00:40):
That said, if there was information you believe that people
should know about you that they don't know, right, what
would you tell them or what information would you give
to say this is truly who I am?

Speaker 8 (02:00:57):
You know it? Ask people that have been around me.
And again, as you said, people have come into my courtroom.
One of the best things that I felt after I
resigned from the bench the calls that I got from
people saying, I hope you win. And these are people
who've been in front of me, whether they were attorneys,

(02:01:21):
clerks in my room, and that said, I just appreciated
how you were as a judge, and I hope you
can win being a DA because I know that's how
you're going to be again. If you can win. This
just that reputation. People know it, and I even had
people who told me this. I see people out on

(02:01:43):
the campaign trail who again, I found their son guilty
or they were guilty, and they come up to me
and say, but I really appreciated how you ran in
the courtroom. You always treated everybody fairly and you listen
to them, and you know, whether you know what you
look like didn't matter to me. It was about what
was the evidence there. So again, I am Pat Dugan

(02:02:04):
from Philadelphia, and I'm real, I really am. I'm not
trying to hide anything from you. I'm not out there
getting coached what to say. I'm not looking at poles.
I'm just being as real as I possibly can. This
is me, and you know, my joy are my grandkids.

(02:02:26):
And it would be so much easier for me to
just go off and retirement hang out with my grandkids.
You know, I had the greatest job in the world.
As other than being like a bullbend coach for the
Phillies or you know, the long snapper for the Eagles,
I was a municipal court judge in the city of Philadelphia.
I love what I was doing, and all I had

(02:02:48):
to do was coast into retirement, chilling out all that
good stuff. And I'm taking this mission on because I
believe in getting up and helping people. And that's why
I decided to do this, because that's who I am
as a man, and that's sincere. It's just who I am,
and I truly want to help Philadelphia for all Philadelphia.

(02:03:09):
So again, I'm not getting consultants telling me say this,
say that, No, I'm real fantastic.

Speaker 6 (02:03:16):
If and when you win, you have to promise that
you come back to the show and talk about that,
talk about the journey, talk about you know how you're
feeling now, do you right before you answer that or
acknowledge that you'll come back. I'm sure you'll come back.

(02:03:37):
But I would like to know what your life would
be like if you find out that you have one
that day one? You know, what what would that be like?
In you know, would you sit on like you're sitting

(02:03:59):
here saying all the things that you have done. Would
you change your mind or would you pivot? Will you
now that you are to a degree affiliated with a
different party, do you now take some of their ideals
or or or you know, some of their interests in

(02:04:19):
you with what you're doing. In ruling.

Speaker 8 (02:04:22):
You know, so, yes, I will be back.

Speaker 6 (02:04:26):
Get that. Let's pause. I did to get rid of closely, no.

Speaker 8 (02:04:29):
Doubt, absolutely. And what I can tell you is that
if I had won in May, the Democrats would have
no say, And now I run my office, and if
I win as the Republican nominee, the Republicans will have
no say. Now I run my office, it's going to
be I'm going to bring in good people, surround myself

(02:04:52):
with good people. I never say that I'm the I
never think I'm the smartest person in the room. It's
going to be I'm bringing in good people to be
around me. I don't want yes people coming to work
for me. I need people to come in give me
their best thoughts, their best ideas. I'm gonna make the decisions.
But now I'm gonna surround myself with good people. But again,
no political party is going to tell me what to do.

(02:05:14):
And in any office kind of should be like that.
Darn it. In the disc Attorney's office, there's no room
for politics in there. In my opinion, there really isn't.
There really isn't fantastic.

Speaker 3 (02:05:34):
I mean, my my final final thought was, just like,
do you have any concerns about like, you know, once
you win, your your mental health, Like, how do you
take care of your mental health? Yes, we had we
had Mayor Charell when she was just what was it,

(02:05:54):
Demo Democrat Democratic candidate?

Speaker 2 (02:05:59):
It was just the elect at that point.

Speaker 3 (02:06:00):
And we asked her like, you know, how will you
you know, take care of your mental health?

Speaker 2 (02:06:05):
What are you going to do?

Speaker 4 (02:06:07):
And she.

Speaker 2 (02:06:09):
Sounded like she yeah, how about you? How do you
plan to take care of your mental health?

Speaker 8 (02:06:15):
So, as a judge for seventeen years and again, somebody
has been in combat zones and all you know, it's
something you got to learn how to get rid of
to stress. I will never stop going to see my
grandkids play a game. I probably won't be able to
go as often as I do, but you got to
continue to family as first. I'm never going to lose that.

(02:06:37):
I think that keeps yourself grounded and well balanced. My
wife has been a fantastic supporter of mine. But I
will definitely be talking to people I know. So as
a judge, I had to have police protection at times.
I had death threats. Even in a campaign in the springtime,

(02:06:59):
I had some some pretty pretty bad threats against me
as well. It's part of being in the public world
today in this crazy day and age. So it's something
that you just have to make sure that you're surrounding
yourself with good people. And I'm not going to tell
you that I'm not afraid to sit down and talk

(02:07:20):
to a professional. There have been times in my career
that I did sit down because of some of the
things that were coming at me. And you know, you
should talk to somebody who that's their job. So I
have talked to a therapist or two just trying to
deal with things that are going on. So I do
know I'm man enough to admit that, Yeah, sometimes it's
good to sit down and talk to somebody about it.

(02:07:42):
So I just plan on surrounding myself with good people,
getting good advice and just you know, moving forward. Yeah,
my life's going to change after I win this, but
that's what I'm trying to do for the city. I'm
going to surround myself with some really good people from
the city of Philed if we want to take this
omigo and do it together and I come back here
for third.

Speaker 6 (02:08:03):
You got that, look, So I got one more question
to ask you. I'm gonna throw you a little curve ball,
because you know, this is one of those questions that
everybody has a challenge with. If I was to ask
you the one thing that no one knows knows about you,
about the honorable Patrick Dugan, what would that be? Got

(02:08:25):
dig d.

Speaker 8 (02:08:27):
So, as a paratrooper jumping out airplanes from thousands of feet,
I'm afraid of heights? What?

Speaker 6 (02:08:37):
But where are my scrap what?

Speaker 8 (02:08:40):
I'm afraid of height? I'm afraid.

Speaker 6 (02:08:46):
So I gotta tell you.

Speaker 8 (02:08:48):
When you're up in an airplane and you're fifteen hundred
feet up, there's no perception of the height, so it's
easy to walk out of that airplane into the air.
But when you're up on the ladder twenty four feet up,
oh my goodness, I'm not very good at that. So wow,
And I guess I can elaborate a little bit more.
We've got to go up on the ladder. My beautiful wife,

(02:09:11):
generally speaking, will do it.

Speaker 6 (02:09:13):
So I'm also mad enough.

Speaker 8 (02:09:14):
I'm mad enough to admit that that, you know, I
just don't do well ladders.

Speaker 6 (02:09:20):
Fantastic. Is there anything that stands out a memory during
your tenure that stands out that you are truly proud of?
I mean you have, I mean literally you have so
many moments. But is it something that stands out that
you were really proud of in terms of any of
you either ruling or success of your programs.

Speaker 8 (02:09:41):
So there's a gentleman from West Philly.

Speaker 6 (02:09:45):
That was shout out to Westfield. Yeah, we from Westfield Center.
Actually he went over Broke, shout out Overbrooking from over Brook.
That's album. You would another one, say something else.

Speaker 8 (02:09:58):
I really didn't do my home. I'm not doing so anyway.
My buddy, and I'll just say his first name, Donald.
We had a really hard time when he was in
my courtroom, back and forth with his addiction and you know,
crimes he was committing, and we didn't give up on him,
and he finally got it and he's over eight years

(02:10:22):
sober now. His first year sobriety happened to be close
to my wedding anniversary. I'm taking my wife out to dinner.
I get a call, he says, can you come to
my meeting? Because that's what you do on your first
year anniversary, you bring people that were part of it.
So my wife and I went out to fifty fourth
and I forget what the cross street was to see

(02:10:44):
him on Now. My wife didn't know where she was
going on the way to dinner, so we stopped into
the meeting to see Donald and for him to talk about,
you know, his year's struggle. And he still we're good friends.

Speaker 4 (02:10:58):
Now.

Speaker 8 (02:11:00):
He became a mentor in my courtroom for other veterans,
and even since I retired from the bench, I still
see him and he recently called me out to tell
me it's eight years now. So he's just somebody that
amazing and he's now back with he's now talking with
his daughter's daughters back in his life. I was with

(02:11:22):
him a couple of weeks ago. He's talking about his
grand baby that he's saying. So it's just you can
make a difference in a person life and it just
ripples forever. So that that is one example that he's
near and dear to my heart. You know, I hope
to keep I'm proud of being able to do that
for that man.

Speaker 6 (02:11:38):
Wow, But they have it, ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable
Patrick Dugan. I'm going to give you the floor to
say because I did it far you know the current DA,
but I'm gonna allow you the opportunity to talk to
our audience to let them know why they should vote

(02:11:59):
for you in this coming election. You had the last word.

Speaker 8 (02:12:03):
So I have a body of work. I've been doing
this for a while. I really can walk in cheugh gum.
At the same time, the diversion programs, the fiction diversion,
me going into the prisons, me sitting in the murder
room and holding people accountable. There are some bad people
out there. We need to protect our neighborhoods. We need

(02:12:23):
to make it safer for our kids in the rec
centers to go be able to go play there and
not get shot by somebody just going randomly shooting down
the street. People need second chances. I have no problem
doing it. I've done it. It's my body of work,
so walking chew gum. At the same time, people are
going to be doing violent crimes. They need to pay

(02:12:43):
for it. People need a second chance. We can do it.
We can do it together. I want your input, but
I also want your vote on November fourth. I need
to make sure you get everybody to come out. I
have a website, Judge Dougan for DA dot com, social
media Doogan for DA. I'm on TikTok and all those Instagrams, MySpace,

(02:13:05):
you name it, I'm on them all. So so just
you know, do your civic duty. Folks, get out and vote,
and you should always get out and vote. And again,
I'm Pat Doogan, I'm from Philadelphia.

Speaker 6 (02:13:20):
I'm real, fantastic, fantastic. But there you have, ladies and gentlemen.
We talked weeklies after the Talking the wpp P Philadelphia
one on six point five film. We talked weeks after
the Talk with your boy Charles Gregor and Beautiful and
the Beautiful and the Gentleman. This is we talk weekly
And just one thing that I say, uh to our

(02:13:43):
guest is once you come to the show, you're always
your friend to the show, So you're always welcome to
come back. But we will continue to lend a platform
for people to give information to the community. And that's
one of the most important positions that we talk weekly
sits on. You know, there's always this discussion of we

(02:14:05):
don't know, right. We hear people saying I shouldn't vote
or why should I vote? You know, this gives you
the opportunity to make those decisions. You can't make a
decision without the information, right, So once you had information,
now you're informed. Now you can make an informed decision
whether whomver you believe through your research. But what we're

(02:14:26):
doing right now is that the very le's giving you
the cliff notes right and so I'm your boy, Charles Gregory.
Continue to follow, continue to subscribe, continue to share, and
if you're feeling, you know, you want to dig in
that little pocket, make sure you donate that we talk weekly,
cash that we talk weekly. We're everywhere. Make all the
people who's listening on all of the platforms across the country,

(02:14:46):
across the world. Actually, we really appreciate you. Thanks for
tuning in and we're out here like last year, y'all.

Speaker 8 (02:14:52):
Please

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