Erik Fleming hosts three powerful conversations with Kate Powell (grassroots advocacy and "menacing" elected officials), Gloria J. Browne-Marshall (A Protest History of the United States), and Dr. Ashleigh Brown-Grier (internationalization and support for HBCUs).
They discuss protest strategies, voting access, protecting civil rights, and strengthening HBCUs, offering practical takeaways and calls to action for listeners who want to get involved.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.
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00:01:15 --> 00:01:20 The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:06 Hello and welcome to another moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:12 And today we've got another jam-packed episode. And I'm just here to let y'all
00:02:12 --> 00:02:16 know that until the election, we're probably going to be jam-packed all the way through.
00:02:17 --> 00:02:25 But this episode, I have three women who are hell raisers in their own right.
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 As far as just, you know,
00:02:29 --> 00:02:35 the causes that they're committed to, we're going to be talking about protesting
00:02:35 --> 00:02:40 and advocacy and HBCUs and all that good stuff.
00:02:41 --> 00:02:47 So we just, I want you to sit back and enjoy this episode because these three
00:02:47 --> 00:02:53 dynamic women are the epitome of why March is Women's History Month.
00:02:53 --> 00:02:59 And I hope you enjoy the conversations as much as I did having them.
00:03:01 --> 00:03:09 And so, yeah, I would love to hear what you have to say about that.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:14 And also, if you want to subscribe to the podcast, all that stuff,
00:03:14 --> 00:03:19 you can go to www.momenterik.com and do all that stuff.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:23 If you want to catch up on some past episodes with dynamic guests that we've
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 had on the show, feel free to do that as well.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 But yeah, I think you're going to enjoy this episode.
00:03:31 --> 00:03:35 And I hope that you have been enjoying all the episodes leading up to that.
00:03:35 --> 00:03:39 So without any further ado, let's kick this program off.
00:03:39 --> 00:03:43 And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:03:51 --> 00:03:56 Thanks, Erik. The FBI is investigating a shooting at Old Dominion University,
00:03:56 --> 00:04:01 where a previously convicted terrorist killed one person and injured two U.S.
00:04:01 --> 00:04:05 Army personnel before being neutralized by a group of ROTC students.
00:04:06 --> 00:04:11 Security personnel shot and killed a suspect who crashed a truck into a Detroit-area
00:04:11 --> 00:04:17 synagogue's preschool wing, preventing any casualties among the 140 students.
00:04:18 --> 00:04:22 Trump-backed candidate Clay Fuller, and moderate Democrat Sean Harris will advance
00:04:22 --> 00:04:27 to an April 7 runoff for Marjorie Taylor Greene's vacated House seat after neither
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 secured a majority in the Georgia special election.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:36 Mississippi's primary results set up a Senate showdown between incumbent Cindy
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 Hyde-Smith and Scott Cologne,
00:04:38 --> 00:04:43 while Congressman Benny Thompson easily fended off a primary challenge to secure
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 the Democratic nomination for his long-held House seat.
00:04:46 --> 00:04:52 President Trump has threatened to withhold his signature from all future legislation
00:04:52 --> 00:04:57 until Congress passes the Save America Act, which would mandate proof of citizenship
00:04:57 --> 00:04:58 for voter registration.
00:04:59 --> 00:05:03 New Mexico authorities have launched a search of Jeffrey Epstein's former ranch
00:05:03 --> 00:05:09 following DOJ documents alleging that two victims may be buried on the secluded property.
00:05:09 --> 00:05:14 Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Charles Sonny Burton
00:05:14 --> 00:05:18 to life without parole, just days before his scheduled execution.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:24 A federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 protected status for 350 Haitians.
00:05:28 --> 00:05:33 Jeremy Carl withdrew his nomination for a senior State Department role following
00:05:33 --> 00:05:38 bipartisan criticism of his past comments about the Holocaust and his promotion
00:05:38 --> 00:05:39 of the Great Replacement Theory.
00:05:40 --> 00:05:45 A federal judge invalidated Carrie Lake's previous management decisions at the U.S.
00:05:46 --> 00:05:51 Agency for Global Media, ruling that her appointment as acting CEO was illegal
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 under federal vacancy laws.
00:05:53 --> 00:05:58 And South Carolina's measles outbreak has reached 993 cases.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:02 I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:13 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news.
00:06:13 --> 00:06:18 And now it is time for my guest, Kate Powell.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:24 Kate Powell is an administrative juggernaut who fundraisers and runs nonprofits for a living.
00:06:25 --> 00:06:31 In her spare time, she likes to bother our legislators and public administrators
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 into maybe doing their jobs.
00:06:35 --> 00:06:43 She advises people to learn the dark arts of advocacy and become an absolute menace.
00:06:43 --> 00:06:48 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 of this podcast, Kate Powell.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:06 All right. Kate Powell, how are you doing?
00:07:07 --> 00:07:14 I am pretty good. Just, you know, contemplating the imminent demise of our republic.
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 No, I'm just kidding. I'm actually, most days I'm pretty hopeful.
00:07:17 --> 00:07:23 Today I'm in a pretty decent mood. The weather is warm and I am having a lot
00:07:23 --> 00:07:28 of fun hassling some people who are trying to do illegal things in our democracy
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 as usual. So it's a good day. Yeah.
00:07:31 --> 00:07:37 So we're going to get into your skill set for hassling as we get into this interview.
00:07:37 --> 00:07:40 I've been following you on social media.
00:07:41 --> 00:07:46 And, you know, there's a number of people that I follow as far as content creators.
00:07:47 --> 00:07:51 And, you know, all of you have a unique style.
00:07:52 --> 00:07:58 But I really like you because you have described yourself as a menace.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:07 And we'll get into that in some detail. But I thought that was a pretty interesting
00:08:07 --> 00:08:08 moniker to stick on yourself.
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 So I'm honored to have you to come on.
00:08:12 --> 00:08:17 Oh, thank you. Yes, ma'am. So the very first thing I do is I do a couple of
00:08:17 --> 00:08:22 icebreakers. And the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.
00:08:23 --> 00:08:28 And the quote is, we have the most beautiful thing, but we're going to have
00:08:28 --> 00:08:32 to fight to keep it and make it fulfill its own promises.
00:08:32 --> 00:08:37 What does that quote mean to you? Oh, my God. I couldn't encapsulate,
00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 I think, where we are any better than that.
00:08:42 --> 00:08:48 I, when I look at the history of our country, I can say pretty definitively
00:08:48 --> 00:08:51 that I don't think it's really ever fulfilled its promises.
00:08:52 --> 00:08:58 But I also think that it's so striking that in the entirety of the history there
00:08:58 --> 00:09:01 have always been people for whom the promises are not being delivered and yet
00:09:01 --> 00:09:07 are are fighting for it and believe in it and hope in it and so I just that
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 that's you know on days when I wake up and I'm,
00:09:11 --> 00:09:16 tired I'm sick of it I'm over it you know another country is looking really
00:09:16 --> 00:09:25 good right now I draw inspiration from stories of people who were even in darker times than this,
00:09:26 --> 00:09:31 relatively speaking, and yet they felt that this thing was so beautiful,
00:09:31 --> 00:09:37 or at least its promises were so beautiful, and that it was their duty,
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 their calling to fight for it.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:49 And so that quote, I think, is not only awesome, but also is the most perfect
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 rallying and crying because it's uttered by people for whom, again,
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 the promises of the United States have never been delivered.
00:09:56 --> 00:10:00 It's never been, you know, opportunity and justice for all.
00:10:01 --> 00:10:06 You know, we say that and we want it. And I think we've had some really great moments.
00:10:06 --> 00:10:10 But then, of course, we've also had moments where it was very clear that that was not true.
00:10:10 --> 00:10:15 But we keep marching. That is the soul of this country is that,
00:10:15 --> 00:10:17 like, we're going to keep pressing towards it.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:21 Yeah. All right. Now, the second icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.
00:10:23 --> 00:10:27 So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20. A 6.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:37 All right. What do you think was the worst or best thing the previous administration did?
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 Worst or best, so I can go either or. Yes.
00:10:43 --> 00:10:48 Okay. Ooh, okay, this is a tough one.
00:10:48 --> 00:10:56 I think the worst thing they did Was not make Harris the heir apparent from the get-go,
00:10:57 --> 00:11:03 That waffling between Well, no one really It wasn't even definitive if Biden
00:11:03 --> 00:11:04 was going to run again, right?
00:11:04 --> 00:11:10 And I firmly believe he did not need to run again ever I voted for him in 2024
00:11:10 --> 00:11:16 But I, you know Because obviously the other option was what we're doing right now.
00:11:18 --> 00:11:27 But i i will i really cannot find any justification for not even having a plan
00:11:27 --> 00:11:33 right from the get-go and then when he did try to run and then when it was clear
00:11:33 --> 00:11:34 that was not going to work,
00:11:35 --> 00:11:42 on top of a part and parcel of this being the worst is how to me they really threw kamala harris,
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 onto the altar of their own mistakes.
00:11:45 --> 00:11:50 And I really, I hated that for her. I hated it for her just as a person,
00:11:50 --> 00:11:51 but I also hated it for her as a Black woman.
00:11:52 --> 00:11:58 I was like, this is unacceptable to treat her this way, to make her the sacrificial
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 lamb, because y'all couldn't figure it out.
00:12:02 --> 00:12:07 And, you know, when you look at the campaign that she was able to do in 107 days, I think,
00:12:08 --> 00:12:14 It's a miracle she didn't lose by more. I really don't understand the vitriol
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 that's been directed at her for losing.
00:12:18 --> 00:12:24 She was set up to lose and yet still came within striking distance of Trump.
00:12:26 --> 00:12:31 So I understand policy-wise that the Biden administration did advance a lot,
00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 though, of course, we're seeing most of it being unraveled right now.
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 And there's a lot more policy-wise that I wish they would have done.
00:12:36 --> 00:12:41 But I usually get fixated on the part where there was no plan.
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 There was no plan for what comes next.
00:12:43 --> 00:12:47 And Kamala Harris ended up being the collateral damage in that.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:48 And I think that's pretty unforgivable.
00:12:49 --> 00:12:55 So, I love that phrase, the alter of their own mistakes.
00:12:56 --> 00:13:01 That's the first time I've heard it said like that. And that's pretty powerful.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:07 Powerful enough for me to ask this question. Do you think that that taints the
00:13:07 --> 00:13:11 legacy of his presidency, the way that he ended it?
00:13:11 --> 00:13:17 Oh, yes. I don't think it's, I don't think it needs to be like,
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 You know, in all or nothing, I try to avoid all or nothing. My psychologist
00:13:21 --> 00:13:23 would be so proud right now for me saying that.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:26 I do try to avoid being so black and white.
00:13:27 --> 00:13:35 But I do think that, you know, again, we have a history of, you know,
00:13:36 --> 00:13:40 using certain groups of people, black women would be one of them,
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 as easy collateral damage.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 You know, like, well, we can we can sacrifice that.
00:13:46 --> 00:13:52 And I just from the moment they put her forward, I was hopeful she would win
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 and also knew what this was.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 Because the Democratic Party could just blame her.
00:13:59 --> 00:14:02 Right. If if they didn't if they didn't win.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 And they still kind of continue to do that, even though I think the post-op
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 was pretty clear about what happened.
00:14:08 --> 00:14:15 And I think that, and I know the DNC is kind of scrambling around right now
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 from other similar issues as they look into 2028.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:27 If they want to move past all of this, if they want this to not be their legacy,
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 whether it's like Biden's legacy or just the legacy of the Democratic Party
00:14:30 --> 00:14:35 in Trump too, they're going to have to reckon with this.
00:14:35 --> 00:14:39 They're going to have to be able to just like face it and say out loud what
00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 they did, because what they did was heinous.
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 So you read 107 Days, I take it.
00:14:45 --> 00:14:48 I have not read it yet. Oh, you have to read it.
00:14:49 --> 00:14:52 I know I do. I've seen lots of excerpts and some of her interviews and whatnot.
00:14:53 --> 00:14:58 And it's on my list of, there's a long list of books that I need to read.
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 But I've, and then I've also talked to some people who have read it,
00:15:01 --> 00:15:05 who I respect their opinions very much. And when I've told them my thesis of
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 her being the sacrificial lamb on the altar of their mistakes,
00:15:07 --> 00:15:08 they're like, yeah, basically.
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 I'm like, okay. Yeah. Like, I
00:15:10 --> 00:15:14 mean, I'm glad. Again, it was like I was watching it in real time. And...
00:15:15 --> 00:15:19 You know, I, I really, yes, you're right though. I need to get on that quickly.
00:15:20 --> 00:15:25 Yeah. If you, if, you know, in this day and age, just, just get the, uh, just get the audio.
00:15:25 --> 00:15:30 That's what I did. I got the audio cause she actually narrates it so that to
00:15:30 --> 00:15:34 me that, that, that brings it more to life. Yeah. It's her story.
00:15:36 --> 00:15:39 Yeah. So that's cool. Do you think she should try
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 it again in 28 or should she just say you know what it's been
00:15:42 --> 00:15:45 fun i'ma i'ma enjoy this
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 public private life okay so
00:15:48 --> 00:15:51 i would love for her to do it again i
00:15:51 --> 00:15:54 i would i would if she
00:15:54 --> 00:16:00 were to announce a 2028 run i would do literally anything that i could do to
00:16:00 --> 00:16:04 support that campaign i don't know that doesn't mean anything probably to her
00:16:04 --> 00:16:08 but because i'm you know it's not it's not like i'm a mega influencer or who
00:16:08 --> 00:16:12 can really move the needle that much, but I would literally throw everything I could behind it.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:18 I would also completely understand if she was like, I'm out, I'm so done.
00:16:19 --> 00:16:23 But I really think if we're,
00:16:23 --> 00:16:27 you know, back to my point earlier about reckoning with what the Democratic
00:16:27 --> 00:16:35 Party did in 2024 and not really being able to move forward until they go back and deal with that,
00:16:35 --> 00:16:43 that to me is probably one of the most definitive ways that they could do it is if they would just,
00:16:44 --> 00:16:48 put her up as the nominee in the appropriate amount of time which is going to
00:16:48 --> 00:16:53 be soon-ish it needs to happen in like you know the end of this year really
00:16:53 --> 00:16:57 you know like that's about the time when they really need to start being like
00:16:57 --> 00:17:01 this is this is our you know this is our horse and.
00:17:03 --> 00:17:08 But, yeah, I really, in my, like, the world of fantasy that I sometimes live
00:17:08 --> 00:17:12 in of, like, what does justice look like? I think that that's what it could
00:17:12 --> 00:17:15 look like is Kamala Harris, 2028.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:20 Oh, yeah, no, but I was just going to say, but I also understand she's like, forget this crap.
00:17:21 --> 00:17:26 I wouldn't blame her whatsoever. But, you know, the reason why I push that because
00:17:26 --> 00:17:30 that's on brand for you because that seems like a menace move.
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 That seems like a move where it's like, yeah, I'm going to show you.
00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 Exactly. That's what I wanted to do. I'd be like, oh, you thought.
00:17:39 --> 00:17:47 And I just, I truly, I would. I would be so proud to be under such a president, truly.
00:17:48 --> 00:17:49 Anyway, I could go on about that forever.
00:17:50 --> 00:17:54 So how did you first get interested in politics?
00:17:54 --> 00:18:00 Because this is going to be, I want people to kind of understand your background.
00:18:00 --> 00:18:03 So I've divided up your background question into three parts.
00:18:03 --> 00:18:06 So the first one is, how did you get interested in politics?
00:18:06 --> 00:18:11 Well, I've always been fairly interested and pretty civically engaged.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 You know, I'm one of those who, if I have an issue, I'll go to the city council
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 meeting. I'll go to the school board meeting. Not all the time,
00:18:17 --> 00:18:19 but, you know, enough to, and not just to complain.
00:18:19 --> 00:18:23 I will go to thank them for doing the right things. I will, you know,
00:18:23 --> 00:18:30 I do believe in, you know, holistic engagement. You know, if you only show up
00:18:30 --> 00:18:32 to yell and scream when there's a major headline.
00:18:34 --> 00:18:37 I'm not saying that that's not powerful and that it doesn't need to be done.
00:18:38 --> 00:18:44 I am saying that if you want access to your electeds and you want them to take
00:18:44 --> 00:18:46 your word, you know, weigh your
00:18:46 --> 00:18:51 words more, being more consistent and data driven and as fair as possible.
00:18:52 --> 00:18:54 Like I try to be, even though sometimes I am just trolling the people that I'm
00:18:54 --> 00:18:58 calling. But, you know, but I also do try to call with facts and logic and whatnot.
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 And that that is so that's the thing that I've always kind of done.
00:19:03 --> 00:19:09 Once Trump won in 2024, it became clear to me that this was going to be an existential fight, and,
00:19:10 --> 00:19:15 And that's when I turned up the volume on my consumption of what was happening.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:20 You know, as I said, I was very, very supportive of Kamala Harris's race.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:24 I was like, oh, my gosh, like, I might actually tune into the Democratic Party
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 if we can clinch this. And then I was like totally frustrated,
00:19:26 --> 00:19:28 obviously, as we just described.
00:19:28 --> 00:19:32 But then I was like, regardless of how I feel about the Democratic Party right
00:19:32 --> 00:19:33 now, this is this is a war.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:42 Pretty much exactly as I predicted, the most vulnerable, transgender people,
00:19:43 --> 00:19:49 the Latin community, immigrants, whatever, insert whatever here,
00:19:49 --> 00:19:50 are the ones being crushed.
00:19:50 --> 00:19:53 Black women are facing the highest unemployment.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:57 Their unemployment rate is completely disparate with everyone else's,
00:19:57 --> 00:20:00 which we were actually beginning to close that gap. And now it's like tenfold
00:20:00 --> 00:20:02 worse than it was before.
00:20:02 --> 00:20:04 So it's truly awful.
00:20:04 --> 00:20:12 And so that's what started me getting into the nitty gritty of federal politics in particular.
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 And because my background is in,
00:20:14 --> 00:20:18 I have an MPA, a Master of Public Administration. I also run a nonprofit.
00:20:18 --> 00:20:24 So I'm used to how committees work and boards work and the process by which
00:20:24 --> 00:20:26 legislation and budgets run through.
00:20:27 --> 00:20:29 Now, obviously there were there was still a ton I had
00:20:29 --> 00:20:33 to learn like about what the parliamentarian does
00:20:33 --> 00:20:35 and like I'll get into all of these things so I really
00:20:35 --> 00:20:39 started covering the big beautiful bill and that's what kind of
00:20:39 --> 00:20:41 started the traction online was and that was I was doing it
00:20:41 --> 00:20:45 for me because I was like what the hell is this reconciliation process and as
00:20:45 --> 00:20:50 I was unpacking it in lifetime people started following along because I think
00:20:50 --> 00:20:54 that was also an interest because some creators would grab like certain major
00:20:54 --> 00:20:58 headlines about it but I was covering like every single step of like every single
00:20:58 --> 00:21:01 part of the Big Beautiful Bill, which was obviously massive thousands of pages.
00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 So that that's kind of the trajectory.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:09 It's like I always understood the process, like on a macro sense.
00:21:09 --> 00:21:14 And I've got a lot of work experience that gives me a lot of insight into how those processes work.
00:21:14 --> 00:21:19 So and, you know, insight into like call this subcommittee about this particular thing.
00:21:20 --> 00:21:25 And and then I just had to throw some gasoline on fire for this for 2025,
00:21:25 --> 00:21:29 because once it became clear that it was going to be worse than I even thought
00:21:29 --> 00:21:33 that it would be, I just couldn't sit around and do nothing.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:38 So that's how you elevated to menace status. That's how you decided,
00:21:39 --> 00:21:43 okay, why do you describe yourself as a menace?
00:21:44 --> 00:21:49 I think it was one of the calls that I made during the Big Beautiful Builder
00:21:49 --> 00:21:53 was there was a big committee vote that was going to happen the day, the next day.
00:21:53 --> 00:21:58 I sat down to do a marathon of calls, calling every single member of this Energy
00:21:58 --> 00:22:02 and Commerce Committee in the House to tell them what their Medicaid enrollment
00:22:02 --> 00:22:05 rate was in their districts, which was data that I had.
00:22:05 --> 00:22:09 I had, so I pulled up the congressional health dashboard, gave me the Medicaid
00:22:09 --> 00:22:10 enrollment rate for every district.
00:22:10 --> 00:22:13 I called every single member on that committee and was like,
00:22:13 --> 00:22:19 in case you forgot, your enrollment rate's 44% in your district or 18% or 25%.
00:22:19 --> 00:22:22 And it's this many points over the national average and all this kind of thing.
00:22:23 --> 00:22:27 And I started the video saying, watch me be a menace.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:33 And it just like, I think just it, it stuck with me.
00:22:34 --> 00:22:36 It stuck with a lot. A lot of people were like, oh my gosh, like,
00:22:37 --> 00:22:38 you know, way to be a menace.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:46 And I think that part of, you know, part of what everybody is so frustrated
00:22:46 --> 00:22:50 about when it comes to our Democratic Party, for instance,
00:22:50 --> 00:22:54 is that lack of fight that they were seeing, especially in the beginning of 2025.
00:22:54 --> 00:23:02 I think it's getting better, but that it was like, why are you not like doing
00:23:02 --> 00:23:05 more? And so that menacing kind of just, I think, became like...
00:23:07 --> 00:23:10 Well, I'm no one, right? I'm not in Congress. I can do absolutely nothing,
00:23:10 --> 00:23:17 but I can waste a bunch of y'all's time and kind of take away all of your plausible deniability as well.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:20 It's not like you didn't know because at least one person was telling you.
00:23:21 --> 00:23:26 And ever since, you know, and since I started that whole like menace campaign,
00:23:26 --> 00:23:28 I've gotten a lot of messages from people.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:32 They're all very, very sweet saying like, you know, I now call my elected state
00:23:32 --> 00:23:35 league and I menace them to hell about my particular issue.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:42 And that, I think, is so—it's the only thing that's going to get us through
00:23:42 --> 00:23:45 this is keeping our electeds on notice.
00:23:46 --> 00:23:50 And I think that's what the whole, you know, go be a menace or have fun— now
00:23:50 --> 00:23:55 I end every video or all of my congressional videos with, like, have fun being a menace.
00:23:56 --> 00:24:00 And just—I think my final point on that is that people are generally trying
00:24:00 --> 00:24:03 to— we're trying to live in a society, right? We want to be friendly to each
00:24:03 --> 00:24:04 other. We want to be kind to each other.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:08 We don't want to live in, like, fisty cuffs with our, you know,
00:24:08 --> 00:24:11 our friends and neighbors and family and even our life officials on a regular basis.
00:24:12 --> 00:24:20 But to kind of take away the idea that it's wrong to raise your voice in opposition
00:24:20 --> 00:24:23 to things that are obviously wrong, right?
00:24:23 --> 00:24:29 It's maybe you need to be a little less polite with people when we're talking
00:24:29 --> 00:24:32 about food or, you know, human rights.
00:24:33 --> 00:24:38 I don't really feel the need to, you know, couch it in, you know,
00:24:38 --> 00:24:41 oh, if you could get to this, that would be fantastic.
00:24:41 --> 00:24:43 It's like, no, I actually expect you to do your job.
00:24:43 --> 00:24:46 There's a constitution over there that you swore to uphold.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:51 So anyway, hopefully that all made sense. It's a lot of different things.
00:24:52 --> 00:24:56 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, you know, I was an elected official,
00:24:56 --> 00:24:59 so I had my Kate Powell's in my district.
00:24:59 --> 00:25:04 I had some people that, you know, one of them actually ran against me when I
00:25:04 --> 00:25:05 first ran for the position.
00:25:06 --> 00:25:10 And, and she was, you know, Eric, I need you to do this. Eric,
00:25:10 --> 00:25:14 I need you to do that. Yes, ma'am. I'll look into it and all that kind of stuff.
00:25:15 --> 00:25:17 But it, you know, and of course we didn't have the internet when,
00:25:18 --> 00:25:22 you know, it wasn't as prominent when I was elected, but.
00:25:23 --> 00:25:25 You know, it was starting to come in there.
00:25:26 --> 00:25:30 So it was starting to get the email starting to get the, you know,
00:25:30 --> 00:25:32 on the blog pages was the big thing.
00:25:32 --> 00:25:36 Right. Yeah. And so folks would all of a sudden leave stuff on,
00:25:36 --> 00:25:37 you know, say something about me on a blog.
00:25:37 --> 00:25:40 Somebody say, hey, man, they dogging you out on this blog right here.
00:25:40 --> 00:25:43 It's like, all right, let me go in and see what they're talking about, you know.
00:25:44 --> 00:25:49 But that's really what this process was set up to be.
00:25:51 --> 00:25:54 And it has evolved with technology, of course.
00:25:54 --> 00:25:59 But, you know, that I just, you know, it's just a natural thing.
00:25:59 --> 00:26:08 One of the coolest things I had was when I just got out of college and a mentor
00:26:08 --> 00:26:15 of me and my friends was hired to be a A for U.S. Senator.
00:26:17 --> 00:26:21 And in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S.
00:26:22 --> 00:26:30 Senate, each member gets like directories where you could call the actual people directly.
00:26:30 --> 00:26:34 There's a direct number for the Department of Defense, for example, or something like that.
00:26:34 --> 00:26:38 And so the Senate, they would print the same amount of books.
00:26:38 --> 00:26:43 So the senators will always have extra books because it wasn't 435 of them.
00:26:44 --> 00:26:48 So he just, it was like we went to visit the office one day and he said,
00:26:48 --> 00:26:51 hey, would y'all like this book?
00:26:52 --> 00:26:55 And he showed us, we were both looking like, oh, hell yeah. You know what I'm saying?
00:26:56 --> 00:26:59 So it was like, you know, for a little- I was killed for that hook.
00:26:59 --> 00:27:05 Yeah. And so it's like, I just, you know, once, you know, they updated it,
00:27:05 --> 00:27:08 I think they updated like every two years. It was like, hey man,
00:27:08 --> 00:27:09 they got the new updates. You know what I'm saying?
00:27:10 --> 00:27:14 And, and it doesn't really matter who the person is.
00:27:14 --> 00:27:19 Once you have those numbers, I mean, it is just, just little things in life
00:27:19 --> 00:27:22 that has been able to do, you know. And then when I got elected,
00:27:23 --> 00:27:26 I was like, bam, especially when Katrina hit.
00:27:27 --> 00:27:31 It was like I was able to call, and they thought I was a congressperson.
00:27:31 --> 00:27:34 I was bugging them so much.
00:27:34 --> 00:27:38 So I guess I was a menace in that sense.
00:27:38 --> 00:27:43 But I just think that that's beautiful what you do. The...
00:27:44 --> 00:27:50 Last thing I guess about on this is when did you decide to do this as a,
00:27:50 --> 00:27:53 be a content creator? Was that the intention or?
00:27:54 --> 00:27:58 No. You just wanted to post this stuff. How did this come about?
00:27:58 --> 00:28:04 Oh my gosh. Yeah, it did not come about because I was aiming to be a content creator.
00:28:04 --> 00:28:12 I was devastated. March, 2025, I was completely devastated by what I was seeing.
00:28:12 --> 00:28:14 So something that I talk about fairly often on my channel is
00:28:14 --> 00:28:18 that I'm half Japanese and I had family who was interned in
00:28:18 --> 00:28:21 1942 to 1944 or
00:28:21 --> 00:28:24 45 or so under order 9066 under FDR
00:28:24 --> 00:28:27 and the the
00:28:27 --> 00:28:30 moment those men got shipped off to Sukkot even though Judge Bosberg
00:28:30 --> 00:28:34 had told them to turn the planes around I was I
00:28:34 --> 00:28:36 just I hated everything like I felt like I
00:28:36 --> 00:28:39 was just screaming into the void you know like how in the
00:28:39 --> 00:28:42 you know world are we doing this again how how
00:28:42 --> 00:28:46 how how why why why and and
00:28:46 --> 00:28:48 seeing detention centers go up and like all this kind of thing I was like absolutely
00:28:48 --> 00:28:55 not absolutely not like we cannot be doing this and so I'm but I'm also like
00:28:55 --> 00:28:59 a very type a organized person and so I was like okay we fight back with the
00:28:59 --> 00:29:04 bureaucracy we fight back with with the knowledge. We understand like where the buttons are pushed.
00:29:04 --> 00:29:09 And so I started making videos mostly as kind of maybe just a way to reach out
00:29:09 --> 00:29:11 into the world and feel less alone about it.
00:29:11 --> 00:29:15 But I wasn't thinking it was like going to go anywhere, really.
00:29:15 --> 00:29:22 So I made one, though. The first one that ever popped off was calling Marjorie
00:29:22 --> 00:29:26 Taylor Greene's office because she's on the House Oversight committee and asking,
00:29:26 --> 00:29:33 where is the line item of the money that's going to El Salvador for that?
00:29:33 --> 00:29:38 We're supposedly sending these millions to El Salvador for these men that we
00:29:38 --> 00:29:40 just kidnapped and sent over there.
00:29:41 --> 00:29:46 Which line item in the budget approves this, you know, is approved for this action.
00:29:46 --> 00:29:52 I want to see it. Give me the line in our federal budget that we are allowed
00:29:52 --> 00:29:57 to send $14 million, $6 million, you know, the number changed every day, but to Naive Bukele.
00:29:58 --> 00:30:02 And everybody was like, you know, of course, every office I called about that
00:30:02 --> 00:30:03 was like shocked by that question.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:06 Like, what do you mean? I'm like, I want to know which line item was approved
00:30:06 --> 00:30:08 by Congress, you know, for this thing.
00:30:08 --> 00:30:11 And when the one that I did
00:30:11 --> 00:30:14 to mtg's office that was like went mini viral
00:30:14 --> 00:30:17 you know and people were like that's a great question why
00:30:17 --> 00:30:22 aren't we asking that question and that was sort of the beginning of under understanding
00:30:22 --> 00:30:29 that people were hungry for ways that they could just be as like menacing and
00:30:29 --> 00:30:33 awful and annoying to this administration as possible and it's like okay if
00:30:33 --> 00:30:35 you're if you're going to, you know, be on this BS,
00:30:36 --> 00:30:40 then I'm at least going to hassle you to death about the BS, right?
00:30:40 --> 00:30:45 Like, you know, I don't recall you being able to do that with my tax dollars.
00:30:46 --> 00:30:49 And so that kind of popped off a little bit.
00:30:49 --> 00:30:54 And then as I started covering like the big, beautiful bill moving through Congress
00:30:54 --> 00:30:56 and whatnot, it just started developing from there.
00:30:56 --> 00:30:59 And I realized that, again, people were just hungry for like,
00:30:59 --> 00:31:03 what is the process, you know, and how are they violating the process?
00:31:04 --> 00:31:09 And if nothing else, I'm like, well, at least I'm documenting how they're violating the process.
00:31:09 --> 00:31:11 So when we get to the part where we're out of this administration and we can
00:31:11 --> 00:31:15 start doing like tribunals or whatever, whatever we need to do to get to fix
00:31:15 --> 00:31:18 this, here's my channel.
00:31:18 --> 00:31:24 Feel free to use it for whatever evidentiary purposes you want to use it for, as goofy as that sounds.
00:31:24 --> 00:31:28 But, you know, I've called inspector generals. I've called, you know everybody
00:31:28 --> 00:31:32 and I've I've had some doomers in my comments who are like you know they don't
00:31:32 --> 00:31:36 care they're breaking the law anyway and whatever and my thing is like I'm not
00:31:36 --> 00:31:38 doing it for now I'm doing it for 2029.
00:31:39 --> 00:31:44 There's a new president and a new congress and a
00:31:44 --> 00:31:46 new attorney general right like when there's i want
00:31:46 --> 00:31:49 the record to show i want i want the record to be there i want
00:31:49 --> 00:31:52 there to be the trail of all the
00:31:52 --> 00:31:55 things and so that when we have you know my fantasy is
00:31:55 --> 00:31:58 that tish james out of new york will be the next u.s attorney
00:31:58 --> 00:32:01 general can be like here you go have a
00:32:01 --> 00:32:04 great time prosecuting everybody me
00:32:04 --> 00:32:07 so whoever kamala if you hear
00:32:07 --> 00:32:11 me like and you become president in 2028 i that's
00:32:11 --> 00:32:14 that's my suggestion for you all anyway but
00:32:14 --> 00:32:18 yeah that that it was totally an accident and now it's like it's just ballooned
00:32:18 --> 00:32:22 into this thing i still work a full-time job that i love very much and so i'm
00:32:22 --> 00:32:31 balancing both sort of but yeah that's that's the story yeah so how does humor
00:32:31 --> 00:32:34 help convey a political message?
00:32:35 --> 00:32:40 I, you know, it's funny. Sometimes I'm just raging, but humor,
00:32:40 --> 00:32:42 I think, it's very disarming.
00:32:43 --> 00:32:49 It gets behind people's automatic knee-jerk responses. And also so few,
00:32:50 --> 00:32:54 I think more politicians are getting better at this, but so few politicians are humorous.
00:32:54 --> 00:32:59 And so people do not expect to hear political messages through humor.
00:32:59 --> 00:33:02 But I mean, if you look at the history of any political anything,
00:33:02 --> 00:33:04 the most effective messaging was.
00:33:05 --> 00:33:10 Funny you know it was or it was sarcastic right you know i do a lot of sarcasm
00:33:10 --> 00:33:13 there's a lot of like i'm trying to understand um i have a call that's popping
00:33:13 --> 00:33:17 off right now where i was i'm talking to the mailing company who'd sent out
00:33:17 --> 00:33:19 all this propaganda about our redistricting vote.
00:33:20 --> 00:33:23 And i was being sarcastic and like oh it's like i'm
00:33:23 --> 00:33:28 trying to understand why this happened and why you didn't do your job and what
00:33:28 --> 00:33:30 you're gonna do to rectify this don't actually think that they're that interested
00:33:30 --> 00:33:36 in rectifying it but it was funny made me laugh you know and And it's also it's
00:33:36 --> 00:33:40 a great way to deal with fear as well for for someone who is getting into advocacy
00:33:40 --> 00:33:41 and activism and whatnot.
00:33:42 --> 00:33:46 That ability to laugh at yourself, that ability to laugh at the other person.
00:33:47 --> 00:33:50 Amanda Nelson with Amanda's Mile Takes, she's a good friend now.
00:33:50 --> 00:33:55 And she, I think, is the queen of using humor on these people of just like laughing
00:33:55 --> 00:33:57 in their faces of like, oh, my gosh, you look ridiculous.
00:33:58 --> 00:34:02 So when someone is like terrified of
00:34:02 --> 00:34:04 calling their representative or things are going to
00:34:04 --> 00:34:08 be on a list somewhere using that humor of like
00:34:08 --> 00:34:11 but they're actually incredibly incompetent and stupid so if you think they're
00:34:11 --> 00:34:15 going to be able to even find your address in the you know in this in this time
00:34:15 --> 00:34:20 and and come get you um when they have they can't even keep a lawyer you know
00:34:20 --> 00:34:25 in in office long enough to sue the people that they are trying to sue you know
00:34:25 --> 00:34:27 like let's just let's just have some perspective.
00:34:28 --> 00:34:30 So it's good for perspective taking. It's good for reducing fear.
00:34:31 --> 00:34:35 And it's also just good for staying power. Like, this is exhausting.
00:34:36 --> 00:34:39 Like, every day I wake up and I have to remind myself, like,
00:34:39 --> 00:34:44 we're doing the right things. This is the right thing to do. Get up and do it. So.
00:34:44 --> 00:34:49 Yeah, I watched that video when you were going against it.
00:34:49 --> 00:34:55 So for the listeners, There's literally a mailer going out to the people of
00:34:55 --> 00:35:02 Virginia dealing with this referendum about redistricting that invokes the Ku Klux Klan in some way.
00:35:03 --> 00:35:06 And so Kate called the people...
00:35:07 --> 00:35:11 Who actually sent the mailer out, the company that distributed.
00:35:11 --> 00:35:16 If you have not seen that video, you need to watch it because it's just,
00:35:17 --> 00:35:22 you know, but as an example of what you do and the fact that you handled it
00:35:22 --> 00:35:24 in a humorous way, you know,
00:35:24 --> 00:35:31 as the Brits would say, in a witty or clever way that, that makes it like you're
00:35:31 --> 00:35:33 mad, but then you're like, good for you.
00:35:34 --> 00:35:36 You know what I'm saying? It's like, let me call these people.
00:35:36 --> 00:35:41 You know what I'm saying? I mean, that's, I think the way that you do things,
00:35:42 --> 00:35:44 you know, it brings people in.
00:35:44 --> 00:35:48 If you were, because there was this black woman on Twitter, I forget her name
00:35:48 --> 00:35:54 now, but when she first started, it was just like, she was making good points,
00:35:55 --> 00:35:57 but she was just angry all the time.
00:35:57 --> 00:35:59 And so she had some followers, but then I don't know if somebody,
00:36:00 --> 00:36:06 or she cracked a joke about something. She just started going in and just like, these stupid people.
00:36:06 --> 00:36:10 And all of a sudden, her stuff started taking off. And so she picked up on that.
00:36:10 --> 00:36:16 And so now she's created this angry persona that you can laugh at as opposed
00:36:16 --> 00:36:18 to just being mad, mad, mad.
00:36:20 --> 00:36:26 And now it's entertaining and people pay attention to her. But I just believe that you have to be...
00:36:27 --> 00:36:33 You know, humorous to a degree. I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm socially funny.
00:36:33 --> 00:36:37 Like I'm with my friends and all that stuff. But when I do this,
00:36:37 --> 00:36:42 you know, I might crack a joke or something, but I'm, I'm not that kind of person.
00:36:42 --> 00:36:46 But if I get on there, I'm going to say what I got to say, but I really admire
00:36:46 --> 00:36:51 you and others that can invoke humor into these discussions.
00:36:51 --> 00:36:55 And to be fair, there are, there are videos of me calling and like literally
00:36:55 --> 00:37:00 just screaming, like there there have been a few where i i just kind of melt
00:37:00 --> 00:37:02 down i you know i think that,
00:37:03 --> 00:37:09 feeling is good it's sometimes it sucks it's painful what what's going on is painful.
00:37:10 --> 00:37:17 And but i do think that the the best way through that is through it not trying
00:37:17 --> 00:37:22 to sidestep it not try to be so stoic all the time you know yeah i've got the
00:37:22 --> 00:37:24 data i've got the numbers but sometimes I'm just like,
00:37:25 --> 00:37:27 you know what you're doing.
00:37:27 --> 00:37:31 And I'm going to make it clear to you that you know what you're doing and that
00:37:31 --> 00:37:35 you're hurting people. You are hurting people right now and on purpose.
00:37:36 --> 00:37:39 And there's one call where I was calling the Speaker Johnson's office and I
00:37:39 --> 00:37:46 was not stoic and I was not funny. I just had a complete meltdown on the person
00:37:46 --> 00:37:48 because they were trying to tell me Speaker Johnson was doing his best.
00:37:48 --> 00:37:50 And I was like, he is doing his best.
00:37:51 --> 00:37:57 And I was just I was shaking mad and also this the the woman on the other end
00:37:57 --> 00:38:01 of the phone I really wanted to call her a little girl not out of like her being
00:38:01 --> 00:38:03 childish or anything but she sounded so young,
00:38:03 --> 00:38:09 and I have very little confidence in that office as far as like how a young
00:38:09 --> 00:38:15 woman would be able to survive in it and I was just like nah honey if if you
00:38:15 --> 00:38:18 were my little sister right now I'd be like get out, run.
00:38:19 --> 00:38:22 So some of it was also just me being like.
00:38:23 --> 00:38:26 Someone needs to tell you the truth, right? Like, if you're in this bubble,
00:38:27 --> 00:38:27 if you're in this whatever,
00:38:28 --> 00:38:32 if you're, like, the daughter of some donor or whatever, and you don't ever
00:38:32 --> 00:38:35 hear anything different, you know, who's gonna, I'm gonna tell you now,
00:38:36 --> 00:38:40 you know, this man is evil, and you need to, like,
00:38:40 --> 00:38:44 I think I said something to her, like, and you need to really examine why you're even there.
00:38:45 --> 00:38:48 And, you know, a lot of people liked it.
00:38:48 --> 00:38:51 Some people criticized it. Some people were, like, you sound unhinged and
00:38:51 --> 00:38:54 i was like yeah i i was
00:38:54 --> 00:38:58 unhinged i i was unhinged but i think
00:38:58 --> 00:39:01 i also still remained clear throughout of
00:39:01 --> 00:39:04 like what i was unhinged about in this particular case it was about a hearing
00:39:04 --> 00:39:06 they were holding a hearing in the middle of the night for the big beautiful
00:39:06 --> 00:39:09 bill because they were still trying to skulk around and pretend like you know
00:39:09 --> 00:39:16 they weren't doing exactly what they were doing and and i i i did i did apologize
00:39:16 --> 00:39:19 to her at the end i could tell she was like on the verge of tears.
00:39:19 --> 00:39:26 And I was like, I'm, you know, I'm not mad at you, but you have to think about
00:39:26 --> 00:39:28 what you're doing right now with this man.
00:39:28 --> 00:39:32 And that is a policy that I do try to emphasize to everybody is like generally,
00:39:33 --> 00:39:37 unless they're like this call you were just describing with the mailing company
00:39:37 --> 00:39:38 where they're calling me crazy and whatnot.
00:39:38 --> 00:39:42 Generally, though, I try to be very, especially to the interns in the congressional offices,
00:39:42 --> 00:39:45 try to be super kind because, you know,
00:39:45 --> 00:39:48 they're they're not the problem like they're not like me
00:39:48 --> 00:39:50 screaming at the you know
00:39:50 --> 00:39:54 woefully underpaid if not completely unpaid intern for
00:39:54 --> 00:40:01 speaker johnson is not generally the way that i want to do things but you know
00:40:01 --> 00:40:04 but sometimes also like i said there's there's rage and they also need to hear
00:40:04 --> 00:40:08 the rage well just look at it as an intervention right because it's like somebody
00:40:08 --> 00:40:12 you know you you know they might have been like true believers and then you
00:40:12 --> 00:40:13 get this call that's like,
00:40:14 --> 00:40:17 this changes everything that I've ever thought in life.
00:40:17 --> 00:40:20 You know what I'm saying? You might, you might get, you might save a life actually politically.
00:40:21 --> 00:40:24 Let's, let's, let's take a detour real quick.
00:40:25 --> 00:40:29 Your background is in consulting, running, and fundraising for nonprofits.
00:40:29 --> 00:40:34 How much of a struggle has it been for community-based nonprofits to operate
00:40:34 --> 00:40:39 and raise funds during this Trump decade? Yeah, it's been awful.
00:40:41 --> 00:40:45 The constant trope since Reagan, of course, has been like less,
00:40:45 --> 00:40:48 less, less. There's so much waste. There's all, you know, waste,
00:40:48 --> 00:40:49 fraud, and abuse, right?
00:40:50 --> 00:40:55 And to this, I would say two things. One is, especially when it comes to like
00:40:55 --> 00:40:58 private nonprofits operating in the community, the vast majority are having
00:40:58 --> 00:41:01 to do what they're doing because the government refuses to have robust resources
00:41:01 --> 00:41:04 like health care and food. Period.
00:41:05 --> 00:41:10 So if you don't like having a bunch of organizations running around trying to
00:41:10 --> 00:41:13 fill this need, then fill the need with the tax dollars, which we have more
00:41:13 --> 00:41:18 than enough of if we would actually tax people fairly, as in billionaires.
00:41:20 --> 00:41:24 Second the notion that you
00:41:24 --> 00:41:29 know a public either a public agency or a non-profit is just running around
00:41:29 --> 00:41:35 trying to perpetuate fraud like that that's the majority of of the reality is
00:41:35 --> 00:41:41 so woefully false it is very frustrating to listen to that from either party
00:41:41 --> 00:41:43 because both parties will engage in that rhetoric.
00:41:45 --> 00:41:49 And I just, it makes me want to rip my hair out because to my first point,
00:41:49 --> 00:41:53 we're doing the services that you refuse to do at the government level,
00:41:53 --> 00:41:57 mostly federal, some state, some local, though I feel like the further down
00:41:57 --> 00:42:00 you get, the better you get at being able to pinpoint need.
00:42:02 --> 00:42:06 But it's just it's just not it's I can tell you from personal experience,
00:42:06 --> 00:42:12 it is working with a shoestring to do the best you can and know and still realizing
00:42:12 --> 00:42:14 that you still aren't serving everybody that you want to serve.
00:42:14 --> 00:42:18 You're still not reaching everybody who needs what you have or what you could provide.
00:42:18 --> 00:42:24 So I really am tired of public servants or even people who are working in nonprofits
00:42:24 --> 00:42:31 that are providing a public service being denigrated as like lazy and fraudsters and wasteful.
00:42:32 --> 00:42:37 It's the reality for the vast majority is so far beyond that.
00:42:37 --> 00:42:41 And if like if I'm wasteful running a half million dollar nonprofit,
00:42:41 --> 00:42:47 you know, that employs people and, you know, does does all these great services or whatnot,
00:42:47 --> 00:42:52 then what is Elon Musk, who is like getting billions of dollars to literally
00:42:52 --> 00:42:55 explode the money in the sky for fun?
00:42:56 --> 00:43:00 What is that? Like, someone please explain to me how this is different,
00:43:00 --> 00:43:05 you know, or like how that is, that's progress and economic development or whatever,
00:43:06 --> 00:43:07 though it has created no jobs.
00:43:07 --> 00:43:10 It's technology that usually goes nowhere.
00:43:11 --> 00:43:17 But me providing direct services to human beings or to animals or whatever,
00:43:17 --> 00:43:21 the environment, so that we can have air to breathe and water to drink or whatever.
00:43:21 --> 00:43:27 That's wasteful. So it's been awful since way before Trump.
00:43:27 --> 00:43:29 Like most things, Trump has put it on steroids.
00:43:30 --> 00:43:36 And I really, but I also, you know, refuse to let the Democratic Party slip
00:43:36 --> 00:43:42 out of accountability for this because that neoliberal era was cemented by Clinton.
00:43:42 --> 00:43:46 You know, like as far as like, oh, this is a bipartisan thing, right?
00:43:47 --> 00:43:50 This economic theory, the free markets and, you know, job creators,
00:43:50 --> 00:43:54 as in, you know, we can't tax the rich, all of those things that has really
00:43:54 --> 00:43:58 created a situation where, again, you have organizations just trying to fill
00:43:58 --> 00:44:00 basic needs because the government refuses to do so.
00:44:00 --> 00:44:04 And then they never have enough money to do it. And then we slash budgets even
00:44:04 --> 00:44:07 more so that all that block granting that comes down from the federal side is
00:44:07 --> 00:44:09 less and less and less every single year.
00:44:10 --> 00:44:13 And yeah, it's over it.
00:44:13 --> 00:44:18 We need a different direction. And it needs to come from the Democratic Party in a major, major way.
00:44:18 --> 00:44:24 I despise FDR as a person and for a lot of things, but his labor secretary,
00:44:24 --> 00:44:26 Francis Perkins, was the New Deal mastermind.
00:44:26 --> 00:44:30 And that right there is the energy that we need from the Democratic Party.
00:44:30 --> 00:44:32 And we need it like we need it right now.
00:44:32 --> 00:44:36 We need it this year into 20, you know, into campaigning for 2028.
00:44:36 --> 00:44:38 That has to be the attitude.
00:44:40 --> 00:44:47 Talk about Tidewater Arts Outreach. Yeah. So we're now Arts Connect Virginia.
00:44:49 --> 00:44:56 And yeah, we're literally changing our name like right now. And but just I'm
00:44:56 --> 00:44:57 going to do my disclaimer from the beginning.
00:44:57 --> 00:45:01 The views of Kate Powell, Kate for the People, are not the views of Virginia
00:45:01 --> 00:45:03 when she is running it at that.
00:45:03 --> 00:45:10 But our organization is, you know, what we do is use creative arts interventions
00:45:10 --> 00:45:14 to combat loneliness for primarily older, but also other isolated adults,
00:45:14 --> 00:45:16 like adults who are experiencing a disability,
00:45:17 --> 00:45:18 chronic health challenge, or,
00:45:19 --> 00:45:23 you know, have more scarce socioeconomic resources, that kind of thing.
00:45:24 --> 00:45:28 Loneliness, according to the Surgeon General under Biden, this is one of a great
00:45:28 --> 00:45:33 policy platform, is loneliness is extraordinarily deadly. It's more deadly than chronic smoking.
00:45:34 --> 00:45:36 It increases mortality by like.
00:45:37 --> 00:45:42 34% or something. So especially for people who are experiencing like other comorbidities,
00:45:43 --> 00:45:45 like if you're experiencing a chronic health condition, for instance,
00:45:45 --> 00:45:47 and you are also lonely, your mortality shoots up.
00:45:48 --> 00:45:51 And I think we've always known that as people, like anecdotally,
00:45:51 --> 00:45:55 we kind of know like, hey, if we're feeling like crap and we have no one to
00:45:55 --> 00:45:57 turn to, we're going to die sooner.
00:45:58 --> 00:46:00 And so it's a public health crisis.
00:46:01 --> 00:46:05 And it has been since before the pandemic, it obviously got completely and totally
00:46:05 --> 00:46:06 exacerbated in the pandemic.
00:46:07 --> 00:46:11 Post-pandemic, it's worse for people with comorbidities.
00:46:11 --> 00:46:16 So older adults who have chronic health challenges, chronic mental health challenges,
00:46:16 --> 00:46:20 or who are underemployed or unemployed, you know, lack mobility,
00:46:20 --> 00:46:23 transportation, that kind of thing, they are experiencing more isolation than
00:46:23 --> 00:46:24 they were before the pandemic.
00:46:25 --> 00:46:29 Where arts comes in is that the science is very, very clear that arts interventions,
00:46:29 --> 00:46:32 especially group arts interventions, which is what we specialize in,
00:46:32 --> 00:46:34 is very good at combating loneliness.
00:46:35 --> 00:46:39 So social connectedness shoots way up when people are participating in visual
00:46:39 --> 00:46:42 arts classes or music performances or that kind of thing.
00:46:42 --> 00:46:45 So it's, yeah, I love my work. It has nothing to do with politics,
00:46:46 --> 00:46:49 which is awesome right now, especially.
00:46:49 --> 00:46:52 And it's a dream job. I I love it so much.
00:46:52 --> 00:47:00 And yeah, I am very excited to keep growing that model because it's very evidence-based
00:47:00 --> 00:47:03 as people, anyone who knows me, whether through social media or in real life
00:47:03 --> 00:47:05 or whatever, they know that I love the data.
00:47:06 --> 00:47:10 So it's very evidence-based, but it's also just, it's very joyful. It feels good.
00:47:10 --> 00:47:15 It's like, it's an intervention that's like, oh, I'm like having fun with this, right?
00:47:16 --> 00:47:22 We've got the social workers, God bless them, in like foster care and housing and whatever.
00:47:22 --> 00:47:27 That can be such a slog. And like I said, God bless them because we need them and all of that.
00:47:27 --> 00:47:34 But I love what I do because it gives us the ability to make change while also...
00:47:35 --> 00:47:42 Advancing, like, just the ability to feel joy and upliftment,
00:47:42 --> 00:47:46 that's not a word, but I'm going to make it up now, in everyday life. So, that's great.
00:47:46 --> 00:47:51 Yeah, that's great. That's cool. All right. So, we're going to close it out,
00:47:51 --> 00:47:54 but I want you to do a couple of things.
00:47:54 --> 00:48:01 What issues or what issue or issues do you want the listeners to be a menace about right now?
00:48:02 --> 00:48:05 Voting. Voting access for anyone.
00:48:05 --> 00:48:11 I was talking to someone the other day and I said, if we cannot flip at least
00:48:11 --> 00:48:13 one chamber of commerce in the 2026
00:48:13 --> 00:48:19 midterms, then this damage will be generational versus just like years.
00:48:19 --> 00:48:20 Right. We know it's going to
00:48:20 --> 00:48:24 take a long time to repair what has been broken, not just this past year.
00:48:24 --> 00:48:29 Again, we've been on a trajectory towards Trumpism for a while as a country,
00:48:29 --> 00:48:36 but we're looking at the difference between I never get to see real repair of
00:48:36 --> 00:48:41 this in my lifetime versus being able to make some significant repair,
00:48:41 --> 00:48:45 especially into 2028 and then certainly with a new administration.
00:48:46 --> 00:48:52 If we have to do two more years of a trifecta, like, I can't,
00:48:52 --> 00:48:54 I just, I can't, I can't even accept that as a reality right now.
00:48:54 --> 00:48:57 So I'm doing everything in my power, advancing, you know, I'm interviewing midterm
00:48:57 --> 00:48:58 candidates, I'm pushing it.
00:48:58 --> 00:49:01 But one thing that I'm really pushing right now is voting access.
00:49:01 --> 00:49:05 So we need to be pushing against any rumblings of the SAVE Act.
00:49:05 --> 00:49:08 As far-fetched as I think it is that the Senate would break the filibuster and
00:49:08 --> 00:49:12 actually pass it, we need to keep telling them, call your senator every day
00:49:12 --> 00:49:16 and be like, I know what the filibuster is, and no, you will not get rid of it.
00:49:16 --> 00:49:20 Call John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, who would be in charge of such
00:49:20 --> 00:49:23 an effort, and remind him that you know what the filibuster is and that you
00:49:23 --> 00:49:24 have no desire for him to get rid of it.
00:49:25 --> 00:49:29 Then also make plans to vote not only for yourself, but for your neighbors.
00:49:29 --> 00:49:33 Who needs a ride to the polls or who needs an absentee ballot needs help getting
00:49:33 --> 00:49:35 that? Who needs to get registered?
00:49:36 --> 00:49:40 Have you checked your registration recently to make sure that it wasn't purged for some reason?
00:49:41 --> 00:49:44 These are the things that we need to be doing. We need to make 2026 the year
00:49:44 --> 00:49:48 of electoral participation, like in just all kinds of things.
00:49:48 --> 00:49:51 I really I want people to laser focus on that.
00:49:51 --> 00:49:55 So and that's why I'm like tearing things up about like redistricting and like
00:49:55 --> 00:50:01 all this kind of stuff is anything that is going to lessen anyone's voting voice
00:50:01 --> 00:50:03 is extraordinarily dangerous right now.
00:50:03 --> 00:50:08 It is it is the most dangerous part because the Republicans cannot win on policy.
00:50:09 --> 00:50:13 Obviously, like look outside. They cannot win. They are they have the worst,
00:50:13 --> 00:50:18 worst approvals ever, ever, period.
00:50:19 --> 00:50:23 So that's what we need to do, though, is now that they know that they're cornered,
00:50:23 --> 00:50:26 it's an animal cornered, right?
00:50:26 --> 00:50:29 And an animal cornered is very dangerous, which is why you're seeing what you're
00:50:29 --> 00:50:32 seeing as far as electoral suppression, redistricting, and all that kind of
00:50:32 --> 00:50:35 thing. And in Virginia, vote yes in the redistricting amendment.
00:50:35 --> 00:50:38 My God, please, please, please, please, please, please do that.
00:50:39 --> 00:50:44 It's a temporary measure. It snaps back after 2030. It's not like Texas. This ain't Texas.
00:50:44 --> 00:50:49 Please vote. All right, finish this sentence. I have hope because.
00:50:52 --> 00:50:58 Let's go full circle. I have hope because we have been here before in different
00:50:58 --> 00:51:03 ways, in different degrees, and certainly people of color have been here before.
00:51:05 --> 00:51:10 They give me hope, whether they're living or not, every single time.
00:51:10 --> 00:51:15 I am so inspired, particularly by black women all the time for how they show
00:51:15 --> 00:51:21 up and show out and you just saw it with jasmine crockett's race right like.
00:51:23 --> 00:51:26 They don't care if everyone's telling them it's a losing battle.
00:51:26 --> 00:51:28 They're like, maybe it is. And this is the right thing to do.
00:51:29 --> 00:51:33 I don't care, you know, if my odds are long.
00:51:34 --> 00:51:42 And because they show up with this energy, they accomplish far more than,
00:51:42 --> 00:51:44 you know, than anyone thought.
00:51:44 --> 00:51:49 And yes, I wish it was a victory every single time. I wish it was like every
00:51:49 --> 00:51:54 single time someone that that the effort was proportional to the outcome every single time. Right.
00:51:54 --> 00:51:58 Because if it was if that were the case, you know, if it was really about effort,
00:51:58 --> 00:52:01 not about nepotism, not about oligarchy, not about all those other things,
00:52:01 --> 00:52:05 then we would obviously have dramatically different results and a dramatically
00:52:05 --> 00:52:07 different government. But it's not, unfortunately.
00:52:07 --> 00:52:10 We have those forces rising against us.
00:52:10 --> 00:52:16 And yet, I have hope because we have seen that in the long run,
00:52:16 --> 00:52:18 in the long game, those efforts pay off.
00:52:18 --> 00:52:21 Meanwhile, the people who cut corners, who destroyed things,
00:52:21 --> 00:52:26 who went for the cheapest, fastest, easiest win, you know, the big,
00:52:26 --> 00:52:30 beautiful bill or whatever, they end up losing in the end, ultimately.
00:52:30 --> 00:52:37 And so I will remain steadfast in that even, again, as I stare down the barrel
00:52:37 --> 00:52:41 of the midterms like, oh, my God, I don't know if I can handle it if we can't
00:52:41 --> 00:52:43 have at least one victory there.
00:52:44 --> 00:52:48 Well, Kate Powell, I greatly appreciate you taking this time.
00:52:48 --> 00:52:53 If people want to reach out to you, if people want to find out more about your nonprofit work.
00:52:54 --> 00:52:57 Can they do that yeah so obviously i'm all over social
00:52:57 --> 00:53:00 media so feel free to dm me i i am actually pretty
00:53:00 --> 00:53:02 good at checking my dms even even the requests even the
00:53:02 --> 00:53:05 hidden requests like sometimes the way like instagram and
00:53:05 --> 00:53:10 whatever filters things is is a little annoying but i will i will find you i've
00:53:10 --> 00:53:14 gotten messages on substack or whatever and i'll redirect you into whatever
00:53:14 --> 00:53:18 communication channel i need to in order for us to continue the conversation
00:53:18 --> 00:53:21 but i'm very open i've had i've had people reach out and say hey can we have
00:53:21 --> 00:53:24 a private conversation about whatever i'm always happy to chat.
00:53:25 --> 00:53:27 Because that's where I think the groundwork actually happens.
00:53:27 --> 00:53:29 I don't want to be one of those perpetually online people.
00:53:30 --> 00:53:35 That sounds counterintuitive since I am creating content and an influencer,
00:53:35 --> 00:53:38 even though I hate that word, and all this kind of thing.
00:53:39 --> 00:53:44 But the way I try to avoid falling into the trap of just being an online presence
00:53:44 --> 00:53:47 is connecting with people in quote-unquote real life, even if it's a virtual
00:53:47 --> 00:53:51 meeting like how you and I are talking right now. It helps me touch grads.
00:53:52 --> 00:53:55 You know, like, this is the real world. This is a real person with a real issue.
00:53:55 --> 00:54:00 And they're asking me about, you know, how do I talk to my friends about this?
00:54:00 --> 00:54:01 Or how do I, you know, whatever.
00:54:01 --> 00:54:05 I love to talk to people. So, yeah, DM me, and I'm happy.
00:54:05 --> 00:54:08 Again, if I need to redirect you into a different communication channel,
00:54:08 --> 00:54:11 I will. But yeah, I'm pretty accessible.
00:54:12 --> 00:54:16 Well, thank you for coming on, and thank you for what you're doing.
00:54:17 --> 00:54:22 I greatly appreciate it. Uh, it's, you know, I tell people all the time.
00:54:23 --> 00:54:28 Know, I'm really honored to have this format where I can talk to people that
00:54:28 --> 00:54:30 are really, really doing good things.
00:54:30 --> 00:54:33 And I think you're one of the people that are really, really doing something
00:54:33 --> 00:54:42 amazing by encouraging people to get engaged and showing them how to do it and doing it in a very,
00:54:42 --> 00:54:46 very serious but lighthearted way at the same time.
00:54:46 --> 00:54:48 I just like your style.
00:54:48 --> 00:54:53 I like the way that you do things. And you have an open invitation to come back.
00:54:54 --> 00:54:57 Anybody that's been on the show before has an open invitation.
00:54:57 --> 00:55:00 So if there's something that's pressing and you say, Eric, I need to talk about
00:55:00 --> 00:55:03 it, just feel free to come back and we'll make that happen.
00:55:03 --> 00:55:07 But again, I just thank you for being you and thank you again for coming on.
00:55:08 --> 00:55:12 Oh, thank you so much, Erik. And thank you for your own service in the public sector.
00:55:13 --> 00:55:16 And I always try to say that to public servants, whether past or present,
00:55:16 --> 00:55:18 like thank you for your service because it is one.
00:55:18 --> 00:55:22 And thank you for the platform today I really appreciate being seen and heard,
00:55:22 --> 00:55:25 Alright guys, we're going to catch you all on the other side.
00:55:44 --> 00:55:50 All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Gloria Browne-Marshall.
00:55:50 --> 00:55:57 Gloria Browne-Marshall is professor of constitutional law at CUNY's John Jay
00:55:57 --> 00:56:02 College, an award-winning writer, a playwright, and a legal commentator.
00:56:02 --> 00:56:08 She has litigated cases for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Southern Poverty
00:56:08 --> 00:56:10 Law Center, and Community Legal Services.
00:56:11 --> 00:56:15 Her previous works include She Took Justice, The Black Woman,
00:56:15 --> 00:56:18 Law and Power, and The Voting Rights War.
00:56:18 --> 00:56:23 A frequent commentator on CNN, NPR, MSNBC,
00:56:24 --> 00:56:29 Browne-Marshall has received numerous accolades, including the 2024 American
00:56:29 --> 00:56:36 Bar Association Civil Gavel Award and an Emmy Award as the writer and host of Your Democracy,
00:56:36 --> 00:56:39 an animated series about the U.S. Constitution.
00:56:39 --> 00:56:44 Her new book, which we will discuss during the interview, is called A Protest
00:56:44 --> 00:56:46 History of the United States.
00:56:47 --> 00:56:51 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:56:51 --> 00:56:55 on this podcast, Gloria Browne-Marshall.
00:57:07 --> 00:57:12 All right. The Honorable Gloria Browne-Marshall. How are you doing, sister? You doing good?
00:57:12 --> 00:57:17 I'm doing very well. Feeling blessed today. Well, I'm blessed to have you to come on.
00:57:18 --> 00:57:22 You have been one of the warriors out there.
00:57:22 --> 00:57:26 And then you're doing something that I love is that you're trying to teach other
00:57:26 --> 00:57:28 warriors over at the college.
00:57:29 --> 00:57:32 I admire anybody that wants to teach.
00:57:34 --> 00:57:41 It's just, I think it's so underrated, but it is so essential that we mentor
00:57:41 --> 00:57:44 our young people to carry the
00:57:44 --> 00:57:48 mantle and to do stuff, whether it's in an academic setting or otherwise.
00:57:48 --> 00:57:51 I just think it's important. So I commend you just for that.
00:57:52 --> 00:57:56 But I also commend you for this book, A Protest History of the United States.
00:57:57 --> 00:58:02 I think that's something that that needed to be in this day and age.
00:58:02 --> 00:58:06 I think it's really, really apropos that somebody kind of put that out there.
00:58:07 --> 00:58:09 And so I want to thank you for that.
00:58:10 --> 00:58:14 So let's go ahead and get started. As always, I kind of do a couple of icebreakers
00:58:14 --> 00:58:16 to get the conversation going.
00:58:17 --> 00:58:20 So the first icebreaker, I want you to respond to this quote.
00:58:21 --> 00:58:26 From its conception, the United States of America has had a split personality.
00:58:26 --> 00:58:31 This nation sees liberty through the jaundiced eyes of capitalism,
00:58:32 --> 00:58:37 speaking of freedom with one breath and crushing civil liberties with the next.
00:58:37 --> 00:58:40 Give me your thoughts on that quote. That's great writing.
00:58:41 --> 00:58:43 That's my first thought.
00:58:44 --> 00:58:51 Brilliant ideas. But it's because the United States was formed from two different
00:58:51 --> 00:58:58 philosophies. and we don't know which one is going to be at the wheel at any given time.
00:58:59 --> 00:59:03 Right now, we're looking at the capitalist mindset of the country.
00:59:03 --> 00:59:08 So I look at it, if you take our full name, the United States of America,
00:59:08 --> 00:59:10 and you think of the United States as the capitalist side,
00:59:11 --> 00:59:17 the empire building side, and then you look at America as the Statue of Liberty
00:59:17 --> 00:59:24 representative to symbolically give us your tempest toss, longing to breathe free.
00:59:24 --> 00:59:28 So we have those two very different philosophies in one country.
00:59:29 --> 00:59:32 And we never know what we're dealing with at any given time,
00:59:32 --> 00:59:33 but it's been that way since the beginning.
00:59:33 --> 00:59:36 I always like to say I don't want to hurt people's feelings,
00:59:36 --> 00:59:38 but we did not begin our country with the pilgrims.
00:59:39 --> 00:59:43 Repeat, our country does not begin with the pilgrims.
00:59:43 --> 00:59:49 The country begins in 1607 in Virginia in what was the Jamestown settlement.
00:59:49 --> 00:59:53 King James, the same King James version of the Bible, King James,
00:59:53 --> 00:59:59 gave a business charter to English businessmen to have a colony created in the
00:59:59 --> 01:00:00 New World, which is North America.
01:00:01 --> 01:00:03 That colony began in 1607.
01:00:04 --> 01:00:08 So when we start thinking about where the country began. It was from that business
01:00:08 --> 01:00:12 prospect that we were going to have this product come out of the colony that
01:00:12 --> 01:00:17 would make the king and the monarchy rich, which in that product became tobacco.
01:00:17 --> 01:00:22 But we also had people in those same ships coming to the new world who wanted
01:00:22 --> 01:00:26 to get out of the caste system that was set up in Europe.
01:00:26 --> 01:00:29 And they wanted to have a different life and they were willing to risk their
01:00:29 --> 01:00:34 lives because sailing by ship was very risky to go to this new world and start
01:00:34 --> 01:00:38 new, to have freedom, to have liberty and begin a new, fresh life.
01:00:38 --> 01:00:43 So we have those two same ideals in the same ship that starts the country.
01:00:44 --> 01:00:50 And that's 1607. By 1619, we have the introduction of Africans into this whole paradigm.
01:00:51 --> 01:00:53 Then at the same time, the land
01:00:53 --> 01:00:58 they arrived on was the Powhatan Native Americans, the indigenous people.
01:00:58 --> 01:01:02 The Angolans, who were the Africans, had their own civilization,
01:01:02 --> 01:01:08 own religion, own government, everything, when they were kidnapped and brought to this new world.
01:01:09 --> 01:01:13 And the Powhatan Indians, indigenous, had their own government,
01:01:13 --> 01:01:15 their own culture, their own religion, their own art.
01:01:16 --> 01:01:23 So you have all these cultures in one place. So even our diversity began as early as the 1600s.
01:01:24 --> 01:01:30 The Plymouth Rock Mayflower episode, that was 1620. That was after the Africans
01:01:30 --> 01:01:31 had already arrived in Virginia.
01:01:32 --> 01:01:36 So we were here before the Mayflower landed. So when you think about.
01:01:37 --> 01:01:41 The country is so confused and the mentality is so conflicted,
01:01:41 --> 01:01:45 the dual personality, are we about liberty, the people in the bottom of the
01:01:45 --> 01:01:48 ship, or are we about money, the people in the top of the ship?
01:01:48 --> 01:01:51 And this is the way it is right now. It's been the way the whole time.
01:01:51 --> 01:01:55 And that gives rise to protest because the people in the bottom of the ship
01:01:55 --> 01:01:58 see the rights of the others and say, why can't we have that?
01:01:59 --> 01:02:03 Why are we being treated this way? We don't want to work the hours you want
01:02:03 --> 01:02:08 us to work, to live only where you want us to live, to be undereducated. We want things too.
01:02:09 --> 01:02:15 And so that protest is now what has created basically the idea of the country,
01:02:15 --> 01:02:18 that most of the rights we have came by protest.
01:02:18 --> 01:02:23 And even we're in the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
01:02:23 --> 01:02:25 and that's the protest document.
01:02:25 --> 01:02:27 So this nation will be 250 years old.
01:02:27 --> 01:02:32 Please note, 250 years old, because we begin the nation with the Declaration
01:02:32 --> 01:02:36 of Independence, even though we begin the history of the nation back in 1607.
01:02:36 --> 01:02:41 Right. And those Angolans, as you aptly pointed out in the book,
01:02:41 --> 01:02:44 were actually stolen because they were Portuguese.
01:02:44 --> 01:02:50 They were slaves of the Portuguese. And then the British, I guess,
01:02:50 --> 01:02:54 pirated the Portuguese ship and took it over and sent it to Virginia.
01:02:54 --> 01:02:57 So yeah, I get that.
01:02:58 --> 01:03:02 But that doesn't make as good a story as the pilgrim's landing and then having
01:03:02 --> 01:03:03 this feast called Thanksgiving.
01:03:04 --> 01:03:09 So we have so many myths that this country is, people don't even know the founding
01:03:09 --> 01:03:11 of their own country because there's so many lies,
01:03:12 --> 01:03:16 myths, and untruths that have been clouding the beginning because people don't
01:03:16 --> 01:03:19 want to say it was a business deal that started the country.
01:03:20 --> 01:03:22 But see, the pilgrims had the cool hats.
01:03:22 --> 01:03:25 That's why everybody liked the pilgrims. They had the cool black hat.
01:03:26 --> 01:03:30 All right, so the next icebreaker is what we call 20 questions.
01:03:30 --> 01:03:34 So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
01:03:35 --> 01:03:43 Okay. What is one thing you hope the current administration will do or not do during their term?
01:03:44 --> 01:03:55 Well, one thing I hope they will do is implode and go down in smoke under impeachments
01:03:55 --> 01:04:01 and criminal prosecutions that are quite successful that wind them in prison.
01:04:04 --> 01:04:08 Okay is there anything you don't want to do or is it you just gonna leave it at that,
01:04:09 --> 01:04:12 well there's you know what i don't want them to do is continue
01:04:12 --> 01:04:15 the authoritarian dictatorship of violence and
01:04:15 --> 01:04:18 bloodshed that has wreaked of
01:04:18 --> 01:04:21 such rotten corruption up to this point
01:04:21 --> 01:04:24 that has undermined even the
01:04:24 --> 01:04:27 possibility of this being a
01:04:27 --> 01:04:35 better country and stop setting us back on a track of villainous deceit and
01:04:35 --> 01:04:44 lies and the sense that white male wealth is the only driving force in this
01:04:44 --> 01:04:47 country and that they see the errors of their ways.
01:04:48 --> 01:04:51 So I don't want them to continue to do what they are doing at this point.
01:04:52 --> 01:04:58 And since that's impossible in my mindset, only God knows for sure, then I would say prison.
01:04:59 --> 01:05:03 Please let them go to prison. Let it happen before the end of this term.
01:05:03 --> 01:05:08 Yes, ma'am. What motivated you to write this book at this time?
01:05:09 --> 01:05:16 I actually started the book 10 years ago because that was even before George Floyd.
01:05:16 --> 01:05:19 People were telling me that protests didn't matter.
01:05:19 --> 01:05:23 And it made me feel as though they were saying the people didn't matter.
01:05:23 --> 01:05:27 The community organizers didn't matter. The activists didn't matter.
01:05:27 --> 01:05:31 And that people thought, well, protest was fine during the Civil Rights Movement,
01:05:31 --> 01:05:34 but it doesn't work in the 21st century since we have social media.
01:05:34 --> 01:05:38 And I was trying to get them to see that social media is by itself not protest.
01:05:38 --> 01:05:43 It can be used in ways for protests, but it by itself is not protest.
01:05:43 --> 01:05:47 And so I also wanted young people to understand, and anybody,
01:05:47 --> 01:05:51 but especially young people to understand the history of this country.
01:05:51 --> 01:05:56 And those young people and the others who understand wouldn't also include people
01:05:56 --> 01:05:58 immigrating into the country.
01:05:58 --> 01:06:03 Because I think they haven't found their foothold in this notion of protest yet.
01:06:03 --> 01:06:09 There are too many people who came to this country based on what was built by
01:06:09 --> 01:06:13 African-Americans and other activists who gave their lives and livelihoods,
01:06:14 --> 01:06:18 and they are now presented with these opportunities that were made for them.
01:06:18 --> 01:06:21 Santa Claus did not give Black people these rights.
01:06:21 --> 01:06:25 Therefore, Santa Claus didn't give the rights to the Africans who are here,
01:06:25 --> 01:06:29 to the people from the Caribbean who are here, to the young people growing up
01:06:29 --> 01:06:35 with rights who are here of any background. Well, people had to fight, die for it, and now.
01:06:36 --> 01:06:40 Call them freedom freeloaders. If you think that you're just supposed to,
01:06:40 --> 01:06:45 you know, suck dry the benefits and live your life, then it has to be understood.
01:06:45 --> 01:06:51 We have too many people who don't know they have a responsibility to give to the protest fight.
01:06:52 --> 01:06:55 So, you know, I just, I'm just concerned about that.
01:06:56 --> 01:07:01 So what, what lit the fire in you personally? When did you decide that you were
01:07:01 --> 01:07:02 going to be an activist yourself?
01:07:03 --> 01:07:05 I didn't plan on being an activist.
01:07:06 --> 01:07:10 My parents probably didn't plan on it either when they bused me to the white
01:07:10 --> 01:07:14 school across town, but that's what resulted from it.
01:07:14 --> 01:07:17 And so I learned speech and debate.
01:07:18 --> 01:07:22 I learned how to interact with people.
01:07:22 --> 01:07:27 I mean, it was devastating and traumatizing, but I like to make lemonade when
01:07:27 --> 01:07:29 I have lemons given to me.
01:07:29 --> 01:07:33 And the lemonade that I made was to be able to take what I had learned about
01:07:33 --> 01:07:39 the cultures that I was now thrust upon and, or what thrust upon me and,
01:07:39 --> 01:07:42 and figure out how do I navigate this?
01:07:42 --> 01:07:47 And so I saw that there were so many misconceptions about the African-American community.
01:07:48 --> 01:07:53 And the more I saw the misconceptions, the more I wanted to speak up about it. And so I did.
01:07:54 --> 01:07:58 And I was, I wanted to be a writer initially. That's what I wanted to do out
01:07:58 --> 01:08:00 of high school. That's what I wanted to do as a little kid was to be a writer.
01:08:01 --> 01:08:04 I went to a predominantly white institution.
01:08:05 --> 01:08:10 And that wasn't a place where people actually supported my dreams of being a writer.
01:08:11 --> 01:08:15 Back then you had essays that you sent in by mail, yes, before the computer.
01:08:16 --> 01:08:21 And my essays were thrown away by my white mailman that I didn't realize that
01:08:21 --> 01:08:26 until that year when it was time for me to go and I hadn't heard anything from the schools.
01:08:26 --> 01:08:30 And those were the applications to go to writing programs. But I'd also thought,
01:08:30 --> 01:08:31 well, I'm thinking about law school too.
01:08:32 --> 01:08:35 And so the one application I had was a law school application that actually
01:08:35 --> 01:08:38 didn't get thrown away because it was mailed out two weeks later.
01:08:39 --> 01:08:43 And so I ended up going to law school and I was so bored and so disenchanted
01:08:43 --> 01:08:46 with law that I wanted to quit.
01:08:47 --> 01:08:53 And until I took union organizing class, and that was my labor law class.
01:08:53 --> 01:08:58 I took a gender and justice studies class. I took a civil rights class and then
01:08:58 --> 01:08:59 constitutional law class.
01:08:59 --> 01:09:03 And I was like, my mind was just like, wow, to this day, I get excited even
01:09:03 --> 01:09:08 talking about it. It's like, oh, okay, then law can be a tool for liberation.
01:09:09 --> 01:09:15 Let me see how this works. Let me see how they bent the power that was this
01:09:15 --> 01:09:21 weapon of oppression to use law to be a tool of liberation. And from there,
01:09:21 --> 01:09:24 I was like, yes, let me talk about this.
01:09:24 --> 01:09:28 Let me write about this. Let me explain it. And I began as a playwright.
01:09:28 --> 01:09:30 Let me put it in the theater that I did.
01:09:30 --> 01:09:37 Let me make this something known to people because we're the most litigious nation in the world.
01:09:37 --> 01:09:41 We have more lawyers, more court cases than any other nation in the world.
01:09:41 --> 01:09:45 We have this constitution. We export around the world. Nobody reads it.
01:09:45 --> 01:09:48 Just like I said, it's the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
01:09:48 --> 01:09:51 but nobody reads the Declaration of Independence.
01:09:51 --> 01:09:56 If they read it, they would see it really doesn't have the story in it that people think it does.
01:09:56 --> 01:10:02 So I'd like to speak truth to power and that power is in the hands of the community
01:10:02 --> 01:10:08 of regular people who can do amazing things and history has shown they have.
01:10:08 --> 01:10:10 And that's why I like to write these books. This is my seventh book.
01:10:10 --> 01:10:14 I like to write these books so that they can sit down at their own pace.
01:10:14 --> 01:10:17 And I write it in a way that anybody can read it.
01:10:18 --> 01:10:21 Not written in a way, in language that people can't understand.
01:10:21 --> 01:10:24 And I like to pride myself on having my books be accessible.
01:10:24 --> 01:10:30 So when I have all these things, I was like, okay, let me go and tell the world.
01:10:30 --> 01:10:34 And so that's what I've been doing. And that's my form of activism.
01:10:34 --> 01:10:40 It could be academic activism as a professor. I'm a full professor at my college, at John Jay College.
01:10:40 --> 01:10:44 So I don't have to write anything. I didn't have to write anything for almost
01:10:44 --> 01:10:48 the last 10 years or so, but I write because I'm a writer and I want people
01:10:48 --> 01:10:50 to explore the gifts they have.
01:10:50 --> 01:10:55 And one of my gifts is to actually be the kind of person who doesn't mind speaking
01:10:55 --> 01:11:02 up in a thoughtful way for myself, but more so for the people around me and
01:11:02 --> 01:11:04 especially people of African descent. Yeah.
01:11:05 --> 01:11:12 So one of the cool things about your book is that it shows that protests can take many forms.
01:11:12 --> 01:11:15 So my next couple of questions are based off of that premise.
01:11:17 --> 01:11:22 You say to people that say a No Kings rally is not really a protest?
01:11:23 --> 01:11:30 I am concerned because one of the good things about a No Kings rally,
01:11:31 --> 01:11:35 if you have enough people and it's spread out in enough places,
01:11:35 --> 01:11:42 it is indeed sending a message to this authoritarian administration and its
01:11:42 --> 01:11:49 binyon among the governors and other people in politics and in corporate America,
01:11:49 --> 01:11:52 that there are disgruntled people, enough disgruntled people,
01:11:52 --> 01:11:53 they should pay attention.
01:11:53 --> 01:11:56 But a protest is supposed to disrupt.
01:11:56 --> 01:12:02 And so when we have these No Kings rallies, it does bring the troops together in a way.
01:12:03 --> 01:12:07 It does help us to see our common interests and get the spirit together for
01:12:07 --> 01:12:09 the protests. That's what rallies did.
01:12:10 --> 01:12:15 Rallies would be a meeting before the protests so that everyone's on the same page.
01:12:15 --> 01:12:18 We have an understanding of what our commonality is, what our arguments are,
01:12:19 --> 01:12:20 why we're upset in the first place.
01:12:20 --> 01:12:24 And then you go to the protests. And the protests doesn't need to be violent
01:12:24 --> 01:12:26 to disrupt. That has to be very clear.
01:12:26 --> 01:12:29 It does not need to be violent to disrupt.
01:12:29 --> 01:12:33 That's why the sit-ins were so important, because the sit-ins were non-violent,
01:12:33 --> 01:12:36 but they disrupted business as usual.
01:12:36 --> 01:12:39 And that's the disruption that needs to take place. And unfortunately,
01:12:40 --> 01:12:44 the No Kings rallies, many of them, especially this time last year,
01:12:44 --> 01:12:48 were held in parks, were held on Sunday in front of, you know.
01:12:49 --> 01:12:53 Offices and in front of government buildings that were closed.
01:12:53 --> 01:12:58 And so it didn't disrupt anything, but it did send a message of displeasure.
01:12:59 --> 01:13:03 And our First Amendment gives us the freedom of speech right,
01:13:03 --> 01:13:06 of course, we know, the freedom of assembly coming together.
01:13:06 --> 01:13:11 But the last line gives us the right to petition the government for a redress
01:13:11 --> 01:13:13 of grievances. And people don't make it to that last line.
01:13:13 --> 01:13:19 That last line means the right to petition is to ask for a redress to fix grievances or complaints.
01:13:20 --> 01:13:24 So even in a union, you file agreements. It's a complaint. And so we have a
01:13:24 --> 01:13:29 right to tell the government what we don't like and demand that they fix it.
01:13:29 --> 01:13:34 But how do we do that if we don't send a message that's strong enough and get
01:13:34 --> 01:13:37 them to understand we mean business?
01:13:38 --> 01:13:44 And sometimes the no-king's rallies are not getting the government to see that
01:13:44 --> 01:13:46 we mean business, and disruption does that.
01:13:47 --> 01:13:54 And as I said, disruption can take, not buying from certain corporations would be a disruption.
01:13:54 --> 01:13:58 When police officers don't have their contract that they want,
01:13:58 --> 01:14:02 they figure out ways to disrupt the mayor's office and to get the attention
01:14:02 --> 01:14:06 of the mayor and other people on the city council and others who are involved.
01:14:07 --> 01:14:13 So we know how to disrupt without violence. And I think that's If the No Kings
01:14:13 --> 01:14:19 rallies would then think about as a part of their rally, the strategy of disruption,
01:14:19 --> 01:14:22 then they would become the protest that we need them to be.
01:14:22 --> 01:14:27 Okay. So how can owning a casino be considered a protest?
01:14:28 --> 01:14:34 Because what I thought of with the child Native Americans in Mississippi was
01:14:34 --> 01:14:39 that they were wholly dependent on the government. Right.
01:14:39 --> 01:14:45 They were living in ways that where there was almost 50% unemployment.
01:14:45 --> 01:14:49 You had very high alcoholism and other types of drug addiction.
01:14:50 --> 01:14:55 And many of, not just there, but in many of the places of the indigenous,
01:14:55 --> 01:15:00 not all the reserve land, but many of those places, for them to have their own
01:15:00 --> 01:15:04 independence is one, to have financial dignity,
01:15:04 --> 01:15:09 to have choice of how they want to live, the ability to run their own government
01:15:09 --> 01:15:17 with a financial basis for that government, but also to protect their language and their culture,
01:15:17 --> 01:15:21 their traditions, and not be dependent on others to do that.
01:15:21 --> 01:15:26 Forced assimilation had taken so much from them, but their protest was to maintain
01:15:26 --> 01:15:30 their cultures and their language and their religions and traditions,
01:15:30 --> 01:15:37 and the ability to have their own source of income, to not go the way of the enticement,
01:15:37 --> 01:15:41 give us your land and we'll put a toxic waste dump on it, but to actually say,
01:15:41 --> 01:15:47 no, we're going to create our own form of income and we're going to have our own autonomy.
01:15:47 --> 01:15:52 And for one to have autonomy is a protest against the government that would
01:15:52 --> 01:15:54 want one to be dependent on them.
01:15:54 --> 01:15:59 So when I use the word protest, it's beyond the protest in the streets.
01:15:59 --> 01:16:03 That's more power to you for the protest in the streets, and protest is powerful in that way.
01:16:03 --> 01:16:08 But there are many ways in which we can protest, and one way is to have your
01:16:08 --> 01:16:13 autonomy, to have your own culture be respected by yourself,
01:16:14 --> 01:16:16 and to maintain it over time, and they did that.
01:16:17 --> 01:16:19 Yeah, the Choctaws are very interesting.
01:16:20 --> 01:16:24 They tried the assimilation piece because they had this big factory there.
01:16:25 --> 01:16:31 And they got a contract with General Motors. And so that was kind of helping a little bit.
01:16:31 --> 01:16:34 But like you said, it still wasn't addressing the major problem.
01:16:34 --> 01:16:36 And so when they were able to
01:16:36 --> 01:16:40 get to casinos, it just changed the whole trajectory of their lifestyle.
01:16:40 --> 01:16:48 And like you said, it gave them the financial independence to continue their
01:16:48 --> 01:16:49 cultural independence.
01:16:50 --> 01:16:57 Right. And they were unique in that they are the only nation that has a lifetime,
01:16:58 --> 01:17:02 a perpetuity arrangement.
01:17:02 --> 01:17:06 All the other ones are like 50 years, 100 years or whatever.
01:17:06 --> 01:17:12 As long as there is a Choctaw breathing, they can have those casinos and stuff.
01:17:12 --> 01:17:14 And they're the only people that had that set up.
01:17:15 --> 01:17:18 And because they tried to change it when I was in the legislature,
01:17:18 --> 01:17:21 I was like, are you crazy? Oh, no, we're not doing that to them.
01:17:22 --> 01:17:29 No. So, yeah, that but I wanted to highlight that because you did such an excellent
01:17:29 --> 01:17:30 job in doing that in the book.
01:17:31 --> 01:17:36 What was the important lesson of Bacon's rebellion as it pertains to protests?
01:17:38 --> 01:17:43 Rebellion was in 1676. That Virginia colony that I said where we started our
01:17:43 --> 01:17:51 history had these major clashes between class and there was forced religious practices.
01:17:52 --> 01:17:57 But you have these indentured servants who are considered white slaves because
01:17:57 --> 01:18:03 they're basically working for free to pay off the cost of taking the ship from the old world,
01:18:03 --> 01:18:09 England or wherever they came from in part of Western Europe into the colony.
01:18:09 --> 01:18:14 And so once they paid that off, then they could start their own farms.
01:18:14 --> 01:18:16 And tobacco was the crop.
01:18:16 --> 01:18:23 So the Africans were then brought now in greater numbers, the 20 and odd Africans
01:18:23 --> 01:18:27 that were recorded in August of 1619, then grew to hundreds.
01:18:27 --> 01:18:32 And so the Africans, as well as the indentured servants, had something in common.
01:18:33 --> 01:18:37 They are both groups were being oppressed, and the former indentured servants,
01:18:37 --> 01:18:42 the poor whites, were being oppressed, and so they rose up together against
01:18:42 --> 01:18:44 the elite English that were in the colony.
01:18:44 --> 01:18:49 And they almost won, except Bacon got sick and died.
01:18:49 --> 01:18:55 And then once Bacon died and they were actually, they put down the uprising,
01:18:55 --> 01:19:01 the mixture of the Africans and the poor whites together was so powerful and
01:19:01 --> 01:19:02 so frightened the elite.
01:19:02 --> 01:19:07 They determined they would never allow those two groups to come together like that again.
01:19:07 --> 01:19:12 And so they figured out how to give the white indigenous servants just a little
01:19:12 --> 01:19:18 bit more based on pigment, something indelible, so that there would always be this conflict.
01:19:19 --> 01:19:22 Divide and conquer, because Europeans use divide and conquer,
01:19:22 --> 01:19:28 have been using it for thousands of years successfully, and only unity beats divide and conquer.
01:19:28 --> 01:19:31 And so they figured out a way to divide the
01:19:31 --> 01:19:35 interests of the poor whites and the Africans so that they would then be in
01:19:35 --> 01:19:39 conflict and the whites would think they were better than the Africans and always
01:19:39 --> 01:19:45 try to some kind of way oppress the African to make the white indentured servant
01:19:45 --> 01:19:49 or the former indentured servant or poor white feel a little better about their situation,
01:19:49 --> 01:19:52 even though they've never reached the level of the elites.
01:19:52 --> 01:19:56 But they could be used and that anger could be used as a tool by the elites
01:19:56 --> 01:19:59 to get the poor whites to be against the Africans.
01:19:59 --> 01:20:06 That was from 1676 and it's been in play ever since because there's too many people.
01:20:06 --> 01:20:10 Jesse Jackson figured out a way to speak to poor whites and try to bring them
01:20:10 --> 01:20:13 together during his presidential campaign.
01:20:13 --> 01:20:18 But very few people actually see the work of divide and conquer from Baker's
01:20:18 --> 01:20:20 rebellion that's still in play right now.
01:20:20 --> 01:20:26 And to understand how do you address that issue so that we understand that we're
01:20:26 --> 01:20:32 being played against each other in order to keep that power from rising up against the elite.
01:20:32 --> 01:20:35 The elite are pressing both groups and all the other groups of color as well.
01:20:36 --> 01:20:40 Yeah. And Fred Hampton was doing that same kind of work in Chicago when he died.
01:20:40 --> 01:20:45 He was unifying the poor whites and the Latinos and all that stuff.
01:20:45 --> 01:20:48 So, like you said, there's power in numbers.
01:20:49 --> 01:20:53 Andrew Dellers once said that the limits of tyrants prescribed by the endurance
01:20:53 --> 01:20:56 of those whom they oppress.
01:20:56 --> 01:20:58 Are those words still applicable today?
01:21:00 --> 01:21:06 Certainly some people only want better hours on the plantation and a softer pillow in the prison.
01:21:07 --> 01:21:12 They don't want real freedom. They don't want real liberty or they think it
01:21:12 --> 01:21:15 has to be this way and it can't be any better.
01:21:15 --> 01:21:20 There's always going to be someone in the group who says, I know I'm not supposed
01:21:20 --> 01:21:23 to have more, but something inside of me wants more.
01:21:24 --> 01:21:29 So you have all of these people from that person who doesn't ever want change
01:21:29 --> 01:21:32 to the people who demand change right now.
01:21:32 --> 01:21:34 We'll all be in the same communities.
01:21:35 --> 01:21:41 And so I think that when you consider how much for, in particular,
01:21:41 --> 01:21:44 African-Americans and other people of color have been oppressed in this country,
01:21:44 --> 01:21:48 I ask the question almost every day, why do I stay here?
01:21:48 --> 01:21:51 Why am I still, where is my America?
01:21:51 --> 01:21:55 Because I travel a great deal outside the country, because sometimes I just
01:21:55 --> 01:21:56 can't take the hypocrisy.
01:21:57 --> 01:22:03 And I, you know, it's almost as though you have to, you're in an abusive relationship
01:22:03 --> 01:22:07 in this nation and you've learned how to deal with the abuse.
01:22:08 --> 01:22:14 And I think some of the benefits, of course, for those who can get the pretty
01:22:14 --> 01:22:18 house and the nice car and you have a job and you have those days that you're not beaten.
01:22:18 --> 01:22:22 And then other days, you know, horrific things happen like right now.
01:22:22 --> 01:22:25 And you wonder why do we live here?
01:22:26 --> 01:22:31 Why are we suffering under these illusions of liberty when this is a capitalist
01:22:31 --> 01:22:35 nation that only cares about the money that we can put into the pockets of corporations?
01:22:35 --> 01:22:39 And we're just the middleman between making the money and putting it in the
01:22:39 --> 01:22:46 hands of those who are then using it to make themselves even richer and oppress us even more.
01:22:46 --> 01:22:51 So it's really a conflicted mindset. And you wonder if it's like this in all
01:22:51 --> 01:22:54 countries. Do Most people believe they're oppressed in their nation,
01:22:54 --> 01:22:56 but they have good days in the midst of the oppression.
01:22:57 --> 01:23:02 I think the reason why this country becomes such an unholy.
01:23:03 --> 01:23:09 Liberation of liberty is because it sets itself out as the shining light on the hill of democracy.
01:23:10 --> 01:23:13 And if the promises had not been made, as Martin Luther King said,
01:23:13 --> 01:23:18 be true to what you said on paper. If the Declaration of Independence, if the U.S.
01:23:18 --> 01:23:24 Constitution, if these constant promises had not been made of liberty and justice for all,
01:23:24 --> 01:23:32 then perhaps people wouldn't feel the need to be disillusioned by the disappointment
01:23:32 --> 01:23:35 of failing to adhere to those promises.
01:23:36 --> 01:23:41 But the other people have just decided there's enough for me to get as a benefit
01:23:41 --> 01:23:43 that I don't need to have real freedom and real liberty.
01:23:43 --> 01:23:46 They don't really need to live up to the promises.
01:23:46 --> 01:23:50 So they'll take what they can get. And you have all that in one country,
01:23:50 --> 01:23:53 in one community, in one neighborhood, sometimes in one family.
01:23:54 --> 01:23:57 Yeah. So, you know, I'm glad you made me
01:23:57 --> 01:24:00 feel like i'm smart because i have said the same thing about this
01:24:00 --> 01:24:03 being a bad relationship it's like you
01:24:03 --> 01:24:06 treat me bad while i'm here but then you don't want me to leave right
01:24:06 --> 01:24:10 because it's like you know we've gone through all these struggles and then when
01:24:10 --> 01:24:14 marcus garvey was like look i'm gonna ship all of us out of here it's like no
01:24:14 --> 01:24:17 we're gonna put you in jail you can't take all the black folks out i said that's
01:24:17 --> 01:24:23 a bad relationship right so i'm i'm glad to hear somebody smarter than me use
01:24:23 --> 01:24:25 that same kind of analogy.
01:24:26 --> 01:24:29 You know, it's just, it's really amazing.
01:24:32 --> 01:24:36 How the dynamics of all that. I was just, I just had a guest on and we were
01:24:36 --> 01:24:38 talking about the Double V campaign,
01:24:39 --> 01:24:44 during World War II, where it's like we were fighting for victory in Europe
01:24:44 --> 01:24:47 and then fighting for victory here as far as black people and stuff.
01:24:48 --> 01:24:52 So that's always been the dichotomy we've had to deal with.
01:24:53 --> 01:24:58 Speaking about that, many of us in the Black community feel that the civil rights
01:24:58 --> 01:25:01 movement is the matrix of American protest.
01:25:02 --> 01:25:04 Is that an accurate assessment?
01:25:05 --> 01:25:11 I think it is very accurate from the standpoint that the labor movement was
01:25:11 --> 01:25:14 actually the initial movement of protest.
01:25:14 --> 01:25:20 And when labor unions were formed, it was a protest against working conditions, the working hours.
01:25:20 --> 01:25:25 People work an eight-hour workday because the labor protests demanded an eight-hour
01:25:25 --> 01:25:31 workday to live up to the law that was passed in the 1800s, to actually have an eight-hour workday.
01:25:31 --> 01:25:36 That took until the 1900s of protesting for almost 100 years before we actually
01:25:36 --> 01:25:40 got the eight-hour workday that we take for granted or the 40-hour work week.
01:25:40 --> 01:25:43 So when the people like A.
01:25:43 --> 01:25:47 Philip Randolph, who learned through the labor movement, the skills,
01:25:47 --> 01:25:54 the structure of protest, and we had people who came from the background of the wars,
01:25:55 --> 01:26:00 World War I and World War II, they learned the structure of the military.
01:26:00 --> 01:26:09 That all came together with Marcus Garvey, you know, and the improvement philosophy.
01:26:09 --> 01:26:13 The Negro improvement philosophy to create the civil rights movement,
01:26:13 --> 01:26:16 adding in there Mahatma Gandhi and what they learned from his protest.
01:26:16 --> 01:26:22 So it was a matrix or the nexus of so many different elements of movement that
01:26:22 --> 01:26:26 came together that were used during the Civil Rights Movement to make it a blending
01:26:26 --> 01:26:30 of different philosophies, tactics, strategies,
01:26:30 --> 01:26:34 alliances, and creativity to create that movement.
01:26:34 --> 01:26:40 So it became the anchor of what would be the type of movement needed,
01:26:40 --> 01:26:44 especially the nonviolent as well as the violent aspects of the Civil Rights
01:26:44 --> 01:26:45 Movement because you had both there.
01:26:47 --> 01:26:53 Yeah. What do you what do you see as the role of media when it comes to protests?
01:26:53 --> 01:26:58 Now, you know, we're talking about the civil rights movement and any Marcus Garvey.
01:26:59 --> 01:27:02 You know, a lot of people don't know that his newspaper, The Negro World,
01:27:03 --> 01:27:07 was literally the largest circulation newspaper in America during this time.
01:27:07 --> 01:27:13 And so the black press has always played a role in telling the story and and
01:27:13 --> 01:27:15 highlighting what was going on.
01:27:15 --> 01:27:21 But I guess the question is the overall media, what can they do when it comes
01:27:21 --> 01:27:25 to protests to help carry, address an issue?
01:27:25 --> 01:27:29 Well, first, I actually used to write for the black press.
01:27:32 --> 01:27:36 And so I felt that was important. And some of my research,
01:27:36 --> 01:27:39 I go to the black press because you can't get the real story from the white
01:27:39 --> 01:27:45 press from 50 or 80 or 100 years ago of what was being said in the white press
01:27:45 --> 01:27:47 about things that were happening regarding lynching, race, etc.
01:27:48 --> 01:27:53 But I think that the media today is more conservative than it used to be.
01:27:53 --> 01:27:57 The media has always had a conservative nature to it, but it had a curiosity.
01:27:58 --> 01:28:03 The media today has an intent to just show one side of the story.
01:28:03 --> 01:28:06 And that means that they're not going to show.
01:28:07 --> 01:28:12 Protests that are going on. Martin Luther King was masterful at learning how
01:28:12 --> 01:28:16 to get the attention of the media, the mainstream media, I should say.
01:28:16 --> 01:28:19 I hope the Black press, even though it's very difficult to do,
01:28:19 --> 01:28:23 will continue to have reporters that go out to report the news and not just
01:28:23 --> 01:28:29 write about what's already happened, because it takes a lot of money to do that.
01:28:29 --> 01:28:31 And a lot of the Black press doesn't
01:28:31 --> 01:28:35 have the money because people don't support it the way they used to.
01:28:35 --> 01:28:40 But I think the mainstream media, whether or not it's the commercialized media
01:28:40 --> 01:28:45 like the Washington Post or New York Times or any other type of large media,
01:28:46 --> 01:28:48 Los Angeles Times, or the local papers.
01:28:49 --> 01:28:54 So many local papers are going under and so much media people are getting from Instagram and TikTok.
01:28:55 --> 01:28:58 So they think that's media, but you have to ask, who's writing this?
01:28:59 --> 01:29:02 What's their background? What's their interest in saying what they're saying?
01:29:03 --> 01:29:07 Are these the facts or is this something they're just writing about because
01:29:07 --> 01:29:09 they have a point of view on it.
01:29:09 --> 01:29:13 So I think we've gotten to a point where media is so diffused,
01:29:13 --> 01:29:19 it's difficult to find places that can cover protests the way protests need
01:29:19 --> 01:29:21 to be covered on a regular basis.
01:29:21 --> 01:29:25 They covered protests in the civil rights era because it was so extraordinary.
01:29:25 --> 01:29:28 It would make the news, but they didn't cover every protest.
01:29:28 --> 01:29:30 And I'll give this one last example.
01:29:31 --> 01:29:36 Over 1 people die at the hands of police each year. We don't hear anything
01:29:36 --> 01:29:39 about probably 1 of those people.
01:29:40 --> 01:29:45 Why? Because the media is not covering them, is not making the news the way it should,
01:29:45 --> 01:29:52 because the media and many aspects of it either don't care or their editors
01:29:52 --> 01:29:57 are not allowing them to cover these racial issues the way they should. So I think...
01:29:58 --> 01:30:03 Unfortunately, if it bleeds, it leaves, continues to be the way protest is covered.
01:30:03 --> 01:30:05 And that's quite unfortunate. Okay.
01:30:06 --> 01:30:11 What would you, you know, we, we are very impatient.
01:30:11 --> 01:30:16 And so a lot of times we collectively, and so a lot of times we'll get out here
01:30:16 --> 01:30:20 and we'll fight for stuff, whether it's George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery,
01:30:21 --> 01:30:22 Sandra Bland, whatever.
01:30:22 --> 01:30:29 And then we don't see the results we want right away or the election doesn't
01:30:29 --> 01:30:32 go the way we want and we'll get disheartened or discouraged.
01:30:32 --> 01:30:39 What do you say to people to try to keep them from being discouraged if they
01:30:39 --> 01:30:41 don't get the results they want right away?
01:30:41 --> 01:30:50 That we are fighting against princes and principalities that can be moved,
01:30:50 --> 01:30:53 but rarely get moved all at once.
01:30:53 --> 01:30:56 And that's the way it has been.
01:30:56 --> 01:31:03 Protest works, but I like to use this acronym, STRG, strategy,
01:31:03 --> 01:31:11 tenacity, time, allowances, alliances, resources, and creativity.
01:31:11 --> 01:31:16 Strategy, tenacity, time, alliances, resources, and creativity stark.
01:31:17 --> 01:31:24 If you think about the tenacity and time that it took for people to gain the right to vote.
01:31:25 --> 01:31:30 Brown versus Board of Education was 1954. The Montgomery bus boycott was 1955.
01:31:30 --> 01:31:33 The Voting Rights Act was 1965.
01:31:34 --> 01:31:37 And yes, we're in the 21st century, we want things to go faster.
01:31:37 --> 01:31:41 And things, oppression happens faster, as we just saw.
01:31:41 --> 01:31:46 And protests can happen faster, but it's still going to go slower than the oppression
01:31:46 --> 01:31:50 did, especially since it takes time for people to get on board.
01:31:50 --> 01:31:54 So many people want the protests to have quick results as they sit back and
01:31:54 --> 01:31:56 watch, like it's a reality television show.
01:31:56 --> 01:32:00 So if they're not going to get involved and yet they want to see these results
01:32:00 --> 01:32:04 happen right away, then we have a conflict in goals.
01:32:05 --> 01:32:09 The goal is to have somebody else do the work. And that's where I'm concerned.
01:32:09 --> 01:32:13 And I go back to the people who either immigrated into the country,
01:32:13 --> 01:32:18 have been here, but don't know what their role should be, or don't feel that they should play role.
01:32:18 --> 01:32:21 And I've had plenty of people say, I just want to live my life.
01:32:21 --> 01:32:25 I shouldn't have to be involved in this. And I'm sure Fannie Lou Hamer felt the same way.
01:32:25 --> 01:32:28 Martin Luther King could have just lived his life. He had a very nice life before
01:32:28 --> 01:32:30 he got involved with the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
01:32:30 --> 01:32:33 He didn't have to do that. And many ministers did not get involved.
01:32:34 --> 01:32:40 So you do have those people standing on the side of the road wondering why protest is taking so long.
01:32:40 --> 01:32:44 They're doing nothing to help, but they wonder why protest is taking so long
01:32:44 --> 01:32:49 or is it effective at all? They want the benefit, freedom freeloaders,
01:32:49 --> 01:32:51 of the protest, or they're sincere.
01:32:51 --> 01:32:55 They want to do something, but they don't know how to do it,
01:32:55 --> 01:32:59 where to do it. And there's a role for everybody in protest.
01:32:59 --> 01:33:02 If you think about, ask yourself the question, what can I do?
01:33:02 --> 01:33:06 But if we don't do something, it's going to take even longer for protests to
01:33:06 --> 01:33:09 be effective because it's going to be fits and starts.
01:33:09 --> 01:33:13 And I'm concerned right now because we have a lot of Black women.
01:33:13 --> 01:33:18 And yes, black women, I'm wondering how long we plan on sitting this out.
01:33:19 --> 01:33:24 We've got to figure out where and when we enter, and it doesn't have to be entering in the streets.
01:33:24 --> 01:33:27 It could be entering strategically. Remember, start.
01:33:27 --> 01:33:32 Strategy, tenacity, time, alliances, resources, and creativity.
01:33:32 --> 01:33:36 We have to figure out when and where we're going to enter, how we're going to
01:33:36 --> 01:33:38 do this in the most safe way that we can.
01:33:38 --> 01:33:43 Protest has always had dangerous aspects to it, but we can expect things to
01:33:43 --> 01:33:46 happen quickly. protest on Friday and see the change on Monday.
01:33:46 --> 01:33:50 That didn't happen even during the civil rights movement, women's movement,
01:33:50 --> 01:33:52 labor movement, anti-Vietnam war movement.
01:33:52 --> 01:33:56 Movements take time. They move, but they take time and they're moving.
01:33:56 --> 01:34:02 And they take even more time if people spend their efforts complaining and watching
01:34:02 --> 01:34:04 as opposed to doing and participating.
01:34:05 --> 01:34:10 All right. I want you to finish this sentence. I have hope because.
01:34:12 --> 01:34:17 I have hope because I know God does not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
01:34:18 --> 01:34:24 And I have hope because my ancestors, one of whom I write about,
01:34:24 --> 01:34:27 well, many, but especially I start my book out, a protest history in the United States,
01:34:28 --> 01:34:34 starts out with my great-great-grandmother, Eliza, who was enslaved in 1827
01:34:34 --> 01:34:37 and rose up against her slave masters.
01:34:37 --> 01:34:42 I have hope because her granddaughter, Maddie, went to college in 1907 and wrote
01:34:42 --> 01:34:44 about grandmother Eliza.
01:34:44 --> 01:34:47 And that essay she wrote was published in the school newspaper,
01:34:47 --> 01:34:54 her college newspaper, and was found later by a professor who then researched
01:34:54 --> 01:34:56 it and wrote a scholarly paper about it.
01:34:56 --> 01:35:02 I have hope because I had cousins who went to Spelman in 1920.
01:35:02 --> 01:35:07 1919 was the time of the red summer where there were so many race riots and
01:35:07 --> 01:35:11 white folks just rising up, lynching and burning down Black businesses.
01:35:12 --> 01:35:16 I have hope because they traveled from Kansas to go to Spelman.
01:35:16 --> 01:35:22 I have hope because so many people invested in me not knowing my name so that
01:35:22 --> 01:35:24 I would have the freedoms I have today.
01:35:25 --> 01:35:29 I have hope because I have breath in my body to do something,
01:35:30 --> 01:35:33 to use the talents that I've been given by God to do something.
01:35:33 --> 01:35:37 And as long as I can do something, I have hope for a better day.
01:35:37 --> 01:35:44 And I have hope because there's always a possibility for change if you keep
01:35:44 --> 01:35:46 pushing and keep trying.
01:35:47 --> 01:35:52 And I am an example of my own life of somebody, there was no crystal stair rising up to meet me.
01:35:53 --> 01:35:57 So I have had to do a lot of hard work and navigate a lot of things.
01:35:57 --> 01:36:01 There are very few things that haven't happened to me that people think,
01:36:01 --> 01:36:03 oh, you didn't have a Black life. I had a very Black life.
01:36:04 --> 01:36:10 And my Black life keeps lifing. But my thing is I have hope because I know that
01:36:10 --> 01:36:14 if I can wake up tomorrow and do a little bit more,
01:36:15 --> 01:36:20 I can rely on other people to do a little bit more, that we can push forward.
01:36:21 --> 01:36:22 We didn't get this far in this country.
01:36:22 --> 01:36:27 By giving up. We really didn't. And that's why I said people who immigrated
01:36:27 --> 01:36:29 here don't know the struggle.
01:36:29 --> 01:36:34 You don't have what you have by Black people giving up and white folks being
01:36:34 --> 01:36:35 Santa Claus and giving it to us.
01:36:35 --> 01:36:42 And so I believe that, as Jesse said, I'm going to keep hope alive and keep
01:36:42 --> 01:36:47 pushing because what else are you going to do? Sit down and be rolled over? I don't think so.
01:36:48 --> 01:36:54 Well, Gloria Browne-Marshall, I, you know, if the classes at John Jay College
01:36:54 --> 01:37:00 are like this interview, boy, boy, boy, you should have like an overflow as far as registration.
01:37:00 --> 01:37:02 You should have folks lining the door trying to get in that class.
01:37:03 --> 01:37:08 I am so glad that you are out here doing this, and I'm really glad that you
01:37:08 --> 01:37:13 took the time to come on the podcast and writing the book, A Protest History of the United States.
01:37:14 --> 01:37:18 If people want to get in touch with you, get copies of the book,
01:37:18 --> 01:37:20 all that, tell people how they can do that.
01:37:21 --> 01:37:25 They can get copies on the book online, most of the places that people know.
01:37:25 --> 01:37:29 But I'm asking people to also go to your local bookstore and not just order
01:37:29 --> 01:37:33 your book from your local bookstore. Ask them to put it on the shelf.
01:37:33 --> 01:37:39 Ask them. It's just out in paperback now. And so hardback as well as paperback.
01:37:39 --> 01:37:45 I'm also on a 25, now going into 27 state book tour.
01:37:45 --> 01:37:49 So I have been touring with this book for some time and doing wonderful podcasts
01:37:49 --> 01:37:53 like your show. Also, I have a website and I'm on Instagram.
01:37:54 --> 01:38:01 And the website is browne-marshall23.com. Browne-marshall23.com.
01:38:02 --> 01:38:05 And I'm on Instagram as well as on Facebook.
01:38:05 --> 01:38:09 So if you want to get in touch with me, that's how you can get in touch with me.
01:38:10 --> 01:38:14 Well, a couple of things real quick. One, I need your permission to borrow that
01:38:14 --> 01:38:18 line. What did you say? There's some people that just want better hours on the
01:38:18 --> 01:38:21 plantation and a softer pillow in the prison.
01:38:21 --> 01:38:24 I said, yeah, I'm going to have to ask, can I use that down the road?
01:38:25 --> 01:38:31 And then the other thing is, is that there's a rule that I have is that I have an open invitation.
01:38:31 --> 01:38:35 Anybody that wants to come, that's been on the show that wants to come back
01:38:35 --> 01:38:39 on, they have an open invitation. So I hope that you please take advantage of that.
01:38:39 --> 01:38:43 Maybe when you write your next book or whatever, but I would love to have you
01:38:43 --> 01:38:47 come back on. But again, I want to thank you for doing this,
01:38:47 --> 01:38:53 and I wish you much continued success in the academic year and as you continue
01:38:53 --> 01:38:54 to go forth as an activist.
01:38:56 --> 01:38:57 Thank you. I would like to come
01:38:57 --> 01:39:01 back at some point and talk about Martyrs Day, which would be July 5th.
01:39:01 --> 01:39:04 And I think this holiday to lift up protesters,
01:39:05 --> 01:39:09 activists, community organizers who have passed on and recognize their work
01:39:09 --> 01:39:12 and whether or not, like George Floyd, their lives were taken,
01:39:12 --> 01:39:18 but that led to activism that may change or people who have been activists all their lives.
01:39:18 --> 01:39:24 And I just want Martyrs Day, July 5th, which is the date that Frederick Douglass gave his speech,
01:39:24 --> 01:39:28 What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, that people around the country would
01:39:28 --> 01:39:32 have their own form of Martyrs Day to spend time to lift up the protester in
01:39:32 --> 01:39:37 their community who has passed on any era from Christmas addict all the way up.
01:39:37 --> 01:39:42 You know, but just like to say their name, because we deserve to know that protest
01:39:42 --> 01:39:46 is what made this Constitution what it is.
01:39:46 --> 01:39:54 The words on paper were just that words, but protests protested that into a reality of our lives.
01:39:54 --> 01:39:59 All right. Well, let's let's work on that. And again, I want to just thank you
01:39:59 --> 01:40:00 for for doing what you do.
01:40:01 --> 01:40:03 All right, guys, we're going to catch you all on the other side.
01:40:22 --> 01:40:29 All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Dr. Ashleigh Brown-Grier.
01:40:30 --> 01:40:36 Dr. Ashleigh Brown-Grier is a higher education expert specializing in internationalization
01:40:36 --> 01:40:41 at historically black colleges and universities, better known as HBCUs.
01:40:41 --> 01:40:47 She holds a PhD in higher education leadership and policy studies from Howard
01:40:47 --> 01:40:54 University, where she studied international student experiences at HBCUs during COVID-19.
01:40:55 --> 01:41:00 As founder of International HBCU Exchange, Inc., Dr.
01:41:00 --> 01:41:03 Brown-Grier secured a $200 U.S.
01:41:03 --> 01:41:09 Embassy grant to strengthen research collaborations between U.S.
01:41:09 --> 01:41:12 HBCUs and South Africa's historically Black universities.
01:41:12 --> 01:41:18 A two-time Fulbright Scholar and alumni ambassador, she served as an English
01:41:18 --> 01:41:23 teaching assistant in Malaysia and conducted research in South Africa,
01:41:23 --> 01:41:26 apartheid era inequities in higher education.
01:41:26 --> 01:41:34 Dr. Brown-Grier's scholarship focuses on internationalization strategies at HBCUs and HBUs.
01:41:34 --> 01:41:38 A graduate of Talladega College, Morgan State University, the University of
01:41:38 --> 01:41:43 Pennsylvania, and Howard University, she is committed to expanding global learning
01:41:43 --> 01:41:48 pathways and fostering academic partnerships in higher education.
01:41:48 --> 01:41:53 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
01:41:53 --> 01:41:57 on this podcast, Dr. Ashleigh Brown-Grier.
01:42:08 --> 01:42:13 All right. Dr. Ashleigh Brown-Grier. How you doing, sister? You doing good?
01:42:14 --> 01:42:20 I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Keeping well. Well, I'm glad and I'm glad that
01:42:20 --> 01:42:24 you were able to do this because you deal with something that's near and dear
01:42:24 --> 01:42:27 to my heart. And we'll get into that in the discussion.
01:42:28 --> 01:42:32 But I want to start off the interview with what I call a couple of icebreakers.
01:42:33 --> 01:42:37 So the first icebreaker is a quote I want you to respond to.
01:42:37 --> 01:42:45 And the quote is, HBCUs were born out of necessity, built at a time when Black
01:42:45 --> 01:42:49 students were barred from attending most universities in America.
01:42:49 --> 01:42:54 They became sanctuaries of excellence, identity, and community.
01:42:55 --> 01:42:56 What does that quote mean to you?
01:42:57 --> 01:43:03 Um, it means to me, it means a lot.
01:43:03 --> 01:43:11 I will say I've been on my historical journey here lately and I understand the
01:43:11 --> 01:43:15 importance of Black people having their own spaces.
01:43:15 --> 01:43:20 I was brought up to think that segregation was a bad thing, but now I recognize
01:43:20 --> 01:43:30 how HBCUs and Black institutions as a whole were spaces where we were able to just be and thrive.
01:43:30 --> 01:43:35 And so it wasn't necessary. It was born out of, you know,
01:43:35 --> 01:43:42 a colonialist mindset, but how we've changed and evolved and really have challenged
01:43:42 --> 01:43:46 a lot of the narratives that were originally, you know.
01:43:47 --> 01:43:53 Within the system that created us, you know, it's very, they're very important institutions.
01:43:53 --> 01:43:55 So yes, yeah, that means a lot.
01:43:56 --> 01:44:01 All right. So now the second icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.
01:44:02 --> 01:44:05 So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
01:44:06 --> 01:44:11 Okay. We'll go with my favorite number, three. All right. How should we balance
01:44:11 --> 01:44:14 rights, freedoms, and responsibilities?
01:44:15 --> 01:44:20 How should we balance rights, freedoms, and responsibilities?
01:44:23 --> 01:44:27 Ooh, that's a tricky one. How should we balance those?
01:44:28 --> 01:44:31 Well, I think, and I know I'm gonna get a little intellectual here,
01:44:31 --> 01:44:34 but I'm currently, I'm working on a conceptual framework.
01:44:35 --> 01:44:40 It's called the Architecture of Institutional Containment. And it looks at how
01:44:40 --> 01:44:46 colonialism was established as a system and how there are two systems,
01:44:46 --> 01:44:52 even though we're no longer racially segregated society, those two systems still exist.
01:44:53 --> 01:44:57 And so the framework highlights that. I don't give an answer. I have one in my head.
01:44:58 --> 01:45:02 But it looks at how do you balance those things?
01:45:02 --> 01:45:07 Because within the system itself, it was built, it's still maintaining.
01:45:07 --> 01:45:11 And then we get things, no shade to DEI or other policies.
01:45:11 --> 01:45:16 But those policies are kind of like pecans on the top of a cake that can be removed.
01:45:17 --> 01:45:20 So if isn't if they were built into the cake it would
01:45:20 --> 01:45:23 be a little harder to just go through and remove so
01:45:23 --> 01:45:29 the question is you know well I guess not the question my answer would be we
01:45:29 --> 01:45:32 have to kind of rebuild but who wants to put in all of that work to rebuild
01:45:32 --> 01:45:41 it well I think we might have to I think we we don't have a choice you know.
01:45:42 --> 01:45:52 I remember when Minister Farrakhan gave a speech about Reagan and he got up
01:45:52 --> 01:45:56 there and he said that he was happy that Ronald Reagan was elected.
01:45:57 --> 01:46:02 And, of course, even the most faithful FOIs were kind of looking at him like,
01:46:02 --> 01:46:03 where are you going with this?
01:46:03 --> 01:46:09 And he said, because now you understand the work that you have to do.
01:46:10 --> 01:46:15 He said, everybody's been placating us and kind of giving us a little of this, a little of that.
01:46:15 --> 01:46:18 This man is telling you, I ain't giving you nothing.
01:46:18 --> 01:46:22 So now the challenge of my brothers and sisters is what are you going to do
01:46:22 --> 01:46:26 when somebody tells you they're not going to give you any help at all? Mm hmm.
01:46:27 --> 01:46:33 And so, you know, when I look at where we are now, and especially with the topic
01:46:33 --> 01:46:38 we're going to cover, I just, you know, it's a it's it's bad.
01:46:39 --> 01:46:43 As somebody like me, that's been in a political system, that's actually had
01:46:43 --> 01:46:48 a position of responsibility to watch how things are going on.
01:46:48 --> 01:46:53 But to go with your answer, I think we got to put in some work.
01:46:53 --> 01:46:58 We got to do some rebuild it. So we may not want to do it, but it's kind of
01:46:58 --> 01:47:00 like we're going to have to, you know what I'm saying?
01:47:01 --> 01:47:07 Agreed. All right. So let's get into the conversation. Why are HBCUs so special?
01:47:08 --> 01:47:13 Oh, that's such a hard question. No, I think HBCUs are so special.
01:47:15 --> 01:47:19 I guess I'll give a little background for who I am and where I come from.
01:47:19 --> 01:47:25 So Mobile, Alabama, middle-class family, and the majority of the people that
01:47:25 --> 01:47:29 I was around, even in church and in my neighborhood, they actually graduated from HBCU.
01:47:29 --> 01:47:33 So I was already born into it. And so...
01:47:35 --> 01:47:40 HBCUs are special because they serve the students or they provide an opportunity
01:47:40 --> 01:47:45 for education for students who may not have thought that college was for them.
01:47:45 --> 01:47:46 I was one of those students.
01:47:46 --> 01:47:49 I did not. I wanted to go to the military. Thank God.
01:47:49 --> 01:47:52 I was 17 and my mother wouldn't sign for me to go.
01:47:53 --> 01:47:57 So she shipped me off to Talladega. And so I met some of my closest friends
01:47:57 --> 01:48:00 and some of the most amazing people.
01:48:00 --> 01:48:06 And from that, you know, we have gone on to do some amazing things and to really
01:48:06 --> 01:48:08 contribute to society as a whole.
01:48:09 --> 01:48:14 And we are part of the higher education system. People try to look at us separately
01:48:14 --> 01:48:19 as separate institutions, but we're all contributing to the higher ed system
01:48:19 --> 01:48:22 research wise, you know, within these last few years.
01:48:22 --> 01:48:27 Well, since we've been producing PhDs, so they are special for that.
01:48:27 --> 01:48:32 A place of celebration, a place of learning how to become leaders.
01:48:34 --> 01:48:40 And even when you make mistakes, a lot of times the faculty and the staff will guide you.
01:48:40 --> 01:48:44 They don't, you know, they might be a little hard, but they will be there to
01:48:44 --> 01:48:46 support you well past graduation.
01:48:46 --> 01:48:50 So yes, that's why I think they are special places.
01:48:50 --> 01:48:58 Well, you know, I looked at it as like, now you were Miss Talladega, Yes.
01:48:58 --> 01:49:02 Yes. I was I was student body president at Jackson State.
01:49:02 --> 01:49:09 So it's like those are moments where like if we had gone to PWIs,
01:49:09 --> 01:49:13 would we have had that opportunity to to to have those moments? Right.
01:49:14 --> 01:49:20 I tell you, my two favorite memories revolve around black college football, right?
01:49:20 --> 01:49:29 So the first time I ever went to a Jackson State game and to see 50 black folks.
01:49:30 --> 01:49:34 Us attending a football game growing up in Chicago, that was like,
01:49:35 --> 01:49:40 oh, wow, I know we played football, but I didn't know we went to the games.
01:49:40 --> 01:49:43 You know, the way that the way the black church is structured in Chicago,
01:49:43 --> 01:49:47 it's like you don't get out till 1230 and the game starts at 12.
01:49:47 --> 01:49:49 So none of us were going to the stadium.
01:49:49 --> 01:49:53 It was like, you know, we were going straight to the television to see what was happening.
01:49:53 --> 01:49:58 And plus it was cold. So we were like, you know, so that to have that experience.
01:49:58 --> 01:50:04 And then my dad coming to the Circle City Classic, you know,
01:50:04 --> 01:50:10 taking him to that and for him to finally see my alma mater play in that and
01:50:10 --> 01:50:13 and just, you know, just the experience.
01:50:13 --> 01:50:17 He got to see what I had to experience for four years, you know,
01:50:17 --> 01:50:18 the sonic boom and all this stuff.
01:50:19 --> 01:50:25 So just that connection with him because he went to a PWI, he went to Southern Illinois.
01:50:25 --> 01:50:30 And so it was just like to see how he responded to that. Right.
01:50:31 --> 01:50:35 Those are those those are the kind of moments that you can't really get.
01:50:35 --> 01:50:38 You know, I'm saying I don't know what PWIs you were accepted at.
01:50:39 --> 01:50:42 I got accepted at Princeton. I got accepted to Kansas.
01:50:42 --> 01:50:46 Kansas wanted me to go into the Air Force. They wanted me to be Air Force ROTC.
01:50:47 --> 01:50:49 When Ronald Reagan was president, that wouldn't happen. Right.
01:50:50 --> 01:50:54 But, you know, so, I mean, it's just for those of us who have gone through that,
01:50:55 --> 01:51:00 there's this moment that there's some unique things that you probably wouldn't
01:51:00 --> 01:51:05 have experienced at a PWI that you experienced at a black college.
01:51:05 --> 01:51:07 But like Alcorn, for example.
01:51:07 --> 01:51:12 Right. And it's still an interview with you, but I got to tell the story.
01:51:12 --> 01:51:17 So like Alcorn, you knew every Friday they were going to serve pork chops.
01:51:17 --> 01:51:22 You knew that. So it's like whenever you were going to visit your boys at Alcorn,
01:51:22 --> 01:51:25 you try to get there just in time so you can sneak into the cafeteria,
01:51:25 --> 01:51:28 get you that pork chop dinner, and then hang out with your boy.
01:51:29 --> 01:51:33 I mean, that's a unique thing.
01:51:33 --> 01:51:38 When I would visit my friends that went to PWIs, especially the ones that went
01:51:38 --> 01:51:45 to Northwestern in Chicago, well, Evanston, it was like they had the cafeterias in the dorms.
01:51:46 --> 01:51:48 But all the black people sat at one table.
01:51:50 --> 01:51:54 It's like it didn't matter if you was an Alpha or Kappa, a.k.a. Delta.
01:51:55 --> 01:51:57 All y'all were sitting there. They all had their regalia on,
01:51:57 --> 01:52:01 but they were all sitting at the same table. You know what I'm saying?
01:52:01 --> 01:52:03 And I was just kind of like, what are y'all doing?
01:52:04 --> 01:52:06 It just kind of blew me away. All right.
01:52:07 --> 01:52:15 But I just wanted to convey that to people because it's such a unique experience.
01:52:15 --> 01:52:15 It's a nurturing experience.
01:52:17 --> 01:52:20 And I appreciate you giving the very intellectual academic answer,
01:52:20 --> 01:52:22 but I had to throw that out there too.
01:52:23 --> 01:52:27 Because as the songs, it's a feeling, you know what I'm saying?
01:52:28 --> 01:52:32 So that leads me to my next question. What do you say to those critics who say
01:52:32 --> 01:52:36 that in a modern American society, there's no need for HBCUs?
01:52:37 --> 01:52:41 That's a great question because when I was Miss Talladega at the NBC, what is it?
01:52:41 --> 01:52:48 The national, oh my goodness, I can't remember the name of the competition,
01:52:48 --> 01:52:52 but this was a question for the queens to answer.
01:52:52 --> 01:52:56 In a modern society, I think HBCUs are still needed.
01:52:56 --> 01:53:01 When I look at my background, higher ed and international education,
01:53:02 --> 01:53:07 across the board, people have been doing a lot of research on HBCUs.
01:53:07 --> 01:53:14 I'm not going to negate that, But there's still so much that has not been researched
01:53:14 --> 01:53:18 when we look at these institutions, especially when we're looking at the internationalization
01:53:18 --> 01:53:21 from an education standpoint at HBCUs.
01:53:21 --> 01:53:25 And so they are necessary because those stories do need to be told.
01:53:27 --> 01:53:30 I did graduate from the University of Pennsylvania as well.
01:53:31 --> 01:53:35 Like you were saying earlier, I did find myself sitting with the majority Black
01:53:35 --> 01:53:38 classmates. There were 50 of us and about 10 Black folks.
01:53:39 --> 01:53:44 And so several of us ended up taking an MSI class. And from that,
01:53:44 --> 01:53:47 I found the gap with HBCUs and international students.
01:53:47 --> 01:53:53 And so that information is still relevant. And it's information that our institutions
01:53:53 --> 01:53:56 can use to innovate and become better.
01:53:57 --> 01:54:03 Again, when we're looking at the current climate of a workforce-focused society,
01:54:04 --> 01:54:07 they no longer want us to go to college, and that's for a reason.
01:54:07 --> 01:54:12 And so while our predominantly white institutions are getting rid of funding
01:54:12 --> 01:54:16 and scholarships for minority students, HBCUs are stepping up to the plate.
01:54:17 --> 01:54:19 Well, I won't say stepping up to the plate because we've been there.
01:54:19 --> 01:54:20 We've been doing this work.
01:54:20 --> 01:54:25 And so they are already prepared to take these students in.
01:54:25 --> 01:54:29 Now, the numbers, you know, may be a little challenge for them,
01:54:29 --> 01:54:36 but they are prepared to do that work to ensure that we still have a Black educated society.
01:54:36 --> 01:54:44 So, you're basically saying that the HBCUs now are more of a safety net than,
01:54:45 --> 01:54:48 well, because it was a necessity because they wouldn't let us in.
01:54:48 --> 01:54:51 And then now that it looks like.
01:54:52 --> 01:54:57 They're they're trying to limit, although numbers are showing that that's not
01:54:57 --> 01:55:00 necessarily the case. There was somebody that just came on.
01:55:00 --> 01:55:04 I saw somewhere where they were saying that the number of black students at
01:55:04 --> 01:55:08 one of the schools that got sued at once was at Harvard or North Carolina.
01:55:08 --> 01:55:13 It was one of them that the black enrollment has actually increased and the
01:55:13 --> 01:55:18 Asians who had sued the Asian population has decreased at that particular school,
01:55:18 --> 01:55:21 even after they won the lawsuit in the Supreme Court.
01:55:21 --> 01:55:24 So, you know, but like you said, they are cutting the money,
01:55:24 --> 01:55:27 but I guess that's why I was asking,
01:55:27 --> 01:55:33 are we considered more of a safety net now for the kids that would have had
01:55:33 --> 01:55:38 a chance, but because of the pressure, you know, about DEI and all that stuff
01:55:38 --> 01:55:41 that they're, they're, they're choosing the black schools again.
01:55:43 --> 01:55:47 Well, I can't speak for them. But as far as safety net, I don't know.
01:55:47 --> 01:55:53 That's a great question. But I would say I think this generation of students
01:55:53 --> 01:55:59 are more comfortable and open about who they are and what they want to learn.
01:55:59 --> 01:56:06 And so black institutions are, you know, maybe what's bringing them,
01:56:07 --> 01:56:13 you know, encouraging them to apply because the application numbers have gone up for those students.
01:56:13 --> 01:56:17 So, you know, before they were saying, well, HBCUs don't offer scholarships,
01:56:17 --> 01:56:18 they don't have a lot of money.
01:56:18 --> 01:56:21 And now, you know, they're coming.
01:56:21 --> 01:56:28 So is it more so I want to be ingrained and educated at a space that's for me
01:56:28 --> 01:56:31 and also safe, a safe space?
01:56:32 --> 01:56:34 Yeah. Okay.
01:56:34 --> 01:56:38 So what are some of the main challenges facing HBCU?
01:56:44 --> 01:56:47 Oh, some of our main challenges.
01:56:48 --> 01:56:54 I would say funding has always been a challenge, especially for our private
01:56:54 --> 01:57:01 institutions, and especially with the cutting of research dollars from the federal government.
01:57:01 --> 01:57:07 And so a larger need for private funders and alumni donations,
01:57:07 --> 01:57:13 but also keeping in mind that a lot of our alum have been impacted by the job cuts.
01:57:13 --> 01:57:18 So we can't really pull a lot if our people don't have it.
01:57:18 --> 01:57:24 I'll also say our board and governance, our board and governance.
01:57:24 --> 01:57:33 I know within the past few years, our HBCUs have had a lot of turnover with
01:57:33 --> 01:57:37 presidents or just empty seats, trying to find presidents.
01:57:39 --> 01:57:44 A lot of issues that we put on the president to get him out of the seat that
01:57:44 --> 01:57:48 are actually issues within the board as a whole.
01:57:48 --> 01:57:51 And I'm not just talking about one particular institution.
01:57:51 --> 01:57:57 I'm just looking at multiple institutions that have had issues with the board.
01:57:58 --> 01:58:01 And then that's two.
01:58:02 --> 01:58:07 And I guess accreditation, which goes back a lot of times for HBCUs,
01:58:07 --> 01:58:12 it goes back to funding, not necessarily that the education isn't worthy,
01:58:12 --> 01:58:17 but a lot of times we don't have the endowments that larger,
01:58:17 --> 01:58:22 predominantly white institutions have, and that often affects us with accreditation.
01:58:22 --> 01:58:27 Yeah. And, you know, I've had this conversation before with other people,
01:58:27 --> 01:58:30 and I think I've had it on the podcast with somebody,
01:58:30 --> 01:58:34 but, you know, one of the things I have to remind people is that historically
01:58:34 --> 01:58:39 we were behind the eight ball because of our missions.
01:58:40 --> 01:58:45 A lot of our historically black colleges were either land grant schools or what
01:58:45 --> 01:58:49 they called normal schools, where either they were teaching agriculture,
01:58:49 --> 01:58:53 but they were teaching education, right?
01:58:53 --> 01:58:59 And, you know, it was like for the ag folks, you know, when they created Social
01:58:59 --> 01:59:04 Security, as the previous guest mentioned, you know, they didn't put agriculture
01:59:04 --> 01:59:08 in there because black folks were doing kind of work. Right.
01:59:08 --> 01:59:12 So they couldn't build up wealth that way.
01:59:12 --> 01:59:18 And then and then you had, you know, teachers never get paid what they deserve.
01:59:18 --> 01:59:22 So you can't build an endowment. uh
01:59:22 --> 01:59:25 you know and that was something i was always sensitive with
01:59:25 --> 01:59:28 because like rice college for example
01:59:28 --> 01:59:34 and i pick on rice all the time because rice is like one of my classmates well
01:59:34 --> 01:59:37 he was a year behind me at jackson state but his son played baseball at rice
01:59:37 --> 01:59:44 and you know because they lived in houston and so rice has about half of the
01:59:44 --> 01:59:46 student population at jackson state,
01:59:47 --> 01:59:52 you know and but they sitting on like a billion dollars in endowments.
01:59:53 --> 01:59:57 Because, you know, it was started as a private school and, you know,
01:59:57 --> 01:59:58 the inheritance, all that kind of stuff.
01:59:58 --> 02:00:03 And they were able to build on that. So that's why a school with 3-something
02:00:03 --> 02:00:08 students can play Division I football, can participate on all these different
02:00:08 --> 02:00:12 things, can offer these scholarships, send kids abroad, all this kind of stuff.
02:00:12 --> 02:00:17 Whereas Jackson State started off as a private school and eventually became public.
02:00:17 --> 02:00:22 But it was like the mission was, well, we're putting people in these positions.
02:00:22 --> 02:00:26 We had to sue to get a school of engineering you
02:00:26 --> 02:00:29 know i'm saying so they weren't if if
02:00:29 --> 02:00:32 they weren't athletes or lawyers they weren't
02:00:32 --> 02:00:38 really making the kind of money to donate back to the school right so you know
02:00:38 --> 02:00:42 i think that puts us behind the eight ball as far as endowments and then just
02:00:42 --> 02:00:50 trying to get the alumni to do stuff on their own even though now we have more opportunities,
02:00:50 --> 02:00:55 it just, we still haven't made that equation because we wait till we're old
02:00:55 --> 02:00:57 to get involved in the Alumni Association.
02:00:57 --> 02:01:01 We wait till we start getting some gray hairs or in my case, losing hair and stuff.
02:01:02 --> 02:01:06 And then all of a sudden you want to, oh yeah, well, I want to get back to my school.
02:01:06 --> 02:01:08 You know what I'm saying? It's like, I want to find God. I want to get back
02:01:08 --> 02:01:12 to my school. I want to, you know, you know, all this kind of stuff you try
02:01:12 --> 02:01:15 to catch up with before you take your next journey.
02:01:15 --> 02:01:21 And, you know, I think we got to instill in our, in our young alumni.
02:01:22 --> 02:01:26 You know, why you're at the peak, why you're at your top of,
02:01:27 --> 02:01:31 you know, whatever your peak, as far as your career or whatever's going on to
02:01:31 --> 02:01:36 get more involved that way and try to build that endowment and all that.
02:01:36 --> 02:01:41 But as you can tell, this is the issue I'm very passionate about. So I apologize.
02:01:41 --> 02:01:45 I'm doing a lot of talking, but no apologies necessary.
02:01:46 --> 02:01:52 But you addressed in your challenges the next question, which is what is the
02:01:52 --> 02:01:56 cost of leadership instability at HBCUs?
02:01:57 --> 02:02:07 I think, in my opinion, I think the cost is potential donors because it's almost like a creditor, right?
02:02:08 --> 02:02:13 I'm less likely to invest in you if you keep changing leadership.
02:02:13 --> 02:02:18 I trusted this person to make this donation, to see this program through.
02:02:18 --> 02:02:22 They're out of there. I'm pulling my money. That sets us back.
02:02:22 --> 02:02:30 I think even the relationship with alumni, you know, I love Talladega College
02:02:30 --> 02:02:34 as my, that's the institution I'm going to always take care of.
02:02:36 --> 02:02:44 You know, they've gone through about three presidents over the last maybe six years, right?
02:02:45 --> 02:02:51 And with each, you know, with one of the last ones, not the interim,
02:02:52 --> 02:02:56 but the previous president, there were a lot of promises. There was a lot of talk.
02:02:57 --> 02:03:00 It didn't come to fruition. And then there was a lot of spending,
02:03:01 --> 02:03:05 which, again, I won't just put on the president, but that was also a board issue.
02:03:05 --> 02:03:08 And so, and the board is leadership.
02:03:08 --> 02:03:14 So that caused a fraction within alumni. that also caused us some financial
02:03:14 --> 02:03:17 troubles, which led us having to sell murals.
02:03:18 --> 02:03:22 So, and alumni are back to feeling like, oh, I want to donate,
02:03:22 --> 02:03:27 but we want to make sure, you know, the money is going to be used properly.
02:03:27 --> 02:03:32 So it's really a financial piece is also, again, going back to SACS.
02:03:32 --> 02:03:34 How can you go into SACS without a leader?
02:03:35 --> 02:03:39 You know, even if it's an interim president, how do you go in there without
02:03:39 --> 02:03:44 a long-term plan or without a leader is problematic.
02:03:45 --> 02:03:52 And then again, with each president that changes when it's unstable, strategies change.
02:03:52 --> 02:03:56 So you're making a strategic plan, a five-year strategic plan,
02:03:56 --> 02:03:58 and you might not be there next year.
02:03:58 --> 02:04:02 So nothing is getting, I won't say nothing is getting done.
02:04:02 --> 02:04:08 Things are getting done, but long-term plans and processes aren't happening.
02:04:08 --> 02:04:11 So explain to the listeners what SACS is.
02:04:12 --> 02:04:17 So SACS, and I know that's such a, I think they've joined with another accreditation
02:04:17 --> 02:04:25 organization, but SACS is the Southern Association for Colleges and Universities.
02:04:25 --> 02:04:27 They're an accreditation agency.
02:04:27 --> 02:04:35 And so they just make sure institutions are maintaining protocols and financial,
02:04:35 --> 02:04:39 great financial standing and meeting requirements.
02:04:40 --> 02:04:47 And so when those things are not met, for example, financial finances aren't
02:04:47 --> 02:04:52 met, then institutions are in jeopardy of losing accreditation.
02:04:52 --> 02:05:00 So one institution is on warning for sex because of their financial unrestricted
02:05:00 --> 02:05:04 funds isn't where it needs to be documentation, yada, yada, yada.
02:05:04 --> 02:05:10 So they give institutions a chance to fix the challenges or fix the issues after
02:05:10 --> 02:05:15 so many years that they're unable to meet that, then an institution can lose accreditation.
02:05:15 --> 02:05:19 So just making sure that the institutions are running and meeting the standards
02:05:19 --> 02:05:22 of that particular accreditation. Yeah.
02:05:23 --> 02:05:32 And I can relate, you know, because we've had at Jackson State over the last
02:05:32 --> 02:05:34 decade, I think we're on our third president.
02:05:35 --> 02:05:40 And, you know, our situation, see, Talladega is a private school.
02:05:40 --> 02:05:46 Our situation is we have to answer to a college board. And so we have to answer
02:05:46 --> 02:05:50 the same college board that Ole Miss and Mississippi State is under.
02:05:51 --> 02:05:54 And, you know, so, of course, those schools will get whatever they want.
02:05:55 --> 02:06:00 And if the alumni says, you know, we want this person to be the chancellor or
02:06:00 --> 02:06:05 the president or whatever, they're going to cater to that. Whereas, like...
02:06:06 --> 02:06:09 Jackson State, it's like, well, you know, you take what we will give you.
02:06:11 --> 02:06:17 But that leads to the instability because if you bring in somebody,
02:06:17 --> 02:06:23 even if they're an alumnus, if you bring in somebody that's not in tune with the alumni,
02:06:23 --> 02:06:28 right, then, you know, you're going to run into friction.
02:06:29 --> 02:06:32 And a lot of times, if it's not the alumni, it's the faculty senate.
02:06:33 --> 02:06:37 And so, you know, And just the constant turnover.
02:06:37 --> 02:06:42 And I'm based in Atlanta, so it's like the whole situation with Morris Brown.
02:06:42 --> 02:06:48 It's like one morning I wake up, and the guy who literally slept on the campus
02:06:48 --> 02:06:53 to rebuild it, I'm reading, he's been fired. It's like, are you serious right now?
02:06:53 --> 02:06:56 It's like you wouldn't even have a board if it wasn't for this guy.
02:06:56 --> 02:06:58 And it's like, you got to go.
02:06:58 --> 02:07:04 And I think like 48 hours later, they had to change the heart, and he's still there.
02:07:05 --> 02:07:10 But that but just that it's like that that leads to like, well,
02:07:10 --> 02:07:12 do these people really have to act together?
02:07:12 --> 02:07:14 Why would they even think about firing this guy?
02:07:14 --> 02:07:19 And, you know, and like you said, it impacts outside donors because,
02:07:20 --> 02:07:25 you know, it's like like you said, because we don't have and we've been dealing
02:07:25 --> 02:07:30 with this issue on the podcast for the last three episodes about building black
02:07:30 --> 02:07:33 wealth and reducing the racial wealth gap in America.
02:07:34 --> 02:07:39 When you got 15 cents to a white man's dollar, you ain't got the capital to
02:07:39 --> 02:07:43 invest in your community and your institutions the way that you should.
02:07:43 --> 02:07:45 And so, or you want to.
02:07:46 --> 02:07:50 So we have to get other people. We have to get some of our light-skinned cousins,
02:07:51 --> 02:07:56 as I refer to them, to put in, you know, and invest in our education.
02:07:57 --> 02:08:01 And if they're looking at it as a corporate structure, they're like going...
02:08:02 --> 02:08:07 We need to ask some questions. Why would you fire this guy for 48 hours and then bring it back?
02:08:07 --> 02:08:12 What was that all about? So, you know, why are you changing leadership every
02:08:12 --> 02:08:13 two years? You know what I'm saying?
02:08:14 --> 02:08:16 What's going on with that? So I agree with you.
02:08:16 --> 02:08:22 I think that's that is the biggest challenge we have is that we've got to run
02:08:22 --> 02:08:27 these institutions and have some stability in these institutions so that,
02:08:27 --> 02:08:33 you know, Because the eventual victims of that will be the students.
02:08:33 --> 02:08:35 The students, yep. And go ahead.
02:08:36 --> 02:08:42 To that point, with the Morris Brown situation, it didn't make sense to me either.
02:08:42 --> 02:08:46 And I was like, you're getting ready to go into sex without a president?
02:08:46 --> 02:08:51 I mean, it's not making sense. I don't care what the issue is, unless it's like...
02:08:52 --> 02:08:56 Know, horrible. I mean, but we have a current president who has all of these
02:08:56 --> 02:08:58 things. It can't be that bad.
02:08:59 --> 02:09:05 But when you look at that situation and how it hit the news,
02:09:05 --> 02:09:10 it hit news channels that aren't the usual for HBCU.
02:09:10 --> 02:09:15 I said, that tells you right there, he has donors and influence,
02:09:15 --> 02:09:18 and these people are behind him.
02:09:18 --> 02:09:23 The students were behind, the alumni were behind him. It was not worth it.
02:09:23 --> 02:09:26 And I think a lot of times, again, I don't know these situations because I'm
02:09:26 --> 02:09:29 not in the room, but sometimes it seems personal.
02:09:29 --> 02:09:35 And for me, I've learned to keep the personal out of it. And these are the facts.
02:09:36 --> 02:09:39 And I guess that's the beauty of being a researcher, right? I'm looking at the facts.
02:09:40 --> 02:09:45 I'm going to tell you the facts and I'm learning, you know, how to,
02:09:45 --> 02:09:47 my social media, I just say it. Right.
02:09:48 --> 02:09:54 But when I'm in collaboration and working with people, I am able to people say I'm funny.
02:09:54 --> 02:09:58 So I said in a funny way, I mean it, but I but it is the truth.
02:09:58 --> 02:10:01 And so we have to put the personal aside.
02:10:01 --> 02:10:05 And and what what what do the students need?
02:10:05 --> 02:10:10 What do because when I think about Morris Brown, it was a few years ago when
02:10:10 --> 02:10:13 he came in and he said we need faculty.
02:10:13 --> 02:10:17 We we will take online faculty we cannot
02:10:17 --> 02:10:20 pay you and I
02:10:20 --> 02:10:25 applied me and several of my friends applied I didn't get the job but that takes
02:10:25 --> 02:10:30 a special person and special people to say hey we will get people who have PhDs
02:10:30 --> 02:10:36 in the process of getting a PhD apply for a free position to teach these students
02:10:36 --> 02:10:37 because we know they need it.
02:10:38 --> 02:10:44 Yeah. Yeah. I just, like I said, I didn't understand it, but I'm glad that's
02:10:44 --> 02:10:47 been settled, at least for a point.
02:10:47 --> 02:10:54 And we'll go on. But then, and I guess I kind of gave my answer to my next question
02:10:54 --> 02:11:01 to you, what should be the understanding of the state college boards as it relates to public HBCUs?
02:11:01 --> 02:11:06 Because my personal journey with dealing with college boards,
02:11:06 --> 02:11:10 of course, as a student, we would protest when they were talking about merging
02:11:10 --> 02:11:13 us with Ole Miss or somewhere like that.
02:11:13 --> 02:11:17 And then when I got to be a state legislator, one of the perks of being a state
02:11:17 --> 02:11:20 legislator in Mississippi is that you can show up to a college board meeting
02:11:20 --> 02:11:24 and they will kick everybody out the room, including the college presidents.
02:11:24 --> 02:11:28 And you single-handedly, you don't have to be the chair of education,
02:11:28 --> 02:11:32 none of that. Just a member can just talk to the college board.
02:11:32 --> 02:11:36 So I took advantage of that a couple of times to talk about Jackson State,
02:11:36 --> 02:11:37 because one was dealing with the lawsuit.
02:11:38 --> 02:11:45 The heirs case that took almost 30 years to solve and then settle and then dealing
02:11:45 --> 02:11:48 with a presidential change at that point.
02:11:48 --> 02:11:54 And, you know, I got to sit, you know, they put together a committee for me
02:11:54 --> 02:12:02 to, you know, me and others to, you know, sit on as alumni to try to choose a president.
02:12:02 --> 02:12:06 That's when Dr. Mason came for the time he was there.
02:12:06 --> 02:12:15 So I just, from my viewpoint, I think that college boards, being political institutions,
02:12:16 --> 02:12:19 since they're part of the government, even though we don't vote for them.
02:12:21 --> 02:12:25 It's like they should pay attention to their constituents.
02:12:25 --> 02:12:29 Even if you don't view the alumni as some special constituent,
02:12:29 --> 02:12:32 especially if you're dealing with a school, you should pay attention to us because
02:12:32 --> 02:12:36 we elected the governor that picked you.
02:12:36 --> 02:12:42 So you might want to pay attention. We pay the taxes that allows you to sit in this boardroom.
02:12:43 --> 02:12:46 So we, I think you should listen to us, but yeah,
02:12:47 --> 02:12:51 you smarter than me. Go ahead and tell me what you think. Well,
02:12:51 --> 02:12:54 I think, oh, let me see. I had it in my head. Let me see.
02:12:55 --> 02:12:59 When we're looking at, and I don't see how people miss this,
02:13:00 --> 02:13:05 the economic contribution of HBCUs to the states.
02:13:05 --> 02:13:09 I know it's not as much as what a predominantly white institution would bring
02:13:09 --> 02:13:15 in, but it's contributing jobs. The students are coming. They're putting money into your economy.
02:13:16 --> 02:13:22 They're filling jobs that, you know, what, like your part-time job,
02:13:22 --> 02:13:25 they are contributing. They're paying taxes.
02:13:25 --> 02:13:31 And so even if one closes, and I think one good example is Concordia University
02:13:31 --> 02:13:33 in Selma, Alabama. They had two HBCUs.
02:13:34 --> 02:13:42 Selma, yes, it's a, I think a very high, I want to say like 98% unemployment,
02:13:42 --> 02:13:47 low income, and just the impact on Concordia in that city.
02:13:48 --> 02:13:53 You had two colleges, I'm going to say elementary, middle, and high school.
02:13:53 --> 02:13:56 That one college college, that took students out of your city.
02:13:56 --> 02:14:00 Even if it was 200 students, those students were contributing.
02:14:00 --> 02:14:07 It took the jobs and decreased the amount of money that was coming in.
02:14:08 --> 02:14:13 And the state, it is Alabama, didn't seem flustered, you know,
02:14:13 --> 02:14:16 even with the closing of Birmingham Southern, which isn't an HBCU.
02:14:16 --> 02:14:20 You're losing jobs and money and people coming to the state.
02:14:20 --> 02:14:23 So that, you know, we have to look at the benefits.
02:14:24 --> 02:14:25 We can't afford to lose them, right?
02:14:26 --> 02:14:31 But to your point, you have to listen to your constituents because you have
02:14:31 --> 02:14:34 a ton of alumni who live in that state who want to see that institution.
02:14:35 --> 02:14:38 There are just the...
02:14:39 --> 02:14:43 Corporations who are like, I graduated here. I want my child to graduate from
02:14:43 --> 02:14:46 here. We have to keep it open. We have to keep producing.
02:14:47 --> 02:14:50 And you said something earlier about the merging of institutions.
02:14:50 --> 02:14:56 And sometimes that's what they want, because I can take this, I can merge this school.
02:14:56 --> 02:15:00 People will say, oh, this is still a part of Jackson State's history,
02:15:00 --> 02:15:01 and we'll still get these.
02:15:01 --> 02:15:06 So for them, yeah, we want to take over, change the demographics,
02:15:06 --> 02:15:14 but still, you know, know get some of the same folks in so I don't know if I
02:15:14 --> 02:15:16 truly answered that question but I think,
02:15:17 --> 02:15:22 a lot should be considered with the with the college boards and accreditation
02:15:22 --> 02:15:29 yeah yeah I'm sorry cool it's like you know and I'm glad you know Concordia
02:15:29 --> 02:15:31 because I grew up Lutheran I grew up in the Lutheran church.
02:15:32 --> 02:15:37 And so all the Black preachers that were, you know,
02:15:37 --> 02:15:45 there's a book called From Roses to Thorns that talk about the legacy of the
02:15:45 --> 02:15:48 Black preachers that came out of Concordia,
02:15:49 --> 02:15:53 Selma, and how they reshaped the Lutheran church, especially in the Missouri Senate.
02:15:54 --> 02:15:59 And, you know, one of my, you know, my pastor was one of those graduates and
02:15:59 --> 02:16:02 he married the sister of another graduate.
02:16:03 --> 02:16:07 Right. So they had that connection and they all ended up in Chicago and other
02:16:07 --> 02:16:11 big cities and reformed the Lutheran church.
02:16:11 --> 02:16:14 Whereas like, if you went to our church, you thought you were going to a black
02:16:14 --> 02:16:15 Baptist church. You know what I'm saying?
02:16:16 --> 02:16:19 We had a gospel choir and everything, you know what I'm saying?
02:16:20 --> 02:16:24 So, you know, just, just those kind of legacy impacts.
02:16:25 --> 02:16:30 It just, you know, anyway, let's get into some of the stuff that you're doing with your research.
02:16:30 --> 02:16:33 What is the International HBCU Exchange?
02:16:35 --> 02:16:40 So it's a nonprofit that I decided during my dissertation process.
02:16:40 --> 02:16:45 I didn't have enough to do during COVID and dissertation, but I knew from my
02:16:45 --> 02:16:51 experience of being a Fulbrighter in Malaysia, the gap of HBCU students participating
02:16:51 --> 02:16:54 in federally funded international exchange programs.
02:16:54 --> 02:16:58 So when I was in Malaysia, there were a hundred of us, only two of us came from
02:16:58 --> 02:17:06 an HBCU. And I was like, with this program, it pays for us to travel abroad, to teach.
02:17:06 --> 02:17:11 It gives us, and I'm like, this seems ideal for people who look like me who
02:17:11 --> 02:17:13 wouldn't be able to travel otherwise.
02:17:13 --> 02:17:20 I was wrong. I was wrong. And what I learned was that these programs were actually
02:17:20 --> 02:17:25 used to bring through the next generations of students.
02:17:26 --> 02:17:33 Diplomats and government leaders. And so when I found out about the other programs,
02:17:34 --> 02:17:37 so there's Fulbright, Boring, Gilman, Critical Language Scholarships.
02:17:37 --> 02:17:40 Those are the ones that I really focus on in Fulbright, I think.
02:17:40 --> 02:17:47 Yeah, I don't know if I missed that one. Anyway, and so I talked with the folks
02:17:47 --> 02:17:49 at the Institute of International Education and they were like,
02:17:49 --> 02:17:52 hey, we tried to reach out to HBCUs.
02:17:52 --> 02:17:57 It's really hard. And I was like, yeah, you have to understand not just the
02:17:57 --> 02:18:02 culture, but you also have to understand the challenges, and you also have to
02:18:02 --> 02:18:05 understand how to engage the students.
02:18:05 --> 02:18:09 And so with that, and this started out as just an initiative,
02:18:09 --> 02:18:13 and we reached out to several HBCUs.
02:18:13 --> 02:18:18 We eventually opened it up to all, and there are a lot of, we didn't just focus on the students.
02:18:18 --> 02:18:24 We also focused on fellowship advisors and faculty who wanted to provide the
02:18:24 --> 02:18:26 information about these opportunities,
02:18:26 --> 02:18:32 but also with the fellowship advisors providing workshops so that they can tell
02:18:32 --> 02:18:37 these students how to navigate the application process, because there are unspoken
02:18:37 --> 02:18:40 rules that have to be, yeah,
02:18:40 --> 02:18:45 unspoken components of the application that have to be present for students to be successful.
02:18:45 --> 02:18:49 So that's how we came about. And then.
02:18:49 --> 02:18:52 Sorry, this is so long-winded, but in 2024,
02:18:52 --> 02:19:00 we received a federal grant to increase research collaborations and partnerships
02:19:00 --> 02:19:06 between historically Black colleges and universities here and historically Black universities,
02:19:06 --> 02:19:11 or what are now known as historically disadvantaged universities, in South Africa.
02:19:11 --> 02:19:16 And unfortunately, it was terminated, but a lot of similarities between those sets of institutions.
02:19:16 --> 02:19:20 But yes, making sure we have access to these opportunities.
02:19:21 --> 02:19:26 Well, you know, and that was one of the reasons why I was intrigued and drawn
02:19:26 --> 02:19:28 to have you on because, you know,
02:19:28 --> 02:19:32 Some people were just satisfied. Oh, yeah. Well, I got a Fulbright scholarship,
02:19:32 --> 02:19:36 you know, and as you got two of them, I never you're the first person I met
02:19:36 --> 02:19:38 that got two Fulbright scholarships.
02:19:38 --> 02:19:43 So I already know you're a bad sister, but let's get into the South Africa thing.
02:19:43 --> 02:19:50 What did your research about the HBUs or the HDUs, I guess, now they're designated
02:19:50 --> 02:19:55 in South Africa, teach you about the HBCUs in the United States? Yeah.
02:19:56 --> 02:20:03 So I knew that there were similarities with the Jim Crow and apartheid.
02:20:03 --> 02:20:08 And so I originally went over there to study how apartheid era inequities were
02:20:08 --> 02:20:14 exacerbated during COVID because I could see the parallel between the HBCUs
02:20:14 --> 02:20:15 here in the States and COVID.
02:20:15 --> 02:20:22 What I actually ended up finding out through my research, and I love to read in history,
02:20:23 --> 02:20:30 was the similarities between missionaries and their role in establishing Black
02:20:30 --> 02:20:33 education in both the United States and South Africa.
02:20:33 --> 02:20:37 And that is kind of where my institution, I mean,
02:20:37 --> 02:20:42 my architecture of institutional containment for racialized education came from,
02:20:42 --> 02:20:49 because we look at them separately, but both the education systems and Black
02:20:49 --> 02:20:53 education systems in South Africa and the U.S., how they were set up,
02:20:53 --> 02:20:57 are continuing to function like that in today's society.
02:20:58 --> 02:21:03 So when we're looking at the board and governance, almost identical.
02:21:04 --> 02:21:10 When in the 50s for HBCUs, when a lot of the students were protesting for black
02:21:10 --> 02:21:15 leadership, the white leadership left up out of there, left it in disarray.
02:21:15 --> 02:21:20 A lot of people had not been trained to take over those positions.
02:21:20 --> 02:21:25 Even going back to how they were set up, we were set up to get a specific type
02:21:25 --> 02:21:27 of education. You mentioned agriculture.
02:21:27 --> 02:21:33 You mentioned education preachers and domestic work.
02:21:34 --> 02:21:38 And all of those types of jobs pushed us into a specific type of work.
02:21:40 --> 02:21:44 Place. So we were never meant to compete.
02:21:44 --> 02:21:50 And it's literally documented. We were not meant to compete with white schools.
02:21:50 --> 02:21:56 That is why you're white. White schools were set up in both countries to be knowledge producers.
02:21:57 --> 02:22:04 Their endowment is not just coming from donations, but patents, research.
02:22:04 --> 02:22:12 So even when I went to South Africa, I made sure that I did my Fulbright IRB
02:22:12 --> 02:22:18 through Howard University because I knew that I'm going over here. That can help them.
02:22:18 --> 02:22:22 Did it make that big of a difference? Probably not, but it shows we have international researchers.
02:22:23 --> 02:22:28 So we are still behind when it comes to knowledge production,
02:22:28 --> 02:22:33 but now we have Howard University, the only one to have a research one institution,
02:22:33 --> 02:22:37 and there are about 17 others that are researched two.
02:22:37 --> 02:22:39 Mind you, we weren't supposed to be doing that.
02:22:40 --> 02:22:44 And we see that similarly in South Africa. They are doing a lot of research
02:22:44 --> 02:22:49 production, but in comparison to the historically white universities,
02:22:49 --> 02:22:51 that's how it's labeled there, they are behind.
02:22:51 --> 02:22:56 Still educating first-generation, lower income students.
02:22:56 --> 02:23:05 And so that is where the historically Black institution exchange part of IHBCUX
02:23:05 --> 02:23:10 came from, because I'm like, we have similar challenges.
02:23:10 --> 02:23:16 We'll be producing educators, STEM, how can we work together to really enhance our research?
02:23:17 --> 02:23:21 Yeah, and shout out to Dr. Hope over at Howard.
02:23:22 --> 02:23:27 She's been on the show and highlighted the work she's been doing with the Ralph Bunch Center there.
02:23:29 --> 02:23:33 I just think I just think it's important for us to realize that we're not in
02:23:33 --> 02:23:36 a bubble when it comes to oppression.
02:23:37 --> 02:23:42 You know, it's like, you know, I hear people all the time saying that African-American
02:23:42 --> 02:23:46 experience is unique and it is to an extent.
02:23:46 --> 02:23:51 But when you look at what, you know, South Africa, I mean, in my lifetime,
02:23:51 --> 02:23:58 in our lifetime, we saw the apartheid or Jim Crow, however you want to label it, end.
02:23:59 --> 02:24:05 And they're a relatively new Black nation as opposed to whatever.
02:24:06 --> 02:24:08 And I just think about, you know, like Haiti.
02:24:09 --> 02:24:14 If South Africa was blessed compared to Haiti because international attention
02:24:14 --> 02:24:18 was given to South Africa, the minute that the ANC took over,
02:24:19 --> 02:24:22 they were recognized as a country, whereas Haiti was not.
02:24:22 --> 02:24:27 And all the chaos that's happening now, you can go all the way back to 1804.
02:24:27 --> 02:24:38 So anyway, I've done a lot of talking for an interview, but I respect you a lot.
02:24:38 --> 02:24:43 And even though we're just now meeting, just the fact that you're trying to
02:24:43 --> 02:24:48 make that connection and the fact that you're a cheerleader for the HBCUs here
02:24:48 --> 02:24:52 puts you in a very, very high regard with me, Dr.
02:24:52 --> 02:24:57 Ashleigh Brown-Grier. So I'm again, I'm really, really honored to have you on.
02:24:57 --> 02:25:00 I do want you to finish this sentence before you go.
02:25:02 --> 02:25:12 I have hope because. I have hope because black people and the institutions that we build and maintain,
02:25:12 --> 02:25:18 we are resilient and we pull through every time.
02:25:19 --> 02:25:22 Boom. Drop the mic and the story. That's great.
02:25:23 --> 02:25:28 So if people want to get in touch with you, Dr. Brown-Grier, how can how can they do that?
02:25:28 --> 02:25:33 I assume that the International HBCU Exchange is a nonprofit,
02:25:33 --> 02:25:36 so if you want to donate to that, how can they do that?
02:25:37 --> 02:25:40 Yes. So we are on GoFundMe.
02:25:41 --> 02:25:46 We're working on getting our website back up and running. So it is ihbcux.org.
02:25:47 --> 02:25:51 Give me about a week. And then you can follow us on social media,
02:25:51 --> 02:25:54 ihbcux.org, on Instagram,
02:25:55 --> 02:26:03 Facebook, and International HBCU Exchange, X-C-H-A-N-G-E, on LinkedIn.
02:26:04 --> 02:26:08 All right. Well, Dr. Brown-Grier, again, thank you for doing this.
02:26:08 --> 02:26:10 I greatly appreciate it.
02:26:10 --> 02:26:14 I apologize for talking a lot.
02:26:14 --> 02:26:19 But like I said, this is an issue that's very, very passionate for me.
02:26:19 --> 02:26:23 If it wasn't for Jackson State, I wouldn't be in the position I am now to,
02:26:23 --> 02:26:29 you know, look back and some of the achievements I've been able to achieve,
02:26:29 --> 02:26:32 it wouldn't have been possible without Jackson State.
02:26:32 --> 02:26:34 And I'm sure you feel the same way about Talladega.
02:26:35 --> 02:26:38 And even though you said the University of Penn, you attended there,
02:26:38 --> 02:26:41 that's the only PWI you attended because you went to Morgan State and Howard.
02:26:42 --> 02:26:49 Yes. So you've been true to the cause, you know, as far as attending HBCUs and supporting them.
02:26:49 --> 02:26:54 So thank you for doing what you're doing and thank you for coming on the podcast.
02:26:55 --> 02:26:59 Absolutely. Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. All right,
02:26:59 --> 02:27:00 guys. We're going to catch you all.
02:27:12 --> 02:27:18 All right, so we are back. So I just want to thank Kate Powell,
02:27:20 --> 02:27:23 Gloria Browne-Marshall, and Dr.
02:27:23 --> 02:27:27 Ashleigh Brown-Grier for coming on the podcast.
02:27:29 --> 02:27:38 You know, when you are in the presence of powerful people, there are two things that happen.
02:27:38 --> 02:27:44 One, you are somewhat humbled, but two, you are inspired, right?
02:27:45 --> 02:27:50 And so all three of these ladies fall in that category of being very powerful,
02:27:51 --> 02:27:53 very passionate about what they do.
02:27:54 --> 02:27:58 And I just hope that you got something out of that.
02:27:59 --> 02:28:03 I hope that you get Ms. Browne-Marshall's book, A Protest History of the United States.
02:28:03 --> 02:28:15 I hope that you follow Kate's lead and be a menace and hold your elected officials accountable.
02:28:16 --> 02:28:23 And I hope from Dr. Brown-Grier that you understood why it's important for us
02:28:23 --> 02:28:27 to support the HBCUs here in America.
02:28:27 --> 02:28:33 Even if you didn't attend, those institutions play a vital role.
02:28:33 --> 02:28:40 And it's because of people like Kate and because of people like Sister Browne-Marshall.
02:28:41 --> 02:28:48 So those institutions would have had a tougher time, you know,
02:28:48 --> 02:28:49 along with people like Dr.
02:28:50 --> 02:28:55 Brown-Grier, who are cheerleaders and advocates for HBCUs directly.
02:28:56 --> 02:29:02 You know, the fact that people had to fight and people had to agitate to make
02:29:02 --> 02:29:06 sure those institutions, the ones that have survived,
02:29:07 --> 02:29:12 you know, still were able to thrive, still were able to get the recognition
02:29:12 --> 02:29:17 and the funding that they needed and they still need today.
02:29:18 --> 02:29:20 So all that kind of ties in.
02:29:21 --> 02:29:25 And that's why, you know, it was like trying to come up with a title.
02:29:26 --> 02:29:31 I came up with menace, movement, momentum, right?
02:29:32 --> 02:29:40 Because you got to have that fierceness and you got to build a movement with that fierceness.
02:29:40 --> 02:29:46 And then you've got to carry that momentum forward to keep attaining the progress
02:29:46 --> 02:29:50 that we deserve and that we should continue to strive to attain.
02:29:51 --> 02:29:55 So I thank all three of those ladies for taking the time out to come on.
02:29:57 --> 02:30:00 And I hope that you all enjoyed the interviews.
02:30:01 --> 02:30:05 I know I always say I'm not going to take up too much time and,
02:30:05 --> 02:30:09 you know, in my commentary and all that stuff.
02:30:10 --> 02:30:14 You know, but I just try to say what I need to say and get it off my chest.
02:30:14 --> 02:30:19 And I appreciate those of you all who stayed throughout the podcast to listen to that,
02:30:19 --> 02:30:24 because this is really the essence of why I even started this podcast,
02:30:24 --> 02:30:30 was to get things off of my chest to articulate some frustrations.
02:30:30 --> 02:30:33 And hopefully a lot of y'all can relate to that.
02:30:33 --> 02:30:36 Hopefully what I say is.
02:30:37 --> 02:30:41 It resonates with what you were thinking. I mean, you were glad somebody said
02:30:41 --> 02:30:44 it, even if you didn't get a chance to, right?
02:30:45 --> 02:30:55 But all I can really say this episode is just be laser focused in whatever you're
02:30:55 --> 02:31:01 doing and whatever you seek to do to help move this nation forward.
02:31:01 --> 02:31:07 Because right now, whether it's deliberate or they can't help themselves,
02:31:07 --> 02:31:12 we are in a state of chaos and confusion.
02:31:13 --> 02:31:16 And this is not the first time I have used those terms.
02:31:17 --> 02:31:24 But, you know, it was one, I don't know if I wrote it or I've said it before or whatever.
02:31:25 --> 02:31:36 But there's a passage in the Iliad, I believe, where Odysseus talks about this being an age of heroes.
02:31:36 --> 02:31:44 And I have made the contention for years now that we are not in that age, right?
02:31:44 --> 02:31:50 Now maybe when Homer wrote that, that was kind of the sense of civilization.
02:31:51 --> 02:31:57 Or that was kind of the portrayal of the era that Homer was trying to depict in that story.
02:31:59 --> 02:32:08 But we are not in that age now. If anything, we are in an age of chaos,
02:32:08 --> 02:32:11 confusion, and even cowardice, right?
02:32:12 --> 02:32:16 And cowardice shows its form in many, many ways.
02:32:16 --> 02:32:22 It shows its form in trying to drive your truck through a synagogue or showing
02:32:22 --> 02:32:28 up on a college campus shooting people or not standing up,
02:32:30 --> 02:32:36 administration that you know is wrong, right? Not being able to say no to your boss.
02:32:36 --> 02:32:41 And we got to get out of that cowardice. We got to get out of that fear.
02:32:41 --> 02:32:46 We got to get out of this mental malaise that we're in.
02:32:48 --> 02:32:55 And for those of you who are not elected, I understand that may not be a priority
02:32:55 --> 02:32:59 for you when it pertains to politics.
02:33:00 --> 02:33:03 But see, politics interacts with everything we do in life.
02:33:04 --> 02:33:09 And so if you have a mental malaise in going to your job, or you have a mental
02:33:09 --> 02:33:14 malaise in dealing with your children, or if you have a mental malaise in pursuing
02:33:14 --> 02:33:19 your personal dreams, you can't compartmentalize that.
02:33:19 --> 02:33:25 It carries over in everything that you do, especially in things that you don't
02:33:25 --> 02:33:32 prioritize, like who is your mayor or city council person or state rep or state senator,
02:33:33 --> 02:33:37 county commissioner, or even your congressman, your senator, your president.
02:33:38 --> 02:33:42 Average American politics is not the foremost thing in their mind,
02:33:43 --> 02:33:45 yet it impacts everything that they do.
02:33:46 --> 02:33:52 Everything. The car you drive, if you have a car, right?
02:33:53 --> 02:33:56 Government has their hands all in that car.
02:33:56 --> 02:34:01 Government has a hand in the highway or the street that you drive the car on.
02:34:01 --> 02:34:07 Government has its hands on whether you stop at that intersection or not, right?
02:34:09 --> 02:34:16 Just basic stuff. If you don't have a car, government provides transportation for you.
02:34:17 --> 02:34:22 Government regulates that Uber or Lyft that you summon.
02:34:23 --> 02:34:26 We're just talking about the transportation piece. We ain't got into food.
02:34:27 --> 02:34:31 We haven't got into the schools. We haven't got into the house or the apartment
02:34:31 --> 02:34:37 that you live in or the fact that you can't afford a house or an apartment to live in, right?
02:34:38 --> 02:34:44 Politics plays a major part in everything, every aspect of your life,
02:34:44 --> 02:34:46 even when you go to the...
02:34:47 --> 02:34:50 So, but people don't look at politics that way.
02:34:51 --> 02:34:56 They just look at it as, okay, that's what's predominantly on the news.
02:34:57 --> 02:35:00 The president and the Congress don't get along. The governor and the state legislature
02:35:00 --> 02:35:03 doesn't get along. The mayor and the city council doesn't get along. Okay.
02:35:04 --> 02:35:09 You power through that. but you need to pay attention to what they're arguing about.
02:35:12 --> 02:35:15 As sure as the sun comes up, as sure as the air that you breathe,
02:35:15 --> 02:35:17 it's going to have an impact on you.
02:35:18 --> 02:35:25 And if not directly, indirectly, if not immediately, in the future.
02:35:25 --> 02:35:27 But it's going to have an impact.
02:35:28 --> 02:35:31 So you need to pay attention. You need to pay attention to the people that are
02:35:31 --> 02:35:37 asking you to vote for them to be in these positions, regardless of how trivial
02:35:37 --> 02:35:40 you think that position is to your life.
02:35:41 --> 02:35:44 You can say, well, I'm never going to get arrested. I'm not going to commit
02:35:44 --> 02:35:46 a crime, but you still need to
02:35:46 --> 02:35:51 pay attention to who your sheriff and your district attorney are, right?
02:35:51 --> 02:36:00 So I'd say all that to say that if you are in a funk, if you are in a sad state of affairs mentally,
02:36:01 --> 02:36:06 that's going to impact your decisions as far as politics go,
02:36:06 --> 02:36:09 because politics It's not a priority in your life.
02:36:10 --> 02:36:16 So whatever is putting you in this bad situation is just going to carry over to that.
02:36:18 --> 02:36:22 And sometimes those decisions, whether you decide to vote or not,
02:36:23 --> 02:36:26 has incredible consequences.
02:36:26 --> 02:36:34 And whatever your mindset was in 2024, even if you voted for the candidate that
02:36:34 --> 02:36:36 you felt was going to do the right thing,
02:36:36 --> 02:36:44 the results have brought about this era of chaos, confusion, and cowardice.
02:36:46 --> 02:36:58 And all I can say is that all I can ask you, I should say, to do is be more focused on that.
02:36:59 --> 02:37:05 Most of y'all who are listening to this show are not the people I'm really trying to reach,
02:37:06 --> 02:37:12 but for those who might be listening for the first time or you've kind of been
02:37:12 --> 02:37:15 monitoring and what I'm doing or whatever the case may be.
02:37:15 --> 02:37:18 You don't necessarily agree with my positions.
02:37:19 --> 02:37:28 Take heed. And I just want you to just look at what is going on and make a decision
02:37:28 --> 02:37:30 how you can make that better.
02:37:31 --> 02:37:36 If you realize that the only thing you think you can do is just vote for somebody different, do that.
02:37:37 --> 02:37:42 But I want you to be more engaged this go-around.
02:37:43 --> 02:37:46 And if you know people, if you're listening to the show and you know people,
02:37:46 --> 02:37:49 because a lot of times people are not really engaged and not listening to a
02:37:49 --> 02:37:52 show like this, it's time to evangelize.
02:37:53 --> 02:38:00 It's time to spread the good news that you can make a difference if you participate in the process.
02:38:02 --> 02:38:08 If there's anything that Ms. Powell tried to convey, it's that you have to get involved.
02:38:09 --> 02:38:14 You have to. You don't have to accept things, right?
02:38:15 --> 02:38:20 I guess it was St. Francis of Assisi that asked God's guidance to accept the
02:38:20 --> 02:38:22 things that I cannot change.
02:38:22 --> 02:38:30 And then Angela Davis countered that and said, I seek to change the things I cannot accept.
02:38:30 --> 02:38:34 So it's time for us to embrace that ladder.
02:38:35 --> 02:38:40 Because I don't believe the majority of the people that live in the boundaries
02:38:40 --> 02:38:44 of the United States of America are really cool with what's going on.
02:38:44 --> 02:38:47 Some of y'all might brush it off as a joke.
02:38:49 --> 02:38:54 Just part of your daily entertainment. Until it hits home.
02:38:54 --> 02:38:59 Until you're the family that gets the knock on the door and says that your loved
02:38:59 --> 02:39:05 one didn't make it in this particular battle or this particular war.
02:39:07 --> 02:39:14 Or if someone you care about gets arrested, or if you are involved in something
02:39:14 --> 02:39:20 that jeopardizes your health, then everybody's engaged, right?
02:39:21 --> 02:39:26 And human beings have been very good at reacting to things.
02:39:26 --> 02:39:34 The challenge is getting us to a point to have vision and courage enough to
02:39:34 --> 02:39:37 deal with things before they happen.
02:39:38 --> 02:39:45 Deal with the probabilities. We have the capacity to do it because we make computers that do it, right?
02:39:46 --> 02:39:49 We program computers to do all this stuff.
02:39:50 --> 02:39:57 So if we could create something to do it, that means we have the capacity within us to do it.
02:39:58 --> 02:40:00 That's my argument. I'm sticking to that.
02:40:01 --> 02:40:08 We can foreshadow things, we can detect patterns, and we can stop things before
02:40:08 --> 02:40:10 they manifest into something devastating.
02:40:11 --> 02:40:16 But in order to do that, we have to care. See, we'll catch our child when we
02:40:16 --> 02:40:20 think that they're falling, because we care and love them enough that we don't
02:40:20 --> 02:40:25 want them to get hurt, right? We react to that.
02:40:26 --> 02:40:32 Some of us react like that to our pets because we care. We don't want them to get hurt.
02:40:34 --> 02:40:40 Something really, really big. I want you to care about the government that you are under.
02:40:40 --> 02:40:45 I want you to care about the institutions of government.
02:40:46 --> 02:40:51 You should not want them to fail. You should not want them to be damaged.
02:40:52 --> 02:40:53 You should not want it to be broken.
02:40:55 --> 02:41:00 So please, please focus.
02:41:01 --> 02:41:10 I'm pleading with you because all of this that we're dealing with right now, we don't deserve that.
02:41:10 --> 02:41:15 We deserve way better than that. We are much smarter than that.
02:41:15 --> 02:41:20 We don't have to settle for the lowest common denominator.
02:41:21 --> 02:41:25 The United States of America is supposed to be an example of excellence.
02:41:25 --> 02:41:34 As I've stated before, we are the only nation that has people from every country
02:41:34 --> 02:41:41 in the world represented within these boundaries. The only one.
02:41:42 --> 02:41:46 Therefore, we have an example to set.
02:41:48 --> 02:41:54 Better time to set that example than in the 250th year that we waged a protest
02:41:54 --> 02:42:01 against tyranny, that we waged a protest against authoritarianism, right?
02:42:02 --> 02:42:06 And yeah, you know, some people are like, well, you know, Frederick Douglass
02:42:06 --> 02:42:15 said, this is, you know, it's like slaves fought for American independence.
02:42:16 --> 02:42:23 Slaves fought in the Civil War. Black people fought for this nation.
02:42:24 --> 02:42:30 The very first person to die for American independence was a black man.
02:42:31 --> 02:42:39 So forgive me if I embrace the nation that I was born in and I challenge to
02:42:39 --> 02:42:44 do better each and every day despite this moment of chaos,
02:42:44 --> 02:42:47 confusion, and cowardice.
02:42:48 --> 02:42:53 I know we have the potential. I know we have the ability. But it's got to be
02:42:53 --> 02:42:54 a buy-in from everybody.
02:42:55 --> 02:42:59 And just like the preacher knows every Sunday, he's not going to convert everybody
02:42:59 --> 02:43:03 that he gives a sermon to every Sunday.
02:43:03 --> 02:43:07 But he shows up on that pulpit, or she shows up in the pulpit.
02:43:09 --> 02:43:12 And delivers the good news. right?
02:43:13 --> 02:43:18 Or they show up, the imam shows up at the mosque or the rabbi shows up at the synagogue.
02:43:20 --> 02:43:23 It's all about the challenge.
02:43:24 --> 02:43:30 If you accept a call, you accept a challenge to make the society that you are
02:43:30 --> 02:43:34 in better than what it was the day before.
02:43:35 --> 02:43:39 So please, ladies and gentlemen, would you do that for a little old me?
02:43:39 --> 02:43:43 I ask you a lot. I ask you to subscribe to the party. I ask you to listen to
02:43:43 --> 02:43:44 the party. I ask you to do comments on it.
02:43:45 --> 02:43:51 Please, please, please get engaged. We need you. We need you.
02:43:52 --> 02:43:57 All right. That's all I got. Thank y'all for listening. Until next time.