Shaun King on Athletes’ Social Activism, Rodney Reed, NFL & Kaepernick | ALL THE SMOKE

Shaun king Man, the People's champ. This is pop. I can't say enough good things about to do, but kind of pop cultures go to guy for social justice, social activism. Um, A positive voice, a real voice. It's good to have you here. MA appreciate it. Man, Thank you for coming to Also also educator. A lot of stuff that go on. You educate a lot of people when they don't know

what they're talking about. You know, my first job out of college was as a teacher, and so much of what I do is still from that training, trying to just teach and break stuff down. So that's a lot of what I've did. And people need to be susceptible. I mean, we know, uh, pretty much what you're about, and we're gonna get into that the detail, but what

I kind of wanted to tap into. I'm excited personally just to kind of get to know Seaun King the person you know, not the person that is, you know, the social justice fighter that we all know and love, but you know your upbringing and and and what got you going into this space to tell us a little bit about Oh man, Yeah, I mean, I you know, social media is weird like that because it kind of reduces us to little sound bites and tweets, and we're

all way more nuanced and complicated than our best Instagram post. So I grew up in rural Kentucky and we're all about the same age. And so I grew up in the eighties and a small town right outside of Lexington. So I grew up a huge basketball fan, big UK fans UK. Right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know there were some Louisville fans you know, around, But no, not at all, man, No, not. I can't even play a

game of horse right, right, right. But so I grew up. Man, When I think about the way I came up, you know, my mother was a single parent, hard working, working class white woman who worked in a local factory there in the town. And I was a product of an interracial relationship and in this town, like that was unheard of. Yeah, Like, I'm born in nineteen seventy nine and in the eighties, growing up looking the way I looked from the from the relationship I came from, it was weird. Like this

was before being mixed or by racial. I didn't even have that language, Like this was before any of that was cool. And so in the town I grew up in, I never even saw myself as mixed or multi racial. I was black. Like that's interesting. What age did you realize you're a black man? Because I'm similar, I'm Italian and black. But I knew at seventeen from a particular instant that I was looked at as a black man. Well here's man, I have a book that comes out

in April, and I tell this whole story. So in my house, my mother never talked to me about race. And I try to tell people, like, you know, a white household, we had like a very low racial I Q like my mom wasn't trying to school me on race or racism. So I was in second grade when two young black girls in the school who were friends of mine for life came up to me and asked me if I was mixed. And I remember, like, I've played it cool my whole life, but I remember being

so confused when they were like, are you mixed? And they were giggling. What they wanted to know And I didn't understand this two years later. Was they wanted to know if it was okay for them to think I was cute because their parents had taught them don't mess with white boys at the school, so they wanted to know, are you mixed? And so in second grade, I start

realizing like, oh, I'm different. And by the time I got to middle school, like I went from thinking, Okay, I know I'm different too, Oh I'm black, Like I'm sitting at the the black table, my girlfriends are black or my friends are black. By the time I get to high school, I've told this story before, Um, it was a whole. It was a whole another monster. Like the town was super segregated and there was just major racial strife in the high school. And so I mean

we were being called the N word. I had a redneck one time throw a jar tobacco, spit in my face, like we were dealing with full on bigotry in nine teen, Like this was I was fourteen at the time. I got beaten so badly by a group of racist white students. I missed my whole sophomore and junior year of high school recovery from those injuries, and that shaped the rest of my life, Like I don't even know, Like so I hate that that happened. I had three spinal surgeries.

I fought my way back to recovery. But had that not happened, I don't even know that you would know me. Like I was not on the path to fighting for social justice for civil rights, but going through all of that impacted me so deeply that this fight for justice became a huge part of my life. And so from n on, I've always been not just fighting for civil rights, but I've always had a huge heart for people that

are hurting, for people that experienced injustice. But even through all of that, I mean, I've always sometimes just been at this weird spot when it comes to race. You know, in in this country, Uh, we haven't always had the nuance for people who operate in multiple worlds. You know. It's interesting because it's a similar upbringing. Like I said, I'm Italian and black. Um, so I was never black enough and I was never white enough, you know what

I mean. And I went through stuff and elementary school where baby calling me nigger, so I would fight him, and so I really didn't get a chance to show who I was until you know I was. I was bigger obviously, but they would never let me play at recess and the girls didn't look at me like me because I went to my parents. Although I was mixed, They've always put me in white schools, you know, I mean,

just for whatever reason may ben. So I would go through racial stuff and it was just like okay, and I was proud to say, okay, I was always mixed. I was always mixed. I was always mixed until my senior high school where a kidd spit and my sister's hero and Calder and nick girl and actually came up and told me after class, I happened to see the dude walking by, so I did what a big brother

does and I ended up getting suspended. And during my suspension, the KKK came up to my school and just vandalized it, burned down the bathroom, hung my football, a man it came with my football jersey on the die knicker swastikas everywhere, and it was really at that point where I'm just like, Okay, although I'm very proud to be Italian, I'm black and people look at me as being black, and I was like, the society can't you can't proudly be mixed, and many

mixed kids as there are like if you have black in your you're black, and that's how people look at you as black. As you know from It's wild that you experienced that, man, because that's one of the first times I've heard of a store if somebody experiencing something like that. Because in three I got into a same thing. We were always in, like horrible racial fights, and um, I got into this horrible fight at a football game and the next week the school band, the high school

I went to, banned Confederate flags. And when they banned these Confederate flags, there was a huge walkout of white students who were who wanted their Confederate flags. Why I got suspended because of the fight that I was in and when I came back to school after they had banned those Confederate flags, like white students at the school saw me as the reason they banned those Confederate flags. So the heat and the pressure was on me from

that point forward. And if it force my identity, you know, at least in this town, I didn't have the experience of not being black enough, Like black folks in this small town just accepted me with open arms. And so I've seen even with some of my own children, depending on on their tone, of sometimes feeling like they don't quite fit in. But the beauty of New York is that everybody can blend in in New York. And so my kids, people don't know if they're Puerto Rican or

Dominican or whatever, so they all they always fit in. Yeah, let's transition a little in a in a little different path with Um. You know, obviously we'll get to the Kaepernick situation. But I think as far back as um Cream, Abdul Jabbar, Bill Russell, you fast forward to and if people that don't get enough credit and spoken about as Craig Hodges, mak Mood, ab Dul Rove, guys who lost their career and we're pretty much outsted blackball, so to speak.

From the NBA, two Lebron James really taking athletes platform and giving us a voice that traveled worldwide. What are your what are your thoughts as far as sports and basketball in particular right now? Well, yeah, I think Lebron has changed the game for a lot of people. And I mean he he went so strong with it that it's given a lot of people permission, like in so many ways, because he's the FA of the league and

one of the most known athletes in the world. When he stands up for social justice, it makes it easier for all the other players to do so. I think I thought that was gonna happen with Colin Kaepernick in the NFL. Like, I know he was not at the peak of his career when he took a knee, but I think I thought that when he took that stand, that he was a big enough name and have been

successful enough that it wouldn't cost him his career. Like imagine the NBA equivalent of Colin Kaepernick, whatever that we could think of, who that is? Yeah, Like, you know, a success, super successful player basically being banned from the NBA. Well that's that's my mood up due Rove. You know, like as progressive as we think the NBA is now and it's a lot, it's the best it's ever been.

It wasn't that way just twenty years ago. Like mostly like even when I had to teach my son like son, these two guys as Craig Hodges and my Mood up du roof that I loved as a kid, Like I I watched Chris Jackson played for l s U and we love this guy like man. These guys had their careers ruined, and it's hard for this new generation to realize that in some ways, both of those guys Craig Hodges and Myke moved up to rowth, they are still kind of actively banned from the league. The league still

won't touch them. And um, I've talked to both of those brothers and it's it's still painful for them. So it's kind of like there's two streets right now where the NBA is super progressive for these current players, but you get these former players who still feel very hurt and left behind by it, And um, you know, I'm proud that the NBA has given brothers the space to kind of speak their peace, but I mean there's still

room to grow, for sure. I agree. My Mood is still playing in the Big Three, and right has done a lot for him. But oh yeah, people that didn't know him, they learned a lot about him now from from the success he's having a Big Three and then they were able to learn his story now, you know. And then when a lot of people seen him, that was a big thing for the Big Three because a lot of people wonder where did he go? What happened

to him? So to see him still in great shape at fifty to still be one of the best shooters in the Big Three like it was, it was it was refreshing for him to get back on that stage and it proved right away. It's like, oh, he definitely should have been in the league, like this notion that one of the best scores ever. They started making memes of Steph Curb before Steph Curry was showing this picture.

He could have He could have played another ten active seasons and you see him in the Big Three, you realize, like, oh, they cut ten years of this. You know, what do you think about Lebron being so outspoken? And then Michael Jordan's not really wanting to take that. I mean, I know that's an individual if you feel comfortable speaking, but of your thoughts. When someone such as Jordan has a platform and lebron as a platform and we have one guy doing it. The one guy not well. You know.

So I grew up as a kid, just a young kid, like a huge super fan of Michael and so like when things like the l A Riots and Rodney King beating it happened, I didn't understand how pissed people were that Jordan wasn't speaking out. But like if there was social media back then, there would have been trending topics

about his silence. Like he he wouldn't touch it. But at the same time it was there's a part of me, I don't mean to say that wants to give him a pass, but he was I think he understood, at least believed that his calculation was if I speak out on this, it could jam up my career. There's another part of me that looks at m j and his prime and thinks, man, you could have said whenever you want on it like he was him. We almost have

to go back in time. I mean, he was at one time the single most popular human being on the planet, not just athlete like he was he could do no wrong, and so had he spoken out against police brutality, the mity. He had just spoken out against police brutality, so he could have ushered that in. You know, I don't know the calculations that caused him to think it was too risky, but I remember I remember a few years ago where Lebron wasn't speaking out on police brutality and social justice

like he is now. This young boy in Cleveland, Tamir Rights, twelve years old, had just been shot and killed, and it took over the whole city of Cleveland, the whole country. And this is in at like the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, and they had put a mic in front of Lebron's face and asked him what he thought about it, and he basically said he didn't know anything about the case, which was I thought one of two things at the time, and I put him on

blasts on social media for it. If he really didn't know anything about the case, then that's crazy because he was right there in his city and it took over the whole city. Or he kind of froze in that moment and didn't want to see anything. I didn't want to say anything, and the pushback that he got from that, I'm not saying it was the pushback that caused him to say, I need to do more but it but yeah and the thing I need to do more. Yeah,

I mean I think he felt like it. Even Tamir, his family was hurt by it, and I think when he saw that, I think it's stung. And I've worked with hundreds of guys in the NBA and NFL. What I know is every day, brothers are making these quick calculations about what's okay to say, what's not what's not okay, And um, I think whatever Lebron messed up on a few years ago, he has more than made up for

it over these past few years. Like even when I see him just after the game loving on young brothers and and and showing new players moves and are Like even when I look at old school players like Jordan even before them, like they weren't even seeing themselves as like mentors of the young guys. Yeah, he's different. Yeah, I mean, old school man, you just you played the game and left the court, and so I think, but I think Lebron changed that in a lot of ways.

It just now the older generations kind of mentoring the younger generation. Song. It's it's a good thing. As athletes are kind of people expect Lebron to speak up on stuff, and and Steph and Kyrie and the name go on. I've always wondered why people don't look at Tom Brady, goat status, Hall of Famer, right, best quarterback ever, why don't people look to Tom Brady to to speak up on stuff like that. That's a good question, man, I

mean Tom Brady. If you think about it, Tom Brady is he is the Michael Jordan's, no question, and in terms of his his skills, his titles, and his almost near silence on anything social be it be it Donald Trump being racism and bigotry, Like you gotta you gotta really twist that man's arm to get him to even hint that he cares about any social issues in the world. And I think in a lot of ways, white athletes get a major pass on not just issues related to

Donald Trump, but white supremacy itself. And it kind of begs this idea that white supremacy is an issue that black folks only are supposed to speak out on, and the opposite is true, Like if Tom Brady and white athletes spoke out more on bigotry and racism and white supremacy. They could actually impact the people who are advancing it, and those guys are completely silent. Man, so Tom gets a complete pass. But there was Kyle Krber about that

open letter that I thought was amazing. Yeah. Or you know there's a guy, the relief pitcher for the Washington Nationals, um who just won the World Series, uh Dolittle. Um, he was the first guy to say he wasn't going to go to the White House when the Nationals were

invited there. But he pinned this, uh this op ed on why he wasn't going to the White House and he gave about like fourteen or fifteen reasons on why he just couldn't do it and be with his wife the next day or be with his family the next day, and um, the World Series MVP rendon he didn't go.

And so you have some white athletes or who are doing it and uh Dolittle even said in that op ed like he mentioned uh long and others of saying like, hey, there's some other white guys that kind of came before me, and so I see it now is my responsibility? But Tom Brady is he's a ghost and um, yeah, he I mean he could he could do more further the movement, you know what I mean? And to me, to be fair to these people, to Mike and Tom and whoever,

it's always a bit about being comfortable. Just because you have a platform, you may not be comfortable. You may not be bursting the subject, you may not want to say anything for whatever your reasons. But to me, like I think there's enough athletes now that are utilizing their platform. We can always use as many as possible. We can always use more racist uh different races, obviously white and

whoever else speaking up on it. But to me, it's something you have to be embracing something to be comfortable with, you know what I mean. I mean I try to see each of these guys and like you said, including Tom or others, the people, and you know, it's easy for us to to reduce any of these athletes as something other than just just a human being. And um and some sometimes with a guy like Thomas that he might not know, but I I still refuse to give

him a pass. I mean, there are many issues. Like he he said a little bit in defensive Colin Kaepernick, but that's about the most I've ever heard him saying. You know, we know that you know, you're kind of being an athlete. I know I reached out to you

personally a couple of times. Athletes come to you and and and discuss obviously this or maybe something they're going through and what are some of the messages you give to them, and you hope they get from that because you say early on you you know you haven't a background in education, you know, so you're always educating. What it depends. It depends on when it depends on when guys come to me. Like there there are probably three scenarios where guys come to me from from all sports.

One is a guy's in trouble and he's he is he has said something or done something problematic and he's now trending on Twitter and people have said, hey, you need to go talk to Shaun King and and he'll talk you through this, and I'm okay with that. Like that's helped me build trust with guys because they understand

that if they come to me. If there's a there's an NBA player who said something during the height of police brutality a few years ago, and he just he said something really dumb on Twitter, and uh, he was the top turning topic in the country, and we came to me and was like, he just didn't understand what

he said that was wrong. He said something in effect of like, you know, if if we handled our situations better with police, there wouldn't be as much police brutality or something that people were just flaming him on social media. So my job is to kind of educate him behind the scenes without anybody ever knowing what that conversation is about out and trying to say like, here's what you said that was wrong, here's why it was wrong, Here's

why people are pissed. And I get that every few days, man of a guy who tried to wait into something and just missed the mark in part because nobody schooled them or educated them on it. Um. I get guys who are asking, like, how do they use their influence on an issue to make a difference in there in the city they play in, or in their hometown where

they grew up in. And that's a different situation where I'm trying to help brothers understand, like here's how you could be a creative foundation away in on social issues

that matter. And and then one of the things that I get that surprises me is I get players who often are asking me to introduce them to some other athletes, and I think people have this assumption that all athletes know each other and pret equally, like I found that in in the NFL in particular, of it's a brutal sport, and like even in the in the NBA, where you guys are on the court seeing each other, talking with each other, no helmet, and it's it's competitive, but it's

not physically as brutal as the NFL. Most NFL guys, if you didn't go to college with these guys, you're not talking team versus team. So a lot of times I'm introducing NBA players NFL players or even guys within the league because they don't really know each other, and there's not I think people think there's like a directory and uh, and there's not. And so sometimes I try

to be the bridge between players. What about now, I mean moving to CAP someone you've obviously been you know, become close with and and talked to and to me when it first happened, like you said, I thought it was gonna be monumental and all the players are going to do it, and it was really pro that for a while. But then kind of the trickle down effect and possibly people understanding that, Okay, well if I do, I'm not gonna lose my career, I'm not gonna lose

my livelihood. What what what was your thought on the overall situation with that. You know, before, before I knew him personally, I was a fan, Like I watched him admired and watched them go to the super Bowl. They were literally a play away a few yards away from winning the Super Bowl, and uh in uh he reached out to me when there were several issues of police brutality and I saw this was Twitter was even smaller

back then. This was before Trump's election even and um, we just started talking through Twitter d M and he would ask me to explain a certain case of police brutality or asked me what I thought. But he wasn't even really tweeting about it. But this was before before he ever took a knee, before people understood what was

going on in his head. And um, he had had several injuries that ended that season, and I think, and I know you guys have experienced this, Like during that injury, it just was a real reflective period for him, Like during the grind of a season. When you're not injured, it's hard to think about anything other than the game. And he had this period for the first time in his whole adult life where he wasn't playing and he was just able to kind of think through the issues.

And that summer there were three different brutal police killings of a man named Terence Crutcher in Oklahoma, Philando Castill in Minnesota, and then Alton Sterling and bad Rouge and we forget it, but then there was in response to that, there was a brother in Louisiana and a brother in

Dallas who started shooting police officers. And that summer was so volatile, and Colin and I were were messaging and talking several times a day at that point, and he was at a preseason game and he didn't tell anybody. I don't even think he told his partner anybody he was gonna do this. Just when they played the national anthem. I think he had just a personal human moment where he heard it. It was just like, I'm not standing up for that that but all of that stuff was

going on. It was literally the week that all of that was going down, and then he but no one noticed. And then he did it the next week where he wasn't taking a knee, He just didn't. He was like, I'm not standing up for it, and a lot of people felt like that, Like the anger in the country

was high and um. But when people noticed that he wasn't standing for the anthem, uh, that then put him in an They put him mic in front of his face, and I think the country learned, Like Oldest Brothers brilliant, he started through and right away he became like an instant cult hero for people. And I talked to these families, the family of Alton Sterling and Philandolka still and they needed somebody like that. So like when they heard Colins

speak about their issue, like for them it mattered. And when the season started and he took a knee in an official NBA game, NFL game during the anthem, it was a huge deal for families who had experienced police brutality, it was and it was a huge deal I think for people who were fighting against police brutality and fighting for justice. And yet I don't think he did it to sparkle, like he did it for himself, like that's

how he felt. And he had a couple of brothers on the team, on the fort who did it with him. Those guys were his friends. And yet I think I hoped that other guys around the league, we're gonna do it. I wish they had. If had everybody taken a need

and yeah, you couldn't do anything. And um, I never imagined as he continued to do it throughout the year, even as Donald Trump started talking about it, as Fox News started talking about it, I didn't imagine it would cost him his career, Like I I don't think he thought that either. Um, I believe he would have done it anyway. Like having talked to him through this, I think even if he believed that was the consequence, I think he still would have done it. But he didn't

believe that what's gonna happen. And he was twenty nine years old. I mean, this is a guy who had up you know. Yeah, this this was a guy who who who still has to this day several records in the NFL, and the notion that he would basically be cut and never allowed back into the league seemed preposterous

and the price he's paid. I'm a lifelong NFL fan, and I just couldn't to this day, I can't bring myself to watch it because one, because I know this guy, but the notion that this league has effectively ruined his career in the prime of in the in his youth, in the prime of his life, I can't get over it. And so I'm stuck on that. It was frustrating to me because when Trump and Fox Movie started getting involved,

it wasn't he was protesting the flag. That was just the vehicle he used to get his message across at the time. He was protesting stuff that we all know as an issue, but they turned it into you don't respect our soldiers and this isn't that, And as many people is, you know, they try to say, you know, you're distracting. I would see tons of you know, bets across social media that are for CAP. Oh yeah, all the time, all the time with CAP, you know, and

we serve so so so so. So it's really frustrating me to see that the way the media was able to spend that and make it him against Yeah, Well they're masterful at that, man. And I think if if Trump has one superpower, it's kind of diversion of if there's one issue going on, Yeah, he's a slider hand magician. Man, he's masterful at it. And I don't think anybody could reasonably make the argument that this was him protesting the flag. This I mean, but when you get loud voices to

say that's what it was, people bought it. Man. And you know, I think the NFL, the NFL Players Association, even I mean, there were a lot of people that I thought should have gone harder for him, that pretty much yeld on him. And I had several brothers in the league, mainly older veterans who had kind of already

made most of the money. They were gonna make talk about the possibility of of doing deeper protests or trying to get people to sit out the season, but it just never picked up momentum, and um, you know, I think I think a lot of players are gonna look back on how they abandoned Cap at a time where they should have stood with him. I don't think they'll feel good about oportunity to do something real big. You know,

we're following steps, but they didn't take it back. And you know it's I mean, but here I had, I had a lot of guys and I had full on arguments. Were brothers in the league when this was going down, and I had guys tell me things like listen, just as I said earlier, I don't know him. He didn't, he didn't talk to me about this before he decided to do it. I had guys, as most guys in

the league don't have any guaranteed money and NFL. So when guys saw, particularly in the second season, when he was fully banned basically from the league, guys were spooked and if they were going to do something, it probably needed to be during that first season when he was still in the game. But at the moment in which players saw, oh, they're gonna ban him, they should have responded in mass right away. They they wasn't really, you know, And I mean I talked to guys that I felt.

I mean, I had guys tell me, like Sean, if I missed one paycheck, it's gonna jam up my whole my whole family, my whole system. And guys when they saw a guy of Collins caliber basically get banned, it had the effect the NFL wanted it to have. It

spooked guys from following in those footsteps. Yeah, so the only guys who did it, we're guys that were just different, like Eric read Eric Rea is different, Uh, Marshawn Lynch, like the guys are these guys, Kenny Stills, these guys, they already were different before they got in the game. And so those guys already kind of march to be to their own drummer. The rest of the guys just looked at him, was like, I can't take that risk. And that's exactly what the NFL wanted to happen. And uh,

it was a moment. Had half the league, a third of the league just said, listen, we're not playing until he comes back, it would have been one of the biggest moments in sports history. And instead, brothers just kept on playing. And uh, I get it, I understand it, but there was a real missed opportunity there. You know, what are you what are your thoughts about Jay Z and his partnership with the NFL. You know, I was someone initially looking in like j has always kind of

been the voice of the people for me. What I mean, He's always been that guy so to me when people are not gonna I was first when when it first came out, I was saying, you know, we to effect change, you have to be a part of change. We needed to seat at the table, and to me, what that seemed like was Jay had to seat at the table, not knowing how much power what is actually actual job or objective, was that he had to seat at the table and we need to kind of sit back and

wait to see what happens. What are your thoughts thus far on the whole situation, because it's been a while now. Yeah, I mean I love First off, I love jay Z. I love him and just like you, like, I've admired him for a very long time. And I've also I've been behind closed doors and have seen him support families and causes that people never knew about. And I mean he raps about generosity being something he does in private,

and I've seen that. And and I think in any other circumstance, had Colin Kaepernick not been currently banned from the league, if I saw Jay Z said oh, he's

gonna he's gonna become some type of partner here. If if what the NFL did to Colin Kaepernick never happened, I would have been like, oh, okay, yeah, but we live in real life, Like Colin Kaepernick is currently actively banned from this league, and Colin has never spoken out about jay Z and that's not his way, but I know many of us who are close to Colin felt

like I felt like jay Z played Colin directly. Jay Z and Colin met several times throughout that previous year j J Ward a Jersey to a Colin Jersey to UH to a concert, and that whole time, he was also a meeting with Roger Goodell and was jay Z was. Jay Z had at least four meetings with Roger Goodell over the year before he struck this deal. And so I'm not listen, it's jay Z's business if he wants to strike a deal, but that he was kind of bargaining with Roger Goodell at the same time while he

was hanging out with Colin and defending him. It just seemed underhanded to me, like I wish he would have at Colin never knew about it, He never mentioned it to Colin, never talked to him about it, and um, I think it wouldn't have hurt the deal had he just spoke with Colin and said, man, I'm gonna try to go inside and impacted from the inside out, and when I get there, here's what I hope to do.

What's your input. But I think Colin was blindsided by it, and so like here's here's the thing, Like, even just as well as I know the two of you, if if a corporation had done you super I mean that's in real life, if a corporation had done one of you super dirty, I just can't rock with it. Like, even as little as we've known each other, I care about each of you enough to where if they did you wrong, I'm gonna have to think twice about that. And no corporation has gonna man worse than what the

NFL has done to Colin Kaepernet. And I think when Jay Z when he had the press conference, I've I felt like he it seemed like he hadn't done he didn't do any prep for it, like he was surprised by basic questions and his like some of his talking points bothered me, Like it was like I don't even know if he had thought this thing through. And when you really look at as much as we know about the deal, I don't even think the deal is that deep. I think it's a music contract. It's uh, it's an

entertainment deal. And Jay's seeing Rock Nation get a little bit of input on social justice stuff, but I'm not seeing the fruits of that. And you know, there's always this Tennessee to think, Like I hear people say like jay Z's playing chess and we're all playing checkers, like he's ten moves ahead of us. And if that's the case, I'm looking forward to seeing what the results are gonna be.

But I'm not impressed. And I think Colin is the loser and all of this, And if jay Z was gonna make the deal, I wish it would have been contingent upon Colin getting up. At least he hasn't even gotten a try out, like anybody who says otherwise it's a line. He hasn't gotten an offer or try out or anything. But my thing is, how can we even

go to what's next without Colin? Right? I mean, because the truth is there wouldn't There would not even be a conversation about social justice, US some police brutality and in the NFL without him, And so how I would say sports as a whole. He changed the whole, but he changed the landscape. And so to move to move forward in that without him um is like an ego move to And again, I think in any other circumstance, I would have nothing but pride that he is now

a voice at the table. But this, this leaves Colin out of a conversation that he should have been a central part of. And you know, people say, well, Colin sued the NFL. Eric read he sued the NFL. He's back in the league. Colin could have a chance right now, like he still literally is working out five days a week and could still be picked up there. I mean, the quarterbacks in the NFL right now, you can't tell him even if people want to say he's thirty three, No,

he just just and thirty or two. You can't tell me at least, well, he's de minuted. You can't tell me at least he can't be a backup. I think he could probably start on some teams. I'm a Nighter fan. I followed him and I was I was a huge fan of what he was doing on the field. But you can't literally look me in my eyes and say there's not a spot for him in the league. Yeah, And I don't think any credible commentator or athlete would

say otherwise. And so so, knowing that that's the case, this idea that I can still will and deal with this league on something different while they banned him. I just have a problem with it, and I just I think he was shortsighted. Like I think people were proud that it seemed like jay Z was rocking with Colin and then it just seemed like he took a different turn. You know, tell me a little bit about the the current situation, which is a very time sensitive Rodney Reid

and uh for fourteen days and counting. Yeah, he's supposed to be. It was a horrible situation. Man. Um. There's a man in in Texas outside of Austin, in a town called Bastrip, thirty miles to the east of Austin, who's been in prison for almost twenty three years. And in nineteen nine six, there was a young woman named Stacy States who was sexually assaulted and murdered. Horrible and I just want to put that out there, like her

family suffered tremendously from this loss. And right away people believed that it was her fiancee who was a brutal man known for domestic violence. And uh, he was a police officer named Jimmy Finnel and he was the primary suspect and nearly a year after Stacy Stice was killed, Jimmy Jimmy Finnel instead Uh was no longer to suspect and they arrested Rodney Reid. There was no proof that

he had anything to do with her murder whatsoever. And if you've ever read the book or here in New York seen the play To Kill a Mockingbird, it's kind of the same story of of a white woman who is brutalized by a white man, but a black man takes the fall. And for twenty two plus years, Rodney Read has declared his innocence and there's so much evidence that exonerates him that the Innocence Project, who is probably the most prestigious organization involving this, they turned down of

the cases that come in their way. When they take on a case, they know a man is not guilty and typically they have DNA evidence to exonerate that man, so that the Innocence Project is on the case. Uh. It sounds funny, but Dr Phil mcgrawl, Dr Phil is on it, and Dr Phil did two whole episodes on it. Dr Phil has declared that he also believes Rodney Read is completely innocent and had nothing to do with this there are some mechanisms that could potentially free Rodney Read

or at least delay the execution. The governor of Texas, who's a deep conservative, has the power to state the execution. There's a board of Parole there that could also at least delay it or cancel the execution. His sentence could be commuted, and he could just be given life in prison and then at least live to be able to fight through the appeals process. I think there's a high likelihood that Rodney Reed will be executed, and all of us are extract at the point in which we're two

weeks away. Uh, of course there's a high likelihood. We're trying not to think about that, but uh, it's an urgent situation. We've had over a million people signed a petition at free Rodney Read dot com and uh, trying to lobby people to intervene anyway they can. But it's a who needed to hear this for that to happen more in Congress hands now right, you feel, well, it's not just Congress, it's of all people who are convicted of crimes are convicted on the local and state level.

And what that means is Congress and even the president have very little say in what they can do about those cases. So the President of the United States, be a Trump or Obama or anybody, they can pardon people who have been convicted of federal crimes. But in this case, Trump and Congress, the United States Congress, have very little say and how they can help Rodney read. It's almost

all in the hands of officials there in Texas. Their governor, their state legislature could at least make a statement or do a vote, but even that wouldn't matter. A local district attorney there in the county could remove the death penalty and say we're calling on the death penalty be removed, and just remove it. So it's really in the hands

of local conservatives in Texas. And in some ways that's scary because I don't have a lot of influence with conservatives in Texas, and and yet that's who we need to influence. And so part of what we try to do is just make this story go viral. And so we've had people from uh from Rihanna to both of you, to to other athletes and entertainers and supermodels. At the end of at the end of the day, conservatives have

to care about it. And they've been saying for years that they care about criminal justice reform, and this is their opportunity to kind of prove it. And fourteen days it's already cutting it way too close. All of his appeals are not exhausted, but it's it's a it's in a dangerous position right now, for sure. I think that it. It doesn't take a scientist to see that. You know, we live in a race driven country. Oh yeah, for

good and bad reasons. Um. And so it almost seems like what you're doing is obviously a daily thing, Like how do you find time? How do you really like when you take on all this stuff? I mean, because you're you're educating me daily on your post, whether it be a continuous post about one thing or one thing now and two things later tonight. Like how do you

find all the time too to do all that? And with some My life's a mess, you know when people ask me, is that I don't have a pretty answer to it, Like I work too much from Like I get up a most mornings of four thirty or five in the morning, I have my own daily podcast, I go to the studio super early. Um. I have a few hours each day where I'm just spending time with my wife and kids. But outside of those few hours and some rest at night, I mean, I'm I'm pushing

hard something. I'm working twelve or fourteen hours a day every day. On most days, I feel disappointed because there's somebody who asked me for help and I'm just not able to do it. I get, on the average day, hundreds of emails of people who said, can you can you help my family? Like this week, I've gotten emails from people all over the country who said, my father, my son is on death row? Can you can you look into his case? Can you do for my son

what you're doing for Rodney Reid? And what breaks my heart is I can't. I just I'm only able to do but so much in a day. And part of what I try to do is build systems and organizations that allowed me to impact people the best I can, but for me to develop other leaders who can also do what I do. So we have an organization called Real Justice that helps elect district attorney is all over

the country. We have an organization called the Action Pack that's helping lead this piece with Rodney read So we have almost twenty staff members working on this Rodney Reed case right now, so you see me, But behind the scenes, they're twenty of us and that's it took twenty of us working around the clock to force this, you know, into the mainstream. But it's hard to manage. It's it's hard to balance that with family. It's hard to balance

that with marriage. And when everything is going well in my life, it's like it's beautiful and good, but if one thing goes wrong, Uh, it could be a mess. And I mean I have all the same problems everybody else has. My wife and I argue like cass and dogs. Uh. Sometimes my kids feel like I'm super present and then other days I'm working so hard that I'm not there the way they need me to be. So it's it's

hard to buy. And do you feel pressure, Like you said, you're getting a hundred two always have to do something like I know that you want to, But do you feel the pressure because now you are known as like I said earlier, like the go to guy for our culture for this. I mean I do feel the pressure. Um, I accept I accepted, but I feel the I feel the pressure in the sense that there's so much injustice and there's only so little I can do about each case. I I bumped into a woman a couple of days

ago who said, and she and broke my heart. You know, she said, Sean, I've emailed you forty times, and I literally said, just pull up your phone and show you know, like I believed her, but I've never seen this even and she's sure enough pulled it up, and she had emailed me dozens of times asking me to help her in this case. And I hate that that's that's how we're doing this, that there's so few people to go to that we I hate that we don't have the systems.

I hate that there's so much injustice. Like I have kids who tell me all the time they save my email address in their phone. I'm talking about yeah, I'm talking about strangers who saved my email address and just in case they need to send me something hard I've seen. I've seen viral videos of police brutality all over the country and I'll hear somebody in the background say send that to Shaun King and and so all of that.

It's a it is a degree of pressure. And I try my best every day too not to keep up with the grind of it. But I I try to be as productive as I can. It's it's a lot. How do you handle, um, the level of recognition and fame that have come with us? You know obviously we so you were honored that Rihanna's uh Matt gala um. How do you handle because I know, like I said,

you're doing it for the right reasons. But you know, when you do things for the right reasons, stuff happens around you, and this happens just to be you know, obviously your name continuing to grow, your face being more recognizable. How do you handle that? Well, I mean, first and foremost, and we were talking about it earlier. I have a big fan. I have five kids, and so like my family unit is healthy and strong and so as as long as that unit, they're like, has my back and

it's rocking with me, I'm good. Like, say, my wife's gonna kill me for saying all our business, but my life is so fragile, Like say my wife and I have fallen out, then then life gets harder for me because it's like I'm already doing all this work and it's hard at home and just just I just want to be on the record if if life is a mess, at home. It's normally my fault. Like, yeah, just to be clear, right right, there's rarely a problem in my world that my wife calls it's normally me. But um,

the fame is definitely causes a lot of consequences. It puts a lot of pressure on my wife and kids. People recognize them in public. I'm a I'm a hermit generally, like I'm I don't go out much. I'm in the office doing the work at home. Um. You know. I also isolate myself from a lot of ugliness, like I see you guys sometimes like battling people in the comments. Oh, man, I gotta stay out of comments man like. I don't

know how you do it. Man, Like I can't be in the car, I can't even the comments in my world are so ugly. I can't even look at him man and so, But what I do is I kind of protect myself from the ugliness of it all. It's hard, Oh, it is, it is. It's it's it's something you learn

over time. And if I listened, I have enough people in my world, my wife included, who tell me the ugly truth about myself, Like if I make a mistake, I have people who can school me on it and tell me about it, that I don't necessarily need to listen to strangers and haters and all the other stuff. I have people in my world who tell me the good, bad, and ugly. Yeah, I get it all. I get it from people who actually people who are brutal but love me.

And so because of that, I'm not super swayed by the hate or the anger of people who don't even know me. Yeah, well, at least they don't mean anything to me, you know. And and you know, it's not when people have legitimate critiques of something that I say, or that's one thing, but when people are just being ugly. I have gotten to the point this isn't even it's this isn't even really healthy. But I've gotten to the point where I'm kind of numb to it um where

the ugliness just doesn't impact me at all. It's not because I don't care, but I've kind of flipped off a switch where I just can't allow that stuff to get to me. But I was telling him, like, the big problem today is people can't have a conversation and

disagree without disrespecting each other. That's a big problem. Or or online when you disagree with somebody, people immediately perceive it as disrespect and then it then it can spiral into that and it's like we were just we were so sometimes when I like, I hardly even disagree with people online publicly anymore because people would take it somewhere where. But when I do, I'll have to like it could

be say it's one of you. I may message you privately like I hope you know here's what I'm actually thinking. But now we're in a space where it's it's hard to disagree. Man, sweet of idiots for voices like Charles Berkley says in the social media space, tell me what I saw your wife to take over your handle one day, um defending you and then also just saying how hard all this ship is on the on the family dynamic

side of it. You know, you're out here being a Kate crusader for the for the world, but then, like you've touched on, like your family is obviously most important to you, Tell me how hard being able to balance both is, Because I mean, I was someone who went through a public divorce and still had like I said, we talked about it on the shows like and you're someone to us in the space now as you're kind

of professional in this field. So when all the ship is still going on that's rough at home or family, you still have to be you still gotta be on. So tell me what that what that dynamic like and the weight that brings to your family. You know what my my wife and I five years ago, when Black Lives Matter movement first started, I started getting death threats right away, like on the phone, in the mail, like we were we were reporting them to the police of

the FBI. Uh. We were getting people who were coming to our home, to our children's school, and and he got back quick and so right away, all the way back in we decided that my wife would basically disappear from social media, that my kids would not be on social media, just to protect them. But it unintentionally built something that we didn't really see coming. As people began criticizing me, they didn't understand the implications that they would

have for my whole family. And so people be on social there two or three lines of people tell about me all the time. One is that I'm raising money from families and I'm stealing from these families, which is a crime, like literally it's a federal crime. There are people you may remember, there were these people who claim they were raising money on go fund me for this homeless man, but on the low kept the money. Those two people are imprisoned right like they are. They are imprisoned.

They each got ten years. And every time I raise money for families, I never see it. It doesn't come through my accounts. It goes directly to these families every time I do it. People I'm talking about real verified blue check accounts are saying he's stealing this money. Well, what they don't understand is when you say I'm stealing the money, people then look at my wife like, oh, you're stealing the money. Oh you're aware that he's stealing

the money. And so she's a professional woman, she's an executive here in New York, and people literally start asking her about this. And so as people lie about me, they just don't understand that my kids get asked about this stuff. And we live in this culture where it's so easy to just post a random lie on social media that they don't understand the ripple effect. And it had gotten so bad and had boiled so far out of control that my wife, who doesn't who at the time,

didn't have any social media accounts. Was like, listen, let me say what I have to say. And it was and it was messy and emotional and all of yeah yeah, and it was like, yeah she was. People don't understand that. While it's easy for them to get on there and say Sean is stealing from families, Sean is a white man pretending to be black. As people say these weird things, it has real implications with my family, and um, she just gotten fed up and so she so now she

is public. She opened up her own Twitter account, her own Instagram account, in part just so people understand, like, hey, I'm I'm a real person with my own views and perspectives. But it's it's hard man, for sure. Five beautiful children, And you touched on it briefly from what are the age with the age range from from six to twenty. Our oldest is in college and our youngest is in elementary school. What are your knowing how out front you

are with the work you do? What are your some of your concerns obviously you know on a day to day basis with them. Well, men, so much, so much of what I do I do for my kids and over these past five years because we had decided like we wouldn't post about them so much. Uh. I never really shared how much that I do what I do to fight for them, to advocate for them, hopefully to

create a better world for them. Um. But we go out of our way, like we don't even post pictures of the kids on social media anymore, and in part because the threats and all of that remains. So even though we talk about them, UM, we do little things like don't post full pictures of their face and don't say where they go to school. Uh, in part because I know I can't be there with them to protect them,

you know. So we haven't said where our daughter goes to college, and so little steps that we've taken to kind of protect ourselves. Um. But we have other things that we do to keep each other safe. I mean, we're we're a close family. But UM, I also try to keep the kids off of social media, and I tell them, like, please don't search my name on Twitter, don't search my name on Google. These are kids, like

they're gonna do it anyway. And it's to the point now where even if they search their own names, they see people talking about me mentioning them, even my little kids. And uh, it's a it's a weird climate, man, Yeah, it's crazy. How do you you know something that Jack and I as fathers have always had to work on as we both came from the streets. You know, I got it out the gutter, but our kids will never have to. How do you compared to how you're growing

up now? And then almost the safety environment you have to deal with your kids? How do you how because they probably can't do things that other kids can do. It's tricky, you know, Like I didn't. I didn't grow up in the gutter, but I grew up rough. You know, we were we were like a half a step above poor, and and I didn't even really I never really even understood how broke we were coming up. And you don't know,

you know, and and so I didn't understand that. And and then I experienced I experienced a lot of hell and trauma growing up. And yet all of that shaped me, it shaped you, It shaped you. Like as I said earlier, I don't even know that you would know who I am had I not been through all of that. And so now our kids, we protect them from all of that, and it has its own implications like, uh, it's you often see the children of successful people sometimes lack drive

or determination. So there are little things that we try to do to still help our kids be as determined as we were, even though they don't have the same obstacles. Um, you know, like just making sure that even though they they are the children of somebody who is well known, that hey, whatever you get, you're gonna have to. Like if if my kids interviewed for a job, I'm not calling in advance and saying, hey, I'm at Shawn King,

can you help my daughter get the job? You know, like I tell they got an interview for it, Like, um, our daughter. We have a daughter who's a senior in high school and she's applying for college, and as much as possible, I'm trying to see her do it without me. I'm there to help with the applications, but I want her to know that when she gets there, it's like, oh, I earned this. And so it's hard when you grew up rough, it's hard to duplicate the environment that helped

make us who we are. And so it's it's tricky because part of how we became who we are is that we had to overcome so many obstacles. Our kids will have their own obstacles and uh yeah, so we just I'm trying to see them through it. And you know, it depends, like even my youngest kids, they don't even really know what I do. I try to protect. So our daughter who was six, we have a daughter who's ten. They I don't I don't even they don't know about

Rodney Reid. You know, they don't know that I'm fighting for this man who might die in two weeks. In part, I just don't want them to have that. The child brain is not even able to process some of these things. So I mean, I try to even protect my kids from some of the worst knowledge and information that I see every day. What age do you feel with your kids, because, like you said, you do have something in college and

headed to college. Do you share some of what you do? Well? Man, We people ask us that all the time because there's a there's so much horrible information from videos of police brutality and these stories that we're sharing. There's this video that I'm gonna share later today of of a shooting that and normally when I share a video like that, a family has asked me to share it. I'm not sharing it because I want you to say, I don't even want to see it. I'm not sharing because I

want you to see it. The family knows that it getting seen, it's gonna give them leverage to negotiate with police or district attorneys and um, so we kind of have a sliding scale. Like our daughters who are twenty and seven, team, they're gonna see everything, whether I share it with him or not. So I try to. I try to explain things to them and break it down. My son, who we have four girls and a boy,

and my son who's in the middle, he's thirteen. He's he's a very sensitive boy, and so I may describe the basics of a situation to him. But even he's in eighth grade going into high school, he just couldn't handle seeing these things. And and that's okay. Like my wife doesn't look at my wife doesn't My wife doesn't read the articles I write. She doesn't look at the post that I make because it's too much for her.

And she supports me. But I know that some of this stuff is too much for my son who's thirteen. Now my girls who are ten and six. Uh, I sheltered them from it all. Every now and then they may catch that I'm doing like they know that I'm that I fight for people, you know, they know that I'm trying to help people, but I try not to. Like some people want their kids to see it all,

and that's dangerous. Actually, kids don't have without explanation every step and then, like you said, as a child, it's hard to fathom how cold this world really is and what happens. Studies show that when young kids see, particularly police brutality, they immediately think it's going to happen to them. And and I don't want my kids to have It's not that I want them to be ignorant of the danger.

We school our kids the best we can, but I don't want them to be having nightmares or unnatural stress of the danger. So even with the safety risk against me, like when I travel a lot of town, we have security at the house. Our older kids know we have security outside of the house, but I don't even want the younger kids to know that there is a risk here, that they that we need somebody standing at the front door.

And so we we kind of have a age age sliding scale where the little kids know next to nothing, and depend on how old they are, we share more and more. What's the best part about being a dad? I mean, we've talked about the tough side and they

tell me decided to make you smile. Oh man, I love being a dad, you know, I was saying, Jackie, I've been I've been a dad my whole adult life, and you have to and uh, my wife and I were nineteen and twenty years old when we were Yeah, we were in college and young and dumb and broke and struggling and all of that. But I've been a dad my whole adult life. So I literally don't know adulthood without being a dad, Like it's all. It's all

I've ever been. And so, um, I love spending time with the kids like one they're you know, before you have kids, you assume they're gonna be like you in some kind of way. All five of my kids are totally different from each other. They're very different than me. They have skills that I've never had, gifts that I've never had. So it's beautiful just to see them becoming their own unique people. Um. They've taken on some of the things like I love movies and sports, and they've

taken on the love of movies and sports. Um, my thirteen year old son and I are playing the NBA Fantasy League together this year. That's the first time I've done fantasy basketball and ten or fifteen years. But I just wanted to make sure that we were engaging on some kind of level. And so just little things like that. Man, But um, they don't see me at all when they come home. They don't see me as famous, and they they never would like, Yeah, I'm just dad, and so

home for me is normal. I'm taking out the garbage and cleaning the house and and turning on the alarm and so home is like the place where there's normalcy for all of us. And uh, and it's a beautiful thing. So I mean again, I know that no matter how crazy the world is, that I got this unit at home that has my back and it's gonna rock with me no matter what. What do you do? I mean, your your job seems to never end. What do you

do to unplug and decompress? How do you chill out or do you I don't chill out much like no days or no certain times where I'm not doing nothing right now, Well, I do a couple of things, like one, I love what I do. As hard as it is, as hard as fighting for justice for Rodney Reid, as hard as all that stuff is. I do it because I love doing it. So even even if I'm doing it late, like I was, I pulled even on the way over here today, I pulled the car over because

I had to respond to something. But it's what I want to do. I chose this life. It's how I want to live my life. So even know the work is hard and it's a grind, it doesn't wear me down, Like I look forward to being able to to help people to tell these stories. So my work it never quite feels like work. And people say that, but I mean I hope. I hope that for everybody if you can love what you're doing in your life, and that's true for me, man, Like everybody doesn't get to do that.

Like my mother made light bulbs for forty years, and I talked with her. I mean, she told me that there wasn't a day she made a light bulb she liked it, you know, like she hated all forty years of she said some day she liked the people there. She was like, no, I never enjoyed making the light bulbs. You know, it was nothing in it. And I hope for my kids and other for anybody who's watching, I hope that they get to do something that they love. But I watched sports. I'm a I'm a huge NBA

fan everything. I'm a Nets guy. We live in Brooklyn. Some room for the Nets. We're rooting for the Nets before they signed Kyrie and k D. And he was when I was there. Oh yeah, man, we've been loving We've been loving Nets man. No, we love no. We We've been here in Brooklyn, were in Brooklyn for almost four years now, and uh we love the Nets man, and like it's just our hometown team. But I mean we have all types of teams that we've moved all

over the country. So when we lived in California, we were rooting for Golden State and rooting for the Lakers. We lived in Atlanta for ten years, we were rooting for the Hawks. So I'm a homer. Like wherever I live,

I kind of root for the home team. And uh, as I grew up in Kentucky where we didn't have a protein and so we go to the movies all the time, and the type of movies you like because you have a certain line of work that you try to get away from that and just or what the tricky the hardest thing that sucks is because we have a six year old in the house, Like it's hard to take the whole family to the movie and see something that I actually like, you know, like, um so

me and my wife go out Like I mean, we see it all man. I mean I go to the movies three or four times a month, and uh so, whatever is out, we try to check it out. And uh, I'm watching, Uh, I watched a couple of shows on iTunes and Netflix. I'm watching this new show, uh yellow Stone. It's a like a western with Kevin Costner, and I've been checking that out and people ask me, like what when do I watch it? Like if I'm on the subway, I put my uh put my headphones on and steal

a couple of minutes there to watch it. But I mean I try to. I try to decompress when I can. Um. You know, we travel as much as we can, Like we'll we'll go somewhere during the Christmas holiday. That's at least once a year. We take a big family trip together and get away and um. Last year we went to Hawaii and we go to Jamaica or something like that, just to just to go somewhere where the weather is warmer than it is here in New York. Now, do you are you? Are you off? Are you offline when

you're on family vacation? Still gotta work? Well? I try to be um like we um. This past Christmas, we went to Hawaii and my whole family made me promise that I would stay offline. And you may remember this young girl named Jasmine Barnes, a seven year old girl in Houston was shot and killed. And uh, I had been away for two or three days and people started asking me if I would help find who killed this young girl. And my family was like, don't you do that?

You know, my wife and my kids. And I kept my promise for a couple of days, and then finally people who were very close to the family reached out to me, and I interrupted my vacation and time with family to do it. And uh, I wish I hadn't, you know, Like that's a dilemma that I'm in all the time where my family needed me to just say no even though people really wanted and needed me to help in that situation. Your heart is so big you

can't and just only so long. But I jammed myself up though, you know, like, um, you know, I ended up hurting my family because I basically stopped my My family was still on vacation before the final two or three days. All I did was throw myself into this case. And uh, I learned a lot from that, Like I hope this holiday when I go away, I might just I might not even take my fund. But I'm plugged from the world. You gotta reboot, man, you gotta be So where do we go from here? Like what is

your message? Like we're I mean, obviously, you know, with with the presidency and in the in the state of race, what it is people bother me when they say it's not about everything. A lot of stuff is centered around race. Where do you think we go from here as a culture as well? And I do. I do have hope, And uh, even with all the ugliness that I see every day, there are a couple of reasons why I

have hope. Like no matter how ugly things get in the world, and we're talking about the world that can that can get deep and dirty and ugly, We're talking about the world that had the Holocaust, the world that had the Transatlantic slave trade. We're talking about the world Like when people say, Sean, can it get worse? My answer is always, oh, hell yeah, it can get a lot worse. But anytime things have gotten horrible and ugly all throughout history, I'm a historian by training. My undergraduate

and graduate degrees are in history. People always bounce back. Societies always recover, no matter how ugly, how dirty, how horrible, how desperate things can get. The pendulum it may swing one way, but it will always swing the other way. Now, what I need to explain to people is that that pendulum illustration has limitations. It doesn't people swing get back. And so whatever we're gonna see next in this world, Like when we think about slavery in America that lasted

for hundreds of years. People fought to end that, Like it didn't just end like any just say we're done, Like there was a civil war for that. And so whatever it is, if it's voting rights, if it's civil rights, whatever future it is we want to see in this country, we will only see what we fight for. And I try to explain to people whatever future it is, that we want for this country. We have to organize ourselves into it. Otherwise it's just not gonna happen. And I

wish it. I wish it just things got better naturally, but that's just not how it goes. And UM, you think we're heading in the right direction. No, No, I don't. UM, I'm confident that we're not. I'm actually I'm not an alarmist. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I think these next couple of years could be real rough for us. What you're gonna see next next month and over the next two or three months, the impeachment of the president is gonna happen.

Those proceedings. This isn't theoretical. The the impeachment proceedings are going to move forward. I believe the president will be impeached in the House, and I think that could get real volatile. Um. I think the election could be very volatile and dangerous. I I I could imagine a scenario where Donald Trump loses the election and decides not to leave the office because he thinks it's not official or

not legitimate. Um. We're already in a scenario where the Congress has subpoenaed a llegal subpoena has subpoenaed people to testify, and they just said no. Like there are people in prison right now for failure to comply to a subpoena. You go to jail for that, and so we're already at a showdown. I think the United States right now is in a much more fragile place than we understand. Um, i'm I'm deeply concerned, and I um, I hear not just the president but others even talk about civil war

and violence and that type of stuff. It concerns me, man, I mean, it makes me, uh, it makes me concerned about what's next. And I don't know, I think, Um, I think things will get worse before they get better. And I don't think. I don't think all of our problems are just solved even by this one election. Um. In Donald Trump's defense, many of our greatest problems in this country, he didn't create them. And so even if he does, even if he does lose, even if he

does leave the office peacefully, they're still mass incarceration. He didn't build that. You know, there's still issues of poverty and other things. So now i'm i'm, I'm deeply concerned about where we go next. And I say that as somebody who studies it day in and day out. Um, I think we've grown a bit used to things that we probably should never have grown used to. And there's some things that have been normalized in this country that that are deeply problematic. So I'm worried about these next

few months. Um, I'm watching carefully, but I'm I'm not even quick to get nervous. But it's a it's a weird time. Yeah, it's Um, I'm friends with several people who are in Congress, and even Congress people understand this. We're walking on thin ice right now. Like say, say those people who have been subpoenaed, Say Congress then threatens to jail those people, but say those people then say, well, you're not taking me to jail. What's gonna what's gonna

happen here? Like how what? What are we then gonna force them into in cart? Like I don't know, like even people in Congress. No, it's like it's untrued territory. Yeah, I mean typically you get a subpoena, your show up, Yeah, and if you don't, it's simple, you go to jail.

And so we're testing those norms and and so for the first time we realized like, oh, there wasn't really a system in place to enforce the rules on the presidency and on the administration, and daily Trump in the administration are pushing those boundaries in a way that I think are gonna be hard to dial back in one way or the other. What would be your message to the youth to get out there and and you know, it's cool to talk about it. I'm not talking about you.

I'm talking about outside of social media, to talk about it and and do that. How can they be What would be your message to make them be a part of it, you know, really make their voice count. What would you say that that? You know what, man, today's generation of young people are already way more active than

we were when we were quit. I was explaining to my kids just last night, when I was there were no activists at my high school, Like I didn't even know that was an option, Like you could care, but you there there were no activists at my high school. Like that's not how we saw the world. And today, even my daughter who was in college or in high school, they see themselves as activists and not just because they're

my children. Like here in New York. My kids, even my kids in elementary middle school, have been to marches and protests like we didn't. We didn't do that growing up. So this generation, I I trust them more than I trust our generation. Like I think they understand the danger a little more in part because they also and I don't even mean this as a knock, because they don't have to pay the bills, because they don't have all

the responsibilities as adults. They get to see the world for for all that it is and isn't in a way that's just very different. And so like there are days where I there might be a protest in the city, but because I have a nine to five, I just can't go. Well, kids don't have that same burden in that sense, and uh, they're laying it on the line man like I am on most days more inspired by them.

And uh I could tell you, I mean there their kids fighting for uh, fighting against the climate crisis, fighting against police brutality, gun violence. That I would say, are they are the ones leading on it. In most rooms that I go in, I'm the old man in the room. Like I've been in rooms I'm talking about with like the best leaders in the country. My in my brain, I haven't started thinking of myself as old Jet, and I realized right away it's like, oh, they think I'm old,

like people calling me Mr. King or Uncle Seawn. It's like, hold hold on, hold on. And I realized it's like you gotta think, how did you see somebody who was forty when you were eighteen when you were Yeah, you saw And so I realized it's like, listen, these young people. I'm proud of them. They in the election, they voted more than any young generation in American history. So they're not perfect. Um. I used to think when we were kids, I used to think that racism would pretty much die

out when all the old racists died. But so so, even though I'm proud of young people, some of the worst racists in America now are teenagers and young adults, and they full on white supremacists and neo Nazis. Don't know why, Yeah, I couldn't couldn't break it down if you sat here with him and nothing like why don't you like right? Because my mom and dad told me, you know what I mean, Well, Shaun King ever feel accomplished? Um, I don't know, man, you know I'm I'm always pushing it.

You know. Um, I used to there's a writer of TNA He's Coats, and I used to read Tona, He's the coat stuff. I used to think he was super pessimistic. He used to talk about how things like racism and stuff would always be here, and I, as a young optimist, I would see that and be like, man, why is he so negative? And as I've gotten a little older, I've grown to think a lot of the worst parts of this country they'll change their shape and form, but they'll always be here. So I think, to the day

I die, I'm gonna always be fighting back against injustice. Um. You know, there are there are single battles that I hope we win. Today is election day around the country. There are a couple of candidates that I've been fighting for and so I feel accomplished in a sense that, Um, there are some battles I hope we win. But one of my heroes is Harry Belfonte was now in his mid nineties and it's still fighting for justice and change today.

I hosted a conversation with him last year and he showed up with a Trayvon hoodie about a ninety four year old man and uh. And I asked him about why he had on the hoodie and he said, uh, as long as George Zimmerman is walking around, I'm aware of this hoodie and it's ninety four year old man. And I saw that was like, that's why I want to be the ninety four year old man wearing the hoodie. You know, I wish, I wish we didn't need to wear the hoodie. I wish, I wish, I wish I

could work myself out of a job. But I'm convinced that a lot of our problems are gonna be here for a very long time time. So um, it's it's a marathon. I know we all love Nipsey, and um, I think part of what I think about when I think about Nipsey is also saying, hey, there's some things I'm gonna fight for today, but there's some things I'm fighting for now, knowing we won't see the fruits for ten, twenty or thirty years, and and as I get older,

I'm able to see that a little more clearly. And so um, some systems are gonna take a lifetime for us to see see the change for sure. Sean appreciate you Tell Tell our audience where where they can find you at sure, I mean right now, people can go to free Rodney Read dot com. And that's where my mind is and where my heart is. As soon as I leave here, I'm checking on that and seeing what progress we've made. We're down to the wire with fourteen days to save this man's life. You can check me

out at Shawn King on every social media platform. Also have a daily news podcast called The Breakdown. I'm recording that just f y. If anybody ever asked you to do a daily news podcast, say no, it's hard, man, It's hard. It's a beast. It is a grind and so I love it, but it's so hard to do. That's on every podcast platform. Check that out. We're talking about Rodney Reeves case every day for the next fourteen days on their UM. I have a book that's coming out.

We just released the website today. It doesn't come out to April. The books called Make Change, So you can go to Make Change book dot com to check that out. And Uh, I'm always building, always tinkering, always trying to empower people to make a difference. So I'm gonna keep on pushing. Man. Yeah, if you had last thing, you know, a message to the world that would go around on the billboard, one word or a sentence, what would be? Oh man, you know so much of so much of

my mind is is about Rodney Reid. But um, I would I would probably say do something. Uh so much. So much energy has spent thinking about doing something, talking about doing something. Um, you learn more from just getting out there and actually doing something. And and so I tell people all the time, your issue does not have to be my issue. My issue doesn't have to be yours.

So I'm fighting against police brutality and mass incarceration. Your thing might be something altogether different, but do something, and you're something doesn't have to be mine. But you don't want to look back on your life and your good years wishing you had done something, So you would say, do something, Get out there and do it. That's a

wrap Episode three, All the smoke. I want to thank Sean King for coming through and educating, using and sharing his story and uh, you know you guys can find us on Showtime Basketball, YouTube channel and all platforms this stream podcasts. Jack, you got anything? The boy gave me some Malcolm and some more Luther King. Yes, man, I'm getting chills from I learned a lot today, so that's why I was kind of quiet. I learned a lot today. See y'all next time.