Welcome to another episode of Civicsacker. I'm your host, Rams's Ja.
He is Ramsy's Jah. I am Q ward Man. You guys are now tuned in Pacific.
Second hashtag side Flack. Let's get to it. Stick around. We've got a lot of show in store for you this week. We're going to spend the first part of the show talking about news. You know, for those that listen regularly, you might hear a constant complaint that we have that we often don't have enough show for the news that we have to cover. This is something that Q has said consistently on the show since we started
doing it. And so while we're not going to be able to cover all of the goings on, there's certainly some notable stories in the news this week, so we're going to spend a little bit of time about each of them. Our final story is going to kind of give us a precursor into the second half of the show, where we're going to be examining a report the University of Michigan Law School detailing race and wrongful convictions in
the United States as of twenty twenty two. This is something we've been wanting to get to and so it's a perfect opportunity to get into that and peel back some layers there, So that'll be the second half of
the show. On top of that, we are going to be talking about the Black Codes for our Way Black History Fact and some of you may be familiar with black codes, but I don't believe that we've covered the Black codes in depth on this show just yet, and in short, just so you know what's worth sticking around. Black codes are basically bogus laws that were I guess they were valid, but they're you know, the mean spirited laws, and they were enacted to they were actual law. Actual
that's the word. I don't know if valid is the right word, but they were actual laws. Definitely the right intended to imprison black people after slavery to continue to get free labor out of them. So stick around for that. But first and foremost, I think it's time for some ebony excellence, shall we we shall? I like this one. This is another story that we wanted to cover. So this one comes from Essence magazine and it's sponsored by
Hip Hop Weekly Media. So I'll read. The Yale School of Public Health recently honored a nine year old black girl from New Jersey for her efforts to help curb the presence of an invasive species known as the spotted lantern fly in her hometown of Caldwell. Bobby Wilson was awarded the title of Donor Scientist after donating her personal lantern fly collection to Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. According to the university, the collection is available for public
viewing in the museum's database. Bobby created a TikTok inspired insect repellent out of dishwater soap and apple cider vinegar after learning about the bugs that ecologists have urged the public to squash on site. The fourth grader, affectionately known as Bobby Wonder among her family and friends, was spraying the lantern flies that she saw near her home last October when she was approached by a police officer and questioned.
The encounter that Bobby had with the police officer was due to the fact that her neighbor and former town council member Gordon Lauche I believe that's how I pronounced had it called to make a report about seeing a suspicious person. There's a little black woman walking spraying stuff on sidewalks in trees on Elizabeth and Florence. I don't know what the she's doing. Scares me, though, Las, she
said to dispatchers. According to footage obtained by CNN, Ijoma Opara believe that's how I say that, who is an assistant professor of public health at Yale, invited Bobby and her family to the school to meet other black female scientists and to the university shortly after the incident. Quote, the whole science community got together and said, she's one of us. We're not going to let her lose steam for stem. We're going to support the family, and we're
going to support this girl. She said, so again, shout out to Yale and shout out to little Bobby for being an example of ebony excellence. Now that's not the only thing in the news, but that certainly is one
of the brighter things we'll be talking about. First and foremost, I do want to take a moment and before we get into the stories that we actually have earmark for today, I do want to mention that at the last minute, some additional information came out about the shooting, the shooting in Michigan, the college, and it just it just didn't time out right for us to include all that and do it justice. But you know, we did see the three victims. We were toward the show before you hear it.
That's just kind of the way syndication works. So we're not keeping secrets here. And uh, that was heartbreaking to see the students that lost their lives and uh there that we just need we need to get a little bit more before we're able to cover that and do it justice. But I don't want you to think that that's not something that made its way to us. So when the time is right and when we can do it justice, if we can do a justice, we certainly
we'll cover that. That was tough though to see see those to me their children, you know, so and then they're writing the articles. She was this, he was that. It's like very sad because the photos, you know, they seem I don't know, weird moment. So let's pivot to uh separate weird moment. This story comes from binnews dot com.
Peyton Gendrin, the shooter who killed ten black people at the Top supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last year, has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, per CBS News so you some of you may remember us covering this story. This was very heavy for all of us, but Civic Cipher had existed long before that shooting had taken place, and obviously we're still here now, and so this was kind of a thing where all eyes were on us at a time when we were
us saying this, I want to share something me. It's very difficult. Oh, I don't want to say I got to make sure I say this right. I believe that we process these stories a bit differently than we used to. And I'm speaking for you, but just because I've known you for forever, so follow me here. They're sad, and then there's sad coupled with a responsibility to not succumb to your emotions, responsibility to be coherent, and to process
every single detail. We cannot look away because we now have a responsibility to help other people through these things
in a way that we didn't before. Once upon a time, when we were doing our regular radio show, we could you know, mention things like this and you know, thoughts and prayers, that sort of thing, and then get right back to the latest CARDI B record or you know, hit some little baby or whatever we were doing in the studio and now these stories, we realize this is kind of everyone's looking at us to give it context and to give it perspective, and where we could normally
have our moments in private, I guess and put on a brave face and then share thirty seconds with our listeners. You know, when something like this happened in Upstate New York, we're like, Okay, we're going to have to talk about this for like fifteen minutes. This isn't a thirty second clip. We're going to have to go through every detail of it.
We're going to have to I remember this one. Remember we had to read the things that that guy wrote on that gun, and we had to kind of articulate for folks who like reporters almost you know, we have to articulate the hatred, perhaps the source of the hatred,
and even deeper sources than that. You know, we're we're now we're looking at online chat rooms and doing research and there's communities of people who wake up early to just share hatred about us, you know, and it's just a different it's a different thing now doing this show than it was ever in my life. And I'm speaking for you because I know that we take turns watching the videos. Lately, we haven't been taking turns because we had to watch the Tyree Nichols video together at the
same time and go ahead. It seems like.
It's different, and it's different in multiple ways. It's there used to be a shock to seeing things like this, and I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that it's become something that we're unfortunately getting used to. It never stops making me upset, It never stops making me angry, It never stops breaking my heart. But before I press play now, my heart and my mind kind of braced for what they know is coming, rather than being jarred and caught
off guard. The responsibility to our listeners and to our culture for doing this show weighs heavy. I think in the wake of Tyran Nicholas, you and I were talking about how difficult that was for me, more so than really all of the other videos that we've seen, because the nature of the stop being fraudulent, the fact that the kid actually didn't do anything, and not that he didn't do anything worth dying for, but he didn't do anything at all, Like even the stop itself had no basis.
He didn't run a red light. He didn't get over without signaling. He didn't you know, he wasn't reckless driving, he wasn't drunk, he wasn't under the influence he how they would usually find all of the things this person has done wrong to put in front of you and make them less human and less worthy of your empathy, and less worthy of your sorrow, and really less worthy
of your outrage. In this case, that couldn't even do that, even in the wake of his family putting out videos of him skateboarding and you know, photos of him helping people, and there's a picture of him handing something to a little girl who I'm not even sure he knew. He was just being kind. Usually to combat that, someone would try to give you the other side of it.
Right.
In the past, we've seen Cannice owned go out of her way to dehumanize someone's humanize, you know what I mean, so that you won't feel sorry for them. Even people like her couldn't find things to make up about this kid. And that was the thing that I think troubled me the most. When I was driving home and a cop got behind me, and I got tense and started sweating, and my heart started beating, and I started feeling anxious and had to take the next day off of work
because I was so upset and so uncomfortable. So there's, yes, it's way different watching these videos now than it was before, but it's that's not singular. It's different in a spider web of different ways.
Well, yeah, it's been tough, Yeah, And I think that's that's kind of what I'm trying to say. You obviously are more articulate than I am, so I appreciate that. But you know where we end up is, you know, seeing this thing unfold, we know that the best case scenario is that because remember, he was taken in a live I think we did a whole show dedicated to that one singular element of this, that that shooter was
taken in alive. Right, the best case scenario, the best possible outcome, is that everybody gets a nice funeral and this guy is you know, goes to prison forever. Right, And it feels hollow, but it's it doesn't even feel like enough to say it's not nothing, it's what happened.
So I'll finish reading this news story because we have a duty to inform you, and these stories don't often we haven't been able to cover things like this just because there's been so many, so much death and strange behavior. But I'll continue reading. Here's a quote from the judge. She says, there can be no mercy for you, no understanding, no second chances. Her name is Judge Susan Egan, and she said this as she delivered the sentence during a
court hearing on February fifteenth. She goes on to say, the damage you have caused is too great, and the people you have hurt are too valuable to this community. I appreciated her saying that that is akin to say black lives matter. You know, the people are too valuable to this community. So you know. She goes on to say, you will never see the light of day as a
free man ever again. And so you got to be careful with stuff like this because I don't want to say that that's good, and of course I don't want to say that it's bad. It's just what happened. And so this is the outcome that this.
Is the best case scenario, I guess, And I think what you're trying not to do is make it feel like a celebratory moment. There's something that's this, you know, kind of vile. But it's not a celebration of this man's life being turned into perpetual captivity as much as it is the idea of there being a such thing as justice. And at the very least, if there's no justice, there's accountability here when we've seen so many cases where there's not.
Well, let me let me tell you what would feel better than this. I know this is wishful thinking, I know this is bying the sky. But what would feel better than this is if the powers that be are elected officials, the billionaires that you know have these little pockets of the Internet that they own, in control or whatever.
If those people shut down these cess pools where these types of individuals can you know, network and share ideas, These real extreme, hateful white supremacists where they're compelled by each other to get out there and get the high score, meaning get out there and shoot the most number of people. And these guys are often as a term's called in cells and voluntarily celibate. And I mean we know that. I think it's like forty percent of men never father children, right.
These guys are often those types, but they don't have access to women really nothing. Nothing about their lives they feel is they don't feel like any part of their lives makes them happy. So they are, in my belief, often suicidal, you know, and in that last minute, when that adrenal is pumping, some will surrender, some will take their own lives. We saw that in Michigan this past week.
And you know, some of them will you know, surrender and go to prison and just be there and be celebrated in prison as whatever of neo Nazi or you know, Aryan whatever. They'll have their status in the prison with the Aryan Brotherhood or whatever it's called in prison. So not having access to women is not like a deal breaker for these guys. So these communities on the internet continue to breed these hateful people and point their hatred
in the direction of black people, brown people. We saw that in El Paso at the Walmart and then the country as a whole, you know, is really upset with Mexico for no reason.
But it's not for no reason, right, Yeah, they had reasons created and taught to them. So sure they think that they're fully justified in their fears and their fake concerns for this monster that's coming to get us. That doesn't exist.
So what I would have liked to see is a crackdown on that type of terrorism. Let's be honest, That's what it is, and not just this one individual being sentenced. But this is news. In our job is to you know, cover stories like this so that you know, we're not leaving everything on the you know, the cutting room floor every single week. So that happened. Moving on, this also
comes from the Black Information Network. Six North Carolina officers have been put on leave after video showed the deadly tasing of a black man who complained of heart problems. Thirty two year old Darryl Tyree Williams died in a Rally hospital on January seventeenth after police taste him multiple times during its attempted arrest for alleged drug possession. For The New York Post. In the newly released footage, Williams
can be heard questioning why he is being arrested. Officers told Williams that if he didn't put his hands behind his back, they would use a taser. Police ultimately taste Williams three times despite his pleas for them to stop due to his heart problems. And that one is another one that is really sad because I think that I'm starting to appreciate the fact that tasers aren't strictly speaking, non lethal. You know, people get shot and survive, you know, I mean shot.
There are a lot of things that have no lead the intentions that can kill you. You can drink too much water and die, you know what I mean. Like the point, it's it's that these things are being used in excess. Yeah, and scapegoaded and the together are they're yelling taser, They're yelling stop resisting. They yell all these things out loud to teach you how to feel well. See he yelled taser. He you know, he wasn't trying to well if he tased them one hundred times, you know,
or for ten twenty minutes or whatever. You know, there is a limit to which you can do anything, and it can be harmful. So all these billions of dollars that are being spent on training, I'm sure someone knows that. Yeah, and they you know, they crossed that line anyway in most cases with impunity. And you know, thus the cycle that has us, you know, all these years later, still covering the same stories. The names are just different, you know.
Over the last weekend. We so where we live in Arizon, So we had the Super Bowl here in Phoenix, and there's a lot of moving around. And you may not know, but I have a couple of nightclubs here in downtown Phoenix, and there were some people. I'm not sure if they were from my club or just in the entertainment district there. But I was walking in an alley behind my business and I was headed inside and I heard the sound of a taser from like a security guard. There was
like some commotion. I couldn't see it, but I heard the sound of a taser, and then I heard a woman screaming, like a blood curdling scream. And then I believe it was her that was getting tasted. She got tased two more times and the scream again. I didn't see who was tasing. I didn't see who was being tased. I didn't see that just because there was a wall there, but I could just hear it over the top of the wall. But that let me know that those things
are intense. I never heard somebody scream like that, like screaming in pain. So yeah, I've never come face to face with the taser, fortunately, But you know the fact that people are dying consistently, People are dying asking what they did wrong, and people are dying because of the overuse of you know, taser, indeed, any police tactic. You know, you can overuse the you know, the chokehold, you can over use the punch, you can overuse the gun, you can over use any of this stuff. The point is
that this police violence leads to death often enough. It's black and brown people. And again, now we have to talk to you about the now deceased thirty two year old Darryl Tyree Williams. So that happened as well. Forgive us for not going into more detail, but you have to Below this is going to be a precursor to the next part of the show. So we're just going to kind of read this you with it. This also
comes from the Black Information Network. A Missouri man who spent the last twenty seven years in prison for murder walked free on February fourteenth after a judge declared his innocence and vacated his convictions. Per CNN, Lamar Johnson was sentenced in nineteen ninety five. Sure, hey, that was when California Love came out to life in prison without parole in connection to the death of Marcus Boyd. Police said
Johnson and another man, Philip Campbell, fatally shot Boyd. Last year, Saint Louis Circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner filed a motion for a new hearing, arguing that Johnson's murder conviction was based on false eyewitness testimony and misconduct sounds familiar by investigators
and prosecutors. Johnson was granted the hearing, and on Tuesday, Missouri Circuit Court Judge David Mason said his initial trial included constitutional error, as he vacated the murder conviction quote there is clear and convincing evidence of Lamar Johnson's actual innocence. Mason ruled Gardner's request to vacate Johnson's convicting Johnson's conviction came after James Elkin, the sole eye witness of the
initial trial, recanted. Another man, James Howard, also testified in December that he and Campbell, who has since died, shot Boyd over a drug dispute. According to Mason's ruling, Johnson had an alibi on the night of Boyd's murder and no physical evidence linked him to the killing, and so I know that you probably get your news from whatever news sources you get it from, and we appreciate you taking a little bit extra time to get your news
from us as well. But it suffice it to say that this is a pretty big deal in black news circles, and so we thought that we would mention it, and that would give us an excellent opportunity to discuss what we're going to discuss next.