Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I am still your host ramses Jack.
I am hopefully still and forever. I like that your co host Qward, and thank you a million times for tuning in to Civic Cypher. We appreciate you, guys more than we have time to explain it.
Everybody that supports sins letters. We've got a ton of letters, letters to people that are fans of UQ. Nobody's a fan of me, but that's okay because you start the show, Daisy.
If you and your family are listening, thank you for listening, thank you for reaching out, and thank you for being so kind to me in the moments that we got to interact with one another.
Yes, indeed, a lot to stick around for as well. We will be discussing some housekeeping, catching up on the news, Trump, Biden, and the Supreme Court. Just a lot has been going on there, and uh, let's stick around for before we get there, though, it's time for Baba becoming a better allied. Baba on today's Babo was sponsored by Friends of the Movement you can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied
businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's fotmglobal dot Com. Today's BABA comes from The Guardian. This was a sad one.
Brace yourself.
Linda Torodo is at life's end due to an eye injury sustained while covering a protest in twenty twenty. A journalist who was shot in the eye by Minneapolis police while covering the twenty twenty protest following the murder of George Floyd, has entered hospice care due to her injury, signaling that she is dying from her wounds. Linda Toroto, age forty two, is at life's end and receiving palliative care, the National Press Club said in a statement last week.
Toronto was photographing demonstrators during the twenty twenty unrest in Minneapolis when a police officer shot at projectile at her face. Toroto, who was wearing protective goggles and press credentials, suffered a traumatic brain injury as blinded in one eye.
Quote.
I was lining up a photo when I felt my face explode she wrote in an NBC op ed. She goes on to say, my goggles came off and my face was suddenly burning and leaking liquid, the gas mixing with the blood. I threw up my arms and started screaming, Press, I'm press, although I'm not sure if anyone could hear me with my breathing apparatus and the general chaos around me,
she wrote. Toronto sued the Minneapolis Police Department and was awarded six hundred thousand dollars in twenty twenty two as part of a broader settlement between the city and the people assaulted by police doing the twenty twenty protests. A friend of hers said her condition has been deteriorating slowly, in that she was dying still. She has some lucid moments,
but they are becoming more infrequent, he wrote. In his substack, she wrote that she was getting ready to die at thirteenth June post in her substack, I really don't feel lucky or unlucky. I feel like the sweeping notes in the Flower song the Nelson Dorma saying anything Vivaldi ever wrote, and in short, she gave her life to cover the protest of twenty twenty and we salute you. You are an ally to us. Linda Torodo, I said it was going to be a sad one, all right, Donald Trump,
Joe Biden, Supreme Court. We didn't get a chance to talk about Donald Trump. Let me back up a bit because one of the things that we didn't get to cover for Donald Trump was an event that he did in Detroit. It was one of those blacks for Trump events. I don't like how that sounds. Blacks for Trump sounds racist. We're not black people for Trump or African American supporters or black support. You know something, Blacks for Trump just
feels it makes my stomach turn. But he had this event in Detroit and it was at a church, as you do, right, And you know, the video was released and we saw the video and Trump was on stage with two three black folks, and then the camera pans to the audience, away from the stage to the audience, and the audience is full of white people in a black church. But the audience is full of white folks. And there might have been one or two black people in the audience. I don't remember.
And we'll say a handful, yeah, just and the only reason I'm cutting rams is off to make that not correction, but amendment is that some of our listeners are real light skin intentionally choose semantics, yeah, to cancel everything else that we're saying. So they were a handful of black people on the pulpit with him and a handful of
black people in the audience. Yeah, but you will count four instead of three and then say everything we said was wrong, right, and said that I have to guard against that, but I've seen that happen.
We're generally speaking, we don't have time to split hairs here. But I'm glad you did that because you're right. People will use a small uh semantic error, semantic error to invalidate the entirety of what we're saying here. But the video is available for public consumption. You can watch it yourself, and you can see that the smoke and mirrors that have been part and parcel to Donald Trump's campaign since the beginning, and really his whole brand since the beginning,
it is on full display. Blacks for Trump goes to a black church, you know, you make a donation, it's possible to gain access to a black venue, black owned venue, right, and then you invite all the white people and then say I had a Black for Trump's Blacks for Trump event at a black church with a handful of black people on the stage.
You don't say that part.
Well, that part we know from the video. But yeah, and then if you roll that into the next series of headlines, more black people will look at that and say, well, obviously Donald Trump is getting support from black people, And then you can convince them that, well, if other people are doing it, maybe me being on the fence about it isn't so bad. Let me go ahead and answer this poll saying that I would support this man, right, And so again it's smoking mirrors trying to artificially generate
the look of black support for Donald Trump. But and this is not the only thing. This is just kind of one of the things that we didn't get to cover. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about
it because we've got a lot to cover here. But it was one of the things that really bothered me because again, the angle was Donald Trump's in Detroit and he's got so much black support, and when you look at the video evidence, you're like, okay, so where's this black support whereas it because I don't see it in the audience. And I know he's not knocking on doors. And if black people were really supporting him in Detroit,
they would have went to that church. And if it was an event where black people were prioritized so that Donald Trump could speak to that community, that will be black people in the audience. So it means one of two things. Either black people were not as supportive as they made both the things that you're about to say, Okay, so that or that black people weren't invited or allowed in to the degree that white folks were. And that's
on Donald Trump in his campaign. So and as Q mentioned, it's probably both, and you need to know that, and so can. I can't spend too much more time dissecting that. But the video is available you care to watch it. Let's fast forward a bit more the debate. Since we're talking about Donald Trump, I will mention kind of the big thing that Donald Trump mentioned on the debate stage that social media has taken and run with, which is black.
Jobs, more specifically immigrants, Yeah, coming to steal black jobs, black jobs, and by black jobs, he means low skill, low pay. It should be so offensive because it's so obvious. It should be so offensive because it's so obvious. Black people like me because I'm a criminal. Black people like me because I'm a felon. Black people you should be afraid because immigrants are coming to steal black jobs. Here
go some tennis shoes. Here are my Trump sneakers. Look at these two rappers I got to come on stage with me. Don't black people love rappers? So doesn't that mean that they support me? By black jobs, I mean that you don't need a degree or any skill, you don't have to be smart, and they don't pay much. Those are the black jobs. You should be offended when you hear these things because they're so blatantly disrespectful, They're
so blatantly dismissive, they're so blatantly dehumanizing and marginalizing. And I cannot and I forget, forgive me for this is just not this is not a message just for black people. I understand. We have been lied to, We have been promised things during campaigns that never happened. We have been failed by both parties, cause it would just be flat dishonest to say we've been let down by the democratic
process or by Democrats at large as a party. Republicans have let us down too, so like the idea that the Democrats have let us down, so we need to vote Republican now, as if they've shown up for us. We've been let down by both parties. The growing frustration, the growing apathy, the growing desire to just throw up your hands and not participate at all, I get it. We have to stop pretending that our feelings aren't real and aren't valuable. But we have to also stop pretending
that we're being gas lit. When people come out and say, hey, that other guy will destroy our country, that's not gaslighting. When you hear that he's an existential threat, that is literal, and this is not conspiracy theory. These are not even the words of those that are oppose him. These are his words, Dictatorship day one. That's him. There are documents that read like a full magazine that lay out exactly what the straightforward in tent of Project twenty twenty five is.
A nine hundred fifty page document, and if.
You're not into legalese and you don't understand how to read policy, there's parts in there that make it very very simple what their intentions are. A white supremacist, Christian nationalist nation led by a king who's immune from criminal project prosecution, who can do whatever he wants in the name of the presidency and it be forgiven criminally, who will make very, very literal changes to the way that
you live your everyday life. So I get that you are uninspired by Joe Biden as a client as a candidate. I'm sorry, I get it. I often wish that we were less informed, because there's a reason why there are no MAGA candidates encouraging voter registration. Ooh, because they could, They could encourage more people to register to vote to vote for them. What you'll also notice is that when many people do push voter registration, they do not also
include the client I keep saying client. They do not also include the candidate they want you to vote for. They just want you to vote because they feel like the more people that show up to vote, the better the outcomes will be for the country. Ironically, those better outcomes are not for MAGA Republicans, so there is a reason that they are not in your communities encouraging you to register to vote. They know that the outcomes would not be in their favor if more of us participate it.
But that's why they don't want you to participate. That's why they're making it harder to vote. That's why they're encouraging you to throw your hands up. That's why they're encouraging you did not participate, And we do this thing where we wait until we get to the finish line to then try to voice all the things that were frustrated about instead of participating all along the way. So when it gets to this point, all of your work
can be rewarded. Those local, state, and federal people that you voted for can now do the job you elected them to do. Now do they always do it, of course not. But there is one party present that will at least allow you to continue to participate, and there is one that will make it their business to ensure that you cannot. And I don't need to tell you which is which you can actually take the words I
just said in Google them. Which party will make it illegal for me to be a part of the process, will make it illegal for me to have autonomy over the decisions I make for myself, for my children, for my family, And which won't. Google's AI will do the rest of the work for you. Yeah, it'll fill in the rest of the search. So I did not mean to kind of clumsily take over this segment and sidetrack me.
You want to speak about. However, we are not gaslighting you, because I keep seeing friends of mine say that the Democrats need to stop gaslighting us. Listen, folks, this is not that.
Yeah, it's not the same. This is very different.
That I don't have a candidate that I work for. We don't have a campaign that sponsors us or that we endorse. So I'm not here to tell you how to think and what to do. I am, however, here to tell you that the idea. I'll stop that thought and say this, this is a binary decision. This is a zero sum decision. We do not get to sit this one out because there will be a president. There will be one, and there's going to be one of those two. It's going to be one of those two.
I don't need to say the names, because you know. So to prove a point this time, I'm going to vote third party for Ramsey's jah is a mistake, or to hold one party accountable, I'm going to vote for the other one that is a mistake. Pay attention. I know you're mad me to I know you discouraged me too. I know you're exhausted and tired of the same old me too, But never in our history, even when America
was great, Because they want America to be great again. Right, once upon a time a man told a nation to make Germany great again. I'm talking about the exact words I just said, make Germany great again. It should sound familiar. Google is free even when America was great. According to them, the president was not immune even then. So if you think this tyrannical regime stops at abortion, stops at denying gay people the right to marry, stops at allowing minorities
to go to college. If you think it stops there, you are mistaken. I told friends of mine years ago that they would do the types of things that they are doing now, and they laughed at me because I was being hyperbolic or ridiculous. So when I'd say they're trying to take us back pre Jim Crow, i am not just talking out of my rear end. A conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court has now in just the last few years, overturned Roe v. Wade, overturned affirmative action,
federal attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Former presidents cannot be held accountable for criminal acts as long as they say it was in the name of the presidency and what they thought was in the best interests of the country. They are not even doing these things undercover anymore. They're doing them in front of you, in our face. Watergate everyone. I wish we were not so informed. I wish I knew less so I could just be frustrated and not participate.
I understand those frustrations. I am not saying they are not valid, I promise, but now is not the time. We did this last time, and that's why we're here. You're unhappy with the candidate that we have. We we had some better ones, but you didn't like their email folder in box. The other gentleman is a thirty four time convicted felon and gided on over ninety charges that have not seen convicttions yet adjudicated rapist. He said out
loud on a bus. He's recorded that he does exactly what he's been convicted of, walk up to him and grab him by the blank. He said that while running for president, and Americans still elected him. We must wake up, folks. Unless you have some alternative country where you have citizenship that you can go to. You got to live in this one and your normal human rights and liberties are at risk. Democracy as we know it is at risk. We are not gas lighting you. I do not work
for the Democratic Party. I want to say this too while we're here, if I may. That was poignant. That was everything that we needed to say. We covered all our bases well, said, Q. You are on eleven today. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I see why you got all the fan mail. But you know, we saw the debate Donald Trump and Joe Biden. We had to watch it.
We had to do this show, We had to do Black Information Network, we had to do everything British Broadcasting Company. With all these things that we end up having to do. We know that that was a very uninspired performance and we know that there are concerns about Joe Biden's fitness for office movies.
Shame on our colleagues for not calling out the lies of the other guy.
Yeah, that was another other part of it. However, Joe Biden is the name on the administration. It's the administration that carries out the functions of government. Donald Trump is
the name on the administration. The administration is the carries is what carries out the function of government, and as you mentioned, Project twenty twenty five is an effort to rewrite what an administration is, what the roles are, how much more expansive those roles can be, and how much more control those individual roles will have underneath the commander
in chief. And so rather than looking at okay, do I vote for this guy or that guy, it might be easier to take a step back and ask yourself, do I want to vote for this administration or that administration?
This policy versus that policy? You see what I mean?
And so these are really important things to consider moving forward the Supreme Court, where you know, I feel like Democrats need to get a spine. I'm not a fan of Joe Biden because of all the stuff that happened in Gaza, but I recognize one of those two men have to be the president. One of them changes the country forever for the worst, and the other one at worst leaves it the same. So we'll leave it right there. And ended up getting tough at parts, but we got
through it. So I didn't mean to hijack. No, that's what we needed, man. I needed to hear that I'm upset Man, No, No, You're right where you need to be.
Man.
I love you always.
Man.
Thank you all for listening to Civic Cipher. I've been your host.
Rams. This is joh I am Qboard Steele.
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Peace, peace,