081223 Solidarity over Jason Aldean’s ‘Try That in a Small Town’ song (Part 2)

the folding chair because we didn't get to it. Shout out to Aquamane and Uncle Wiget here you you wouldn't know if you've seen the video or whatever, but we're gonna talk about that folding share and the fact that a black person is the one who pattent did the folding chair. And we're also going to talk about Jason Aldean and his song try that in a small town so stay tuned for all that. But first and foremost, we're going to discuss b A b A becoming a

better ally Baba. Today's Boba sponsored by Unknown Union, the fashion house situated at the intersection of meaning, innovation and culture. For more info check Unknown Union dot com. And today we're talking about this came from the South Africa Daily and we're talking about The Rock, the actor Duane the

Rock Johnson. So I'll read. American actor Duane Johnson, best known as The Rock, took time out of his business schedule to recently surprise Demba to Goririmbo is zimbabwayan UFC fighter who had recently relocated to the United States with only seven dollars in his bank account and the aim of pursuing his dream of the coming a UFC champion. Then bug Grimbo fought against Takashi Sato in May and made his first win after falling after previously falling short

against aj Fletcher. MMA News reported during an interview after the fight, he shared a devastating story about his childhood back in Zimbabwe. Quote, I've almost died when I was sixteen at the Diamond Fields. I saw heaven when I was in the fields. I've been shot at in the diamond fields. I've seen people die in front of me at the diamond fields. I smuggled diamonds when I was sixteen,

he said. According to The Rock, after Garimbo won his first fight, he sold everything, including his fighting gear, on the net and made seven thousand dollars, which he donated to his village. And I saw the video. There's a video documenting this is really special and if you have a beating hearted, mi movie to tears.

in America with a new house. This is obviously The Rock is black and Grimbo is black as well, but black people can be allies to black people and people in Africa. Money is a big deal in Africa because there's even less of a there.

guys up based on that. If I can convinced Ram just to go back with me, oh yeah, both of us will be there. We there. I love Africa anyway, all right, So let's talk about what solidarity looks like on the opposite side. Okay, So this one is going to be a little weird, because I think this gives insight into how cooperative folks who whose beliefs are based in hate and divisiveness. In my estimation, they probably would not call it hate and divisiveness, but I know better.

They just rebranded every few years is something different, but we're calling it conserva, deep conservative conservativism, now right or far right conservativism, but it's racism, that's full stop. We're going to show how they stick together. And I want to have this in content trust to that riverboat thing, because this what we're talking about with this Jason Aldean thing, is this happens quite a bit, especially when it comes to voting. These people vote, they get together, they get organized.

I think Malcolm X has a quote that I think works right here. He says, we were not out numbered, we're out organized. Right. So that's why that riverboat thing was so special for black folks because it showed a little bit of solidarity. We're going to rally around this person and support him in his time of need. Well,

the opposite of that is this Jason Aldean guy. So I'm gonna do a little bit of reading from Rolling Stone, and I'm gonna tag Q in along the way just to kind of help paint a picture, because I know Q has been champing at the bit to try to get this one. That's an inside well, I guess not inside joke, because last week or two weeks ago, we're trying to figure out if it was Champion at the bit chomping at the bit. It turns out it's both. But champing is not wrong, but Cusman champing at the

bit to get at this topic here. So I'll read a bit, all right, This comes from Rolling Stone. Conservative fans tried to push Jason Alden to number one. They just missed. Jung Cook and Lotto prevail after streams and sales for Try That in a Small Town skyrocketed thanks to the controversy around the song and video. Okay, let me read a bit. Conservatives hoping to drive Jason Alden's controversial Try That in a Small Town to number one on the charts following CMT's move to pull the music

video fell just short on Monday. Bear in mind, we're reading this a little bit after it came out because we couldn't get to it last week, So forgive me. The timeline might not sound as accurate, and you're hearing us after we've recorded this. I'll go on as Jung Cook and Lotto's seven Rain victorious. But the controversy clearly stoked flames among MAGA circles, giving the song sales a major boost last week and propelling the song to number

two on the chart. According to data service Illuminate, which powers the Billboard charts, Try That in a Small Town was garnering fewer than one thousand sales per week and hovering just shy of a million streams per week in the month prior to when al Dean released the song's

music video on July fourteenth. Immediately, al Dean faced swift backlash, as everyone from fellow artists like Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbel to scholars of racial violence pointed out the parallels to white nationalist narratives in al Dean's depiction a protest as violent and lawless and his taunting refrain try that in a small town, See how far you make it down the road. CMT pulled the video within a few days, drawing a predictably furious outcry from the right wing and

vows to drive the song up the charts. So I'm going to read a little bit more here, but short, this video pulled footage from the BLM protests. Now you'll hear because we have to say his side of the story, but you'll hear him say that he didn't know that it was that, and he you know whatever. I guess he didn't have permission to use the footage anyway. But those of us in the know realize that this is coded.

This is like dog whistle musicianship right here, musicianship. He's making a song two for those really entitled folks and these folks that feel like America belongs to them and the flag is theirs, and that you know, Donald Trump is the second coming of Jesus Christ. It gives them a rallying cry, reason to beat their chest. Right. That's not to say that we haven't had songs to move the culture forward on our side, and by our side, I mean the more I guess liberal side of things

or less conservative side of things. But this one is a little different in that this song there's connections to violence that are very realistic and very much based in a real history. And so for this Jason Alden record, when the video comes out, they're showing like a courthouse and that's where they used to do like public lynchings of black people back in the day. And you know, obviously the footage of the protests really pits Jason Alden's message of try that in a small town against the

messaging of the BLM protests of twenty twenty. In other words, it's a rallying cry that is like the lyrics don't directly reference it, but when the video did, that's when it blew up, because everyone's like, okay, clear, now you can't even hide it anymore, Like we knew, but now we know no, because you're literally showing us the video. So I'm going to turn it over to Q to get his early thoughts, and then we'll get back to reading a little bit more.

to scroll until I find it. Well, seventy, you can talk ram this, So watch this eighty Donald Trump, ninety, go ahead. It's not in the top one hundred. I won't scroll past that because I think my point is proven. It was a troll job by people that hate, just like he intended them to get. Pretended he had no idea when there's video of protest in Atlanta in his video. So it's intentionally insultingly deceitful.

a troll job. So these things that the January sixth choired, this sort of thing and other things are kind of an act of solidarity on that part. Their response to the I'm a huge fan of wokeness. I'd rather be woken in sleep Dog ten times out of ten for real.

You know, we're French, we're Swiss, were Spanish or Portuguese, even we're white, all of us. And once I can get all of you to identify as white, I can then present white as superior and everything else as beneath what you was talking about here is and then the rest of your life without knowing it because it's an ideology. Now you have been indoctrinated to the idea of simple self protection, self preservation.

the non slave class from the slave class. In other words, based on your appearance, you could tell a person's status in a given society black because of the slave trade. So shout out to Great Britain, Britain, and the Spanish, and the Portuguese and the Americans. And let's not pretend like the Middle East, those those countries and there didn't have anything to do with it as well. And so this is the origin story of black people as a term and white people as a term.

I'm talking about UH a series of aggressive acts, political acts and uh fiscal acts, you know, laws enacted to uphold a system that protects white interests and doesn't consider black interests. And I'm not just talking about Jim Crow and you know, the Black Codes, and I'm not just talking about the GI Bill, and I'm not just talking

about redlining. It's it's so much deepail, Like like land theft, we could we could just start there, billions and billions of dollars just just completely taken washed off of the record, and then guess who ended up with that land? Right, So, so for many years, black people have borne the brunt of a system that protects white interests. I'm not making this stuff up either. Why would I do that. I

could be easily debunked. I just have happened to be able to do so much research over the past few years especially, and then now I'm condensing it into a conversation. So when we talk about this guy Jason Alden and his song, and it's very pro white supremacist messaging, dog whistle messaging, and then we see the solidarity around it. This is something that we all need to be made

aware of because, as Malcolm X said often enough. His quote goes, we are not outnumbered, we are out organized, and we have to know that even though it's hate, it's very, very sophisticated hate. It's sophisticated at the polls. It's sophisticated to trick Billboard charts algorithms, right because they're not increasing the amount of radio plays. So that's clicks, that's downloads, that streams, that's everything of people saying this

is the reality that I want to live in. I'm going to do this a thousand times.

eleven point six million streams. For reference, the song has two hundred and thirty eight digital sales all time, meaning that around ninety five percent of the sales came last week after the controversy started. Fifty of its nearly twenty one million all time streams came last week as well. Aldine faced diiff competition from bds's Jung Kook, who said, uh, well, I guess we don't need to read that anymore anyway.

Regardless of where a small town landed on the chart, the track has become yet another dog whistle for conservatives how about that, who have bemoaned the critiques as examples of so called cancel culture. Right wing entrepreneur and long shot presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whoever that say we did

last one I know he is. I'm just being playing, tweeted last week that he'd be playing the song at rallies and encouraging followers to drive the song up the charts, before doing his best to change the subject to hip hop. Ramaswammy eagerly echoed the song veil threatening tone quote, it'd be a real shame if the song hits number one.

Other accounts of referenced the bud Light boycott, some conservatives tries to get off the ground after the beer brand partnered with trans TikTok star Dylan mulvaney, or the campaign to boost Qanana Jason thriller Sound of Freedom all Right, now Here We Go. Aldine himself has repeatedly dismissed the backlash, denying that try That in a Small Town is a pro lynching song. He says, quote there's not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it.

He wrote on social media. Obviously the video told a much different story. But you know this is what he's hiding behind. Easy so they say, whats your chest if you mean it otherwise, don't play with people. But you know, anyway, let me finish read all right. On Friday night, Al Dean addressed a controversy during a concert in Cincinnati, seeming to applaud efforts to cash in on the song's notoriety. Quote, you guys know how it is. It's cancel culture. It's

a thing. It's somehow where if people don't like what you say, they try and make sure they can cancel you, which means they try to ruin your life, ruin everything. One thing I saw this week was a bunch of country music fans that can see through a lot of the bs. All Right, I saw country music fans rally like I've never seen before, and that was pretty bad, as in good. I gotta say thank you guys so much. So this is his statement on the whole thing. Just

to be fair. Obviously, we know that it can only be one of two things, what we believe it to be, which is outright racism and you know, him taking advantage of that and making music about that, which we don't believe is kind at all.

our Way Black History Fact. We're gonna be talking about the ship Harriet, the second, which was named after a slave ship. We're going to be talking about the Alabama Riverfront slave trade. And we're talking about how a black man patented the folding chair that was famously used in the Alabama Riverfront brawl. Right floors yours?

and then back to Liverpool. However, post it was owned by Barton and Co. And also cruise between Liverpool and Africa. It now serves as a relaxing cruise and as one of Montgomery's tourist attractions, which offers visitors dinner, dancing, live entertainment and more. The idea that a slave ship can become a tourist attraction in this country and clearly be a profitable one. It is just part of the American dream, I guess.

Until the Civil War in the mid eighteen hundreds, thousands of enslaved people were transported on steamboats and railroads from New Orlands up the Alabama River to Montgomery. According to the Montgomery based Equal Justice Initiatives, many of the rail routes have been constructed by slave labor. Enslaves people would arrive on Montgomery's river front or at the train station where they could be chained together and paraded down Commerce Street.

That used to be like a celebratory act. There's something that inspired people, made people happy that it would rile people up. Let's march these slaves down the street, shackle together so that people can celebrate it.

one state, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. By the start of the Civil War a year later, Montgomery was among the most prominent slave trading communities in the state, and the mid eighteen hundreds, thousand enslaved people were transported on steamboats railroads from New Orleans up Alabama River to Montgomery and Montgomery having a prominent slave trading community in the state. Quote the slavery's impact could be seen everywhere,

Rothman said in an email to CNN. He added that enslave labor fueled the local economy and influenced everything from political order to religious life. If you scratch hard enough at the surface of any of those matters and many other matters today, you'll likely find the legacy of slavery living somewhere underneath facts. It was once the capital of

the Confederacy. Montgomery is often called the cradle of the Confederacy because in eighteen sixty one, it briefly served as the first capital of the Confederate States of America, wow

eleven states has succeeded from the Union. After Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the US in eighteen sixty Delegates from six of those states South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana convened in Montgomery in February eighteen sixty one to officially establish their own government, and May of eighteen sixty one, the Confederate government moved from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia, which retained the capital of the Confederacy until the end of the.

in schools, churches, and auditoriums. His design included a book rest that was usable for the person sitting in the seat behind, and was ideal for church or choir use. Patton nine nine seven one zero eight is the only invention on record for Nathaniel Alexander, but on March tenth, nineteen eleven, his application was witnessed by two people, James Rodiggs and C. A. Lindsay. Alexander's volding chair is not

the first volding chair patent in the United States. His innovation was that it included a book rest, making get suitable for use in places where the back of one chair could be used as a desk or shelf by the person seated behind. This would certainly be convenient with setting up rolls of chairs required so they could rest music on the chair ahead of each singer, or for churches where a prayer book, hymnal or Bible could be

placed on the reading shelf during the service. Voting chairs allow the space to be used for other purposes when there is not a class or church service. Today, many congregations meeting spaces that used to be large big box stores, supermarkets, or other large cavernous rooms. Using voting chairs set up only during services, they are able to quickly turn spaces

into a church. In the early part of the twentieth century, congregations likewise might have met outdoors and warehouses, barns, or other spaces that didn't have fixed seating or pews.

it's within a couple of lifetimes. It's really easy to pass on hateful ideas about different people to the next generation.

We're still coming to understand these things ourselves, and we don't profess to be experts in this space at all. We are doing our best to be brothers to you to give you what it is that we feel you might need to become the best ally that you can be so that you can have the conversations and make the impact.