081724 How to Speak to Political Opposition Online (Part 2)

with us politically speaking online. So buckle up because q is going to give us all the game that we saw him deploy.

I'm going to share a letter. You know, BABA is a segment that we dedicate to people who have done great things, and people have done nice things and whatever. But this really is just about being who you are and coming as you are and doing what you can. And this happened. Q doesn't know this, but I'm gonna share it. We got a letter from a lady named Laura says Hi Rams's jaw Q. I was listening to your most recent show on KOPN, Columbia, Missouri. You were

talking about getting some hate mail. It's no surprise in this crazy time, speaking the truth puts you right in the cross heres. I wanted to send you a different kind of note from a white person, as it were. I always appreciate your show and was completely caught by surprise when you asked the question about the magic wand would you rather have cheap gas, cheap food, or cheap housing. As a person who's never been insecure as far as far as housing, my first thought was all three were

equal in value. I was so impressed by your explanation. I see it everywhere I go in our town. Besides the crazy market, everywhere, college students here have priced working people out of affordable housing, and landlords rent to them rather than take a housing voucher. Thanks for continuing the good work of keeping us informed. Laura and Laura, the reason that you are our baba this week is because you don't know what it means to have a kind word sometimes when all the words that you hear are

either from the echo chamber of your own making. Q and I we spend a lot of time together, or the words from social media, where our algorithm puts us with people that would probably rather see us and our children dead if they have their way. So this letter means a lot, and we want to say thank you for being a better ally. Now we are going to to take some time to have Q tell us a story. So we have some some some action steps that we'll get to a little bit later.

that entirely. But for some people who get excited, reasonably excited about a person that they see the themselves in, or that they see, you know whatever, or that if this candidate makes the people around me happy, if Kamala Harrison makes my little sister happy, gets what I'm happy, that's the end of the sentence. Doesn't matter, because my sister's the most important person to me. There are people who will jump in and try to rob you of

that moment, rob you of that joy. And Q is one of these people that approaches social media very cautiously. You might if you follow our social media, you might see my afro on a lot more pictures than you see Q's beanie. But because you know, we we have our difference. Accused strengths are in certain places and my strengths are in others. That doesn't mean that I'm invincible, but I will never let my brother fall on a sword that I can take myself right. And we have

this approach to each other. Well, in the common section of a post that he put up where he was sharing the credentials of that that rally against something that we would have never anticipated or expected that we would even be a part of, much less. Hey, you guys, you guys, come up to the front, you stand right here. You got good audio, you know that sort of thing where we're the like kind of the important people around.

They're making sure we're taken care of. To be proud of that and to be happy and excited about a candidate that is a little bit closer to our age and kind of has some of some of our sensibilities are shared with this candidate. There's there's nothing wrong with c sharing a little bit about that moment. Well, I'm tagged in in the post in question, and so I got a lot of the comments that people were sharing, and you know, I'm not a social media person like that.

I posted ghost because I ain't here for it either. But I noticed that there was one person that kind of kept coming back, coming back, coming back, and I'm like, oh, I know what that means. There's a discussion, and if it's a discussion online, it's not really a discussion, right, And so I'm going to turn it over to Q to kind of take it from there and kind of tell us what was happening, and then of course I want you both to chime in if and when you feel that it's appropriate.

but back then it was just mean people. But there were thousands of mean people because of something that I went through in my personal life that brought an audience with it. In real life, there's not much that I

can't stand up to. I show up completely as myself in spaces, in person, and in most cases, and I'm by most, I mean like ninety nine percent, you'll get one of the most pleasant people you've ever encountered, unless, however, you run a foul of someone that I care about, and then as justly as I could possibly show up, a different version of me avails itself. But again, those encounters are rare in person, because most people in person are not as bout it about it as they would

have you believe they are online. In recent years, since Ramses and I stepped away from the entertainment side of our career into the social justice and activist space, the type of interactions that we get from followers and listeners and people who would, as Ramses you know so eloquently put, would probably rather the worst outcomes for us. People that look like us and those that we care about, they show up in a way that's very very aggressive, very

very negative, and very very mean. So from the beginning of the show, I've kind of not engaged at all with our comment section, But as the show grew, so did the comment section, and once it became something that was noticeable, I removed myself as an admin from our website, from our socials, and deleted social media apps from my phone with regards to my personal accounts, cause I just

don't do well with the negative discourse online. This hit me more specifically and more personally when Donald Trump became president, because there have been topics and things throughout our collective lives that black people used to be united on, Like twenty years ago, I wouldn't have had to wonder if any of my friends supported Donald Trump. It would have been a very obvious no, like every black person I

knew would have been in solidarity on that point. The reason why I know that's true is because OJ Simpson was on trial for something that most people know he was on trial for, and without having to gather facts, without having to have a meeting, black people kind of unilaterally and collectively supported him. That was not because we knew OJ was a great manner that we knew that

he was innocent. We just knew what black people's relationships were like law enforcement, and in the wake of Rodney king.

zero accountability for it. The next time a black man, especially a famous black man, was put in a position where it was him versus the LAPD, collectively black people just said, Okay, we're riding with him on this one. That group of black people would not have in any way stood for the type of candidate that Donald Trump was because once upon a time he was a celebrity that black people kind of shouted out, you know, once upon upon a time Nelly dropped his name in one

of the biggest hip hop songs ever. But as we learned, but as we learned more about him and especially his quote unquote politics, because that's an interesting way to put it, because he doesn't politic He doesn't give you policy, he does not legislate. He just sow's division and hate. When that happened, I, you know, all of mine, Naivete showed up very upset about that result and expected people that I care about and that I know to feel like

I felt. But oh, contrere, monfrere, and people who look like you, yes, but even people that don't. Right, if you know me and you've met me, and you've held my child, my Mexican and black child. That's important to say because when these people are screaming build that wall, I think you would expect that that wouldn't be something I'd be happy about if you're somebody that claims to

care about me. So, as my dms started to fill up with people who look like me and those that don't in defense of all the great things Donald Trump had done for black people, Okay, I got to get off of this thing again. And you know, most recently, as Civic Cipher has grown way beyond what Ramses and I thought when we were just trying to get on in the middle of the night on Saturdays to give people like yourselves a platform to talk about important moments

like this. We did not know we would then end up on the radio and seventy six cities and growing and across digital platforms from every way that you can access digital media. As your audience grows, so do those that oppose you. So two separate people made their way onto my wall as we used to call it, or comments section.

it's celebratory, it's not overly serious. It's definitely not political, except George Floyd was murdered and talking about that on the radio put me and Ramses in a position where we had to make some very interesting career decisions. So when I go from that to being press credential to cover the rally for what might be the first black female president in our country's history, I feel damn proud about that. And I simply shared that I was press at the Kamala Harris tim Wall's rally. I did not

endorse the candidate. I did not implore people to vote for her, just really celebrating a moment for myself sidebar. Pay attention to the party that's imploring people to register to vote in general, one party saying registered to vote. They're not even saying vote for me, just register to vote and vote. The other parties not saying that, not even to vote for them. So that's just something that

we should pay very close attention to. And this young lady who I will not name, commented, wonder how many people were really there, as the photoshop photos in front of the Air Force too had no reflection of people in them. Now, what Ramses had to teach me to do, God bless my brother is give people the benefit of the doubt, because I be ready. You know what I'm saying.

me just educate her. Because I was there. I can just show her a first hand account that's not photoshopped and that there were really thousands of people.

the same reality and we don't agree with what facts are. Okay, she's the VP, now, why is she waiting to maybe win and not making changes now? So we're not even going to acknowledge the photoshop myth that we just debunked. We're just going to change the goal. We'll move the goal post. Let's talk about something completely different and deflect.

And at this point I quit. But I have a brother here, and he presented her with credible sourced articles and at this point, I'll spend all day trying to read all of these responses for her because she's very committed to nothing's real. And oh you're one of them. I thought you were somebody who might have been taken advantage of. And this is what I mean when I say some people show up and they're kind of ashamed to be make America great again from the jump, they need to kind of be.

a lot, but I have a little bit more. And that feeling of like somebody coming and saying some comment and they're wrong and you just letting it live. That's that's hard for me. That's hard for a lot of us because you're wrong and I got to tell you, but it's a slippery slow as we'll get to. So anyway, I didn't say anything to her anything at all. I just provided links. So when she said, well, what about

Kamala hair dored doing this? And then I would send her a link and then she'd be like, oh, well, that's CNN, that's the Clinton News Network, and there's tons of links. That's just the first one that I found. Right, But I'm starting to see, Okay, this person is not looking for credible evidence. So then she moves the goal post again. So then I say, you know, before you hit the rest of these MAGA talking points, here's a whole Time magazine article debunking all these popular MAGA myths

about Kamala Harris. Right, So then I submit that and then she responds saying, oh, well this must be true because I have a link to it. And the link said Tim Wall's YouTube parody account parody of Tim Wall's song or something, the title parody in the title. I didn't even click it.

This happens quite a bit, but to see us kind of go through it and see mentally where a person could take you, I started realizing, you know what, this is something that a lot of people are going through right now, especially people who are in support of Kamala Harris, in the midst of this these crazy disinformation campaigns, in the midst of these bots, in the midst of all of this misinformation, as I mentioned, disinformation, to try to

defend their position, their intelligence, their integrity as a voter, as a conscious being in this society. And so I came up with some action steps that I saw Q take and that I kind of jumped in and took too. And this is this is not the first time we're having this conversation.

We have to recognize that this is tied to who they are at the deepest core, at their identity. So you're trying to change more than just an opinion.

I found out that Trump didn't actually cut the CDC funding, He just wanted it cut, and I had to apologize for that on the air. Prepare for lots of cognitive dissonance, and don't be afraid of the block button. So we'll leave that one right there. As always, I'd like to thank you very much for tuning into Civic Cipher. I've been your host Rams's job.

we have a few moments, we want to say it again. Uh, the black woman is as close to God as we'll ever be on this planet, and so the thanks is never going to be enough, but we will say that much and make sure that we share the audience.