For those of you just tuning in to Civic Cipher, I am your host, Ramsey's jaw.
Most of the time. I'm que most of the time. Sometimes, as I said before, people say some different things.
That's all right.
My mother though cast me Quentin, all right, but most of the people that I spend most of my time would call me q Ward.
Indeed, the man, the myth legend.
Back in the studio after traveling may as well be in the globe because it was all over the place.
Man, good to have you back in the studio.
I'm glad to keep that.
Yeah, man, we still got a lot more show in store for you. We're going to talk.
About what happens when we listen to black women Wow yeah, yeah, and why supporting black women is mission critical not just for black people but for all people in this country. There's something here that is we've done this sort of thing before, but it's been a long time and we definitely need to touch on this stick around. But first we're discussing Baba becoming a better ally Baba. Today's Baba sponsored by Unknown Union, the fashion house situated at the
intersection of meaning, innovation and culture. More info check Unknown Union Dot com We.
Talk about police a lot on the show.
Well we we their activities caused that. Yes, you don't seek them.
Out, Nope.
But by being critical of the police, we believe that we can point out where they are wrong, where they can do better, and where they should do better. But to be fair, we also need to point out when they get it right. And we've done this many times on the show. Today is going to be another example. Okay, please shot that woman. She died and her baby died. Okay from TMZ. Michigan cops saved the life of a baby dying in the middle of a busy intersection and
it was all caught on dramatic video. The hero officers pulled over the tots mom and uncle for speeding going eighty miles an hour in a forty five zone in the city of Warren last Tuesday. You've been to Warren, Yes, okay, the family was driving fast. There's a lot of black people in Warren.
Right in comparison to Phoenix.
Yes, okay, Well that's enough because in the video the officers are white, the people in the car black.
Okay, all right, let me go on.
The family was driving fast to get to the hospital because their eighteen month old boy was choking and turning blue.
Please.
Dash cam footage shows one cop jumping out of his patrol car to traffic light and rushing up to the family stopped in their sedan. The baby's mom and uncle are totally freaking out, screaming for help and begging to go to the hospital, but there's no time. The officer grabs the infit and starts patting him on the back, dislodging the object in his throat. The cop passes him to another officer who drives a child to a hospital and the little ones.
Now, okay, all's well. That ends well.
Police, when they get it right, and it makes the difference. We have to shout that out too. We recognize that you're human beings and your system is corrupt, but individually you can be good. And this is one example.
And before we move on, I'll say this again.
Compared to Phoenix, yes, okay, but not compared to Detroit. From Detroit, So okay, very good, very good? All right? Uh, what happens when we listen to black women?
Okay, we can talk for this, we can talk for hours about this.
Into it. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna do this one backwards.
I have this written in a certain way where I want to want to cover it a certain way, but I'm gonna start backwards. Today we're gonna be talking about three black women. I'm gonna be reading from Black and Prize, by the way, so you can find this reading yourself. We're only going to pull a piece of it. We're gonna be talking about three black women. We're in positions of power in this country who are forcing us, not just the conservative.
People in this country, but.
All of us to understand what accountability should be. Because all three of these black women are at the helm of three different investigations and court proceedings or judicial undertakings or whatever you want to call them, targeting the former President Donald J. Trump's behavior either in his business dealings
or with respect to the election or whatever. And these black women are tough, and these black women are brave where a lot of our elected officials have not been brave, and they are showing us the best parts of humanity by how about this we know on this show, and we can say this as black men who have mothers and sisters and women in our lives that we you know, we can say that black women are are.
The most disrespected, the.
Most vulnerable to attacks, that black women were the last human being to receive her voice in this country.
Briefly, tell the story about your mom. You just said it before we started recording.
So President Obama's first term, the first vote in Maricopa County was your brother and co host who slept at the polls because it was that important to me, because when my mother reached voting age, she couldn't. So people hear these stories about the past and the kind of the history of our country, and it's like, I think, in our minds, these stories happened so long ago. I'm not talking about a few generations gonna talk about my mom.
H A lot of you know, our followers and some of our listeners even have come across my mom, either in lives or some of them even in person. A lot of people that I went to college with got to meet my mother, and not as my mother, but just as someone who was present at the school, you know, lifting up people who needed it. My mom would come and spend the night and anybody who was dealing with something, she would stay up overnight. When the sororities and organizations
were doing lock ins and sleepovers. My mom would drive down and this is when my mom was in a wheelchair. That's what I talk about. Even when her burden is heavy, she's still gonna go out of her way for everybody else. Let me, let me, let me, let me ask you a question. It is possible for human beings to be kind. It does not matter what color these human beings are. What color is just imagination anyway, cultural line, tribal lines, you can find kindness everywhere.
Have you?
How about if you had to pick somebody to pray for you. That made me emotional.
That's the best way to ask that question.
Though, it made me emotional.
Way to ask that question. I had to pick someone to pray for me, specifically.
How does that person look in your mind? Q?
She looks just like Reverend to Stella secrets and my pastor, my mother, my best friend, my cheerleader, my teammate, my shelter.
I want I want to take you, I want to take you back, Q. If I may I get myself together here? Do you remember seeing those pictures of those wet nurses. There were black women that fed the children of white women during slavery. That was their designation was to take care of the house, to keep everything in order to You know, there's a lot that can be said about the men who built this country, and I will see that entirely because some of those arguments are irrefutable.
But I don't think that the arguments are complete without the mention of the black women who made it possible. The black women who made this show possible. Thank you, doctor Westernberg for taking the time with me when I was nineteen, because I didn't have anybody else, but nobody else would stop me looking like me to say, young man, why don't I know your name?
And you know that no one else would because no one else did. Like this is not Sometimes the language that we use, in the way that we speak can be received or interpreted as us being hyperbolic or like being you know, grandiose. In our language, these stories are literal.
Yeah, to happen, to happen. So the point the point is just so that we don't harp on one part of this. Black women are, we say on the show, as close to God as we will ever be on this planet. Women are very very special creatures. Black women. If you want to know what resilience looks like. If you want to know what forgiveness looks like, if you want to know what empathy the best, the best that human beings are capable of, you need to look no further.
Now.
The black women that we're going to talk about today are serving as a reminder of what is fair because, as we've often articulated on this show, and as many people who don't see the world the way that we do, they even know full well that there is a two tiered system in this country right that treats these people differently.
From these people.
Often times, if you are rich and guilty, you are better. You're treated better than if you are poor and innocent. And we often find that poor, innocent and black is a dangerous intersection to be at when it comes to criminal proceedings. In fact, I can point to young thug free ysl in a Georgia state prison right now, for more than a year with no bond, has offered deny bond five times, offered so many different ways of getting
that bond. What conditions does the court need? Former President Donald Trump legal system despite there being a black woman at the helm, It's just it just exists this way.
Donald Trump comes in rico charge, same.
Charge, same charge, same state, same.
State, same same prison, same photograph, same They have to stand from the same wall to take same picture. Donald Trump, here's here's my bond right here. Two hundred thousand dollars in and out. Okay, two tier legal system.
Okay.
Now, inequality exists in this world, but it often exists for the benefit of the wider you are, the straighter you are, the more masculine you are, the more Christian you are. You know, it exkews in that direction, right, and that imbalance, that inequality comes at the expense of the darker you are, the more feminine you are, you know what I'm saying, Like on and on and on and so you start to see how black women are where a lot of these a lot of the benefits
that go to those privileged come from black women. You know what I mean. If black women are disenfranchised, white men conservative, but white men, there's enough of them can make the world however they want to, and everyone suffers. Who's not that person? Not quite well, white women can benefit.
But because white women can benefit.
They help. Sure, that's a fair point.
That's a fair point, but that represents a very small sliver of humanity, even including them. But there's a good amount of them that realize that the patriarchy disenfranchises them too. So yes, white women can and do benefit from white supremacy, Let's be honest, that's what it is.
But there's enough show.
Yes, yeah, that's a fair pointed to them.
But here we are. If it were not for black women.
Say that part again, because whatever you're saying after it, if not for black pop.
If it were not for black women, these men and I'm not talking about all white movie on this show, we affirm constantly that white men are our brothers. White women are our sisters. Right, we are just the older brothers and sisters in the room because our tribe is the oldest tribe on this planet, and if it were not for our tribe, no other tribe would exist. And so we are the older brothers, and we have the capacity and the maturity to see things in this way, and we do our best to do that as often
as we can. But if it were not for black women, these white men, who are often very conservative, would be free to create the world the way that they want it to be, and everyone else would be subject to the whim's decisions. Power structures of that group of people. In other words, black women are the reason that there is not unchecked power in this country.
Now.
Heavy the former president, he's attacked black women constantly.
To be fair, he attacks people, he attacks people.
But to me, it feels like it's a little bit of stink on it when he's attacking black people. We called Amarosa a dog. I'm not a fan of that lady, but he called her a dog. It's in a tweet. You could look that up ilhan Omar Muslim women, right, beautiful, beautiful.
Easy to attack for someone like him, though, because his constituents feel that by nature of the way she prays that she's somehow beneath her less than on top of being a mellenated.
Won't say that.
Let's talk about Katanji Brown Jackson. Let's talk about Kamala Harris, right, you know, and the list goes on. Anybody that Donald Trump disagrees with, he attacks. That's fair. But these black women, that little bit of stink. Don't think I don't notice that. Now, as I mentioned, black women step up time and again to save this country from itself.
That part needs to be highlighted and it needs to be said like that as often as possible. Black women, in more instances than any other specific designation of person, creed, ethnicity, race, whatever, Black women and in more cases than anyone that I can remember, have stepped up specifically to save the United States from.
Her saved the democracy, save the American democracy. Now, how did black women do that personal sacrifices? We talked about.
Mammie Till Mobley when they dragged her boy and they drowned her boy, Immettil and she said, open casket, you're going to see what they did to my son. And it went early viral, super duper viral.
And that was the.
Gas on the civil rights movement. The bravery and the courage. She wasn't embarrassed, She didn't go inwards, She didn't cry. She said, nope, my son's death is going to me and son, it's my only baby. Black women have buried their children. For those that caught the first half of the show, there's a Black woman bearing her daughter and her unborn grand baby.
Time and again.
Black women are buried that chuldn't had to take them off of trees because they're hanging on the trees. Had to gather the burned bodies okay, bravery displays of strength. How do black women say this country from itself? How is it possible? How do they display the best of humanity? As black women have not gone off the reals? Black women, I don't care what you believe. I don't even believe
it most of the time. But black women pray. And if that's not a display of faith, I've seen faith express to almost every culture, and a good number of them. I've been on the soil with them in the place where they are expressing their faith. Never before where have I seen a more profound expression of faith than from Black women.
From black women praying specifically.
That's what I mean to say, thank you, But also that same bravery. It turns into activism, black women, activists, poets, writers.
Let's go back further. Tubman was an activist, right did she not imagine this?
Though? Right in a country where the patriarchy has been upheld for as long as it has, in a country where history would much rather highlight the positive exploits of a man champion, right even through times of folklore and a whitewashing of the history of this country, and even in a place where now we have governors throughout the United States trying to get rid of black history, that the story of someone like Harriet Tubman has continue throughout history.
Mm hmmm, because why not rewrite that story? It's different. She's a CSS. Yes, you can't, you couldn't. It's the only version of the story. There is only that version of the story. The leader of one of the most powerful moments in the history of man of humankind, led by once again a black woman.
So black women, through their sacrifices, their faith, displays of strength, activism, votes in the modern era, given every everything that we've given black women, they have turned it into progress, not just for themselves but for the whole country.
Black women, in a very selfless way, almost always yes.
And now we have black women holding the former president and by extension, every politician accountable.
Now you know what's on the menu.
Okay, I want to shout these people out before we move on. Letitia James, the first woman of color to service New York's Attorney General. Letitia James, first woman of color to service New York's Attorney General, has shown unwavering commitment in investigating and prosecuting Donald Trump in his business dealings in Georgia. We're going to talk about Fannie Willis, who has risen to the challenge of investigating Trump's actions during the twenty twenty election. As the first woman to
be elected as district Attorney in Or County. Willis has navigated complex legal battles and faced pressure from various quarters, yet she has remained focused on upholding the rule of law and ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their status
or influence, face the consequences of their actions. As mentioned, and then let's go down to US District Judge Tanya Chutken, an exemplar of judicial integrity who has shown willingness to deliver the harshest sentences possible for those involved in the January sixth insurrection, despite the government's requests for leniency in
certain cases. Judge Chuchkin has been unyielding in her pursuit of justice or decisions have sent powerful a powerful message that attacking the corp of democracy will not go unpunished. Trump immediately called for her recusal and a chance, I'm sorry, a change a venue because he doesn't believe he will receive a fair trial any minute now. I expect him to also brand her a racist. And because of Donald Trump's rise to power was undeniably fueled in no small part by a wave of angry white men.
Responding to Obama's election and re election.
These men, feelings enchanted and disempowered in a changing world, found a champion and Trump, who promised to restore their perceived sense of entitlement and returned to a bygone era
they believe was rightly theirs. This surge of angry white men is manifested in various ways, encompassing political and extremism, domestic terrorism, and the rise of movements like the alt right and the Men's movement, as well as the Proud Boys and the right wing death squad that's been doing all these mass shootings and on and on and on. So shout out to black women one time, and that's going to do it for us here on Civic Cipher.
So once again I'm your host, Rams' job.
And once again I am q Ward. Once again, I'm gonna ask this as often as I can, subscribe, like, share, comment, and engage with us as often as you can. Listen to us on the radio, download the podcast on Apple Podcasts, iHeart Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get digital content, and listen to black women, if that needed to be said again, listen to and follow black women, the very very outspoken and mostly correct leaders of this country.
Yeah, that's where everybody is going to find what it is that we really need to find as people. And I don't know how to say it any plainer than that, So I'll leave it right there and until next week, y'all.
Peace, Peace,