Yes, yes, y'all.
This is Civic Cipher and I'm your host, Rams's Jah And of course this show exists to empower the community and give a voice to the movements, the various movements and the struggles even and really to empower us all individually, as groups, as cultures, and as far as we relate
to each other. And today's guest on the show is somebody that I don't even know if I want to call you a personal hero, but I think I'm gonna go ahead and say it, just because I've been so inspired by you that I've changed the significant amount of my life just to make sure that I get a chance to interview you. Her name is Zara and she is the Minister of Activism with Black Lives Matter.
So welcome to the show.
And thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
So a little bit more about how I got a chance to get to know Zara is I went to a protest in Timpe. Now i'd seen her before, we actually had a chance to talk before. But in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and Dion Johnson, you know, there were a lot of rallies where I live in Phoenix, and I went out
to a lot of the Black Lives Matter protests. I got a chance to see a lot of the organization, and I showed up with a bullhorn just because I had one, and one of the other people that had a bullhorn was Zara, and so I did my best to echo sort of what she was saying, because when there's a crowd of four or five thousand people, would you say something like that, there's a lot of folks out there. When a crowd is that big, you in
up not really reaching everybody with a bullhorn. You know, a bullhorn is good for like the first three hundred people. When you have three thousand, it's just not going to work. So we had to kind of echo the message throughout the crowd. And I noticed very early on that what she was saying was very potent and very powerful, and I really.
Wanted to make sure that.
She had a chance to get on the air and say some of the things that she was saying that energized the crowd and motivated people to take action. And also, you know, after those first couple of protests, I would come home and I would watch like twelve News and some of the other media outlets, and I recognized that there was not two sides. There was not a lot of balance there. It was, you know, those guys telling their version of the story. In other words, to them,
everyone was a rioter. You know, there were riots and all that sort of stuff. And then I was there with my children, you know, and it wasn't that. It was very much to empower the community. And so I felt like, this woman is one of the women who needed a platform to say something. And when I saw her in Tempe, there was another protest in timp We stopped by the courthouse and you stood up with I think there was like a like a gate or something
covering like a water maine or something. You stood on that, you got a bullhorn again and you just addressed this huge crowd and it was so potent, it was so powerful, and it really spoke to what it was that was happening, sort of the spirit of the movement. And again that's when I decided, you.
Know what I need to do more than just show up.
I need to lend as many resources to this as I can, specifically to this message. And you happen to be the person carrying that message, and it moved me and my chop. We talked about that when we went home. A lot of the things that you said, and so I wanted to say that just so that you understand
exactly how important this meeting was to me. And of course on the show, we're going to have sit down conversations with lots of folks who are very active in the community, but this one was a long time coming and I and again, I appreciate you coming out. So I think first things first, tell me a little bit about what got you into activism.
Yeah, so there's a few things that got me into activism. I think I was a little bit inclined because my mom and my sister were involved in their union. They're both nurses, and so kind of through that was able to kind of have a consciousness of that things were not right, that healthcare should be free, that education should be free, and that, you know, just a critical consciousness. But really what me out was during occupy and when the student.
Debt hit UH larger than.
The UH then like home mortgages and it hit like one trillion, and I remember that moment and remembering, you know, UH that like this the system is rigged in that we have you know, a bunch of uh the one percent that is oppressing the ninety nine percent.
And uh, I really got involved then.
And then continued to uh do active vism, whether it was about inequality or environmental justice. Uh, but it really got me involved in the activism I'm doing now with Black Lives Matter.
You know, was.
First uh going to South Africa right before the Trayvon Martin shooting and being able to see that white supremacy global and that around.
The world we have.
We have a system where our lives don't matter simply because the color of our skin. And you know, I always thought, oh the motherline, everything would be better there. And to see black people still as second rate, still their lives still don't matter on their indigenous homeland in South Africa, and then to come home and see this young boy being murdered simply because he was black. It really pulled me into the streets and you know, decided we're going to do something about this.
Very good. You know, it's funny. I saw something the other day. So we're we're recording this on the heels of the shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And something that is very telling is that there was a I mean, I'm sure everyone knows the story, but there's a young white male years old walking down the street with an clearly visible assault rifle and he's walking toward the police, and he's walking past the police. He's not pointing the gun at them. But it's that doesn't matter because I saw
something last night. The Atlanta Black Star put up a clip and this was I want to say September second, twenty twenty and Washington, DC, and there was a kid. He was on live stream. I think he had just turned eighteen. He's on live stream and he's in I look like some projects. I'll tell you the story if you don't know. He's sitting in the car with some of his other friends and he's sort of showing off
a gun. What happens is the police see the live stream and they pull up and they shoot the kid, okay, but not before the kid throws the gun as far away from the officer as possible. They found the gun so far away, and then there's bodycam footage of the guy who runs and shoots the kid in the chest. So the kid was running away as he threw the gun. The officer circled around front of him and shot him in the chest, and obviously he died and then went
to go look for the gun. It took him like five minutes to find the gun that was so far away, and I think it shows that panic response with the police. But I want to say something real quick, just while we're here, and to anyone that will listen, now that I have a microphone and an audience, having a gun is not always a crime. You know, this kid was
an adult and so forth and so on. But even if you wanted to make that argument, I think Zara kind of touched on the fact that there are certain economic conditions that really lend themselves to black and brown folks ending up in environments where, you know, sometimes you have to fight for survival, or fight to protect the things that you've earned, or you know, anything like that, and so a lot of times in those environments you
do find people that protect themselves in that way. And if having a gun is not necessarily a crime, especially if it's not pointed at an officer, and it makes sense that a lot of people in those really harsh environments do have weapons or other means of protecting themselves, then to show up and shoot them is more indicative of a panic response than it is of just the normal state of things.
With that said, I want to touch on this rallying cry.
That initially it might sound jarring to people who, you know, maybe when they first heard it, or maybe they have heard it over and over again and maybe not know exactly what it means. But you explained it so well, what does defund the police mean?
Yeah, I think it's really important for folks to realize because when people say defund the police, a lot of you know, the white middle class have been like you talking about perge, you know, and you know.
It's not that it's not that.
It's really important to see that where we're at and what public safety means, and when we look at where we're at right now, we know that especially in poorer neighborhoods, but even in rich white neighborhoods, you call the cops after the crime has happened, right, You call the cops once they've broken into your house. You call the cops after something's been stolen, after harm has been had. So if we can agree on that, then we can agree
that the police aren't keeping us safe. They're they're just coming after to try to you know, clean up after the mess.
Has been made.
What we're calling for is preventative measures. We're calling for Why is that person breaking into your house in the first place?
Why what made them? What pushed on that?
Is it mental health? Is it drug addiction? Is it poverty? Those are systemic issues and we can fix those issues. So when we call for defunding the police, or we're calling for as an investment into communities, an investment into mental health, an investment into community services, into being able to address systemic poverty, being able to Right now, we do not have no social safety net for those who have mental health issues, and when we call the police,
they often end up dead. So what we're calling for is a change to that, and I think that's something that we can all agree on. Even police, I think will agree that they are not and they've said it before, they're not able to handle They do not have the skills.
Or equipped with.
The tools to be able to handle mental health issues, to handle homelessness, to handle drug addiction. And yet those are the people who are being called. So when we call for defunding the police, we're calling for other people to call. Who else can we call to address drug addiction, who actually has the skills and the tools and the training to be able to help in that situation instead of what do police have.
They had they're armed with only guns.
And so what ends up happening is people who are in crisis then have a cops call on them, and then it creates a larger crisis. So when we call for defunding the police, we're calling for a reimagination of what safety is and the rebuilding and restructuring of the social safety net so that these crimes don't happen. And that makes us all safer because you know, when we strengthen the social safety net, when we make sure we leave no one behind, that's how you actually reduce crime.
It's not by getting more cops on the street.
It's by preventing people from having to do these crimes in the first place, because no one actually wants to commit crimes. You know, it's the society that creates the structures where causes people to feel like they have no other option but to commit these crimes. And so once we invest in community, we will we reduce our reliance on police. And that doesn't make us less safe, that makes us more safe.
Okay, So what do you say to someone who says, well, in recent years there has been an increase in police funding and a decrease in the overall crime rate, and that correlation cannot be ignored. What do you say to a person with an argument like that.
So crime actually started going down, and under Bill Clinton, and despite the fact that crime was going down, which had.
There was a lot of factors in why that happened.
But uh, while crime was going down, he actually pushed for the Crime Bill, push pushed for further criminalization of people and also for further funding of police departments in prisons. And so we've created this system based off of this fear. And when you look at the type of ads Clinton was running to pass the crime Bill, it was criminalization and primarily of black men, you know, and the right still does this and you know that basically it's scare tactics.
But when you look at the data, we see that crime has been going down regardless, and yet we've put all this money into police and what is that done? You know, how are we even defining crime because police killings have been going up as we've been overfunding these police departments, as we've been hiring military people, to treat the streets of America like a battleground, and does that make it safer? I think we could all agree that
doesn't make it safer. So I think when we look at what's needed and what helps, it's not more funding to the police department. Researchers shown a great way to decrease crime is actually to fund pre k education. And then when you fund pre educate education, all of those who get access to that, it reduces the likelihood that they will go into be you know, uh, victim of the school to prison pipeline, be victim of the whole
car soural system. And so when we look at how much we're spending on police, and then we look at how much like a pre K program costs, or how much a cost to reduce class sizes so that you know, kids, because they're basing how many prisons to build off of third grade reading scores.
And so.
We are continuing to divest from education, divest from my community resources while we're investing into this militarized, occupying police force. So what is that going to create. It's going to create like a war. We don't have money for you know, education, but we have money for guns.
Is that the type of that we want to live in.
That is not a society that we are safer, That's not a society where you know, it's a society that we're we're all treated like criminals.
Okay, very good.
Now there's a lot of activism.
On the streets, and you know, these are some messages that I've I've heard you speak about before, and I've heard them echoed in other organizations that work alongside Black Lives Matter, But Black Lives Matter, the official Black Lives Matter, of course, as a as a statement. You know, that's a statement that many people can get by, get behind, not everyone, because obviously there's the all Lives matter cry from some folks, and that also is a true statement
in and of itself. But obviously the reason for Black Lives Matter, for those of us that understand it, is kind of built into the.
Narrative already of our lives.
Even though I know the answer, I have to ask the question, does black lives matter condone anarchy and unlawful unlawfulness?
So one, uh, there's Black Lives Matter like the National whom I cannot speak for, and then Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro, you know, and we are not an official chapter of Black Lives Matter National. They haven't been accepting chapters for uh for five years now. But that being said, uh, you know, so I E would feel more comfortable to speaking to Black Lives Matter Phoenix, but our lie our values are aligned with Black Lives Matter National, So there
isn't really much of a difference here. As far as does Black Lives Matter engage in that anarchy and lawlessness, No, But as far as condemning it, we have an understanding of it, much like MLK that is the voice of the unheard, and we understand that, you know, it's the social conditions that cause people to riot. We understand that, you know that people engage in that way when they've
had everything taken from them. And so again, when we think about how to make our community safer, if these people had something to lose, that wouldn't have happened.
In the first place.
And so, you know, it's the social conditions that create the riots. It's being disenfranchised for so long, it's having your community disinvested, everything from the redlining to the disinvestment of public transportation, to the disinvestment of even down to the side rocks and trees, which we don't have in black and brown neighborhoods. We see that our lives don't matter. We see that, you know, our government doesn't care about us.
And for the folks who are mostly disenfranchised and have nothing to lose, you know, and after the continual disrespect and disregard for our lives, it causes.
The conditions for riot. And so I wouldn't.
I don't condone, but I don't engage in that way. However, I think it's important to recognize the way to stop riots is not bringing martial law like they've been doing. It's not to bring in federal police like they did in Portland.
What did that do? It just made people more angry because you're adding fuel to the fire.
The way to stop the riots is to stop unhearing the people. Right, if a riot's voice of the unheard. If you listen to the people, what the people are saying, and actually show that our lives matter and actually address these things, then there won't be rights. But as long as you treat people like their lives don't matter, you disinvest in their community, you disregard their life, you're creating the conditions of the riot. So I don't actually blame
the you know, individual rioters. I blame the societal conditions that allowed for that to happen in the first place. And if we look on a systemic level, if we want to change this, the way that we do it is change the societal conditions to prevent rioting.
So it's funny that you mentioned that I was in.
Portland maybe two weeks ago, and I was at they call it ground zero there where all the the riots are happening. And I think it's very important. This conversation is important for another reason because a lot of folks, I think that if you haven't participated in a riot or really in a protest, which I have. I haven't been in a riot, you know, but I have been
to a lot of the protests. So what you have is a lot of angry people who, you know, like you said, Okay, said it best, they don't feel heard, you know, They're they're making very simple demands. I think that there's a lot of compromise built into the fact that we're protesting and not rioting already. We just want to be hurt. So these are people who are willing to have a conversation, and they've taken to the streets,
and they haven't. You know, they're not necessarily anarchists. Of course, there might be individuals in the crowd, but for the most part, the group is trying to move a social agenda forward ive forward.
Sorry.
And when I was in Oregon or in Portland, you understand that the people out there, they're not opportunistic. They're not trying to break in and steal stuff necessarily. That's a function of, you know, people being at their wits end, and one person does something and then there's a way for people to vent their frustration or otherwise receive some form of recompense in that moment. And what I saw
when I was there is people just frustrated. They're just setting fires, not to gain anything, but just because it will get attention. And if we do this, then you have to hear us now. And that's really what I got a sense of when I was out there. Same in DC, there wasn't a lot of that going on, but just talking to the folks in DC. I was in DC maybe three weeks ago, and the same thing
happened out there. You know, when I was talking to people and they were discussing how they were dealing with counter protesters and things like that, and I do want to share a quick story. Actually know, I'll wait, I'll share the story in just a bit. Before we get there, let's talk about Marxism for the folks that don't know, is Black Lives Matter? Does Black Lives Matter consider itself a Marxist organization?
Black Lives Motternational has said that, one of the co founders has said that they're a Marxist organization. But I also think it's important what what people understand what that means. I think that since the Cold War, there's this hysteria when you mentioned Marxism that makes people be like, you know, like like you're somehow.
Like like it's a scary word.
Yeah, and so on socialism exactly.
And so you know, with what they mean when they say there are they are Marxists is that they, you know, believe in free education, they believe in free health care for all. They do not believe in the monopoly that we currently reside in where you know, the one percent owns ninety nine percent of the wealth. And that's how we're set up now. And when we look at you know the fact that.
As of right.
Now, you know, we have some of the high unemployment rates since the Great Depression.
But the stocks tell us a different story.
They say the economy is good because the one percent is still making money.
Like you know, Jeff Boso of Amazon, he.
Has made so much, he's made billions or off of our backs while he's paying people minimum wage. If you think that's wrong, then you're probably a Marxist too. And so while BLM, Phoenix Metro, we are anti capitalists, and there's a lot that we draw from Marxism, we also believe we draw from a tradition of like the Black Panthers and the Zappatista's type of Marxism, which is a little bit different because a lot of Marxism, you know, was said by an old, white dead man and it
isn't as relevant to us. But like there are things that draw upon that as anti capitalists, which we most definitely are, you know, and we definitely see the fact that, you know, the system isn't working that when one percent of the country owns ninety nine percent.
Of the wealth, you know, there's a problem here.
And you know, capitalism likes to, you know, in America, likes to give this this.
Beautiful dream which is that's all it is.
It's a dream, it's not a manifested reality, which is if you work really hard, then you can make it, then you can be rich too. And so so many Americans, uh, you know, basically hold on to capitalism because they want to be rich to one day. But the reality is, if you're not born into it, if you don't you know, know, the right old white men, you're not getting in. You're not gonna make it. It doesn't matter how hard you work.
It's it's a lie that we've been sold that we continue to sell that if you just work hard, you'll you'll get rich. And the reality is that this system is rigged. And that's what capitalism is. Capitalism is a system that ultimately ends up where one person has all the money. You know, we've all played monopoly. We know how the game ends. That's how capitalism ends. And so we are inherently we're against that because the reality is that when we look at capitalism and how it started,
it started off of our backs. When we look at Wall Street, the first Wall Street sold slaves. That's what it was, an auction block. And we have to look at the fact that capitalism would have never existed if it wasn't for slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, and the theft of entire continents including Africa and South America and what we know is America today. All of that is how capitalism was created.
So of course, if you know.
This system was never built for us, it's not going to work for us because the surplus, the Marxist term is primitive accumulation, which is all the wealth that was accumulated through colonialism.
That is what how white people have the wealth.
Even when you look at Chase Bank, when you look at all of these rich people today, they got their money from slavery. And so we as black people have to understand that while they're led a few tokens in so that they can say the system isn't racist, so that they can say there's a black billionaire, we're never all. This system not only wasn't built for us, it was built on our backs, and it requires us to be in poverty. It requires in order to have a one percent,
you need the ninety nine percent in poverty. And so that's what when we say that we're Marxists are anti capitalists, that's what we mean. We say that we're against the inequality. We're against minimum wage. That when you can work full time and still not be able to afford housing or be able to live on your own, and that is the system of capitalism, and that is a system of inequality and oppression, which we denounce absolutely.
Now, there were to piggyback off of what we were talking about earlier about the voice of the unheard and then sort of the wealth gap something, And this is part of the story that I wanted to tell earlier, so I'll tell it in brief. But do you remember there was a day when there's a mall here in Arizona, in Scottsdale.
It's called Fashion Square Mall.
And this made national headlines and there was a protest in front of the mall that quickly turned into a looting of the mall. And I got a call from my son was staying the night over there on that night, and I got a call from the folks that lived over there, and they says, hey, you know, there's some activity going on at the mall. You might want to come grab your son, because they lived right across the street from there. So I drove over and I realized, oh,
there's no riot here. There's nothing going on. These are children, and you know, that was that. But I did see like droves of police, and the police weren't engaging, fortunately, and no one got hurt, to the best of my understanding. So I didn't pick up my son. There was nothing
to see there. But because I saw the police and I didn't know that they weren't engaging, and I saw all these children, I decided that I was going to make sure that the people that were in the mall got away from the police without dying or otherwise getting
beat up and thrown in jail or whatever. And obviously I can't save everyone, but I'm there in the truck or you know, whatever I was driving that day, I invited as many people who wanted to get into my car and let me drive you to where you're going so you don't have to walk by the police so they won't hurt you. And of course some folks jumped in the car, and what I heard in the back seat,
of course, it was children. You know, I'd made three or four trips just helping folks out, and no one was bragging about a new belt or you know, whatever they got. No one was bragging about that. What I heard, and this happened in my life, So no one can take this experience from me any with an Anyone was on the outside looking in. I was there, and I was actually talked with the people this night, and then
got tear gas later downtown, a whole separate city. Anyway, the kids that were in my car, all of them beginning to end, were explaining just sort of like what you said about how there was there's a great deal of hops hopelessness in their communities, and now maybe they'll listen to us. That was That was a direct quote from one of the kids. I don't know these people's names or anything. I wasn't there for that. Now maybe they'll listen to us. And this is them talking amongst
themselves in the backseat. I think one person just broke a window. He didn't actually leave with anything, but he was so happy to see that the activity at the mall was going to affect the one percent. It was going to have to, you know, rattle them a bit to where they understood, Okay.
You have to deal with the people.
You have to.
You can't just take and take and take, you know, you have to.
Actually deal with them. And that was really the underscored that night, and so I think that speaks to a lot of what you're saying here, and a lot of people may not know that when you take a step back and you look at the human component and not property values or buildings or whatever. I saw a quote on the internet the other day and it was something like, why does you know a riot justify murder but a murder doesn't justify a riot, or something like that, And
I thought that was a potent sentiment. But in any event, I did want to make sure that I mentioned that because again, I think that that in a personal experience of my own, I think that speaks to what it is that we're discussing here now in terms of other organizations or ideas rather concepts besides Marxism.
Do you know if.
Black Lives Matter or would you say rather that Black Lives Matter is affiliated with Antifa?
Real quick, I just want to say something.
You said, you know the youth, and I think that's a really important part part. You know, while the youth might not identify as Marxists per se, I think that the youth understand because they were born into a recession, a recession caused by these greedy banks who are then bailed out by our government and the people got sold out, and this is you know, what they grew up in. So most kids these days are anti capitalists because of that.
They see that the banks are greedy, they see that, you know, and they realize, you know, and they've lived through now multiple recessions. Right, it's not just the you know, two thousand and eight one. Now, it's the one that we're currently in. And when we look at why it was, it's again the greed of the corporations who decided to continue to put people at work to not address this the way it should be. And so, yeah, I think that is where the youth are at and I think
that means a lot for our future. But to go to your point about antifa, I think I think it's a great question because I think a lot of people again don't know what antifa is.
Antifa is anti fascism.
Right, So if you're not antifa, that would make you pro fascism, which would make you a Nazi.
So I'm pretty sure most people, if.
You you know, when you put it like that, most people are like, no, I'm not pro fascist, then you're anti fascist, right that. So, uh, if you don't support Nazis, then you're Antifa. So yes, there are, you know, and it's really been around Trump who's been kind of acting like Antifa's this gang that you know, goes around breaking things and all of these things. Really Antifa is about
being anti fascist. And so there are people who call themselves and Antifa who punched Nazis in the face, and uh, you know.
They take that to hold other level.
But then when you look at in Germany, they've got statues of women who've punched women punched Nazis in the face, right, so I guess they're Antifa too, And uh so I think that that's definitely been uh kind of taken out of out of like that now when you say antifa on like Fox News and stuff, they think it's like this a radical gang that's trying to destroy America, and really it's like people who want to, you know, make sure that Nazis don't take over our.
Country so we don't end up like Germany.
And so uh yeah, as far as I think your question was like do.
We work with them directly with antifa Antifa chapters, and I don't.
Even know if there's like Antifa chapters per se. Uh, yeah, I think that we work with people who identify as anti fascists, and we work with people who agree that to defend us from fascists because the police don't defend us. I mean, just the other week we got credible death threats. We a man show up to one of our offices raving a gun around, talking about he wants to kill the BLM commies. And it turns out, you know, people are like, why didn't you call the cops? The cops
send him there. It was a police union that gave the name of the office, which then got ran up by this guy. So when we're in a situation where the police are sending people to kill us, sending people they know, you know, are a little bit off the rocker and that you know, who are unstable, who they know, you know, all they have to do is give them an address and these people will.
Show up and have nothing to lose.
We do have to work with people who are going to defend us from that because the police won't. And so yeah, anyone that says that they will, you know, defend us from Nazis, which makes the man.
Tifa welcome over here.
Yeah, I like that, all right, So let me ask you this. When I was out of the protests, I saw we'll call it ten percent black people that might be generous. This movement, this moment, this rallying cry, has really struck a chord, a human chord, I believe, because I've seen people of all colors, from all walks of life, people with turbans, people who don't even speak the length. Maybe you speak Mandarin, you know, whatever your background is, if you are a human, you are our brother and
our sister, and you showed up right. So I do want to take this moment to ask what is it that you can do for Black lives matter?
If you are.
Let's say, a white ally. You know, we've seen this happen. We've seen our white allies.
Get killed.
You know.
I remember in uh in Virginia.
I think it was I forget the name of the city, but there's there's a at the University of Virginia. There was a woman who got hit by a car some years back at a at a protest and actually went to that campus just to kind of, you know, walk around and just take that in because I saw it on the side of the road as I was driving towards Tennessee and I forget her name and that, you know, and then obviously the other day in Wisconsin, you know, someone lost his life, a couple of people lost their
lives actually, and you know they were there in support of Black Lives Matter.
So obviously there's.
A desire to help, specifically to white folks or non black people. What would you say is the best way to approach helping the movement?
Yeah, so I think that the biggest part is helping and that that is important because when you mentioned like Antifa and like these other groups that come out to support, you know, we definitely welcome them as long as they like follow our leadership.
You know, there are times when we do have like.
White people who will go off script and decide to do something that we don't want them to do, or not even realize the way that their their privilege. Their privilege allows them to yell in a CoP's face and it's but then who gets harmed by it's us. And so you know, it's not even that we don't want you to do that, but don't do that next to
black people because we're the ones taking the heat. We even had an incident where this white guy through a water bottle at a cop and they grabbed one of our members, you know, black and Latino man, who.
Was not the person who threw the water bottle. And in the court when they took it to court.
It's said that a white man had thrown this water bottle, and so the case got dropped because they're like, clearly, this is a black man and you arrested him, even though in your police report you said it was a white man who did this harm. So I think that it's important that you know, white folks recognize their their privilege and not kind of go off script and follow black leadership and keep showing up. And we definitely we appreciate it, and we need y'all because you know, Black
lives matter isn't about that no other lives matter. In fact, all lives do matter, but or they will matter once black lives matter, but currently black lives don't matter. So if black lives don't matter, then all lives cannot matter. And so we have to also realize that you know what we're asking for or you know what Black lives
matter is, it's a call for human rights. So if you're against Black lives matter, that also means that you're against human rights right for all, because that's what we're asking for. So we really appreciate people from all walks of life, people from all races in different countries showing up and helping us to make black lives matter.
And we asked that you know, you follow black.
Leadership, and obviously I think that it should be also specified that doesn't just.
Mean any black person, but you know, a leadership position.
People that you know are rooted and grounded in community, like the black community, because yeah, it is we We you know, are only thirteen percent in the country. In Phoenix, we're six percent. So yeah, we couldn't have thousands of people out there if it was just us, right, we need y'all and and we appreciate y'all being there for
us and coming up and showing up. And we just asked that you like follow our leadership and follow what we're doing, because yeah, we do often get in trouble when people do decide to go off scripts.
Okay, now there's another thing that I that I saw when I was first sort of made aware. I mean, there's I'm not gonna give too much away, but there's a group chat that exists, and uh, there's a space for white allies to engage with Black Lives Matter, and I was able to see some of the calls to action, and one of them included effectively it was saying like help as a as a human shield, keep the police away from us. And another one was it spoke to reparations.
I want you to touch on those two as well.
Yeah, most definitely.
So you know, when white people ask us what is their role in the movement, we believe that they have three prominent roles. One is for reparations, and that's reparations, not charity. It's not that you're donating to us. We have to understand when we again take it back to how wealth was created in the first place. It was created through theft of land, genocide of Native Americans, and enslavement of Africans.
So everything that y'all have we built. We built this country.
And I think that it's also important to note that that all of their wealth is theft. You know, even if, like you know, in the last couple of generations, y'all worked hard, it's important.
To realize how you had it in the first place.
So when that's why we're not asking for charity, we're not asking for donations we're asking for reparations, and we believe it's white people's duty to be able to uh to uh give to us, because that's how we begin to right the wrongs that we're done, and that's how we begin to change the inequalities we don't have.
Uh you know, the black.
Communities are disinvested from, but the white communities have all that investment from. So if we're going to change inequality, we have to talk about redistribution of wealth. And that doesn't come from a oh, save the poor blackies. That comes from a do you want to address these harms? Do you want to really you know, begin to address the cracks in this nation's foundation.
That's really what it's a call for.
When we call for white people to use their body as a human shield, we're saying that because we believe that we know that the way white privilege acts is that if we had black people as a shield around us, all those black people getting maced, arrested and beat up may be killed, right, But we know they would never do that to white people. So we're asking them to use their privilege to shield us. And that's not that white people are our saviors. We're asking them to be
race traders. We're asking them to be a trader to the privilege they were given to protect black folks.
And then the last thing is to get your racist uncle.
Like many of y'all have racist family members, many y'all have, you know, are related to the people who are now oppressing us. So y'all can speak to them in a way that we could never right anytime we talk to your you know, your uncle, your cousin, whatever, that's that. You know, we're speaking as an outer group, But when you know your daughter speaks to.
You, you have a harder time ignoring that.
So if you know that, you know you have family members who are racists, who are harmful, who are police, then you should have those conversations with them. You should again be that race trader, be use your privilege to support black folks.
So when people make a donation, exactly how does that impact Like, where does it go? How does that impact Black Lives Matter?
Yeah, so it goes it directly goes to supporting the work currently Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro.
We're an all volunteer org.
We have like an all volunteer staff, and we're trying to change that because we believe black people should be paid for their labor, and over the summer, many of us have been working more than full time for free. Currently, all the funding goes to our rent, to the supplies to food. Is a really important one for us because it's part of how we build community and part of our African indigenous values of UBUNTU. I am because of you.
We take care of each other, and so as we're trying to build the village, we realize, you know, we got to feed the children and anyone else who's there, and so we try to have that at our meetings, our in person meetings. We also take care of the community, whether it's you know, uh supporting people.
Uh through bailing them.
Out through the Black People's Justice Fund, or helping them get into hotels so that single black mothers or black trans women don't have to be have to sleep on the streets and be harassed by the police, or whether it's you know, uh supporting people in their uh making sure that they can get into housing, or it also goes into all of the other kind of infrastructure that we've had to build, whether it's like our website or our zoom or all of the other kind of subscription
services that we're using to run this org, so it goes directly into the work. And currently you know, we don't have like an admin team, so that work that those funds are directly going back into this work.
Now, you mentioned something about community and something that I know to be true, you know, growing up in California and spending so much time here in Arizona, is that a lot of times community also extends to our Hispanic.
Brothers and sisters.
What is it that Black Lives Matter is doing on behalf of our Hispanic brothers and sisters who deal with the same sort of oppression, the same sort of social injustices. What is it that and how have we worked together with them to make the community safer and better?
Yeah, so Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro.
We work directly with organizations like pod Air and Action, which works on police brutality, but also on immigration, trans Career Public which works with transmigrants, and Puente, who is also another human rights organization that works on immigration issues. And we work on this because we understand that, you know, we rise in solidarity with all oppressed people, and we realized that especially because of.
The way they treat black people in this country.
We realize that if they're you know, also oppressing brown people, we're not free. We're not free until we're all free. So we do realize that these issues affect us, and we also realize that we're strong, stronger together. So we're in coalition with many of these orgs, with the like Civilian Review Board, which we got passed in Phoenix in
like December. That was a coalition of black and brown organizations that came together and realized that police brutality is affecting our communities, and we were able to build this powerful union because black and brown folks came together.
We also, you know, will support victims of police.
Brutality, of brown, brown victims. But we follow the leadership of brown orcs because we also realized like our place in that So with like the Antonio ARSA and more recently James Garcia, we followed the leadership of Podair's work because you know, they're able to connect with the community, They're able to speak Spanish, they're able to you know, connect with the community in ways that we realize we wouldn't be able to. But we still are going to
show up for the protests. We're still going to follow their leadership and how they ask us to show up, because you know, until all.
Of us are free, none of us are free.
And we not only are in solidarity with Brown organizations, we're also recognized that we're on stolen Atom and Peeposh land and we support Native struggles. And so you know, we've gone gone out to Oak Flat. We go up actually monthly to a place called Black Mesa. It's in the Navajo Nation. We've been doing food runs supporting now up to sixty people because we realized, like our liberation is interconnected with all oppressed peoples, and so we build and rise in solidarity with.
Them all absolutely. And I want to speak to this real quick. These are things the two events that you mentioned, or one of one of the events that you mentioned, which was a protest when I think he was sleeping in his car and the police killed him in his driveway. I want to say, so I went to that protest, and he was Mexican, and I did see all the
things that you were saying following Brown leadership. You know a lot of it was in Spanish or otherwise translated into Spanish and so forth, and then ah, the I know that there's a uh a push to really support the trans community by Black Lives Matter. And I've actually been to those protests as well, in the front, you know,
helping carry the banner, all that sort of stuff. So I actually can personally vouch for the fact that Black Lives Matter has shown up for peoples that may not traditionally fit the role of they're not the popularly oppressed. But I think that when you said that we all rise together in solidarity, I think that really speaks to the at least one of the core values insofar as I can tell, of Black Lives Matter. Now, I do want to ask a question that has been submitted to me.
This one came from California. So why is it that Black Lives Matter is not doing more about the murders in Chicago? Why is that not as visible as some of the other things that Black Lives Matter is doing.
Yeah, so I think it's important to, uh look at why those murders are happening in the first place, and how do we address them from a systemic issue, right, And so when we look at the history of gangs in the United States, gangs were first started because to protect from white supremacists and police, and so they were originally started to as a way to protect us because we did not have you know, we knew the police were terrorizing us and white supremacists were terrorizing us, and
we had to protect ourselves because you know, you look at places like Black Wall Street in Tostal, Oklahoma, which was burned down by you know, by white people in the government because they didn't like to see black people do well. So black people started looking for a way to protect themselves and they created a way. And then that method then kind of.
After a while itself.
But then you also have to look at the history of that, and it's happened in multiple cities and including the city I'm from in Seattle, where the police would go tell one gang that this gang said this about you.
Then they would go tell the other gang, and then they would record what they said. And once they found out this lie that the police created.
Then they would take it to the other gang and then they would show them that so as to create war between these gangs. And then you have to look at the history of the War on drugs, which was
a war on black and brown people. Then you have to look at the crack epidemic, which the government actually during the Cold War was taking drugs from South America, who they are also destabilizing those countries, and then they were bringing over into the hood and putting crack into the hood to create the conditions we are in now. So when you look at the hood and you see you know, gangs and drug infested neighborhoods, you have to understand that the government did that.
You have to understand that white America did that.
And so when we look at how do we address that, It's not that, oh, gun laws, Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws. That's not helping, you know, It's not that further criminalization. It's not that to create these gang registries to further veil black neighborhoods. None of that works. What works is what we're asking defunding the police and investing in community. If those kids had many of the services in the first place, they wouldn't have to join
the gangs. They're joining the gangs because you know, they often are, you know, in families without fathers, and we have to look at why that is too. It's so often blamed on black women or blamed on all of these other conditions of black people, But you have to understand, in America, one in three black men are in jail,
one in three. So when you look at and the age is that they're most often in between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, which are you know, so they're locking up the fathers and then then blaming us for being fatherless and then say it's because the content of our character that we're fatherless when you put all of our men in jail. And so we really have
to address these things. We have to, you know, the way we see it, the way we address it is to abolish police in prisons and to create new systems of safety. And that's what you know, the defund invest is about. It's about creating after school programs, It's about creating stronger social safety nets so those kids don't have to feel like there's no one looking out for them and that they have to join this gang for protection.
Because that's what it's about. It's about protection.
So if we can make sure black children don't feel unsafe, if we can make how do we make those neighborhoods on safe, How do we make those neighborhoods safety. We invest in those communities and we prevent the police who created these problems. In the first place, there's a police in the FBI who put the crack in those neighborhoods. It's the police who took those fathers away. And so we really have to address it from a systemic side. And so so often these Fox News talking points are
really like blaming black people for killing themselves. And we have to understand that this is the result of the societal conditions. It's the result of intergenerational trauma, the trauma of being ripped apart. Have these families have been being broken up since slavery and they never ended it. They just renamed it as prison right. And so when we call for the abolition of prisons, it's a continuation of.
The call of the abolition of slavery.
Because you know, with the thirteenth Amendment, you have that clause in there that says that, oh, you know, slavery has ended, except if you know, if you are a criminal, and then what is now You don't even have to say the inn word, You just call us criminal, right, And so this again is it's a continuation of slavery. And so how do we begin to address these systemic issues in this intergenerational trauma? You know, we invest in these communities who've been disinvested from day.
One, and I think that that really speaks to the fact that there's a lot of disinformation floating around out there. One of the things that comes to mind is the myth that black men are bad fathers. What comes to mind is there was a report from the CDC and this will be my final thought a few years ago, and you're welcome to google it if you're tuning in or listening, But it turns out that black men are doing best of all races if you break it down
by race. This is a Center for Disease Control. They did a study on black parenting black fathers specifically, and as it turns out, black fathers are most engaged, most present, and so there's this prevailing myth that those that's the case, and so a lot of this disinformation requires further research. But unfortunately we're out of time, and so before I go, I want to implore you to send us all your questions,
any topics that you want. Keep in mind, this is a community supported show, so you can donate on the website Civiccipher dot com, Civic Ciphers all of our social media, you can follow me at Rams's Jah and Zar go ahead and leave them with your social media as well.
So if you want to follow our work in BLM Phoenix Metro pretty much on all platforms, we are b l M, p A checks Metro and and our websites dot org.
And if you want to follow my personal page, it's Zebra Tacola t E k O l A.
Yeah that's on ig all right, Well, thanks for tuning in the civic cipher. Be sure to check us out next week, same time, same channel, and uh yeah, until then, they save y'all