And now moved my mic back.
You're like that.
Strike waters from headquarters behind him.
And if you're just tuning into Civic Sipher, I'm your host, ramses Jah.
I go by the name q ward List.
Indeed, we should to stick around. We got a lot more to talk about. Not the least of rich is body camera footage that we had to review comes from Fort Lauderdale, and we were talking about a hotel clerk who was arrested after calling the police on one of his guests. We're also going to talk about the Harlem hell Fighters for our way Black History fact and first we are going to talk about how to become a better ally. And so sometimes we get to say some
cool stuff and this is one of those times. So I'm happy to say this. On this show, we've you know, people ask us all the time, how do we support what you're doing? How do we support our African American brothers and sisters? How do we do this sort of stuff? On this show, we've mentioned the NAACP and their efforts recent efforts to combat the voter suppression initiatives across the country. Well got an email today says thanks to the support
of our incredible NAACP network. Florida's unconstitutional and racially motivated election law changes have been struck down, and that's not all and a win for the Voting Rights Act. Florida is now barred for making any changes to its election law for the next decade without federal approval, in order to stop future attempts to silence black voters. That has a lot to do with people like you, people listening
to the show, people making donations. You know, if you can't get out there, knock on doors, if the conversations don't come your way, and you can't change the minds of the people in your social circle and your family, maybe you can make a donation. And you know, money makes the world go round, you know, And the truth is you might have a lot more fiscal resources than your African American brothers and sisters. And so that's one way that we always suggest that you can help that
is meaningful, it's impactful. I do want to mention while we're here for this show, you can become a Patreon. You can donate through our websites off excipher dot com. We have been growing as well, and it's largely due to the fiscal support of our listenership, but just you tuning in, listening sharing the content that goes a long way too. We do want to mention this. If you want to continue to support the NAACP, they're taking on niches in Alabama and other places as well. Visit NAACP
dot org, slash donate and make a donation. Now let's talk about this video. This comes from the Grio. Body camera footage recently released by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department shows officers pushing a hotel employee who called them for help after a customer attacked him. According to a video report from NBC News, the incident occurred in January at a Best Western Plus hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the video of it has gone viral after being shared
by civil rights attorney ben Jamin Crump. Quote, hotel employee Raymond Raschal tried to exercise his right to cancel a white hotel guest stay for spewing racial slurs at him, but Fort Lauderdale police officers allowed the man to stay, and Raschal was attacked arrested in charge for defending himself, Crump wrote. Crump's tweet contradicts police records, as NBC reported the white alleged assailant, Jason Rabe, did not stay in
the hotel. The incident, captured by security cameras and police body cams, involved two separate leducations, and the first conference tation, police officers forced Rabe to leave the hotel. WSBN previously reported. However, the report also notes that Rabe, who is white and who instigated the altercation, was visibly drunk. He was charged with trespassing and giving a given a courtesy ride to
a friend's house. NBC reported. In the second confrontation, police shows Rachall sitting at a desk when Rube returns to the hotel after police have left, and he charges toward Rachelle. Raschall has heard saying that he has been attacked and he has to defend himself. The NBC report features excerpts from the police report where Fort Lauderdale police returned for the second time. In that footage, an officer is seen pushing Rachelle and arresting him, charging him with disorderly conduct
and resisting an officer with violence. The charges were eventually dropped by the state attorney's office one month after the incident. According to WSBN News, now had to tell the full story. But Q sent me this video earlier this week, sent it to my inbox. Q said, we have to talk about this. We have to breathe life into the experience,
the black experience in this country, and I agreed. You know, the show has grown in a lot of significant ways, and so we don't always get to do stories like this, but this one stood out, and I know why. But I will let Q explain why this one stood out, because this is kind of the origin story of this coming our way this week.
Imagine driving down the street what would be considered a benign day. You just got off of work, stopped at the grocery store, you got some milk, and you turn out of the parking lot and onto a main street, and there's a cop car behind you. For some people, that just feels like driving home. For people that look like us, that is a terrifying experience in and of itself. We have to hope that we survive driving home from work with a cop car behind us, because we understand
that stories like this are not isolated. Because we are the police, and because you look like you, if we feel like beating you up, you have to allow that because if you don't. We're going to charge you with resisting with violence for simply trying to protect yourself. If we pull you over and we want to conduct an unlawful search or seizure, you should probably let us do that too, because you don't want to make yourself our adversary just because we're annoyed or having a bad day.
Because that's what they've said before, he was having a bad day. We really could just shoot you. And if we present to an attorney one representing the city, state of municipality that you live in, that we were scared for our lives even though you had no weapon, imposed us, no threat, they might not even see fit to press charges, let alone get a conviction. This young man, after he called the police, was then assaulted by the police and
then charged for it. Now this should sound ridiculous if you're listening to this, and I think most people would like to think that instances like this are isolated and they're just a couple of bad apples, But rams is denied. Unfortunately, by the nature of the job. We do have seen far more footage than we get to share.
With you, and this is the recorded stuff.
Yeah, most of the require more bad actors than everyone would like to admit. And when these bad actors make a mistake, and you have to understand how charitable we're being by calling all of these incidences of murder a mistake.
We're being very charitable. You guys think it's coincidence that very large numbers of these victims whose families get no justice look like Ramses and I. And then we have to also believe that every time that that person really was trying to do the right thing and just slipped up and made a mistake, it is not by chance that these people are not convicted, that charges are not
even pursued. That becomes the reality for people that look like us in a country that we love to be in that has proven over and over again that it does not love to have us here. And we have to still sing proud to be an American when it plays, and still stand for the anthem and still proclaim this country the greatest? How dare we question it?
Be it not?
Just go back to where you're from, except where six generations deep here not that far removed from most of you whose ancestors also came from somewhere else. So when you start down this rabbit hole of history and patterns that repeat themselves and that not have not, by any fracture of measurement, decreased much over the last hundred years.
It is very, very difficult to sit in the position of Ramses, who is the eternal optimist and hopeful and it sees the best that this country is and can be, when sitting across the table from someone like myself who is just really exhausted with being disappointed by the same
things over and over again. In this case, this young man didn't die, thank God, But imagine having to have zero dignity when faced with something that's just grossly unfair and obviously unfair to anyone who won't pretend that these things are random. You cannot have dignity or self respect. You cannot demand that your rights be upheld, and you have to hope.
As I said.
Before, even in the most benign situations, you forgot to put your blinker on before you change lanes, or someone assaulted you and you called the cops. When the cops arrived, you have to pray that you survive that interaction. You have to understand what that does to the the mental space of a person that has to live under that amount of pressure every day and in the event that
the trained professional with the killing machine. Because Ramses says that all the time, he's not being dramatic, there is no other purpose for the weapon than to kill. Right, the nightstick or any type of baton could be used to subdue or just harm, or just cripple or just slow down a person. The gun is meant to kill. So the person that's licensed to carry and trained.
He put air quotes when he said trained, is the person that gets to make the fatal mistake over and over. Because please get this, please have this in your mind correctly. If the cop shows up on the no knock warrant and the cops murder and not the person who sleep on the couch, that person's going.
To jail under the jail cops don't get.
Their justice right there on the spot. Yeah, and then not go to jail themselves because now they've proven their point.
Yeah.
This is the pattern that people that look like me are forced to live inside of in the greatest country in the world.
Now you might be listening to this and think, now, most like the police are not the biggest enemy of black people. There's other things. There's socioeconomic conditions, there's you know, whatever, whatever thing that you have in your brain as a much bigger issue for black people to tackle. And you know, I won't even say that you're wrong. You probably are, but I won't say it for this purpose, for our
purposes right now. But I think the Q you bring up a great point because the psychological implications of knowing that there will be no justice, that these people can show up and even if you're the good guy, the person that called the police, they can still treat you like the bad guy. Like what that does to your psyche, to your self image or self concept of who you are? What prospects do you have? You know, am I worthy of growing? Developing? You know, you know those sorts of things.
It's impossible to fully explain the impact that that has. You know, you went to school, and I went to school, and you know what, the teachers they love the students. Right now, Imagine if the teachers loved only some of the students and they treated the rest of the students back, what that would do to them psychologically. Now, let's swap out teachers, because you know, not too far away from there, when you learn what the fireman does and of course
what the teacher does you learn what the police officer does. Right. So these are the people that you feel hold up a society.
Right.
So when you see over and over again, I saw this since I was little. The police were the people stealing from the pockets of the people that they had in handcuffs. I saw it happen. They would take the money and then they would put it in their pockets. It didn't go in evidence bags anything like that. And once they took the money, they took the handcuffs off, and then they let them go. I saw it happen. That was stealing, right. And you can say, hey, as
just those police officers in Compton, California makes sense. Not all police officers are like that. But the point I'm making is that we have seen, we have experienced these things. And imagine what it does to you psychologically to know that. Just me, you know, I'll I'm almost forty years old, I'm thirty nine years old. I saw this video of this man calling the police after subduing a drunk guy that came into his hotel as he was working. He was working, the guy walked in and he had to
get up and defend himself and subdue the guy. Call the police. The police show up and put him in handcuffs. Right. We saw the video the other day, two kids fighting in the mall. The police set the white kid down on the bench, the big him up the black kid. Right, this is our reality, and so you say things like, well,
you know, there are bigger challenges. There's you know, we really don't like that black on black crime narrative around here, because there are things that have a positive and a negative correlation with violent crimes around the country, you know, and most of the people live near people that look
like them. So there is such a thing as white on white crime if you want to have that argument, But no one talks about it, no one sensationalizes it, because it's just a way that the media and politicians can shift the narrative away from what their real responsibilities are and try to put the responsibilities of the conditions that black people live in on themselves, and they don't
take into account even governmental policies redlining. That's the precursor to a lot of things that happen in this country. You know, why crime rates might be hiring this neighborhood than that neighborhood, you know, and I know that might be some high level stuff. If you're just casually listening to the show, I employ you to look it up,
you know, just google YouTube video on redlining. If you really want to do right by your African American and Native American and Hispanic brothers and sisters in this country, just google redlining and then start down that rabbit hole, because that's facts and they'll tell you what you need to know. Now, Public Enemy, it's so good that were on hip hop stations. Man, I love it because at least we can make some connection to our listenership that you know might land, you know, and to all the
stations that aren't hip hop stations. If you're listening and hip hop's not your thing, you still appreciate you just to say you might even know who Public Enemy is. Public Enemy had a song came out when I was really little, So if you don't know about it, it's all good, but listen up or check it out. Rather it's called nine to one. One is a joke, right.
NWA of course has a famous song called f the Police, and that song has been remade a bunch of times, and you know, basically there's a lot of there's a lot of hip hop artists that have expressed how the police look in our stories. Right. But the long and the short of it is, there is a culture in Black America where we especially when you come from like certain neighborhoods Detroit, Michigan, for instance, shout out to that motor one time, the three one three qore putting that
sign up for y'all. And you know, I'm from Compton, California. You know, people from Chicago South Side, people from you know, Fort Lauderdale, people from Atlanta, the atl people from you know, places like this where we don't call the police for what so they can make it worse. Uh, one time recently, I'm going to share this story. One time recently in
my life. This might have been I guess it wasn't real recent, but recent for me with respect to calling the police, we'll call it seven years ago, maybe a little more than that. I had to call the police. I had a situation with a person and she was very angry with me for no reason. She was just
kind of having an episode. Nothing happened, nothing crazy. Still someone that I interact with on a regular basis, but in that moment, she was kind of making a big deal out of nothing, and't wasn't aware that it was nothing in that moment, I didn't even know what the problem was, you know, and she just kind of reacted physically, right, So I started getting hit and punched and you know, so forth, and this person ended up cutting my face. For those that see me, I wear a beard, pretty
substantial beard. The result that this substantial beard is I had to have surgery on my face from this altercation. And as she's yelling and screaming. You know, I have neighbors. My neighbors know I'm black. Last thing I need. This is the way the world feels to me. You guys hear me every week, right, you know I'm not an awful person. I hope you think that, you know, But the reality is I have to be mindful of things that maybe you don't. Right. So, my neighbors, you know,
I don't know what they're afraid of. I don't know what prejudices or stereotypes they have, but I know if they hear a woman screaming in my house and things banging on the wall, that they might assume the worst. They might assume she's the one getting hurt and call the police, and the police show up, and then I don't have a leg to stand on because it doesn't matter because she could say anything, right, so I can
read the play in the beginning, right. So as soon as I my face got cut up and then I started bleeding everywhere, I was like, well, it's probably time for me to leave, right, So I gathered up the things that I could gather that I was hoping she wouldn't destroy, some cash, you know, some jewelry that I had, and so for pocketed it all and left my own house that I pay the bills and left her here by herself. It's totally fine, you know, I needed to leave. I drove to a circle k. You know I live
in Arizona. Circle k's are out here, so I drove to It's basically like a convenience store, gas station, corner store sort of thing for those that don't know. Drove to a circle K and called the police terrified, But I had a little bit of game, And what I did was I called nine to one one. I explained to them calmly what happened, right, I told them, I'm at this store, this circle K on the corner of this street and this other street. It's well lit. I'm
in a black range rover, I'm wearing these clothes. I am the good guy, and I don't have any weapons, and you know, feel free to come and approach. And you know, they came and went off without incident. They took pictures and all this sort of stuff. And that was the reason why I needed to call them, is because I needed to make sure that I had enough evidence to prove that I was in fact injured and still actively bleeding, and that a different narrative couldn't get
chronicled on the other side of that. But imagine those steps. I can't call from my own home because I'm afraid that if they show up here and they see this woman here and they see me, then it's going to be a problem. Now, I know that was a super duper personal story, and I hope that I didn't freak anybody out. Nothing happened. Obviously, me and this person were still cool. It was a mental breakdown episode, and then once all the information came out, everything was fine and
there was a ton of apologies. But the point of that story is to explain why calling the police is a dangerous thing. You know, I remember speaking to my lawyer at that time and she, my lawyer, told me, she's like, I'm so glad you didn't call the police, because all they need to do is hear something from a neighbor, from anything like that, and they'll put you
under two jails. She said, it just like that. So for this young man at this hotel in Fort Lauderdale, let me say his name again, where did I put his name? Rashall for him? I understand why you needed to call the police, and I feel bad that it didn't go the way that you had hoped, but I recognized, as you probably did, that there was perhaps a small chance of it working out in that way. Anyway. With that said, you probably didn't have much in the way
of options. So that's that. Moving on, it's time for the Way Black History fact. This comes from abcnews dot Com. Today. We're going to be talking about the Harlem hell Fighters. These guys are awesome. I loved kind of putting a little bit of research into this one, so yeah, buckle up, all right, New York City. The three hundred and sixty ninth Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Health Fighters, were the first African American Regiment to serve with the American Expeditionary
Force in World War One. Their accomplishments and heroism stood in star contrast to the racism and discrimination they faced on the home front. Their story has largely been overlooked in mainstream US history. Shout out to us one time, Shout out to civic cipher, because we're here to make sure it doesn't get overlooked anymore. All right, your way, black history effect. All right, I'll continue now one hundred and three years act to the regiment service in World
War One. It will receive Congress's highest award, the Congressional Gold Medal. The House and Senate voted unanimously to honor the health Fighters, and President Joe Biden signed HR thirty six forty two, the Harlem Health Fighters Congressional Gold Medal Act,
into law. That happened last year. Okay. In nineteen sixteen, New York Governor Charles Whitmen formed the fifteenth New York Colored National Guard Regiment, which became the three hundred and sixty ninth Infantry Regiment after the US entered World War One. The majority of the men were from Harlem. In their ranks were hotel porters, mailmen, and doormen. The men were
the first black soldiers in New York's National Guard. Prior to their deployment in Europe, they were denied permission to take part in the farewell parade for the Army's forty second Division, known as the Rainbow Division. I want to say that again. They were denied permission to take part in the farewell parade. Heyward was told, quote, black is not a color of the Rainbow. It was a sign of the lack of acceptance, prejudice, and discrimination Blacks faced
in the military and in the country at large. African Americans were considered inferior and not up for serving as soldiers. Their patriotism, intelligence, and courage were questioned. Once in Europe, the regiment was not a newly meant to serve at the front line. Instead, it was tasked with supply jobs in media labor. Like most black troops, Colonel Haywood reportedly lobbied General John J. Pershing to let the unit fight
the French were in need of troops. On March first, nineteen eighteen, the regiment was renamed the three hundred and sixty ninth Infantry Regiment ninety third Division. According to former National Archives Senior archivist Barbara leuis Berger, they joined the French Armies one hundred and sixty first Division and began
combat in April. Colonel Haywood wrote to a friend, quote our great American general simply put the black orphan in a basket, set it on the doorstep of the French, pulled the bill and went away end quote though the Army. Though the American Army didn't want black soldiers fighting alongside white ones, the French welcomed their help. In addition to his musical duties, Lieutenant Europe commanded a machine gun company. He was wounded in a June nineteen eighteen German Gaps attack.
He wrote the song on patrol in No Man's Land while he was recovering in hospital. After his recovery, he was ruled unfit for combat, but continued to lead the Regi Band in performances in front of big crowds in Paris. The Regimental Band is credited with bringing jazz to Europe. I left that in there because I thought that was important. If you ever spend any time in places like Paris or whatever, that jazz that's American, that's black has its roots in a slave field, made it over there because
of things like this. It was important to mention that I'll continue. The unit distinguished themselves in combat, including in the Second Battle of the Marne on July fifteen, nineteen eighteen. Fighting alongside the French, the three hundred and sixty ninth lost fourteen men and sustained fifty one injuries, and the Meuse are Gone offensive in Sechalte, France on September twenty nine,
nineteen eighteen. The three hundred and sixty nine took the town but suffered some of the worst casualties by an American regiment in the war. One third of the unit were casualties of the battle. The men served one hundred and ninety one days on the front lines, more than any other American unit. The French. This part feels special, the French, not the American. The French awarded all one hundred and seventy one soldiers the craus de gueur for valor. I don't know what the craw de geur is, but
it sounds important. We're just talking about them now. French people gave all of them that distinction, that valor, that special returning Black veterans confronted the reality of a country that still held black people in a low regard and feared them. Racist attacks were widespread upon their return to the US in what became known as the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen. Coined by James Weldon Terry of the NAACP, that summer saw violent attacks, including race riots, mob violence,
and lyncheons initiated by white servicemen against black veterans. In many cases, a purple heart was finally presented to Private Johnson posthumously by President Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety six. He received the Medal of Honor in twenty fifteen from President Barack Obama, ninety seven years after his actions on the battlefield. Obama said, quote, his injuries left him crippled, he couldn't find work, his marriage fell apart, and in
his early thirties he passed away. America can't change what happened to Henry Johnson. We can't change what happened to too many soldiers like him who went uncelebrated because our nation judged them by the color of the skin and not by the content of their character. But we can do our best to make it right. Que So the Harlem Hill Fighters, you live again here on civic side. Man. I know the radio goes like to the country, but I hope that the radio goes to like whatever the
great beyond is. I think technically radio waves kind of go out into space, so whatever is out there, man, I hope you guys can hear that. We're proud of you. Thank you. If we were able to put on a parade for you, we would do it. We were born and I was born in the eighties and Q was born in the eighties, so we can't you know, you were gone by then. But we're very proud of you. Thank you for that. Thank you for making us proud. We have a hard story sometimes, but it's a good story.
We're gonna make it a good story, and you started it and we appreciate that. All right. Cute anything at like thirty.
Seconds, it's a It's exhausting sometimes, it's exhausting a lot of the time. Our history on this country, it almost always sounds like this. Somehow, the best music, somehow, the biggest smiles, somehow, the most prize still comes from people that look like us, in the country that has always viewed us and treated us this way. It's exhausting for those of you that are listening to this that don't look like us, that support us.
Thank you.
I hope that at some point during maybe my kids' lives, the story doesn't always go this way.
Well, I think that's going to do it for us today. So thank you for listening to us here on Civic Cipher. Once again, I'm your host rams this job. I go by the name q Ward. Yes, indeed, be sure to hit the website Civiccipher dot com. Submit all your questions that you might have about the show, any topics that you want us to discuss. You can make a donation. The show is growing again Patreon. That really helps. It's a monthly donation and it gives us sort of a budget.
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