Yeah, that's right, y'all. Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host Rams this jah.
You know, usually I'm Q Ward, but today I am Grayson's father.
Yeah, stick around your radios because we have a lot to talk about, a lot of which will bring some context to that statement Q just made. In addition to that, it is now a week and some change since the shooting, the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, they claim the lives of nineteen school children, and we have a lot more information for those that listened to the last week's episode, you know, we we had limited information going into that, but we have a lot more that we need to break down
and really re examined. Uh, And we're going to take the second half of the show and really take a medical look at what public safety means, and what our values are and what our priorities are as a society, as a people as you know, you know, different tribes with different concerns and so forth, and of course this is a place to have those conversations, so definitely be sure to stick around for that. We're also going to
breathe some life into Memorial Day. We know it's passed, but because of the way the scheduling of the show works. We didn't want to just not you know, give any shine to it. So we're going to take some time to over to dig into the overlooked black history of Memorial Days. So forgive us for being tardy on that. But as you know, sometimes we have to respond to things that are timely in the news, which makes us
have to adjust what we talk about. But that doesn't mean that the adjustments means that the things we've adjusted are less important. So again, a lot to stick around for the first and foremost, let's talk about some ebony excellence. Let's start off on a high. How you feeling you shall?
We?
We shall? So this one comes from Black Enterprise, the founder of Slutty Vegan Restaurant gifts LLCs to entire Clark Atlanta's class of twenty twenty two. Now let me bring you up to speed. For those that don't know what Clark Atlanta is, it is a historically Black college and we shorten that to HBCU, which stands for historically Black
college or university. So again, the restaurant owner, Aisha Pinky Cole, surprised over eight hundred graduates of our alma mater Clark Atlanta University with a kickstart to launch their own businesses. The Slutty Vegan CEO spoke to the class of twenty twenty two during their commencement ceremony on Saturday and gifted the entirety of the class a limited liability company or LLC. This is according to Fox five reports. They're based in
Atlanta as well. Here's a quote. I have partnered with Vobank to provide every single graduate in this attendance with a new LLC and a path to entrepreneurship. And quote Cole said before the uproar of the clause, and she resumes every single graduate in this audience will leave this stadium as a business owner, she proclaimed for a press release from the university. Cole graduated in two thousand and nine with the major in Mass Communications slash Media Studies.
She was clowned Miss Clark Atlanta during her undergrad in two thousand and eight and initiated into Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Sigma chapter. So we wanted to take a moment to shout out some Ebony excellence and some black entrepreneurship, and of course this is the place to do it and so once again we're shouting out Ayisha Pinky Cole, aka the founder of Slutty Vegan Restaurant, and we definitely
want to see that now. As we mentioned last week, we had to have a very difficult conversation about gun violence in this country. I personally invited my child, my seven year old, to sit in with us. The reason for that is he is approximately the age of the students that lost their lives in Texas and I had to have a conversation with my son. I felt like doing it on the air might help some folks who might have some difficulty broaching that subject with their own children.
And I talked to my son, who lives in a care free world. You know, these things, these problems don't exist in his mind. As you remember it too, and as you were deeply troubled by. You know, the first question I asked him was, baby, do you know that sometimes people get guns and go into schools and shoot children, to which he replied no. And I want to be clear, I was not trouble that these things don't exist in his world. I was troubled because they have to thank
you for them. Well, that is, if we boil it down that is a Ramses problem, right. I wanted to share that with everyone, But you know, if you could make a case for that being a problem, that is just my problem that I have to deal with with my children and my home, and everyone else has to have that conversation on their own, and that's the way it goes. Well, today we're going to have a conversation about what is decidedly the US problem. It involves all
of us. It involves our votes, it involves our voices, it involves us putting pressure on our elected officials. It's about us taking a stand and changing the culture, changing the narrative in our day to day lives in our communities, in our cities, and in our countries. And one of the things that I think may serve as a catalyst to this is what we now know happen in Texas, where when you say catalysts expound a bit. I know that I'm an optimist, so catalyst might be a strong word.
But on this show, if you're a longtime listener to this show, you know that we bring light to a lot of myths that are associated with policing in this country. More police officers makes us safer, right, very much? A myth. You know, the only thing that can stop a good guy with a gun is a bad or sorry, the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Myth. Police are heroes largely a myth with some examples that actually do.
They are heroic, and we've talked about them on this show. They have some people are heroes. Some people there we go, they just will happen to be officers. Right, that's a great way. Occupation itself does not make you inherently heroic. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Again. If you're a longtime listener of this show, you know that we shed light on a lot of the terror that is endured by black and brown communities at the
hands of police. A lot of it is unfair, a lot of it is unfounded, a lot of it is unnecessary. I'm not trying to say that all people in all black and brown communities or other marginalized communities are innocent. I would never say that. But on this show we look at things from often a societal point of view. We look at systemic issues. Granted, we use specific examples
to bring those issues to light. But the fact remains is that we deal with numbers, we deal with statistics and so forth, and so in Texas, we learned that there were conflicting reports, but we learned that the police took some time to engage the shooter. MS. You are the most kind.
I'm setting you up, gracious human I've ever encountered. I just want to say that out loud so people can hear it again. And I'm setting you up because I know that you have some thoughts here.
But yes, that seems to be the most what's the word I'm looking for, alarming unsettling element. We know there are several. That's the most alarming because you have a police force, right, you know, the people that get all the support from the right and from the you know, all the trucks with the flags on and everybody with the flags, and that flag that is an abomination and
goes against flag code. If you have a gray and black flag with a blue stripe that looks like the American flag bat actually goes against the US flag code. I'll say it as often as I can for all you patriots out there. But yeah, we have a police force here who in twenty eighteen were outfitted with bulletproof vest. They got more money, not just vest, good body armored, body army. That's what I wanted to say, rifle stopping body armor to be specific. So they that police force
was funded, not defunded. That police force was funded. That city's budget budget, the police force.
There you go, Okay, of the whole budget for the whole city went to the police officers.
Thank you for saying that, and goodn'ts gracious? They had an active shooter in the school, multiple nine one one calls made. I've read reports that said they stood outside of the school as long as ninety minutes. I've read reports just said parents actually jumped the fence escape police custody because police were arresting parents for trying to motivate them to go in and stop the shooter as he
was executing their children. And what it boiled down to is the police were afraid, you know, they weren't kicking in the door of guns blazing, where's the bad guys shoot them up? Risking their own lives, you know, heroic stuff. They were being humans, and they were you know, probably had ninety minutes to debate their own mortality, right as you do when there's someone with a semi automatic rifle and you know, on the other side of a fence
executing children. And what we learn is that, you know, I think that a lot of these stories that have come out really cut police down the sides. Police as a as a concept. All the training in the world, all of the you know, all this sort of stuff doesn't prevent you from being human, you know what I mean, from being afraid, right, And you don't get to be a hero and wait outside while children are getting murdered.
That's like the opposite of a hero. That's like, that's the most extreme case of the opposite. Yeah, exactly. You can hear and see.
And you're stopping the people from going getting their own children.
And it's important to point out third graders because some people hear children and think teenagers and that would still be awful, but we're talking about eight year olds again, very very close to at Anya's age. Yeah, babies steal. Now back to blue, right. There are people who will.
Say, well, that's one police force underneath one chief, under one department, and not all police forces are like that. There are going to be more hero examples, and I would challenge that because what we're seeing is it's a testament to the opposite. You know, anyone who subscribes to a detached, separate reality from the one that we're all living in is writing a story for their own purposes. There's confirmation bias, or it's not even confirmation bias. It
is a I forget what it's called. When when you're you're confronted with the truth and your brain cannot allow you to receive it because it goes against what your truth already is. Right, you're confronted with new information that's that flies in the face of what you know, you have known to be true up until that point. There's a term for it, but it escapes me right now. But the long and the short of it is that what we have to do now is examine. Okay, so
what does this mean? What is the point of a police department? But really, what is the point of a police department if not to stop people from shooting babies? Right, to run into a school? You know, fire fire department? Right, we know what the point of a fire department is. They run into a burning building, right, they put the fire out, They save your property, they save lives, they do whatever they can, right, but it's immediate. You have
to be on top of it. You can't sit outside and be like, oh, you know, it's it's it's a little hot in there. I'm gonna just wait out here for a few minutes until it's a little bit more, you know, comfortable, till till my blood has become acclimatized. You know, it doesn't work that way. If that were the case, then everyone would be fired and we would
really think, rethink what fire safety meant. Right, But we have this sort of binary mentality in this country where and I'll be honest and I'll be to the point this time because I do like to speak in co sometimes or be cryptic because I don't want to offend anybody.
But what I've learned in my nearly forty years of living on this planet is that and I've seen this about history because I've had to obviously, I've studied a lot of history, not just during the show, but just being me that there is oftentimes in this binary society that we live in, there is a progressive group of people, people that feel like we can be better, we can move forward, we can aspire to do more, we can grow a lot of times black folks and people who
empathize and sympathize with the plight of black and other marginalized folks fall into that category. And then there is just opposition. Right, some folks would say, no, that's conservative. They want to keep things as they are, no actively opposing anything that changes the way that things are right now right, and as you mentioned quite often Q, even if it goes against their own interest. And I think that nowadays we see it more than ever because we saw to be fair. I just saw clips and watch
the whole thing. But at the nra A convention, you know, people like Ted Kruz, who you know, a lot of folks hung this most recent shooting on him and his policies and his beliefs. He's one of the biggest recipients of funds, campaign funds from the gun lobby. Mitch McCollum, of course, the former president. All these folks, right, these people oppose everything it is asamine. So here watch this.
This is something that has troubled me on the news, especially right wing media, which is where a lot of these right wing folks have a chance to say what they would have done or what the country needs to do. Right, You hear me out. I've heard that they want to make school's single entrance, single exit, right. They want to make schools. They want to arm teachers. Of course, teachers have guns now they have to be certified and go to gun training, as if their jobs aren't already tough.
They want public resource resource officers, armed resource officers on every campus in the school, which, by the way, there was an armed resource officer on the campus in While Day, Texas at the time the shooter broke in and shot up all the kids and those teachers as well. They want man traps, I've heard that one, which is basically like an alarm code or an alarm that traps an active shooter in a school. They want to outfit all the schools in this country, you know, so that they
can address this problem. They'll do anything except say it's a gun problem. Let's address the guns, right. And then there's a bunch of other ones. There's some lady talking about ballistic blankets. They are colorful. Hang on, hang on, I'm making the point right here. But just a week before that, he was a guy that walked into it a grocery store. So all of that stuff in terms
of public safety flies out the window. So you're going to spend all this billions of dollars to outfit every school in the country to ensure public safety, and you completely forgot about the grocery store. What do you mean about churches? What are you because you know people get shot in churches too, Right, What do we do about concerts? I was in Vegas when all those people got shot at that that concert. I was in Vegas too. Yeah, so an ambulance, every no one could go anywhere. It's
stuck in the hotel. That's it. It was across the street from the concert. They had no idea that it had happened until afterward. But you know, I.
Actually stayed in the same hotel hotel shooter was.
I wasn't in the uh. I was in the What is that man? Anyway? So?
Yeah, these people have every they say everything they like shift the narrative, right, so instead of it being a mass shooting, it's a school shooting.
Right, So how do we fix school shootings? Now? How do we fix mass shootings? Right? Because this is the problem that we're all dealing with. And then they have all these statistics, all gun violences that and the other handguns do most of the problem. Okay, Well, does that mean you can do nothing? And that's fine. Now, I know I've been talking, and I know you wanted to jump in, so let me allow you some space to say what you were wanting to say. Good.
I mean, it's tough because I don't have specific speaking points. You spoke earlier about cognitive dissonance. That's it, Like this idea we're in the face when faced with new facts that contradict whatever truth we have.
There can't be a new truth.
There are now two separate truths, and we dismiss one of them. Profit above everything, even the lives of our children.
Yeah. That's a really, really tough pill to swallow.
And it's gotten to a point where the divisiveness with the people in our country has caused us to nobody can even say my bad anymore.
Not only was I not wrong, but let me double and triple down on my wrong.
Because I could never just admit, Okay, we've been doing this wrong the whole time.
Right, guns are not the problem. We need more.
More armor, more guns, more of whatever is going to help my constituents make more money, not what's gonna make our people, more specifically our children more safe. How can I make the people who give me money more money? It's very, very troubling. And you know, in our next segment, I want us to actually read some of these details so people can that don't know, can hear some of the things that actually went on that day at that
school while these children were being murdered. They were present while these children were being murdered and actively doing nothing to stop it.
And I heard you.
I laugh in jest when Ramses interjects hope into stories and situations that have shown us enough times by now that they are completely hopeless.
These people do not care about us.
They only care about themselves, because even if they cared about their own children, this would be an issue. Their children go to school, they go to private schools, you know, and communities that they think are safer, right because these shootings at these grocery stores and these schools, in these last most recent cases, the victims look like us. But we have and shown even when the victims look like them, that they don't care, right because those victims are probably
less fortunate than them. It's not just our minorities that get stomped on. It is our poor, no matter how they look but they've done such a masterful job at the divide that the poor that look like them think, vote and act like them, as you said, against their own best interest, even when all the statistics and all the data and all the stories and all the videos
show them they don't care about you either. They've just done such a good job convincing you that they do that you'll fight to continue to support the world that they've created for themselves as their boot continues to step on you and us.
I don't think any thing illuminates that point any better than a man saying we need to install traps at the school to catch active shooters. We need to install traps at every school to catch the active shooters. Okay, okay, this is asamine. This is we're not sharing the same reality because kids walk out of schools. Right, Families go to grocery stores, right, families go to worship, Right, people go to concerts. Right people go to Pulset nightclub? Right?
Have you? Are we going to install man traps in every You see what I'm saying. So the people that lap that up and say, yeah, that's a great idea, Yeah we need that. You know, those folks, those good accent of those folks. Those are the people we need to have important conversations with, and it is now your responsibility to have that conversation. But we're going to move on.