And now.
Watching my mic back like that, we just strike waters from headquarters behind him.
And if you're just tuning in the civic cipher, I'm your host Rams's job.
I go by the name q Ward.
But reminding everybody again that today I am more specifically Grayson and I Coho's father.
Indeed, be sure to stick around. We still have more UH to bring you. We're going to be discussing what public safety means. Really, this is a conversation we've had on this show before, but something happened recently that I think you is going to bring to life for us, and we're going to have a conversation about that because I think all of us have grown up in a world where we it's one way and that's the way we know it, and we haven't taken the time to
re imagine what that could look like. So stick around for that. We're also gonna discuss Memorial Day, despite being a bit past Memorial Day, but we didn't want to forget about it all together, I mean just a little late on it. But first let's discuss becoming a better Ally Bobba. So this week the story comes from NBC Philadelphia.
This was incredible by the way.
Yeah, be like this guy, all right? The title you speak English. Lyft driver kicks out writer over racist comment. A lift driver in the Lehigh Valley is getting worldwide praise after video posted online shows and kicking out a couple from his car Friday night. The driver said the writers were making racist comments and now the Internet is reacting, from block pages to donations. The incident happened Friday night,
so this would have been a few weeks ago. We hadn't had a chance to get to it, so forgive me. Outside of Katasauqua Bar Fossil's last stand in Lehigh County, the Boroughs Police Department confirmed they're investigating the incident.
Please say.
The woman in the video, so there's video you can check out, is Jackie Harford, who owns Fossils. The video, just over a minute long, starts when Harford gets into Bode's car. He asked if the ride is for Jackie, and she confirms it is. You're a white guy, Harper says as she gets into the car on the rear passenger side. Boad asks, what's that? Are you like a white guy? Ask Hartford, who was then making her way to the center of the car. You're like a normal guy.
Harford says, you speak English. There's a quick pause before Harford laughs, Pat's Bode's shoulder and apologizes. Boad then tells her to get out of the car, saying what Hartford said was inappropriate. Quote if somebody was not white sitting in the seat, what would be the difference, Boad asked.
The car is a rear pass.
Door are still open, but it repeats to a man unidentified at this time standing outside the car that he won't be taking this ride.
And the video goes on.
They exchange some cusswords, and a lot of folks have come up to support this lift driver, and a lot of other folks have made it a point to leave one star reviews on these people's business. And we loved it. We loved that video. We don't get a lot of stuff like that around here. But that is our bah blah for this week.
If you get a chance, google that story and watch the video because in transcript it doesn't.
Happen, it doesn't translate. Yeah, but if you see it, you're like, Yeah, that's what you gotta do. You got to stand up to that, You got to stomp it.
Now.
Rethinking public safety I definitely want to talk about this, but you were having a conversation with me before. Just to kind of piggyback off of that, Baba, I think you were at an event recently where there were people that were using some languages. Wasn't entirely appropriate. Tell a little bit about that story and how folks can challenge that type of behavior. I think we've gotten to a
place and this isn't something that's new, right. We just sometimes sometimes and I mean we specifically ramps, and I don't even mean everybody, We get let into spaces where we're considered where we're considered special. If you've ever seen the movie Django, you know what I mean. If you haven't watched it, and the way that Leonardo DiCaprio uses the word special will shine some light on what I mean. You are that one in ten thousand, bright boy.
Once upon a time, I used to work for an alcohol and spirits company, I'll say that, and when going to meetings with distributors and venue owners.
I had several people out to me.
How much they enjoyed me, specifically my energy, the way that I spoke, the way that I articulated myself, just how nice and well spoken and kind and educated.
I was. However, my crowd.
Wasn't exactly what they were looking for was in the crowd that they hoped to draw to their establishment.
We like u Q, we like you, we don't like your people.
And they would say that to me like that, like they don't think they just said anything offensive at all. They even think they just paid me a compliment. So sometimes I won't even say we're in mixed company. There's spaces that Ramses and I are let into where we're the only people there that look like us, and in the instance that there might be one or two others there in a domestic capacity, are the help if you will.
And I've always been certain that things like this were said behind our back, with no hesitation, with no apology, with no shame. But I recently witnessed it again firsthand. You know a room full of people that are not melanated, enthusiastically singing hip hop lyrics, repetitively saying the N word in my company and no look of oops I messed up, No, not even the hesitation to continue to do.
It over and over and over again.
It hurts more than you realize, because I do realize that we have people who listen to our show that are not black that may do this and don't see it as something wrong or problem.
When Drake and Kendrick.
Lamar and Lil Wayne and whoever you know future, whoever your favorite rapper is says that word in his record, Kanye West and jay Z come to mind, because their grimmy has the word on it. That is not a license for you to use that word.
And I know.
Some of you honestly don't think that you're doing or saying anything wrong. I can tell by the expression on the face of these people that I was around recently.
They were really really excited about the song that was playing.
It was a song that they liked, not because that word was in it, but they definitely did not shy away from the parts of the song where that word was expressed. And I won't say the name of the song, but this song said it a lot, and they gave me all I could handle as they enthusiastically rapped along to this song. So, in the name of becoming a better ally, have a real sense of how that feels when we're present, and don't be so cavalier. It's about respect our absence.
Yeah, even if even if you think it's cool, and even if you're right, if you're around your friends and you think then they you think you're good, and they think you're good. I think there's a way you can show a little bit of respect. You know, the world is. It feels different to different people. You know, I would I would show respect to I don't know whoever else, anybody else if they if I felt like their tribe generally wanted that for me. And so I think respect
comes into play there anyway. So let's talk about public safety and what that means. Obviously, the first part of the show, we talked about some police officers failing to engage. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about, you know, shooting in Buffalo, and we've been having conversations a good guy with a gun, bad guy with the gun. We've been dealing with white supremacy. We've been dealing with white
supremacist institutions since the inception of the show. But one thing that we keep coming up against is what we need police officers. We need public safety, We need someone that you can call the end of the number. I'll not argue against that, right, but I want to have you listen to a real world example of what public safety is so that you can rethink what it should be and we can have a critical examination of what public safety means. Que the floor is yours.
I spent most of the last year away from my kids, accepted a job that relocated me to Atlanta, Georgia. A lot of our listeners know this. We did the show remote for almost ten months.
As a result, my daughter.
Who is two, and my son, who was four, they both did a lot of growing up in dad's absence. You know, ten months almost a year, does not sound like a lot to those of us that are forty years old, but when you're two, ten months is a very long time. Even when you're four, you know, almost one fourth of your life. As a result, my children have what I jokingly called, you know daddy PTSD.
If I go to the.
Bathroom and it's a bathroom that's not in my bedroom, my kids think I am leaving forever. So they chased me out of the room, ask me very aggressively where I'm going, and determine that they are going with me. I've seen this happen there and not asking my permission. They are not listening to me try to discourage them to go back to the room with their mom. No no, no, no, no,
I'm going with dad. I am thankful and fortunate that that same job recently promoted me and relocated me back here to Arizona where I can be with my babies.
And that is cost for celebration.
And you know, a lot of perspective was built over this last year as I spent that amount of time away from them. Also because of this job, Ramses knows this. I keep a very very irregular schedule. My day starts at about two thirty am, when a lot of people that are Ramses and I call colleagues have not gotten home from work yet. My day is starting, which means going to bed is a really strange thing because the
sun is out when I go to bed. Took the family to dinner at about five o'clock and tried to get home and into bed at a decent time. On the way home from dinner two days ago, the initial plan was to go grocery shopping, but it was getting a little later than we hoped and we decided we're going to table grocery shopping until the weekend. So I'm just going to run into the store real quick to get some milk so that my kids can have breakfast milk and eggs and some fruit so they can eat
in the morning before their mom also goes to work. Now, those of us that have children, those of you that have children, know that the grocery store can be a challenge with young children, especially multiple young children. So I'm just going to run in the store myself. I'll be right back. Well, I think I told you guys, my daughter, for lack of better, don't play that.
Daddy, I'm going with you. It was not a question mark on the end of it.
She declared she was going with me, and she's a little bit more difficult to reason with because she's too I can have a conversation with my son, explained to him to stay in the car with his mom. Daddy'll be right back. I'm just running in to grab a couple of things. My daughter, none of that reasoning would matter. She would scream her lungs off and just stress her mom out for no reason. So I'm just take her with me. But baby, I'll be right back. Stay with
your mom. Now, my son wants to go too, but he also wants to make his dad happy, so he'll be grudgingly stay in the car, except sometimes, and again, those of us with young children know sometimes our children will push right to the edge to see maybe if I try this again, Daddy won't say no again. So sometimes I have to stop and tell him again, like no, get back in your car seat, stay in the car with your mom, because he's gonna try to go again.
Because I know this, I am approaching the grocery store now with my daughter in my arms, listening for my son to try to get out of the car and come with me, because he always does, like clockwork, here goes the door, and here I go turn it around and tell Grayson's So it's really hard not to tremble at this next part because when I turn around to tell Grayson to stay in the car with his mom, I notice that the person that opened his door is
not Grayson, but some strange man. And to paint the picture for you, imagine yourself opening the rear door of your car to reach in to get anything out, your child, a bag, groceries, whatever is on the back seat. I say that intentionally because there's a very, very specific way you go about opening a back door and reaching in to get something. So when I turn around, I don't see a man yet, so I have to like.
Look down into the car.
His mother, like me, thinks that the door she just heard open was her son and that his dad is about to tell him to get back in the car, so there's no need for alarm, except as I stopped talking, something in her looks over her shoulder and sees a man reaching into our back seat to grab our child. Had I not been preparing to tell my son to stay in the car, I just walk into the grocery store.
This man grabs my son, gets into his car that is running next two hours with two other people in it, and drive away with him and with my daughter in my hand, I could not have gotten into the car fast enough to pursue them in a way that I know I'm going to see my son again, safe and alive. So I lean down into the car and I see this strange man reaching into the car. She freezes, because what else do you do? Like all of us think
these very heroic things about ourselves. You know, if it would have been me, this is what I would have done. I did not drop my daughter and jump over the car and attack this man who looks like he's trying to grab my son. I'd like to think I was trying to process what to do if this man doesn't stop. But just like we speak of the lack of heroism and police officers, they're human beings.
Here.
I am play, you know, put in my position to be the hero. With my daughter in my arms and some man attempting to take my child, all I can do is make sure that this man sees me, see him, and hope that the fact that I'm.
Coming towards him will startle him or stop him.
And it did, thank god, because I didn't run, I didn't sprint, I didn't jump. I didn't grab him and beat him up and throw them to the ground and rescue my son. No, but this man saw me, see him, stood up, said oops, wrong car, jumped into the running car. That his friends were in his friends or partners or whatever you call them.
I want, I want you to talk about this because you have a friend that described that they move in units like this, a kidnapping people, they move in units like.
The next morning, I'm still shaking because I haven't slept because you can't stop replaying.
What I watched happen, and he used to be a police officer in Brazil.
A colleague of mine and I say, hey, man, somebody almost took my kid last night, and he says, where were you? I said, at the grocery store. His immediate response, with no hesitation, was it was a woman and two men, wasn't it. This was startling. The accuracy was almost no details that he described what almost happened to us, right, a woman present to disarm you as a parent, to calm the child that they're going to take, and had
this happen inside of the store, maybe to just distract me. Hey, sir, do you know what alda? And whatever question she's asking me, I don't notice my kid is now gone. This is how this is supposed to play out for them. The easy way to tell this story is, hey, somebody almost took my kid, but they didn't, so we're cool. The problem, however, somebody almost took my kid, Not I caught someone following me and that might have let no, no, no, no, the attempt happened.
It's like somebody almost killed me. Not I was in a.
Situation where someone may have tried like no, the person actively pulled out a gun and shot me, and or this person walked up to my car, opened the door, and it's going to take my son.
The worst case scenario of this story.
Happens if I take one more step away from the car, because the timing has to be that she's going to be paying the least amount attention. And so am I when I just got out, grabbed my daughter, and am about to walk into the grocery store. I've committed to walking in there. I just got out, so there's no need for alarm. The door has not been locked yet. They take my kid, They're gone by the time I get back to the car. It doesn't matter, and they
can ambroleert all they want. We live really really close to the border here.
Now you reached out to the police, because of course you do, right, I'm not talking around this. I'm talking to you. Someone attempt to kidnap your son, break in your house, vandalize your house, hits your car. You call the police. So what do they do? They take a statement? Excellent.
Now, had you told me this story twenty years ago when I was nineteen, maybe actually there's no point in my life you had told me the story. But there are people who've grown up in a world maybe they weren't educated in the way that I was right, And you can tell them that story. You can tell them that story now, and then you tell them, yeah, I called the police, and they will assume great, you called the police. So the police got out there. They didn't
invest again, they had detectives. They looked up then numbers they looked or license plate numbers. They chased down the bad guys. They found them, they arrested them, put them in jail. Which does happen. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, right, But you just told a story, and then you said you called the police. Someone broke into my house one time.
I lived in a really nice part of town. When I bought my first house, I was nineteen actually at that time, bought a really nice house, really nice part of town.
Someone broke into my house.
The police took a statement, they didn't even dust for fingerprints, and then they left.
Right, They probably gave you a business card exactly.
And so what happens a lot of times is that we need to understand that police only show up after a crime has been committed. They if someone's ever broken into your car, you understand this they can only show up after the crime has been committed and do their best, and a lot of times their best nothing.
They don't do their best. And that's kind of the point. Now there's not going to be an investigation because people might still be listening because I said they took a statement and there was like ellipses.
It wasn't a period like I was done.
It took a statement and gave me a business card and these words specifically were said.
In the event that someone else reports.
Something like this, will have this information from you.
Now. The reason it's important for us to say this is because.
A lot of us think that police make us safe. Police are more often who we call after we've already been violated, and we say it on the show quite a bit. Obviously it has not achieved enough support, but I'll say it one more time. The movement to defund the police is really a movement to reallocate the fiscal resources of police departments into programs and systems that will
prevent crime from happening in the first place. If you do a little bit of research into it, you will see that the ideas have merit, and the traditional policing system model often leaves people who might have their children taken from them in a state of worry, with no real finality to it. You're just left to live in fear and move on.
Can I borrow thirty seconds from you? I describe the man, what he was wearing, and the car that they drove off in. There is not going to be an investigation. So on the marking lot where it happened has video cameras, there's not going to be an investigation. So in essence, these people have to actually kidnap someone's kid first.
For that kid, they'll have to be missing.
For a certain amount of time first, and then the police will start to try to investigate and find this missing child.
With that said, I think it is upon you to begin to rethink what public safety means in our culture and to all of us. Now, with that in mind, it is time to move on to the way Black History Fact. This week, he comes from Hip Hop Weekly as the sponsor Hip Hop Weekly magazine.
We love those guys around here.
Our producer, Miss Maggie aka Maggie b No One sent this one over to us. He'd be knowing, she'd be knowing. This comes from Time Magazine. So the overlooked black history of Memorial Day. I will read nowadays. Memorial Day honors veterans of all wars, but its roots are in America's deadliest conflict, the Civil War. Approximately six hundred and twenty
thousand soldiers died, about two thirds from disease. The work of honoring the dead began right away all over the country, and several American towns claim to be the birthplace of
Memorial Day. Researchers to trace the earliest annual commemoration to women who laid the flowers on soldier's graves in the Civil War hospital town of Columbus, Mississippi, in April eighteen sixty six, but historians like the Pulitzer Prize winning David Blight have tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who decorated soldiers' graves a year earlier to make sure their
story gets told too. According to Blight's two thousand and one book, Race and Reunion, the Civil War in American Memory, a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place on May first, eighteen sixty five, in Charleston, South Carolina, at a former planter's racetrack where Confederates held captured Union soldiers. During the last year of the war.
At least two hundred and fifty seven prisoners died, many of disease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black residents of Charleston decided to give them a proper burial. In the approximately ten days leading up to the event, roughly two dozen African American Charlestonians reorganized the grave into rows and built ten foot tall white fence around them, and archway overhead spelled out Martyrs of the Race course
in black letters. Now real quick, I've been to Charleston, South Carolina, went to a museum there, learned about this. This is a real thing, and we are on the air in Charleston as well. Sorry, we're on the air in Florence, South Carolina. I meant to say we're on the air in South Carolina and Columbia as well. So I want to shout out one hundred point seven the beat, and I want to shout out one oh five point five the beat in Florence.
Thank you for helping us echo the message in South Carolina. All right, About ten thousand.
People, mostly black residents, participated, and they may first tribute.
According to coverage.
Back then in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New York Tribune. Starting at nine am, about three thousand black school children paraded around the racetrack, holding roses and singing the Union song John Brown Body, and were followed by adults representing eight societies for free Black men and women. Black pastors delivered sermons and lead attendees in prayer and in the singing of spirituals. And there were picnics, and
there were picnics. James Redpath, the white director of Freedmen's Education in the region, organized about thirty speeches by Union officers, missionaries, and black ministers. Participants sang patriotic songs like America and will rally around the flag and the Star Spangled banner. In the afternoon, three white and black Union regiments marched
around the graves and stage to drill. The New York Tribune described the tribute as quote a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before. The grave sites looked like a quote one mass of flowers, and quote the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes of them, and tears of joy were shed. This tribute gave birth to an American tradition. Light wrote in Race and Reunion, the war was over and Memorial Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of
remembrance and consecration. In nineteen ninety six, Blight stumbled upon a New York Herald Tribune article detailing the tribute in a Harvard University archive, but the origin story it told was not the Memorial Day history that many white people had wanted to tell.
He argues.
About fifty years after the Civil War ended somewhat at the United Daughters of the Confederacy, one asked the Ladies Memorial Association of Charleston to confirm that the May first, eighteen sixty five.
Tribute occurred, and received a reply from one S. C.
Beckwith quote, I regret that I was unable to gather any official information. In answer to this quote, whether Beckworth actually knew about the tribute or not, Light argues the exchange illustrates quote how white Charlestonian suppressed from memory. This founding.
In nineteen thirty seventh book also incorrectly stated that James Redpass single handed the organized a tribute, when in reality it was a group effort, and that it took place on May thirtieth, when it actually took place on May first. That book also diminished the role of the African Americans involved by referencing them to it as quote black hands, black hands which only knew what the dead they were honoring had raised them from a condition of.
Servitude all right.
The origin story that did stick involves an eighteen sixty eight call from General John A. Logan, president of a Union Arty Army Veterans group, urging Americans to decorate the graves of the fallen with flowers on May thirtieth of that year. The ceremony that took place in Arlington National Cemetery that day has been considered the first official Memorial
Day celebration. Memorial Dake became a national holiday two decades later in eighteen eighty nine, and it took a century before it was moved to before it was moved in nineteen sixty eight to the last Monday of May, where it remains today. According to Blight, Hampton Park, named after Confederate General Wade Hampton, replaced the grave site at the Martyrs of the Race Course, and the graves were reinterned in the eighteen eighties at a National Cemetery in Beauford, South Carolina.
The fact that the.
Freed slaves and Memorial Day tribute is not as well remembered is emblematic of the struggle that would follow as African Americans fight to be fully recognized for the contributions to the to American society continues to this day. So a little bit more whitewash history for everybody right there. Memorial Day was founded by black folks. So that holiday that you recently were able to celebrate, you can thank some recently freed slaves for honoring the soldiers who fought
in the Civil War. With that said, that's going to do it for us. I'm glad we read that one. Glad we read that one.
We always need to.
Breathe a little bit of life into some stories because you know, our role gets kind of diminished a lot of times around here, and it's up to us too make sure that we can stand tall on those folks that really gave a huge chunk of their life to making sure that we stood for something other than helping out and picking cotton and that sort of stuff.
So it's always good to get new history as well. That too, but what that said. Thank you for tuning in to Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Ramses Josh.
This is Grayson and I girl's father listening to the Akah Board Show produced by Ms Maggie a KA Maggie be Knowing. Be sure to check out the website civiccipher dot com is up with any questions comments, make a donation and follow us on all social media at Civic Cipher and until next week.
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