Welcome to another episode of Civic Sipher. I'm your host, ramses Jah. Ramses calls me q.
Yes indeed for people at the club and other venues, call me q ward and give people put a DJ on in front of that.
It's kind of what I go by, yes indeed, and back again to talk about what's going on in the world, goings on in Black America. Yes, not just Black America, America, black existence and that that part. But a great show this week. This week we are going to talk about some you know, admittedly the show is heavy on any occasions, but this week we're going to talk about some heavy things, but some some things that we don't normally get to
talk about. One such thing is we're going to talk about story where some policing is done in a very heroic the manner. And on this show, you know, very critical of the way policing is done in this country, especially when it comes to black and brown bodies. But
we have a story. We were able to watch the video and of course we'll talk to it, but a great story of an example of police being done right and really want to highlight the difficulties of the job and the heroic nature of at least these police officers, you know, doing what they did, So I'm really happy to be able to highlight that story. We're also going to spend some time talking about Al Sharpton taking on a case of a white victim, which is new that
doesn't happen very often. And of course we have our bah bah. We have a good one for you this week, and right now I think we should spend some time talking about some ebony excellence that sound good to you. Absolutely all I do is win no matter. Okay, well, then let's get to it. The name Zaiela avant Garde mean anything to us you.
First of all, this queen's last name is a rock gard which would make you stop even if you had no idea why you were reading her name. If you saw it, you'd have to pause to just look further into that our first black National spelling be champion, indeed, which would be enough by itself.
And she's fourteen.
She just also happens to be one of the best people on earth to dribble a basketball that too, and not just dribble of basketball.
If you can google.
Her and check out her highlights, she's really good at playing basketball in general, and juggling and everything with a basket.
She's incredible. You can see the way her brain works differently in the way that she handles the juggling and the basketball and so forth. It's just you can see that her mind is just on a different level.
There's likely nothing that she wants to be good at that she's not. Yeah, exactly, that's what I gather from watching her.
There's something I don't know why it comes to mind right now, but something about a world record or something like that.
Yeah, she's got multiple Guinness Okay, so that was record.
Yeah, yeah, So I love taking a moment to highlight some ebony excellence. So necessary, Yeah, exactly, And so zayla avant Garde for for this week on Civic Cipher. You know, we we salute you. You know, please keep shining, baby girl. We love to see it.
We might salute her again in a few weeks.
We might have to man and again. Za E la avant Garde, z A I l a avant Garde. If you want to check her out. She's got tons of videos and all that sort of stuff. Just an inspirational human being and a black human being and that's special around here. And so yeah, I wanted to take a moment to highlight that.
But.
Really excited. I'm excited is kind of not really the best word, but really, what's the word? I'm thinking? Maybe interested in talking about our first topic this week, which is a video that came our way that takes place in Toledo, Ohio. And this was on July fifth of this year, twenty twenty one, and it is believed to be a gang shootout. So I know you saw the video, so you had a great way of recalling the video, so I want to hear.
The first thing I want to point out is something that you've already said, and I'm glad you use this word specifically heroic. Okay, a lot of people's assign the word hero to the badge by itself. Yeah, as if you're a police officer, you're a hero, and that's not always the case. Watching this video is very clear from the moment that they arrive that they're not just mindlessly brave and heroic in the way that they think they should be like in movies. They are actively doing the
job we wish they would always do. They are trying their best to protect the civilians. They are trying to their best in a very chaotic place to discern who the victims or possible casualties or bystanders are and the shooter versus the shooters, And there's moments in the video where there's complete darkness and muzzle flash and that's it. And they're running in that direction, moving people out of the way, rushing people to safety, aggressively trying to serve
and protect a community literally under fire. The date just stood out to me, you said, July fifth, because if you're just listening to this audibly, it sounds like the fireworks. It's that many gunshots that it sounds like a fireworks show, and these officers are running toward the fireworks, and really, really in a way that has to be even if you're really brave, terrifying.
It's terrifying to watch.
And trying their best to make sure that everyone is safe behind some sort of shelter, running away from.
The danger as they run toward it.
As they run toward it, it's really relieving, is a word that comes to mind. Refreshing. It's what as a kid, you expect police officer behavior to look like.
All right, let me jump in right please, So this video it's it's bodycam footage, so I have to talk you through it. If you're listening, it's bodycam footage of one officer. It looks almost like a Blair Witch project footage. Right, It's unreal. And you know, as you mentioned, Q just shot shot bag bag may bang the whole time and then people screaming everywhere. And I need you to understand that that most of the people that I saw on
the video that were under fire were black people. Okay, So that's part of the reason why it's important for us to have this conversation. These guys run in the direction, as Q said, and they're yelling at people, and they're doing their best to try to figure out where the shooters are or whatever. But it's it's multiple shooters. You can just tell there's different frequencies of fires from different automatic weapons. That's the best way I can describe it.
I'm not a gun person, but firing rates are different, so there's different weapons. I guess being discharged, and you can tell that there's firing and then returning fire, right, And the officers are just running into a field of cars and it's like a street with cars on this side and that side, and they.
Don't knowhood something like that. Maybe your line of sight isn't clear. It's not like an open battlefield like a military would deal with. This is a neighborhood.
Yeah, and people can hide in different places and you don't know where it's coming from. So and then of course it's night, so it's it's dark, and you know, the people are screaming and they're, oh, no, she shot over there, Get behind the car. Uh, don't move, you know, like the you know, the young. Obviously there's a lot of profanity in there because everybody's freaked out and tensions are high, and the police are just kind of human
And that's what I want to talk about humans. A story that really helped frame this radio show, Civic Cipher took place when Q and I took a road trip in twenty twenty and we were pulled over in Mississippi. We've talked about this and I get the feeling we're gonna have to tell the story quite a few times.
But for those of you who are newer to know the audience of Civic Cipher, a quick and dirty version of the story is, we got pulled over in Mississippi in the middle of the night by two police officers mining our own.
Business from two different agencies too, right, the sheriff and a highway patrol.
We ended up getting pulled out of the car, detained on the side of the road, and they brought out like the drug sniffing dogs and they did all this sort of stuff to us. In my belief and in my estimation based on how we look, there was no real reason for them to search our car to suspect that we were inebriated or anything like that. And you know, we talked to the officers in a calm manner. At no point did we lose our composure. It wasn't that
kind of a party. But they were insisting on finding something, and then they made up something and they had an excuse to bring out the dog, and the dog supposedly alerted them to the fact that the non fact that we were just transporting drugs in a brand new vehicle that we just bring the dog alerted you to any right, But they made that their story so that they can
then go in and search the car subsequently. Now, when we originally told that story, one of the things that we were able to do is identify the difference between a person who is a police officer and a police officer like that. You wake up a police officer, you go to sleep a police officer, and that's your whole thing. You were just so committed to that, not job, but that idea, the idea you're always on. You know this guy and both of these officers were black, and they
were doing this to us. So I maintain that we're not critical of police because they're often white. We're critical of policing as an institution because it often fails. And that type of institution, you cannot have an error rate really any higher than zero. Same as like airplanes, you
cannot have an error rate higher than zero. It has to be zero if you're dealing with life and death and people with the opportunity and the license to execute human beings on the street like animals, right, And I think that that's fair that there is no acceptable error rate.
There's no such there should be no such thing as bad apples, and the nature and the framework of the institution is flawed at its core actually when it comes to interacting with and judging and sentencing black and brown bodies. With that said, our story, we were able to identify one of the officers. I believe he was the sheriff was a cool person. He tried to make sure we were okay.
He tried to make sure we didn't feel like like he died. He knew we felt yeah.
Right. He approached it.
Like, okay, I see it was just two o'clock in the morning. I get in Mississippi and this is last summer, so this is the height of protest, se dealing with Yeah, we've just driven through three states of Confederate flags and you know Trump signs.
Yeah.
This officer approached it like, okay, let me make sure that these guys aren't scared to death, because everything about the circumstances right now would justifiably lead to them feeling that way.
Sure, the other officers had no such concern. He wanted to find us, to have a find something that we were doing wrong, to have a reason to punish us, and there was nothing there. And the scary part is not everyone is as squeaky clean as you and I and picture perfect. You and I have never even drank alcohol before, right, Never in our lives have we drank alcohol. So that shows you the path that we leave. Not everyone can say that people do live full lives and
enjoy themselves in those ways in other ways. Right. But when we originally told that story, we recognize that oftentimes, if you're looking for something hard enough, you're going to find it even if it's not there, which is something that I say to sometimes romantic partners if they try to go through my phone, you're looking for some You're to find it even if it's not there, because your brain will make it real. Right. So the same with
the officer who was an officer. He just was like, I'm here to enforce the law, so let me enforce it. How can I enforce the law on these people? How can I enforce the law on these two young men? Whereas the other guy was, he was a man first, a living, breathing man who recognized, Okay, this situation requires empathy and tact and diplomacy and so forth and so on. This is not a high stress situation. I recognize who
I'm dealing with. I've been able to assess the demeanor and the energy and so forth, and I can govern myself accordingly. The other guy was dead set on nope, let's call the dogs. Oh no, the dog smelled and smelled something, And I remind you a brand new car that we just got, and it was an electric car, so there's no hybrid or that what it was it was.
It's some kind of Porsche or something like that. So anyway, this car is brand new, there's no And then then this officer, after the whole ordeal takes two hours or however long, around the side of the road. All of our friends are scared because I'm of course on Facebook
live terrified. Phone dies. No one knows what happened. So what happens is at the end of that interaction, that same officer who was he was a police officer, only that guy says somebody might have brushed up against the car with a joint in his pocket when you stopped at a grocery store in Alabama. And that's and that's why the dog smelled it. And that was as much of an excuse as he could render for a wasting both of our times. He's not fighting real crime, he's
just bothering us. And he like the thoroughness for such a petty thing. Feels like, yeah, we should probably defund the police. There are too many police smell a mill of a mill of something of what the human knows and smell stop anyway. Uh So, yeah, he that that interaction helped me to determine and to see firsthand that there is a difference between a police officer and a
person who is a police officer. The person first, right, And what I saw when I saw this video that took place in Toledo, Ohio, was a person when it was time to be a person. Because there's people all around, and he could be scared of any one of these people.
He could justify me to be scared of all of them exactly.
That's what stood out to me. He was not.
From the time he arrived, he'd already made up his mind. I am trying to say save as many people as post.
Thank you, that's it. That's it that you gotta watch the video to see it, and again credit where it's due, because this doesn't mean that we won't continue to be critical of the way policing is done in this country. But when it's done right, we have a responsibility as journalists, you and I and Swirl our show producer, a responsibility to high like that and bring the same energy to it right. And so that's what we're doing right now. Now.
The comments section, Now, I came across this video originally on Reddit, and uh then we ended up talking about it in our in our group chat for the show.
And just the heads up because Ramses has mentioned this to me before. Only Ramses has seen the comment section. I only watched the video, right, so I'm very curious as to what this comment section looked and read and sounded like.
So allow me to explain. As you can imagine, there's a lot of pro police chatter in the comment section. Don't ever look at a comment section if you're if you please don't. It's just the junk food of the internet. It's just bad for you. But you know, for this type of show, it helps to kind of have a sense of the pulse of you know, where people are online, people who are a little bit admittedly a little bit more brave and push their tongue a little bit a
bit more brave. There you go, thank you. So so I'm in there swimming around trying to put this together because you know, the description of the video doesn't really say much. It just says, you know, two cops charging to a war zone in Toledo, Ohio. I didn't know that it was. It appeared to be an event where most of the people that were visiting or hanging out at the event were black.
So for people who are not familiar with Toledo, Ohio, it's the northern part of Ohio, about an eighty mile trip south of Detroit, Michigan. The automotive industry brought a lot of black people to that area because there was industry there and employment after you know, slavery was not just abolished, but when people finally stopped the practice of it. So Toledo does have a nice concentration of black people.
Sure, sure, So that's all we can. So the comment section now illuminates just kind of the back and forth and what's going on. What do people have to say about this? Right? And obviously I'm not gonna read every comment on Reddit, but got a good sampling and some there were some people in there that were saying, you know, these were the same people shouting defund the police, so you know, why would the police come and defend them? Or this is what would you do if you defunded
the police? You know, So that was a big deal in there. There was another one that says, you know, there's this is what this is what our cops do. This is what our police do. And you know, whenever you have like a few bad apples, it it cast a shadow on what real policing is supposed to be and what real policing looks like, and so forth and so on. And some of them were sensible if that's your worldview, there's sensible things to say, you know, sensible
comments to make. And then some of them obviously was oh yeah, I'm gonna get this off as like we're a sparring match between you know, the other side. I'll call it our side posting videos of police murdering people for no reason. Right, So here's so them saying, here's a good example of what police do. And then on our side we put here's why we need to change the way.
The hilarious irony of that is that that's what we would post as an example of good policing too. Yeah, we're talking about here. We want good policing too. So if that's your response to us, it's not. It shouldn't be, even though you think it is. It's not adversarial to us. We like seeing it done right, right. Hire those guys to train a lot of their colleagues. It would help tremendously.
And so that comments section really made me pause because I do recognize that the way that policing looks too to groups in the United States difference to America's is very different, looks very different. But that example looks like what it should look like across the board. Yes, a high stress situation. That really is a high stress situation, right, and the people with fire, the people with training show up, So hang on, hang on, watch this before we get there.
So I do want to talk about that. But if I remember Falando Castile, Yes, officer, I do have a gun. I have a permit for my gun. Ban ban ban bank. That is not a high stress situation, right, the officer freaked out, right, and probably every other example that I could possibly name, we'd be here for days. Yeah, even if even and of course we understand that you don't need a gun, you don't need to be threatening, you don't even need to be away were conscious in order
to have your life ended by police officers. We've seen that time and again, and it's all under You know that they do this, and they are never convicted or I guess, rarely convicted, are rarely charged, almost never convicted, how about that?
And even when convicted, the sentencing is always it's pretty like.
Yeah, so, And the reason for that is that they're able to say things like, oh, it's a high stress job and it's you know, people don't know what we go through, and it's like, no, we saw what you went through. This person did not have a gun pointed raised, was not operating the gun, it was not firing bullets. It was not a high stress situation.
And we've seen you deal with people that don't look like us in high stress situations a lot differently to a lot more empathy, case and care and patience and the execution of the training that you were saving there it is right there. So when we actually see a high stress situation.
And we don't see the police freaking out, I mean they were freaking out because obviously you're human being that flighter fight or flight kicks in and you're just that adrenaline is pumping, but high as about as high stress as you can get. There's active gunfire. You can hear it as they're running, okay, and then they're not like every direction too, It's not like it seems like it's
coming from right there. It sounds and looks like it's coming from everywhere right and So what what I'm able to see and what I'm able to take from that is that there's definitely a way to do this, you know, in in New Zealand. I got friends in New Zealand, so you know, I've been able to kind of see what they do over there in Serato because I'm a DJ at the Serrato factory and then at the sound Switch factory. Shout out to Serrado and SoundSwitch. Those guys
keep their guns in the trunk of their car. They don't take it out unless they need it. They just operate that way. They don't operate as though they're going to kill somebody or need to kill somebody right there, operate as we need to protect and serve and if things escalate beyond what our normal duties police officers, over the police officer. That's what I mean. Not my friends.
My friends are DJs, but long and the short of it is, there's different ways to think about policing, and the police budgets are definitely bloated, and there's ways to reinvest that money into community programs that prevent things like this from happening in the first place. And there's a bunch of different ideas and approaches to it, and hopefully at the end of this long dialogue that we're having, we'll be able to see some police reform. But in
the meantime, credit where it's due. Shout out to those police in Toledo, Ohio. I'll say it, we salute you. And now we just striking from head borders behind him. And if you're just tuning into CIVI excipher, I'm your host, ramses Jock will call me q Ward and you got We've still got a lot of important stuff to talk about on the show today, not the least of which is Al Sharpton and Ben Crump taking on their first case involving a white person who was killed by the police.
So if you listen to the first half of the show, you recognize that we credit where's do had to salute the police for uh an example that we came across in Toledo, Ohio. But you know, and later on in the show, we're going to discuss au a situation with you know, police taking life, this time of a white child, and you know what it means and why Al Sharpten and Ben Crumper jumping on that just felt like it's
up our Alleien. You need to know about it. And also we have the Way Black History Fact with DJ Swirl that's coming up as well. But for now, I want to talk about our Bah Bah section that stands for become a better ally and today we're highlighting a young woman by the name of Page I hope I say that's right. Page Buchers. Yeah, awesome person, you know, and I do want to say that there's a lot
of examples that we could have used. You know, I really wanted to talk about what happened in England and the coaching that came to the defense of the black players when they were like, you know, all the racists came out to say whatever and whatever, and the coaching staff and the prince even came up and spoke up. But that's not in America, and this is an American based show, so we got to talk about what's going on here. But anyway, so Paige Bukers, I hope I'm
saying your name right. She is a white woman and she basketball if I'm not mistaken them, she gave a speech for what's the name of the awardship. Yes, s piece, I'm not a sports guy, I'm my music guy. Q know sports, So thanks for that cute. Anyway, she gets up and gives this speech and she says thank you and thank God, and she really sounded like she grew up playing basketball.
She got a little bit of And just to be clear for you guys that don't know, she's one of the best basketball players on the planet. Oh yeah, she's a star at Yukon, which is a basketball factory, and she's one of the best to ever come through there. If you do follow sports, especially women's basketball, you know that being the best at a place like Yukon is a really big deal.
Yeah. I wouldn't know that, but she is a big deal for us because she is a great example on how you can become a better Outly. She used her time in the spotlight to say she is a white woman in a black leed sport. That was one of the first things that she said. She admitted that black athletes don't get the credit they deserve, and black women, specifically black women, that's what I meant to say, sir, And she said that their value to the sport is undeniable.
That was a direct quote from her, and I just thought that was very special. She goes on to say something like she was nervous the whole time too. But she goes on to say something like eighty percent of the award winners from the WNBA or whatever were black women, but it was the white athletes that received like fifty
percent of the media coverage. And I just felt like that was her using her time in the spotlight to highlight her privilege and the fact that the media coverage and the sport and you know, all the things that go along with it don't really treat black athletes fair. It's just a great example of how to use your privilege, which if you have any, to bring a little bit of balance and fairness and equity to the to the world, to the universe in your own small way. And so
in this moment, we want to salute her. Now let's talk about Al Sharpton and Ben Crump. So lawyers. You know Reverend Al Sharpton, but Big Crump is more for being a lawyer. So again they're taking their first case involving a white person killed by the police. This person's name, it was it's very sad. Was as soon as you said that word, I kind of yeah, yeah, he was a teenager, so I you know, Q gets mad at me when I call teenagers babies, But I have a
teenager and that's my baby. So his name was Hunter Britain, and he was killed like three am outside of a repair shop in Arkansas, unarmed, of course. And I'll be honest, I don't know his story, you know. I was introduced to this via a CNN article and then some other research, So I'm not sure exactly how a Hunter's you know, interaction with the police went. But I'd imagine if Al Sharpton and you know, Ben Crump are taking on this
this story, uh, or this case rather that uh. The the assumption is that he did not deserve to lose his life that day, and the fact that he was unarmed think further suggests that that was not the way his life should have ended in his teens, out in front of a gas station for no real reason or not really posing a real threat. And that's that's what
I imagine. Anyway, if you know anything about Al Sharpton and and Ben Crump, you do recognize that they are sort of advocates for black people when there is nowhere else to turn. You know, that's kind of the highest that you can get in terms of visibility and representation and people on your side and you know, having some sort of fortifying optics on your case or situation or whatever. So for them to take on this situation with this white child feels white young man feels a little unusual,
and it is a little unusual. But there's a reason for that. And I want to get your thoughts on
a queue. So there's one quote. It says that I feel it's one of the most significant cases in the fight to push Congress for landmark police reform and uh and just so you know, there's no footage because the officer didn't turn off their turn on their body camera when they got out to which should be illegal, right, And so I think that what they're trying to do here is use this as an example to move Congress to you know, enact some laws to hold police accountable
when they don't do things like this, because at that point, you know, dead men tell no tales, and this this guy's gone hunter Britain, we're talking about him in the past tense. The officer who executed him on the spot is perhaps very much alive in getting paid and so they believe that this could push lawmakers to pass the quote George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which has stalled in the Senate right now. There's another quote here I
want to get off real quick. It says that is going to be looked at differently because he wasn't a child of color. The police are supposed to protect them, and that's been Crumb saying that. And there's another quip a little bit later in the article where it says something about them wanting to pass what's called Hunter's Law, which feels like, I don't know if that's something that they want to rename the George Floyd Initiative as Hunter's Law, like that might be a little unfair, but this is
kind of what we have here. And so first off, your your thoughts, your initial reaction to this.
So I first want to say I have no issue with referring to teenagers as children. As someone who recently adopted and attempting to help raise one child is the best way to describe. The only reason I that I brought attention to it before is because I didn't want it to seem like you and I were being unfair when trying to garner some type of undue sympathy for some teenagers in another story by calling them babies.
Yeah, so that was just we got we got big daddy energy over here.
I told you when you told me about this story that my initial reaction was why, why is it a story? Why are they doing it? And as you were introducing the topic today, I had a bit of an epiphany. I don't know this to be true because I don't know any of the people involved, but I'd like to believe that, just like we tried to express last summer, we don't take to the streets to say kill more white people.
We take to the streets to say, stop.
Killing all of us, right, except all of the examples that we're given, all of the cases that we see, all of the bodies that are being buried look like us.
So we have to call attention to the suffering. The most well said.
So we say black lives matter as not a way to disqualify or minimalize or marginalize the importance or value of other people's lives. It's like, hey, can we have any dignity at all? It's our shout and our request. So any citizen unjustfully killed by law enforcement should be represented and should have someone stand up and fight for them, just like you would me or Ramses or our children.
The civil rights movement, it leaned heavy toward black people because black people were the group suffering the lack of civil rights. But we're not saying civil rights for only black people. We are not saying justice for only black people.
It's like us too.
Maybe if you guys would consider it, because clearly that's not what you want to do, it's not what you're currently doing. So the big question marks that I had when I first read the headline and when I first saw the story literally start to melt away as I'm listening to you talk about it, because Hunter is not less important than Grayson or Christian or Adanaya.
That's fair, So I can't.
I guess I just told you a little bit about my initial reaction, but more about how I feel now as I'm listening to this.
Someone's child.
Should have made it home that night, should have woke up that next morning, and should still be here now,
and they're not. And we don't have all the details, but if this man was unarmed, he should have been shown the same Grayson should have been provided with the same opportunity for life and even incarceration if he committed some crime, but it shouldn't have been but it shouldn't have been met with death, especially, like I said, when we've seen that the measures and the lengths that they can go to make sure that they apprehend someone safely,
and situations that are far more stressful, in tense and scary even than this, we've seen it, so we know that the training is being provided and that it's possible. We just wish this could be a more uniformed thing and that we don't have to keep having conversations like this because it's getting out of control.
So there's an interesting thing here. I think that by them wanting to get behind this case, I think that it illuminates the Forgive me if this sounds dramatic, I know that sometimes the nature of the show causes things to sound that way, and this might be another example of that. But these people, Al Sharpton Bidcrumb are using this example of a police killing with a white victim as opposed to a black victim because it has a better chance of moving the hearts and the minds of
the people preventing the George Floyd Policing Reform Act. I believe it's called justice and Policing Act from you know, actually making its way through the Senate. If the victim is white, then folks will have to be able to empathize. And I think that what it does is it illuminates the fact that black bodies, you know, that the people's impulse, the media's impulse, and then people that live in their homes, well, what did he do wrong? Right?
What w W?
He hadn't have done something? What was he doing?
You know?
And they try to blame the person who has lost their life. And as we mentioned, you know, we live in a society where we're not savages, we're not monsters and beasts. And this isn't you know, this is a modern society. We are able to take people who make mistakes,
rehabilitate them and get them back into society. Death is This is not a what is that called the A B B Big brother state or whatever, I forget the name of it, but basically, when they kill you when you do anything wrong, you know, nanny state or some like some kind of state. This is not that. This is a society where people can exercise their freedoms if they go a little bit too far. We have checks and balances in place for better or worse, that they're
designed to keep everything operational. The thing is, we see time and again that at the point where policing meets the actual citizens, that there are too often this type of mistake, which, as I mentioned earlier on the show, really needs a zero percent error rate. If you pull out your gun, you better be one thousand percent sure because somebody is going to lose their life. And there's cavalier attitude that people tend to have when it comes
to death and black bodies. Often times, we've seen time and again that it doesn't move the needle, certainly doesn't move the needle in the way that we want. It might move the needle a little bit here and there. Every decade or two we got a tiny step forward.
But I think that with Al Sharpton and Ben Crump, what they're banking on is the fact that, Okay, if this child looks like the people we're trying to appeal to, if this child looks had a quote promising future as opposed to the one time he shoplifted when he was twelve years old, and I'll see he was gonna grow up and be a crimp, you know what I mean? How they did with Ferguson. I forget his name, Ferguson, Missouri.
What's his name? Jesus, It'll come to me. But you know what I'm talking about where you know, if it's a black child, then it's well, what did he do wrong in the past that wasn't even happening on that day?
You know?
So what was his name? Helped me out? Michael Brown? Michael Brown, Jesus. I don't know how I forgot that, but yes, Michael Brown, and his name deserved to be said. I'm just as you know, there's a lot of names to remember.
Sadly, there are a lot of names and a lot of names in that part of the country Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Chicago and other places. There's some sad truths to what you just said, Okay, and then there's some kind of truths to.
What you just said.
The kind of truth sad absolute truth truth is that Hunter or any other white child being gunned down by police will trigger a different emotional response from the from I wouldn't say the majority, but the people in those positions yere. However, what our lack of motivation to make changes in our gun policies have shown me listen, is that even when the victims are white, they don't move.
And it's because in most of these cases, the perpetrators are also white, and our capitalist country gotta seldom guns, has to sell whatever it is, not just guns.
But you know, in the name of.
Curing our union's capital, they've shown they're willing to bend on just about anything. I thought when schools full of white children started getting shot up and white politicians started getting shot that there would be some immediate gun reform. There was not, because someone's bottom line would have been affected too much.
Right, So you have this grand idea.
Of white versus black in a country that was without questioning, people absolutely found it and built on the back of the racism train. That has also shown me that the rich will use that to manipulate the poor. So you have dual ideology geez growing from the same seed. Right, Convince poor white people that poor black and brown people are their enemies, and they will never notice that you're
robbing them too. Give them someone to look down upon to blame their problems on, Give them an adversary, and they will vote for the man who's literally taking food out of their children's mouths.
The system is.
Masterful and cruel and disgusting at the same time. So it is it's interesting to listen to it because if they renamed it that it probably would grow more legs. Right, But as long as you have hundredons and lobbyists and people who stand to profit from the system being exactly the way it is, they're going to be very, very slow to make any grand changes. You know, those same people help them get into the seat that they're sitting in the office here to vote against them.
You know, not to backtrack here, but you know, in the first half of the show, if you were tuned in, we discussed a gang shootout in Ohio and police officers rushed in and they were very brave, and you know, we did our best to give credit where it was due. That's what hero. We don't believe that policing in its current version works well enough for everybody enough of the time, but that was one example where it looked like what we thought it should look like, and so we wanted
to give them credit. But I mentioned earlier in the show about the comments section of the post where I saw that video. I'm glad you brought this back up, and one of the comments was is the solution more guns? And it's it's interesting because that comment was there because what you have is a gang shootout and then police rushing into it with guns and people fleeing the scene like it's a mass shooting.
You know.
Obviously mass shooting is well, I guess it does qualify, but the nature of this mass shooting is very different because it's a little bit more targeted and precise versus the mass shootings that we know that come to mind, which is just kind of indiscriminate executing of human beings at a grocery store or whatever. But it's funny that someone in the comments section pose the question is the solution more guns, and the NRA and the lobbyists and so forth might have you believe that, But I can
assure you with great certainty. Guns can not protect you. Guns allow you to kill people. What protects you as a bulletproof vests, and police don't even protect you. Police show up after you've already been shot, you know, or
the crime has already happened. It's a reactive effort, and so again reinvesting and rethinking about how do we insulate ourselves from the problems that we have right now, and how do we address problems before they become problems is at the core of the defund the police narrative, which admittedly is a bad title. I don't think it'll ever really fly in some households, but the idea of it is brilliant.
Sends people from hearing that brilliant idea. As you just said, the idea makes all the sense in the world. Some people intentionally won't let themselves get by the catchphrase.
Those are the people with the license plate, the racist, by the way, license plate that has the flag and then the blue stripe. And so a second ago, I said, I was glad you brought the comment section back up, And the reason why is because what you just said. Someone please explain to me what that flag is supposed to mean. It's just every time I see it, my stomach I have an actual reaction to it. And I've started to see people that I know that looked like
us flying or wearing or posting that flag. I was gonna say that, and I'm like, Okay, is there something that they don't know? Or am I did I make this something that it's not. Here's what it is. So someone please help me. My belief before we get.
To if someone knows better than us, someone is an expert, someone who helped design that social media call us.
Please let me know. I'm at rams job and at I am qboard. You can you can hit both of us or at uh is DJ's world. At DJ's world, okay, you can hit any of us. That's our producer. Anyway. My belief is that that flag is racist. It was designed as a response to people saying the police are
killing us. And then there's a group of people who say, no, no, we got to defend the police instead of defund we gotta, you know, because that's the blue instead of listening to their countrymen and their brothers and sisters of African descent and empathizing these people. Says no, no, no, we don't you know. No, it's okay, please keep killing them. We'll support you, you know. And I know that's not the intention of people that buy the flags and fly the
flags and so forth. But the origin of that flag came about as a direct response to people saying black lives matter and protesting police injustices. It came about as a result of Kaepernick neeeling. It didn't exist before them. There was never a flag, which, by the way, is an abomination of the actual US flag. And if you look at the United States Flag Code, that is that is how you disrespect the flag by changing the colors. You can look at it yourself. Kaepernick never disrespected the flag.
You do when you fly that weird, gray blue abomination of what the United States flag is supposed to be. You're not supposed to do that. That's facts.
I've seen a couple of people that I went to college with in the last month or so, one who is a police officer wearing that flag around his face as a mask, and another supporting a promotion that her husband, who was a police officer, just got and the the first picture of her post was that flag.
And I was very caught off guard by.
It, kind of knocked off my square by it, because black people wearing and flying and posting and hanging that flag is just very strange to me.
Listen to this. There's a lot of people that perhaps in their heart of hearts, mean well. I'm sure there's a lot of people that fly the Confederate flag or fluid and they mean well, and they in their heart.
They definitely still fly that flag, but they didn't.
Know what it actually meant, what it was born out of, what it you know, and there to them, it's just like, well, I just you know, my cousin is a police officer, and I don't want to see them get hurt or my brothers, you know what I mean. That's what. But I'm here to tell you that for all of your black brothers and sisters, that is a slap in the face. That is that is a way to challenge us saying that black lives matter. It's very hurtful and very distrest fretful.
And if you look at the United States flag, called your disrespecting the flag. That's all I gotta say about that. Swirl. Let's talk about some way black history.
And I want.
Really quick point to Rams's point.
What Crump and Sharp Dinner trying to do is the same thing as the opposite of the War on drugs.
Yeah, the war on drugs.
The response to that was one way, and then as soon as it became the opioid epidemic and the energy shifted and the needle move to Q's point, Sandy Hook in January sixth, those are two things that you think would be cut in dry issues, not the case. And also what's worse defund the police or the thin blue line hm which one is helping move the needle in
the positive direction? Anyway, Today's way black history fact. I'm glad that I did this because I did this on the fly, because we didn't really do.
This on this day.
In twenty thirteen, the hashtag black Lives Matter first appeared, sparking a movement wow Outraged and saddened after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed the black teenager in twenty twelve, Oakland, California resident Alicia Garza posts a message on Facebook on July thirteenth, twenty thirteen. Her post contains the phrase black Lives Matter, which soon becomes a rallying cry and a movement throughout the United States and around the world. Garza said she felt a deep
sense of grief after Zimmerman was acquitted. She was further saddened to note that many people appeared to blend into a victim Trayvon Martin and not the disease of racism. Patrese Cullers, a Los Angeles community organizer and friend of Garza, read her post and replied with the first instance of
hashtag black Lives Matter. The phrase and the hashtag were then quickly adopted by grassroofs activists and protests all across the country, particularly after the subsequent killings of, as you discussed earlier, Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, and a number of other African Americans at the hands of police officers or would be vigilantes like Zimmerman. After the May twenty twenty killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, at least a nationwide
protest movement against police brutality and racism. Support for the Black Lives Matter movement increased by a twenty eight point margin in two weeks, almost as much as it had in the preceding two years, according to The New York Times, perhaps more than any other phrase since black power, black lives Matter became a singular rallying cry for the American and global racial justice movements.
Wow, now, synergy, I knew that. A lot of you might not have known that, but I knew that. And the reason I knew that is because I won't say who, but one of those women is very close with my like had like like adopted mom sort of figure, and really she's my teacher. I like calling her my teacher
because she literally was my teacher. Doctor Camilla Westenberg, who's been on the show a few times and certainly helps us when it comes to consulting and informing sort of us with topics things like that, and so I was kind of right there with her as she was kind of helping bring that to where we live, which is in Arizona, and recognized that initially it was something that really felt empowering. It didn't feel like we were taking
sides in a war. There was no opposition early on, you know, there was no all lives matter in the early days of you know, the BLM movement, if you will, again, it came about as a way to challenge like there's people who the world makes sense to them when black people are suffering, that's the only way and they can't see and everything that happens is black folks is own doing, and even black people are You have instances of black people succumbing to this way of thinking because you know,
as we mentioned, there's institutions that are even more powerful than the human beings that uphold the institutions. Right, It's like indoctrination, right, So you know, I'm glad that we took the time to talk about that. I do want to if you're listening to us. First off, we appreciate you listening to us every week. And we know that there's so many things that we're not talking about. There's things that come across your tie line, there's things that
come across our time. Lie so many things we can't talk about. One of the things that I do want to take a moment to do, and we'll have to do it next week, is we want to take the time to honor our Native brothers and sisters and the traumas that they have had to relive in reading the articles about the the bodies of children being unearthed at
these schools and so forth. And and in Arizona, there is a a whole street, a major street in Arizona for those who don't live here, it's called Indian School Road. And on Indian School Road there is an actual Indian school on Central Avenue. It was also right in the heart of the city. And there's a lot of history there with Native folks, a lot of really troubling history
that those folks went through. And so I do wanna let folks know that there's that and other things that we miss that we will try to incorporate in in future shows. But you know, as Wirl put it, it's timely that we discussed the origins of Black Lives Matter, and you know, we had a ba ba a example. But if I have a few more moments of your time here, it looks like I do. I do want to say that you are the biggest weapon in the war on inequality and white supremacy and social injustice and
political injustice. You the listener you are. If you are a black person, your voice carries in circles that perhaps white voices don't. If you're a white person, Hispanic person, your voice carries in circles in your home and your social circle and so forth. And this show exists to empower black voices and empower black allies, and both of those things are important for us to all get to where we're going. And you know, I'm glad that this was our way black history fact and I wanted to
leave you with that. So yeah, and I think that's pretty much where we're going to leave it today. So once again, thanks for tuning in the civic scipher. I'm your host, Ramses John, call me q Ward and please hit the website Civic Cipher dot com check out this and all previous shows.
Be sure to make the donation if you can really helps the show. Bro Follow all our social media at Civic Cipher. Show boost by d J Swirl and Yeah we.
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