Civic Cipher 091022 2-Year Anniversary Episode (Part 1)

to talk about. And we know we deal with heavy topics and subjects and so forth, So to have that support and to just be championed by you means a lot to us. So stick around. We will be discussing again some of the more positive things that have happened as a result of you know, all of our combined efforts, not just us, but yours and other great organizations. So we're going to look at the progress there. We're going

to also spend some time discussing black media. You know, our show wouldn't exist if not for you know, the starting point was the Freedom Journal, the first black owned and operated newspaper in the United States, so we're going to spend some time talking about that as well. But you know, we like to start off with some Avenue excellence, So cue, how's that sound, sha we shall This week's Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media and

the story comes by US Sports Illustrated. I think you might know what's coming. We are going to celebrate some more black girl magic, like we like to do around here by talking about Serena Williams. So I will read a bit. We knew it was time for the Queen Goat Williams to lay down her rackets. She remains victorious in winning our hearts because she's the greatest of all time. Twenty two major championships later, several close calls for an

additional title, injuries, disappointments, marriage and motherhood. It was a forty one year old body to have the final scene. Many young black girls have been watching her resilience and competitive nature, wondering if they could one day possess the heart of Serena Williams and will forever look up to her. Congratulations Serena Williams and family, especially King Richard, Queen of mother, sisters, brother and of course Venus. You all made many across

the world extremely proud. From Comptony England, Francis, Spain, Africa to Australia. Williams family reigns Women's Tennis Royalty Supreme. Serena, please continue to hold court wherever you may be. You see you're still our queen for forever. In a day, Serena Williams definitely the greatest of our all time, yesterday,

today and tomorrow. For those who don't know, she has retired at the end of a very celebrated career and she is the living embodiment of excellence, being committed to not just your craft, but to who you are, standing firm in the middle of yourself, owning your blackness, championing your blackness in spaces where it's sometimes difficult, challenging, et cetera. And if we can, we will take this moment to

salute you, Serena Williams. You are absolutely of any excellence, And if all goes well, the rest of the show is going to sound just like that. I know, I'm excited because we don't often get to have sort of a celebratory tone around here. But again, turning two years old is really something special. I want to remind you that this show, we didn't expect this to happen, right We didn't expect to you know, this was that we

didn't have like a master plan right here. I mean that's the part of the story that I stressed the most.

now we're, you know, celebrating two years later. Just seems really improbable because even that we started well, I mean, I don't even know if we've ever told this part of the story out loud, but I sat at Ramsey's dining room table and watched tears stream down his face as he said goodbye to not just a career. A lot of people have jobs and careers, but media, radio

and broadcasting was Ramses's life. And because our people were being misrepresented and for what it meant to our culture that our home and radio told us no on the basis that what we were trying to do was black without hesitation, Ramsey said no. And you guys have to understand, there's a moment where it's like, yo, bro, did I make the right decision here?

et cetera. And after some roundabout, you know, misleading conversations, they ultimately said that they didn't want to do a black show. And this is when we decided to leave on principle as Q mentioned, and we resigned to the city rather than to the station. We wrote the letter to the city just letting everyone know that this is why we would not be heard on the radio anymore. And what we were trying to do was for them.

We were trying to give them an hour a week just to at that time it was a half hour a week, so that you know, we could tell our own stories and we could challenge what you know, Channel twelve was reporting as a riot, which wasn't a riot because again we were out on the street, you know this.

We felt the need for that. So, you know, to go from a moment where it's like, Okay, this chapter of my life is over all of the tickets I gave away, all the listeners that grew up listening to me on the radio, all of the you know, I tried my best the whole time I was a broadcaster for that part of my career to not let that define me, to not let that become a part of my identity. Rather, but there's no escaping there's no escaping that when you've done it for that long. It just

because it's second nature. It's as natural as breathing.

but certainly the bottom of the middle. So going into radio, you know, two thousand and five was when I first got a chance to broadcast, and it was KKFR and Phoenix, which we're on now. So shout out to DJ Complex and my man.

a tomorrow fifty percent. You know, you might increase your odds by fifty percent, but it's not going to guarantee anything. And so I didn't want it to become a part of my identity because I knew that it could go away at any point in time, you know, and I I at the same time, I doubled down so that it would not go away, and then over time it becomes a part of your identity. I say that to say that walking away from it was obviously very emotional.

You know I've shed tears on this show before. So if you, if you're a longtime listener, you know that this is a very emotional place. We have to tell real stories. We deal with life, and we deal with death. We deal with heavy topics here, and so I have no there's no shame in me letting you know that I obviously had I lost it a couple of times, having to walk away from how I did my family, what might made my family really proud of me and my friends and so forth, knowing that I would probably

never talk on a microphone again. And I know that you felt the same weight of that. But I know you were kind of just moving with me. And I'll never ever be able to thank you enough for supporting me. You know, I knew that you. I know that you would and just like I support you, You and I have been a year. There was no other version of it, though, there was no version where that decision was being made, you know, in a vacuum with you by yourself like

that was. That was us decision. Sure that I'd been disappointed if you felt like you couldn't make the decision because you didn't know which direction I leaned, Yeah, yeah, but it's still important to say it out loud because you know, even though it's a given, it still represents a sacrifice on your end as well. And so while you're acknowledging that, on my part, I want to make

sure I say that for you. But you know, to go from essentially zero, well maybe not zero, but you know, we had some people who had they had come to know our names, but zero, no career, no no nothing, you know, no promise of tomorrow to now having a radio show that's on from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, you know, where as far north as you know of state New York. I think we're on in the station in a couple of stations in Vermont, you know, so as far north as in Vermont, and as you know,

obviously we're as far south as San Diego. You know, we crisscrossed the whole country. Now after two years and obviously tons of support, most of which comes from our listeners, is extremely humbling and we're really grateful and this is a very invigorating time and our careers in our lives because now rather than asking you to listen to the next commercial break and you know, giving away concert tickets or you know, doing celebrity gossip or things like that.

We feel like we talk about things that really matter. Granted it's heavy stuff, but again we really feel like it matters. And there's another part of this too. And while we're here talking about this, I do want to say it. I'm not one of I'm not the most spiritual person in the world. That's not my way. But you know, sometimes there are things that happen that kind of make me feel like perhaps I have some favor

with some sort of higher intelligence, higher power. And obviously having you know u Q and having such a storied career alongside you, our producer Maggie b Noan coming to the table and really helping lend that voice that we really needed in terms of writing our scripts, making sure that we account for things that we might have overlooked. You know, we can't articulate the pain that a mother might feel, you know, we can't. You know, there's certain

things we can't do. But there's some other things that really, in hindsight, makes me feel like this was sort of.

you've heard it. But prior to us being told that our old station didn't want to do a quote black show, and it's a hip hop station, they didn't want to do a black show. Humh. Prior to being told that, two reached out to me. You know, once upon a time I had not done a lot of traveling in the US, only international travel, and I had an opportunity to go with Q to help them drive back a car. I think we went to go get your some fancy car that Q has. I don't remember which one was.

been to you know, four states or whatever. So this was a chance for me to you know, travel through the south, the southern part of the US and coming back to the to the city, coming back to Phoenix.

We were pulled over in Mississippi and we because remember at the time, you got to think George Floyd had just gotten killed Breonna Taylor, you know, Ahmat Aubrey, where the country is dealing with these in real time, and then we get pulled over in the middle of the night in the darkest back road in Mississippi on our way to Louisiana.

out of the car. But I had my phone on UH Facebook and I was doing a Facebook Live and because we were bumping out cast driving through Mississippi and Alabama, you know, my battery was dead. So I'm on Facebook Live. Everyone sees there's police behind me, and everyone knows that we've been out protesting you know this, that and the other. They don't know. They don't know that we were in Mississippi. I have no idea where we are, and you know,

obviously if something happens, we can't upload a video. So I got to go live. And then my phone dies, so all they see is Q walking backwards to the sound of a voice, and I'm in the car and then they come and pull me out of the car and I'm like, oh God, and then my phone goes.

to speak on. I just want to take this moment to say that I'm very grateful to be able to share some of these things that I'm going to share with you that have taken place over the past couple of years. So, without further ado, let's talk about some

positive things since we've been on the air. So h One thing that is I think very very important and was very much pivotal, is that Donald Trump was voted out and he relinquished his post relatively peacefully relative I know, January sixth, but relative, I mean, he could have did a lot work.

are valuable and our lives have worth. Donald Trump and really his base being sort of galvanized behind you know, reclaiming America and and you know, kind of getting off these strange, bizarre ideas about them, you know, being replaced and you know, all this sort of strange stuff that puts a target on our back black people, brown people, anyone who's not white, Christian, you know, heterosexual, you know that sort of person. To have him out of office,

that's obviously a huge thing. And that has happened since we've been on the air. COVID. You know, we had to deal with COVID, you know, for we had a few episodes. We're still we're still dealing with it. But the worst of it, you know, in terms of the numbers, the death numbers and so forth, that feels like it's

largely behind us. And we had to do a couple of shows where we tried to do some convincing of black people to really get vaccinated, you know, and we had to take into account that black people's history in this country, especially insofar as it relates to the government, and the government performing you know, untested or you know, not fully fleshed out medical solutions on black populations as a way of experimenting to kind of see what the effect on a human body would be before they release

or altered formulas or whatever. I'm alluding to the Tuskegee experiments, which are harmful experiments that the United States government is documented performing on black people, had to apologize for, and they were doing it just to see what the outcomes would be.

be done in theory since George Floyd's murder. So before George Floyd, you have to remember, there were police killings, police shootings that were shooting children. You know, this sort of thing was have black children, what's happening? Over and over and over again. We were paying attention to it. We did talk about that on the radio when we were doing Radio Solstice, our old show that we were doing. We talked about that stuff over and over again every

time we could. And after George Floyd and after the sentencing of Derek Chauvin, we started to see some changes. So that was something that was positive. We still have a long way to go. I'm not going to pretend like it's all roses and all that stuff. But I'm grateful to have seen progress and our time on here. And you know, there has been some cities who have taken police resources, fiscal resources and reallocated them. It's not a full defunding of the police, but some cities, unfortunately,

have doubled down. And unfortunately the president is talking crazy.