Social Activism Isn’t Just for Social Media with Mysonne

to mention, we're married, Yes, sir, we are. We created this podcast to open dialogue about some of the life's most taboo topics, things most folks don't want to talk about through the lens of a millennium married couple. Dead ass is the term that we say every day. So when we say dead ass, we're actually saying fast the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We're about to take pillow talk to are whole new level. Dead ad starts right now. All right, you got a good

story for me today? I got I got a good story. That's his mad stories, but I got a good story today and it hit close to home because I remember you and I waken up one morning to a couple of Um, I guess it was d M s and comments from people who were upset at you and me because they felt like we weren't vocal enough when it came to what was going on in the country at the time. And this was right after George Floyd was murdered and you had went silent on social media for

about a week and a half. I had posted a couple of things, but to be quite honest, UM, that wasn't My main focus. Wasn't posting at the time. UM. What a lot of people don't know is that I still run a nonprofit organization in Brooklyn called Prototyp Sports Performance, and during that time, we were dealing with the shutdown

of the school system. So I had six employees that were working in the school system, all young kids who just graduated college, and they talked about shutting down the school. So I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out a way to help them not only get jobs if we couldn't go back into schools, but trying to redefine the program so that we can get funding to make sure that they got paid during the pandemic.

So there was a lot of things going on. Um, for me socially that I just didn't want to post on social media. And at first I was a little taken back because I was like, you know, I do a lot that I don't post because I don't think it's postworthy. I just I just feel like something it's not necessary. This is these are things that these are my mission. This is my mission, this is my passion project. You know, I want to make sure that my people are taking care of on a daily basis, on the

front lines. Everything doesn't have to be looking at what I'm doing. But then I also had to sit back and think that UM as a quote unquote celebrity, because once you are in the public eye, we do have a podcast, I am on TV shows, we do have our social media platforms. People do want to hear what you have to say when it comes to things of

this nature that affect all of us. So at first I was pissed, right, and I responded to one of the comments and I started to list all the things that I was doing during this time, because I was actually trying to help people. And if people start to chime in, you know the value. You don't owe them anything, you don't own anything. And then that person reached out and hit me a d M on private and apologized and you know, and said, I didn't realize that all

of that's going on. But that made me think, in that moment, how much of social media has kind of um distorted our views of what real activism is. And it was that moment and that when it happened to me that I realized, you know, how much are people doing that we don't know? So check this out, guys. This this song that I'm about to sing for karaoke. It means a lot to me because you guys know

how I feel about this particular artist. But what made it so important to me was that Jackson listened to the song and it's become all like our song that we listened to doing workouts, and um, he says, it's amazing how this song, you know it was was made in the nineties and it's so relevant today in the hundred hundreds, when your TV was black and white and big, Oh yeah, yeah, hey, I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I asked myself, it's like forth

flipping shu ut blast myself. I'm tired of being broken even worth some black my stomach so I'm looking for a purse to snatch cops killing them. About the need bro pull a trigger, killer nigger, he's a heat wrote selling oh, selling crack to the kids who the hell kids one less hungry mouth on the welfare. Think about those words. Are we literally not going through the same things right now? Jackson said to me. We listened to it and that's two shout out to two. Cairo's middle

name in Shakoor. But wake up in the morning and I asked myself, is life worth living? Should I blast myself? I'm tired of being poor and even worse some black My stomach hurts, So I'm looking for a purse to snatch cops. Skill a cops, give a damn about the negro pull a trigger killing nigga, he's a hero. Mhmm. Jackson heard these words, was just like, that's happening right now. And you think about the suicide rate amongst blocks right now.

It's especially during the pandemic, which which brings me back to story time. Back to story time because when we developed a program prototype Sports Performance Lab, when I was tired from the NFL, to give young men an opportunity to transition into the world. If their NFL dreams don't. And over the years it expanded to young women as well. So we currently have two mentors, two mentors that are women, they ran track in college, and we have three athletes

who are football players. Right, so we've pretty much always had a pulse in the community. UM, and I love you for that because that was a vision that you had super early on, as early as when you retired from the NFL, UM and you wanted to start your speeding performance enhancement training program. And it was more than

just training children physically or athletically. It was about encompassing the entire child and the entire experience and how they UM can be a well rounded athlete, you know, maintaining a certain grade level in school. There were certain criteria they had to above a three point oh Um. To me, it was more about caregiving and less about training because we mentored these young men and women from seven all the way through college. And then the program ended up

becoming a pay it forward program. Well, we got to grant from the United Way. We partnered with after school All Stars, and these young men and women that came back from college who couldn't find work, we placed them as mentors and discipline every deans PS two seventy two shout out to our principal Dakota Keys, who worked with

us uh Mateo like that whole staff Rashim. They worked with us to create this program where we took these young African American people who would have been lost any other way because they thought they would be in pro athletes. They come back into the elementary schools and they mentor the young kids so that for the first time they're getting they have an opportunity to see young people that look like them who graduated from college who worked with

them daily hand to hands. So they're like mentor disciplinary deans. And we've been able to decrease the dropout rate when I drop a rate or decreased the absentee rate because kids wanted to come to school to spend time with the mentors. UM. Kids started to graduate on time, behavioral issues started to decrease, and that was part of the activism that we created because I feel like it was necessary for us to UM have an actual hand and

pulse in the community. And you know, for me, the change was about being able to see it and being able to just on the front lines be the ones to be able to institute that change, you know what I mean in seeing it through. So sometimes you can't affect the entire mass of people, but if you can help you know, a handful directly. But but realistically, it wasn't just about that school. It was about the whole community.

Because shout out to CANARSI. You know what I'm saying, This is on the school, the floors, stutt of the

floor PS two seventy two. I love y'all, y'all know y'all more people's But this program was designed to help the community so that those young people, and we're talking about hundreds of kids that go to PS two seventy two who will ultimately graduate and go on to different junior high schools, but they're having they feel better about themselves because they see versions of themselves that they can emulate.

You know, college graduates who played sports, who did well, who were productive members of society, who chose to come back and help them. So, you know, to take it back the story time, my focus was there because when they decided to close the schools, not only did the kids not have the mentors, but the mentors didn't have a job. So now we're dealing with an economic crisis, and I have five young men and women who don't

have work, some of them have children. So we were trying to focus on a way to revamp the program so they could do remote mentoring and we were able to figure it out. But in that first two week span where I was kind of off social media, this is what I was dealing with, and that became my focus because at the time I found out that I wasn't going back to film yet um all the brand partnerships had stopped, so social media for me wasn't a priority. It was my family and it was my actual community.

And I started to get backlash from it because I wasn't posting constantly about what was going on, and if you did post, then I was getting backlash for not posting as well or as frequently. And it was just like, can I exist in the process in this moment and see what is going on? Or am I just going to be a person that's aimlessly, you know, reposting other people's post just to say that I'm posting and I'm active,

you know. And that's where we were with it. To take it a step further though, um Bay, with what we were doing in the community. The community was not only just the parents, the children, the families, it was also having an establishment between the relationship between like our young men and women in the community and the police because which was one of our local precincts and stuff

like that. It was important for us too for they for them to kind of know who we were, um to know some of our children who were in the mentorship program. So that way it kind of decreased a little bit of the tension or the aim was to try to decrease some of the tension that existed or could have potentially existed between our young folks and the cops. Yeah. Absolutely.

During the time at the peak of prototype, we had a partnership with pact Plex and there was a mccalling, a young man by the name of Tommy who had a really good partnership with the sixty nine Precinct and he ran the boxing gym at the time, I think it was zab Juda's boxing gym, but um he ran

the boxing gym. And there were some there were men and their older black men who really had a stronghold in the community, so we used to partner with them, partner with the sixty nine priescint to make sure that they were there was at least an understanding sort of something happened between one of my kids, I could reach out to someone at THET precent and say, hey, that's one of my product type kids. Let me get his parents on the phone, let me get a lawyer present.

And then I had an attorney that I could call when one of my kids had issues. Y'all heard him, Kenneth Montgomery. He comes down here all the time. So what we had developed through Prototype was at least a system where we could protect our kids, especially the kids that we knew were doing the right things, because the worst thing is for a kid to get caught up in in in the system and have no way or no one to turn to, no advice, no legal counsel,

things like that. So we were creating in a sense, our own ecosystem of you know, change and of support within our community, which is still super very important to us. So shout out to Canarcy again in Brooklyn. I mean,

we have a special surprise for you guys. I met this young man a couple of weeks back when I did face to face with Lewis Carr, and I actually got introduced to him months before when Jackson started asking me about what was going on in the country, and I was trying to find a way to introduce him learning about black history, and I found this I Know Your Rights, I Know My Rights book Bill of Rights, and it was written by my son Lennon, who was who was our guest today who we're gonna speak to.

And I'm gonna introduce my son and let him tell you a little bit about himself. But before we start, I'm gonna tell you that my son is an independent hip hop artist and criminal justice reformed activists from Bronx, New York. He's a co founder of the social justice organizations Until Freedom, where he organizes and speaks out against biased police and inequity in the criminal justice system. He's also an author. Mr Maison, are you with us piece?

Thanks for having me, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here. This is the first time you meeting my wife. You and I met earlier this this year, but it's the first time. Leisure. It's nice to now put an actual phase to the cartoon version of you because your book is a heavy rotation in our house. Like I told you before, so um, thank you so much for that. I mean, it made the transition for us to have that talk with our

sons um that much easier. So I appreciate that. And that will tell you also to how you kind of inspired us. So keep on keeping on brother, Thank you, queen. I appreciate it so so. For the people that really don't know you yet, please just tell them a little bit about yourself and tell them how you made this this decision to becoming activist. Um okay, well going and raised in the bronx um Um. First, I was a basketball player when I was young, and I guess my

knee got bad. So I started playing basketball and I started hip hop, and you know, I was real. I thought I was good. People telling me I was good, and I got signed to def jam unviolated records by Chris Lady alright, Peter Chris Liy. He was the first person that signed me. Roughly right after I got signed, I got convicted of robbery charge that I actually never did. Ended up spending seven and fourteen years seven years out of a seven or fourteen years sentence in prison. Wow.

So of the peak of my career when I first was getting signed was scheduled to be pretty much the biggest hip hop artist, the next next best thing, they said. And I ended up spending seven years right when that sun So did seven years. Came home in two thousand and six. Um, and while I was incarcerated, you know, I just I learned a lot about the system, about the injustices of the system. You know, were so many

young black and brown youth in there. That was coming in sixteen seventeen with thirty years for crimes that didn't amount to over a hundred dollars, you know, a lot of a lot of older guys that I was in there was only twentieth years sentence for supposedly robbing somebody for a white woman for one dollar. Her pocketbook supposedly had one doll One of my closest friends, he actually just came home probably about a year ago, and um, he was one of my mentors. Brilliant, really brilliant guy.

And he was explaining to me his case and I you know, we were just sitting there one day, he was talking to me. We was reading something and he started telling me about his case. He's like, you know, I got locked up. You know, he said, when I was young, you know, we used to do a lot of stupids. I used to hustle downtown, you know. He used to hustle downtown and selling drugs whatever. And a white lady told the police that he robbed Mm hmm. He didn't never see any I've never seen this lady before.

So I got arrested for this robbery. And she said that nobody did anything to but they walked up to her with a gun and said give me your purse and took her purse, and she said she had one dollar in the purse, and he went and he was fighting. He was fighting the case. She wasn't hurt nothing. They gave him in twenty five years, but twenty five years for a one dollar crime pretty much. So that really

stuck in my mind. And it was when, you know, when I was in there, there was so many stories like this from young kids that was it just was in proportionate to a lot of these white kids that was going in there, that was going home in two or three years, were way worse. Crowns, million dollar beselment charges and all types of stuff. I start realized, you know,

it was it was disproportionate to our communities. So when I came home being a hip hop artists, having notoriety from that, being from the streets, understood that a lot of our realities were different. We have been taught the wrong things. We had glorified stupid things, and I was a victim of that, and a lot of our kids are victims of that, and the injustice system utilizes, you know, the fact that we have been taught wrong. What can you do? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because you are a hip hop artist and my wife and I constantly have this conversation about how the mainstream media and on all of these outlets that utilize our culture to sell records and sell TV shows continuously put us in a negative light so they can continue to push us through the injustice system. Can you talk a little bit about how that made you feel as an artist in the type of music you want to put out,

in the type of things you want to push forward. Yeah, that and and that that's that was my first step into activism, you know, when I realized that I had been lied to and have been taught you know something that was the reality that we were taught to glorif like when we went to prison when we was young, it was some type of badge honor because a lot of these cruser was coming home from prison. They had

the jail stories. So my how they had the gators on and they was on the visit and you know, I had, I had, I was getting packages and all of this stuff. And they come home they were doing worked out. So you're looking at the whole block is glorifying them, and you think that it's something to go to prison. You're like, wow, actually, in your mind in a in a funny way, you like, I want to go to jail. I want people to look at me like that. I want to have this disrespect, you know.

And when I went there, I realized we have been to everybody in there, and to come home, you know, it's it's surrounded by people who you probably would never talk to in the street, you know what I'm saying. So it was a false narrative, and I wanted to come home and dispel that narrative. And I understood how hip hop had created that and not created it, but it had it had glorified and unilized that, yeah, and utilized that that false narrative, and it was feeding that

to these kids. And I realized when I was a rapper, That's all I knew. So I grabbed onto that same thing I fed in too, glorifying violence and negativity. I fed into that, and and I was celebrated for it, you know. And I realized that most of the artists who who are trying to sell positivity, who are giving us, do you know, enlightening things, they're not celebrated. We we gotta read. My thing is we have to make that cool. It wasn't cool for you to be a conscious rapp.

It wasn't cool for you to talk about doing things positive, you know. So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to come home and not make it corny, but still make it cool. I know, I understood what our communities gravitated to, so I wanted to tell the stories truthfully. Well, not only was it was it not to cut you off. Not only was it not cool, but it wasn't lucrative because if you look at conscious rappers, they weren't giving the big deals, they weren't put wasn't behind them, right,

That's why I wasn't cool. So and if it's not cool and it's not lucrative, then why would I even go that route exactly right, you know, So it becomes just a moral stance that we have. And that's what it was for me. It's like I felt like I was cool. So I felt like I can make this cool. You know what I'm saying. That's what the reality is. We we dictate what cool is. They don't need to tell.

So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make being honest and being realistic and being you know, and having real integrity, having moral LUs and values something that was cool. So when I came home, that's the path that I want. I wanted to dispel the jail myths and not make y'all think it was cool. Going to jail wasn't nothing cool about but an each we ain't shooting and killing each other. Let's figure out how we're gonna build. Because I know you have another initiative

called kings. Uh, Kings, don't kill kings. Kings stop king, Stop kings. Can you talk a little bit about that, Well, it came from my organization, you know, I wanted I started called raising in Kings and me dealing with at risk youth and and and and retraining their mind state and and re giving them a right to passage, retraining what they believe real was what manhood was. A lot of our kids, the definition of manhood has been tainted

and something that is not. So I started raising kings based on that, and then you know, I wanted when based on when Nipsey lost his life, you know, knowing that he lost his life to another black man and most of the time that's what's happened in our communities. But you know, I started the initiative Kings stopped killing Kings,

in which we did. We already did fourth Marchers. Um, we do a lot of different I go to different detention centers, different schools, and you know, just trying to traine the monster, because what it is is we got to identify each other as brothers, as family because when you identify someone as a brother, a family member, you don't want to hurt them, you don't want to kill him.

So that's what we don't got to reaffirm. I've realized that we've taken the neighborhood out of neighborhood for a reason. It's just the hood in the you know, neighborhood, but you don't see that as your neighbor. When you start seeing that person as a neighbors, somebody that you got to protect and that you're supposed to love, you know. So I don't use the hood and I say neighborhood. I'm from the neighborhood because my neighbors are participants in

the hood. These are people I want to protect, I want to love. I want to make sure that the kids are safe. I want to make sure that the old woman feel safe. I want to make sure that the other brother that if I can do something to help him, that he understands that we all in lived together.

That's putting the neighbor back in neighborhood because you think about it, the hood is there's a negative connotation around neighborhood, you know what I mean for some people unless you're from the hood, and then it's different because that's just like home, that's where you're you're used to getting that love. So showing the differentiation between putting neighbor back in it

for our young men, I think that's definitely that's definitely key. Um. We were talking about what's cool my son, right, so it's cool too. For example, glorify the guy who comes home from jail. So you think about now social media and what's cool. You know, people are young, young kids particularly are glorifying these lives that they see on social media.

So now that you've taken the stance as an activist and use your social media platform to push this, what do you think about Don Lemon's call out to celebrities who don't post in the height of protesting this year, people who may not be using their platforms to um

you know, continue this uprising in the fight. Well, I agree, you know, I say that all the times, like if we have a platform, and you have a voice and you'll connect, if you really say that you're full the upliftment of our culture and of our people, and why

not utilize it to say something. I just did a panel off the Double Excel Freshman and in which we interviewed me and the rest of my unto Freedom organization, and we interviewed the next up becoming Freshman, and we was talking about that and and they identified with the fact that they have a responsibility. I think when you have a voice, you have a platform, and you've and and you've profited or for this complete then you're supposed

to give back. You're supposed to elevate those things like I say all the time, I wanted I want my favorite basketball players, football players, artists, everything to have some social social responsibility. I want you to feel like you owe it to us, because I do. I feel like to all exactly you should feel like if you do, and you should want you should actually want that responsibility because this culture and these people put you in a position to have these things. So you have to speak out,

you have to speak up. Right now, We're we're in such a uh life changing time and error that the more people speak up, you really can see change. Like that's what it is like. The more that everyone is is conscious of that and they're speaking up and they're saying, hey, we don't like this, and we're not okay with this, and I'm willing to make a stand, and I'm willing to do something, and I'm willing to sacrifice something. You can actually see that the tide is changing, you know.

So we need as many people as possible to utilize their platforms and voices. This is the way I talked to my my wife about this, because she and I had a little bit of a not a disagreement, but we had different ideologies. Because as a mom, when things

start to get real heavy. The first thing she wanted to do was take care of her family first, and I said, I understand that as a woman, and I understand that as as a mom and a wife, but we also have to understand that when we utilize our social media to go back to these people and say, hey, we're doing X, y Z, we need your support, so we don't have a problem asking them for their support.

Now they need our support. So because we asked them these hundreds of millions of thousands of people for their support all the time, we have a responsibility to be their support system because they can't necessarily reach out and ask us for it. So, um, when we had this conversation, was like, you know, I never thought about it like that, and I never thought about where she was coming from, from the maternal instinct of having to protect home first. So we had to come to like a common ground.

And then they'd be like, you know what, You're gonna find a way to say it in your time, but you got to say something, definitely, And I didn't realize that it would be tone deaf of me to just pretended if this was not occurring. Although I was very aware within my household like that said, Um, but I had to know that there were, you know, about seven thousand people who supported me in my journey to where

I am now. That was owed you know something, you know, whether it was me posting about it, me doing content around it, it has to be highs and lows because we've always taken people through the highs and lows of our our journey. So and that leads me to a question to you about black women, because you speak up on behalf of black women all the time. My son, and there was one thing you said that that me

and my wife were talking about yesterday. We were watching what was the documentary Black Boys, and they were talking about how so many black men in prison are in prison because of the woeful cries of white women, which America puts white women on the pedestal. If you attack a white woman or you become a villain to white women, you will be dealt with accordingly. But for black women, and when the black woman cries, it's never heard. And

you've you've been talking about this for months. Can you speak a little bit about going through the Beyanna tailorcase and everything that's going on and what you've seen over the past couple of months. Well, you know, this Brianna Taylor case is its personal for me, and it's also something that I realized throughout the cases, how serious and

how disrespected Black women are the most disrespected people. You know, you say it all the time, and I say it all the time, but I think that with this case, it really made me pay attention because when you know, when Sandra Bland happened, I was fighting because I always fight for black women. I'm surrounded by Black women and women just in general or all the time. It's strong, you know, so I'm very aware of the responsibility that

we have to fight. But when this Brianna Taylor case happened and I really started to think about it, I had never seen a black woman get justice like I've never seen I've never heard the case but black women killed by the police and somebody was even charged, I've never heard it. I've heard one time in in in in the officer got a way. I was fighting for elder lady in the Bronx named Debra Dana who was

shot by the police officers. She was a sixty seven year old woman and she was mental health and they called the police to the house and she picked up a pair of scissors and the police shot at three times in the house, said that she was a threat to him. She was sixty seven years old, and I'm just trying to figure out, why did you need to shoot this woman, you know? And they be four and I fought and I protested for forty straight days in front of the preteen I never forget. Every day rain sleeps.

And I was out there and they finally charged. They charged the officer, but he beat the case. But other than that, I'm never and even that there was no justice. I've never seen a black woman received any level of justice in America, and that really really bothered me. You know. So when I was out here and I started getting in tune with the family and I started really understanding this case and just and now when you see what's going on now, the rabbit hole is even deeper. When

we talk about going on with this case. You have this man, Daniel Cameron, who was quote unquote a black man, who literally decided that he was going to circumvent due process. Like he literally decided, you know what, this case right here, I'm not gonna give it to I'm not gonna let him see his day in court. I don't believe he did it, and I believe it's right. So, you know what, I'm not even gonna present this to the case because based on my my own personal beliefs, I think it

made sense. And that's what people realize that with the grand jury, that the district attorney has a right to present whatever they think was done wrong. So he purposely omitted the bullets that went into Brianna Taylor. He purposely admitted that. So now the grand jury is coming out saying we didn't even we didn't even know that this was part of the case. Can you talk a little

bit about that. It's it's just crazy when you sit there and you think about that, like, how did they just justify How do you just say that we're not even going to present that this even happened. Like I understanding that there's an outcry by the world saying that these officers need to be arrested. The whole world is saying it, and you made your own decision that you're not even going to let it be presented to a jury to for them to even decide whether we think

it's some they need to be heard. Just have due process, you know, what I Many times we've got arrested for things that we were innocent for and they had no proof and said, well, we just gotta arrested. You go to court, you know, fight your case, let them take their case. Let don't let them have their day in court. They took some woman lost her life over so much negligence and cover ups and illegal things, and you decided that that wasn't even pertinent to give to a jury

for them to even decide on it. And that's the problem. And I and I when I watched your post, that's what you're continuously arguing. You're not even in here saying they're definitely guilty. But though you're saying let's let them have their day in court, you don't even want to let them have their And that's what black people don't understand. That is crazy. That is really crazy to me. Like I I sent jail for seven years for crime I didn't commit. I went to I had to go to

and they had no evidence. They had one person saying he did something. I went to jail for seven years and you're telling me we got bullets that went into a woman. They didn't even when this grand juryman they didn't even search the woman's house. They went they were to search for ran to search the house. They ended up killing her and never search the house. So you what did you go there for? What? What was the whole the whole purpose was. We came there and had

a search for them. We was looking for something. You never did anything that you came there for, and you killed the woman and there's nobody responsible for nothing. Like this system is is rigged and it's and it's not broke because it's working the way it was designed. Say that again, it's definitely working in this design. I tell people all the time, like it wasn't when they had this system in place. It was never supposed to benefit black people. The constitution, none of this was supposed to

benefit us. So that's why it doesn't work for us. And all the time, we really need something different. It's a it's a slogan that I said, but it's really we really actually need something different. We have to reconstruct what justice looks like. You know, when a when a justice system and in the government no longer fits the people, then it's not fit to rule. Like we don't the government works for us. We don't work for the government.

So if everybody is saying this ain't right, and y'all trying to tell us it is, well, how do we continue to listen to laws and rules that don't fit us? You know, it's funny to say that. It's funny to say that because our producer Trible said something to me yesterday that was son in South Africa when they ended apart time, they didn't amend the constitutional rights. They got rid of the constitution that existed prior to that and

created a new constitution. And that's what America needs to do to represent black people as more than three fifths of a human because right now, underneath all of these laws, and this is what I think black people need to understand because I hear people argue all the time, you know what, what do you expect to happen there? This is legal, Yes, it's legal underneath constitutional laws that do

not protect and stand for black people. That's what we're fighting for, changes to the constitution, not changes to just police officers, because that's the big argument BLM is anti police, their fascist Know that it's far deeper than just like not liking somebody because of their skin color, which is I think a lot of people like a lot of white people are like, well, I have black friends. I you know, like, not all black people are bad. It's not. It has nothing to do with that. It's the system

in place, the constitution. White supremacy is destruction. It is the system. It's not white people in general. And that's what people don't get. And and the police structure is built around white supremacy. It's deep, though, Bro, what you just said was so deep. You just said white supremacy is not white people. It's the structure in which we exist. People do not want to hear that. That's why they keep trying to point to people. But that's so deep, bro,

that's deep, and it's eloquent. White supremacy is not white people, it's the system in which we exist. Damn my sound. You need to write another book, brog were I thought all these explained. What if anyone follows you on social media and it's not trying to just be a troll because a lot of people on social media just trying

to be trolls. If anyone's on social media that just listened to the things you say and what you stand for, it's not hard to understand why you feel the way you do, especially since you were a product of a system that was designed to enslave you. You understand what I'm saying. You know firsthand, You've been there, you know. But my thing is this, I take it because I understand. If you look, I was going to write a post. I was like, you know, they called mon Luther King coon.

He was one of the most dangerous men in the world. Malcolm X couldn't even get buried. You wouldn't buried, right. You understand what I'm saying. Jesus got hung Like if so when when I when I'm wanted talking the trolls, I'm in good company. The first person in the world and all of this, I'm like everybody that I idolized, it was told the exact same. I have no I take the so with a grain AsSalt man, because I understand that my mind state, it's going to trigger people.

It's gonna scare people because it's not something that you're used to. I don't just follow. I don't follow like the sheep, like I actually critically think things I and I know, and I followed my moral compass. You know what I'm saying. I don't go along like just like he said, it's legal. No, legal and right is two different things. I know, right wrong. You know what I'm saying, and and and based on the Lord. If the Lord is built on something that's wrong, then it's wrong. I

don't care if you're telling me it's right there. Somebody was saying one of them the I forgot that. The guy's name. He was talking during the interview that Charles Barkley and and Shaq was and he said that the officers said they did it by the book. He said they did it by the book and the book. No, it wasn't the white guy. It wasn't Kidny Smith, the white he did say that. He said they did it by the book. Then we got to fix the book.

And that's what it is for me. It's like, I don't you can't tell me because it says somewhere that is right, it's right, like one plus one is gonna be too. You're not gonna tell me it's full because somebody wrote it in the book. So this is what we're dealing with. People are comfortable with somebody telling them something that doesn't make sense, and I'm not okay with that.

So I'll fight. I'll give a troll sometime when I got time, if I got t see the best part for me is the people who actually have the time to troll. So instead of using the time to troll my soign tell people how they can actually get involved and be actual social activists and not just people talking a lot of smack on online. But where will people start if they really want to evoke change, whether it's on their community level, state level, national level, give us

some give us some tips. Where can where can they go? It's so many ways that you can go. There's so many different things. Because everybody is not gonna be a frontline activist. Likely they're not gonna take months away from their family to move Kentucky to stand on the front line. They're not gonna go to jail, they're not gonna risk their lives. They're not gonna support fans, they're not gonna put make those sacrifices. And it's cool some people are

gonna be on Instagram and tweet about it. As long as you're doing something that's and that is evolving us, that's pushing us somewhere higher. Like there's so many different things. You just gotta find your entry point. We got people that come here and were in Kentucky and they come bring us food because they can't be out with us. They bring us fool they mail us um all types of health things. We've got people that sent us. There's

so many different entry ways into this movement. You just gotta find out what it is that I do that I know that I can contribute everybody. Some people speak, some people don't. Some people support the people that speak, some people financially support organizations and people who are doing the work. It's just so many different But I just say, we don't have the right to do nothing, Like I don't care what you do, but you can't just do nothing, you know, like people be on my page like yo,

you're always doing this, Why you're not doing this? And that. I'm like, well, okay, cool, maybe you're right, but why don't you do what you say? I'm not You got oh, you got a lot of arm chair critics, critics without credentials. With my sister Linda's do something. I don't mind. I might not. I'm not perfect. I can tell you that I'm not doing everything right all the time. The thing the places I'm missing, why don't you do it? You can create that because I created what I did create

what you feel needs to be done. But you know what bothers me thought. Even even in you're saying that my song, people will say, why aren't you doing this? For stuff that you are doing, but it's not publicized because they don't want to push that narrative. For example, the biggest argument against bon l M or against any any organization like Until Freedom that's pushing forth the changes, well what about black on black crime? And they go on my song's page all the times, but you don't

care about black on black crime. And I sit back and I'm just like, dude, this dude has a whole platform where he's focusing on black on black crime, but you won't see it in the news because they don't want us to talk about that and that, and it's things like that, And then what you just said that made me realize in order to be an activist, you have to understand that activism is understanding the fact that people will not like you for promoting change that will

evolve us as people. And once you come to that that point in your life, you can truly be an activist because the trolls don't matter, the headlines don't matter. All the bullshit that comes out don't matter because I know what I'm doing it for. And that's that's what I applaud you for, bro, because you found your pocket, you found your niche, You are true to that, and you're not gonna change based on people saying I don't

like my song. You know what I'm saying. And I think I think you need to be applauded for that, because it's hard being a black man just existing, but trying to be a black man that promote change and the black man that stands for black women. Forget about it, Like now now you get it from all angles, because I've even seen black men come at my song for promoting black women and be like, oh, you know what about black men? He talks about black men all the time.

Guys like, can we can he just not just focus on this for right now? We're focing on this right now, right now, we are focusing on black women. Can we not do that? It's it's it's it's a very it's a very um unique situation for me because, um, I'm a person that my reputation is what I care about, Like like I care about how I'm perceived based on the way that I moved, you know, like I've never when I was young, and I wasn't a person that had a lot of money or anything, but I had

a good reputation with people. Anybody that said that, you know that I actually came in contact with most of the for the most part, they said that that dude is a good dude instead of do So Internet was kind of tricky for me at first, attacking my character

because that's all I ever had. So you can't attack my character like you can say anything about but my character is really what is for me, So that that was really hard for me at first, you know, and then lately the whole attacks, Like you said, it's about what about You don't want to talk about what's going on the bronx and they killing people every day. You don't say nothing about that. And in the black and I say all the time that you know, I don't, I don't. I don't use the term black on black

crime because it's a false narrative, not real. There's no such thing. Because it's proximity crimes commit crimes in the areas where people are closest to them. That's who commit crimes those crimes and white communities are committed by white people to everybody. So that that term right there is is designed to make it look like we are more violent and we are more prone to crime than anybody. And people don't understand that poverty creates crime. Poverty is violent.

You don't go to communities where black people are thriving. There's no crime in those coolies, you know what I'm saying. So when you go to the hood where people are hungry, there's crime in those communities. You know, there's violence in those communities. If you put any people in the in the conditions that you put these black people in that you say are committing these crimes, they could they do

the same exact thing. There's no different And if you go throughout the world, the same level of crime, violence is The overall thing is poverty. And tell people that all the time. So I understand, I come from error, I come from a time. I come from a place where most people would just want to get out. You know, most people really just trying to figure and when they get out. If you look at most of our athletes and when as soon as they get out of that that era and they get out of that area, and

they get out of that community. It's no more crown. The crown changes. So we understand what it is when we talk about defunding the police. That's what defunding the police means. It doesn't mean we're trying to we want anarchy and we don't want police ever. Know, we want you to take some of the billions that you're giving the police and give a couple of those two community activists.

Give a couple of those two UM community organizations that can actually come you know, that actually prevent crime, because police don't prevent crime. They don't they locked you up after you commit the crime. They don't prevent the crime. They only prevent two present the crimes. So the crime is is is gonna be able to be stopped by me?

Because I know everybody in the hood. So when I go to the hood and they like a certain suches beefing with sudden such, I sit down with both of them, like what you're beefing over, and the respect that they have for me is gonna bring them to the table. So that's a murder that we stop. We got we actually got crime, you know, UM crisis management programs in Queens and the Bronx in Brooklyn with former people who are gang members and and people that came home from

jail who actually prevent the crimes. So if you get them, if you allocate those funds to them, you'll see the crime change. You'll see different changes. But no, they don't. They don't want to do that because they want if fit's a narrative, they want to say, you know what, We're not gonna fund those communities. We're gonna make sure that the schools is the wordst the the health is the words. We're gonna make sure everything is the worst,

and we're gonna put a pandemic in the hood. And then we're gonna say that only a sense you businesses is the is the liquor store. So they can't go play, no sports, can't go hang out, can't do nothing, but you can get liquor stand on the corner and that.

And you're bringing guns in the community and saying, oh, look how look at the savages like this is like this is what this is what they do it to us, and and and and and most of sometimes we get so frustrated with us and we blame us and we don't realize and then they say, oh, you just want to make an excuse like this is common sense. It's been the same play over and over that they play. They know if they give us the same opportunities and

the same resources, that we're gonna prevail. And it's it's done purposely. That's what the reason why they don't. I think. I think what you just explained was was brilliant because people don't understand what defund the police is. They think the defund the police meet just just fire all the

cops and let us do it for ourselves. But what you're saying is allocating funds for programs that can help promote wealth building and time management for young men and women who have nothing but time and resources to allocate energy, which obviously makes sense because they funded they defunded education, like the time they took all of the acting and all the all of the stuff, all the arts out of schools and now these kids got nothing to do but go to corners and just sit. So what do

you think it's gonna happen? And their mothers don't have jobs. They frustrated, you know, so what do you what do you actually think it's happened? It's funny people have people have yet to create the correlation that the increase because what they're saying right now is the increase in crime in the neighborhoods is because we're all screaming for defunding the police without thinking that the increase in the crime is coming from the fact that people do not have jobs.

Like people do not have work. There are millions and millions of people who do not have work who are trying to find ways to feed families. But y'all want to say we're in a pandemic, Like for really, you don't they realize how traumatic this situation was, being locked in your house for months, Like I was going through trauma, like I was dealing. I was angry all the time, you know, I was frustrated. I had to start creating workout programs from my stuff, Like literally, I had to

do things because my mind I was losing. I found myself drinking more like like you know what, let me just take a drink at every night, just like, yo, I'm looking at the news. They're showing the deaf count. You're gonna die, Like so a young kid in the house going through that. Nobody who ain't who's not who hasn't really even massive this emotion who doesn't even understand what you think. He's just still developing and he just surrounded by that all day, all day long. Like we

are in a crisis. We are in a crisis, and poverty is the biggest form of crisis. So when you snap, when you put all the rest of that on top of poverty, what you think you're gonna get? Bro, We're gonna have you back on. We have to have you back because this conversation is not it's not over, This is just the beginning of the versation continuing. So we appreciate you. But before you leave, can you please tell everybody where to find you everything that they can do

to find you with everything that you're working on. Okay, So my Instagram is my son n y General. You can follow me there. On Twitter is at my song um follow until Freedom so you can be up, you know, updated about what we're doing to fight for Brianna Taylor. We're doing a big march October seventeen with Brianna Taylor's family in New York, so we want everybody to come out there with us, UM and just you just follow me on those those platforms. It's not hard to find.

We're back. Y'all all right, and it's listener letter time. Um, we have someone here who's a huge fan of the show. They say, thank you, thank you for being being willing to be vulnerable and transparent. My question is about your stance on activism and what you think is Okay, I understand the anger that black people have. I am angry, but when it comes to looting and violence, I often feel like that behavior sets us back and takes the attention off of the mission. But I'm hearing so many

conflicting views. What do you think to me? This is simple, okay, I I do not What what bothers me the most is that the same people who have a voice on looting often silent when it comes to the murders talk about it, which means you mean what you tell us is that the property and the businesses and talk people. Yeall care about sheet rock, then you do about the blood running through our veins and as and as a small business owner, as a small business owner for the

past ten years, I understand that businesses are important. But let's be real. Majority of these businesses that are in our community are not owned by us. They constantly disrespect us. They are owned by people who don't even live in the communities in which they act. The people in the need to patronize their business, so then when their businesses get destroyed by the same people they disrespect. You cannot be upset at the people. You understand what I'm saying.

You cannot ask a marginalized people who have been terrorized, brutalized, and criminalized their whole life to now be civil civilized but responding to your brutality. So what you're saying to me is listen, I know I know I killed you. I know I shot you, I know I shot your kids. I know I locked your people up. But I'm gonna need you to just be calm and don't do what we've been doing to you for four hundred years. That to me is what when people say to me, you'll

shouldn't riot and loot. That's what you're saying to me. Man, this woman she said it's so eloquently on this clip. I wish I could find that. I have to dig

it up. But there was a woman that was speaking about looting and she started off talking about like a monopoly game, and it's like, all right, so I'm gonna give you this money and you know, I'm gonna give you this money, but I'm gonna take this from you, wanna take that from you, I'm gonna take that from And it's like you keep taking and you're taken with all these promises of things that we're going to get

and it's never it never comes. And I mean, let me tell you how many times I should I feel like we should pull that clip up at some point and you know what I'm talking about. But she literally was just like, the hell with your building, the socio economic damage that was created to black people, and why we respond by damaging your problem? Absolutely absolutely, So it's a really it's a really um you have the kind of total line between like, you know, promoting there's no

there's no total line. I don't I don't think that we promote looting. No, we're not promoting it, but just saying also holding people accountable who don't understand why we're looting. Right but but but we can't glaze over that. You don't promote looting, right but looting and writing is the voice of the voiceless. You've taken away all other options for them to get their point across, which is why they're looting and writing, protesting, the kneeling like that earlier

in the show. You took all of that away. You said we couldn't peacefully protest, we couldn't nail, we can't march. We don't have people in positions of power or politicians who can help us get changed. We have to get your attention. You want us to stop looting. Pay attention when we hashtag, You want us to stop looting, Pay attention when we kneel, Stop moving the goal post, stop hijacking the narrative, and listen to what we're saying, and

we'll stop looting. That does that's not promoting looting. But you gotta understand. If you're a child, right, if you're a child and your whole life your father has been whooping your ass, whipping your mom's ass every single day, there's gonna come a point when you grow up and you become a man and you say, what, I'm tired of these ass whoppings and I'm gonna hit this man back.

When you decide, after take an abuse for four d years, that you're gonna hit your abuser back, you cannot then play the victim as the abuser and say this is wrong. You know, especially especially since this company, then let's come this country was gained off of a riot. You celebrate the Boston tea Party. You celebrate Christopher Columbus, who pretty much looted and rioted the indigenous people to get this land. These are the things we celebrate here in America. We

have a Columbus Day. Very selective. Is that not ironic that we celebrate we celebrate looters and rioters when it's not black people. So let's be clear. We're not condoning looting, We're not promoting it. What I am promoting is that if you listen to us, we won't loot and we won't riot, But you cannot then point the finger at

us when we do feel that's just what it is. Well, that was a great listening letter because it encompassed something that I think that we didn't get to discuss in social activism, which was what was happening, the rioting and the moving. Um. So thank you for that, that listener. But also, this is not the first time looting and rioting, like we said before, it has happened in America. This

has happened in every social change forum. Every time we got to that point, there's always been looting and rioting, and it's his American as American pie. There you go. And if you'd like to be featured as one of our listener letters, y'all email us at dead as Advice at gmail dot com and you can email us about almost Emmy and everything. Yes, you know, give them, give the email one more time. That's dead as Advice at gmail dot com. D E A D A S S A D V I C E at gmail dot com. Alright,

moment of truth time, Moment of truth time. You want to go first? You want to go first? Umman, I can go first. Um. I feel like with this whole talk of activism, what it looks like, the social activism, the social media activism. The biggest thing is taking an introspective look at where you fall in this change system,

picking a point, picking a position. It could be one position, it can be two or three, depending on what your interest is or where it lies or where your strengths are, and then investing time and energy in that as opposed to clocking other people on what they're doing. Because the time that you're spending clocking this person or that person, celebrity or not, is time that can be spent. EVO can change where you can see it, where it's tangible for you, where you have that strength. Do that? Yes,

do that? Do that? Do that? I agree, and I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback on that. To me, social activism is a personal choice. How you choose to be an activists should be something you do daily. And I want to give this to the people because everything you said, I agree with everything you said, but I want people to think about this. If the Underground Railroad existed in Harriet Tubman would not be on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, but she'd be getting shipped done. She beginning it all

the way done. So we got to think about that before we go out here and start to point out who we think I'm not doing enough, take an introspective look and realize am I doing enough exactly? Alright? Be sure to find us on social media, y'all dead as the podcasts and of course I'm Cadine I am, and of course I am devouring. If you're listening on Apple podcasts,

be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. D dead Ass is a production of I Heart Media podcast network and is produced by Dinorapinia and triple follow the podcast on social media at dead as the Podcasts, and never miss a thing