DON' T MUTE DC H.P. Live at Connect Beyond Festival

I'm going. Because then and from that point on, I was like, if I meet anybody that has a doctor in front of their name, I will After going through that, and I just did it. Like I just watched her. I was like, call that person bout a prefix. Thank you doctor. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here in Asheville. Hello everyone him. So, introduce yourself a little bit of your work and uh, we'll get into some questions for you. Sure. So, my

name is Natalie Hopkinson. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Culture and Media Studies at Howard University. UM. I'm also a thank you any Howard people here familiar with Howard yeah, and uh. I Most recently, I was a co founder of a movement called Don't mut d C around Go Go Music, preserving Go Go music and culture and the life and people of the Chocolate City. Let's go. Yeah. Any y'all been through DC before, you know, you got me, got any d m V sny P

GCS anybody. So uh, if you're familiar with me, you know I believe you cut me open. I believe the Pacific Ocean of Los Angeles. Boy. But my mother and I was saving this story for the States. But my mother is five generations Chocolate City, Like, so we go my mom's life and everybody's there. Everybody's born there, they buried there. You know. I was naming some like four League Cemetery on Bladesburg Row. That's where my whole family

is at. You know what I'm saying. Um, and I spent every other summer in d C with Grandma and all nine of my mom's siblings, you know, bouncing around Capital Heights, everything which is bounced around the city. So I I have a deep love for anything d C um and including Go Go music. But here's my story. So my cousin, one of the I'm at the tail end of my cousins. You know, there's like two under me, there's a million of them above us, right, because she

had nine siblings. Right. So he would bring these tapes back to CALLI, these these gogo it tapes, and I would be like what is this? Like, I just I didn't let taste. I did not get it. I was like, these are bad recordings. You would not understand. Yes, I was like this and he was like, no, okay, now listen to this he brought. He brought chunk Yard dang backyard boys. You know what I'm saying. Was it Chuck Brown that brought them all to the city. And I was just like I don't I. I was like I

don't understand. Like I don't understand. Until I was sixteen and it was my turn to go to DC and we went to a go go I was like, now I get it. And that's the whole thing about go go music, which is d C. It's a cousin of hip hop started in d C the same time that hip hop started the seventies. So d C is to the Bronx, you know, sort of like parallel um and but it's live music. It's about twelve people on stage, multi layers of percussion, cow bell, sim bolts, Timbali's conga drums.

He's got a lot of Afro Latin rhythms. And when you hear it on a tape, the tape is really just like a memento the experience. Yeah, it does not translate at all. The experience is it's a conversation. So the music is a call and response between the audience, and so the band is actually the audience is part of the band, and so unless you're there in that moment,

you're not gonna understand that. Yeah, it's so beautiful. And I grew in such appreciation for that because of like you said, like experiencing any thing, understanding what go go means to d C. It's a native grown born sound um. And then after that I started recognizing it in other groups like so so when you the first time I heard uh crazy and love yes, like Rich Harrison produced that D Yes, that's go And then do you guys remember a Marie yea what thing? Just you know what

I'm saying? How the timing is Like I was like, I think that's going you know what I'm saying? Yes, And me being in Cali like nobody knew. I like, why, what what are you talking about? And I was like, it's it's DC, It's Go Go, you know. Yeah. No, So I have a very um special moment for for Go Go. There was one time again one year becausin Jeff took me down. There is a U Street that's got yeah so yeah with the one of the it was one of the one of the one of the clubs.

That's a house. That's probably all of them, right, but I don't know whatever. It was like a three story house. The basement was the open mic and bar none maybe it's DC Live. It might have been there. DC Live was downtown, so it wasn't you Street, but anyway, whatever, There's a lot of a a lot of places. But it was like when it was the second time I experienced it and it was an open mic. So I was like, okay, I have to Callie Boy underground hip hop battle rapper.

I was like, oh, I'm getting on this, but I don't care what y'all. You know what I'm saying. So so I went up there told the dude like, hey, look from CALLI you know what I'm saying. I do. I do hip hop music. Back there I would love to, like if is there any space on the list, And it was like yeah, yeah, you know you're talking yeah, bamo, you know what I'm saying, Like you know saying yeah, you know, we we got a little time at the end,

you know what I'm saying, We'll get you there. So she did the full and then um so then towards the end he was like, oh yeah, now we gotta care CALLI. So like I came in there and I'm like, now my nerves is going and I'm not used to wrapping over a band so so much like sound, I'm used to wrapping over horrible microphones, so like I have to know how to project. So I kind of knew how to project because I'm used to rapping on like karaoke machines. So I was like, I know how to

do this, but like that, but I did it. It was like, oh, pat myself on the back slated slay that mug became friends ever since. I'm like, I'm still tapped in with those guys, like ever since. It was just one of those but it was one of those like Yo, I just wish everybody could travel and experience this because I was like I don't know how to tell anyone back home what that's like. Yeah, I mean

it's a very Chocolate city experience. You know. It comes out of the segregated history of DC, segregated school systems, um, you know, and and it's as horrible as segregation is, it did allow a space to protect these traditions that really go back to West Africa, you know, our roots. So I started off writing about gog I'm not a DC native. I came to Howard um in the nineties and I was an arts writer at the Washington Post.

Then I went to do my dissertation. I didn't want to do my PhD at the University of Maryland, and I did it on Go Go music. And so that's part of what I did was sort of really looking at these roots. And it's so go go. It is not just also the music. It's fashion, you know, it's the sound companies, it's uh people who sell the tapes. It's a whole multi million our industry in d C. And um, you know. As DC has gentrified, it's one

of the most intensely gentrified spaces in the country. Uh go Go has been under attack through gentrification, but it also was attacked during the murder capital years of d C, when it really got blamed for it, got scapegoaded for all the murders that took place. Which I always say that the you know, the conquer players were innocent. They

were totally innocent. They just happened to be there once uping went down, which a lot of things were going down when you have an epidemic of drug addiction and gun violence, like things go down, and somehow this beautiful music um got blamed for that. And so in the last three years with the Don't U d C movement, you know, we've had an amazing turnaround as far as people, more people coming to the realization that you did, which is that, Okay, maybe I don't understand this, but maybe

this is something that has value. Man, man makes no noise for that man that don't ut DC things so dope. I feel a lot of kinds ship to like that in gangster rap, you know what I'm saying, Like the music coming out of the West Coast to you know a lot of a lot of times for you know, the the inner mixing of like like you said, like this can you know guy playing the can guys He's like I just happened to be from this project, you

know what I'm saying. Like, so, I'm like, I'm just from South Central, Like you know what I'm saying, I'm running from the same dudes you're running from, you know what I mean. So, and and I chose and a lot of times, especially a lot of like the gangster rappers, like a lot of them chose doing music to get away from the violence. You know what I'm saying. It's like, well, this is who we are, is where we're from, it

is what it is. I'm not scared, but I'm doing this to avoid that, you know, and even to be successful in because if you think about, like at least how California's played out, and I've learned that it's a little similar to DC. It's like the way that our sections are. If you want to be a successful artist, you can't only do shows in the hoods you're good and like, you gotta you gotta be able to play in areas that have like rival here said, which means that means that I have to learn how to like

navigate outside of you know what I'm saying. So you pick up a lot of skills being able to be like first of all, knowing the grid, you know, and where you are when there's no maps for it, you know, kind of knowing where you are and then knowing, Okay, who do I check in with? Who do I tapped in with? Who we make sure is this and how is this? What do you need for me to make sure everything's okay with this? Okay? Because I really just

want to do this music. It was it similar or there to absolutely absolutely, and so you know, and the other thing that with the Go goes were also really a place to mediate. You know, this is a place where everybody is celebrating, a lot of people from different communities are coming together. They're also a place to sort of heal from a lot of the trauma that's going on.

You know again d C Murder Capital Days uh d C was leading the nation and gun violence and all these other things that we're going out which were because of the violence over the drug drug trade, people competing over profits and there were a lot of people who lost their lives. And much like New Orleans, you know, the second line and sort of like the brass band culture, the go go is that space where you can heal, you know, where you can mourn where you could remember

your friends, where you could be recognized. You go take your picture in the you know the spot, and you know a lot of times those are the records of people's lives that have been lost. So it's a really special space. That's beautiful. That's so beautiful, and it's and the more you more you talk about it, the more

I feel like it can be. Like the principles of it is like, yeah, this is like any hood, USA, you know what I mean, Like we have for California, we have an area in the Crunchhaw district called the murt Park that like was like for some reason, it's in between like a trade cribs and rolling sixty cribs like Nipsey Hustle and him like this is it's in

the center, you know what I'm saying. But they do an African drump circle every Sunday, Like it's like this is It's one of the most peaceful of my whole life. I can't think of anything ever. It's along the cruising boys in the hood, the Crenshaw Cruising Crenshaw that's on this that street, you know, But it's just the I remember my father bringing me on Sundays to the flea market,

like as a child Lamart Park, you know. And then Saturdays, I bring my my my little nephews, I said earlier, I'm a girl dad, so that my daughters aren't interested, but I bring like my nephews with me and we just kicking on Cranshaw and it's just but that space. We just knew how the space was sacred, and yeah, it's a sacred space. Um. It's a place for art,

communication community. Um. And you know, a lot of the questions that my work has been asking the last couple of years is like, well, where are the arts grants for those drummers? Okay, talk you talk, because where are you know? You we recognize opera in ballet as great American art forms, but you know their European art forms, and there are there are many other continents. So I'm not sure why, well I know why. But they all don't have to These art forms don't all have to

originate in Europe to be valuable. Some of them came right here on American soil, things like hip hop, things like go go music. But our public policy structures are not built to include them. And so that's a lot of the work that I've been doing the last couple of years, is really trying to really make these arguments and to try to help people understand that this is American art and it deserves the respect and the financial support. It deserves the space we make every American city, major

city makes room for sports. They will put their money into these stadiums. They will give tax subsidies to private people who are making money off of it. Because we appreciate that this is a special space. This is not to not sports, right, This is a special space where people come together as and this is something that our society values. And so we have to to get to the hood politics part. We have to be able that has to also extend to the drummers and the drums. Yes, yes,

it's like pay us too. Yes, this is perfect. This gets to perfect segue. You know what you're doing, what I'll tell you right. So, my my podcast I Do is called her Politics Will Problem, And what the podcast is essentially like in a lot of ways, like The Doctor,

here's an embodiment of this. It's just this idea that like oftentimes we feel if we don't have like formal or like academy education, that we kind of don't know what we're talking about, and what I found was that's just not the case right some of when in getting my formal education, I realized a lot of the ways that I made sense of history, politics, foreign policy, all those things were really just lessons I learned growing up with gangsters, you know what I'm saying, and just learning

how to like navigate the city. Like you know. I again, I'm just from South Central. I never gang bang the day in my life, but I knew exactly where they were, what they're doing, how they move, what offending them because I needed I needed to know to survive, like I have to know how y'all work right and in the same way like I'm I've never ran for office, not a politician, neither of you. But for you to survive

and thrive, you better know how they work right. You have to know how this stuff and what my encouragement to you is, like you probably already do this is nobody pointed at it. You understand what I'm saying. I think right now, you know, if we were taking the conflict in Ukraine, that's not complicated. You get it. You know you you've had you've had to deal with a bully, you know, saying, you know what the deal and feel

like to deal with a bully. You you know what they feel like if you're about to get jumped, Like, let me be real with y'all, let me show you, hi positive you're about to get jumped. You know, somebody's like surrounding you. There's three rules. Three rules is don't

let nobody get behind you, right Number one? Number two, I need to go psycho on one of y'all, right, because if I go psycho on one of y'all, the rest of you might think twice right, And if I could just hold on long enough, y'all might gas out right. And I'm like, if that's Crane right, Like, okay, you

don't surround him. You didn't surround it our nation, all right, We just gotta hold out, you have we have to show them that we got hard right and and and ain't nobody jumping in if you notice, ain't nobody helping right, everybody's standing outside like I'll throw you a batter two you feel me? But Yo, this is your fight, bro, Like you gonna have to hand over and you Crane like, Yo,

y'all gonna jump in. It's like, no, we because we don't want to smoke with Russia also, so both the point is you already understand this stuff, right, and it's just using what you already knew to understand what's happening right now, and then this is then and then and in your role in again building a better world. So

you're already abodying this. I want to ask you a specific question around that idea, Like, so you have your your school training and what you knew about your like formal training, and how to turn that into things that affect the community around us. What I would argue is, like that's real power. There's a thing with politicians called astroturfing.

I don't know if you ever heard this, but it's this idea of like, if you're about to do this rally, you know, you kind of hit hit the craigslist, you know, hit the d M. You start saying, y'all, here's fifty bucks, pull up out here, what draw some signs for you? You pull up so they pay people to come out for the for the for the rally to look big, right,

That's called astroturfing. But I know, dudes, right now, and I bet you you since you're so plugged into the community, you can send out three texts and be like, Hey, we're pulling up at this part y'all. Y'all pull up hunted people on the street. You know what I'm saying, Hounty people outside. You're like, Hey, we're gonna do a barbecue at the Carter Park in the whole city. Come out. That's real political power. Politicians pay for that. So what

I'm saying is like somebody like yourself. Ultimately, my hope for this show is to onboard people like us into policy. You understand what I'm saying, So that now we at gotta hate our politicians if it's a real one like this. Well, and I want to say exactly what you just described is really what the don't d C movement came about. So there was an issue where there was somebody who was playing music on a corner for twenty five years,

playing go go music. The neighborhood was gentrified. Gentrifiers came in demanded the music be shut off. Everybody rolled up. Everyone there was not I mean, you had people who came on the corner of fourteenth in New Street to watch Backyard band perform. So like the go go bands have that type of Natalie Hopkinson not so much right, but the go go, the go go bads. If you say Big g is gonna be at the quarter four,

you you gonna have They're coming. And so what we've been doing able to do with the don't U d C movement, we were able to rally people to come to defend that corner and to be able to say, okay, every everybody backed off. They're like, okay, never mind, We're gonna let him play his music. But then we're like, you know what, we got other things that we want

to say. So we talked about how they were going to shut down a hospital in Wards seven and eight, the blackest, poorest part of the city, separated by a bridge. These are genocidal policy decisions. We did a go go in the hospital parking lot, and every one of those council people they flipped the vote. It was twelve eleven one against it. It was the opposite, you know, when they finally came to the final vote. We applied it

to issues like school funding. They were going to take away um a new building of his black high school. Put that on our list of demands. We talked about UM return citizens. There was in a place for people who after having served their time in the district, they had no place for them to come back to the district. And so we did a rally on New York Avenue the middle of the work day. We had a thousand

people come out um to see these bands perform. And so that's what I'm saying is the power of these So again, Dr Hopkinson does not have that power, but I've read. What I do know is that the Go Go musicians have the power. And so once you pair them with people who are interested in different policy issues,

there's nothing that we can't do. And so we've been on a role for the last um last few years and really winning a lot of arguments, including making Go Go name the official music of Washington, d C. That was a law that was pfial, so they got remember, everybody's gonna remember what Go Go is, right, And and then now we're in the process of just figuring out how we institutionalize this, how do we do this? So and I was really like hearing you talk about that

traditional knowledge. So I tell with my kids so books, I'm a big fan of books. Yeah, I've written a few of them, I read a lot of them. It's a very efficient way to learn because you can learn, You could cross time and space learn about people's experience. Wonderfully efficient way to learn. But the other way to learn is by sitting down and talking to people, observing and having experiences. Those are like two ways that you

become smart and knowledgeable. And in our community we have a lot of talking about in the black community, you could just sit with elders. Yes, you know, you could sit with people who've been around and so you know, some of the work we're doing is around how do we make sure that that traditional knowledge gets passed on? How do we make these power structures respect the fact that there is a thing called traditional knowledge and there's

a thing called book knowledge and they're not. There shouldn't be such a great hierarchy between them. Yeah, you again, it makes a noise for that right there. You know what I'm saying, give give the doc or flowers. I like, I think you're right. I think about in my own life, like if I were to go back home and tell my grandma, like when she was around, like you know what we learned it, you know, blah blah blah, all they said, yeah this and is Grandma would say, they

don't know what they're talking about. Let me tell you what happened, you know. And when I tell you and I'm pretty sure you're the same, I would dismiss anything anybody else said, you don't. I don't care what the books say. When my grandma say they don't know what they're talking about, let me tell you, I'm like, I immediately believe her. You know what I'm saying. And I'm like, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for you. We just don't have a name for it. What she's calling

it is, that's the name of it. It's called traditional knowledge, you know what I mean. It's why you know what we say, don't cross railroad tracks. It's why you know, hey, don't go to that liquor store because it is this and is hey when you go to the store, make sure you buy this version and not that version. That's

traditional knowledge. And Grandma is the traditional PhD. She's the p o G. She's the one teaching things like even the food that we eat, you know, like these are the these are our cultural traditions, and that those are passed on often by women, you know, sitting around tables, and they just get the respect that they deserve. So thank you for giving her respect. Oh man, come on, get grandma or flowers. It's the thing she already It's

the crazy part to me. Again, it's like, but we we already do it, you know, we just don't name it. And I and I appreciate you naming it. And and again like once you do name it, now you can institutionalize it and give it its flowers. That's great. Um. And I think one thing you said, just going back to something you said where you were like, I don't have the official powers the go go players that do. What that translates to me is like, this is what

she described is what lobbying should be like. Right now, we see lobbying as like as a bad word, but it's just a bit. It depends on who you're working for, Like when you're lobbying, and like if you're working for you know, Lex Corp. You know what I'm saying, then yeah, you're lobbying is evil, you know what I'm saying. If you're trying to bend somebody's will for something that's just for a selfish game, and that's evil lobbying. What she

said was this, Okay, we have an issue. I know who got the Jews who got the cloud in the in the city. I'm tapped in with them. You're good with these people, you feel me, which is something again people pay for that to be good with somebody that knows how to get people, and say, if you're good with them, then do you know what I mean when I say you good with them? Am I going too far? Okay? Yeah, if you're good with them, then now you what you do?

Exactly what you said. You just pair them with the policymaker. That's called lobbying, you know. So rather than these big lobbying corporations you know what I'm saying, in firms that are just hiring kids out of college and just being like, yo, this is the project. Like what if we saw a world that had more like this, where it's like we're indigenous, we're grown from here, We're I'm good in the streets, I'm good in the academy, you know what I'm saying.

And I'm good with the council people. And I understand how all these things work. And this is again this is hood politics. Well, and I swe it was the Other thing I will start to add is with um when this this businessman who would sell ago tapes in addition to selling cell phones. MS. Donald Campbell. When he was under attack, the first person who came to his defense very publicly was a student at Howard named Julien Broomfield. And she created this hashtag don't mu DC and she said,

you know, what's happening is disgusting. Gentrification is horrible. And she said, maybe this won't change anything, but let's when we talk about it. Let's talk about this using the hashtag don't mut d C. And so I and my partner Ronald Molton, who's my he's an activist, so he's been in the street activists, um, you know for for years.

We created a petition on change dot org. We were able using this don't mut d C language, we were able to get eighty thousand people to sign our petition from every state in the Union, in ninety four different countries around the world. People rallied on behalf of the specific street corners. So, you know, so it's like you can use these tools. You know, you don't have to

be just tweeting in the void. You know, if you sort of pair it with people who are ready with plans and need to have a conversation and you know the other thing with my um with Ronald Molton, who's he's creating the Go Go Museum, cafe and d C. Now, which is another thing that's come out of this is that um, he's taught me a lot about lobbying. We were able to get three million dollars just directly for Go Go because we said, look, it's not enough for

you to just say we're official. We've always been official, right, So what what you gotta do is you gotta put some investments. And especially when the community was really reeling from the COVID pandemic, and so we were able to get direct relief to artists, direct relief, direct support for Go Go related archiving. And we're just getting started because d C is rich and so you know, DC has a seventeen point five billion dollar budget. You know, like

they gave us a couple of crops. So we're gonna go back for like really institutionalize in making sure that there's never a case that you know, DC Go Go music will be forgotten or muted again. Man, if there's one thing I learned about one thing I learned about government is oh they got the money, they said, like, don't let nobody don't let these people lie to you. They got it. They got it on them right. One thing I've learned, um, and then I'm gonna end with

this last question, you know. But one thing I've learned was like, and I'll be honest with you. I learned this from my white friends. Be real with you. It's and maybe maybe it's true for you, but it's let them tell you no. Like in the sense of this, if you don't ask right or just start doing, then you never know. Again, remember I talked about it in the terraforming thing. There was a lot of ways that

I had to rethink what's actually possible. The thought would have never crossed my mind that asked for three million dollars to go into the thing and asked like, Yo, hey, y'all got money for arts, we need it, We'll run it, like I would never ask. And if you say no, then some of my other again, another one of my white friends was like, Noah's a starting point. It's just like there's there's a way to get to yes. I

had yeah, and you cannot. I mean the thing is is with the art, like it sort of goes back to the drummers in the circle, Like if if we've gotten it in our minds and the public narrative is around art is a certain thing. Art aren't people who look like you or look like me? Right, then you don't even think like, okay, we're entitled to this money.

Like I'm like, not only do they need to do three million, they gotta do reparations for the last forty years that they hadn't had anybody involved in this, you know, like it's a whole lot of checks that need to be and you know, and we do it in a very systematic way. Um, you know, I do. I did charts. I did an analysis of arts funding in d C. I found that seventy eight percent of the funding went to white neighborhoods in d C, where where black people

are the are the largest ethnic group. Like, how does that make? Make that make sense? You know, the math wasn't mapping, and they tried to throw us off the Arts Commission for that. But then you know, my friends in the go go community really came to our rescue. They did another alley, you know, and they were like, yeah, don't, don't, don't try this with that, and they didn't. So it's it's our superpower, you know, our music is our superpower. Wow, man,

that's actually that's actually a better place to stop. You know,

our music is our superpower. You You, you have embodied what I hope for, what I hope to see in the future where somebody who's in you know, born and bread from the soil, you know, learned, never left the roots, you know what I'm saying, got into a position of access, brought people with you, and learned how to leverage and even like even deflect some of the Even in this conversation, you've deflected some of the like you know, some of the flowers and glory and was like, nah, it's a tine,

Like we come from this and that's and that's again that's another thing that I am going to assume this of you, like this just comes from growing up in a black and brown community. You just yeah, you know, you're not only we, it's we. It's always we. You want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together, that's the pros. That's how we have to do it. Yeah. So when you when you

don't deny that part of you. I know, for so long, when I was getting into the academy, I thought I had to shut off all of those lessons I learned from there and learn something new and I realized like, oh no, this is this is actually it's actually better to bring this to the table. Yeah. Anyway, doctor, thank you so much, Thank you y'all. This was incredible. I'm so honored your books outside. Yes, I have two books outside. She got two books outside. I got one book outside

called Terraform. She got two books outside. Again, if you want to read Work of Dogs versus Wolf of Work of Wolves, you know there it is. Thank you again, appreciate, thank you. Do you guys want to take some audience questions or you just want to oh yeah, oh, I'm sorry. We were supposed to open for Q and A. Any I mean, do we got any Hey everybody, if you're interested in asking some questions right now, I'm glad to come around with the microphones. Just put your hand up

and thanks for bringing the house lights up. Thank you darling. Well, first, I want to thank you so much. This has been an incredible inspiration. Um and I just thank the festival

for doing this and bringing you guys here. And my question is I'm working in Ashville with a lot of people trying to save trying to make sure that ashvill doesn't become Charlotte or Austin, Texas, or Bend, Oregon and all these other cities that have just grown really fast and lost a lot of affordable housing and a lot of culture, a lot of the culture built in culture, and UM, it is it's rare. It's it's like to

know that you did it by music is great. And I think that one of the things that I've gotten out of this is like the positivity thinking of it. As you know, we have to become more inclusive and sometimes I get really angry and I expose that in my in my writings and in my standing up against you know, the powers that be. But um, any any words of advice on how to keep that, how to build I mean I'm getting this, but any further thing that you can offer is great help. Yeah, thank you

for the question. Actually, right now as we speak, UM, I mentioned the the co author of the Don't U d C petition, Ronald Moulton, right now is doing a tour of Anacostia that's in d C's It's a black neighborhood in d C um where he was able to acquire his business UM with the support of the city, he was acquire to acquire the property um and that also inspired some really innovative legislation in DC that allowed legacy uh cultural business owners like him, uh, like a

bookstore owner, like the several cultural businesses were able to get there um to to get ownership. And that's really the only way that you can assure that people won't get displaced is if they have ownership. And so that's one of the I think one of the policy innovations that sort of come out of it is that, yeah, you can, just like you give a tax break to uh sports stadium, you can give a tax break to a mom and pop cultural you know, cultural organization. You know.

So we've were able to make those arguments, and we hope that other people um do the same. All Right, we got another question around here. Oh yeah, so I actually have more of a common First off, shout out the problem man. I've been following you since Humble Best Days, So shout out to you man. Uh doc, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate you just coming through. My name's best b E S. Thank you all once again, and uh just for sharing the light man, just for

bringing this to everybody's attention. Go go such a strong movement. You know, I got a bunch of family in DC as well, and just wanted to invite you guys, if you guys have time to try and go park. For those of you who don't know about Triangle Park, it is the last or one of the last remaining black cultural artifacts here in Asheville. And so we actually, me and my brother next here. Right before we came through, we actually just finished having our monthly meeting, just figuring

out what we were gonna do this summer. For those of you who don't know, we kick stuff off at the park. We do live jams, DJ sets, band sets, set up their play chests, all the stuff that should go on, so don't neglect what's already going on right here in the city. For those of you who don't know, right it's good to see you all up here. It's up to see that y'all came out to support them

as we should. Shout out to Jessica for bringing them through, but I had to take a minute to shout out just folks and Triangle Parks because we're trying to keep it alive. And if y'all have time, I would love to show you the park just to point out the artifacts. I know you're busy, I know y'll here for different reasons, but I had to point that out problem. I didn't know we aligned so much. Man, Like I said, I've been fooling you for a long time. But girl dad

got a cat for the exact same reason. So I felt you completely. I was like, man, if I love this little girl, that thing would be somewhere else, man, yo, and I got shot out one more thing. Man, if you ever need a DJ for your said, howl at me, howl at me anybody else and thanks. I'm gonna get my exercise doing this today. Al Right. First off, I'm gonna be really dense and ask you to spell out

that hashtag because I'm don't mute DC. Yes, don't mute d C, d O N D O N T m U T E. There is e C And there's a website don't mute DC dot com that has a lot of information that I shared. DC statehood is hugely important, like nationally, yes it is. What can we do? What can we do here in North Carolina to support that? So that's a really strong movement and definitely I think yes,

very strong movement. Really important DC gets statehood. That changes the whole political game in the United States, which is why there's so much resistance in places like North Carolina because it it mutes the power people who are already states. It mutes their power. UM. So I would say, I mean, there's I could probably send you some resources of the d C statehood. There's many organizers who's been doing working on this for decades, UM. And I really think that

now is the time. I don't know why people wait. Like the minute Biden got in, he should have that should have been the first thing he did so that we could you know that, so that we they can't just take away people's voting rights and all the rest of the stuff that they're doing. They can only do that and you know without um, without DC being a state. So I think it's very important. And thank you for for asking the question. Anybody else, Yeah, thanks UM, Thank you.

First off, great conversations. UM. I was sitting here reflecting a lot on what you were discussing about lobbying and lobbyists and just sitting here thinking that what we consider lobbyists is like the power is the money, Like those are the ones that are lobbyists. Um and just sitting here kind of trying to consider whether the issue is that right now the money actually has more power than people power or is that a mentality like what you were talking about in the beginning, Like our idea of

what has power is wrong. So this idea that like and don't mute d C like, actually people are remembering that they have power. Um. So I'm just I don't know, I'm rambling, but just kind of thinking. That got me thinking about like where is the power? No, You're you're actually nailing it. What what I have found? And I mean obviously you're actually doing the work, you know, but what I have found is like, No, the power is

the access to the people. The fact that like that's what I'm saying, Like they politicians, the money is to pay for access to the people. You know what I'm saying, it's it's it's getting people to the You know, why why in the world if you're looking at like a rally on on television, why are there people behind the stage? Like it's absurd, what type there's nobody behind us? Right? Like, why would you sit behind at an event? It's for the perception of power. It's to look like there's a

lot of people here. Most of the time, ain't nobody in front of them, everybody's actually behind, you know, saying because they need to look like they have access to the people. Right, So, so the power has always been again, can I send out an email? Can I send out a text? Can I make one phone call and get a hundred people outside? That's that's what they need. So then that's why you partner with activists with, why you hire street teams, why you do all that because they

actually get you. But if that street team, if that person like like their team is like no, no, no, no, I'm not making this call unless you cut the check for this, for this, for this, and for this, and if you don't, we're going outside against you. You know what I'm saying. So that's what I found. Yeah, and I think power is also so the part of what

money is paying for is just access to eyeballs. Right, So if you have a viral tweet or if you have something, if you've got you're able to command attention and bring a platform to issues, that's just as good as money. And then so so the social media part is really important, but also just the spectacle of people on the middle of a day, be it in the streets, shutting down traffic. That is a real signal to people, and that's really we've been operating off of that for

a while time. It makes people very uncomfortable, you know, to see that people could be rallied and engaged because you know, they really makes them see how like they're not seeing those people on a daily basis. So it sort of reminds them that you exist and that, you know, the threat is implicit. Is that, yeah, and you can go to the polls too, you know, and that's when

you're really threatening. So the last thing I'll just say really quickly is about you know, Stacy Abrams, I think has shown more than anybody how your street and she played a long game, her street game. You know, people conventional wisdom said that, you know, you you have to go for the you have to convince white people of this, and her thing was like, no, we have to include everybody who lives in our state. How about we start

with that. You know, why don't we go to the people who have not we you haven't been campaigning these areas. Let's get their turn out to be right. And she's turned out to be right, so so far, and that's why she's probably one of the most dangerous threats to the to the powers that be right now, because she's smarter than them, Yes, exactly. And she's because she's good in the streets saying she's good out there, they're like, okay, when when she pulls up, you don't want to see

her pull up. Yeah, if she pulls up, it's very different when they pull up. And and even to piggyback on what she's saying, like what that when those forty five people come out, then that then that person in power realizes like I don't have access to none of them. They didn't and you're just like, oh, I don't have as much pull as I thought, and you just showed me. And you can control the need the media narrative that way too. You can point you know, so you have

what the mainstream media is talking about. You actually have a platform to be able to tell people like, this is what we need to be talking about right now. So that's also very powerful and that's a currency as well. Anybody else, do you have one more question? Well, we are going to send them out to sign some books. Well, I mean, I hear what you're saying here, we tried to save a group of us. We had three fifty people.

We wrapped a big um for blocks to keep these houses that held affordable housing, true affordable housing from being displaced and those houses from being destroyed. We had four thousand signatures. We thought for sure this happened in downtown Nashville at twelve city blocks, and we wrapped it in in in sheets and those all those buildings are still there. It feels today like there's a real different tenor it's like, um,

it's not. It's like we did all of that and it fell on deaf ears, and it continues to fall on deaf ears, and you know, it's Urban renewal has been a horrible thing for Ashville. We used to have a thriving African American community downtown. It's great, and we just keep shoving them further and further. Everything gets further and further out, and it doesn't and I and I hear what you're saying. And we haven't done the music part,

but I hear what you're saying. But even the media paints those of us who are really about equity and affordability and climate change in the truest sense are being are being looked at like we are the you know, the pariahs. So how it's it's hard to stay the course when it feels very much like it's not we're not gaining and they're gel like YouTube, y'all just need to talk, you know. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.

And I would say also um Conservative has invested a lot of money in framing and how to frame issues, and they've just and they're they're so excellent at it instead of they're able to like spin you off of what you know, like Kelly Uh Kelly and Conway, she was like she was the embodiment of that. You could ask her a direct question that she's like dancing and pure, you know, and it's like and they'll never give you

a straight ant. They'll they'll put you off the scent and then sort of point the finger at something else. And so what you have to do is just be stronger and be smarter and keep changing it and coming out of a different way and you know, partner with new people. Give this. I love this idea that I thought about that like right here, you know, get a hot DJ, you know, put it. That's so what we do in d C, we do uh conversation and crank.

That's what we do. We don't have it. We just did event at the Kennedy Center a couple of weeks ago. We have no illusion that people want to hear our policy broccoli, but we they do want to come see Backyard Band, and so they don't have to hear a little bit of our policy, our conversation, and then they get to hear Backyard Band, and so it really like

it elevates the issues. And so you know, and I think once you really work with gosh, you work with the artists, they're the most creative people you know, in in in being able to um express themselves, reach audiences and just keep switching up the playbook. And I think that's the big thing is just and don't don't give up. So I think with us, like with d C, d

C people have said that Chocolate City is dead. That's been the narrative for for many years now, and so it's got us to the point where we believe that we don't even exist in DC anymore, when we're literally forty something percent of the population. Still we are the largest ethnic group in d C. And the narrative is that we don't exist anymore. People don't even try for

our votes anymore. And what this movement has done, um, is that it just reminded us that okay, maybe it started with a little street corner, but we could win a battle. And then once you start winning, you want to win all the time, you know, and so you just coming up with new ideas, more people come into the fold, and just keep working at it, and don't let them give up. Because we're progressives outnumber the people who want to maintain the status quo, and so we

we we we are going to win. I do think too, I want to hear what you have to obviously want

you have to say. I think in in in addition to what what y'all have done well in me, listening is like is not allowing the person to build a strong man to define your terms where you tell it orm What happens a lot of times and progressive movements is we come up with a word, a term, and idea and then it's told back to us in a very different definition and then weaponized like critical race theory, like oh oh yeah, this seventy year old concept that

you just discovered. You know what I'm saying don't understand and still and still don't know to means you know what I'm saying, Yeah, you know. But but if we let you go, well we're defending. It's like, I'm not defending what you're saying because that's not critical race theory. I don't know what you're talking about. You know what I'm saying. So if you like, I would even encourage you to be like, not even let someone redefine your terms. No, this is this is no, I said what I meant,

I said what I said. You know what I'm saying, and this is what it means. I don't know what you're talking about. We are saying this, and I think that that's something your movement has done. Well, it's like no, go goes in art. No, it's an art, an American born art. Okay, what you do. But for thirty years they got to say, but but it's violent, yea, And they got away with it right to the point where I was doing my dissertation, people were like, why would

you want to do that? That those criminals that you know what I'm saying, And like every it used to be every talk I gave, I would every time I got a question about violence, and I would very calmly say that the ConA player is innocent. The conga player was just playing his congda. What does that have to do with that? You know, the gun laws and drug epidemics and blah blah blah. These are two different conversations. So yeah, so that that I would say, don't let them,

don't let nobody. Take your time and redefine it like it's your words. Thank you so very much. I just want to thank you both for coming here. And my response is actually to the audience and not y'all um, as a black Indigenous person who lives in Asheville and who's watched how things go mostly talking to the white colonize people, like we had someone talk about Triangle Park like we're not gone. These neighborhoods that you've pushed us out of doesn't mean that we don't exist. We're still here.

We're sitting in indigenous land. The problem with the most of these movements in Asheville is that they're run by white people that are not resourcing the neighborhood. They're not going and building true deep relationships the black and indigenous you know, individuals and uplifting them instead, it's your faces everywhere, and of course nobody gonna come out and listen, because if you're speaking towards the inequities, you need the people

that are affected by the inequities. You can't keep doing things the same way. Ashville like acts like they're doing all of these things. We keep talking about reparations, we're talking about all of this stuff. But there is a multitude of beautiful black indigenous fire humans that live here that are doing these things. But our voices get stifled by your money, by your power, by what it is

you all think you're doing. If you just plug in, step back and resource tap in like you're talking about doing all this tapping in like we're here, how about you pay some respect to those of us that are here. Talk to our elders, go to Cherokee, talk to the people who own this land. We can't even be talking about reparation and talking about housing if we're not talking about land back like, that's why this stuff keeps failing.

Let's figure it out without white supremacy leading, because then we're just doing the same ship over and over again with a different toilet, and it doesn't work. Straight up tap in alright, questions, comments, anybody else? All right, look y'all, thank you so much. Please give them another round of applause. Yeah, this is here. Thing was recorded by ME Propaganda and East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This smug was mixed, edited, mastered,

and scored by Matt Osowski. I can totally say his name, guys, it was it was just stick. He's going by Matt now again because he got into some legal situations with the name Headlights. You know, common used to be called common sense. You know, tip t I was tipped sometimes it happened. Executive produced by the one and only Sophie Lecterman for a Cool Zone Media and the theme music by the one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips d J Shawn p. So y'all just remember listen every time

you check in. If you understand city living, you understand politics. We'll see how next week. Talking talking it