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Welcome Welcome, Welcome home, y'all. This is our mini pod our.
Good brother and friend Bakari had to make his way to the courthouse.
He couldn't get a court date change, so.
We're gonna bail him out them out.
Fortunately he ain't go to jail for civil disobedience. Right now he's helping out a client. But I get to have this conversation. I love my one on ones with my brother Andrew Gillham. He is one of my favorite former elected officials, an incredible, incredible political strategist. He's organized
so many people over the years. And we were having, you know, really this deep dive conversation in our main show about you know, nation building and the structure of the house that remains, if any remains in this country, and then what we should be building an alternative And by we I mean black folks first. Doesn't mean the allies can't come along, but I am thinking about self preservation in the communal and cultural sense in this moment, and so AG that's.
So because we're the ones really being done, you know, targeted and just swiped out.
I mean, just take it out.
Yeah, And so we have to think about what is needed for the present, what's needed for future generations, what's needed so.
Our ancestors will be proud. Andre.
I can't tell you the number of days I wake up and I'm like, are we like disappointing y'all? You know, I got Harriet. Look, you know, I got my hair. I'm like, here, Harry, is you mad at us or not? I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm like.
Is this our fault?
I literally was in a session with my therapist yesterday and I said, doctor Tamar, I really am asking like are they disappointed in us? And I really asked myself like what could we have done differently?
And I don't know.
I think if there's anything, it's working together better, removing like the wounds and the ego out of the way, so that we could better strategize and not worry about who's leading on this particular effort or that particular effort, so that we can act actually advanced.
But I really want to hear from.
You, so I want to keep with you on this theme here about whether or not ancestors are you know, I think the beauty is one we may never get the definitive answer.
Maybe we'll take some relief in that.
But but when I think of the answers, is I think of wisdom, And I think our wise ancestors predicted the clawbacks, they expected and prayed for, and ushered in and played a role in the advancements. But they in their lives lifetimes saw the clawback and then the advancement, and then the take back, and and and it is a well worn journey for us to have some progress on one day and have some backsliding on another.
And what I think.
If there was a thing I'd say do differently. First to Democrats, we may have some left some allies who are on the listening side of this. It's really important that folks don't see what's happening with these congressional districts as solely political when it comes to black folks. In fact, I would say overwhelmingly it is not for black folks a d versus are reaction that you are seeing, that you're hearing that we are experiencing. I am not.
Tow out the frame.
Because Democrats have exceless seats or access to less seats
than not no higher and revels. I mean, I'm thinking of the going from property chattel slavery, a middle passage which brought us to this foreign land, speaking of step forwards and backwards freedom, and then Jim Crow right representation, and then Sharecropper and I mean member of Congress, and then hey, hey, rat's is that back rest of that back rights at that back to then have a record setting number of black people in the United States Congress.
Mark the day.
The decision by the United States Partisan Supreme Court and the cal A decision of Louisiana that affected an entire nation, that individually signaled the decline in black representation in the Congress of the United States from that point forward, I don't know that we will ever reach an apex there again. I don't know that we will ever reach an apex
in number there again because of this decision. So all of that is bottled up in the anger, frustration, fear to have voice and representation and to be able to make demands, but then to be able to make good on those demands by being a person who can sit in committee rooms, vote something up or down, and then deliver.
Something to your community.
To now not having that, so I was just say, first say recognize that this is not that for us, be a good ally if that's what you are, and acknowledge that that's not the trade off that we're experiencing right now, And then I would say we have got to be as a community more strategic with what we want. Yes, when we decide to put our weight on somebody or something to win a race, black people chose by them.
But total on before we before we get into choosing candidates, because I honest, this is what I honestly believe.
I think that we are cart before horse people.
I think we're the exact opposite.
But let's here, you do I do, I don't know.
I think generally, I really do believe we're cart before horse people because what we what we do is despite all of our efforts in building this thing, we still will allow ourselves to be guided by processing systems and
strategies by folks outside of our community. So I'm not saying that we're not practice thinkers and doers in that system, but I think that we so confine ourselves to generally speaking, and this is a hyperover generalization, but we but writ large, we so confine ourselves to that system that we don't imagine what we actually need to thrive.
We're in survival mode.
So it's again it's not criticizing the fact that we know we need to live, but it is saying it's very limiting because we're constantly going from one crisis to one crisis, mitigating this harm to that harm, and we're never thinking.
We're never allowed or give ourselves.
Permission the spaciousness to be like, now, what does thriving look like?
And so I guess what I'm saying ag is like, nor.
Does the practicalities of life for us oftentimes support it?
Right?
Yeah?
Yeah, so if we're I think that if we took a little more time. Now am I talking about years, I'm not em talking about months, I'm talking about some hours. Probably because of how smart and innovative and creative our folks are. That's why we're going to live a long time, because we, naturally artists are going thrown back to the maino. Right, you know, like you have to be when you don't have nothing else, you've got to be creative and dream big.
So's say, absence or not having is the mother of what's to say, is the mother of invention?
I don't believe.
Basically, when you're without something, it creates.
It is the it is the.
Mother of of of invention. You create when you don't have Yeah.
Yeah, and so in this imaginary country, to.
That end, necessity, that necessity is the mother of that's it, I said, when you have need, but that's it.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Yeah, I guess what what?
And I don't all the way remember what I was saying, But I think that the general point is.
Because you said we were always creative people.
Yeah, well, we can find the time that we need to.
We can find ourselves to the systems that exist and not and not dedicating the time or energy or space to the systems we deserve.
And so can we example this with like soapt for instance, would it be like a convention and then out of that convention we would barter where our vote might go.
Yes, it's just that simple.
Like I just wanted I shouldn't say that that's what you were.
Yeah, because I don't want to.
I don't want to belittle or be condescending to our people.
I believe we have tried this. You know.
My favorite thing to talk about or reflect upon is the nation time documentary documentary that examines Gary, Indiana of nineteen seventy two.
And I've went and talked to people who participated, like why.
Did it fall apart? What do we do wrong? What can we learn from that? I mean, Andrew, they had delegates in the thousands from all over the country, and.
We don't have that now, and I think we need that now.
And I think at the time, our people were so hyper focused on integrating into the other system. You know, even Reverend Jackson's tone change from the amazing speech he gave there to integrating into the system. There's some utility they saw into integrating into that system. But why can't we hold both? You know, like I feel like we've got to hold both. Fine, be a part of the system. We need people who are inside systemic influencers, got it, shifters, changers.
I'm not saying influencers like in the social media centers right shift it paradigm shifters inside the system.
But we also need builders outside of the thing.
So when that system crumbles, as we're witnessing, I didn't know it was this fragile agy. I got to tell you, I knew it was, But God, in a matter of days and weeks and months, we're seeing the whole thing fall apart by singular, one vote at a time. What do we have for us on the other side of the thing. We poured everything into so much so that we don't have anything left for us.
We don't have the Gary system.
Yea to stephen A.
Smith's uh, I don't know if it's a plea or a It was but ass stupid as far as I was concerned, and highly uninformed. But the suggestion that can black people consider giving their votes to the Republican Party to see whether or not the yield what we get from that negotiation would be greater than what we've gotten to this point, from from from from Democrats? How how would the system of trade of barter, our support, our vote, our stand with you power one party or the other,
depending upon who's coming with it. How does that correlate to to to his suggestion? Does it connect at all?
Do you see the.
You know the connection I'll draw and this may be where we part weighs a little bit. I'm not a Republican, I've never voted Republican. But what I will say is there's a reason members of the CBC founders of the CBC said, no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent interests.
I think that if we can cast party aside and see where our real interests lay, and if like, because we don't know what's about to happen in the South now, it might be Dixiecrats that raise up rise up right, that is not going to necessarily be in our interests. And so I'm not you know, vote blue no matter who, Like, I want to know what you're talking about, you know, if you're talking crazy.
Like again, I'd say it all the time.
We have a mayor in Seattle Andrew that's waging war on people who she should be agreeing with eighty seven ninety three percent of the time on policy, raising war and so I don't. I don't support that overall. And she's working families party. So I'm real confused. Told Mo, I'm real confused.
I think that we have to but we have done that, yes we have.
We have to know people know how to do that of the box because we did it when we left the Republican Party.
Yes, So I'm just saying, like, but here's the thing that I would tell us to stretch beyond too. When we left the Republican Party. I'm not saying aligned with
any party. I'm saying aligne with our interests, with our demand and I'm hoping Andrew, honestly, like, in a perfect world right now, what I would love to see happen is we have our own ALEC, our own American Legislative Exchange Council, but as black and we are making sure our legislators are equipped to push bills in and through their state houses, state sentence, and to the deaths of the governor so that our needs are met.
In a perfect world, Andrew, we would have our version of this Tea Party.
Many of us have been talking about this for years, since before twenty sixteen, probably since twenty twelve.
We need this.
Thing because we know the Democratic Party needs to be pushed and we damned Republican Party need to either be pushed to the left or push off a cliff.
It sounds like the British system of coalitions, which a lot of democracies have, so basically they have to coddle together. That's it, desperate interests within the chamber to form a governing party. That's what I want, and in exchange for me getting my folks behind you, this is what we expect to be on the agenda, what this coalition will fight to deliver, and if you fail us, we will
collapse this government by removing our coalition from your majority. Yeah, this is what's happening about to happen right now, and you're here with these governments fall and they have to get a new prime minister. That's what happens part of the coalition breaks down.
I like that because it also gives us It doesn't make a locked in, It makes us locked into our priorities. And I think that's the other thing I hate, even sometimes on the show when we talk about things is squarely political, because what we're losing.
Is that the heart of policy are supposed to be people.
You hit on this in our main show as well, like we can't lose our morals or our human decency while we push policy forward. If policy is moving forward, the people should be moving forward. Those two things should be inextricably linked. Is what are the things that we can be doing as a people in and outside of a political system to make sure that the people are advancing I say all the time too in speeches, ag like the first thing that your grandmother asked you if she's still alive.
Mine are both passed.
But the first thing that they would normally ask you when you walk into the house is what.
Period. That's the first thing.
And what what I've been surprised by, Andrew is I thought that was just a black grandma thing, white grandmother's two you know, Latino grandmother.
No, seriously, I've been blown away by it.
But what that tells you is that their makeup is centering that humanity.
And the basic needs of the people.
First, if we can have your grandmother's political party, the whole nation will move forward.
The children are fed, there's no elder that's starving.
And then after you ask people are that normally they say are you hungry?
They ask you are you all right?
And they give you permission to tell you where you're not all right, And then they try to meet that need too, even if they put a little they put that little folded up twenty dollars in your hand, or sometimes it'll be five dollars. My granddaddy used to do give us dimes and nickels po chat, but you know it would be right, Well, those are the basic needs. How do we move so far away from our grandmother's values.
Right, Yeah, you know it's so funny. We oh man, we give so much in our society to the robber barons and tycoons who you know, the Bezos of the world, the Elon Musks of the world, who are brilliant. You want those brilliant people around because they did something. And I'm thinking Elon Musk wasn't the first hybrid vehicle. He didn't introduce that into the space. What he did was advantaged himself off of billions of dollars of public investment,
money and research that produced a certain guaranteed science. And his preference was to make it a little more glamorous and luxurious. And he had a hustle and he did it. The SpaceX going to space. Brother, the American people did all of the groundwork on that, trillions of dollars and research and money for that to take place, right, Jeff Bezos. We were doing mail to people's houses long before we
were ever a nation. The postal system proceeded the Constitution of the United States of America, and before we were ordering online, we had catalogs that came to the house that people ordered from, and then you had the QVC that came on the TV and you ordered over the phone, And those were just earlier iterations of a thing that you're doing right now. But let me tell you what
was most required for your success. What was most required and why it is not privatized today is a United States parcel service that delivered mail to every single home in America within the last mile and some of the most sparse places on this planet. And what you did
is you needed a public system to exist there. You once your piggybacked off of it for years until you were able to get an agreeable rate with fed X that you could get weights bargain between what the government rate was and then what the private sector rate was, and you borrow it between the two and til you can make it work.
And now you got big enough that you can.
Build your own. But the foundations of it came from us, the people, So they're not relionize these people.
And all I'm saying is is like that.
Actually isn't the most impressive part of how that thing happened. If you follow it from its beginning to where we are now. There are people who take advantage of public investments.
And figured out how to profitize. You know, a profit from it. And that's okay.
I'm not begrudging people anything, but your question around how do we go from you know, this commonplace of humanity? First, I think our obsession and in so many ways forced because of the societies that we are in of this pour yourself up individually by the bootstrap to go on and the great things. And then they call the names of the elon Musks and the Bezoses of the world, when that is a fallacy. That is not how they got what they got, that is not why they are
where they are. It is because of us, the beloved community that ushered it and paid for it first, and then people, as as it often does water fines cracks, figured out a way to then take what has already been invested in built by the public and figure out a way to profit from it. And so where did it go? Where did human Where did common Where did decent?
Where did humanity go? It went the way of the tycoonins because they're the ones that are putting it in front of us every twenty four to seven, This aspirational life that we're supposed to get to.
And what does that mean?
You have to fok your neighbor for me to get mine this zero sum game rather than where we once were, which was we build as we climb, we leave the ladder down and the window up. That's how we move forward as a community. Because I can't be doing well in my house if my whole neighborhood is in strict poverty and in constant need, because that makes me then.
The target.
That would be self defeatists. So I you know, so I understand very inherently. We understood that arizing tide did lift when we were all invested. But that's no more. That's no more. The comment and the human and the decent.
Is still there.
It just has to be serfd out through through the scar tissue that society has, you know, written on all of us through its usery. I probably went somewhere way different than where you were, Okay, I just know, I just I just it's just the way did the decent go really struck me because we are still at our core decent people, and the lionizing of these standouts I think has cost us a lot. And I don't think we have all set with and the recesses of our minds how much.
It has cost us.
Yeah, I think that's probably true.
I think what I guess we could implore our people to do is think about the real lions and lionesses in our lives. And again, it sounds like there's some consistency across grandparents. So maybe we start there and you know, kind of go up from there. Yeah, definitely our humanity. And as I'm looking at you know, there's again this article that came out about the Alabama cuts to snap benefits based on the new work requirements and the HR one,
which was the big beautiful bill. It's I mean, Andrew, there's gonna be a blood, blood bath, and I don't think it is wise for us to look to our legislators, and certainly not to this president and in any of the Southern states most of the governors.
To feed the hungry.
Except that that except that that need is going to run through our neighborhoods and their trailer parks, yes, and everything in between.
And they don't care.
This man, literally, I can't believe we didn't run this clip I meant to where he was asked about the cost of the war and Donald Trump says.
Back that I don't care.
I don't care.
I'm not worried about the cost for or what Americans, what Americans have to pay or something like that, and they said that they expect for that to be, you know, a political ad. There are MAGA supporters Donald Trump supporters who are like, this isn't who I voted for.
B Yes it is, but you know we're going to be on us, yes and only. And that's the part.
So if we know that these people don't care, we can't also turn a blind eye. We have to lean in to the need, even in our own need. And that I think is tough. You know, some people would say that's socialism. I would say, it's compassion.
I don't care what your furthest thing. It's the furthest thing.
First of all, it was it was exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered to this country through the GI bill. It's what he's what he delivered through this country through the setup of the social security system, the medicaid system, all of that stuff overwhelmingly popular in this country. But becoming a multicultural democracy meant that those benefits had to be extended to everybody. Yeah, and that is when the tycoons got to work and said if they get you lose.
Well, and you know. I know we like to shout out FDR.
Let us not forget he's also responsible for Japanese internment two people. Absolutely I was, but I just you know, we talked about a new deal and providing access.
You can't lock up some of the people now because I agree.
And by the way, most of those benefits went exclusively to white folks, and it took special acts of Congress to them in executive orders to then extend those same benefits. He said, we can't have our boys and girls coming home from saving the world and not have access. But they weren't. They were not thought of in the origination of these things.
So I completely get that.
But I'm just going with all these things that are now Socialists were bedrock so long as the bedrock consisted of.
Only white people in America.
Yeah, but all those programs, they weren't built. We didn't force those they did. We weren't designed for us.
Yeah, that's right, And you're saying they should best.
I'm saying they were. And why isn't this popular today if you still get to be the benefactor, but we share in the benefactoring as well. Yeah, yep, that's the difference. That's why they are no longer popular programs.
Yeah, well, here's to us building our own programs as well as figuring out how to make this country I know I said, as well as making this country better.
First, No, I'm just.
Mean not no, because why should the burden be put on the victims to then address the issue introduced into our lives by the victimizer? Right, the victimizer either solved the you know, it bears responsibility in my opinion, for solving it.
We have to hold them to the fire.
And just in case they don't, we're gonna go ahead and do this work.
We're gonna put it out.
We're gonna do this work.
Okay, Well, here's to being a firefighter. On the second part of this conversation, we invite you all in to speak with us and weigh in, sending your videos, your comments, sending yeah, sending your videos and comments, and let us know what you think about this topic and how we move forward as a people.
As always, this is our mini pod, Welcome Home, y'all.
Welcome Home.
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