Is Our Safety Being Short Changed? | Angela Rye SoloPod

just really appea, I appreciate your patience. Today we're talking about something that I've learned a lot more about from being on the ground and from working with some amazing people. One of them is Pastor Mike McBride, who has become a fast brother to me. He runs an organization called

Live Free USA. He's the executive director, partnering with folks all over the country on community violence intervention programs, and just the other day we were in Detroit, Michigan, at a juvenile detention center facility where we got to speak to some young folks who have been impacted by programs just like Pastor Mike's, and I know that they could certainly benefit from access to resources like the ones that

Pastor Mike and Liftfree provide every single day. So I am doing this elongated intro because I am waiting to see his face and I'm wondering if there's a technical issue there. He is, Hey, Pastor Mike, how are you brother?

talk to you about. I saw, as the Bible would say, your counting is drop.

to come between one young person and another. It is conflict resolution. It is telling people your own heroing stories. It is helping people to understand the importance that life does, in fact matter. We have young people nowadays, even in my own community of Seattle, Sewer Park is we have the loop. Some kids just got shot at Sewer Park

the other day, so this work is so important. Can you talk about the work that you all have been getting funded through the federal government and how you plan to pivot now.

be together. People want safety and they want justice. People don't want to be criminalized in their own communities as a price to pay to achieve some false sense of safety, which has largely been the experience of most black folks in this country. What has now become known as community violence intervention. In the past, it may have been known in Shorthand as ceasefire, as focused atturrens, as cure violence.

It has now kind of largely been described as community violence intervention, and it is a menu if you will, a rising sector, a rising labor force and workforce of trained individuals who are skilled in public health interventions that interrupt lethal conflicts that are a result of interpersonal violence, largely with guns. And this has become now in our say third or fourth decade of or working and organizing, one of the best, if not the best evaluated public

safety community safety set of interventions. And thankfully in the last four or five six years, they started to scale all across the country. It is our life's work when I say, I'm talking about all of the peacemakers, all the violence interrupters, all of the community based organization senior executives, folks who've been doing this work for decades large without renunration or public appreciation. Community vised intervention is here to

stay if we can organize to keep it so. And it's righteous work for sure.

have some gaps, I did have some blind spots. I know these programs need to be funded, but there's something I think that happens when a policy maker or a strategist or even like a bill author has to come face to face with some of the victims or the victim's family member. So can you talk about how you got into this work and why it's so important to you now? Like what keeps you rooted and grounded in this work?

church to respond to this. And I heard God speak to me and say, what is it about the ministry you're creating where these children and their families will trust you with the salvation of their souls but not the safety of their bodies. These children were experiencing violence at the hands of police and in their own communities, and

the church was not being responsive. I went to Douke, came home, started to do more community work, particularly around this I was introduced to this work by you, Jean Rivers, Reverend Jeff Brown, Tenny Gross, folks who came out of the Boston experience of this work and began to do some of this work here in Berkeley, Oakland, and had to bury a teenager. Over five hundred young people attended the funeral. I asked, how many if you've been to more than one funeral? All of the young people raise

their hands. These are teenagers. Five funerals. All the young people still had their hands up. I got as high as ten, asking how many have been to ten funerals? Half of their children had their hands lifted while they were weeping, and I was reminded that whatever work I'm doing is not adequate. If the young people in my community are teenagers and they've been to more than ten funerals.

Whatever I'm doing, whether it's preaching, whether it's volunteering in the schools, whether it's getting people jobs, is not adequate because our children are not safe. Either they're dying or they're dealing with perpetual grief. And I found myself being challenged to not only be a proclaimer of peace, but also as much as I can, a maker, a creator of peace. And these strategies were the best way to

do so in a structured manner. And it forced us to organize people like the Larry's and the others all across the country, in my own neighborhood, to be face to face with elected officials, law enforcement leaders, preachers, and respectable black people in every city across the country where we work, and declare that our story of violence and trauma is not something that can be solved by arrest alone, that we need a radical intervention that is public health driven,

that is people centered, and more importantly, that is results based. And this is the strategy. There is no strategy that comes close to these menu of strategies. We have found a lot of elected officials and a lot of law enforcement leaders at the time were not familiar with these strategies, and we had to do organizing filling community centers, churches,

mayor's offices, and congressional representatives offices. We had to build organizing power to push our leaders to champion resource scale these strategies, and that work is still ongoing quite frankly, but we're in a good place historically. Now we just got to keep it cooking.

the Biden administration champion and signed. That those dollars were cut and it's been devastating, and it's it's important to acknowledge that that was just our little part of the cuts, but all the other kind of resources in the Department of Justice that deal with victims services and juvenile justice, and child protection and substance abuse. That all comes to evaluation of almost eight hundred and twenty million dollars were cut,

and it's devastating. It's devastating to all those who care about safety and justice.

to give out that type of service. We just paying on fifteen dollars an hour to keep them away from the street. We all know that if these kids came get into a program to give them a better outcome in life, they gonna tend to go to the left side to where somebody else can put something in their hands to help feed their family, help take care of bills. We noticed last year a lot of our students have

not committed a crime in eighteen months. They had the group down here called Kia Boys on christ shores around the whole United States, but we had seven in our program have not stole a car in eighteen months because we gave them an outlook in life to point their directions towards something that can help make them a productive person into life.

able to keep our lives on. Give some food onto my brothers and sisters and stuff, and my young My other brother underneath me, who helped me, also started this program. He's assistant director, Mark Moore. We hit the streets and next thing you know, I was able to take care of my family. But I also was hurting my family because at age eighteen years old, I was sentenced to twenty years. I was sentenced to twenty years and then I came back home when I was thirty three years old,

did fifteen years and stuff. So when I got out, I vowed to come back to my community to give them an opportunity to don't go down the road I went to, and I'm doing that. Of course, I learned how to start remodeling homes, doing electric plummies and stuff like that. And me and my brother had bought this property and we was rehaving it. Our whole goal was to rehab it and put it back on to the market and sell it. But we know we had a lot of at risk use. And I don't like to

call him at risk us. I like to say we don't want this at risk and not loving them and showing them the right direction. But we noticed they was homeless and stuff, so we start teaching them the type of trade and start paying them. They were the age fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. So as that went, we end up start opening up the program which became Our Brother's Keeper, the Game of Outlook and life to take a different direction.

And I noticed by looking at them saying kids, it was a reflection of myself, and I seen that they had no parents inside the house. One had a child when he was fourteen old, which I had my first son when I was fourteen years old. So I seen the reflection of where they head into. And now it's five years later and with this funding's being cut. I just noticed over the weekend we have our city was praising how the violence is down. Within this month we

done had ten to twelve homicides. Over the weekend, we just had some more homicide last night we just had another homicide. But these is now the schools is getting out, so now we really about to see the risks of homicide, robberies, breaking in cars, still in cars, and stuff like that because they cutting so many of these programs funding, these kids don't have nowhere to go.

how do we fix this? And so we talked about city funding and state funding, but someone named Adrian Jordan asked if these can be privately funded, if you all could raise your own resources to be able to make an impact, to have the similar impact that you've been having, and then the type of impact I know you want to see, Pastor right, you talked about all those hands going up at a funeral. I know you wish that there were no hands that could go up and hopefully

not even be at the funeral. So what types of resources can you raise privately? What do you need to see from the state and local government to be able to make up for this huge gap?

not because of one hundred people shooting each other. It's likely a small number of individuals who are caught in lethal conflicts and they are repeat their volume of fits. Those individuals are the individuals the lion's share of these resources from the federal, state and local should be targeting when we're talking about reducing gun violence. These strategies CBI

aren't necessarily attempting to reduce everything else. Although you will find that a number of folks who are engaged in robberies, who are engaged in other kind of violent offenses are also some of these individuals. Why is that important. It's important to say that because these are targeted resources that should impact targeted individuals or networks in our communities. And I often find that we think the problem is much bigger than it is, so our brains can't get wrapped

around how vitally important this kind of investment is. Now, there's several things that we have to acknowledge. First of all, the federal dollars were so important to us because many local mayor city council members, county boards of of supervisors, or governors, their state legislatures would not fund these strategies with the tax base of the local or the state, and so we had to go to the federal to

almost be an innovation like catalyst for these strategies. Now, we've always depended on philanthropy to kind of bridge some of our gaps. But just like a police department would never ask philanthropy to fund their police budgets, we're trying to get to a place in a moment where no philanthropy is being expected to fund public safety and community safety. This should be a bill a cost that the local

municipality and the state legislatures should fund themselves. And so yes to your person's question, we got to organize locally now that we know for well over a decade, particularly with the federal dollars that were infused into this post COVID. Now we know these strategies, we now need local mayors and local city council members to take local dollars and

fund the local ecosystems of these strategies. It would be great to continue to have federal funding, and we're gonna keep working to have federal funding, but every municipality is the richest institution in every city. More than philanthropy, more than a fortune five hundred company. Every local municipality can support these strategies. What we have to do is organize people, organize the stories, the ideas, and we have to push

in their local municipal budgets to fund it. In the meantime, if you're a philanthropic partner, if you are an individually wealthy person, someone with high resources, and you're trying to put dollars on the ground now to make our summers less bloody and less lethal, then yes, you should find an organization like our good brother here on the call,

or you can visit us and live for USA. We can plug you into all kinds of organizations locally that you can support in every city we're talking about all across the country. But resources are needed, and they're needed now.

health support. They all have a case manager, an individual person who literally case manages them so they do not fall back into lethal conflicts. They get some resources on the side to help them with some job training and reintegration. And so in Oakland, if your times that by two hundred, that's about four to five six million dollars just for a quarter, right, And so it's just really important to appreciate that the tax base has to fund this individually.

Wealthy people can help provide gaps and bridges for individual organizations. But if you really care about this work, and you care about anchoring this work, then we need everybody I'm talking about from the pastor to the CEO, to the teacher, to the nurse, to the parent, to the elected official to the police. Everybody has to get on one accord and and insistent. We will invest in peace making in

our communities. We will fund peace We will make sure that the resources needed for brothers programs, but also case managers and intervention specialists and violence interruptors that work will not be shortened because of an administration change at the local, state and federal level.

And it seemed like it might be a lot of money, but it goes so fast when you're putting kids through job training service and then they working for twelve weeks throughout the summer program making fifteen dollars an hour, so

the money adds up pretty quick. And then the professionals that you got around them to keep them stable mentally more than anything, to be able to understand their job training skills that they're about to get ready to learn, or just to note that they're in the safe environment to where they don't got to wear by toting a gun or anything else and stuff, as well as the

staff and let them know that they okay. But we are getting support now because we partner up with one of our church's City of Grace down here in Columbus seeing the good work that we've been doing. And Pastor Mike Young, a great man, he seeing what he was doing and he unders stay what the outcome would be by us not being evolved around the summertime with these youths. You can have a program, but if you if you don't have the staff to understand what they are about

to receive, it's just gonna be a program. But if you have a staff to understand what they're about to receive, and they see this every day and they living in this, and they know the aunties, the grandma's and stuff that to prevent, and if we start preventing, we won't have to be doing an intervention. So right then, doing all these cuts, now we gotta do the intervention of what's

about to get ready happen. You know it's already happening summertime, having any start already, and because of the budgets being cut, we know the homicide because we also work inside the schools, we know what's about to get ready happened. Within these next couple of weeks. My team is working at three schools, the most violent schools to be honest, with the gangs and stuff. So we got an opportunity to understand this is going to happen to this day when they had

this event over the weekend. They just had the talk ovent but were working inside the school. We already reading the text message the social media. They meeting at this time to go do fight and stuff. They actually met up at that time. When I made phone calls, hey make sure you try to get this prevented. Though two people end up getting shot, it was already on social media. What they're gonna do. So programs like myself and other programs around the city. Revenue it's gonna go up and down.

But I know personally for our program, which is really low, that have sixty kids come in every day from nine to five o'clock, and have we got ten staffs on their LSI w's mental health specialists and our ns. It's really not no money, but you're saving a life and that's meaning more to us. It's some money, absolutely, Wes.

what I will say is that yes, you have. And this is our fifteenth year. Live for USA is our fifteenth year of training pastors and congregation members to either provide programs to influence policies or to use their voices through prophetic proclamations to raise up peacemaking congregations. Of course, we could always use more, but we have as many pastors and faith leaders working on this as the number of pastors and faith leaders supporting Martin Luther King Junior

at the height of SELC. I don't know if that's a condemnation or something to celebrate, but it is worth saying that.

It's important to say a couple of things though. A lot of our pastors youth pastors, but whether they be our brothers or sisters, et cetera, their role is not necessarily to be on the front lines, because in every city there are already frontline workers, all right, So some of this work is the work of individuals like our dear brother from Columbus who was just on the church should not be replicating any new programs we ought to

be supplementing through advocacy and organizing. A pastor would do more, helped to organize his congregation and the surrounding neighborhoods and show up at a city council meeting, a county board of supervisors meeting, or the state legislature and demand that the local and state tax base be leveraged and invested in these strategies. I would have say, we got to bring organizing back because a lot of our work has walked away from organizing and power building and moved into

a lot of services. And while services are important, the systems have to be restructured. The powers have to be challenged. And that's what I would put the challenge out to every pastor and faith leader. Let's organize our congregations to be peacemakers through our voices, through the programmatic supports of these CBI efforts, and through the ways in which we challenge the systems.

the cuts are enough, But that's not true for everybody. Brother, right, we know there are some folks who need to know, Like, if I contribute my one hundred dollars that I have for this month to this entity, even if it's not the four to five million it takes quarterly, but if I can make a little bit of a difference, this is how I know this work is making a difference.

I'll use Oakland and Indianapolis as two great examples. We've been able, through the local funding of an organizers seventy five thousand dollars a year round about to unlock tens of millions tens of millions of dollars in both Oakland and Indianapolis, just two examples of many that literally fund dozens of organizations to do this work. And what does

it require. It requires us to have a person on the ground who is able to connect both the individuals directly impacted by this work, help them develop their stories, help them to kind of get in touch with the healing they need, but also be prepared to show up publicly, to speak out to elected officials in public meetings, to get hundreds of individuals to show up at a city council meeting, to get a hundreds of individuals to show up in perhaps on a prayer vigil or a peace vigil,

to get hundreds of individuals to support the programs that we've just heard from, like the one in Columbus. That kind of work is an investment of one hundred dollars a month. By seventy five folks could literally get us an organizer in each city, which then unlocks tens of millions of dollars in that city's municipal budget. Indianapolis has done an amazing work of getting that kind of stuff funded across multiple mayoral administrations. Oakland has done the same thing.

Orlando has gone six seven eight months without a homicide in their city because of this kind of work. It's no accident that when the organizing and advocacy of this stuff, spite the federal and some local state dollars, infused resources into our city and we saw historic drop in the

last three years. So I want to say, if we fund organizing, if we support advocacy, then that pushes the systems to reimagine the way they use their local tax dollars, and that in turn puts a battery pack in the local peacemaking organizations so they can wake up every day, just like law enforcement wakes up every day to do

this the police fighting and crime fighting work. Now we have individuals, some of whom are directly impacted, some of whom who've been trained in conflict resolution behavioral cognitive therapy, Folks who are being coached at our CVII Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago that doctor Chico and doctor Marcus are leading, David Muhammad, de Vone Bogan, Erica Ford. I can just keep naming names of individual who are

training folks every day to execute the strategies. We need the dollars at the local level to fund the strategies, and that happens through organizing and pushing people to do so.

just really want us to surround him. He is a shepherd, right, He's got a congregation and the flock he leads, and he's leading this work too. But it takes a toll on you when your life's work and the thing that you know you feel called to do has been hit. It feels like, you know, a failure, even when you didn't facilitate set failure. You know there are a lot of young people whose lives are going to be lost because of this very selfish, sick cut. And so I

want us selfishly to surround my brother. For the mayors, state elected officials, county elected officials, those of you who know you can help to impact this work.

where the pastor mics of the world come in. And so I just want to publicly thank you for all you do above and beyond this, but certainly in this work, I'm so grateful that you use something so traumatic, several traumas, to utilize it for good so that other young people don't have to have to have the same experience you had, or all of those young folks who raise their hands in that funeral. I am praying that you can continue to work to do the work to prevent funerals like

these from going forward. And most of all, I pray that in this work that you take care of yourself and know that here at Native Lampid you are always welcome home. But we're going to help welcome some of these dollars. Y'all. We didn't put out the buckets. The buckets we have the offering. We need the love offering to be These young people got to survive. Make sure y'all follow Pastor Mike McBride on socials. Where can they find you?

violence shows up in your own city. Just like me and Angela were at the UH the Juvenile Hall with Jalen and a whole host Michael Eric Dyson last week. Everybody should be connected to these young people. What did they say, Angela? They all wanted two things. They wanted guidance and support. We asked them, what are the two things you want? They didn't say more money? They didn't say a house or car. These young people in juvenile Hall told us the two things they wanted was guidance

and support. That is free, right, that's just availability. Let's show up for our young people. Let's save their lives. Let's make sure they can live free from violence and incarceration. And thanks again, Angel for having me.

Love you, brother, Thank you, Welcome y'all. Native Lampard is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.