Native Lampid is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reisent Choice Media Minneapolis.
I need y'all to make some noise, make.
Some noise, all right, So again tonight is about justice, community, power and connection. I need y'all up on your feet as I introduce our next guest to hit the stage, who will be singing the Black National anthem. I need you up on your feet, y'all show some love for Thomasia Petres.
Good evening, everybody, Thank you so much. My name's Thomasina Petris. Forty years ago, nineteen eighty six. I found my voice here. I became a singer because of this theater, because of North North Side, North High So I am honored to be able to lead you with a little help. Come on, and you're welcome to sing along.
Lift every voice hand, sing till their long heaven ring, ring with the hornies.
Of leave.
Liberty, Let our joy sing rise past.
The leaves, sneak skies, Let resign loud.
As the rolling scene.
Oh yeah, let's sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has talked, a sing a song full of the hope that the prayer has.
Broad broads facing the risezing.
Sun of a new day.
This new baby eagle.
Let us much arm till victory.
He's one. Oh yeah, let us my home to liberty. Here's one.
Oh.
Let my charm till equity.
Equity is one woe, one love.
Let us my charm till victory.
He is one.
Yes.
All right, Welcome home, y'all.
Welcome home.
Wait a second, they got to get my mic out. Okay, here we go. Welcome home, y'all.
Do y'all have any of those friends or chosen family members that are your bootleg Beyonce, that's ours down there.
Thank you, Welcome home.
It's a Pleasure's a privilege, and a pleasure and an honor in every other adjective possible to describe how it feels to be here in your presence tonight. So I just want to say, before we begin to give yourselves a round.
Of applause for being here with us tonight. Good evening, everybody.
I bring you greetings from the great state of Florida.
I just looked at my phone.
I think y'all are about five degrees here, maybe feels like below zero.
It's warming up. That's the Florida in it. You could thank me later for that.
But in all seriousness, I just I feel real humbled right now to be in shared space with you to hopefully this evening have some breakthroughs. If you came into the doors feeling a little bit shaky, maybe needing to be propped up on one side or the other, or maybe needing or feeling like you need a word something to pierce the tenseness of the space.
I hope that you find that this evening.
Maybe you're here because you are the person to.
Pierce the space.
Maybe you're the person that's gonna leave us all inspired and feeling like as we leave this share vicinity.
That will go out there and will multiply. But I got to tell you.
Just coming from one of the fifty states, you all have made us incredibly proud.
Yes, yes, yes, made us incredibly proud.
I know, I know that the sacrifice has been far too great and too often, Minnesota, that sacrifice has fallen right here on y'all shoulders. But I want you to know that by your sacrifice and through your service and by your example, you've really stiffened the spines.
Of many of us all across this country.
And you've set an example that as other communities confront these kinds of challenges that are being brought down by the people who are supposed to help us, but find it right now in their spirit to hurt us. And in the case is that we've experienced here, kill us. It's gonna take a mighty army. But I'll tell you we are greater than them. Every day of the week. We has got to keep at it all right, So God bless you and welcome this evening.
Well I'm gonna say this because we didn't say this. We are your hosts of Native Lampid.
I'm angelau Rae.
This is Andrew Gillim and that is Bacari seller. We're thrilled to be here with you all, and I want to echo andrew sentiments and just tell you all, thank you, thank you all for showing us what courage looks like when fear is trying to overtake you and terror is trying to overtake you. So we really want to thank you. And this was our offering to you, not to come and make content and go viral, but to come and commune with you the way that we do every single
week on Native Lampod. It is a safe space for us, and we wanted to create that same safety with some of the people that we are admiring the greatest right now. The other thing that was really important to us is that we come and pour back into the community as best we can. So we partner with an organization, a coalition I started called State of the People to engage in some mutual aid efforts with the Minnesota Freedom Fund, with.
The Capri Theater.
And so many other partners throughout the city to give back groceries for those of your neighbors that are afraid to go to the grocery store right now, hygiene.
Kits, diapers for the babies, wipes.
We also have at the end of the program, we'll be presenting micro grants to seven small business winners. So we wanted to come with an offering because we dare not take another thing from such a beautiful city. So thank you all for having us right and at this time, our Beyonce Bakari has a panel that he's hosting, so we're gonna.
Last fort y'all slide out, though I wanted to kind of save this for last because I wanted to introduce you all to some people that are here just to point a personal privilege. I know that you were talking about it, but the pain that we feel sometimes we find ourselves so interconnected. And I was speaking to Eddie Rye earlier. Shout out to mister Rye. Who is Papa right? Who is Angela's father? We all kind of come from
this background of civil rights of movements. And on the front row with us today is the family of Ricky Cop. Please stand up. His dad is, his twin brother, his mama is. Although this family has been holding it together, many of you all know Ricky Cop was gunned down right here in Minneapolis, minis Or by Minnesota State Police not long ago. And so I wanted them to come
in this space and feel the warmth. Because as we go from m Mittil to Michael Brown, as we go from Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond and Dellano Middleton all the way to MegaR Evers, as we think about all of those lives that were lost, all of those weddings not, had those graduations, not, had all of those individuals who weren't able to grow up and raise a family, all of that pain that we feel in our community, it's important that we wrap our arms around each other, particularly
on a nightlight tonight, and so we're gonna have a lot of fun. But I wanted you to share this space. Give them around of applause, and then we're gonna get started with the first pattern.
We also want to acknowledge the folks who are streaming live nig lampod family.
We appreciate you. This is about Minneapolis.
We're wrapping our arms around Minneapolis, but we also are wrapping our arms around you.
So let's get started with Carl.
Yeah, thank you, thank you, welcome home.
Get them around of applause because the show can finally start now that they off stage. I was supposed to have some theme music, but they don't even worry about it. Bye, Okay. So as we get started, we got a couple of people I wanted to bring on because we have some national figures who play.
A loop a large looming role. You know who they are. They are organizers.
The first person I wanted to bring on was Elizabeth Booker Houston, who you may have seen Come on Elizabeth, who is a viral content creator who was actually joining us tomorrow as a special guest host of Native Lamb podcast. I don't know. They ain't really give me the instructions. That seat is perfect. Oh and Georgia Ford. How many of you all know Georgia Ford from right?
Head lord?
They cheering louder for you, I said, I said.
So, miss.
Well Elizabeth, you should have brought some more fans, I asked. I asked Georgie, I said, how do you want me to introduce you? I said, it just says independent journalists. She talking about Emmy Award winning and then she said, wait a minute, multiple Emmy Award winning. So we want to make sure down south, down south, we have to saying, you give people their flowers while they're living.
Amen.
And so George, we want to make sure you give your flower, give you your flowers. And I you know this crowd loves you, home loves you. Next we have Juan Puranio. Come on, oh, Prano, I have to roll my r. I'm working on it.
Who is the CEO of Lulac? Now? Uh, let me just tell you that.
I think it's a fascinating time in this country because we are finally starting to see that good people of like mind, singular hearts are being faced with oppression no matter what they look like. And I think the country is actually witnessing good people being gunned down in the streets. I've oftentimes asked what would happen in this country if white people were killed in the streets. You know, for me that was a question coming from South Carolina, that
was a question that we always asked. For me, it was like, when are we going to see individuals come together? Because that is the only way that we change in So Wan's presence here, the work that you do for the Hispanic community, the work that you do, because many of.
Us have been singing.
Our praises and our prayers and bowing our knees and praying that our brothers and sisters who may not look like us are not being drug out of their homes in the middle of the night or rounded up like wild animals. And so we pray with you, we're here with you, and we're glad you're here with us tonight one And so following him, I know he's on an executive committee meeting, because the NAACP is the most meet in this organization known to man.
Is he out here? Is he ready yet? All right?
Well, we actually have Derek Johnson, who's the President n CEO of the NAACP, who will join us shortly, but while he stumbles out here, I wanted to start with you, and actually, Georgia, this is home for you. I wanted to start with you and talk about this is kind of fascinating to me because dealing with the case of Ricky Cobb or Filando Castile or George Floyd. One of the things I realized is God sometimes uses some really unassuming messengers. And the other thing I realized is that
we keep coming back to this place. Talk to me about how this has taken a toll, the changes you've seen throughout from your bird's eye view in the community, and the resilience you've seen in this community.
As we sit here.
Today, Minnesota is ground zero.
We've been ground zero.
And I think that the rest of the country had this perception of, you know, ain't no black people there.
We said that all the time.
Well you ain't saying it now.
I know I was, well, I was wrong.
I was wrong, But so we're ground zero. Prince predicted it.
He was probably the only person who said the revolution will start in Minnesota, and people thought he was crazy. But the thing is, what we're experiencing right now in Minnesota should be a code read for America, and as an independent journalist, I live in this kind of interesting intersection where I'm able to amplify stories mainstream media does not, while also still holding them accountable.
And I've been calling them out in this moment.
Because i feel like the principles of journalism being neutral, being objective, these things have never really served us, But right now I think they're central to our demise. Mainstream media can no longer be neutral about the dismantling of our democracy yet still expect to be protected by it.
You can't stand by idly and just report the facts of a US citizen having their constitutional rights violated, but then be upset when your journalists is attacked by the police and say, oh, but our First Amendment.
No, it doesn't work both ways.
Media is not on an island of their own, and so that has been my vantage point in being here in Minnesota. But because I'm from here, these stories are also my stories. The things that are happening in our community also impact my family, They impact my children, and so I don't think any of us really wanted to be ground zero for this long. We're still recovering from what happened after George Floyd businesses barely getting by. But it is that resilience and that perseverance that even Bovino
himself had to acknowledge that the organizer is here. Yes, he said, those organizers, they're really good, you know. And so that is a testament of who we are, of how we love on one another. And I think essentially why the nation is looking at us right now in this moment to lead in a pathway forward, and I think that we are meeting the moment.
Want to talk about your organization, give a round of applus for sure, First of all, for some people in this room, this would be an introduction to your organization. For those of us who are somewhat in this space, it's the parallel partner to the NAACP in the Hispanic community.
Talk about your organization briefly, but more importantly, talk about the toil that you're seeing, weight on the individuals that you represent, and very succinctly tell us what we can do in this room to join hands, or what you all can do to join hands with us.
How do we bridge that gap?
Because I will tell you this, one of the most political, politically brilliant, yet sinister, unholy things that was ever done in American politics was shipping immigrants to sanctuary cities that were predominantly black in places like Chicago and places like Baltimore, and try to drive a wedge.
Between these communities. How do we bridge that gap?
Well, thank you very much, Macary. So the organization that I represent is called the League of United Latin American Citizens, or as we refer to it as LULAC. It is a country's oldest Latino civil rights organization, founded in nineteen twenty nine in Corpus Christi, Texas, and effectively it was modeled after the NAACP. We have councils, THENBACP has chapters,
and we have members just like THENAACP does. And we've been doing the exact same work that the NAACP did in the South, in the Southwest, and in the West. So one of the seminal cases that we've litigated, for example, is Menendez versus Westminister, which is a precursor to brownne Board of Education, and so the same thing, the same fights that we had in Texas to decigregate pools and
restaurants and funerals, homes and barriers sites. We've been doing that for the last ninety seven years and as i'd taken to, you know, inventory what we're seeing today, sadly, we're going back to that time and we're having to fight some of those same fights. One of the episodes in our long history has been what they called the Braselo program. And I don't know if the Baselo program was a program that the United States basically had with Mexico,
which was a foreign worker exchange program. They allowed Mexican Mexicans to come into United States to do the work that no one else would effectively do. We're talking about nineteen forties, nineteen fifties, Okay, when they were finished with those workers, they effectively deported them back. Over a million Mexicans that were here and had been here for almost a decade at that point, were effectively shipped back to Mexico with their families, with their US born children. US
citizens were actually caught up in those effective rates. And what we're seeing is effectively this a new Brasero program. And let me explain what that means. They're trying to take away birthright citizenship. Okay, they're trying to take away birthright citizenship. We sue this administration on the four Hours after he signed that executive order.
Well, this executive order that Stephen Miller wrote, let's be exactly that's right.
They are redefining effectively what immigration is, taking away temporary protected status, taking away asylum, taking a refugee status from folks. Literally, student visas are basically now null and void, unless you may want to come from or a white person from South Africa, they can still get visas. It's interesting Africa, it's interesting how that happens. So what they're basically trying to do is they're going to try and get as
many Mexicans, Mexican American immigrants as they can out. And that's not just Latino immigrants, but if you're from Asia or from Africa, and even if you're from Ukraine or some Eastern European country, then they're going to let us back in with new work visus, with no pathway to citizenship ever, no birthright citizenship effectively for our children.
Okay.
And we know that they're going to somehow or another find a way to reduce wages for these immigrants that come into this country to work. That is servitude, okay. And we know where that effectively is going to lead, and that's why we're fighting this fight for me. Our work has been so important to make sure that it is in lockstep with the NAACP. I have the privilege to serve on the board of the Leadership Conference and Civil Rights with Maya Wiley because that's kind of sort
of how I've always grown up. My family is beautiful. It is assimilated into this country like no other. I have a nephew who's got red hair because his mom is Irish. I got three nieces and nephews that are Afro Latino like we are really what the American dream is right now. We're struggling and fighting for that because our community is in fear. They are at home, they're taking the night shifts, they're not going out during the day.
Their children are missing school. Ten fifteen thousand children have basically disappeared from Miami Dad's public schools. It really is incredible. And you've seen the stories of that young man Liam, who is used as bait to get his father out, and they're both now in Texas Didley, Texas in detention, and.
They just they just shipped out a six year old Venezuelan.
And a two year old girl, Chloe right, who is also deported, and she's two, and she's a US born citizen with her father, and we're trying to basically get her back. And so that's why this is so important for us. That's why the community aspect of it is so important for us, because you know, this is the fight for our generation and it will define who we are.
I think one of the most important words he used was our hour.
We have friends we all know. I mean, I had these same discussions in the barbershop. We talk about a lot, we talk about OnlyFans, models, we talk about a lot. But one of the things we always talk about is there's always that one guy in the barbershop who's like that ain't my problem. But when you're quiet when they come for them, and then you're quiet when they come for them, and then you're quiet when they come for them. When they come for you, you look around, ain't nobody
gonna be there to help you. And so I think our in community is so important and we have to get back to that. But you got to promise me one thing now. Now, when I'm out there marching for the death of Ricky Cobb, I need some of y'all out there marching with me too. Now, not a crazy part about this. And I gotta tell that's what I tell my white liberals, I tell my Hispanic friends, my progressives.
I'm like, look, now, you ain't gonna find no bigger supporter for planned parenthood and female productive rights than me, reproductive rights than me. But when there's a little black boy that died, you got to be marching with me too. That's the only way this think work.
Yeah, and so I will be very frank. You know, LULAC historically has made some decisions that it shouldn't have. Nineteen thirty six, they supported calling Latinos white. That was a choice that Latino's actually made as a community. Would we make that same choice now? I don't think so, certainly, not under my leadership. And let's be very frank. Latinos can be racist too, right, we.
Know that prejudiced something about racist, but we go down a whole another.
Even within our own community. And we had to take our accountability for this past election cycle because Latino men voted for this.
Yeah, I was on y'all. I was gonna mention it at the end of the day.
And so I'm I'm working to make sure that our folks effectively know what's that steak? And I think clearly now they know what's that steak?
And I live in.
Miami and it's interesting, Oh, the Latino Republicans are like, I didn't vote for that.
I guess you did vote for that. So listen.
One of the badest women that if you don't know, you need to follow her. Elizabeth is dope with a capital D. Now the reason that she is so dope and I have only admired her from afar, I didn't know anybody, and then.
Angelau was like, we gonna have it.
I was like, hey, So the reason is because she cuts through the bullsh the stuff, and she does it in a way where she meets people where they are. So we have different generations in here, right right, and you do understand that the way that your mama and daddy and grandparents communicated with people is not the way that's effective today. Their entire generations of young people, young women, who just respond to.
The way that you talk about politics.
And so my question is, from your vantage point, particularly in this content creation, are we seeing the apathy that people say, is there are people thirsting for change? And how can we utilize that as a springboard to kind of catapult and bring in communities together and doing some of the good work that you talk about doing.
It's coming, it'll come on.
My bad.
I think that everybody sped up, and that's what a lot of people have in common, regardless of where they sit generationally.
Right.
So I'm a millennial, and I know you were referring to the fact that I have a slick mouth because I'm from Memphis, Tennessee. So I cuss a lot.
Are you from Memphis? What high school did you go to?
I went to Bartlett.
I hated it. Where is that.
It's in the suburbs Memphis. I know, we moved out there when I was a teenager.
It was terrible. My mama helped desegregate Hamilton High School. My daddy went to Hamilton. There you go, That's where I grew up.
So I grew up around the corner from Hamilton High School. Actually, But yeah, so I have.
A slick mouth. I cuss a lot.
And I think it's funny because you were like, oh, you know, different generations. But the funny thing is, whenever I get my openers, because I also do stand up comedy, whenever I do shows, and I have my people that open for me. I love when they come in the green room and they're like your audience old as hell, Elizabeth, and I'm like, yeah, because I talk. It's like a king of comedy and that's an older generation, a king or a queen of comedy, and so it does span generations.
So I see that with my content and how it resonates with people. It's really not just younger people, it's not just older people. It's not just folks in the middle. It's everybody. Like it's a wide range, and when it comes to addressing the apathy, people just need some direction and they need it to make sense. We spent so long with everybody talking down to folks and over folks.
And I say this as a lawyer, I hate it because the reason why we make everything so complicated is so we can keep it in charge three hundred dollars an hour. But it affects everybody. Everybody should know the law, everybody can understand the law. And I just don't operate from that vantage point that just because you don't have a law degree or a bachelor's degree or even a high school diploma that you can't understand it. You can come to my page and learn something and you can.
Figure it out. I had a whole group of people.
Understanding substantive due process when everything happened with abortion rights being overturned. If you don't know what that is, go find my page because you'll learn it in about five minutes. And it's possible to teach people these things. And so when we cut through that whole knowledge gap and all this elitist behavior that we have with the way knowledge is gate, captain, just share it with everybody in a way that actually makes sense, and you're not just trying
to talk over everybody's heads. Then people will be willing to be more active. And that's what I see every day of my page. My favorite comments are not for people who've been following me forever. It's people who say I didn't understand or care about the law of politics until I found your page, and that always makes me happy.
One of the other she says, substanative due process, substanitive through that's three words. I'm from South Carolina. We still count on our fingers and toes.
But one of the other.
Words that we're gonna get real cozy with not tonight, but in Minnesota, because I think we just got to teach people this and have this fight of the two words qualified immunity. It's something I've been dealing with for a very long period of time in cases around the country. I don't know is Derek coming out here. This is a live pod, so I get to yell in the back. I guess he's gonna join another panel before we, So listen. We have two mics up here, and I'm gonna have
time for two questions. I got rules about questions, y'all listening. Questions have question marks. I know y'all got a little written speeches.
Get them in the.
Next panel, ask them questions. Okay, and then I don't know where we got away with teaching people. There's no such thing as a dumb question. I always tell people that there is a such thing is a dumb question.
You smarter when we answer there? You go okay. You know I hear you. So make sure we have time for two questions. Bring them up.
If you have a question. There's a microphone right here. Two questions. Just line up those two people before. I wanted like a rapid response from you guys understanding where we are. It's fascinating to me that in twenty sixteen, everybody said we would be here. In twenty twenty four, running for election, everybody said we would be here, and
it seems like nobody listened. If there is one consequential event, moment, or thing we could do from this point forward, what would that consequential moment, event or thing be to help create the change we.
Want to see?
Depoliticized humanity?
What does that mean?
It means our humanity has become.
Political humanity is oh, not like people or human beings, but like.
Correct, I think, especially like from a media dvantage point. I think again, going back to why I feel like we need media reform, everything is we got to tell both sides.
Well, what's the other side of the truth?
A lie?
That's problematic?
Right?
It's very and it becomes divisive because then it's everything is us and them, them and us me against you. And some stories are nuanced, some stories have seven, eight, nine sides, not just two. And so I think right now we're living at a time where everything is left right, Republican, democratic, and I'll just be honest for me, I don't And I think I hear this a lot from people I
talk to in community. Is not everybody sees themselves represented in those identities, and the deeper you get into black and brown communities, people don't really see.
Themselves represented in that.
And so America has to get to a place where we depoliticize humanity.
Everything is not political.
Some things like we just witnessed to a woman be brutally shot in the face, a US citizen, and then our politicians are trying to force feed us that this is about immigration, and then we just saw another US citizen be shot down, and it's this isn't immigration, but it has become political because our elected officials are not seeing the humanity of these US citizens and they're giving
us all of these different justifications. At the end of the day, if America didn't have such a hard time listening to black women, I think looking back at the church protests that had everybody, and believe me, I lived in the Deep.
South and the Bible Belt.
I was getting calls, Georgia, what was you doing in the church doing the protest? But if y'all would have just listened to a black woman, Alex pretty might still be here today.
I heartily agree with you.
I also think along with that, there's something that I echo a lot with Angela and Andrew is that many times we get caught in our own silos and we seek out news and opinions that reinforce our own views. And we live in very segregated communities. We just do, particularly in the South. What's the most segregated place in the country. Church on Sunday in the South, right, And oftentimes we don't get out of our silos to hear
the opinions of others. And I think in order to give people the benefit of their humanity which they don't give us, sometimes you have to. I like that deep politicized humanity as both Paul's real quick. One second, y'all say hello to my good friend Derek who just joined us today.
I don't know if y'all know this man. Do y'all know this man? Do y'all know him?
Derek Johnson from Mississippi. That's how we pronounce it downside by way of Detroit. Who's here with us today. I got a big.
Question for you. We're not gonna do these questions right here. I'm sorry. I got a big question.
For you, and then we'll do these rapid responses because that was I'm gonna ask you some questions in the back along that line, but people oftentimes ask the question, is the NAACP ready for this moment? That's the first question. Is the NAACP necessary now? Mind you, I say yes to both of them, but you need to be able to answer that for these folks.
And also talk to me about the moment.
That we're in, because you, as a student of history, can go and talk about since the inception of the NAACP through now and is this something we've seen before? Is this a new struggle? Are people is being sick in time? Being sick and tired? Is that something that we just have Do we have to deal with this every four or five years? How do we this is this You may not be able to answers, but how do we break these chains?
So thank you didn't even give you one. You know, the question is is NACP ready for this moment? The real question are black people ready for this moment? Our institutions are as strong as we populate them and give them strength. And any time we set our institutions over here and we put us over there, that's a losing proposition. And never in the history of the black community has there been a singular leader a singular organization or a
singular strategy. The real question for all of us, if we are going to lend our voice to freedom self determination, what vehicle are we going to use to get there?
And I'm agnostic.
You can pick any of the vehicles, but pick one and get off the sideline of criticis.
Amen right history, we have never seen this before.
We've always seen this before at the exact same time, because this fight is about power, domination and control, and what we are witnessing is in a democracy where your vote is your currency, they're running out.
Of white people to have enough votes.
In that called the browning of America that Stephen Miller is definitely afraid of.
In nineteen o nine when we were created with those Africans who had American citizenship met the year before, who was.
Asked to join those non whites in.
The media in New York because they were non white. Because if you was Irish Italian, you was not white. If you was Jewish, you was not white. If you was anything other than Anglo stacks in Protestant you was not white because racist or social construct and each one of those individuals were not doing this to say black people are doing it because their own communities were under attack. But then when le Garde gets elected in thirty four in New York, who.
Was Italian, and they begin to carve.
Up to see the New York and say, these are the Irish districts, and here are the Italian districts.
In Harlem, you get the black district. And then World War two.
Happened, and then the washp class beget out of beginning to run out of white people. Oh Irish, we're gonna give your president. You could be white now. Oh Jewish, it's not world War two. We're gonna make you white now. And that process continue. The difference is we can never join the white club.
And I'm okay with that.
But the white club was frustrated because the New Deal policies and the shifting of tax policies, and from nineteen thirty two up until last year, the big Ugly Bill. That's been the fight throughout. We've seen this before and we've never seen it at the exact same time. And so the use of othering to divide and the store to cover up the tax policy ship, the use of othering to divide in the store to cover up the esteem.
Epstein files that still have not been released to use of divide and the store to show to try to cover up the fact that white Middle America, your pockets have been picked.
Your farms cannot.
Be harvest and your jobs you cannot sell cheap labor because we're not doing those jobs. Again, that's what this is all about. Mass distraction and distortion. We've never seen this before, and we've seen it before.
So the reason when anybody asked me, the reason, the reason that I have faith in the NAACP is your only really as good as your membership. That membership looks like us, and it's very strong, but you're also as good as the leadership that the member elects.
You want me to leave Derek up here for this next panel? What? Oh so? Anyway?
I got some more questions for him. But you know, Angela's the boss of the podcast.
Everybody know that. But I do want you to do me one big favor.
I want you guys to stand up and give a round of applause to these four individuals who are on stage with me tonight.
Stand up, take your bow, Elizabeth, Georgia Vaughn, Dear, thank you for joining the Native Podcast. Next up is Andrew Gillham. And by the way, we are not the same person. I'm really happy that we are both in a room together.
You can't top that.
Thank you, Bagard, thank you, thank you, thank you, Beyonce. Y'all, we're gonna keep it, keep it moving one. Thank you all again for your patience for being here with us and your energy level. We're gonna keep this conversation going with a panel of some elected officials, our political leaders.
We keep name checking our electeds, and tonight we've had a couple of them agree to join us, and so I'll go through a little bit of an introduction, some questions, and then we'll have this mic right here.
To my right, you're left where we'll.
Take audience questions. So not to belabor, let's bring our panelists up. We're gonna start with some familiar names.
You know, well state senators.
They to have Mohammad give her a round of applause. Stay Representative Cedric Frasier, the immediate.
Passed and forty sixth mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, my brother from fam you Melvin Carter, and.
Another young leader in this state.
Y'all have potential on potential, on potential, y'all have a pipeline here in this state of incredible young leaders, and this one is no is no exception, and that is your Lieutenant Governor, Miss Peggy Flanagans.
And Senator Zev Muhammad. We introduce you first. You probably were further back there. Y'all give the senator another rap of applause means so, no, you can't see the audience, but they can see you, watch your expressions. One I want to thank each of you are elected leaders the folks, whether you are holding political position at this moment in time, once you've established yourself in the community as.
A leader, people look to you for leadership.
And I can only imagine that these last couple of uh well now over a month probably of this federal occupation, a government force that was sent here supposedly to.
Bring safety and peace.
I have to treat it like I treat everything that comes out of the President's mouth. Whatever they say, interpret the opposite, because instead of peace and safety, we've gotten chaos, we've gotten destruction, and we've gotten death. And Lieutenant govern I'm gonna start with you with this question, which is
to simply the set out the states. What has it been like trying to lead during this time, supporting your governor, holding down your position, supporting these electeds around the state, and the most importantly, supporting your people.
What's the state of mind? How are you all getting through this?
And where do you diagnose where you are right now in this fight with the feats?
Well, I would say we're exhausted, but not tired. And as we have watched over the last eight weeks, but like, let's be real, the surge has started, but ice has been here for a long time, and so you know what we have seen and I absolutely am eager to hear from my colleagues because they have been on the front lines. But what we have seen is just absolute chaos and fear. And what is being done under the guise of safety right couldn't be further from the truth.
When there are two Minnesotans who have been killed by ice, when we have five year olds and two year olds who are being detained and brought to Texas, and just the lies, the lies, the continue to come out of this administration about the individuals who have been killed at their hands.
It is outrageous.
And so what I have seen over the last several weeks is the best of Minnesota is folks who are stepping up, who are standing outside of schools and daycares and churches and getting food and mutual aid and responding in a way that I think folks weren't expecting from Minnesota. But we care about each other. We stand up for our neighbors. And this isn't just about the Twin Cities.
As we've been traveling across the state, ice is everywhere. Right, We're in Alexandria, they're there, Detroit Lakes they're there, Saint Cloud they're there. And so this just terror has to stop, and they got to get out. And I want to just name something that I think is really there's a
through line here. Individuals who are being detained are being brought to Fort Snelling, which was essentially a concentration camp for Dakota women, children and elders, and now that's where folks are bringing, you know, brought to in this moment. And so the through line is that the federal government continues this long cycle right of separating families of detention. And so I would say again we are exhausted, but not tired, and will continue to show up for our neighbors,
continue to use non violent protest and resistance. And that's what you've seen happen all across the state, and so much of the groundwork that has been laid is because of the good organizing work that has happened over the last several decades in this state. People have relationships, they have trust, right and we can then just put all that into action.
And actually give it a run of the cause. It's been pretty obvious that you can.
You can't overcome the will and quite frankly, the sheer might that they put on the ground overwhelm me the law enforcement of the communities here in Minnesota and Minneapolis in the surrounding area unless you have deep, well built, trusted.
And strong relationships that can carry you through.
Senator the Lieutenant Governor really set the framework by bringing in our Native brothers and sisters in the history of the dissension facilities here of to just put it plainly, the racism that guys the policies of this administration, gentlemen, I'm being generous with this term, but Stephen Miller, the avout I think, unapologetic racist that runs these policies in the White House, use the pretexts in part for coming to minute, Minnesota, the Somali community, as President says low
Iq right, which the man who stated that couldn't be lower in an Iq as far as I'm concerned. But for those of us who were watched from outside, I mean, I've been offended every time I've heard the President speak about Somali Americans, but as is Somali American yourself, and I realized that your jurisdiction and your governance now expands far beyond that. But it be a haphazard of me not to ask you how is this reverberating within the Somali community here in the state, the attacks and what
does mutual aid? How is that coming? And to focus for your community? Are their needs that this group, those who are watching, those of us around the country where spread out is, are there things.
We can do to be a greater aid and support.
Thank you for having me, and thank you everybody for being here. Well, first of all, the smaller community here is a large community, but compared to the rest of the community, to small community right where eighty thousand people, if not less, across the country, less than two hundred thousand people were a fraction of the population of this country.
And I think to see some of.
The most powerful people in this country, whether it's this administration or tech billionaires, and the ways in which that they're using the algorithm to talk about our community.
Has been disheartening.
And the one thing I know about Somali people is that we're an incredibly resilient community. I came to this country when I was nine years old and I am twenty eight years old. My community has been here for less than thirty years, but.
They have made Minnesota their home.
They are not everywhere you go, whether you're coming out of the airport, you're the person who's checking you in or checking you out as a Somali person. That your Uber driver is a Somali person. When you take your mother to a nursing home or it's our final days, the person who's taking care of them is a Somali person. The thing I learned in the last five years from Minnesota since the murder of George Floyd is just how resilient Minnesotans are and how much we're a fabric of
this community. So many of the people who are on the ground that are protesting what's happening are also speaking about the frustrations that they're feeling about what people are saying about their Somali neighbors. And what I have seen from my neighbors is I don't think I've shoveled a day.
There's a day.
There's not a single day I've shoveled snow this year. And it's because my neighbors understand the work that I'm doing and they're showing up for each other.
We have done massive.
Food drives for through a number of schools in our communities. We have seen people raise thousands of dollars. I think I put a goal GoFundMe on my social media and by the end of the day had raised like fifty thousand dollars. And so Minnesotans understand that at a time where in the federal governments, the state government, every system that we know that's supposed to help people is failing. They are looking to each other and they're creating systems.
And I just have never seen such a powerful community just across the board. I mean, we have like we are better than the police, we are better than the government. Like I'm like, these people can do whatever and nobody.
Can can do anything better.
But we're a resilient community and at the end of the day, him speaking about Somali's it just means he's talking about Minnesotans, because that's who we are, that's our community.
I love that.
I love the.
So Renegga and Alex Preddy.
We should say their names and lift up their family and their loved ones in.
Their absence right now, in their physical absence.
Black bodies have been put on the line quite a bit in this state. In fact, most of us around the nation began paying attention because of the black lives that have been risked here. Have you representative noticed any bifurcation, any difference in response from the community based off of who the victims are, or is it true that people are seeing an assault on one as an assault on everybody. I'd love your honest interpretation of that.
No, thank you for that, and thanks thanks for having me out here. I appreciate that, and thanks for the audience for being here tonight during these trying times. I just want to I need to say again that I am very proud of the way Minnesota has stood up. We are showing not only the rest of the country but the world how you push back when you're looking at tyranny and authoritarianism trying to be forced upon you.
So Minnesota shul always give themselves a hand and around applause for that, you know.
And I've been saying.
This, and I've been I've been in many rooms since this has been happening here in the state. What I've been saying and the most folks is because you keep showing up, it gives me hope. We may feel helpless, but we're not hopeless.
Right.
We may be tired, but we're not given up.
And what I'll say, what I say also is that they picked the wrong state. Right there were and I say that, and I say it because of this reason. Only right there were people killed before they came to the state of Minnesota. I say, you just had killed the folks. But we made sure that the rest of the world and the rest of the country knew exactly what was happening here. We made sure we were going to have the receipts in real time to show the rest of the world and the rest of the country
what was happening here on the ground in Minnesota. And that happens because of what we've been through in this state. You know, my sisters just talked about George Floyd. We built a system of community after what happened to George Floyd.
Right. And let me say this, I what I tell folks all the time, because.
When we played the politics here, I still hear some of my Republican politagies talking about we're going to go back to the eighties or the nineties when we divided and segregated, and we can we can put out and we can demonize people and demonize people that didn't look like the folks in the suburbs, right and look like people in certain communities within those neighborhoods.
Right.
And what I always say to them is like, you're living in a time that doesn't exist anymore. Because now our neighbors they know each other, our neighbors, their friends, their family, their kids are hanging out, they're having sleepovers, they're doing carpools. They have a connection with their neighbors that they didn't have when we had such segregated communities. That they didn't have in the seventies and the eighties.
We have those connections now. And because we have those connections, what we were saying is, you're not going to tell me that my neighbor that I should hate my neighbor, or be fearful of my neighbor because I know my neighbor. I'm gonna give you this example right here, and I'm gonna stop with I'm gonna give.
You this example. My daughter.
I walk into the bus every morning. That's how I find some peace and this chaotic stuff is going on. And she's got a friend named Freedom that she's six nice to every day. And when this president won and they started going to school, she would say, hey, Freda tells me that her family is really scared to go outside.
I said, why is that.
She said, her family is there Mexican and they're feelful that they're gonna get snatched if they come outside, so they're not going to work anymore. And she doesn't know she's going to continue to be able to continue to go to school. Jesse, yesterday, we're on the bus stop and I said, how's free to how's free to holding up? She said, well, she told me she's probably going to have to be homeschooled for the rest of the year, but she may be back next year.
She texts her. Literally, it's almost real time. Broke my heart.
She text my daughter as they're waiting for the bus, stop and the bus is always late in it's cold outside, So we didn't deal with that right. So she texts my daughter and she says, I'm no longer going to be riding the bus for the rest of the school year. I believe I'm going to be in school. I'm be a parent pickup, but I'm gonna be riding the bus. My daughter texts back, what's going on? She says, because of this.
Ice thing broke my heart.
Breaks my heart to know that this is what our young people have to deal with. They're tearing found me is apart. They're terrifying young people. But what gives me always young people aren't going to forget about this.
They are.
They are creating the future resistence to this right. They are creating the future leaders that are going to know what not to do when you're making policy. They're creating the future leaders that are gonna know how to absolutely be proactive in taking care of their neighbors and taking care of their community folks and being right there and standing up for them.
So, no, I don't see a difference in their response.
I see our neighbors showing up here day in and day out, just like the way they showed up when George was murdered on the middle of the street in broad daylight. I see them showing up and saying, enough is enough. We're not going to stand for this. And you know what, We're not going to have true healing until we have accountability, and we're making sure we have the receipts for that accountability.
I love that.
Turn to the audience.
If you have a question, we can begin to form a question line over here.
As I talked to Mayor Carter.
So you see, yesterday the President appeared to make some sort of I actually don't know what to call is thing. Some people the media is running with a pivot or a retreat. The President did an interview thirty minutes before we started here this evening on Fox News and basically says, not a retreat.
We're still he's.
Still committed, so on and so forth, but thinks that the deaths have been unfortunate in some other flowery language, again.
People executing his will on his behalf. But those were his comments. I'm curious how you see.
This as whether or not this is a retreat, maybe a retreat from the state of Minnesota to be reincarnated in another city.
In another state someplace else.
Or does the administration appear to have learned a lesson and we may see a secession here until at least after the midterms earned a lesson.
No, I don't you said it from the beginning. At some point we have to understand that, you know, my angelous say, when somebody tells you who they are, believe them. And at some point we have to understand that the things that they are doing are a feature of their plan, not a bug of their plan. And y'all made it so inconvenient for them that he had to find a different news cycle. But do I think that the death of two absolute, completely innocent people is going to change their course?
No?
And here's why.
You know, after George Floyd was murdered, I was on some show and they asked me, you know, what are you going to do differently now that this happened?
And I said nothing.
And I said nothing, I said, Well, the most important thing you have to know about the murder of George Floyd is how historically unsurprising it was that my father and his father and his father could tell you about unarmed people being killed at the hands of law enforcement. And so we had to know that this was there.
And the point that I was just trying to make is the things that we need to do because this happened, we actually already started doing before this happened in our work, because we know that this is that this is a phenomenon. But as my Lieutenant governor was talking about the Fort Snelling I was thinking about the dread Scott decision where they brought dread Scott to Fort Snelling and he sued and he said, Hey, I went to Fort Snelling, so
you know, I ought to be free. And I'm not a legal scholar, but ultimately, what the Supreme Court of our country said, the United States Supreme Court that we look at as the highest level of justice in the on the planet. The Supreme Court said, We're not even going to actually answer your question, but what we'll tell you is that a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect in the first place.
And so I say all of that to say that, you know, when you place this in a historical arc, I think it would be farcical for us to assume that these two murders, which are awful, by the way, the what's the the evilness with which they're operating is asking the sheer incompetency with which they're operating. But I don't think that they are suddenly woke up this morning better in terms of competency or better in terms of morality either one because of.
This news cycle.
Here you're here, Are there any I'm gonna keep looking over here in case there are questions, and in the absence of them, I know.
We'll have to wrap soon.
But there is yeah, you to you, yes please.
I'm so sorry.
I just wanted to I wanted to build on what mayor Carter just said, because I think there is this idea today that somehow, because Greg Bovino is leaving, that somehow we're cool, right and bringing Tom Holman in. And I don't mean to be crude, but I saw a post today that said replacing Greg Bovino with Tom Holman is like pooping your pants and changing your shirt, right.
And so I just.
I think that that's really important to know that going back to eight weeks ago is not enough, going back to six months ago is not enough, right, going back to February of twenty twenty five is not enough.
Right.
Ice has to get out, And it is very clear to me that this has been the plan all along. You have bright red signs in all caps that say mass deportations now behind Donald Trump at rallies at the Republican National Convention. This was not in the fine print, right, They've been saying what they are going to be doing
for a very long time. And so we can take a breath, We can catch our breath today for a moment, but get real that today we've already seen footage of people being violently pulled from vehicles, of.
Folks being detained.
So it is not over right.
It's just that Donald Trump knows this is a bad look, and so a little bit of shuffling of the deck chairs is not going to cut it. They got to get out right and like we got to rip it apart and start over.
That's right, Thank you. Listen to Gon.
Good evening, Pane.
I do want to have a I have a question and I also want to make a comment. I do want to refer back to the question about it being a change because of those who are now the murdered victims, right, and I think just coming from Minneapolis born and raised, there is.
A change in response.
There has been a change in response because not only was Renee good good enough and not only was George Floyd a good enough reason. This has been a white male that has been murdered in broad daylight in America, on American soil. So the response that the nation has took over and the response even from the NRA has changed.
We didn't get that same response with Filando Castile. So there is a difference in the response that we see with not only two white bodies, but it took for a middle aged white male to be murdered to get the response across the nation.
But that's not my question.
My question is to Lieutenant Governor Flanagan with the extortion letter that we received from Pam BONDI, what will be the response. I've seen the response from Governor Walls, but what is our real response in regards to extortion which is a crime which finger.
You can thank Florida for that, by the way, thank you gift from Florida.
Yeah.
So I think we can go back to our Secretary State right, who is in charge of the voter rules, And his answer was simply no, right and no is a complete sentence. And he couldn't even give that information if you wanted to, because it is already illegal right
to share that information. And so I'm glad that you brought that up, because let's be clear again, going back to the through line, preventing certain people from being able to vote is the goal, right, And so we have to be really clear, this is already in litigation.
Right.
They have already tried to ask for the voter roles.
They have already tried to ask.
For the names and identities and sensitive information of our neighbors who aren't who utilize public programs.
Right.
Also, no, and so I think our incredible Secretary of State, along with our amazing Attorney General Keith Ellison, who by the way, has been the most valuable player right for our safe like suing the Trump administration fifty times, that is what this is all about. So Noah is a complete sentence, and I am grieful for the leadership of those two constitutional officers. But let's be clear, the goal is to try to prevent folks from voting, and we're not going to let that happen.
Hello, Hanne, I have a question, and it's kind of.
I don't want to say loaded, but I hear some of the comments and we all see the news, but I want to ask, how do we continue to build and trust as a community and a whole as a community without identifying and acknowledging some of the hurt and the pain some of our community has not only been through that's outside of this ice situation, but also the the things that has happened within certain communities that has
affected us as a whole. And as leaders and politicians, it's good to keep us good face, like I understand that, but for us as people to trust you all, it has to be knowledged because it's not just good, and it's not just home all the time, and it's not just these things. There's things that's happened that has affected all of us from individual communities, and we want to welcome us as a whole.
Examples, I don't.
Necessarily want to.
I don't think it's like effective to give like an example really.
Just in general.
If the thing is is that in the black community, we've confronted X, and let me I think, I think, okay, okay, never mind, this is inside conversation.
They know what the example is.
Okay, it's an inside conversation. As Minnesota, and I want to say I'm a proud Minnesota and I love the fabric that we've created. And I've never appreciated the term Minnesota nice more than ever now. Minnesota nice means that we vibe check each other, and we have culturally acknowledged other people even when we don't know them deeply. We say high and we give them a surface level kindness.
And I've never appreciated Minnesota Knights as much as I do now, and that's extended to everyone here in this room. But I just want to say, as leaders, we have to start to trust. We have to start acknowledging not just the good but also the things that as humans are problematic that affects other people.
Yeah, but let's be honest.
That definition you just gave of Minnesota nice is a new definition of Minnesota nice. Absolutely, because my grandfather would have said, Minnesota nice means they don't call you the N word, they smile at you while they deny your law. Absolutely, And so what you're talking about is so important because
we're a state we've always planted our flag. We are a home ownership state, where education stay, where a healthy state, where an employment state, all those things, and all of those things are also the spaces in which we have the.
Worst dispirities in the nation.
And when you were talking, I was Rember when I first ran for city council one hundred years ago. I remember telling a group of folks, I love Minnesota so much. I want some of it in my neighborhood. And so but let me tell you, like what they're trying to do, and let me tell you and the reason they chose the wrong state, what their.
Goal is to do is pit us against each other.
And I saw it.
We had an action in Saint Paul a couple months ago, and we were trying to get the Ice out of it. We got them out of there. We were trying to pull our police officers out of there. We got Ice all the way out there. They were all the way out.
Three ICE agents.
Turned around and walked right back in the crowd, not to arrest anybody, not just to like needle some folks and then walk out. And it went to hell. They're doing that on purpose. They're trying to like figure out how to needle that in between.
Us on purpose. And you're right, sister, we.
Have specific issues in our African American community. But one of the things that I think has has has pushed Donald Trump to that place we've been able to hold our discipline. And when we hold our discipline, then the news story isn't about some glasses that God broken.
Or building they burned down, or is it the only.
Thing they can cover is the fact that you murdered this man in the streets, shot him in the back. And so our ability to kind of navigate through this. And let me tell you, I have conversations with people in so many different communities that well, our community and all of our communities are unique, and all of our communities are challenged, and all of our communities are different,
and we won't be able to hold together. You had the answer in your question, we won't be able to hold together without acknowledging those uniquenesses and the unique pain points that our African American community has, and the unique pain points that our Native community has, and then our Somoley community has, and our Jewish community have and those
types of things. And the next level is making sure that we're kind of pulling all of those things together and saying, yes, there's some uniqueness, is there, but like, we have a common enemy right now who's trying to attack all of us, and our power exists in being able to be in this together.
Nice, We've got two minutes, two minutes remaining, and I wanted to come back to our lodges on accountability. So right now, we've got a Justice Department that is really the injustice department. Remember the inversion, if it comes from Trump, is the opposite.
This is the Justice Department, not under Pambondi.
They're doing anything, but what is just my question is is on the accountability front, the folks who were the ICE agents who are masked, and I believe they're masked and don't want their faces shown because they've got to create a dissidence between humanity and then what they see is inhumane, which is.
Their behavior towards all the rest of us.
What does that look like in an administration where you've got a Justice Department that won't fairly investigate, You've got a president who is likely going to pardon outright every ICE agent federally before he leaves office, and yet our communities have suffered devastating harm. How do we make sure that the individuals who perpetuated and rain down this harm on our communities get the cost of justice that they deserve.
So we've already started their process and that's a great question. I'm glad you asked before we got out this panel. So we've started their process County Attorney may Mriorati, Attorney General Keith Ellison, who said one of our superstars, they're already they've created portals to collect evidence, to collect information so that we can see what kind of harms are being done, so that we can then vet that information for potential charging.
I think County Attornity Mary Mority.
Came out to day and said we think she believes they have some sufficient evidence to move forward on the renee Good matter pretty soon.
So we are already in the process of doing that.
We've got some legislation that we that we're crafting to move forward to get people the ability to sue civilly for the harms that it's been done by these federal agents. The one thing I think they're gonna have a hard time doing. We've got some really smart people out there that can catch people and identify people with some freak facial recognition stuff. We're going to find these folks, And what I told people is going to be similar to how maybe like the Nuremberg trial and the jacent It's
gonna be after the fact. But we're gonna find you and we're gonna hold you accountable. And the one thing for murder, there's no statute of limitation. So so, but what I will tell you to the community, and I didn't come here to campaign, but I will tell you to the community. You have to look at the people that are running to be leaders in these offices and positions that will be in a position to try these cases,
to charge these cases and hope people account right. Look at how those candidates are moving right now to give you a pretty good idea of what they may or may not do if they're leading those offices. So we're gonna need strong leaders to make sure we carry that out and have the accountability because like I said, there's not going to be any healing until we do have accountability.
There it is Minnesota, y'all have some of the best. You all have some of the best.
Elected officials that I've encountered around the country.
Will you give it up again for all four.
Of our panelists or what the sacrifice.
In this tests?
All right, everybody's give it up one more time for these outstanding elected officials.
Thanks for hanging with us.
We have some other amazing folks who I know you all have seen, many of.
You follow work with. Before we get.
To that, I do want to just take a moment to shout out our friends at Act Blue who immediately went into action on Saturday night ten sure that there was a fundraiser page setup for the Minnesota Freedom Fund. You all know the great work that they're doing every single day. We thought it was so important to show you all for everybody who's.
At home, like I'm scared to go to Minnesota, that's all.
Right, send you money because we want to make sure we can bail people out of jail. We want to make sure we can get groceries on tables, we want to make sure we can get.
Grants to small businesses. And our good friend.
Eli Darris, who is the executive director of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, is joining us.
Now, give it up, give it up, Give it up, y'all.
He loves you because he is supposed to be at home on paternity leave.
Okay, so he loves y'all. He's here. I also want to.
Recognize the president of the University of Minnesota's Black Student Union. Many of you all know him, and if you don't know him, at home. We've seen him go viral recently for some powerful remarks in the face of ice terrorism.
Give it up for Gutu Chin Kaso. Please got fans. Oh this brother I know very very well.
We became close after I read his New York Times best selling book My Grandmother's Hands. And you all know that Resma Minicum is doing the work of the people every single day in Minnesota, making sure that we are able to process the trauma that we experience on a day to day basis and resume wherever you want to sit.
We thank God for you. Oh no it's not. It's not last just yet.
So Attorney Leslie Redmond, I want you all to give it up for her, because literally this would not have happened if it wasn't for Leslie. Leslie brought every single resource. Somebody wasn't calling me back. Leslie was like, since I got you, let me say less.
And she was on it. So I just really thank God for you, Leslie. Thank you so much.
And it was very important to Leslie that she was on a panel this evening with someone who she loves very dearly.
He has a shared sibling to us.
He is President Derek Johnson of the naacps coming back to join us to chat it up a little bit, all right.
So Resma, I want to start with you. I do because you know why.
Let me tell you why, because the one thing I know you're gonna do is get us straight. We got to heal like where right now people are saying, oh, well, there's no point in being in Minnesota anymore.
They're about to withdraw eyes.
But now there's all of this destruction, literally death, literally grief as we sit here right now. Ilhan, our dear sister, was holding a town hall and a man comes up and sprays some foreign substance on her in her direction. Ilhan is the smallest giant I have ever seen in my life.
So she was like, the town all gonna continu but.
I think that it's important for us to understand how we reckon with what's going on.
And as doctor King Best said, where do we go from here?
Yeah?
You know, Doctor King also said another thing. He said that just before he passed. He said, you know, I'm afraid that I've taken my people into a burning house, right and I want to start there because a lot of times we start with healing like this, like it's this magical thing. Right, And what I want to say is if in this moment in time where people are being murdered in the streets, that are officials' only caveat is to say we need to be better. They are
leading us into a burning building. You get to be angry in this moment, You get to be pissed off.
In this moment.
You get to figure out how you turn towards each other.
As opposed to on each other. That's what they want us to do.
And so when I talk about healing, about healing, I'm talking about how do we tend to the things snatching babies.
Out of people's arms.
They're executing people by shooting them in the back and in the chest, and don't care that you're filming it. They're shooting women in the face and then calling them foul names after they do it.
They kneeling. And let me say this last piece.
This don't sound healing, but it is healing.
What I'm talking to you about is healing is tending to the things that are showing up and beginning to figure out how you use that as fuel for your liberation. Right, We're not going to get out of this and return back Gavin Newsom ain't coming to save a Shaw.
Can you say it again? Gay got mad at me when I went together.
Gather Newsome, the current governor of Minnesota, are not coming to save us.
What Let me just ask this one question.
What if what we're seeing right now is the best they got?
What if there are no better angels?
What if what we're seeing is all they got for us?
What does that.
Mean in terms of what we need to do right? And that's what I want to talk about when I say healing.
So when your question.
About healing says we have to start nobody coming to save us. The mid terms ain't coming to save us. We are being asked right now, who are we going to be in the face of tyranny?
That's the healing.
Well, y'all see why we started here. He set the tone, didn't he Eli?
So I want to come to you because freedom is in the name of the fund And to Resmu's point, you know, for years we have toiled with this concept of freedom, but we're lacking in resource right So even right now we're like, what are we going to build? Well, what are we going to build without proper resource? Like we won't even stay going to black businesses multiple days
a week unless there's a fast. Oh okay, but you know what I'm saying, like, we won't even support each other unless we're required for many of us.
I'm not saying all of us, too many of us. So what does healing look like?
What does freedom look like without resource? And how do you encourage people to give what they have towards a common cause toward our liberation?
M hmmm.
Well, One, we have incredible resources, as the rest of this state and the rest of this nation has bear witness to. Uh, even when it seems as though there's lack. They may have looked at Minneapolis, Saint Paul, the Twin Cities and thought that, you know, we were lacking in something, we were weak, We were going to be easy that you know, this was going to be a push over, that they were going to create an example lot of us that they were then going to replicate another municipalities
around the country. What they saw was a people respond robustly with a deep and embedded resource that's inside of us, and that's people power.
Right.
Uh.
So we are the resource and as Resmus said, no one is coming to save us.
We're the help that we've been waiting on it.
So people have been able to see the power of people. And I fundamentally believe in the power of people to impact the realities that we want to see around us, to help to create the realities that we want to see around us. We said we were going to get ice out of here. We said that we were going to melt ice. We begin to see some of the tactics that they use, and so we created counter tactics.
They weren't allowing people to be able to peacefully go and get hygiene, or go to the grocery store or do whatever, and so what did people decided to do?
So we decided to.
Galvanize our own resources and to create alternative ways that people would still be able to get food, still would be able to get provisions, still would be able to get resourced. Right, So, you know, the top level to the answer of their question is we the people are the resource. We have absolutely everything that we need to create the reality that we want to see around us.
And so the nation was able to bear witness to that in terms of in terms of our giving our resources out, our financial, our emotional, whatever the resource is that we are giving out. I am a firm believer in sowing and weeping that what we what we put out, we get back multifold. And what I'm investing now in terms of I'm supposed to be at home with my family right now, right.
I have an eight day old daughter, but this is so important to me.
The environment that is cultivated is so important to me that I know I have to invest my time, my resources, my intellectual abilities, well whatever it is that I got, I know I gotta do this because twenty years from now, I want her to inherit a certain type of America, right, And so so I'm going to invest in now. I'm going to fight against the powers that be now. I'm going to do whatever it needs to be happening now because I have to. I have to be fighting for
that greater later. And so, you know, those who are having a tough time of deciding how they're going to invest in or what they're going to invest in, I really don't know much to say to them, because to me, the state of the Union, the great conflammation, the great fire that we see burning around us, If that's not clear indication enough that we have to get off of our resources and do something you know what again, whether that is time, whether that is financial like whatever it is,
I don't have a lot to say to anyone who would sit on a fence in a moment like this. We have to do something or something that's going to happen to us. So I know that's a non answer, but that's what I have.
It's perfect. I want to take this moment. Speaking of resources I know we have in the audience. I hope they're still here because we meant to acknowledge this earlier. Jazz Hampton, who is an attorney earlier somewhere yes, right here, okay, and wanted to oh right over here, okay, yes, I can see in the dark now, Jazz, thank you so much. For those of you who have had interaction with law enforcement and are still confused about what to do.
Jazz has an entire.
App called Turn Turn.
Signal, and it's here to provide other resource to you. Also, you don't feel like you're loan, because we do have everything we need. So on that I want to go to you YouTube because I think it's important. We are always talking about what young people aren't doing, what young people ought to do, and I think in rooms like this, what I love to do. I love hearing from young people about what we're not getting right to facilitate the
type of future that Eli just talked about. So what do we need to do differently to support young people because we're not getting it right. Clearly, it ain't on y'all, it's on us. We all all do y'all got okay, Well, I'm all they young people too out here.
We've got some young people in the back of board members.
Shout out, y'all, yeah, sure for more of us. First of all, I just want to thank you Angela and the rest of you know, the Native lampod and the whole the whole crew for reaching out to me, you know, me being a junior at the University of Minnesota, being you know, younger twenty one, and just being in the space with so many amazing people, you know, legislators, just amazing people, you know, I'm trying to say, even president and a CP right here.
Yeah.
Yeah, So that's that's it's a blessing to be here, truly, just talking to your point about maybe what the people before me can potentially work on. I mean, honestly speaking, we're here because of people before me. So the first thing you have to always acknowledge the things and the gratitude to them or to kind of be here in these spaces to do this. And even being BSU president, you know, we're built on activism, We're built on change.
We're built on fighting for what's right and fighting for the needs to create the better future as you talked about for people coming in behind us. And that's kind of how I view this as well. As it can be tough as a student, you know, you want to focus on your academics. You want to focus on, you know, maybe your future like an internship or a job. That's what I'm looking for right now. But you know, but at the end of the day, you can't deny what reality is. And what reality is in front of us
all within our communities is that ICE. ICE is a terroristic organization. They're causing a lot of harm to our people. You know, whether that's old, young, whether that's immigrant or citizen, it doesn't matter what it is. They are causing continuous havoc and terror. And I think the biggest thing is I don't know if you guys got wrong before, but one thing I've learned is at least is just organization i'd say in the sense organization to gather troops, to
gather people. I think throughout multiple different areas, multiple differences, and even within our universities, there's definitely a lot of division. I'd say division because of I don't know whether it be you know, race or ethnicity, or economic status or whatever it might be.
There's there's still that division and also.
That sense of I know somebody mentioned it earlier, kind of like I don't really have to worry about if it's not directly affecting me. And I know that that is not a good mindset to have at all, because when it gets to you, then who's going.
To help you?
Right?
You feel me? Yeah, exactly.
So I just view that as a sense of organization is key. Organization is important Continuously pushing and relying on young youth people like me to step up out of this out of our shelves, to really be here in these spaces. I mean, I'm so blessed to be here, but there's so many others that can be here that can really speak to so much more that I probably can't even speak to, and I want to to really push them to be here as well. I'd say so pushing on the youth, pushing them to continuously push to
be better. Organization is definitely another big key step, and I think hope as well. I think in a lot of ways that can be lost when you're maybe talking to certain people that are older than you. Maybe they've seen a lot or they've been through a lot, and they don't really see that hope. But I think to continue pushing for hope is basically giving your services to your community. I think that can bring hope in a sense.
Like let's say, if you're losing hope or if you're losing whatever you're going through, one thing I always think about is going back to my community, being a service to my communities, and I think that is the first step to hope, is relying back on your communities and pushing that forward as well as organization and you know, pushing on the youth. So that's kind of my answer.
I guess, thank you so much.
I want to come to you, Attorney Leslie, and I want to sit here for a moment in what I believe is starting to take shape on the stage, which is the role of each community member, right like we all have a role to play. Some of us are utility players. You're supposed to be in DC right now, but you feel called to stay home in Minnesota. Served as an NAACP president. I don't know how many organizations you got now, but you connected us to multiple businesses
today that needed support. When we talked about mutual aid, you said you knew some people that can help with mutual Like at every turn, there was.
A dot you were connecting.
And I want to know what is the conviction that drives you to do that, and how do people who are sitting at home watching this on the live stream tap into that conviction even if they're not dot connectors, maybe they are one that needs to be in service in a particular way. But what is that conviction that you tap into when it feels like hope is gone, when it feels like fear and terror is writing.
How do you tap into that?
M such a good question.
Grace and peace everyone, So first I would say, you know, my mom tells me sometime like Lesly, you're so fearless. I wish I was so fearless like you, and I have to remind her that I'm not fearless. There are a lot of times I'm afraid, and as a believer in the Bible constantly says, be not afraid, be of good courage, right, because God knows that we are going to be afraid.
I don't think, amen.
I don't think that David wasn't afraid when he went up against Goliath.
It's just that he had more faith than he had fear.
Right.
And so for me, you know, I really believe that we are our ancestors' wildest dreams. I believe that everything that we're seeing right now is a parallel to places that we've already been before. Right when we look at what Ice is doing right now, I think a lot about the Fugitive Slave Act right eighteen fifty and how we have to separate law and ethics.
Right.
Just because something is legal does not mean that it is ethically and moracally correct, right, and that is where civil disobedience has to rise and where we have to come to stand in our greatness. I think about drape Domania and when they tried to tell black people we were crazy for wanting our freedom.
Right.
I'm just I have crazy faith, Angela, Right, I have crazy faith to believe that we were meant to be free, that this is not the world that God intended for us, right, this is what humans have made it to be. And in twenty twenty, I said, Black Minnesota, we are done dying, and white Minnesota, you are done hiding your white Wakanda has been discovered and it's time for black people's humanity to be recognized.
Right.
And so I didn't know what I was saying in twenty twenty though, Right.
That was God.
That was God.
It wasn't me.
But as we fast forward to here we are in twenty twenty six, and white people are being killed in broad daylight.
This is something I never thought I would really see in.
Minnesota, right, And I'm seeing the parallels with Renee sitting in her car like Filando was sitting in his car when I see Alex laying on the ground and being murdered, like we saw Jamar Clark laying on the ground and being murdered.
Right.
And they didn't hear us, Angela, they didn't fill us.
Right.
And I told people the black.
Community, we've been warning, we've been prophesying, right, telling them what would happen if something doesn't change. And sadly we're here, But I believe that God has plans to prosper us and not harm us. I believe that what the enemy meant for bad, God meant for good. And so I believe that we are really at h we at a crossroad,
brother Resma, right. And a lot of the time we talk about history repeating itself as if it's inevitable, but I think iver pieces o because we repeat ourselves, right, And so I'm determined not to repeat the sins of our past. And I was born in nineteen ninety two, this is my Jesus year.
I'm thirty three, amen.
And you know I was born right around the time where there was uprising in la and then I ended up leading in twenty twenty and then here we are, right here in twenty twenty six.
That doesn't feel like a coincidence to.
Me, right.
I believe that we were destined to fight this fight. I believe that we were born for such a time as this. And I wouldn't trade places with Harriet Tubman. I'm not trying to run from Delaware to Maryland, right, and so because this is our run though, this is
our fight, right. They say it's not just not a race, it's not shout out to Nipsey hustle, just a marathon, but it's a relay, right, and so we're passing the baton to each other, and me and my good sis Tis Jones of True Our Speaks have been having a lot of conversation around our narrative and how we can capture and reclaim our story. And that's why I say, don't complain activate right, because we all can't do everything,
but we all can do something, Angela. And so my conviction comes from knowing that I owe something to future generations, I owe something to our ancestors, and I'm determined to be who God meant for me to be.
Love it.
Well, we have a phenomenal panel full of license and unlicensed preachers, and Derek is they'll close us out because both of my co hosts are texting me as if Bacari didn't start it by going over his time. But there's that Derek I'm looking at. He's given me you got a sadman room if not go back reclaiming my time for the president, I know nobody knows, Derek. I want you to talk to us about you mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. NAACP chapters mobilized hundreds of thousands of people.
All over this country and there.
Comes a time where, Leslie, we get called back home, right, can you please talk to us about the importance of standing ten toes down with membership organizations, especially when there might be a vote in the Senate on whether or not these Nazis, these January six ers, these terrorists now in Ice Mass are.
Gonna get funded or not. You have a whole legislative arm. It's time for us to.
Stand side by side with our civil rights org So can you please talk about the importance of that.
So thank you, and I appreciate Lanslie. I remember when we first met French president, and the crazy thing was you was in law school and during the same time, and I said, have you lost your mind? But receiving Leslie at the exact same time, I had to deal with the eighty year old deacon who was honorey as hell but committed like nobody's been business and appreciating the middle aged sister who's trying to get the kids through high school while I'm talking to.
The brother who's an executive. We are not a monoliths.
We are a collective of Africans in America, and we got to respect how we show up at every step. The problem with leadership of institutions like the NAACP too many people sitting in his seat and then make it about them. It's ego centric and as a result of that we lose traction because they're trying to get to the news camera. What's going to happen, What must happen by Saturday. That will be a budget bill adopted or continued resolution in there is a line item of giving
Ice more money. We need to mobilize folks. That's the q coles there to call folks. Senator Kloborshaw want to be a senator, I mean a governor. She need to be here clear from you all here. Not only do you vote against this bill if the line item is in there, you bring five fears along with you from the Senate. Because two times now we have been betrayed by Democrats who relied on black volks to get in office.
And we must approach just understanding that political parties are nothing but vehicles for agendas, and we have to have a clear black agenda, and we always have had a clear black agenda.
Far too many of.
Us fall prey to the partisan conversation.
Who cares.
If our folks still not not getting the food that's needed. So as we look at what's happening here, one of the things we can do is mobilized, as we're doing across the country, to put the pressure on Senators to not vote for this bill if the ice funding gets in there.
But if it passed, that doesn't stop.
The process, because that Bob Moses said, do some vices movement. Every episode just a different theater in the fight on our journey to freedom, and we will get there. Why because we are a people who fight, we persevere, and we will get self determination.
Absolutely, y'all give it up for this amazing piano.
We're so grateful to each of you.
And speaking of elected officials who are accountable to the people, who are regularly representing what we need done, ensuring that our voices are heard, and that there's an advocate in one of the highest offices in Minnesota, please join me and welcome me your Attorney General, Keith Ellison. He's got a receiving line, y'all, he's coming, Attorney General Keith Ellison. Ladies and gentlemen, I mean I try. I said, I'm
channeling Angela Davis. That's who I was named after I yield the floor to the journey.
Generally, thank you Angela, Hey, thank you guys for being out here tonight.
I can't think of a more important place for you to be.
Our country, in our state, in our city, in this very moment, has been the site of the largest single escalation of ICE agents of immigration officials in the history of the United States. Ordinarily, ICE has about one hundred people for the five state area, the five state area. Now they have four thousand ICE agents for just the state of Minnesota, which is an increase.
I don't have to tell you what's been happening.
You live here, you've been seeing it, you've been experiencing it yourself.
But this blanket of.
Attack is certainly not normal, not justified, and is not legal.
So what we have done about Operation Metro Surge.
First of all, as we filed a lawsuit which was heard yesterday, and what we argue was very simple that if the federal government cannot bully and take over Minnesota and pass laws to make us do what the federal government wants, if they can't do it with an executive order or with a piece of legislation, they certainly can't do it with four thousand armed masked men. If they couldn't pass the law that said all Minnesota law enforcement is now an ice agent, which they could not do.
They certainly can't say, oh, you don't want to do it our way, We're going to send people with guns in large numbers to your state to intimidate and even kill people. At the end of the day, believe we are going to prevail because we're right and what we're doing is just. And I am telling you that we're not here to back down. And I will also tell you this, there is no legal barrier to a state prosecutor charging a federal agent. You understand there's no legal barrier.
I've been a lawyer for thirty six years. I'm here to tell you that law and morality are not the same thing. That unjust things happen in the name of the law, and you know. But what I'm telling you is that it is not a fact that the federal agents can commit crimes in this state and never have to worry about accountability.
You heard the Vice.
President of the United States tell you absolute immunity. I don't know if he's lying or if he just doesn't know the law, but he's absolutely wrong.
You could pick lying.
Or ignorant, but he's wrong either way. You can pick either one, but it is not the case. And the real challenge, and I'm just going to be very clear with you guys, is the pragmatic reality of completing an investigation and then getting a case to a grand jury or getting enough probable cause to charge.
Now, there's a lot of cases that.
Are hard to bring because you do have evidentiary barriers. In this situation, there's so much video evidence. There is so much video evidence, and look, so the reality of the situation is I'm not going to stand upereard and say I'm charging that dude with this, and I'm gonna tell you why, because that would be improper.
Prosecutors shouldn't do that.
We will remember when George Floyd was murdered, First we got the evidence together, then we charge all four of them with murder. I'm just using that as an example to let you know that nobody here should feel that these people are just going to skate on this. Okay, you
shouldn't feel that way. Now when when when on the first time, when they killed h renee Good, local police went and said we need to process the crime scene, find evidence, put put things down, you know, the little little cards, and put the numbers down, and make sure that we process the scene. And the federal agent said, no, you're not going to be allowed to do that, and we're going to take the casings, we're going to take this car, and we're going to take the gun. So
then it was like, okay, that's different. And then they shot a man in North Minneapolis. Who's who survived only right over there y'all might have been who was there that night in North Bend the epics when it was when the chemical irritant was in the ear, like smoke everywhere.
Good to see you there, Latania.
And then but and then they said, no, you're not going to process that scene. So now on this one we hear about Preddie getting shot. We went to court and got a court order and got a judge to rule that the evidence may not be destroyed, may not be tampers with, and we have to have access with it in the gut.
The judge issue the order Saturday night.
We were back in court yesterday arguing it and the court is not not ruled yet, but we are confident that they're not going to be able to mess around with this evidence.
So what I'm just.
Telling you that that whether it's a civil action that we've taken or whether it's the criminal cases we are we are going to do everything we can to make sure there's truth and accountability here. Now, let me just tell you this, this situation, this oppression that Minnesota is under right now, will not be solved in a courtroom. It just won't be like so after the Floyd case, did police brutality stop?
No.
That's why at the time I said, this is not justice, but it is accountability. The real justice and the real freedom and the real true democracy will be because you go out in the street and demonstrate and say no to this oppression. It is the people in the street, in the hearts and the minds of the people marching in nine to below weather, standing up and saying no, we're not going to let you roll over us this way,
which is going to win the day. Together with elections, together with the artists, together with all of these things that we collect to try to create a just society.
And it's not overnight.
And I cannot guarantee you perfect safety as you fight for justice any more than people could guarantee Martin Luther King. Oh, nobody's ever gonna hurt you if you stand up for justice, or nobody's ever gonna hurt you. Nobody's ever gonna harm you if you if you protest, Jimmy Lee Jackson, we all know what happened. There's no there's no guarantee of perfect safety when an oppress or feels threatened that you're trying to be free yourself. So at the end of
the day, friends, I am asking you to protest. I'm asking you to protest peacefully and safely. But I would rather you be out there facing those bad guys, and that is exactly what they are than sitting at home worrying about your own comfort and safety safely not doing anything.
We need people to be We need everybody to.
Do any whatever they can do. And some people, look, they got bad needs there, they've got disabilities.
They can't be out there protesting.
Well, maybe you can make calls and get people to the election that's coming up. Maybe you can do mutual aid for people who are shut up in their homes and can't even go to work because they're scared the iations going to stop them. But at the end of the day, all of us have to do something in this movement that we're in, and you being here tonight is doing something, is doing something important, because let me tell you, presence is Presence is power, friends, witnesses power.
And let me tell you the bad ones out there who are trying to press all of us, they know very well that you're having a meeting here tonight at the Capri. You think they don't know, they knew if they were spying on you in the sixties. You think they're not spying you on you in the twenty twenties. Of course they are, but screw them. We're not scared of them. And I don't care if mister miss Christinoan knows that I I'm here working with you guys.
And you should not.
And if you're scared that she's going to know about you, be hey, are you in the wrong place?
This is this movement. We are guarantee.
Success because we are faithful. We are guarantee success because we are faithful, and we won't quit and we won't ever give up. Now, a last word that I want to say to you, And I don't know if Angela wants me to answer any questions or not, but there is one word I want to say to you before I rap, I want to urge you and talk to you about the fundamental importance of human solidarity in this moment, because so often we're oppressed based on our identity and
as African Americans. You and I know two hundred and forty six years of slavery, one hundred years of Jim Crow, and disparities in race every single year after that, There's never been a moment where black life in America has been celebrated in official channels. The one time somebody black becomes president, it scares this country so bad that it brings on Donald Trump. So you and I both know
the deal here. But what I'm saying to you is, as a child who's as a child of African descent, as a black man in America, who can trace my roots in America since seventeen forty two, I can.
These folks can't.
Tell me I don't I'm not from here, And no black person in this room whose ancestors came here and slavery can be told you're not from here. But did you know that you were not a citizen up until the fourteenth Amendment?
Did you know that?
Did you know that the Supreme Court justice in the United States, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said black people who were born, lived their whole lives and died in this country for seven generations up until the about eighteen fifties were not citizens. So this thing about citizen has always been racially informed. Did you know that the first statutes on immigration to this country said only free white people could come here.
It wasn't until nineteen sixty five.
That Asian, Latin American, and African people could immigrate to the United States. Immigration was a civil rights bill, just like the Voting Rights Act was.
And so I'm gonna send me over here like a sign man.
He just said, might drop.
Okay, y'all give it up again for Attorney Generarchy Dallas, and he walked all the way out.
We love him.
We're so grateful for his passion, first commitment, for being here with that this evening again on such short notice. Thank you so much, Attorney General Keith Ellison. I'm bringing out my co host Andrew.
Gillam Macari Sellers.
We have a quick panel with some clergy folk who are doing tremendous work.
Who cares about truth when the last more than say it.
As you all know, there was a big organizing effort with clergy at the airport just last week.
It is important that folks are raising.
Their voices because we know there's a whole other one that has a whole church. But he's also working with lice.
But we'll talk about that another time. Please welcome to the stage, Reverend doctor Karen McKinney, Professor and Community Liaison at Betha University, Minister Janeyamuri Bates, Betsamurray Believe, Co Executive Director of Faith in Minnesota, and Isaiah and our good sister when Tana Mellikein, executive director of Groundwork Action Call Hosts, So you're coming back out, We're gonna ask some quick questions and I know we're getting the calls to action.
So the hour is late and we got to work.
I don't know where when Tana is, but she will join us soon hopefully.
All right, Well, first of all, ladies, can.
You talk about the importance of motivating and moving clergy to act at a time like this. I think about the letter from the Birmingham jail and what doctor King
was challenging us with. Come I Andrew challenging us with and it feels like this moment is yet again a choice between white nationalist Christianity and black liberation theology, and then somewhere in between everybody else when Tana, everybody give it up for when Tana we introduced one time a mother gen Yes, but I want you to weigh in on that, Jamay, and then I'll yield to you.
I mean absolutely.
The reality is is that we are we are going to constantly recreate history, and we get to be deciders on if we're going to be history makers in the midst of it. And so I would say it is not just about frankly agitating the Church, but it is about agitating America that proclaims and professes to be the Church.
And so when you are living in a place in the land that weaponizes my Jesus and my Bible, I am I find it incredibly important that people who say that they know God, say that they know Christ, actually
live that out and call other folks into it. And so the action that we took on Friday, on the Day of Truth and Freedom, even the fact that that I think it's important to say, even the fact that that day came into being was because of a bunch of people of faith and union leaders and community members who said that we are going to take ourselves seriously enough to build the kind of power to orchestrate the kind of organizing necessary to have something like that, because
the reality is that people can call for an economic blackout or a general strike and like say that thing. But then you got to look back to what happened in Montgomery, Alabama in nineteen fifty five, when folks in a church said we're going to have the Montgomery bus boycott. It was not just oh, let's do this thing and
we're going to say it and it'll happen. They put in the ground game to have three hundred and eighty one days of people being able to get to work, to be able to get their kids, to be able to go to groceries and not take the bus, and so with a man and so I do think that people of faith have to make sure that we are truly taking ourselves seriously enough to strategize what does it mean to do something today, what is it going to mean for us tomorrow, what is it going to look
like for our people to day after that, and actually put in the real grit and organizing that's required to make that kind of thing come to be.
I had a shirt that said Jesus is not just a Sunday thing because lot of times we don't ascribe to the notion that they teach us in the Book of James that says that faith without works is dead. Because sometimes we become a very prime people. Our knees get sore, we put holes in the carpet and forget that we have to put our shoulder to the wheel on Monday to go out and get out the ditch.
My question is about the.
Disconnect that the church has perceived with this new generation that's coming up, and how we as believers of whatever, can bridge that gap because we need them in our doors. The church used to be Andrew and I we were having this discussion and Angela as well last week on the show. But we all agree that the church used to be that, and our stress used to be the epicenter of change. That's where we had our organizational meetings, that's where we had our precinct meetings. That's where we
fed the hungary in our communities. I mean, this event in nineteen sixty five would have been in somebody Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Doors open bus is going to get folks bringing them here church moms. I mean, so, how do we get back to that or evolve to the next iteration of that while also opening our arms to a generation that feels is that the church is not their home anymore.
And for me, that's that's almost devastating. McKinney.
That's a hard one, see because and maybe it's because I'm older, and then that disconnect, I see, it's there. I have ninety four nieces and nephews, ninety four nieces and nephews and grand nieces and great grands and so when I started doing this, I started calling up my nieces and nephews and saying, come come with me.
You have to care. You don't have a choice. And it's like, oh, that's Dan, Karen, Reverend and Karen. But some of them listen.
So I think there's a disconnect, but there's also you know, they see what's going on and they care. And so when I said come to this training, you know, some of the four of them showed up and came to the training, and it's like.
You have you have to be out there with me.
So so I think they're seeing and I'm not sure that that. I mean, I know there's a disconnect. But in my church, we have a rebirth of young people because I remember the days when you know, I'm standing and I'm shaking hands and standing by the door.
And there's not too many young people. But then I counted seven babies.
I said, seven people with seven babies walk by, you know, and it's like, we're getting people, and so.
They want they people are hungry for it.
And in my church, which is Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, we are unashamedly black, yes, and we're proud to be a black church and own that, even if all of our men are not.
And so we want that black history.
We profess that, we say that we are proud of that, and we call forth people to be active and not sit back. And so you know, I was designated in my church to be when we started this Black Core Leadership team, We're going to be one of these churches that is involved in Isaiah and faith in Minnesota. The pastor said, you take the lead on that. So I took the lead on that, and I was with those people who got arrested on Friday, because I'm taking the
lead on that, and that's the expectation. And there's all kinds of people from my churches and all the other churches that they put in and they say yes. And I left this meeting, left a meeting where people were saying, we're going to caucus and are you committed to caucusing and are you committed to bringing ten more people with you to Caucus on February third, And people were saying, yes, I'm committed to this for the long run, and I'm going to ask my people.
So we're still We're still doing it.
Yeah, I love that. Give her a round of applause for that. I mean, and I am. I mean.
My last comment on this is that I am absolutely unapologetic about the onus that I put on the Black Church. And the reason being is because I feel like as a community.
And this may be right or wrong, but I'll probably die with this.
We don't survive, but we thrive if our church is the foundation of our community, not just our faith.
Yeah, I would agree with you speaking of the foundation of our community. Sit next to someone who created the Groundwork Institute, and I want to just take a moment here because without Antana protests and general strikes and all of that. The rally last week would not have happened last Friday, and so let's please give it up for
Buntana and all the work she's doing. And I also just want to acknowledge the human cost of the work she is battling to make sure that her loved ones are safe in the midst of putting her body on the line for all of us. And so I want you for a moment to talk about the fact one I'm acknowledging you give all of you to this community. I want to know and this is probably going to be very hard because you're a black woman in America, but I want to know what this room can give back to you.
First, I just want to say thank you for having me.
And I also want to say the only reason I was a part of the march in the rally last week is because Janey propositioned me to show up and take that role. Janey was the person that really was the foundation of it and called me into her team.
They actually just voted me in.
On Monday as official member, and so I just want to acknowledge all the work she did, So thank you. So, as Angel shared, i I'm an air trained American. I'm a US citizen, but I also am struggling with immigration issues across my family. I mean, just yesterday when coordinating with Angela around this, I had a family member picked up and now they're in New Mexico and we're trying
to figure out what to do about it. Lately, in Minnesota, most folks have been getting sent to Texas, and now we got folks going to a new state.
As y'all know, about.
Three thousand folks have been picked up over the last couple of weeks. They have been sent all over the country. I have family members who are US citizens. I've had family members with green cards. I have folks with more complex statuses who have been picked up by ice.
There is no strategy, no theory.
They are just picking up our community members and making them disappear. And at the same time, the other part of this battle is that I'm an executive director of not one but two institutions, Groundwork Institute and Groundwork Action, where I got to get up every day and do the political organizing and do the development and the train
and all that. At the same time, you know, having to figure out what autlly can I send a Whipple to pick up my cousin, because I can't go back there again after, you know, being there just a couple weeks before that, picking a different family member. And so I asked for everyone in this community is to continue with the demands ICE out of Minnesota. Absolutely, I need you to contact your member of Congress and make those demands, your state rep, your city council member, every single level
of government. The other thing I'll add is that last Friday during the march, I sat at my computer and I deleted my Netflix. I deleted every Postmates, all the little services I had, I canceled them.
The only place I've been shopping at is my co op.
Like folks that I know have already taken a political position to say we stand with immigrants, we don't stand with ICE, and I have just been unapologetic about rethinking about the way I spend money, the way I move, and I encourage everybody else in this room to do that. And I just think one other thing I got a name that I think can't be forgotten about this moment is that I am very clear that the only reason I have the right to be in the United States
is the work of black Americans. It is very clear that after passing the Civil Rights Act and after the passing of Voting Rights.
Act, the Immigration Act was passed.
After that the work of Martin Luther King to open the door and all the others to open the door to allow immigrants into the United States. And so I very clearly see, after all the organizing I did for Jamar Clark and Philando Castile, I have very overwhelmingly seen the Black American community step up in this moment and stand in solidarity.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't name that. And so I don't know what more to ask for.
I have seen folks really step up in this moment, and I just encourage folks to continue to do it with their political power, their message, and their money.
So I guess before we do our lot of actions that they're any final I mean, I'm a big I'm the person who's crying on the airplane. I have my hoodie own and they'd be like, why is he tearing up? Because it's a Marven Sap plan in my ear. So I'm that emotional guy who's crying. Any parting words for this audience as we begin to bring this to a close of faith, the strength that we have, what we need to do to persevere to get through uh, this
dark time. You can preach a little bit, just a little bit, have a pisk pal, you're not that Baptist stuff.
Love it.
I would just I guess I would say God chooses no hands but our hands. God uses no hands but our hands and feet and and and so we have to choose. We have to choose to let God use our hands and feet. And we have to choose it every day. It's not a one time choice. You're not done, you know, and tomorrow I get to just lay in. No, we have to we have to choose it every day. And it matters for the generations that come behind us.
What what kind of kids? What are what are our kids going to have?
You know?
If we keep going backwards? So we have to pick uh, and we if we can't let go. Yeah, I guess that's what I says.
I mean, I would just lean, have us all lean into the story of the Good Samaritan, the notion that there is there when anytime there is someone who is hurting, someone who has beaten, someone who has oppressed, someone who is down trotten for whatever reason, we are called to do and to act. And there were folks who walked past that body and thought, I can't I can't do anything about that, because if I do, what happens to me?
And the one who decided to stop said, I, if I keep going, what happens to them?
And I think there is a collective what.
Happens to us if we don't act?
And so is that is the call?
And for the Minnesotans.
I can't end this without saying for the Minnesotans who are in the room, specially black Minnesotan's.
February third is caucus Day.
Okay.
We we could talk all day in like little settings like this, but it is so incredibly important that we use our voice and having oversize an outside stay about what happens in our state and in our country. And you get the opportunity to do that when you caucus, and when we caucus together in unity.
Amen.
Amen, So y'all join me at a training on on Monday. Okay, Monday is six thirty a Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. We're gonna get trained to caucus together with the actual strategy. Wein just gonna show up. Willy Nelly, We're gonna come through and actually win an agenda.
Okay, I go to a Catholic church, so I can't sermon like that.
It's not in me.
I'll try my best. I'm in the.
That's around the wine and a little bit.
But we do do that.
We do that a little bray is you better watch that backwash.
Okay, y'all laughed a little too hard at my people.
But so I just I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about what happened about an hour before I walked in this room, a Congressoman Omar at her town hall was standing there talking about how we need to hold the federal government accountable.
And a man walked up to her with a substance and sprayed her in the face. And you know, I.
Have to also talk about how Congressman orders.
She swung back. She literally swung back.
She approached him and then cleaned herself up and then continued the forum, continued the conversation, she put out a statement and said, we have to keep going.
We have to keep fighting.
And this is very difficult, this is absolutely horrific. But also we have to keep going. We have to keep fighting. We can't sit here and wallow. You know, feel the pain, feel the trauma, experience it, process it, you know, go to your place of faith, you know, do what you need to do. But also after that, we have to you know, leave this, leave these spaces and go back
to organizing. And that there are folks with less access and privilege and all the things who are sitting in detention centers that are dependent on us to leave this room and stand up for them because they can't stand up for themselves. So no matter what we're experiencing, it's a little bit harder to go to the gas station, it's a little bit harder to get around.
You got to carry your passport one hundred percent.
But if you have the privilege to stand up for someone who literally can't leave their house, I beg you to do it. I beg you to take that action. And then being an electoral really, as Janey said, you.
Have to caucus.
It is if you have the if you have the ability to. For some folks it's not safe, I get it. But if you have the ability, caucus on February third. One thing that you could do at caucuses that people often forget is you could do resolution. So there's statements where you say, I believe that we need ice out of m N or I believe in a higher minimum wage. You can write statements like that and bring them there and get them added to your plat parties platform.
You can join one of the committees.
So there are so many opportunities for you to take a position and let it be known where you stand and really defend the folks next to you that.
Just don't have the capacity to defend themselves.
So I just ask you to, you know, be a true neighbor and stand up for whoever you know can't stand.
So thank you all, so very much.
Let's give it up again for Reverend doctor Karen McKinny minister today.
We're so grateful, bring you on.
Thank you so much, so great.
Okay, y'all, we're going to get to our calls to action or repping the show.
But you can know, well I'll just say I love that because we talked about this on the show. But how the right wing is really bastardized evangelicals right, every time you hear evangelicals, the evangelical community got behind Trump x y Z. I think what religious people are they talking to. They're not talking to these women that we just heard from. That's the true meaning. And I think spirit of the Word of God and the spirit of God.
The other thing that comes to for CTA.
And I think it was set here on this stage around I think exercising the muscle of repetition, the fact that we can't just do it one time. We reference the Montgomery bus boycott, but we oftentimes don't reference the fact that after the first day of the boycott, the black community went back to the church that night and decided and voted as a community whether they would go
back and continue the boycott the next day. And then at the end of that day they showed back up at the Baptist church and they voted again whether they were going to continue the bus boycott the next day. They thought that the bus boycott was going to be one night, one day, and then two days, and then a week, and that week lasted over a year. They exercised the muscle of coming back and coming back and coming back. And I don't think this is a lesson
that you all need here in Minnesota. In fact, I think this is the lesson you all are teaching the rest of the country.
Cut that song because we don't like have it licensed. I was trying to text it nicely. Don't do that in the middle of a CTA it or get cut. So if you want to play our music while we're talking, that's fine, but not anything that's not licensed.
So to conclude is simply to say thank you for teaching us the lesson and helping us exercise the muscle, the discipline of coming back again again again.
Delay is not denial.
Trump may think they are winning right now, but delay is not denial. In my faith tradition, accountability will come and we will win this thing in the end.
God, bless Yaul, and thank you for being earth.
So mine is very easy.
I know that we are on this journey together and we are getting extremely weary. It seems very cyclical that every three months or four months, or five months or six months, it feels as if we're being pulled down, we are being put upon, we're being oppressed, We're being suppressed, and it feels as if sometimes the faith and the prayers simply aren't working. It feels like the price that we're paying for change with every body and all the blood that's flowing through the street is just too high.
We're tired of going to memorial services. We're tired of going to funerals. We're tired of seeing people gunned down on our streets with our own eyes. We're tired or seeing people drug out of their homes. We're tired of seeing black women die in the hotel excuse me, hospital lobbies because they refuse to give them care. We're tired or seeing our farmers suffer. We're tired or seeing people just suffer because of who they love, or who they pray to, or the color of their skin.
We're just tired.
And I guess my call to action is we all stand before you to just a little bit more tired today than we were yesterday. But it's incumbent upon us to dig deep. Like Andrew said, it's incumbent upon us to rely on that faith because when we were brought to this country, we were stripped of everything we had, but our faith.
Rely on that rock.
Rely on that faith, and make sure when you go out you work extremely hard to make tomorrow better than yesterday. My dream is for so steady and stokely to have a better America than the one that I inherited. My fear is that I'm running behind on that mission. So I'm encouraging all of you to join me in that journey, just to make sure that all these little black and brown boys and girls can grow up and say that this America is made in my image. This America is
something I can be proud of. This America actually gave us a check that we can cash and no longer has insufficient funds written on it. So we're here with you all. I'm asking for your prayers, I'm asking for your work, and I'm asking for you to rely on that faith because we all need.
That at this time.
Thank you, b So my kind of action is all thank yous to y'all. We love y'all so much. Thank you for welcoming us with open arms. I want to give a shout out again to Act Blue for their Minnesota Freedom Fund the setup. We pray that again you all at home will donate to that for all of you in this room. If you have neighbors who need groceries, we have so many groceries for y'all to take hygiene kits. Please make sure you go through Paradise all to do that.
We say it again, I'm directionally challenged, so I believe him I also want to give a special shout out to Capri Theater. Y'all please give it up for them. They turn this around so quickly. If you don't already, please make sure you're donating to support the mission of this critical work. This created a safe space for all of us to express ourselves and to know that we
would not be terrorized by the Ice people. Also, I want to shout out Attorney Leslie Redman, who I shouted out earlier when Tana Mellikan again, Ellie, I'm sorry, not Ellie, I'm used to r Elie, Eli, Danielle Lauren of Minnesota Freedom Fund, all of them.
Do.
Wanna Thompson, who's going to be joining us just in a moment to.
Lift up the small businesses that received the micro grants El Barito, Mercado, Colonial Market and Restaurant, Westside Boosters, Turn Signal and Jazz and all of our community partners and all of you please give it up for yourselves. Dwana Thompson, Where are you come? A noun stee's business? It says up, stay to the people, represent say of the people.
Come on DT, everybody.
I know the night has been long, but it's been good, right it's been sold and riching, and so Angel loves to have me come do this part only because I have been living my life off of a very simple African proverb for a while and it says that there are some people who are so hungry that God can only appear to them in the form of bread. So I've been asking myself, and I'm asking you tonight, what is your bread? What do you have to give tonight?
We do have groceries for over two hundred and something families.
We brought the bread with us.
But there are some businesses who've been thinking about how they can stand with community during this time, and that does not come with That's not easy for them. They probably don't even have the resources to do it. And this won't change everything, but it is a start to recognize that we need each other. So to these seven businesses,
we see you, we love you. Please stand up when you are called Soulbo Britney Class, I can't see nothing but hell, mpls Sierra Carter, Sammy's Avenue Eatery Michael McDowell. I know that KB Brown had to leave, but walk past promotions, y'all give it up for what clat promotions Czara Cafe, mister Calise or missus Calise, I'll be kitchen berry berry and right smart wellness, y'all give it up
for doctor Khalil and Felicia. I will meet you at the back to make sure that you get your micro grants tonight, right, And so thank you so much for everybody who stayed with us tonight. Again, we want if you don't need the resources yourself, but you know a family, please come back and get them. We are going to also donate whatever is left to local organizations who are doing the food giveaways daily so it will not go to waste. And thank you so much for your support tonight.
Oh that's not on.
Okay.
Now to close us out, Thomas Senat Petris, one of your very own, is gonna join us again to take us home.
As we in Native Lampard.
We will tell y'all what we always say, welcome home, y'all.
All right, ladies and gentlemen. So I'm really proud to debut Thish this song. We just launched it called Don't Buy the Lie. Kashimana Ahua and myself wrote it for just this moment. We're honored to be able to sing it. Tonight. If you want to see the video, videographer with Jossi did the video for us. It's available on Thomasina's music dot.
Square and YouTube.
So this is for the love of our.
Community and for you.
Thank you for being here tonight and letting.
Us use our voices this way.
Oh.
I got my head in my head. Oh you got me thinking, mm hmmm. Sometimes I don't understand.
Why you want me drinking. M I got my head in my hands.
Oh you got me fussing.
Because you done up to my place. Now you got me cussing? Why you want me naked? Why you want me brood? Why you want me frighten?
Home?
Person confused? Don't mind.
It's gonna cust you to cause when they hurt me, they hurt you.
We're all connected.
Can't you see none of us suffery.
Till all of us suffery.
You don't care who I am.
You don't wanna know me. You just want to cos ho to Lord show me. You ignore true.
Rather be blind to see me.
But the shame is on you.
Because you could never own.
It's always been.
Free, so afraid of faces, so afraid of truth, moresnessing, hatred.
What's this world? Coming to God.
It's called a costume to cause when they hurt me, they hurt you. We're all connected.
Can't you see none of us surfree?
Normal till all of us surfery.
I got my heart in my hate, dreaming of what could be.
Or all in no violence, nos going hungry.
No, no nose in addiction, no.
Dying yards, Every life a secret more sacred than you God, No.
Gods gonna lost you too.
Husband.
They hurt me, they hurt you.
We're all connected.
Mh.
Can't you see none.
Of us suffree? No till all of.
Us suffree, None of us suffree, Still all of us suffery.
Can we say it to everybody? None of us suffree, to all of us.
Free?
Thomas say, I cut your suffen?
Thank you, Ny Dave lampod is a production of iHeartRadio and partnership with reisent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.