Life as an Activist w/ Tamika Mallory

a well known piece of information about yourself. So I have such a big mouth, and I've had incredible moments where I think I have been able to articulate Black rage and black pain. But I actually do not like doing speeches at all. I hide, I cry, I beg

people not to have needed speak. What's up, everybody, I'm Gammy and this is positively gam Every week I have raw, in depth conversation with inspirational people pushing for change on everything from aging, relationships, politics, wellness, to the current issues facing the black community. Joining me today is civil rights activists, community organizer and co founder of Until Freedom, a social justice group fighting against the stemic and racial injustice. Miss

Tamka Mallory. Tamika is one of the most powerful speakers of her generation. She delivered two of those speeches earlier this year after the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. Welcome to Mika. You know how I feel about you. I'm a huge fan and I'm really excited to talk with you today. People know you as this organizer, of course, and they know you from until freedom, but I wanted to try to get just a little bit more personal with you today, if you don't mind, is that okay? Sure?

I love that with you for sure, Okay, alright, because you you seem like such a superhero all the time, and I know how hard it is. But when the cape comes off, who is to make a really And what is life like for you? And how is it that you went about and made the decision to commit yourself to activism. So I did get involved with activism because of my parents initially. So it's very similar to church.

When your parents take you to church as a child, you have no choice but to go, and you better have a positive attitude because you'll be there all day. And that's just it's just it's a part of your upbringing. For me, we did go to church on Sunday, but Saturday rallies and other community activities were even that they were equally important to my parents, and so my mom went to church, but my dad wasn't a big church go or. However, he was a big activist and always

helping people in the community. And so, um, you know, I had to get up every Saturday morning and attend rallies and other events, and throughout the week, my parents were the ones who would be working within the housing projects to feed people and just to assist other families. They went to precinct council meetings. And now imagine me being a little kid with folks dragging me around to be with old people all the time. It was really miserable.

Where did you grow up? What's city in Harlem, in Manhattanville projects on a hundred and thirty third Street in Old Broadway. We as young, you know, peep. Younger people are influenced, of course by your surroundings. And so imagine living in the projects where some of the kids there, their parents weren't woke, if you will, and there was a lot of stuff happening, and I was attracted to what I thought was cool, the people hanging out people

who were able young girls. They were able to stay out all night, they slept over one another's homes, they had all the boyfriends. And so watching those things play out right before my eyes, but not being able to participate in much of it because of my parents taking me to places where, like I said, there were a lot of older people and it was a lot of talking.

It wasn't as fun to me. Now. One thing I do remember is when I learned about chanting, it felt like really demanding to say no justice, no peace, and that was something that got me a pretty excited. So, you know, hanging around the young people within the movement, we started to be expert chanters, and that was something that made me feel like we were having at least

a little bit of fun. You have a son, and the father of your son, can you talked to me a little bit about about him and perhaps if that had any influence on your decision to commit your life to activism. Absolutely, my son's father, So first of all, just piggybacking off of this idea that I was pretty bored and pretty miserable and thought I was being punished. I rebelled. By the time I got to about sixteen. It started around twelve, running away from home, um, you know,

and not being very respectful of my parents. You know, if I told him I was going to the store at twelve o'clock, I didn't come back until four, you know, things like that. So that started around the age of twelve. But by the time I got to be sixteen, it was really a problem. I was trying to find a way to be in the streets, just being attracted to what I thought was cool. And I met my son's father along the way. He actually lived lived in the

same building that my parents live in. His grandparents and my mom and dad lived there. His parents were perpetual drug abusers who had been in and out of prison his entire life, so he was living with his grandparents. We met in an elevator. We started seeing each other. It was probably the most toxic relationship you could ever imagine. We were fighting all the time, everything you could think of. Too young to be in a relationship like the one

that we were in. I got pregnant, had my son, and he moved away from New York City with a group of people that he met somewhere in Harlem. Two of them were brothers and in the course of time. What we have been told is that they were selling marijuana. And one night after he left my son's birthday party, my son's second birthday party in New York. My son is now twenty one, he'll be twenty two in March um.

When he left his birthday party New York and went back to Pennsylvania where they were living, the drugs that they had in the house were gone. And of course, because these were two brothers who were sort of the head of this enterprise, if you will, I don't think it was that big of an enterprise, but nonetheless their little business, they they turned on him. They looked at him as a suspect for how the drugs went missing.

It came out in court that it actually had something to do with an upset girlfriend and something totally different. But they over a day tortured him, beating him trying to find out where the drugs were. And by the time the evening came, they knew that you can't just beat a man and let him go because the retaliation issues and all of that. And Jason was a pretty tough guy. He had grown up in the streets, and so they knew that they had to kill him, and

they took him to a field. They waited basically until it got dark, because as I said, this went on throughout many hours of the day, and by evening they took him out to a wooded area. They shot him twice and they pushed him over an embankment where you know, they believed he was gonna, of course fall all the way down, but he actually got caught on some branches

and was laying there for two weeks. At the end of the two week period, a woman who was walking her dog happen noticed that the dog was excited about this particular area. She looked over the embankment and saw his sneakers caught to the tree. And of course the police came and they discovered that it was Jason. So he was fully decomposed. We weren't able to have a

proper service for him, open casket or any of those things. Um. And you know, like I said, he had been there dead for a long time and we were looking for him, um, you know, calling his phone, trying to find out what was going on. Uh, and he was dead. Wow. That that must have been horrible And how over you at this time, like eighteen years old, I was actually twenty because my son was too. I had my son at eighteen. Yeah,

I was fwunny and we weren't together. I always say that because people, you know, they like to say, well, you know her boyfriend, he actually wasn't. We weren't together. But it's funny that for the few weeks right before Gammy, he and I started to become friends. We were in that phase of the co parenting situation. We fell out over two years. I had all, I was mad, he

was mad. We did all of that, and now we were starting to talk to each other and try to figure out how we could be friends and move forward with our son. Um and you know, the lifestyle, it caught up with him. And you know, I always say to people that the bottom line is you do wrong and these things can happen, But we have no We can't um separate how he grew up and the things that he saw as a kid from ended up happening to him. His ultimate demise is directly connected. Even though

he lived with his grandparents, who are amazing people. His grandmother his grandfather is now deceased, but his grandparents were amazing.

They tried to do everything they could, but it just isn't It isn't always enough to have your grandparents taking care of you, with your parents in and out of your life, going in and out of prison, and having this drug abuse issue that today is being called a mental health crisis, a public health crisis, But at that time, the way to deal with drug abuse was to throw people in jail and not to give them any real help at all. I know all about that. It was

to criminalize that the whole circumstance. And yeah, I have a whole lot of feelings about how now it's an epidemic, when when we the black community has been suffering it for decades and we were just made criminals. How did all of that affect your decision to get involved with activism? Do you think I didn't want to talk about his death much, But in my own family, I was hearing so many devastating stories from women about their child's father and then being out of the home for various reasons.

And so it started to come together for me what my parents had been teaching me again back to church, because of course, in church, when you little, you're there because you have to be. But at some point the lightbulb goes off and yeah, and God becomes your own you know what I mean. And that's what happened for me. The movement became mine. It was no longer my parents movement that I had to be a part of because

I was forced. It was now that I was the one running around like what time are we going to the rally? Like y'all are not going. I can't believe it, and I want everybody to get involved because I made the connection between poverty and drug abuse and lack of education and all those things to directly to what happened

to him at the end of his life. And I understood that it wasn't me that needed to be embarrassed, that America really needed to have to explain why this crisis of black men being killed wasn't the front page of the newspaper with solutions to back it up, because I knew that if it were white boys, we would

be doing something about it. For you, as a single mother, what was that like, trying to raise your son with the lifestyle that you chose important as it was its respectfully and for lack of a better word, it was left up like, you know, thank God my parents did step in and trust and believe my mom didn't step in because, uh, you know, she was excited about me, um, you know, having this baby. Although she of course they

loved their grandsons so much. I I just the way you guys love your grandchildren is just incredible because we were as kids, we never received the kind of love that these grandchildren. It's just my parents. They're gone over their grandchildren, and so they loved him, but she was always she was so disappointed because my mom knew that I could do so much more without having a baby

that I had to also take care of. And so when Jason died, I remember seeing my father at the burial as they were lowering the casket into the ground. My father went over to the casket and punched it twice on the top and said, I got this, We got it. We're gonna take care of him. I'll never

forget seeing him do that. And it was it was I think it was in that moment that they realized they really had step in and helped me, because I was probably a disaster anyway, and they knew that he wasn't gonna get the right type of attention because I was out of the honeymoon stage of washing the clothes and doing the thing. And now I'm at the point of will you watch him while I go to the club, And so they stepped in and they began to help me.

I got into I started working at National Action Network for Revenew Sharpton, so I got really busy. The club stage phase was real, real short. I got really busy at work. And today you have to ask my son how it felt not to have his mom basketball games. I wasn't there parent teacher conferences. I was. I went to some. I went to some, but I missed a lot more than I should have just being present. Even

at home. He talks about the fact that he doesn't remember us really sitting down watching movies together and doing things like that. And it's because my life is still so on all the time, and I think coming home from trauma, right because during this time, you're talking about A'madu Diallo, Abna Luima, all types of cases that's happened in the Jersey for um. You know, we're dealing with all of the backlash, if you will, of all of

those cases that happened so close together. And then of course Sean Bell, which is where I really got into, kicked in my gear in activism and sort of started to be on the forefront. And and that's a lot of trauma. So when I came home, I would come home and want to just take it all off and not really talk I'm dealing with. I just saw crying mothers, I'm burying babies because I was also working in the community and handling funerals for women who lost their children.

And he experienced all of that with me. And and now today he gets it, but he still he gets it now, but he gets it, but there's still resentment. There's still resentment, and it comes out whenever I'm pushing him. Because the one thing I never stopped doing nomatter where I was, I always had high expectations of him, and I always took care of him and made sure that

he did what he was supposed to do. And so there comes the clash because he wants to use my absence as an excuse for his issues, and I wouldn't allow it, and so he would, you know, start with it. You're never here, and I don't even know if you love me, And and it happened all the time, and in fact, the last big incident that we had was

just last year where he finally moved out. And now I never If I knew that moving out would be the thing to make us best friends, I would have he would have been gone a long time ago, because that's my homie now. And so how did you all deal with that though? Did you ever seek any outside counsel? Did you all go to therapy or anything like that to help overcome some of these issues of abandonment. We're

doing it now. We're doing it now. I so feel it to because I so feel you, because of course, Jada went through the same kind of stuff with me. It's just that my absence was in a different way. My absence was because I was an addict. But it still feels the same. It feels the same, It feels the same, And I used to use that as my excuse. It's not like I'm out here hanging out. I'm not on drugs, because you know, my mother, she was like, let me just tell you something. You are trash, like

she was on me hard. And I used to be like, I can't believe you would say that to me. I'm out here working this and she would say, nothing is more important than taking care of your son. I think seeing me where I am now. Everyone is now understands that it was God's calling, it wasn't my own, it wasn't my choosing. And now they're like, Okay, we're glad

that we invested and we stayed together. But there was some real to motionless times because I was working for someone else, leaving my child for weeks at a time, so that to them was not exciting. But now that they see where I am, they know it was all

preparation for the moment that we're currently in. And I'm glad to have this conversation with you too, to Maka, because I think people see you now and think that this is new, Oh, this is who's on the scene right now, But you've been doing this for years and so I just think about the level of stress that that causes in your relationships, not with just your son. How has it affected some of your other personal relationships? Are you dating now? You got all the good questions,

Give me the good questions. The dating part is hard, that's the part. I was in a relationship with a man who we were together for eleven years. He is twenties, seven years older than me, and when I when when I was younger, and he was younger, it was great. You know, he was the one who had the career, an amazing career and advertising had the number one advertising agency for black people in America. UM, And I was

just sort of figuring out. So I could, you know, run around with him and jump on the plane with him and be you know, work from wherever on my laptop and do those things. And that was cool. But over time, as my career has began to blossom, and my lifestyle is that I'm gone and sometimes I forget the call and I'm a mess. It's I'm never I'm always going the doors, revolving in and out again. The same issues with my son. When I come home, I'm not really in the mood to talk, and sometimes I'm

on the phone too much and all those things. And after a while it became clear that we're and we're the best of friends. I mean that we talk every day. I'm probably not the best, the easiest person into love right now, and so that's something that I have to work on because there are moments of extreme loneliness because when you do want to stop, there's nobody to call to say, let's go on a trip or do something together.

UM And so I find myself entertaining myself, uh, spending a lot of time out alone, going to dinner, doing things by myself, because it's really difficult to turn to your friends and sort of take them up and down on your roller coaster. You're never available, but then when you are available, you want everybody to change everything to feed what you need, and that it doesn't really work

like that. So it's pretty hard. It's hard. Perhaps I have to accomplish a few more things so that I can actually invest in a relationship in the way in which if I need to know, you say, accomplish some things before I go onto the to the next question. Let me let's unpack that for a minute. What is it you think that you need to accomplish? So I just turned in the manuscript to my first book, State

of Emergency. I wouldn't talk to anybody. I wouldn't even allow people to look at me for the last for the last few months while I was in the writing process, and then the editing process is horrible for anybody who knows it's hard. It's I felt suicidal during the last few days because I just felt like I didn't write enough. It didn't say enough so I was probably really moody.

People who write books need a sabbatical or you need to be somewhere by yourself, because it's hard to have to entertain people and get that done at the same time. I and then now I have a second book, my memoir. The first book is about the movement and the state of America, but the next book is actually my memoir. So I really feel like and that's I have a year to do that work. I think I need to get through that. And then there's some personal things that

I have not had an opportunity. You asked a question

about therapy. I don't talk much about it, but I do mention that I had a period after experiencing severe attacks from the right wing during the Women's March, that I got heavily addicted to xan x and had to go to a drug treatment program, that I had to go to a PTSD program to try to address how I got on the xan x. And so while I'm not on any of that and I'm happy to be clean, there's still some residual things about why that even happened to me in the first place, and some restoration that

I need to do. So I don't know that I can go and and really be someone's lover when I have I'm missing some things that I need to deal with for myself. That's an important recognition about yourself, hugely important. You don't want to come into a relationship with all of your damage, So you gotta heal yourself first, and you are the most important person. Is only you can do that. That's a hard part, yeah, and that but that's so important to your recovery process. So don't don't

take that lightly. And I'm glad to hear you share that because it's so important. Talk a little bit more about the stresses of this life that you've chosen, because I think people kind of have a tendency to glamorize it. To Mika, they see you on TV and they see you with these powerful speeches, and but there's no salary, there's no health benefits. How do you what is that like? And how do you take care of yourself and your family? So there is a salary, but in order to get it,

it's hard work. Because we have established an organization called Until Freedom where people can donate and we all receive a salary from the organization. The problem is that the work we do has peaks and loads. People are paying attention when George Floyd is killed, people are paying attention

when you're mobilizing for Brianna Taylor. And then we fall in love with the fact that we elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and now it's okay, they'll take care of it, and and we just let's depend on the Democratic president, when in fact that's not accurate. It's really going to be the work of the people to push

them that will get the job done. And that's where we, you know, constantly working is trying to figure out how do we respectfully but yet and still very firmly pushed the administration to make do on the promises, And so in those moments you see less support, less giving. And we try not to take corporate money for our general

operating expenses. So if some corporate partner wants to be a part of any event or some activity that we're doing, we will entertain it, depending on who that player is, but for general operating we try not to take corporate money because we don't want to be censored, if you will, from what we can say, what we can get involved with, and how hard we can challenge the system, and so that speaks to your point the salary piece. You just

never know. We are constantly raising money, and the way in which we look at it is that we have to raise money for a full year so that we know at least for this one year we're going to get paid. However, that's not a sustainable model for people who are forty years old and older. All of us, of the four co founders, are forty. I think Attorney

Angelo pintol is maybe like thirty eight. But our lives like and we all have children, we have families, we have homes, we have other things, and we have aspirations and people don't necessarily they don't. I don't know. I get these questions all the time. What do you how, why are you and where do you get your money in? And why do you look so you what are you

doing with their money? First of all, the money that comes in from the organization pretty much does cover healthcare and things like that, paying your taxes, those types of things, and of course your basic living expenses. But I also can speak, I can write, I can do other things. I plan events, I convene individuals and and do consulting work. And so, just like everyone else, should I not be paid for the service of and and my skills that

I have that I bring to the table. I would hope that people want me to be able to buy a home and to have a car, you know, to go on a vacation to look nice, because I don't feel like living in Kentucky or being on the road in these places. I was in Mississippi and Parchment Prison fighting with the Mississippi Prison Coalition group there to stop the literal death of prisoners. Every single day to maybe three prisoners were dying in Parchment Prison, and we were

there even in Mississippi. I don't want to stay at the worst hotel in town. I want to stay at least in a decent place that I can feel comfortable because I'm out there doing things that most people are not able or willing to do, and so they are. People do either glamorize it or they diminish the value and think that somehow we're supposed to just be you know what, And it's a mindset that has been taught

to us. Being enslaved has really done us in, right, It did us in because the mindset that we have is that people doing service, are supposed to be poor, and so knowing that Dr King died not having the types of resources, like we just celebrated Dr King Day, And I wonder if today, knowing all of his contributions, we had the opportunity to give him his flowers, to give him our resources, would we make sure that Dr King had a beautiful home, that he had all the

things necessary to be as comfortable as possible. And of course I'm not calling myself anywhere close to Dr King, but you get the point. I think that we would, that we would pour into Dr King if we could do it all over again. And I think that's the way we need to look at many activists, not just to makea mallory, but many activists and organizers, that there's no reason why those individuals should go home and be struggling.

And by the way, the brothers on my team will tell you when they show up at home and their wives are they're taking care of their kids while they're on the road, the wives are looking at them like where the light bill broke? Like where where's the food? Like it's not about it just being a good nature, good moral cause. We also are working and to your point, it is selfless and thankless and no because I'm not gonna do it. It's real. I'm sixty seven years old.

I'm not gonna be out there marching with you. I'm not. I'm too old for that. So I appreciate what you guys are doing, and I think a lot of people do, but how do you show up for that appreciation. What we are working on is a campaign that is many black folks and brown folks and people who are our supporters, allies and accomplices will give um a portion of their monthly resources to us so that we have the money

to leave the campaigns. I think the work that we did with Brianna Taylor shows now we have three officers who have at least been fired from They should be charged, they should be arrested, they should be convicted, but the system doesn't allow for an easy way to do that. Is it's this is something that we've got to work on on so many levels. It's not just Brianna Taylor, but across the nation, so many have died and have been murdered and we haven't received the type of justice.

So that's a systemic problem. But in terms of pushing the buttons, of the system, the local system there in the Oville, Kentucky, alongside that local community. We see now that three officers who were there that night and are responsible for her death have actually been fired from their jobs. That is a direct result of the work that we did and the campaign in the ways in which we were able to do that work well. We moved into an airbnb. I don't even know exactly what the bill was,

but it costs us money to be there. The fact that jay Z said I'll pick up the bill for security and also for your housing, that was very helpful to us, so that we didn't have to think about that, but we focused our attention on the work that we were there to do. We also and these are things people don't think about. I as Tamika Mallory, who and

you know it's me, you can see me, right. I don't I don't go into a lot of restaurants to eat in towns where I'm fighting in the local town against their authorities, especially in a place like Louisville and Kentucky. I don't go to a lot of restaurants. So I try to make sure we go to a lot of black restaurants. And you know, places like that or across the bridges and go into other towns. So we had a chef. She brought us a good meal for dinner

so that we could be safe. So nobody's trying to poison us, right, because this is this These are real things. And so again we because of that, we were able to focus our attention every day on organizing get in industry getting. We've done so much work with the local community there, and in fact, we applied for other grants where we now have given money to many of the local groups and left them with resources so that they

can continue to build. So these are the things that people never get to hear about, and they don't necessarily see, and then they say, what you're gonna do with my money? I'm doing. I would hope that just like we give the Red Cross and all these others, that we also invest in those who are trying to provide emergency services to our communities as well. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that to me, because I think it's important because there are a lot of people like me who

can't participate. But this is your financial support is always a way that you can participate and help. But people do want to know how their money is being spent.

And I don't think people think about all of these things, and it's very important because you guys have to survive, you have to live one I think I want to ask how what do you do to care for yourself emotionally, physically, and spiritually, because the stress that goes along with dealing with these kinds of challenges on a daily basis, it's

just overwhelming to me. God bless and just I'm so thankful that somebody created therapy because, honey, a lot of people don't understand how important it is to have somebody to talk through all your stuff that's not there to

judge you, it flashed across the screen. Or because we're involved in so many different cases, we're constantly hearing no we're constantly hearing no charges filed, We're constantly receiving pushback, and to be quite honest, we're constantly fighting with our own people to try to get us on one accord as well about how we should approach the movement and what type of sacrifices are necessary in order for us to get where we're going. It's very stressful, it's extremely demanding,

and it's extremely painful. The last thing I'll say is this. You know, I finally have reached a place in my career after twenty five years where I don't have to be around negative people who don't have my back. I can actually, I can say nope, I see it already. I don't trust you, or I don't think you believe in me, you don't help, you don't make me better. I feel judged, I feel I don't feel good about your presence in my space. And I finally am at a place where I can just go nope, and that's

good and that's it, and it's the best. It's so liberating. Yes, I can imagine, don't be afraid to say no. We're gonna do the ones you'd like to know. Segments before we let you get out of here. What book are you currently reading? State of Emergency? My own book? Your own book, yes, ma'am, Yes, ma'am. So I'm reading it, editing and getting it fine tune. Okay, So when when when will it be ready for us? It's first of all, you can pre order right now. Okay, it's on Amazon

and everywhere else that you buy books. But it also it will be out on May eleven. The Hard copies will be in the store on May eleven. Okay, perfect, And one thing you would like to get off your chest? One thing I would like to get on I think we covered it already that activists should not be broke. That is something that's that's a norm that needs to be thrown out. That activists should be able to live and thrive just like everyone else. And I agree with

that one. So to Meka, what's a model you live by? What's a model that I live by? And it's a new one for me, that who is they the day? Get rid of day in your head because they all stop you from doing things. They'll tell you you can't dress a certain way, can't talk a certain way, can't dance a certain way. They is not real. It's in your head no more day. That is such a good

one to Maka. And if I could stop worrying so much about what other people think of me and just worry about how what I think of me, my life would be so much easier. I would have so much more self confidence if I could get the days out of my head. Me to someone said to me one time, it's not just the idea of saying getting rid of the thoughts of day and worrying about day. It's also identifying who the days are because sometimes the day could

be closed. People who are really close to you that you depend on and they're actually pouring negative thoughts into your head about yourself and it's stopping you from realizing your dreams. So we do have to identify who they is and decide whether or not they have your best interests at heart. And guess what, I'm just trying to figure it out. This is real new, but I figured while it's fresh on the press for me, I'll share

it with everybody else. Let's figure out day. And obviously you've been doing something to to make sure that you're taking care of yourself and that's evident by the conversation that we're having. Thank you so much. Just keep fighting the good fight, keep stirring up good trouble. We need you, We are need we need you, and I'm so excited about your book. Tell us where people can find you on social media, so people can go on Instagram to add to mek A D. Mallory at to mek A D. Mallory.

If you're looking for the business page, the more appropriate content you should go to until freedom. That's my organization's Instagram page. But my page to mek A D. Mallory is where it goes down. It could be anything from the Wop song and how much I Love that all the way to how fine a man is? And then I might also be fighting whoever needs to be fought in society. But don't come on my page trying to sense to me. We do whatever we want to do

exactly on your personal page. There you go, there you go. Thank you. You know how we feel about you. Here the smith Household to me because we love you, love you too. So here in my takeaways after my conversation with Tamika, activism is selfless and thankless work, and we must continue to show up. Don't discount the importance of your contribution, and whether it's ten toes down or through financial donations, the work never ends. Tamika's book State of

Emergency is now available for pre order on Amazon. Thank you to my guest to Nica Mallory for sharing time with us today. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, be sure to rate and review. Follow me on my Instagram at Gammy Norris to share with me your thoughts on the episode I'm here, I'm talking, and I'm listening. As always,

stay grateful, y'all. Positively GAM is produced by Westbrook Audio Executive producers Adrian van Field, Norris, Jada Pinkett Smith, Amanda Brown and Fallon jethro Co executive producer Sam Hoti, associate producer Erica Ron and Crystal Devon's editor and mixer Calvin Bailiff. Positively GAM is in partnership with Art nineteen. Hmmm hm