Gary Chambers Jr On Backwards American Policies, Taking Back Legislative Power, US Senate Run + More

or eighteen seventy three. Wow. The logic of the Supreme Court today, I think is comparative to the Supreme Court in the eighteen hundreds. How do we get Supreme Court justices the US Senate? They voting to prove these people and they send them there. And these folks have worked for fifty years to get to this point. And I think that a lot of us thought it was a game that our rites could be stripped away. But this

is step one. And to every black or brown person in America, if white men will take the rights of their own women and daughters from them, what's about you? That's right? Let's talk about that big picture of you, because today it is ro versus way. But like you said, this is just the beginning. So so what are your thoughts on just the Supreme Court overall and what it is they could potentially do. I think I'm gonna go to the solution first. The solution is we have to

pack the court. Yea. There's a lot of folks who are talking about not doing so, but that is the answer. The Supreme Court was not always the numbers that it is. Look in the history book and read the reality is

gay rights, voting rights, policing in America. There was just a ruling on Miranda rights like the Supreme Court too, there's a ruling about gun rights at the same time that they are stripping away women's rights, they're expanding gun rights while people are having a gun violence epidemic as well as mass shootings in this country. And so I

think that we are headed backwards. Even the congresswoman making the statement the other night thanking President Trump for protecting white life right and then saying that it wasn't That wasn't what she was saying. Yeah, she knew what she was and everybody shared when they heard white life too. The mind thought and said what it was prepared to say. Inside it came out. It just slipped out. And so you know, you could walk it back all you want to,

but this is the reality we're dealing with. And when you talk about packing the courts, who has the authority to do that? Because Joe Biden, they're saying, is reluctant and does not want to the Supreme Court. I mean the Senate and the President together. If the Senate decides that they want to change legislation to expand the court, the President has to approve that um and if Joe Biden doesn't want to do that, then he shouldn't be

the president. So what can people do? Because we talked about they said, you know, everybody heard what happened over the weekend. Everybody goes vote, vote, but for the last couple of years, they say that we had record number of minorities come out and vote. So what can people do? So let me let me me quantify that. We vote for the president, but when it comes to legislative seats, we sit on our tail. The senator that I'm running against, John Kennedy, and I sent these numbers to Charletmage an

other day. He was elected in twenty eighteen, Twenty six percent of black voters in New Orleans showed up, thirty six percent of black voters in Baton Rouge showed up, twenty six percent of black voters in shre Reports showed up. He won with five hundred and thirty six thousand votes, and they're nine hundred thousand registered black voters in the state of Louisiana. If black folks alone had showed up,

John Kennedy wouldn't be in the US Senate. That's another number that we have that helps us to pass all of these things. You can't just have fifty votes when you got two US Senators who are voting against you consistently in Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin, and you need to expand the Martins. The solution is Charles Booker in Kentucky. The solution is Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin. It's me in Louisiana,

it is Big John in Pennsylvania. Right there are people who are running right now who share the same values, have the same conviction, and they're not moderate Democrats. They believe that when you get power, you do something with the power that you're given. That's what's going on in Louisiana with Roe versus Way, because I know now it's a state by state decision. So we have one of the worst laws in the country. As it relates to this.

We only had three abortion clinics in the entire state, one one in Batteries, one in New Orleans, and one in Shreveport. All three of them instantly closed because we had a trigger law signed into law by a moderate Democrat. Okay, in Louisiana, we don't have a single woman currently in the state Senate that is pro choice, black or white. That's crazy, Okay. So when you when you process that, it is because the masses of us stay home and let them a minority of us decide who represents the

majority of us. And so that's the problem in Louisiana. So women in Louisiana have no reproductive rights at this point. And who does that affect the most when it comes to women in Louisiana. Just to break that down, that that affects black people, black women the most, it affects brown women, it affects poor people across the board. Louisiana is the fiftieth rank state in the nation. So we have a huge poor population of black and white people.

It will affect them the most because if you have somebody who's in New Iberia Louisiana who gets pregnant and doesn't want to have that baby, that person now has to go to New Mexico or Illinois are the closest places that they can go. If I can't afford three fifty four hundred dollars for a procedure in my state, how do I afford eight hundred dollars plane ticket of three hundred dollars hotel room? And there I have to do. And you're not gonna go by yourself. Somebody has to

come with you, so that person has to get a flight. Also, it becomes an impossible situation for women in our state and to men, Okay, you should be concerned. Okay, there's a lot of men who have unprotected sex in this country.

They're gonna go after contraceptives. They've already said this. Clarence Thomas has already said that he believes that they should look at what we do as far as money on contraceptors, and then not to mention people who don't have the money to travel, they may try to find another means of having an abortion that would be illegal and also unsafe. I watched this documentary the James on HBO Max recently about abortion procedures in Chicago before Rove Wade, and there

were terrible things that women went through. And I encourage everybody to go watch it because there's a perspective that we just don't know, especially as men, the emotional capacity of how women were treated, women having to do sexual favors in order to have a procedure. I'm a father of a twelve year old daughter, all right. I want my daughter to grow up to have the ability to make whatever decisions in her life she chooses to make. That it would be the same if I had a son. Right,

America has not afforded that. And the reality is Black people have only had their rights since the sixties, and women have only have their rights in this country since the seventies. So when we say that all of these sexists and racist things are ages ago, No, that Rovie Wade passed twelve years before I was born, right, right, that's that's not a massive amount of time. My father was born without all of his constitutional rights, right, that's

not that's not slavery. That's that's that impacts our lifetime. And I am the first generation in my family born with all my rights while America tells us, oh, this is the greatest country on earth since when exactly? That's why, that's that's the problem with God's like President Biden right, they would leave in the Institution of America so much. But he's a s great white male. It's always worked

for him since the founding, since the constitution. You know, Frederick Douglas gave a speech about what is the fourth did July to the slave? What is the fourth of July to the neigh where we're going into enstance weekend? Fourth of July weekend next weekend? What do we have to celebrate about America today? Gas prices high as hell? Bratt read milk your energy bill. You're taking away people's rights, You're building an unjust government and then telling us to

be excited about it. Nah, I'm not with it. You know, you said something earlier about using power, and I asked you this this weekend. But you know, we know elections have consequences, but I want to know what consequences. Consequences worse Republicans who get in office and abuse power, or democrats we put in office who don't use that power to protect us from that abuse. In my eyes, there's

no difference between the two. If you're not helping advance the cause of people, the people that you represent, you're no different than the devil that we're fighting. That's why we have to be intentional about putting a demand on people upfront and then making sure that there's the accountability measures. If you elect the president, but you don't elect the House and the Senate that's gonna check that president, I don't care if they end your party or out of

your party, you're never going to accomplish anything. I don't believe in blind political loyalty. I just don't believe in it. You give somebody a vote, and then you hold them accountable after you give them that vote, and then if you don't do what you say you're gonna do, we don't reelect you. The other problem is we have too many elected officials who have stayed too long. Their ideology and their view of the world is different than that of us, and we have to inherit their decisions right.

Some of them are gonna be gone in ten fifteen years, and we'll be here for the next fifty years dealing with decisions that they made today. And what I would hope they would do is consider retiring. I'm not gonna call out any of our favorite black or white older politicians that have been there since the eighties or the nineties, but how long you gonna stay? And the second question

is how long we gonna vote on them? Yeah, you know, at some point we have to be accountable to ourselves that if I'm giving you numbers saying that in the Senate race, twenty six percent of black voters in New Orleans showed up, we gave him the election. We gave it to him. Now, and let me say this, we gave it to him in part because the state party in Louisiana gave us a white Democrat that black voters did not want to vote for all. So that's a

part of the conversation. Democrat, a moderate white Democrat that black folks had no relationship with. There's a moderate white Democrat that black folks have no relationship running against me? Right, what will the party do? Because the country is on the line at this point, we don't have time to play these games. And see, that's what boses me too.

It's like, Okay, if we know we have these moderate white Democrats or these blue dog Democrats that they call them, why not call them out, like why not say, look, look, we don't want y'all supporting him, We want y'all supporting this person because this person is going to actually get into the Senate, get into the House, and you know, vote to make change. Well, folks like myself do do that consistently. We've run against them to try to put them out of office. We have to we have to

have the resources. There are people challenging these people all over the country. We're not raising the money that the establishment Democrats are raising. We need to see the people who are making all this noise right now about caring about this issue, showing up for us and hosting fundraisers in galvanizing voters, because the candidates that are out here

championing these causes cannot win without the resources. Charles Booker will not be victorious in Kentucky if he doesn't get every black influencer in the state of Kentucky to step up and have his back in a meaningful way to add concerts registered voters. Right to add clubs registered voters

because brothers and sisters. That's going to the club. When you leave a club, if you're not thinking about the consequences of your decisions that night, you no longer have the right to get the procedures or a plan be peel in certain states, has it been difficult for you to get influential people in Louisiana to galvanize for you. No, because we work really hard at it. We are aggressive at going after the influences in our state and were

grateful for their support. But I know that we could have more, and we could have more people who you don't have to understand it all to recognize that we're in a bad place. And what you have the capacity to do is raise money and influence people. And it's that simple. What we need the people who have influence to do is raise money and influence people so that those of us who understand the policies and that you have seen consistently go out there and do the work

going there and do it. Because a zebra does not change his stripes. If you have somebody who as a candidate was not out there fighting for your rights before, you never saw him at a protest, You never saw him advocating for certain things. Why do you expect them to do that when they become an elected official. They also talk about expanding the gun laws. Break that down

for people that don't know well. So what the Supreme Court did was basically say that states don't have the capacity to our restrict whether or not somebody can conceal carry, that people can have a right to bear arms wherever they are in this country. That you can restrict certain locations like churches and schools, and that that should be looked at. But Clarence Thomas even suggested we have to be careful when we look at what we're examining there.

I posted a tweet the other day that I'm trying to find out where's the trade option for Thomas because I'm tired of him. You know, how do we get rid of this guy? And we get rid of him by making sure that the next time there's a vacancy on the Supreme Court, that there's a democratic majority there that passes somebody forward. That's going to be about justice, right, Um, it's going to happen. They won't live forever, but do we have the mechanisms of power when theyre when it's

time to make their change. But even when we have the mechanisms of fire, we don't use them. For example, you know, um RBG should have stepped down, she should have retired, and they should have There's a lot of people who love to talk about Ruth bade Againsberg, And I don't even like giving her the RBG title because you know that that that puts a lot of stink

on her name that I don't have revolution. She stayed on the court for selfish reasons, in my opinion, and nobody wants to say that did she do some great things while she was on the court. Yeah, but the broke clock can be right twice a day. That and when when Mitch McConnell blocked you know, Obama's picking two thousand and sixteen and saying it was too close to the election, why didn't they push back? Why did this allowed themselves? Now they did. They did push back when

Obama was obed up the right to a point of justice. Now, the deal is, Republicans show you what to do when they get powers, that when they get power, they are not playing by the rules. This whole notion that we were not in the filibuster, if Republicans were there today and they wanted to do something. They are going to break the rule of the filibuster, and they're gonna pass it because at the end of the day, it's a stupid rule anyway, And the filibuster wasn't even always there.

You know, these are things that we don't know in history, and they don't teach us that these are rules that were devised in order to make sure that they made the process more difficult for people like you and I to have rights. Listen, we know why Joe mans is not going to vote to get rid of the filibuster, because he's just Democratic name only. But why wouldn't you know, Joe Biden want to do things like expanding the court. Why isn't he calling for the filibusters? I think, and

this is in fairness to the president. He's an old white man who went to the Senate in his thirties, right in the seventies, and spent his entire adulthood growing up among these people who he refers too, and that's his lived experience. We cannot rob him of his lived experience. What we have to decide is we don't want people with that lived experience, or you know, he has a right to believe what he believes. We have a right to not vote for him. If you will not change

to the will of the people. It is our will by our vote. And if we don't want, if we don't want what we see, then he needs to be challenged in twenty twenty four, he needs to be primary when it comes to these January six hearings that we've been watching, what can potentially happen to Donald Trump? Do you think anything will happen at all? Do you think he'll run for president again? I think Trump will possibly run for president again. And I don't think that they're

gonna do Trump anything. Man. They already said it. What does it to some degree America, White America is going to say, how does it benefit us to arrest a former president of this country? That is just going to be their logic that there is no gain for us in arresting him. For somebody who commits a crime that should be arrested no matter what your job is. Yeah, but we know the rules ain't faying America. You never

have been. So what Jamie Raskin said yesterday, he said that charges for Trump are others are not a principal interest. He said, we want the American people that know the truth, so a coup can never happen in this country again. I'm like, well, how is it not gonna happen again? If you don't hold the people accountable cars be able to run for president again, He's gonna run for president again.

At minimum, it shouldn't even be allowed. I think that we have to recognize that in the hierarchy of rich billionaires and rich white folks in America that they're just they played by different rules and if we want those rules to change, our powers there so we just have to you tolize, what do you tell somebody who voted for Biden? They feel like Biden did absolutely positively nothing, nothing that he agreed, nothing that he said he was gonna do. Now, I don't think Biden's gonna run again.

Maybe will, maybe wasn't, But then you have Donald Trump running again. So what do you tell those people? Now? I would tell them that even on his worst day, he's better than the other garbage that we had, and that if you want better, that the generations before us had to put in work to elect better leaders to do this is the work. This this whole logic that things are just going to magically change is bs. They

never have. We have to be committed to saying that we want to see change happen and doing the work we have to elect people on the local level, the state level, and the federal level, and the legislative powers is where we really have the most of a deficit, I believe, and if we pay attention. We always pay attention to the executives, the mayor, the governor, the president. But the people who control the levels of power are your congress people, your senators, your city council people, and

we just we stay out of those races acts. Ask the next person who comes on your show, who is their city council member, school board member, state rep, state senator, Ask them do they know him. I can tell you my school board members Darius Lands. I can tell you that my House members Edmond Jordan. I can tell you that my senator is bad. I can tell you that my congress person is h Carter. I can tell you every elected official from the from the lowest local level

all the way up to the highest. And if you don't know that, that is a part of the problem. That's one of the reasons I wanted to have you. You up here because you know, I look and I see these established establishment Democrats. They never seem to support the change agents, right, whether it's Nina Turner, whether it's yourself, like when I when I even ask about you, like, oh, they can't win. Well, why I can't win if you

don't help me? Exactly if if if I'm telling you that that this man won with five hundred and thirty six thousand votes, that there are nine hundred thousand registered black voters in Louisiana, one point two million eligible black voters, and thirty percent of white voters in our state consistently vote for Democrats. And we have a Democrat elected as governor. How come somebody black can't do it right because we don't have ten million dollars. Because the Democrat that's elected

in my state statewide, the difference between him. There was a sister named gwyn Collins green Up that ran for Secretary of State in Louisiana. She got forty one percent of the vote. She had nine thousand dollars in the bank. In the same year John bell Ed was won the governor's race, he had ten million dollars. That's the difference. The money gives you the ability. These pens, these shirts,

these mailers, these commercials, they're not free. And the consultants in the staff that you see you have to pay for the gas, you have to pay for the everything that you see is a cost to you know. And so for those of us who want to see it happen this resource, is it not for me to get rich. Matter of fact, most of those who are running for office really championing they're not winning financially. They are fighting for something bigger than them to get to a point

to help all of us. And what we have to recognize is if they're gonna make that sacrifice, what's the sacrifice that we're gonna make. Did you get a lot of backlash for you promo that was in support of two A rates? I thought it was right on the money. We didn't. We didn't get a lot of negative feedback. We didn't get a lot of national exposure to it. And I think that we didn't get anil of national

exposures because we cut straight to the issue. I am a When Buffalo happened, I didn't really know how to respond to that because I have a seventy six year old mother and a twelve year old daughter, right that my daughter goes to the grocery store my mother all the time. She goes to the grocery store with her mother all the time. And when I watched that video and I saw this white dude walk in the store,

shoot these folks, see this white guy. The white guy screams, he said, Oh, I'm sorry, don't shoot him to walk out the door. Right, How do I feel safe when my mama going to the store. Yeah, nigga written on his gun on the gun. Right. So we made a video shooting clansmen to respond to that, and we were going to release it the day after you've already happened. But then you've already happened, and we said, well, we can't drop a video with me shooting the clansmen under

those circumstances. And so then we retooled and we did a school shooter video. But I could not address gun rights in America without addressing what happened in Buffalo. And I'm a gun owner, and I know that millions of people in this country a gun owners. In Louisiana, since two thousand, six million guns have been sold in our state. Okay, you're not gonna get guns away from people this logic that we should just get rid of guns. There are

too many guns in America. There are more guns than people. You're not gonna get away with guns, get rid of guns. What you can do is have sensible legislation and a process to own a gun that is that makes it secure and understands who owns this weapon. And at least we say we try to make sure that responsible people have guns. And so if there's a choice between my mother going home, my daughter going home, and me going home,

and are you me and my family going home? And I think that any American has the right to protect and defend their family. But do I believe that people need the ability to kill dozens of people in seconds? No, So I was gonna ask you, so, what are your thoughts on semi automatic weapons and rifles and long guns. It doesn't matter what my thoughts are on it, because there are too many of them out here for us to get rid of them. And I think that we

need to be realistic with ourselves about that. I think that we need to have a process to owning any type of weapon in this country. I think that that is realistic legislation. I think that we can talk idealistic policy and we can talk about what we can actually get done. And what we can actually get done is a process of making sure and even it's logic that an eighteen year old should be able to get these guns, No,

they shouldn't. You can join the military if you're eighteen. Yeah, but you get training when you join the military, right, and so if you're gonna use a weapon in the confines of a job, that you're trained to use it in. Cool. But other than that, I don't think an eighteen ye old should have a gun. These are sensible things. Or do you think about the gun safety build that Biden just signed it in the law? What do you think about them? Like that napkin right there, it's a little

piece of paper. You know, it's not meaningful. It's to say that they did something. I think the red flag incentives are actually have the potential to be beneficial. But if you ask any of the organizations that are really doing gun rights legista policy work, they would tell you that they would prefer much much more. Yeah, I don't agree with nothing that says. By a part of days, if Bill Cassidy is on the thing, who's a senator

from the other senator from Louisiana. Ain't nothing in it coming out there good for black folk, Okay, Ain't nothing good in it coming out there that's sensible in this country because he does not care, yeah, you know, and so telling me that he's a part of it, He's only gonna be a part of it if he thinks that it's beneficial for the community that he represents. I think it's safe to say that the Republican Party is just the party of white supremacists. It's the clan, that's it.

It's the clans. Herschel Walker running in Georgia is just a black, black faced clan member, that's it. If you are a part of the Republican Party listening to the things that they are saying right now. And here's the other thing. The top ten states in America, seven out of ten of them are ran by either Democratic governors or Democratic legislatures. The top bottoms, the top lowest states in America are either seven out of the ten of

them are Republican legislatures or Republican governors. So you don't even have to ask my opinion. Republican policies are failing. Look at the Deep South, Louisiana. Mississippi is almost completely ran by Republicans in our state legislature as well as the governorship. In Mississippi, we have a Democrat governor, but we have a supermajority in the legislature and Republicans and

we rank fifty and forty nine. So if Republican policies are successful, why aren't they working in Louisiana in Mississippi? Why are we failing? Why are the number one through three states in this country run by Democrats? Why are the bottom three states run by Republicans? Now? How can people support you if they don't know? How can they support you if they don't live in Louisiana and they just want to support you as as financially whatever they

can do, How can they support you? They can go to Chambers for Louisiana dot Com to make a contribution. We need contributions. The end of the quarters coming up. We want to be as strong as possible as we come to this end of the quarter, we need folks to phone bank for us. Toward the end of this summer, we're gonna start phone banking heavily. You can call from anywhere in this country. You can make calls for us. So you can sign up at Chambers for Louisiana dot

com to volunteer. There's a take action tab you can click for that. There's a donate tab you can click for the contributions, and then leaning on the Democratic Party to step up for us, the national Party and the state party in Louisiana. We're the only person with the shot as sending John Kennedy home in this race. We have proven that we can build a national conversation from the worst rank state in this country, and we need

them to get off their ass and do something. What do you say to people who say Gary Chambers does not have a chance of victory, I'd say they lying, And how do you know they? In my last race, I missed it by fifteen hundred votes. Okay, if you add up all the other people who ran in the race that I said for six months, for the ninety days we were in the special election, I said none of them could win. The amount of votes of those people was the amount of votes I needed to make

it too the runoff. Wow, and you did mention. The Essence Festival is coming up this weekend, so are you doing anything? We have an event Saturday at the Jazz Market. We're gonna drop out flyer to they Teacher Campbell's actually gonna be hosting a day party with us at Essence Festival. It's Saturday, so that's gonna be a great thing. We want to just connect with people, make sure folks are registered to vote, and then just enjoy the culture of our state, in our city. And we want you to

come to Louisiana. We want more of you to move to the South Saturday with Saturday at the Jazz Market in the Saturday. I love it, man, because you know, like I said, I don't understand how when you see people like that Joe mentions the cinemas, why Democrats aren't speaking out against them, And I don't understand why they're not supporting people like yourself, actual change agents. I think we have the capacity in the culture to send them all home. We just have to organize to make it happen.

We are the most powerful weapon in this country. We show it consistently. Every business in this country is trying to figure out how do they capitalize off of us. We need to figure out how we mobilize that to make the change we want to see happen. For all of us. And when black people are good in this country, everybody's gonna be good. That's right. Gary Chambers Junior, we appreciate you for in us and we'll see this weekend

out in the New Orleans. Thank y'all. All right, it's a breakfast club, Go Morning,