Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning.
Everybody is Steve j Envy, Charlamagne, the Goud We are the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. In the front of the room, we have Miss Erica Ford.
Welcome Speeds.
How are you feeling that paper Planes had is very fresh?
Yes, and hopefully you got to get choice the hat.
Let's give them the right, she says, she sent it up here, but we just haven't received it yet or we checked the mail.
Either the custom Life Camp hats.
Paper Planes Life Camp. Great.
This is a process coming together with pieces of lifestyle, you know, so that we can help elevate and change lives.
I love that now.
If you don't know, Erica Ford is doing something very specialist weekend at not met Life stated at.
Yank Shastafield.
Stum.
I was used to call Shastadium a city field. I've seen you practicing. Because you're throwing out the first pitch, you ain't look too good. But I know y'all seen you practice.
You just got to do better than Steven. You gotta do better than Steven.
Yes, I will I will represent, I will represent. I've been practicing. I'm gonna get it to the plate. And Emery from Paper Planes is a catcher, and so I'm the picture. He's a catcher, and we'll bring it together, this movement so that we can help change more young people's lives.
Dope. So what is party? We can't play.
It's coming out tomorrow to the Mets game and not only enjoying the fun and helping to build this move because a lot of times people look at joining movements and peace as corny, and I don't want to do that. That's not for me, that's not them people over there to preachy people, right, and so we want to show them you could have fun, you could be fly, you could be part of of doing something positive and having fun and all of that at the same time. And
so we're telling people to come out. We're having DJ Booth, Breezy Lynn and a lot of other folks are coming out and participate in the tailgate party in the parking lot of City Field, and then I'm throwing out the first pitch at six o'clock and then we'll be there for the game. But it's launching a whole movement, you know, bringing together those two slogans visions missions of greatness as a process and pieces of lifestyle.
How do you connect with rock and em So.
We've been working with Shaka. We worked with Shaka years then connected from Shaka this young man named Teddy and the fan fam group that they have, they do our college tours, so they do scholarships for our kids.
And we've been working together.
Teddy came and threw the hat on my tables, like you like this, and I was like, get them out.
Of here, you know, and the rest is history.
It just brought it together, and it's it's doing the work, you know, when you're consistently out there doing the work. Then I remember I said to Shaka years ago, right when I was just arrogant, right, like why.
Can't jay Z support me? Why can't jay Z's brought me right? And she was like, do your work right, and when you do your work then things align with you. But don't beg for some to support you. And I just kept doing my.
Work at Chaco. Go always give it to your screen. Shaka. I love Shaka so much, man, I do too.
Now you've been doing this for such a long time, right, somebody posted a picture.
Of me and you, I mean back in Queens this was a long time ago.
I mean, you were doing the work for the long time and you decided to slow down a little bit. And what does slow down mean for you? Because there's no slowdown for you. So what does that mean for Erica Ford?
So I want to go back to why I had to slow down, right, And a lot of times when we run to the fire, run to the trauma, it depletes us, right, And so I got sick, like I would be in at night choking, trying to breathe, and my whole nervous system was depleted, and so I had to like physically stop And so I physically stopped doing nothing for three months, right. And so now I'm coming back just as the CEO. I will not be running
the day to day operation of Life Camp. I won't be out there running and you know, fighting with the police and interrupting shit and taking guns out of people's hands, none of that stuff, no more, but at an elevated place of showing up at events and organizing raising money for Life Camp and doing teaching, teaching, teaching, because I've learned a lot in these thirty years and I want to teach and get back to young people who are stepping into this field.
You know, it's scary about that though. They always say older people for counsel, young people for war. But the problem is a lot of people in this generation they're not ready for war. Right, you still built for it, like you've done, fought wars, You've been in wards, You're still ready to fight.
Now, who are you going to pass the torch to.
It's just so funny that this young lady who came with me to Sniffany.
Lamella is actually the INTRAM executive director and who I'll be passing the torch too if she passes that process. But we have a group of good young people who are ready, and we have a training academy that we launched with the University of Chicago two weeks ago where we're actually training folks from around the United States to
do this work. So, as you know, the last time I was here, we talked about Buiden bringing down money, and so some of this money that has been brought down is to do the training to prepare people to do this work effectively and efficiently, and so that's what we've been doing. I'm part of a national group called the Black and Brown Peace Coalition, and from that work.
We've opened up this training academy and the first cohort has been launched and it's a six months program and so hopefully from not hopefully from this training, they will learn how to effectively lead and do this work on the front line.
You was just at the White House, right were you there when Cuavo was something?
I wasn't there for when Quavo was there, but I was there when we opened up the off White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. So last Friday, the White House launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, first ever, and this will allow real support to come to the ground continually for the work that we're doing. My good ment son, I call him my son. Greg Jackson got one of the jobs as a deputy director and another young man, Robert.
Got the other job.
And so they did a deputy directors and a lady named Stephanie is the director. Under the leadership of Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The White House been keeping promises because I know they pledged some money.
They did, did they did?
They did?
They have been keeping their promises. The Republicans have been blocking as much as they can, but That's why President Biden has doing executive orders now to just override a lot of that stuff. And so they have been as much as they can putting down funding, changing where money used to go to other places so that it can hit the ground of CBR workers across the nation. And so they have been in that lane put the most money in this work.
I was gonna ask with New York, right, you know, Charlamagne and myself talk about New York and how much has changed?
Right?
How much we see and hear more and more violence, whether it's you know, in the subway, or it's shooting or its mental illness. Since the new mayor has come in, has it been more, has it been worse? Has he been more helpful? What have we seen because on the outside and even you know, it doesn't look any better at all, and even reading the paper every day and just hearing the stories, it just seems like it's getting worse.
So it is in the area, and so it's it's a it's a it's a multi prong question. Right in particular areas it's getting better, right the areas in which we're are, you know, our collective New York City Crisis Management system is doing the work. It's getting better as it relates to gun violence. Gun violence is down, but now as we see around the city, there's different kind of crimes. Right there's people going in looting stores and you know, robbing people and stuff like that.
And so as we continue.
To grow the work that we're doing, and it's we have a problem in New York City. There's been an influx folks coming into the New York and it and they're not being able to be placed in proper.
Homes and have the ability to live. And so what are they going to do?
Right, They're going to come into the community and try to live the best way they know how, and so we can't have that, you know. And so I know with our team, we work to make sure that that pieces are lifestyle in the real sense. And so we have peacekeepers, we have our interrupters, we have our special Ops team, we have brothers and sisters that we put throughout our target area and make sure that those things
don't happen. And so hopefully it'll continue to grow and hire new people to do this type of work without the spork.
I feel like the solutions have always been there right way before the migrants came, but you're not even taking care of the people who are here and implementing those solutions with them, So of course you're not gonna be able to take care of migrants either.
That's what he said.
That what's the cannabis injunction that's going on?
So rich white folks who have these big MSOs, multi state operations basically put a lawsuit in using the veterans. They did many different lawsuits on this last one. They used the veterans, and they blocked the card holders, which is the brothers and sisters who got falsely arrested for
selling cannabis back in the day. And so they were allocated license or organizations like ours who work with those individuals, and everybody was given license, and they put an injunction in and it caused to stop the freeze of our ability to do anything, and so we couldn't open up, we couldn't move forward in our process to you know, get the full license, because it's actually in order to get the full license, there's things you gotta do. So
we weren't able to finish the process October fourth. It's all not but what they wanted to do when they were successful at doing was slowing the process down so that there's a few amount of people who can come into the game before they come into the game. And so now on October fourth, it's open to everybody. Anybody could apply, right, And so it's really unfair because you already had a head start. That's like we in a marathon.
You twenty miles ahead, you gonna come back to trick the person behind you because they catching up, Like what like, are you that greedy?
You know?
Ye know they So that's what's happening in the cannabis and so when we see them open, like we we should not support these stores, you know, we should not support these big MSOs that come into our community and try to act like they've down with us, you know, and have you come into their store to buy their product. But they're in the back room stopping people who really need equity in their community from getting access to equity.
I always had a problem with that because you know, a lot of times what they would do is, like you said, they will find somebody that's wrongfully arrested, right, use them to get the license. Because most of the people that are wrongly accused or arrested nine times out of ten don't have the bank to actually support a dispensary, right, because it takes a lot of money architectural and everything.
So what they usually do is they usually back them and then after two years you can get rid of them, right, And that's what's happening in a lot of these different states. And they have to find a way to fix that, and they also have to find a way to make it not that expensive because it sounds right, yeah, we're gonna give you the first and this, that and the other. But who has that amount of bank to actually be able to do the architecture, to do the research, to
get the actual licenses and all that. It's almost it's almost impossible.
So they gave the individual's two point five million dollars or an allocation of two point five million dollars and a space. But like you said, they'd a landlord, right, and so at any point in time they can't take the space, they just change their name put somebody else in. Right, if you can't pay up, right.
And I think it's after three years or something like that, or they can say, okay, you can do it, but now you can't afford the growing equipment.
You can't.
You know, and so there needs to be real equity definitely in this and and cannabis as we see because when you talk about there's a bunch of illegal cannabis stores all over New York City, all over and they're not closing those, they're not putting up injunctions to stop those, they're not going out. But the brothers and sisters who you know, went through the process the legal way and you know, spend time in jail, lost money, lost family.
Interrupted their whole process.
You're going to come at them like it's just you know, it's a typical American way.
Now we got to continue to change it.
We got to talk about the Spirit Award.
Now you're doing the Spirit Awards before the game, that's right, The Spirit Awards for people who don't know.
So the Spirit Awards is awards that we're giving out at the Medic Game tomorrow to individuals organized stations that have really, you know, been a critical part in helping people achieve their goals and aspirational just bringing up peace, bringing up the vision and mission of what we stand for for life. Camp supported us for years and so we wanted to give it to the Breakfast Club because of the years that y'all have been supporting us.
Thank you very much, thank you so much.
So and I got to ask, so I'm looking at the weather and says rain tomorrow.
Is there a rain date?
That's that mess?
That's all right everything in New York.
You know, hopefully it starts raining after later.
Well, we appreciate you for always coming up, and you know you always have an open door policy here. Anytime you want to come by, you know the address to swing on by and whatever you need and as far as us to support you, whatever we can do, we are absolutely positiving.
Any other thing we need to be looking out for from Life Camp.
I'm sure we're doing a pop up next week.
Come on help it if help we.
Got ye yes, yes, yes, yes, we have our So it was our twentieth anniversary gala, but I got six so we had to postpone it. And so now it's our twenty third year anniversary gala we have coming up
in April. But we have a lot This academy that we're doing and the office with the White House and helping make that a success is really where we're going to put our energy, as well as making sure that the one hundred and thirteen percent that we work in is the safest precinct in the United States of America.
And we're going to use our precint to be the example of what we can do because, as you say, you're absolutely right when you invest in what works, When you invest in what works, then it's allowed to grow and enforce. And so the city would already be at a space where we you know, people coming in would fit into our structure, but the structure wasn't built, you know, And so we're going to build destruction in Southeast Queens.
There we go.
People want to volunteer. What is that? One hundred and thirteen.
P thirteenth and life Caem's always taking donations, by the way, always.
Take can donate the website Lifecampinc dot com. Always taking donation. Get your paper planes hat, it's live on the website. It's live on paper planes. Support the work, support the movement. Let's do this all.
Right, Well, it's the Breakfast Club. Is Erika Ford?
Wake that answer up?
In the morning club? Breakfast Club