I'm Tamika D.
Mallory and it shit Boy my son in general.
We are your host of TMI.
Tamika and my Son's Information, Truth, motivation and.
Inspiration name new Energy.
What's going on, my son, Lennon, I am feeling groovy today.
Grill Bay Real Bag shout out to save the brand. You know my man Boom Boom. This is his sweating.
Oh that's cool.
That's y'all new creations that y'all be making up over there. Listen, are you instructing him at the Culture Gallery? Culture's Gallery?
Yes, the Culture's Gallery.
That's our store in Westchester eighteen fifty seven Westchester Avenue.
Please pull up and.
So at the store, are you guys encouraging boom Boom and giving him design direction or is he just pumping out what.
He Boom Boom is a master designer. Just now.
He has his new shades called the Hater Blockers, so you come get you Hated blockers. He has all types of shirts, shorts, he has whatever you need.
Boom Boom does he make stuff for girls?
He makes all the stuff.
No, no way, Bronx Logo never sent me a thing, so I don't.
Boom Boom is the man.
So for people who are listening and watching. Uh, the culture's gallery is our friend Bronx Logos store in the Bronx and Boom Boom is his son, who is becoming quickly the most I don't know, the highest earning entrepreneur over there, his brand.
He's the man, he keeps the lights open over there. I'm the silent partner. I just you know, do the stuff, but you do.
I would love to hear about the stuff about it, but I wouldn't know what's I'm just a.
Silent partner that does what he's supposed to do.
What does silent partners do for anybody who wants to be a silent partner? No, you didn't just put your hand over your silence. But I want to know what through silent partners?
What is ther?
But give us some advice if we want to be a good silent.
What would you do?
Invest?
Invest the.
And oh that's not being a good silent okay, So then and also promotion because you do do a lot of the non silent part So are you a silent partner?
Are not?
Oh?
Please forget it?
Tell exactly how this relationship probably works where he's not sure from day to day.
Are you silent or are you not?
No, I'm definitely a silent part.
Okay, all right, so y'all keeping it going, but I appreciate that boom boom.
Shout out to you for your sis. I've seen.
Silent.
We have some silent partners. Nelson like people doing. We got a real business going on. Not for the coaches gallery is a dope place. The atmosphere is dope. You know, we're starting programs for kids and then we were about to start doing our raising kings one of our days there where we teach the kids how to be entrepreneurs, how to use the machines, make their own brands, and all of those things. Also teaching them by the emotional intelligence. So we're creating something over there.
Yeah, no, I mean to keep it going for all this time is certainly admirable. Shout out to Bronx Logo because this is a young we should have.
We should interview.
We got to bring Logo up here, that's right.
We got we gotta interview him so he could tell his story about his life prize.
He's a Bronx Hero too. He just got his Bronx.
Hero Yeah, he got his award which I still need to post. And uh, he is someone who he had already created the what was that logo of the Bronx logo that so for folks, Jose but in the Bronx logo that he created before going to prison.
And then he did how many years?
Then he did five years, five.
Years, came home, started figuring it out from nothing. He literally built it all from the dirt. That's like a very true story.
You know.
Some people say that and they don't mention that their parents lent them ten thousand or what, or they had five thousand and the mattress from before they let they don't mention, but he didn't have that. He really started with nothing created and took his brand, just the Bronx logo and started getting that out there.
Then he went to the truck.
No, he went to the car. First.
First he just brought some T shirts. He was selling the T shirts. Okay, Then he got his car.
Was he pressing them up in his house still at that time?
Okay?
Cool?
And then at that point he got a car and he was selling out the car, and he brought the machine. Then he started doing his own pressing. And then from the mission from the car in the machine. He went to the bus.
The bus the bus was was it hit ye right around with the bus.
So things that off the bus.
It's bricking mortar.
Yes, Now there's an actual building. And I'm proud of him. And he has a job. So this what I'm saying, he really needs to be going to put Bronx logo on it.
Kids don't understand.
It's nothing wrong with having a job as you still be an entrepreneur and building.
Somebody that we know very well told me dead to my face, y'all want me to have a job. And I ain't trying to have no job because I don't need a job.
But you need a job.
He said, Well, I'm working on my other stuff, but you still need a job. Jobs are important until you can get to the next stays. Now, of course, you don't want to become complacent, so you have to have the energy that I refuse to let this job be my final stop, because that does.
And I'm just too right.
It's making sure that you have a job that doesn't limit you from chasing whatever it is that you try. Your archer, no of you, you know you have dreams of doing things. You get you a night job right, you get your job, well, you get your parts whatever it seven to three, Yes, but you got to make sure that your financial things are taken care of. You got to make sure that the bills is paid. You need a phone, you need a place to live, you need some food like those things, and that's what your
job should be for. And you should be able to pay your bills. And then whatever you do outside of that is everything else.
Yeah, that's facts. So I agree one thousand percent. I have had a job my whole life, in addition to my entrepreneurial activities. And yeah, sure there's been times because people say balance, and I hear what you're saying.
I think that's important.
Those are the skills that if I knew at the time, I may have structured my life a little bit differently. Where I would go to work from seven to three. My problem was I wouldn't get up early enough to be out by three o'clock. I'm rolling into the office at ten fifteen. So by the time you get there ten fifteen, you gotta stay till six o'clock six fifteen
in order to fulfill a full day's work. But people who had that early bird gets the word or the late night shift and then you work on whatever your passion is. That's a really smart strategy. But the idea that a part of your or building your business means depending on other people to bail you out, or or just going broke struggling by yourself, especially in this economy, it's not it's.
Not a good day. It's an And I can.
Come to this because I had this mentality at one point. It was I was just never gonna work. And and it's a struggle, right, And if you don't have some money to invest in what you're doing, or you don't you haven't built a name or a brand or something, you have to figure out how to get financially stable.
And so I had to figure that out.
You have to say, damn, I need to Bill still got to get paid. I don't care how long working on my dream when I want to do these, bill still got to get paid. I got to figure how do I make enough money.
To sustain Yeah.
A lot of kids, don't.
Please don't get into that I'm not working thing, man, because everything is a job, and bills are gonna come every month.
Yeah they do, they come every month. I agree with you. I mean, bills come every month. You can't let that get into your mindset. You do have to be strong enough to stick to your passion, because you can easily become complacent and just be like, oh, well, the dream is not working, so I'm just gonna stick with the job. But sometimes you find out that maybe you are meant to have a job because you might not have the skill set to run a business. A lot of people
think running a business or running an organization. It's people that do not understand the work that goes into running the organization. I spent a large part of my morning today Linda and me on the phone with our financial advisors and our accountants and you know, all the folks that handle our financial businesssiness, having a two hour conversation while I was at the doctor's office, which brings me
in a minute to my thought of the day. But I was literally in the doctor's office with the thing in my ear, listening to the back and forth about how our resources are being spent, where new money is coming from, looking at all the different line items like.
This is really serious.
So I just say all of that to say to people that we have to be You gotta especially as young people, you got to have a both and strategy and a lot of times going to the work on the job and learning that discipline of being at work at a certain time, having to fill out or submit reports, having assignments, and knowing how to conduct yourself in a
professional space. That's important because part of the reason why so many people get into business and they're not doing well from a customer service perspective, they're not managing their stock and all of their their the products and services properly is because they have had no training. They woke up one day and now they got a lip gloss or a do rag or a restaurant, and they've not taken the time to work with anybody else who's been
able to teach them those skills. Yes, you can go to college and courses and you know, trade schools and all of that and get some of it, but it is nothing like working in a space where every single day you are learning the skill set because guess what happens.
You can you can sit.
Around and read a book all day long, but when that thing hits you in an angle wasn't in the book, You'll be trying to figure out what the hell am I supposed to do? With this, and you do need good mentors to help teach you that, and the best way is to watch it while actually while not having the responsibility of fixing the problem on your owns, right
you know, So that's my suggestion. But you know there'll be somebody in the comments who's like, oh, no, you're encouraging people to go get a job instead of focusing on building for self. Yeah, okay, well you know, I I mean, if you teach me, most people do not have the luxury of not of someone that funds your dream.
Right.
If you don't have somebody funding your dream, and you're a grown man and you got kids and all that, you realize every day that these bills still they don't disappear because you're chasing this dream. So that's that that's something that you have to learn. And a lot of people don't think that. They think they listen to the stories and they watch, you know.
How they put this person put their lip gloss online and the pots, and.
They don't see that.
They don't understand that they've been a long process, like a lot of artists, that people be seeing it.
Oh he did once in a while.
There's something that go overnight, But there's artists that I see now that I was like, and they tell you, y'all, I was doing this seven eight years ago, and I was doing this like the grind that I had to build to do certain things. It was a long process, and people just.
Just over and we still grind and were.
Still grinding every day and we're just building up. Just to build your brand takes time, you know. So I just I employ everyone to get employed.
That was a good one.
Get employed, be employed. So, speaking of my thought of the day, women's health. Boy, I had an experience that really helps me to understand why so many people are not getting the care that they need for certain illnesses.
And just like your checkups.
And keeping and making sure that you are monitoring your whole body from head to toe so that if something comes up, you have the ability to get in front of an issue rather than to be behind. Right, I see it and it happened to me because so I got a mammogram this week, And for anybody who does not know what a mammogram is, it is when you get your breast checked for breast cancer, any tumors, or any issues that may be happening in your breast.
Your lymph nodes.
So under your arm they give you a full scan, and it is uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, but very necessary because predetermination of any issue is better again than finding out later. So when I first asked for the appointment, I got back all the documentation, or the first thing before they sent the documentation, they sent through the mychart system a bill for fifty dollars, which cool, copey, I know, fifty dollars.
I'm used to paying that. But then a few days later they sent me a bunch of documents that need to be signed. If you sign those documents before you get to the facility, it makes your time in the waiting area reception shorter.
So no problem, that's a new thing that I actually like.
And then well, okay, let me stick with my point, because you know, I was getting ready to go off into something else. But and so, but embedded in this message wasn't just the documents. It was another two hundred dollars that I had to pay. Nah, Like, seriously, that's crazy to me and I and we have great insurance at until Freedom. I mean, it's expensive, but nonetheless we have good insurance.
So I'm like, what the heck?
So now I'm clicking stuff, and I open up the bill to see exactly one thing they do give you. Now, back in the days, you did not know the specifics of the bill, all right.
You had to get the.
Carbon copy at the facility and try to look it up and read all of these weird words.
They don't do that no more online.
In the march my chart system, it clearly said the appointment is fifteen hundred. They're covering thirteen and something something something.
And then you got your.
Copay and they added all this stuff up and it came to a little more than what the insurance was paying, which was two hundred and fifty dollars.
A matter of fact, that's not a little more. That's a whole lot more.
And I'm thinking to myself, if I'm somebody who again, especially in this economy, but just in general, I'm already struggling.
I'm making ends meet.
This two hundred dollars is the difference between me making my rent payment and or not, or my groceries or daycare or even my enjoyment whatever it is that I want to do with my life. Ain't nothing wrong with my breast. They're not hurting me, they're not feeling any kind of way because you know, we get a lot of ignorant things in our minds.
You know what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna just rub around myself the way that they teach you, because they do teach you at the gyanacologist office that if you need to be checking, don't wait for the next year. Just make sure if you feel anything sore, if you feel any lumps, you need to say something. So imagine somebody that knows those things. That's gonna be like, I'm not paying two hundred more dollars
after you already paid fifty. That's two hundred and fifty dollars that I paid to go get checked for something that this country should be giving you for free, because we should be making sure that people do not have breast cancer and other sicknesses because that's what weighs on our medical system.
Uh duh.
It's just to Once I saw that, I just started to I just and I know there are all these programs that give mammograms two folks for free once a year, maybe even twice a year.
They have all these facilities.
That you can go to in programs. But your but but it's I just it begs the question in this country, and this is not a Democrat versus Republican or this person versus that person. This is just for us as
a nation. What in the hell are we doing when a woman has to spend two hundred and fifty dollars to go get something that should just be a basic right that we just want to make sure your breast are good because if you get cancer there, right, and understanding that black women are number one, We're number one in every damn thing that is harming and killing people, right,
We're number one killing women. So I would just think that we would want that to be a service, knowing that breast cancer is something it gets in your body and it can spread, and it really kills so.
Many women, like so many people.
Why the hell are people paying two hundred and fifty dollars to get their breast checked it?
It is a microcosm of what's going wrong with America right now, right when we look at just the political stance and we look at just how everything and what we should be focusing on is health, right, like that should be the main thing. It's no way that people should have to pay to be healthy. There's no way people should have to pay to be educated, right, And America is supposed to be this great place, and we have people here that tell us that that shouldn't be a.
Luxury, right.
That the outside of America, people have free.
Health care, some of them, someplace, some places.
I'm saying I'm not saying everywhere, but there are places in the world where people have free health care and they have free education, and those should be things that if we want of the greatest nations in the world, why would we not want to make sure that everyone is healthy and everyone is.
Educated, right, and the facilities that they have in other nations where there is free health care, the places are not shithold no where.
When you go there, you know.
People talking to you crazy, and the place is half dirty, and you know it's it's unkept. I just don't I don't know. America just needs a whole reset because I didn't pay two hundred and fifty dollars last year, so I don't know, and I don't want to speculate because I haven't had time to do some research on why this is now a cost. I paid fifty dollars copay last year. Now I'm up to two hundred and fifty dollars.
I need somebody to explain to me. But what I was going to say, in addition, is that one thing about my chart that I appreciate this time is that I was able to read all of those consent forms that when you are sitting in the doctor's office and you got to hurry up because you're trying to go with your appointment, you already know if you say no to half of that stuff, then you kind of can't get the appointment.
So you're just saying yes, yes, yes, and yes.
But because I was taking the time while getting my little pedicure to read every single form, there was things in there to ask whether I would be willing to be a part of experiments and research.
And you get nothing for it, which is crazy, right, And.
They tell you that you are not expected to receive anything for being a part of this experiment, which means that they are now about to send my images for my breast and whatever they find to all these different people for a research and study. And I don't benefit if they find something that helps them to go along
with whatever certain you know, whatever it is that they're doing. Right, so that no, damn it, no hell to the now, uh no, if I pass away, yes, I will allow them to use certain things for research, but no, why would I do that? Then there was another form in there that said, do I give the consent to all of these different people to have access to my records?
It was like thirty damn things.
This facility, this people, in and in pee, all of these acronyms. And I said, no, I don't give consent to all of these people. And they had, but they have different things that you can answer. One said no, no, The first one said yes, which you mean.
All these people get to see my boobs?
Then the next thing or access to the records about my health?
Right?
Then the next thing said and by the way, it didn't just say for the mammogram, It said your health records. So maybe they meant for the mammogram, but that's not what it's said. Because I went back and read it. It's very very you got to read the stuff. You got to read it, because where's the word that said for the if I want to give consent, where's the word that says for the mamma gred It did not
say that, It's said for the health records. So then so one said yes, the next one said no except in a medical emergency, and then and then it.
Went on with a couple other options.
So I chose no excepting a medical emergency because I want to imagine if I have an emergency, something that's wrong with me, they don't got to go call Tarique or some person find them to get it to such as and such.
Just go and do what you need to do. But I don't even know how they're identifying a medical emergency.
I really don't know exactly.
And it's so open ended that they can decide. It's just like everything else in America. Everything is open ended. There's no more checks and balances. It's no due process. You don't it ain't no step one two three. This is how we identify it is. If we decide that it's a medical emergency, we're gonna go on you there exactly. Nah.
I don't like it.
So anyway I did choose, I think I did better. But it also comes with age. So I think that one of the things we have to teach our kids. If I was started, if I had what win. My granddaughter gets to be a little bit older, and as time goes on, I want to encourage her parents as well as all of my friends and people who have small kids, show them what you're signing on their behalf read it to them. Get you know what what is this? Oh,
we're signing this document for school. Don't just sign because that's what we do.
Come on, I've done that. I've just signed.
But let's take the time to actually figure out and teach a kid that you don't put your signature on something until you have an opportunity to review it, scan it at least and try to get the basics. So
that's what I have to say. But just to go back to my thought of the day, right, my thought of the day today is I don't know if people really do care about cutting cost and reducing the amount of pressure that's on our systems the way that they say they do, right, Because if we cared so much about that in the medical world, why would we not be giving people free prostate exams, free breast mammograms and things of that nature, free cancer screening.
We should be giving that away.
As a nation for free, because that is the only way to try to prevent the system from collapsing, is preventative care.
And but we don't do that because.
The pharmaceutical company does not fit from that.
So you need to have full blown cancer. Are you serious?
Because the pharmaceutical company wants to be able to benefit. They want to sell you medicine that's not gonna work anyway. They want to get rich.
Not all medicine doesn't work. Please don't say that.
I did just say all medicine for the most part, when you if you look at cancer, the medicine that they're giving you for cancer is not curing cancer.
It's not stopping not curing it. But it certainly does help some people.
I'm not saying it doesn't.
I'm just saying, for the most part, the ratio of people that die from cancer is way higher than medication.
I don't know.
I don't know.
My mother passed away from cancer, right and the amount of money that I was spending for her medication was unreal. It was it was unreal, Like it didn't even makes sense.
Yeah, I remember you complaining that towards the end.
It just didn't even make sense.
It was like four hundred dollars, this, five hundred dollars this, sometimes it was nine hundred. It's like I didn't even understand and it wasn't making her any better. It was just like I didn't understand none of it, you know, the hospital bills. Like I'm just trying to say, they've running a racket. They know what they're doing, they're running a racket.
Well okay, I mean it makes me very sad and I really am offended that people have to start organizations and start groups and clubs and volunteer operations to do something that our tax dollars should be paying for.
I mean, what else is pay.
So moving on for the TMI today, people be doing too much, but some people might feel like it's not doing too much. So we want to hear from you. Is it too much or maybe not even enough? So Ari Fletcher posted a video where she was talking about folks who have found out which gym she uses to work out, and people are showing up to the gym wanting to show her stuff about their business or wanting
to take a picture. You know, Oh girl, I saw you was at the gym and I ran down here, which I thought that that one was massive creepy, but I ran down here so I can show you this or talk to you or tell you about whatever. I personally think that is absolutely out of line and I think it's going too far.
But there are other people who will say, hear me.
There are other people who will say, you have to use every opportunity to get that thing right. So there's somebody out there who will run to the restaurant that they know that Tyler Perry or Denzel go to every month, and they gonna walk in the door and if they could sing, they about to blow their lungs down or act in the middle of the restaurant.
And if they get the part because Tyler.
Dendel or somebody like that is like or fifty cent, it's like, oh man, okay, you're really talented.
Then if it's something that we might.
Praise, like man, they did everything possible to get to the person, But going.
To try to take a picture, I don't know.
It's still especially for a woman, it's super creepy. So I wouldn't do it, and I don't want anyone to do it to me. But some people might actually celebrate it and say, hey, you going for you know your dream?
And I think that's what it is, right, it's individuals. Aris. Let you know that she don't want it, she ain't with it at all.
You went down and you tried and it ain't work, and she tells you it ain't gonna work at all because this is where she said, This is her private space she come to work out.
She did with who she would.
She don't want your business, she don't want your card, she don't want to know about your lashes.
She ain't into it.
So you're gonna be wasting your time going down there with are now there are certain artists that you might see someplace and you might create a moment that might catapult your career. You might they might become, you know, business, part of your business for the rest of your life.
And some people just saying with it, and there are artists who are with it.
You might run into Denzel and you might be able to do your best impersonation and he might be like, okay, clap and he might give you a recommend. There are people who they love that you know they.
I don't know if people love it mice.
But there are there are.
Listen to me, if a certain as an artist, right, if a dude could rap really good and he comes up to me and he spits, I'd be like, oh, I will call somebody like you gotta call producers anything I know DJ's Yo, listen, this dude right here, he's somebody.
It depends somebody to say that. I know you get your food from the church across the street or the sea spot down.
The butto everything depends, right. It's just you know, it's just like the girl who flirts with you or the guy who flirts with you. You don't want to be for a guy. If you attracted to a guy and he comes up to you and he says, yeah.
But you can't come find me where I work out and stuff, that makes me feel like if.
You've seen a god and he didn't tell you.
He pulled up and you looked at it, and you looked at you, and then later on you found out that he pulled up because he knew you worked out there and he was attracted to you, and you was attracted to him. You wouldn't feel that way, but it was a creepy looking dude and you see him coming like this dude is a stalker.
So that's what I'm trying to say.
It all depends on the circumstances in an individual. With certain people. There's some people they just don't give a fuck. Already sounds like she is not interested in anybody that's outside of her media circle trying to communicate with her and.
Build any kind of from the gym I'm.
Talking about in that in that.
In that atmosphere and that set, she's not She's not with it, So you have to respect that. But I'm saying there are certain people that see it as damn, this person is ambitious. You did all of that to come to you. Okay, let me see you gotta have some There are certain people I.
Need you to figure it out.
Even if you are a guy that I'm attracted to, I still don't want you coming to a First of all, don't come to the gym when I'm funky and stink anyway to come try to have conversation with me. But beyond that, I still don't feel comfortable with any person, especially a man tracking me down and I didn't know.
Like we didn't meet here.
You just happen to see me online working out or I'm you know what, you shouldn't get taking videos. You shouldn't be really taking videos while you're at a place anyway. But let's just say I decide I want to pop on my live while I'm sitting here in this studio and somebody knows where it is, and then they just come over here like, oh, I just wanted to come, because you could also be coming for a different reason,
and so I don't know. I think, Yes, I'm all for ambition, I'm all for going for what you want, but I don't want you to make me feel uncomfortable and nervous or like I need to be ready to defend myself.
Yeah, but I'm saying She didn't even say it's about her feeling uncomfortable. She just basically said, I'm not wooded at the gym. I don't gire for how you might somebody just want to hand you a car or I know you come here and she don't want none of it.
And you just got to respect to people that don't want it at all.
Okay, it's an individual thing. You might get your.
Shot, you might get your shot. It's a lot of people who got they shot like that.
Okay, Well, this now opens the floor to all of you who I'm sure have something to say about this. Is it doing too much or is it okay? Or is it maybe even not enough?
We'll see.
So we're gonna go into this interview that we already pre recorded, you know, and we're gonna give y'all two dope individuals.
So today we are quite honored, definitely two individuals with us who are esteemed pristine, just award winning folks, a couple.
And I love that, you know.
I love to see people partnered in families that's also doing business together. And so quite excited to introduce to our audience Fox and Rob Rich and both of these two beautiful black New Orleans. I guess I'm sure they'll correct me, because you know, people from New Orleans, you got to.
Say it right right, New Orleanders.
They are the subject of an Oscar nominated documentary that was released in twenty twenty called Time and now there is a sequel, a follow up to the first documentary that is called Time to Unfinished Business. And this family has been through a lot. We're gonna learn about a man sentenced to sixty one years in prison after this family found their backs up against the wall the way so many of us have been in difficult, difficult situations. And then he had a wife who never gave up
and fought for him, and he was released early. And instead of them being mad with their lips poked out, about who did what to them. They've taken accountability and said our responsibility now is to free more folks and to ensure that other stories are told. And so I am honored and quite humble by for the opportunity to interview and talk with and become friends because you know us with our friends on the TMI podcast, they.
Are ready my friends because I've been talking about getting some good old New Orleans food so that they about to cook for me. So they friends before you even did interviews.
So Fox and Rob, welcome to the TMI Show. We appreciate y'all so much. And it just feels like, ooh, it's powerful. You know, it's powerful. We watched the film and was moved. I had a few tears. This is a powerful story. So you know, let's start with the lady, because you seem to be a very very outgoing and outspoken part of this duo. To tell us what happened to you all, how did you find yourselves in the sixty one year situation?
And then we'll kind of go from there.
Well, Miss Tamika d Mallory, it takes one to know one because just over the years, every time I have seen your image or your name. I've just been a cheerleader in the background saying yes, it's you know, so thankful for you using your voice and being convicted for the rights of our community at such an early age. So thank you so much for that, and thank you for having us on TMI.
Rob, And don't.
Take that lightly, but I'm gonna actually pass it to the gentleman and I'm introduce us on how how did all this happen?
Rob?
It's your fault, all right, So I guess it will probably be important to note that well for your listening audience that's basically encountering us for the very first time.
Collectively. We are Fox and Rob Rich.
We're a formerly incarcerated couple who spent more than twenty one years behind bars before receiving clemency in twenty and eighteen. And I would have to venture to say that probably one of the biggest takeaways that we have from our family's experience through Louisiana's incarceration system is that to be
free is to free other people. That being said, once I came home, Fox and I started a nonprofit with its first initiative as pdum NOLA, which is Participatory Defense Movement NOLA, where we teach legal awareness as the best form of defense to people that are justice involved. We chudge the success of that work by the amount of time that we saved someone opposed to the amount of
time that the person has been sanctioned to serve. And to date, as an organization here locally, we have saved nearly four thousand years of people doing time here in the state of Louisiana, and countrywide through our forty organizations, we have saved nearly forty thousand years of people doing time from behind bars. And I'm a pause for effect on that one there, because I think that's a hand clapped.
Kind of moment.
But am and probably the other piece of that would be is Fox and I also met as a high school sweethearts through a mutual friend of ours, And in that situation, it turned out that Fox's friend, our mutual friend, actually misrepresented the relationship between the two of us and had Fox under the impression that she and I had something far more deeper going than we.
Actually had with one another.
So when I called Fox later on that night trying to get my MAC on, she checked me at the door, was like, you know, well, you know what you hollering at me for aren't you Wanda's friend? And I'm like, no, where did you get that from? And she was like, well Wanda herself, I said, we need to call Wander. So I don't know if your viewers are old enough to know when they had start sixty nine. So I'm
just trying to take here the business up front. So I'm like, well, all we go ahead and start sixty nine one, and then that way we can get at least that part out of the way. And so we called Wanda at night and hit her up on three Way and she started the small talk, and after she realized that I was on the phone as.
Well, she decided to hang up. That was the moment that was the turning moment right there.
I think when Fox finally when she fell in love with me, probably for the first time. I'll give way to her on that moment to kind of let y'all know how she was feeling in that moment when she saw a brother take control like that.
You know, we celebrate on this week, we'll celebrate twenty eight years of marriage and thirty eight years of being together. And so I think that sometimes when we have conversations, people look at the worst thing that we have done, and really want to delve into our greatest loss if you would, But Rob and I we like to start off with what is our greatest victory, And greatest victory is our love that we've been able to sustain even
in our lowest points in life. That the love of each other and the love of our family.
Which includes six sons.
So I'll probably just drop that aspect of it in right there to Meeka, Okay, so successful.
But as high school sweethearts, we started adventure to start a business of our own in nineteen ninety seven. We eloped and got married in April of nineteen ninety seven after an invitation to ask Fox's hand in marriage, to which she conceded. Wanted to know how soon was I talking about getting married, And I told her I'd be willing to beild out tonight if we could and go take care of that and we can at least get
this marriage thing going. And she was shocked and all, but she responded back the way way Leo Lyon does, and she hooked up a getaway for us to go to Kassimi, Saint Cloud, Florida, to a small little wedding Chapel where we got married there, and then we later that night at what was then called Pleasure Island, we
consummated our marriage by bungee jumping. Bungee jump for us was a jump that was into or passed all of the negative things that we had run up against in the ten uere on again, off again portion of our relationship before exchanging nuptials that earlier that day with one another.
But in that moment, it was a triumphant moment for us, when we soared.
Out over the city of Orlando and knowing that we were now taking our lives in our own hands and we were gonna make something doing. I've always had a high childhood dream of opening up my own hip hop clothing store, and Fox shared in my dream, and so we as our first business. Once we came back home from our Ario Lopeman. We came back home and started our family's first business, which was Culture, a hip hop
clothing store. Got all excited about the fact that we had just got married, we just bought a home together, and down here we were starting a business together.
Went out to Vegas.
To all of the big fashion shows and all that stuff, and ordered a gang of clothes, got back only to realize that our investor pulled out on us. And in addition to that, as they say in this day in time, that life be life and well life life in such a way.
Back then, uh, in our little young minds.
Where our third oldest son took sick with a with something that doctors could not diagnose in the moment, and I guess I pulled off of John Q in the moment as I sought the game, regained financial solvency for our family for the loss of our investor on our business. As they say, desperate people do desperate things, and I
take desperate measures. The day that I've walked into a bank, brandished the firearm and demanded cash, And that therein I guess, began the story of Fox and Rob as most people know it.
Wow, And you know the reality of the situation is people coming from our communities can really identify with that reality.
You know.
It might not have been your business, but a lot of us have done things where we felt our back was against the wall. You know, And when I listen to it and I hear these you people are good people. You know that just found yourself in a situation that made you react and say, I can't let my family just go. I have to figure something out, you know, and you were ultimately sentenced to sixty one years in prison.
Sixty sixty sixty one years. The crazy part, You guys would have to even get the backstory as to how it even became a sixty one year sentence. We were facing zero five to ninety nine years for the arm robbery itself, and because there were two counts, we were facing arm robbery five to ninety nine times two. And in the process of our trial processes, we ultimately ended up committing a jury tampering charge along the way, which picked us up yet another five to ninety nine years sentence.
Hence we were facing two hundred and ninety seven years. And subsequently, after going to trial, blowing trial and then finally reaching the point of sanctions, the district attorney made a recommendation to the judge because he wanted to leave a He wanted to leave a mark, much in the same way that they used to do slaves back in the day, when they brand you and hit you with something that you'll never forget.
The DA hit me with something that I would never forget.
Because he reminded the court that it was nineteen thirty eight that the last time a jury tampering happened in the parish in which I was convicted, and it was nineteen ninety nine during that year. So he wanted to sentence me to sixty one years, which is the amount of time that it had been since the last jury tampering that happened in their little small town. And he wanted me, he wanted he wanted me to stay with that for a while, stick sit with it for a while.
So that's ultimately how it was sentenced to sixty one years.
So he was clever in the way he did it.
Yeah, he knew what he was doing last And I know these things. They wanted to make an example, you know. They want you to feel these things, and then they also want everyone looking to see. It's just like it's like the lynching in front of the people, of the whipping in front of the slaves, so they know not to get out of line, you know. So ultimately you were sentenced to sixty one years, And how much time did you do?
Foks.
I have took a pleat deal for two seven year sentences and one five year sentence to be run together. So after giving birth to my twin boys, I went and committed myself to the Department of the Corrections and served out three and a half years and then did three and a half years on parole.
So did y'all get the money from the bank.
We held it for a little while, spent it.
Wow my mind.
You know, I'm just listening and thinking that. I know there are people in our community who are the.
Purest of the pure.
They're the most morally sound, do everything rights. Ever, so no matter what you tell them them folks robbed the bank, I don't have nothing to say to them. You know, we don't support them at all. But of course there are more of us who understand, uh that sometimes we just make bad decisions.
That's it.
It's not you know, you don't want to argue about who and what. We can just say it was a bad decision and I had to do the time to pay for that. But it doesn't mean that I should be committed to a life sentence of conviction and rebuke just because of this thing that happened. It seems like we get it, but there's some folks out here that just don't.
What do you what is the response that you received from.
Most people when you are, you know, out in the world with your films, when maybe you're talking doing panels, do you find that there are people who just feel like y'all should just forever be on the fringes and you're just wrong for the rest of your lives or not.
They I would have to say that, yes, you do get that group of people that are out there, but they make up a minority group of the people that we have encountered.
We have had far more people.
On our side than we've had against us, and I think that is reflective. And in the numbers when you look at the numbers. When you look at the numbers, one and three of us have a feling in America, have a felt any conviction that's not us. When I say, that's not black people, that's not black men, that is all people, Whites, Asians, you know, everybody that's here included that one in three of us have a felony conviction and one in two of us have a family member
that is incarcerated. And then you ask yourself, well, then what does that look like due to math? For me, Rob, what that looks like is our current president is a felon and was convicted of several crimes. Our outgoing president is the father of a felon. His son committed committed the act of feling with a firearm. In our community, people are immediately sentenced to an additional five years just for the fits for being a fed a form of
incarcerated person or feling with a firearm. But yet we saw how both in those situations were able to skirt justice, but not necessarily able to skirt the branding or the marking of the fact that you too now know incarceration because you or your family has been impacted from it. Garceration is not necessarily a black thing anymore. It is not necessarily a poor thing anymore. It is a human thing because humans are prone to be and do human stuff.
We air, you know, and for me, I would like to add that it is about the art when you talk about making a film. I have seen the impact of what art can do in changing the hearts and minds of men and women. I would be honest with you all on the TMI that the first time I ever saw a white male weep was at Sundance when
we did the premiere of the first film. Time and it happened on more than one occasion in Utah at Sundance we're doing this screening, they were so overwhelmed that they came up to me to share how much impact the film that had on them. And so knowing that art is activism and that is how we can really use it as a tool to change the heart of man, that we can begin to change man's mind, and in
changing mankind's mind, we can change mankind's policies. And that is the reason why we decided that even after Time one had been so well received, it was such a wonderful project in its own right. Me in particular, found a need to make sure that I could tell the second part of our story one because in the first time, I think our community needs to know how did we gain freedom for our family as it's like being in
the criminal justice system. It's like being in a corn maze doing Halloween and you never know when and how to get out, and it is intentionally designed that way. And so one I wanted to make the sequel to this documentary so that I can help show families what we were able to do to get out. Because if it's possible for me and my family who had been
condemned to diet angola. Then it is also possible for you and your family and countless others two point three million other families that find themselves trapped in one shape form on another in this judicial system, and so being able to bring forth his story and use artists activism to change mankind's heart and continue to push the message. The second reason I found it important to share this story was because I wanted folks to see what we actually did with freedom.
What did we do with the freedom.
That we had been given when my husband returned.
Yeah, ministry, you need TV shows, and yeah, we need to put you on the platform.
You to the program saince you are here talking right now.
What to do with freedom once you get free?
And what we did with freedom is that we used it to free other people. Six months after Rob came home, we had gotten clemency for him. We took on the matter of frame the longest serving woman in our country, Gloria Dean Williams, who by the time we got her release through clemency, had served fifty two years in prison. And she wasn't even the most culpable in her situation. And if that wasn't enough we changed policy in Louisiana that Rob had been studying law and working on since
two thousand and five. We thought that policy change would help four hundred to six hundred men and women locked up in our system in Louisiana, which is the highest incarcerator in the world per capita the state of Louisiana. And when the policy actually got changed, we discovered family that over three thousand families who thought they were going to die in prison because they had thirty years or more of a sentence but not life, are now given an opportunity to go for parole and have a chance
to return home to their families. So we understand that it is our duty to fight for our freedom and it is our duty to win. Thank you so much for ooh it's beautiful.
Let me just let me cool down because the mic on fire. You're done.
Set the mic on fire real quick. What was what made you decide that you wanted to chroniclize this? What made you decide that I'm going to chroniclize this and turn this into this film.
Well, for me, when it was resistance here as form. When Rob and I got married, we had three children between us. We had dated ten years off and on. I had come from a family where marriage was not an institutional practice in my particular home. Rob had come from a home that marriage was a practice. And so for us when we when we united in holy matrimony, it was like we broke all of the chains and
all of the dysfunction. And even though we had made mistakes here, we were determined to fix it and get it right. And so it was it was so important to me I started documenting. I wanted to share this moment with my family and with others that we.
Had actually done it.
I was so happy we married right, find.
The guy, right, he's married. Now he's married.
Now you know.
Time the movie.
It's on Amazon Prime Video for your viewers that may want to check it out. It opens up and it says we're the richest. Now what do you think about that? But it is about building that brand, that family brand together that we can go out into the world and elevate and expand. And so I started filming for that purpose. And then shortly after that, we found ourselves in the criminal justice system to a choice of our own making.
And so it was nothing more disheartening to me than to begin to fully understand what it meant to be free. The moment that I had checked not only myself but my husband and I had subjected our entire family back
into slavery. So having understood that, I wanted to at that point document this, and even though the judge had sentenced him to sixty years, my goal was to make sure that if I couldn't, if he couldn't be in space with us, that I would document space and time and whenever he came home, because every year for twenty one years, we believe that this would be the year, This is going to be the one. Right here now,
this Christmas, we're gonna be together as a family. And how many families every year are having that same thought that they are sharing with, you know, within their family, that hoping that this is going to be the year. And so I would keep filming and encouraging my children because I wanted to share it with him when he came home. But by the time we had been in the system for ten years.
But what we had.
Done, and everybody that I spoke to about the excessive sentence that my family had received thought it was god awful shame, but absolutely nobody lived at a hand to for me in the directional help me. Then I began to document because I knew I had a duty, in an our obligation to tell this story. And as I opened up time too, the trailer opens up and it says, if it wouldn't have happened to us, we never would have believed it. God got to make us witness bearers.
Because I was that two time college graduate with my master's degree, and I thought that everybody that got in trouble with the law, they got exactly what they deserved. I went in the voting booth home from college, and I voted for three time felons to do to be multi bill. I voted for the eighty five percent law. If you do a violent crime, then you need to
serve eighty five for your percent of your time. I voted for the Clinton Crime Bill that said we would charge children as adults when they're seventeen years old.
I voted for all of.
That, and then I entered the system, and then I understood how harmful my voting was and continues to be. Here we are thirty years later into this system and are still being impacted by the Clinton Bill, even though the funding for it is all gone, and all of the apologies have been spread across the ethos, but nobody came back to fix the harm. They calls and undo or repeal the Clinton crime beal.
Yes, yeah, who's so rob You got a powerful wife. That's a lot of women right there saying next to you.
I can imagine it's just like, go ahead, baby, do your thing. What has life been like? I mean, you know, twenty one years. Like I know people who have been incarcerated who have challenges with too much stimulation. My son he needs to get to himself sometimes and just sit and not have everybody constantly talking to him or have to engage in a million conversations, and everybody's like, what's.
Wrong with my son?
And he's just like sometimes I just I just need that a break. And it's different between people who need that break simply because they just can't be over stimulated and someone who had to use that as a mechanism to get through seven years of incarceration.
And we have our other sister, Jamil T. Davis.
I notice it in her sometimes things that she does, and I just wonder for you, what has been the lasting effects of doing all of those years and is a part of your programming and what you do helping folks to break those chains as well after they come out of incarceration.
Yeah, I know, some of the things are things that you can kind of you can repair up on release.
But when you consider the fact one that when I went into prison, I went into prison two years on the other side of windows ninety five.
By the time I had.
Come home, my space was a thing and was no longer a thing by the time I had come home, So you can imagine the technological advances that had happen. And you know, at that space and time when I left home, people with you know, you only had a handful of people that.
Had a cell phone.
Uh.
They were basically street chemists and you know, doctors and lawyers, uh, separate and apart from them.
You know, that was pretty much it.
And phones were just for the purpose of making making phone calls. By the time I had come home, you know, people couldn't even live without their phones. Their lives were connected to that little you know, this little gadget. When I left home from from prison the first time I whimp uh went left home to prison the first time, people were wearing baggy clothes and those kinds of things. When I came home, practically everybody was naked. Yes, it was an over you know, it was over stimulating because
I could look. But then they say, you ain't supposed to look too long, look, don't say nothing, you know, and I'm like, what we're doing? You know, just so many different things were different, But it reminded me so much of people that had gone through slavery and were told that they could not read, that, they were told that they could not learn how to write, that, they were told that they needed to stay literate because as
long as you're literate, then I can control you. Well, much of the same happens that when you move into a technologically advanced world like the one we live in today, or the like the one that I entered when I got out of prison in twenty eighteen. I'm no different than those people. So like, it's like I went from slavery to sharecropping. You feel what I'm saying, And I've
been going through that same process over and over again. Yes, but some of the things that are the remnants or the lasting effects from incarceration, you can repair, you know, you can become educated, you can become tech savvy. You can become a lot of those things and kind of make up for lost time when it comes.
To those kinds of things.
But there are some things that stick with you and they stay with you forever. I post traumatic express is real. No, It's as real as a person that went off the war because I've been in war. Some people, you know, when you say that to them, it's like, well, why would you Why would you make that comparison that you've been in war? And I'm like, come on, dummy, what do you not understand it? It's me versus the state
of Louisiana. It's my brother versus whatever state or federal or jurisdiction that he or.
She was up again. So they made it a war. He made them versus me. So this is not me just making up something. But you know, same situation is that you go through this experience.
Of living in a violent state for two decades, you know, two decades, a year and four days. With that being said, you can't live in an environment like that for that long period of time and not and come out unscathed.
So I'm no different.
You know, I came out, but I've just been learning how to manage and work past it. It was probably when I gave my first interview when once I got home. The first interview national interview that we gave when we were out promoting the first film was with CBS Mornings and Jureka Duncan, a person who I've been you know, watching through the TV, you know, for the last seemed
like fifteen twenty years or so. Now here it is that I'm now being in a situation where this person who I've admired her journalistic style and UH contributions and all those things, and now this woman.
Is uh is actually interviewing me.
You know, Gail King is knowing my name, or she is knowing at least my family story. And in that moment, you know, once the interview came to a close, I started noticing that I started sweating, and my pulse went up, and my heart rate went up, and I started shaking, and I couldn't figure out like what was happening or what was wrong with me. And it was like, you know, Fox kind of you know, calmed me down and got me back.
She's like Nigga breathed it just kind of easing me back through it or whatever. She's like. He was like, I think I need to go to the hospital. I was like, nigga, improve.
It got right. And by the way, we've been through enough, get your ass together.
Right, even old long enough.
To me, I'm gonna kill you anyway, you need to take the DS.
So those are just some of the things that that you know, were difficult for me upon release. Another was just the fact that I've been in a prison where the population is more than six thousand men incarcerated in one space together. Uh, there's twenty five hundred men that make up you know, the walk where I live, the tier where I live, on on my on my tier, there's over five hundred dudes that live in that one pot.
And then in the set I mean in the in the dormitory setting where I live, there are more than one hundred men that share my my my birthing, or my bed space. And with that being said, we also share between one hundred men. We share two telephones, we share one tv U, we share one Kiosk machine.
We say we share six urinals.
Four toilets, two sinks, four showers, and you can imagine the confused and one coffee pot.
Can you imagine the confusion that exists.
When when a hundred men, most of them who've been sentenced or sanctioned to a life in prison.
Get in a setting like that. Man, this is like a powder keg.
It's just any moment that it's gonna blow and again, like I said, can't live through those moments and not come home impacted. When I came home from that situation, my wife was ready to, you know, jump in the showers together.
She was ready to hug up at night in the bed and all that.
I'm like, hold up, man, somebody might shake me, like you got me held up right here, hold on, I need some freedom.
I didn't want to shower with someone else.
I wanted to shower by myself because I've been showering with other dudes the last two decades. You know, you splashing soap and all that other kind of shrug. You know, you can't avoid it. I wanted to close the door when when I was in the restroom because I could you know other than that, I was, you know, in
a situation where I was total lead. You know, there were no doors because people need to be able to see because I need to make sure you're still here, and you know, just all of those things, Intimacy, We had to figure out how many times were a married couple supposed to be having sex with each other once?
Once you were married? And that's me. You know, that mess with my ego a little bit. You know.
I always consider myself, you know, at least above average, you know in these matters, right, I mean, six sons do say something. But in that moment, though, you know, I was like, okay, well they got these new gadgets. Let me google how many how many times do people actually have sex when they married?
And you know, I felt relieved afterwards. I was like, okay, shit, I'm holding my own up in there. You know. Then the average American and boy, I've lapped all the Asians over there.
You know, they barely get it in so but it's just all of those kind of things that that we had to figure out how to overcome.
You know, after you know, long suffering.
Tell us real quick about your kids and then you take us up from there. But what about the children? How are the children?
The children are masterpieces. They're absolutely amazing. Eldest son, Elik is a Somalia. Our second oldest son, Remington, is a or the Donnis here in New Orleans. The third oldest Lawrence was one of the first to get married, and it's traveling abroad with his wife after serving a tour of duty in the Army. Our twin boys' Freedom and Justice. Freedom works in Congress as a senior staffer with one of our congressmen. Justice has finished a tour of duty in the army and it's also living abroad.
And our baby boy, Robert Jr.
Is a second year college student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a scholarship for photography and journalism. So we just can't say enough about how well our children are doing, our families Mato doing that journey was success is the best revenge. And how do we make them pay for what the harm not only that we cause, but the harm that the state added to what we caused.
How can we get back?
And to get back we just succeed anyhow when it was intentional about us not succeeding. And so all of that being said, we are to be able to invite the Tmi family to join us. As we launched the sequel to our Oscar nominated documentary, Time to Unfinished Business, which is my directorial debut. We will do a streaming live here in New Orleans and across the nation through a national watch party, as we are encouraging our sisters and brought us to put freedom at the forefront of
June teenth. This June teenth, and let's talk about freedom. So I do hope that you all will consider coming down and being a part of this amazing opportunity.
Yeah.
Yeah, we are aiming to get a million people watching and talking about freedom this June team.
It's amazing. So I just wanted this.
There's two questions I want to ask, so we know what the whole theme was behind Time one. It was chroniclizing your marriage, chroniclizing everything that happened, and then showing how Rob came home and how you all of the trials and tribulations that you went through. It's more of I would like to say. It's not a story glory of just freedom. Is a story of perseverance, right and love and perseverance, and it really shows that. So is what are we looking at when we look at time too?
What is the theme?
What is the whole idea about it?
If Time one was the cry, then Time two is the call the call to action. As the theme of the entire movie is to be free is to free others. We are excited to be able to show people freedom unfolding on multiple occasions in the great state of Louisiana, which is the worst incarcerated in the world. We are hopeful that people will be inspired and see that they too can go back into the belly of this beast
and reclaim their loved ones. Just because somebody has been excessively sentenced doesn't mean that they have to stay that way.
And so we are just.
Hoping that people will see the power that family and community together, we can achieve anything we set our minds.
I want to ask one more question before I finished. At any time did you doubt that y'all would have this moment? Anytime during that year when you were sending sixty one years and you was fighting, and I know there was ups and downs and there was nose and for twenty one years you went through that. Anytime did y'all say, you know what I'm giving up?
No?
No was not an option.
And that's how we have to be about our freedom here in this country. We have to clearly understand that no was not an option. Us conceding to the Six States sanctions for our family was not an option for us.
And then if you look at the fact that for those that have had an opportunity to watch time the original, if you notice that when I came out, when I exited the prison, I had a T shirt on that says never give up and my zhon, I know you know first and foremost, they don't make them kind of
T shirts in prison. I made that T shirt ten years prior to when I was taking the Arts a Graphic Arts and Communications class, we were tasked with the homeless well with an assignment to create a campaign, and so I thought to create a campaign through T shirts by putting the words never give up onto the front of those T shirts.
And felt that if I could put people inside.
Of those T shirts, as I was able to do inside of the prison, then it was a way of telling all the men that when we approached one another or when we saw one another, that we were reminding each other that we could never give up despite the situation that was ahead of us.
We owed it to.
Our ancestors to not give up or not give up on them, and to not give up on ourselves. We called time to unfinished business because it was some personal business that was there to us because our nephew continued to be incarcerated after I got out. But truth of the matter is is that there was more than four hundred years of unfinished business when it comes to the
fight that our ancestors started many, many years ago. So as long as the thirteenth Amendment still has an exception clause that allows a gateway into back into slavery through one's mistakes or through your air in judgment, through your transgressions,
then that business is unfinished. And that is what we're endeavoring this June team, is to not talk about freedom in the way that we traditionally talk about it in the rear of how we talk about what happened three hundred years ago, two hundred, one hundred years ago, or whatever. We're talking about what's happening now in this moment in time with them two point three million people that are still languishing a way in cars, in systems all across
this country. So we want to bring that conversation back to the forefront and keep it at the forefront until we're able to have that exception move. That's not to say that we get rid of prisons. I believe people that should be punished do me wrong, and yeah, there's a sanction that come with it, But at the same time,
the sanction should be fundamentally fair. And I just think that the system has gotten away that its side steps fundamental fairness and issues out sentences and sanctions that are reflective of what we've seen for hundreds of years now.
Amen, So time two, the time to campaign is us a time to watch campaign?
Is us watching it on June tenth? Together?
So the conversation about freedom with the toolkit that you will be provided and to mek, I think you all will love this my TMA podcast family. Not only do you get the film that you will own, it will
be yours, not a rental. But in addition to that, in this freedom toolkit, you will receive a copy of the public law that made Juneteenth a federal holiday and you will get a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation because we as black people, we need both of those posted up on our walls in our homes next to the picture of the Lord's Supper.
We're going to host a screening, definitely tea where and we will be hosting a screening. We are on the state of the People Power Tour, which Juneteenth is going to be something very special.
But that evening. What time does it come on. I think it's gonna be about six thirty. We have all of the definitives this.
Week, okay, so we'll figure it out.
And as a part of what we're doing until freedom, our organization will host a screening for with and for you all. This I'm impressed, and it takes a lot to impress me, but I see two extremely powerful people.
We've all been through a lot in our lives. My son, you know, he has a story that is very painful, and he's been gone through a lot, but it's and I have a book out about all the stuff and the bad decisions I made from picking up pills and becoming addicted to you know, a lot of things that happened to me because of bad decisions.
But I know for sure and I felt it.
If I could taste it, it would have filled me to know that when God met me in rehab, he was not there to rebuke me, but instead to say that every single thing you've been through is for the purpose of what I need you to go and do now. And I am committed to using the challenges that I've faced and the things I put myself in. I can't sit here toay it was Johnny and Bobby. Yeah, there's some people who were responsible for breaking my heart and making me feel like I was vulnerable and all of that.
That's true, but I still made decisions that ended up really crippling me and put.
Me in a bad space.
And I've made the commitment to God that I know there are other people who are numbing with pills right now or drinking alcohol trying to numb some of their past issues and current issues. I know there are people who are shopping or having promiscuous sexual moments and all of that, trying to cover up things that they don't want the world to see.
And it is my.
Commitment to God that he bought me out and I promised that I would use my platform to do the same. So as I'm listening to you all, it has given me renewed spirit to go back and do the work that I need to do, the work that I know God has.
Called me to do.
The movement is important, and they're not separated, it's all together, but it's there's He gave me the movement, and I've done that I've done it for thirty years of my life, and I wasn't sure what I would do next, and now I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, and that is to deal with disparities around addiction and how people get help. And it is also to say to folks, yes, I was addicted.
It was me. You see me, I'm cute.
I'm fixed up, I got you know, nice clothes. But behind the scenes, I was taking between twenty to thirty pills a day. So if I could tell my story, you could tell yours and we can get healed together.
So there's that. It's a testimony. I've been talk all.
Day to day. It's a fire.
Thank you'll, thank you'll.
Thank y'all.
No, thank you for having us.
And when you get to New Orleans, your favorite, our favorite restaurant.
Is on us.
Yes, yes, that's my teachers.
Don't threat don't threaten me with a good time. I got you king be say.
Talk to you all. Thank you, thank you, Yeah, keep going, thank you.
That was such an amazing interview, like just this story, just listening to them, just the way they're in Unison, the way they just highly intelligent, and it's just dope.
Just watching their experience, man, you.
Know, watching Time one gave me like a glimpse of their life, and then just just having that interview with them was just was the icing.
On the cake. Yeah.
I mean, some people take what was meant for bad for good. And just knowing that you have these two very powerful, very intellectual, very socially conscious, super black folks out here in the world, it makes me feel like, you know, one of these days we may be in a better place.
And I'm glad that they're in Louisiana, which is.
A state that really has significant racial issues in terms of disparities within all types of industries but clearly incarceration and to have them there working to help people get freed or to get their records expunged and all of that is really important as well. And again just knowing that they are socially conscious and they have a racial lens for their work, because a lot of times even black people will be like, well, we don't you know, we're.
Not this is not about this is you know.
And not to say that they won't work with people that are not black, but they still understand the challenges that we as black people have and she's out here quoting Asada Chakour.
You know what I'm saying.
We have nothing to lose but our change, So we have to do the work. We at least have to try. So I love Robin Fox and I'm definitely committed as you are to our Juneteenth event a screening of their show, and it will be on the same day of hopefully it happens.
I'm hoping.
We're on this tour, the State of the People Power Tour, which has been an incredible, incredible gathering of black folks organized black folks across the country, and Juneteenth, we're supposed to have a special day and hopefully what will be in the evening would be this particular screen and so we're working on it.
Yes, the State.
The State of the People Power Tour is a power tour for real. It's powering through my spirit every single day.
It is definitely powering through my spirit.
We should absolutely make sure to have some clips included in this show and subsequent shows to give people an understanding of what has happened from Atlanta to North Carolina and then to New Orleans and now we're going to Alabama. Certainly, I can't forget Alabama, one of the most incredible gatherings.
And then we're now headed to Newark, New Jersey.
Newark it's my home, my second home, Newark, it surely is definitely.
My second Now that brings me to my I don't get it now.
I hate to keep talking about Trump, you know, but like the ignorance, the level of ignorance makes me feel like I'm ignorant sometimes, right, you ever just pay attention, No, no, for real, because you you say it got to be me like you get you say to yourself, it's am I really crazy? Like am I really seeing what I'm seeing? Or am I blind or something?
So listen.
They are people online, right that're constantly people I know, constantly try to make it seem as if Kamala Harris is ignorant, right, I see the post they.
Say she's ignorant or not intelligence.
No, no, they make low IQ, not intelligent, whatever you want to call whatever you want to call it. I've seen a post where they had a picture of her and said we dodged a bullet, right, and she was talking about she was talking about she said something I don't remember exactly what it was. She said there was elephants they took a little clip and she was like, did y'all see the viral clip of the elephants when there was an earthquake? And then they cut it off
and said, oh, we dodged a bullet. She's so dumb and this and that. I'm asking this because maybe I'm crazy. Do y'all actually believe that Donald Trump is more intelligent than Kamala Harris? Dude?
No?
Is this like?
Is this something that when we look and you listen to both of them speak and you just hear the third grade vernacular vocabulary that Trump has. I have never heard him say something that a fifth grader couldn't understand. I've never And then I heard him today talking about Jasmine Crockett.
A fifth grader couldn't understand.
Yeah, he said nothing.
Anybody with a fifth grade education can understand what he said.
He doesn't.
There's nothing intelligent about Donald Trump. So I'm so confused, as do people really believe that he was talking about Jasmin Crackt. I was about to say saying that she has a low IQ, And I'm just really saying to myself, is this like a game? Is it like reverse psychology that if you say something long enough, right, if you so dumb that if you tell people you smart, they start to believe that you're smart. And I think that's
what's happened. Like when they say this cult shit with Trump, it's really like a cult to me because there's nobody that's listening to Trump. They ask him about the Constitution, right, and the Declaration of Independence, and they ask them, they ask him questions. He doesn't even know what the fuck they are. He says, it's a document. It's a good document, you know, it's for freedom. He has no idea about the things that actually govern this nation. He has no
idea about anything. So when I'm listening to people have these conversations and people make it seem like these intelligent black women are less educated intelligent than this man, it's like the weirdest shit I've ever seen it. It really, it really shocks me.
Well, I guess my response is I'm really thinking about it. But what I can say is that there are some people who will feel like just because you use big words that a fifth grader might not be able to understand, it doesn't make you more intelligent.
It just might mean that you know more.
Words, okay, but even more educated right, when you say somebody's low IQ the education at seventy eight years old, right, I don't even think that the man has the IQ or the education of a tenth grader, Like, for real, when I'm listening to him, it's like sometimes I be confused, like this is this really?
Well, we live in the era of trolling, right, and a lot of the people they also know big words, because I see a lot of people on social media that know how to use all kinds of big words and write fifteen page paragraphs and still when you really listen to what they're saying on a very basic level, it's pretty ignorant.
It's pretty stupid, right, And so I think that.
Folks are looking Also, what people like to look at is how much money you've made and how much success you have had, and like where you were able to what.
You were able to accomplish, where you were able to get.
And well, money does not have anything to do with education.
Well, but I know, but I'm just telling you, In a lot of people's minds, the mere fact that you were able to accomplish these big things like having hotels and golf courses and you know, becoming president twice and all of that that to them is what that's what implies education, pation level, or a level of brilliance or intelligence.
They don't think, they don't understand that a lot of these people, especially white folks, white men, who have been able to accomplish these great goals that when you look into the background, because this is what the man was sued for in New York State alone, stealing, you know, mistreating other communities in order to its pretty much scamming and harming people, being racist, in order to grow the ladder and get to whatever it is that they're trying
to do. They did not necessarily take the difficult route that requires you to like know some stuff and learn some things and also consider other people's rights and feelings. And so there are a lot of people that will never agree with you because when they look at him, they see success, and you have.
They're telling the.
Success that's in education. It's two different things. They have a lot of successful people that's not educated.
Right, But I but okay, So then I guess, okay, so you're saying, I think God int same what you're saying that in those situations, you would see a person say I don't know all of this stuff.
I made it from hard work or whatever, whatever.
But I know my sister is much more educated than me, and that's why I rely on her for whatever, or my friend or I always keep people around me who are smarter than me or whatever.
So they are they are.
Making it clear that they know that they are not as educated. They would never try to down somebody who actually is.
It's just for me.
When you talk about IQ level, right, when you talk about education level, when you those things are visible, right when I'm having a basic conversation, like you might be somebody who just has common sense. Like it's a lot of people that have good common sense. They're not the most like we think about they're not BookSmart, right, like you think about our grandparents and all that. My grandmother didn't go to school, but she was she had common sense.
Like she had very good common sense. But when you talked to you knew she wasn't highly educated, right, but she knew how to give you basic things. She would say shit that you when you thought about, like, then that made sense. Donald Trump don't even have that, right when I'm listening to shit he says, like just just he talk about the art of the deal, like you nobody thinks that.
They don't need allies.
Right if the president of America, right, you're not gonna go to war with everybody else and isolate yourself. I mean, that's just not even common sense. You're not gonna keep lying saying that you're making deals that you're not. You're not gonna tell us that you're gonna stop a war that you know you have no they playing you.
But he knows that he has a lot of people. He said his sweet spot is.
Yea, but I understand that.
So, but my thing is, the poor educated got to stop acting like they educated, because you can't look at somebody educated. It because when you look when you look at when you look at just the resume of both of them, when we talk about education, there's not even a comparison. Right, This lady has ran the top government officers. She's went through the ranks of place, like graduating the bargain like, these are things, these are things that require education, they require intelligence.
Donald Trump has done none of those things. Right.
So when we have these conversations and you compare it on an education level and intellect level, it's it's like, to me, it's mind boggling.
That there are people that have.
Now, you don't like her, you think she laughed too much, you don't like to you think she's not whatever, whatever it is you want to say cool, I'm okay with that.
That's your personal opinion.
But when we talk about you can have your own opinions, you can't have your own facts. Men lie, numbers lie. I mean men live, women lie, but numbers don't lie in the numbers. Right when we look at the numbers, when we look at Jasmine Crockett's jacket and we look at her education level, and we just listen to her when she is delivering a message, right, you understand that
this is an educated woman. When I'm watching the president inside the White House and the words he says, and it's like, damn, man.
Is this really the president of the United States?
And I'm.
Listen to me.
But I'm not saying you made a decision, but you didn't. You didn't vote that man because he's educated and he's highly intelligent. You decided that you just going with whatever you want. You feel like he's honest to a fault. You said he's gonna say this shit nobody else says. It's raw.
It's like, cool, I understand, that's what you voted for.
But we can't keep doing this this intelligence shit, because now you you insult in my intelligence by trying to make me believe that this man is more intellien in this woman, and it's it's insulting to somebody.
Maybe they don't know how to express that. What they mean is he's just better than her.
But that I mean, you like her, but there's nothing when you.
Say better, I'm saying. That's what these people are saying. I already know.
In the show y'all got.
Y'all president, right, and it's cool, But you're not gonna keep insulting these people intelligence when you're compaying them to somebody who has the intellect of a third and fourth grader. We're just not gonna keep doing it. I'm just not' I can have any discussion you want. You think he's a business man, you think he does this cool, that's that's your opinion. I disagree with cool, But it's not an opinion that this person is educated.
That's not even an opinion for so yeah, that's it.
I just I just don't need y'all to insult my intelligence by trying to make me think that that man is intelligent and these women are.
It's just it's I draw the line there.
Like that's where I draw the line, because you're not gonna you can't get play in my face like that. You can't tell me you can't pissed my mama. You said you ain't gonna be able to piss on me and tell me it's raining. And that's what they trying to do.
Okay, I I captain.
And with that we come to the end of another episode of TM. We appreciate y'all. Tamika. What you gotta say?
What am I supposed to do? You have something to say something?
Give me a good close and something strong. You ain't got nothing to close you with like a good word? Come on something, give me a strong word.
You said words. Well, we appreciate y'all.
You know, continue to follow us at tam My Underscore Show and at TMI Show PC on YouTube. We appreciate y'all. Let us know if you love us, let us know you hate us. We continue to be the number one show in the world. Tam My Truth, Motivation and Inspiration. I'm not gonna always be right, Tamika the marries and I can always be wrong, but we will both always and I mean always be authentic