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.
New name, new energy. What's going on, my son, Lennon?
I am blessed, black and Holly favored, Tamika D. Mallory. How you feeling today?
Good?
You know, I'm still I'm on vacation. I'm only here because I love doing the show. You know, I think since we have rebranded, I love to street politicians too, And in fact, sometimes I wish we didn't change the name. But that's a whole, different, whole different conversation. Yes, but I understand why we needed to evolve. We've been doing that for a while and it certainly had put up
some robot blocks for us. But I have had a renewed excitement around coming to this studio and beautiful studio and being here and filming the show, and so I don't mind doing that. But this is like the only thing. And I say that, and then I do sixteen different things. Go I say I'm only doing the show, and then I go to Newark to a city council hear and now I say I'm not going to do this, and then I got to go to somebody else's event and
do this and that. But I'm really It's after Thanksgiving, and you know, I don't go back to work until second week of January. All these people calling me talking about are planning meeting and this and that, and I'm doing it.
I don't know why though I don't want to. I'm on vacation.
Listen, the work don't stop. Man. We had to give out turkeys, you know, Shout out to unfriendly Baptists. Shout out to Vanessa Gibson, Kevin Raley who donated turkeys, my little young Kings who was out there giving out. Shout out to Bronx logo. My boy was with me. We had to bust full of turkeys, hundreds of turkeys that we drove and we picked them up and we went to the store by ourselves. They picked up them turkeys. Man, So shout out to everybody. Miss Tea over there.
Mil Walker, who's a hard legend, my friend Jessica Walker's father. He is I don't know exactly what his title is for the State Office building in Harlem, but he runs it and he's been there a long long.
Long time.
But I'm sure he has a title chairman or something like that. I don't know exactly what it is, but mister Walker is a Harlem legend, okay, and he made sure to send some turkeys.
Definitely shut up to him.
You got a long line of people out there.
Oh man, that line was long, and it was over so fast that this probably was like the fastest. I think we were a lot more organized. Yeah, we and we had and it was a lot of more people that but it was more people than we've ever usually at the end of our turkey drives, like we'll be having about thirty more turkeys that we have to stop cars that's driving by me, like, hey, you want a turkey. They was on that line in about thirty minutes.
They got their turkeys and that was.
Gone, two three hundred turkeys going in a matter of thirty minutes. Yeah, So shout out to everybody came out. You know, there's something that I want to make sure that we do. I try to give back to the community because you know, it's hard, Like you said, people can't afford you know, eggs and milks, so I definitely can't afford turkey. So you know, we made sure that we do for the community.
Man.
They always appreciative, you know. Once again, shout out to mis t Shout out to to my cousin James, you know over there at Fronty Baptist Daycare Center for always housing all of our events.
When I was at the city council meeting for in Newark, they said I heard one or two people say, you know, sometimes I'll be thinking to myself, Wow, black people black, not even black people. I take that back. I always say black people. Everything for me is about black people. But older people can be so rude and crazy, like how the hell please don't let me be the real
crazy person. I think about like how our mothers can be when they want to be, how they can be, you know, and imagine that with people being upset about their communities and dealing with trauma. That So it was like times ten in these in this council meeting with people saying all kinds of things, and I'm thinking to myself, the young people that are watching the older people, you can't possibly expect that the younger people are going to act right when they go outside when we're inside of
a actual courtroom. Really, I mean, well, I don't know if it's a courtroom, but the council, that the chambers, the chambers, and I mean Jesus, but one thing I can say is that they keep you honest. Dumb people over there, they keep you honest. And one of the things that I did, because what I tried to do, there was a lot of abrasive conversation and a lot it was whoa at times, because people feel they got
their issues. They bringing it to the forefront. It's how I feel, right, And I said, okay, let me stop watching and and and you know, and being influenced if you will, or whatever triggered by the tone, and listen to exactly the words. And there was a woman who said, we don't we don't have jobs, or no, they don't have jobs. She didn't say we maybe she has a job.
They don't have jobs. But they got a turkey. And I was like, damn, like for a person who gave out turkeys and who worked to get them to pick them up, to bring it to your community, to get boxes of turkeys. So because you want to help a family, that that's one thing that they don't have to deal with this holiday. They know for a fact that every year two days three two to three days before Thanksgiving, my son is going to give out turkeys. And that makes people be like, Okay, I don't got to worry
about that. I can get all my other things, which, by the way, next year our plan is to have all the other things and the turkey. But a shout out to country cooking Auntie sad out in Philadelphia. I was looking at some of what she gave out and I was like, oh, this is exactly what I want to do, you know, not no envy, but like learning from influenced by right, and you do something so good, and then to hear someone say, oh, I ain't got a job, but I got a turkey, it's so deflating because it's.
Like, damn, we're just dealing with so much trauma.
Right, Because then I was gonna say, but I feel you though. I feel you though, like you don't have a way to buy your own so you got to depend on somebody else to give you one, when really all you want is a job.
Reality is the person that's giving you a turkey don't have a job for you, so they trying to compensate for whatever they can because they understand that you don't have a job or you don't have the resources, right, so you kind of villainizing the person that's trying to do the best that they can because they probably barely got a job for themselves. But they saying, I got a little more what somebody else does, so let me
try to give back a little more. And we don't understand that we do more harm to our own people when we criticize them for trying to help than anything.
But I guess I want to feel like and understand that it wasn't meant for the person who gave out the turkey, but it was really a message to the city, to the city council people like yeah, we've got all of these things, these trinkets being done, but the central issue is that so many of our people don't have jobs.
And it's not a newer thing by itself because newerk you know, from what I can see and just you know, talking to Keisha Yuri, who is the Deputy mayor for Violence in Intervention, Uh she and I probably got that tight wrong, but she's definitely over the Office of Violence Prevention. There you go, she's a deputy mayor. She was really
showing me like this is what we've done. These are the jobs, This is what we have been able to do for the community, for grassroots organizers around this issue of violence interruption, and we have the data to prove that it's working. It may not have solved the problem, but it's working, and it's working in a lot of places in Newark that used to be like popping all the time. You see the violence calming down, and so there are people who are really working hard. But it's
not a Newark problem. People speaking in the New York City Council meeting are responding also to what's happening in Alabama, what's happening in Saint Louis, what's happening in DC and New York City across the bridge. Folks are just feeling suffocated,
They're feeling strained, they're feeling suffocated. So you know, it's a good place to be because I always put myself in the middle of listening hearing from people who are frustrated, because that informs for me and reminds me, humbles me, to remind me that you're doing a little bit of stuff. You're doing a little bit of stuff, but you're not even comparing to what it really is. Going to take
to actually heal our communities. So don't you get yourself all feeling big and high fluting because you gave out turkeys, or because you gave out whatever, because you did any None of it is the solve.
We're just trying to do our part.
It's hard. It's hard, but that's that's a that's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people, right because we asked, we ask our people to give back, We ask our people to look out for the communities. And then when you feel like you're being villainized for helping, yeah, the average person doesn't know how to take that. Right. So when we look at we hear the quote unquote sellout and the people that left the community because they've been beat down by the people they're actually trying to help.
And it's and it's it's trauma. And if you don't understand that, if you don't really understand where we're coming from and what goes on in our communities and how that trauma has affected them to where a lot of people hurt people actually hurt people. If you don't do that and you internalize that, then it sours you. You know, I feel like people man, fuck y'all can start. I'm gonna be good me and I'm worried about me and my family because I hear that all the time, or
I gotta worry about me and I don't. I don't have that mindster, and I refuse to have that mindster. So regardless of whatever it is, it's never always just positive. It's there's a lot of negative feedback that I get.
But at the end of the day, for me, when when I see those people and they take them turkeys and they smile and they hug you and they say thank you, and they know Thanksgiving is coming in three or four days before we give out the turkeys, they called me, Hey, are you giving turkey this year?
They call you about the community day doing?
What's today doing?
You know we're giving y'all giving out book bags, you got school supper. So I know that they there's a need, they appreciated, they need.
And it's it's sometimes the squeak, the what you call the squeaky wheel gets the oil. So the person who might be speaking the loudest is making you feel like damn, like what you know, why did I do it? If it's gonna be met with this type of fear. But
actually those people are in the small majority. And I think that's something for us to say to all those people who are out there trying to do things, not just in the holiday season, but all the time, to keep going, you know, keep going because the majority of people they appreciate it, they see it, they're thankful, and they speak highly of you when they're not around you. And I'm not talking about just you. I was thinking about you know, Maya Baraka, and I stick it to him.
It's got to be hard because we know him. He's one of the most authentic elected officials in the entire country, like he truly is that not just him, but also may and Lamamba in Lord in miss Jackson, Mississippi. Also, I believe you know, Oh, I know who I want to say. I'm talking about black men right now, Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland. These are people that I know them, I know their hearts, and I could probably go on
with a list. It ain't that long of a list, but it's a list of black elected officials are outgoing Congressman Jamal Bowman.
There are people out there. I was trying.
To I know, I know, I was trying to find choquait la Mamba, but got it?
Does he know? He know he's my brother?
These I have to wonder what these people feel when they go home and they sit with all of this stuff. I'm trying to be authentic. I'm out here giving of myself. I'm up against y'all don't even know, Like when I walk out of this room talking to you, and you done beat me down and told me I ain't shit and cussed me out and said you ain't got this, and you ain't got that, and this ain't right and
that ain't right. With some of that stuff, I acknowledge, and I'm trying to figure out a way, But you don't even know that when I turn my back and I go this way, the people that I have to deal with to fight for the little bit of resources that I am.
Able to bring to the community, it's no joke.
Like it's hard and it's a struggle. And so I just I thought about may and Baraka while I sat there, and I said to myself.
These people have every right to speak for their truth. They do. They have every right. They were talking to the council members.
It's a little different, but nonetheless it has to be a heavy burden as a black person who's in a position of power, especially as an elected official, to hear people just beat you down and down and down and down, and you did everything wrong all the time. No matter what, we're still all human, you know. So anyway, shout out to May and Barroca because he is doing a really really good job of trying to turn a city from hell to getting closer to heaven. He definitely is doing that.
Just real quick on my thought of the day, so last week, so this is really true in true black women mine in our business fashion. Something happened last week and I just watched to see what people would say, who was going to be out there. I saw a few people speak on this issue, but not many. Walmart decides to close its DEI initiatives down. They shut down all that stuff, and they closed some other department that has to do with black folks and LGBTQIA communities and
so on and so forth. So basically all that stuff that they have been involved in for many years, they decided they're not doing those things anymore.
Now.
First of all, I worked with and no Walmart, right, it was a struggle to get it in the first place. So just be clear that Walmart did not just pop up out of nowhere, like we love black people and we want to have initiatives for other marginalized communities. No, no, no, people fought Walmart and they had to open up their board of directors and their advisory board and other initiatives within the company because they were losing support from black people.
Black people were speaking out against them, Black civil rights organizations were holding them accountable. I think, I think, and so if I'm wrong, I can be corrected. But I think they had made it to a list at some point of corporations that are not doing good in the diversity, equity and inclusion space, and so they were not. This stuff did not just happen because Walmart was just this
good company. This happened over time, and since they've been in this position with DEI programs, there still has been problems. It's not like they just went and got straight and they were just these great stewards. No, they still still still had community issues. Just thinking about John Crawford, the man had a toy gun in Walmart and they shot him to death, right, And Walmart's response at first was kind of shaky. People had to like beyond them, and
then their response got a little bit better. And I don't even know where it ended up, because you know, with these corporations, one day they'll be over here saying like were that this happened, and then the other day they won't change the policy. Though that actually created the situation in the first place. You got Walmart being a place that actually sells weapons. Right two people, you can go walk up in Walmart in certain places because of the state.
I'm not saying that this is Walmart's doing it.
I'm just saying, because of the laws of the state, you can walk in there and get a gun, and meanwhile the police are able to come in there and shoot a man down over a toy gun in the damn store. So don't let's not get it twisted. They're not closing down their DEI stuff now because of Trump.
That is a lie. It is a lie.
So anybody who's out there like, oh my god, Trump and so no, no, no, the environment calls for a moment. Prior to even Donald Trump and him now being elected. This has been going on since the summer of twenty twenty, when corporations acted like they were so excited to get it.
Involved with DEI.
By the next year, most of the commitments that they made they never actually.
Followed through with.
And so for me, I just a black woman mind of her business. I just sat there and looked at it and said to myself, so what you you posting it? You are in the comments section. I see all these people like, oh my god, you see you see Trump's coming. And now what you're gonna do about it? What you're gonna do about it?
People ain't gonna do nothing but talk, because when you explain to them that these things were happening, that we already for saw all these things coming, forecasted exactly, we've seen it coming before it even happened. And we explained to them, look, they're setting the stage for this. What they did with the feels is fun, right. They told us that we can't even support our own people. So we if we can't support our own people, you know
that they wasn't gonna support our people. So and then people say, and then the thing about it is that we like, once again we have our own people telling us that, well we don't need d I, you know, and we made d I into a cur But then.
They say it, would it not be dee I When you say, what exactly is Kamala Harris or Joe Biden whomever gonna do for black people?
Is that not de I?
I think it's o d I think. But I'm just trying to tell you the narrative, right, the narrative is. And the thing is the others they never asked the other side what they're gonna do for black people because they don't care. You understand, they don't really want they You are just trying to tell you that this is a strategy that they use all the time because they don't really want those answers, right. They want to ask
a black person. They want to ask people that support black people, what are you gonna do for black people? So that the other side could block you anyway because they never gonna do nothing. So they want you to publicly say, yea, I'm gonna be for reparations, so the Republicans give reparation, You're gonna get them people. It just don't make sense. It's so counter productive if we do it all the time to ourselves, and I watch I watch us do the same, you know, in a barrel
song and dance bullshit all the time. So we are where we are. So now you ain't got d I. So now these major corporations that take all your money, that that you know, that feed off black people, that feed off the one trillion, the ten trillion dollars that we one whatever it is, it's ten trillion, should be up to about ten trillion by now. But whatever it is,
we are the biggest consumers in the world. And now we don't even call the people who we consume from to hire us anymore, to give us positions in these corporations and in these companies. So now they don't kind of give you ship. They can keep hiring their cousins, their brothers and their sisters that don't have any qualifications, and you can graduate the top of your class, and you can go in there with your resume and they can say we don't want nothing to do with you
because you're not doing d I no more. Because you the d I hired just because you're black. You are you smarter than everybody. You don't graduate top of your class, you did all the ship, you don't beat them in every other area in the world. And now you come to get a job for the corporation, they tell you, now, we don't do it, not.
Just the job, because they will let let you clean the floors, and they will let position and they right, and they will let you do some front office stuff. You can answer telephones maybe because if white women decide that they want to go to work, then you might not even be able to answer the telephone. But you will not be in a senior level position. You will not be as we for on the boards and this
and this and that. So you know, and they will have some black people there, but there will be black people who agree with their position, black people who support them, black people who have their same mindset or at least act like they do to be able to get in the room. And you know, I was sitting there thinking to myself, I was saying, no, they will, they'll have.
Well, but they did just what they.
Did, just put them a black person in the department of huts. Well, but I'm just saying there will be a black because the reason why these companies will put a black person in charge of some thing or put them somewhere in a position within a company is because they do want When you go on their website and you look them up and you're making a decision about who you want to buy certain things from. They do want you to have the illusion that these people of the illusion of inclusion.
That's a very good.
That's good. That was great, my son. You get this snigger the finger snaps for that. However, when I see people saying, oh, Walmart, Oh Walmart, Walmamart, Walmart, you know what I say. I don't wear Nike. I found some I was going through boots this weekend and I found some Gucci boots. That's bad to the bone. I pulled them out, said, damn, these boots to fly. I forgot I had them. I might have got those boots probably six months or so before we decided we weren't wearing
Gucci anymore. After they fashionably a black face sweater. I don't wear them anymore. I looked at the boots. I said, oh, well, somebody can have these. I had some snow boots though that's school treet that. I'm like, only time I would ever really put them on my feet is to go outside and shovel the snow.
So that's okay.
Then they can make it for that, and I don't have I just don't. I don't wear them.
I don't wear them.
It's somebody else I don't wear. It's some other brand that I don't wear, and it's certain stores I won't go in. So I'm already on the boycott stuff train. I don't So you don't worry about sending me Walmart, because once they said they canceled d I I already knew I wasn't going back to Walmart again in my life. I could be in the middle and my family members that live down South.
All they have is a Walmart.
So I understand that that is all literally Walmart in the city in Alabama that my family is from. Walmart is the mall. It is literally the mall. So I understand in their situation. But I promise you that me when I go down there to visit them, I'm coming from Atlanta from a different store with the stuff in my car because I will not walk in Walmart for any reason.
Anything I have to have.
I'm not going in Walmart to get unless it's life or death. I don't eat. I don't eat waffle House. I don't do nothing all of this Shakisha Clemens waffle House. I don't eat waffle I don't care. I have I have arrived in Ohio some years ago. It was late at night. There was nothing open Walmart, I mean, waffle house was the only thing open. My entire family looked at me and said, it's sad that you're gonna really be hungry, because we getting ready to go over there
and get us some waffle house. I said, well, I won't be eating it, and you know what ended up happening. They was like, we can't even go in here because of this, and we went to my aunt's house and pulled out the grits from the cabinet and made our own damn food. I won't be going to Walmart. That's just my position on it.
Our guess to coming up.
We got to reset and we'll be right back. So we're super excited today to be joined at the same time. Usually we'll have one or the other, but today we have two of our friends, you know, my sisters, our sisters, two women that I respect so much. You know, I was looking at something the other day where a person said I love you to a woman and then they said I respect you, and it struck me because that second sentence sometimes is even more important than the first.
Everybody loves everybody, but to say I respect you. It's so deep, and I truly respect the two of you and so excited that y'all are joining us today so we could talk. You know, anytime all three of us get together in one place, people get worried about what we might be getting ready to say, and you should
be worried, because we have plenty to say. But we wanted to have an authentic conversation post election to catch up to, you know, just kind of kick it and talk about where we are, where we stand, and make sure that the world continues to see that while people may be hurting and folks have all types of feelings, that folks who've been together must stay together more now than ever before. So I'm excited to have Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez.
Yeah, yes, three fourths of the Women's March coach here.
Three four You know, he ain't gonna never let Bob be on Bob.
Bob is Bob.
But you actually it's a three fifths because technically you were.
Like the fifth coaches.
Of the Women's March, Yes.
The honorary fifth coach here, because you know, I had to make sure everybody was safe. So that's that's a coach here in itself. So you know, I'm just glad to see you guys like I always do. You know, these people run my life.
But you know that's the best.
Always because we love and respect you the same way.
Respect I say guys all the time. We all say it, but to stop saying. Tyson was in a room with a bunch of women, and when a young lady who was one of the speakers, got up to the podium, she said, yeah, guys, you guys, you guys, you guys, and sisterly Tyson stood up in the audience and started yelling, where do you see guys in this room?
Hold which one guy? Stand up? Guys? And there was no.
As she said, these are not guys. Why do you use that? And everyone whenever I've said it to other people, they are like, that's I mean, it's just a regular thing. But oftentimes we don't think about how we've been conditioned to say things like I'm not a guy, You're not a guy.
You're not a guy. We're ladies, right, and so.
You ladies, ladies and one guy.
But I say guys.
Sisters and sisters Linda's favor line, sisters and brothers, sisters, and brothers.
We are here to.
Well. I asked the two of you to come. My son said, you asked who to do?
What I said.
I wanted to have Linda and Carmen to come so we could talk about a lot of things, and particularly the Women's March. I think it's important because we now see that the Women's March, those who are there as organized as within I guess the Women's March organization, they have called for another march and there's a whole lot of talk about it. In fact, there is someone who works within the Women's March name Tamika m who's black.
I don't know her full last name, who has been soliciting people for different reasons for a while doing her work. I've been told she's a great young lady. I don't know her, but it makes people call me and say to me, will you back at the No, not me, sorry, and so wanted to talk about that. But before we get there, Before we get there, I think that it's important. You know, as I said, we've been together, we will
always be together. And when over the last few weeks since the election, I've been in conversation and in fact, even before the election, there were black women who would say to me, I swear to you, if people don't vote right in this election and they let Donald Trump become president, I will never talk to so and so. I will never march with so and so. I don't care whatever they were, you know that concerned, and you know, of course, sometimes I have the energy to push back.
Other times, depending on who it is, it's somebody who's like, you weren't gonna fight no way. So it really is an important and I know there's some people who it is their literal excuse to get out of having to stand up and speak out against things that are pretty dangerous, like the.
Stuff we get involved in.
It is not I don't know why we can't find like scholarships to give out like something. Now we get involved in all these controversial things. Some people they just really never wanted to be involved in the first phase. But then there are people who really.
Have been engaged.
They've put their reputations on the line, their organizations on the line, even when they were afraid or just didn't know.
I'msure we pulled them along.
Some of them jumped in front to say, hey, I don't like what's happening in Gaza. Or you know, I feel immigrants need to be protected or whatever, and they are feeling very bruised by the election. By the numbers. Now, I think it's important for us to always be careful about exit polls because as I've been studying, it's like, it's no way that the polls that came out the first few days could be correct when you still have
more numbers being dropped every single day. So you got to, like, you know, look at those numbers and really analyze it. But I do I hear women and men, but particularly in the ninety two percent of black women saying that they are tired of standing up for everybody, and that includes black men sometimes, you know, and they are now deciding to retreat and to not be engaged in any
movement at all. I know, I don't have that luxury, right, Like, that's a to me, that's a luxury to decide you're not going to continue to be engaged in intersectional movement building.
I don't have that luxury, nor do I want it. You know.
I love where I sit in a place where the people around me are not all the same, and that means that when.
I'm tired, you pick it up.
You pick it up. We fight together, but it's a difficult place.
So anyway, I set all of that just to set the tone for talking about coalition building, because we are the big rainbow. Like everybody, we're in the second phase of the rainbow coalition. Reverend Jesse Jackson started the Rainbow Coalition and then we came and we have actualized it as a true coalition that is a rainbow, including you, mister CoA chair of They're Women's March. So how do you all feel like just after the election?
In general?
We talk, but every day the feelings change, you know, So I just wonder whoever wants to start on how you feeling in this moment, I let you start.
I feel I feel the same.
I knew we was going to fight regardless of who went to the White House. We were already prepared. We were having the discussions about whether or not if it was going to be Kamala Harris, what kind of fight we were about to have, if it was going to be Donald Trump, what kind of fight we were about to have. And you know, as someone who's Palestinian like unfortunately, you know, we knew that regardless of who went to the White House, the genocide is probably going to continue,
that the conditions are going to be the same. But I want to say to many of those black women, some of whom I know myself personally because of the work that I do with you and the friendships that I've made through you and through your networks, is that it's okay to feel all those things, and in fact, it's tolkay to chill, like, you know, take some times off of the holidays, relax, like a lot of people were really working hard during this election, Like people were
really spending time away from their family, They were traveling to other states. There were people that were on the phone constantly all day every day. I was witching the car many times during our own work, And I know people were working hard. And of course you feel disappointed, you feel frustrated, and we also know who Donald Trump is, so that also is part of it. It wasn't that Kamala lost an election to like a regular moderate Republican.
We lost an election to a fascist authoritorian Like this is not a joke, and we understand that. So I really haven't taken anything personally. I think people should be able to feel what they want to feel. But I want to offer a perspective in ways that I think about this election. A lot of people who were outraged that Kamala Harris lost the election, and they were saying, you know, how could they, you know, how could some people,
you know vote for Donald Trump? How could some people look past you know, the racism, the bigotry, you know, all of that and vote for Donald Trump. And as we know, a lot of folks chose things that were personal to them, whether it was economic reasons that they voted for Donald Trump, etc. And I say to people, it's the same thing that people wanted people to do to vote for Kamala Harris. People wanted people to look,
for example, past the genocide. They wanted us to look past the genocide, to forget that this Democratic Party just aided a better a genocide and that Kamala was part of an administration that did that. And we were supposed to do that because it was still somehow the right thing to do. And it's not about whether I agree with that perspective or not, but that's how a lot of voters thought about it. Like in both cases, we
had to overlook major outrageousness in order to make those choices. Now, for me and all of us we organized under Donald Trump. I know who Donald Trump is, I know the people personally around him are absolutely outrageous. And so I sit in this weird place where I'm like, I get it,
I get what you are saying. But now I'm more self reflective and I'm more like, Okay, we could be frustrated, we could be disappointed, but maybe we just got to sit and ask ourselves a question, why and how did we get to this place.
We're the What were the.
Deficiencies of us as a movement? What were the deficiency of a democratic party? And stop blaming the opposition for everything. Everything can't be because of them, Maybe it's because of us sometimes. And that's kind of where I'm at right now. So I'm not I want people to you know, take this holiday time, this, you know, before the end of the year. And people I've seen women saying that they're
taking you know, vacation, they're taking time off. That's nothing wrong with that, because guess what, the fight is still going to be here. What I'm hoping is by the time you get back here after the new year, you got your mind right and you're back outside where we're.
All supposed to be well.
I think for me, I pivoted, first of all, like, I'm so happy to be with you all and really engage in a conversation about this, because y'all are like the people who I go back to when I'm dealing with various things, and especially the movement and this very purest mentality, because clearly that's not the way we live our lives. Right, We're still representing a community that we are from.
And so I think Linda's absolutely right.
I think that.
You know, a couple of things happen for me is in twenty twenty, there were numbers that were released about Latino voters and although they favored Democrats, that were beginning to lean Republican. And so what I learned in twenty nineteen December of twenty nineteen was that there was a confidence gap when it came to Latina voters and they were going to be the largest majority block that were grown into the largest minority block when it came to voting.
And so I pivoted, and I started building with other latinas a group called Boderistas, and really trying to educate our young women through lifestyle, trying to get them civically engaged. What didn't happen is we didn't get the Latino men right. So I focused on women because that's where we saw the confidence gap, and so we were able to see
Latina show up and vote. But when I was out there voting or knocking on doors in Pennsylvania or in Arizona or even in California, Latinos were saying that nobody came and knocked on their door, or that they were not being spoken to or outreached.
To by the Democratic Party.
That it was really Trump that was out there making these announcements. And also I think various things were happening in the Latino community. The church plays a huge role as well as economics plays a huge role, and then Latinos are not a monolith, right.
So for me, I think the first night, I think.
I was one of those people that felt I had gone out there and put it all on the line and leaving the comfort of my home and leaving my children to go knock on doors.
But I'm even more so fired up, and I.
Think even though I work in the field of criminal justice and police accountability, I'm.
All hands on deck. Still. What I will say, I think that we all.
An immense gratitude to black women as a Latina and being a friend of yours and a sister of yours, and even growing up in a Chicano Black community. Black people have always paved the way for those of us that have been in this community, and so I'm really grateful for that. And like Linda said, it's okay to feel the way that you do. But I will say for you, Tamika, I know you don't stop because I know your heart and I know that everything really affects you and everybody's.
Reaching out to you for answers.
And I hope that you do get the rest that you deserve, that you do get the protection that you deserve, because it is difficult as and I know we're going to be talking about the Women's March, but what we've been through together and also separate, has really done.
Something to us. It was damaging, Yeah, to us, it was in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
I was having a conversation with somebody today and we were talking about a woman who has a very powerful position in the movement. And I'll just leave it there because if I say you know what they what their power is, it'll be given away and that person has said very nasty things about me, and they all of a sudden called me one day like, hey, Okay, you know, I know that stuff happened, but now I want you to help me do something different.
And I think God probably wanted me.
To do it because it probably probably would have been the right thing to do.
But then I forgot.
So I'm like, God, if you wanted me to do it, you should have put it back on my mind because I forgot, Like you were supposed to remind me. A few days later, I've totally you know, the text messages and the emails come through like wildfire.
So I forgot. I literally forgot until today.
I was having a conversation with another person who's going through some stuff and just feeling like people beating them up while they're trying to do the right thing, and I was like, let me just tell you this story.
So I'm tell them about this other thing.
But despite whatever God may or may not have wanted me to do, hopefully give me another opportunity to get it right. I was saying that it wasn't that what they did just hurt my feelings. It was reputational damage that was caused as well, because people around the world who may not have come back for my response or for the second half of the show only heard the first part, which was that I did X y Z
thing to hurt them that wasn't true. And I just find it really difficult to see how people will approach you as if something didn't happen, like you said you were talking about this last week entitlement and won't even.
Say I'm sorry.
And no one has apologized to us, No one, no, no, what we've been through.
No no, So you know what it is for me just watching just knowing the love that we have. People don't understand it. We have a lot of contentious conversations all the time, like everything is just not peaches, and sometimes we disagree about that is an understatement, you like, really like, you know, so when we look at all of our communities in this moment, we're all facing a
lot of different things. Right when we look at the election and we look at the presidency, we look at we look at mass deportation, we look at immigration that that's going to affect Carmen. We look at the genocide going on in Gaza, right, we look at black women feeling like this was their opportunity to be in a
position of power and feeling betrayed. And each one of those things has a place right and each one of those things had an intersection, especially in this moment, that everybody had their point of view it and it was contentious conversations to have to be able to say, hey, listen, I can't support the genocide. I don't care who's what
administration it is. Right. Then there was a then it was black women like, listen, we're gonna have to figure this out because because I believe the black women is gonna figure this out and we're gonna let us get to there. And then it was those conversations where it was button heads like and those things still exist, right, So that's why it's hard for us to move. So
how what is that process like? Because when you have a conversation with black women and they know that Linda is one of your best friends, and then you like, we're gonna keep fighting, they're like, well, the Muslim lady said, and the Palastinian said, they wasn't doing all this, so I hear you, and you can go do that, but I can't do that. Or you know, the people said immigration that you know the the Hispanics voted this way, and I know calm in and I know y'all love
these people, but you can do that by yourself. Like, how does that conversation?
Well, I just would say one thing on that. Every single person that I've talked to who has said things to me like so and so could be on fire before. I mean they are when I say her and feeling betrayed.
Its deep.
The conversations are tough like and like I said, some days I have the energy. Other days I just sit and listen. And some things I just cry because I know that that that feeling. I'm not even judging them for it, but I know that they must be going through some deep hurt to feel that that strongly that I wouldn't even piss on such and such if they was dying, they was on fire like this, that's a
lot of energy. But every single time they go. But I still love Linda, So you know, they all say that they like but Linda, she's still invited to the barbecue, but she better not bring anybody from her community with her right now. And that's just a real thing. And we talk about it. We talk about it. I don't I don't I don't hide it. I might not say, oh, it's this person and this person, because your memory bank
can't let go of things that you know. So if you if I tell you, well, you know, Tutu's the one who said it, you may get past it, but your memory bank will always hold that this is how this person fell when you were in the midst of a genocide. Right, So I may not say that because
that person don't mean That's the thing. People feel like they mean it, they really really feel like they mean it until the deportations are happening and it's going on in your community as well, and then some black person is caught up in the middle of it.
Because when ICE is moving.
That was the reason why we fought so hard against ICE some time ago. I don't even know that wasn't even in the Obama administration. That was I mean in the Trump it was no, no, no, no no. Obama administration at that time, he had deported more immigrants than any other administration. Right in the Obama administration, we were in a full blown fight. During that time, I was working at National Action Network and other coalitions to come together, not so much because I won't I don't want to
speak on behalf of anybody else's organization. But my recollection wasn't even the deportations, which was horrible, but it was also the use of ice and the way in which ice was entering our community. It was putting black folks in danger as well. And so people who believe that you can separate yourself from these issues, I'm not even
gonna argue with you. I just know you're gonna see it and say wait a minute, because you must think that they know the particular zip code address and they're gonna just be precise with rolling up on Wan Carlo.
That's not how it works.
And even some of the laws are arbitrary, like for example, you know CBP, which is Customs of Border Patrol, can operate one hundred miles from the border, right, so when you talk in the northern border, that's the whole state of Michigan.
So if you in Detroit, you part of one hundred miles.
And as we know, and you remember this during the Biden administration, when we rolled up to Del Rio in Texas, the migrants that were there were not Latinos or Central Americans.
They were in fact as black as black and being they were mostly Haitians, a lot of Panamanians, people who are very dark skinned, who if we're walking around the streets of Brooklyn or the streets of Harlem, you really wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they were African American or African or a Caribbean, and whether or not they were US citizens or not, Like you wouldn't be able to tell that just by looking at them.
And so we went down there, and you know, and the thing that I think is important at that time also another reflection that I have about our movements is something I've held with me. If you remember that time when we went to Del Rio, Texas black migrants.
I remember I looked around, where were the people? We were the only ones out there? It was us.
It was Girleen Joseph from Haitian Bridge Alliance with like two of her staff. I remember, there was another two people from Alita Garcia who's a friend of ours.
Her team were out there.
And national actually that work was there the day before.
But from a movement from an image, yeah perspective, the people weren't outside.
But that's how people feel about our movements, like people feel like when black folks are killed. And I have to always run because, as my son said, we do have contentious conversation. We was having one the other day on text message. Everybody's going back about back and forth about how we feel and people black folks feel like.
I think this is also what they're responding to, is something that has been tucked away in their pocket that they never felt like anybody else really cares about our issues.
Seeing you and maybe ten people who look like you at a rally, even a hundred people who look like you at a rally, seeing you, know, not understanding the shades, the different physical shades of black people, so Afro Latino and all of the different groups, not knowing that and just looking for the light skin like close to white skin individuals in the midst of a rally you may
or may not ever find them. In fact, they are more white people that show up for black folks, which they should a data cause of the problem, or at least their their lineage.
Is the cause of the problem.
But people feel like, we don't see any other community anyway, So why is it that we have the key showing up and that I think that's a part of it. They just pulling out the handkerchief that's been stuck in their pocket. Like you know, now I'm raised and I'm swinging afect. Excuse me, what is it called when you flo flag? But it's something anyway, waving the flag.
I think what's really interesting about what we're all talking about is that there are different shades of folks.
Right.
When I went to the border with you, we were in Alfaso.
And I ended up going to Gattis to go visit one of my aunts, and my aunt was housing Afro Cubans, so it was actually black women in her home who she was providing you know, mutual aid for. And when I think about that, like we just had gone to the border, and I was like, I have the luxury of them going and crossing and meeting the people that
are being impacted by this. And then you know, and then I think about the criminal legal system, like my fight has always been because when I go into the prisons, it's black and brown folks, right, and we use black and brown as a talking point. Meanwhile, there aren't a lot of Latinos that are sitting in leadership when it comes to the criminal legal system right movement. But what I also will say is recently working on a project
called the Latine Police Accountability Network. We were looking at state sanctioned violence and policing and the parallels between I would say Chicano's Mexicans and African Americans and the lynchings that have happened, right. But what happens is that we're not able to continuously tell that story. There's no real books that allow us as Latinos to see what has happened in our community. And so we start a movement, will be in it for twenty years, and then we
focus on immigration. And a lot of it has to do with where the funding comes from. Right, So foundations are pitying Latinos in one category. And I remember going to a solidarity summit and one of the foundation women was like, Oh, Carmen, what you know, So.
What immigration organization do you work for? And I was like, I don't.
I work on criminal justice because on my Chicano side, my family has been impacted by incarceration.
But what we found was that people like a zeal.
Ford Filando Castile, we're all Afro Mexicanos, right or Afro Puerto Ricans, and we need to do better when it comes to our solidarity. And I know folks are saying, you know, f solidarity, like we're tired, We're tired of asking you to show up for us. But I know for me, I try to organize within the Latino community to educate them about the parallels, to educate them that this is our issue too, and to disrupt this linear issue area that we keep getting funneled into, because not
all of us are impacted by that. Like when you're talking about this policy that is coming up on mass deportations, in the first first hundred hours, we're not talking about the first hundred days.
We're talking about the first.
One hundred hours.
Educate they're going to be doing mass deportation and it's going to include citizens. In nineteen twenty nine, the Repatriation Act deported my Chicano family that was from here before it became the United States. They were sent to a country they had never been to. They had never been to the other side of the border. And what that did to my family. It took away our land, it took away our business, and empovered my family. My Chicano
family comes back to the United States. My dad can't even cross the border legally because he has no documentation that he was born in the United States, so he had across the river grand and unfortunately my family faced extreme poverty because of that. But there were two point one million citizens that were deported under the repatrioti Repatriation Act because of the scapegoating of white people who said that Mexicans were taking their jobs right and there was
no due process. We also know operation what back happened in the nineteen fifties. I think you recently posted something about that. Again, mass deportations without any due process that continues to sweep up citizens of the United States. And so if you don't think it impacts you, if you think, well, I'm born here, my grandmother's born here, my mother's born you're wrong.
It's going to impact you.
And it also, like you said, people don't know your citizenship, so they don't need to have a due process. They're going to continue to funnel back folks and they're deporting.
Them to Mexico.
Mexico has been trying to work with the United States in order to make sure that they have the capacity to receive the people that are trying to come through the through Mexico into the US, but the US doesn't want to work with them. There's just so much education that really need to do, and I think there's an
opportunity for us. Like I said, for me, I'm looking at pivoting, especially because I know that if it doesn't personally affect me, it's going to personally affects something that I love and that I know.
Right, And so I'm all hands on, I think, and everything that Carmen said, And I think it's again the lack of knowledge and people understanding history that that sometimes we don't think a country's capable of something if you don't know that they.
Actually did it before.
Yeah, but I will say this, you know, absolutely people are gonna get caught up in it. They're gonna lots of legal You're gonna need lawyers, you know, again, having to prove your citizenship because your burden of proof is on you, not on the government.
May they carrying your passport. You think that's going to.
Be a thing. That might be a thing.
I mean, you know me, I've been carried since seven since twenty seventeen.
That passport. I literally got it in my bag right now.
But what I will say to folks, and I hope that we get to this place, maybe it won't affect you, but it's still wrong. And I want people to get to the point in life where if you're sitting at home and you watch your undocumented neighbors being stripped from their children, or you watch ice vands raiding a community, or street vendors in the street, or the local you know, deli or the supermarket where some of these undocumented people are, I just want you to be like, no, this is
not okay. I don't care if you have impacted or not. You might be impacted, but you might not be and that still makes the thing wrong. And what I will say to Meka, we have to sometimes tell the truth. And this is why I love watching your podcast and you and Mices, because you just say what needs to be said, and it's gonna lay wherever it lays. The bottom line is true. Our community's got to do better at solidarity. That's just the bottom line. Like I'm not
going to sit here and say that. You know, Arab American or Palestinian American communities have done this like massive wave of solidarity.
Over the years.
Yes, of course there are key Palestinian Americans in this country who are outside been outside. There is a long trajectory and history of Black Palestinian solidarity that dates back to even before the Malcolm x'es and the Black Panther Party. But the bottom line is that's just key individuals that you could pout to say that our entire communities are coming out and the droves to stand with black people.
It's not true.
And that's a lot of work that we got to do on our part. And I will also say, you know, as you know in the Muslim community, you know many of them, A third of Muslim Americans are African American, They're black people. And so this idea that the Muslims are the quote like you said, the light skin or the Arab or the South Asian, No, a third of our my community is your community. Those are your people too, because they also have to figure out how to be
black and Muslim in America. And the solidarity is also sometimes not there within our own community. And so I just want people to know if you're not in the community, I'm letting you know this is the hard conversations that we have within our own community. We got to step up better for each other first within our Muslim community. That then helps us develop the type of solidarity that we can give to folks that are not exactly from
our Muslim communities. But it's a struggle, and I've been struggling with it for twenty five years.
It really is. It's really a struggle, and I didn't see it until this moment, right because I've seen it during the Woman's March, and I know it for y'all, especially like I watched Tamika have to deal with it a lot, right because every time she does intersectionality work, black women say what are you doing? Right? Every time the Women's March, right when everything started to me, it was the first one targeting black women said, I told
you not to do this. Right when we look at this this election, and black women are saying, look again, you still out there. But you know what I'm saying. And the reality is, I understand everybody's point of view, but I do I understand that the Palacinians said, well, listen, I understand that's a black woman, but this person is complicit in genocide. And I can't. I can't say, I can't of sound mind for my people and my own sanity say that I'm just gonna overlook that because of
the black woman. As much as I love you, and that's what I'm saying. So I understand everybody's point of view. I understand that everything is true, just like I understand that I don't really understand that the Latino men that Trump because I just think that's just a misogynistic bullshit. But but but it's a reality because some of them is thinking about their pockets, they thinking, some of them think that they have proximity to whiteness. Whatever it is.
This is damn reality, and what it forces us to do as real leadership, right is we have to take our personal emotions out and lead with the reality that we actually have to deal with. And that's what it's forced me to do because I'm not gonna lie. I I've been pissed off for a couple like I checked out, Like, Yo, you know what, I don't think this. I just don't think this is it. I just don't see it. I
don't feel that. I don't have the energy. And then I have to say, that's not really leadership, right, It's not really leadership to say because it don't go the way I wanted to or doesn't go the way I
think it should go, that I should just lead. So I have to understand everybody's perspective, and I have to figure out a way to relay it to other people who might not get it right and show and lead through example and say, despite what you might think is going on, despite how we might feel at this moment, the only way that we actually can win is actually do this together. It's no other way. And they know that they understand. By dividing us and disenfranchising us, this
is what they've done all the time. And I was having this conversation and you kind of brought me back to it because I was like, I don't see it work. I just don't see us doing this. I think right now, what they're trying to do is disenfranchise a movement they watch. Even even though the Democratic Party has a lot of bullshit, it's not destroy the Democratic Party, right because there's so many We have Blacks, we have Latinos, we have Palacenians, we have muslim we have all of the shit in here.
We just gotta figure out how do we make it move the way we.
Want, right, because this is what leadership, that's what it is.
It's like, Yo, I'm not gonna leave my foundation. They said, Yo, we need to all go be repulbed. Why the fuck would I go somewhere where it's only five people that look.
Like me and they value none of.
This fit me? Why would I move my whole town to go. No, I'm gonna fix my town up because this is where our found that we built this ship, and they know that we built it, and they seen it and they said, we just gotta fit. We gotta divide this ship. And it's just like black Walls. It's the same. It's the same strategy and tactic. They blew it up last time. They just blew it up. They timp bombs. Did y'all building too much here? We're just
gonna blow it up. They did the same thing even when we was when they say the Republican Party was for blacks. Before they made us say okay, we're not doing that shit no more, and we switch a part. And what they keep doing is making us switch and have to migrate to different ship when we gotta be strategic enough to say, nah, I'm not switching. I got we got this. We're gonna build. We're gonna build this
shit right. We're not leaving our people. We're not leaving the ship we built because it didn't go right for us? What's hill? So this is the moment for us to be strategic to understand what our enemy is doing. They want you to believe when I sit there and say, Okay, we got sixty we just got sixty one black people on the judges that just got put into it, and who gives a fuck about that? We don't care about that. No, we do. We actually these things are very important. When
I'm sitting there talking about but we got democrats. I got over three hundred people that's elected that I know. I know about fifty elected officials that I can go to and you can come to me because I'm in your community and I can go to them and we can actually make change. I'm not gonna leave that because it didn't go right for me.
I mean, but I am interested in what it looks like. I do think and Angelo said this the other day that black people have to be able to build because if what we say is true, that black folks will not that other communities cannot get free until black people are free. That means that there has to be some real intentionality around black people getting free, because we can't as long as our foundation is shaky, then then no one else will be able to be whole if you will, right,
And so there has to be some intentionality. I think that black people are in a position many of us who are on the same page, there are others who are not to build something that allows us to have political leverage. Right, Like, I'm still I still don't know that we're at then. I don't think I'm saying anything
different from you. I'm just adding I think that we may still choose to vote Democrat, workers, family Party, whatever those things are, but we still need an organizing base, right So, the Black Party or whatever people want to call it, you still need an organizing base, a place where we can get ourselves together so that we can set the tone for what is happening inside the party
or which whoever we decide to vote for. Right now, it's not that I think we're and this is something that people may not be able to articulate properly, but it is something they are feeling that we're so mixed with so much that therefore is chaotic.
That's right, because the Democratic.
Party is a little chaotic, it's a lot chaotic, right, I will say.
I mean you started the show with this, and my song was trying to take us here, and I actually think that it goes with what you're saying.
So we could get into the elephant in the room conversation.
Well, I want to say one thing before you go to that, but go ahead and then you go into the Okay, let me say what upsets me is not people who didn't vote for a Kamala or that voted for Donald Trump because they were upset about Gaza. It's not people who say they are dealing with economic challenges and perhaps being closer or having proximity to Trump and what they believe to be money in power might make
it better for them. Their economy was different or better during the pandemic when their grandmother was dying in order for them to get the twelve hundred dollars check. But that's going down in the rabbit home. What I'm upset about and what I have to get past in terms of what's giving me a emotional block for being in coalition with anybody, is that I know that many Arab men, Latino men, and Black men and others who chose not to vote for a Kamala or voted for Donald Trump
did it because they don't like black women. That for me, the massogyny is more danger to me then people who made a decision based upon their pockets or their political views or their morals or whatever. That part I can work on, right, But there's no way that I can get past the idea that you would look at this woman who's highly qualified.
Know it in your mind too.
It's not that you don't know it, but you know it, you acknowledge it, but refuse because you just can't. Your racism and your sexism, even more than racism, says that you cannot vote for a woman, because that right there is not just about Kamala Harris.
It's about me, and.
That becomes way more personal to me than just not voting for somebody because of genocide, which is obviously important, or these other things are important. We were talking, we debated about this the other day. Eggs and milk and bread, that's important. Gas is important, you know, well, all these things important. People feeling like in their community they have immigrants, there are migrants there who have harmed them.
That's important. Safety is important.
But just making a decision that she as a woman, you can call her names and disrespect her and all of that.
That for me, I can't get with.
But I think my personal position in this is that all of those things feed into the same thing, right, Because when you're having a conversation and somebody is explaining to you that Donald Trump is better for the economy, that's not factual, right, It's never been factual that the facts that tell you that that's not true. When you having a conversation they say that immigrants are killing people
in the hood. I've been living in the hood. Those things aren't really happening, right, So what I'm trying to say it feeds in to the narrative of the racism and the sexist anyway, because they want to believe that
shit anyway so that they can justify everything else. Because when you have conversations with the average person that said that, because there's very few, there might be a couple that actually say, Okay, these things right, here are things that I believe, and they come with opinion based on facts and they've done some research. But the average person that says it, I'm saying, where do you get that from?
What information proves that? Because nine out of ten people say that Donald Trump is not gonna be better for the economy, right, where do you get the information from what community are you from where the immigrants or the migrants are coming in there taking jobs or killing and raven people. Where is this actually happening? And they don't
have any facts to support those things. So most of these people just using these same talking points to justify the old bias that they have inside themselves.
Absolutely, and that's that's what we were seeing in the Latino community, is that a lot of the men were repeating Fox News talking points, which is an opinion news, right.
We were hearing things like you know, and I've seen it when I was watching football Monday night football, there were advertisements about trans kids, that Kamala was converting children and elementary into trans you know, there was just all this stuff and all the these advertisements were being paid by Trump and people started repeating it or yes, and you know, people who were undecided were saying to me, we're doing research, you know, to see if she's qualified.
And she they would say to me, you know, under her current administration, under her leadership, they've allowed eleven million immigrants to come here and kill and rape people. I'm just kind of like, I was so appalled, but it's exactly to your point.
Right.
One. We can't dismiss what Tonika saying is that there is racism, there's sexism. We're not ready for a woman president, particularly a black women president, right and there is a lot of anti blackness in these communities.
And the fact that a lot of the people who.
We were knocking on doors are talking to were repeating the same things that Fox News.
And it's because it's on a cycle.
If you turn on your TV, the first channel that it goes to is Fox, you kind of stay there because it's you know, it's compelling.
But if you don't know this information, you're gonna keep repeating it and keep believing it.
Mm hmm.
Y all made the very points that I wanted to make. So I'm going to move us along here on my you know, one thing that I'll say before I get us into the elephant in the room, because I think a lot of people are trying to figure out what to do. And as we kind of move into the new administration, I mean, January is right around the corner.
We're going to close our eyes and open them. It's going to be January twentieth, which will be the day that Donald Trump will be inaugurated against in the White House. But before I get to that, I wanted to share something that doctor John Powell, who is the leader of the Othering and Belonging Institute in California, who's someone that I'm in a cohort with, and me and him go
back and forth all the time. I'm kind of like a little more hot headed, a little younger, you know, And me and him for many years have went back and forth on this idea of like righteous rage and what does it look like in the movement and when do we get to the point where we really start being a little quiet and listening to the people around us, even those that we don't agree with. And this election kind of re affirmed what he had said to me many times before, where he says, let's be soft on
people and hard on systems. And I think what his point is to say is, like, even the people you're talking about, the Latino men, the black men, the Muslim men in our communities, those that we believed were part of our coalition who kind of walked away from us. The question is why is it about them personally? Is that really the conversation or is there something more deeply systematic that caused those people to believe that we were not the party for them, or that our movements were
not for them. Is there something about what they were saying that we didn't take seriously where they really had deep concerns, some of it that comes from the misinformation and disinformation campaigns, But.
We never leaned in. We were more like you just ignorant, You just don't know what you're talking about.
Man.
Maybe there was something deeper there.
And I think doctor John Powell's point is to say, sometimes you just got to lean in and listen. You don't got to agree with people, but you got to hear where they're coming from, because everybody comes from somewhere, and positions come from somewhere. And so I wanted to say that because I think it's been something that has been very compelled for me, and I've really been leaning in and been listening to people in my own community, like let's talk about it, like what happened, Like what's this?
Let's talk about the conversations. And there was a lot of what Carmen talked about, you know, culture wars. The Republicans were leaning into culture wars. They were, you know, leveraging sensitivities around social issues. And some of our more religious elements of our community. You know this in the Black community, this exists as well as in the Muslim community, around issues of abortion, around the issues of LGBTQIA. Issues like these are real things that we have to talk
about within our communities. And so anyhow, and that brings me now to you know, where we go from here, because a lot of people keep, as you know, Tamika, calling us, emailing us, you know, asking us all these questions.
I got the media in my inboxes, as you all do as well.
I don't interestingly.
That's why when y'all was talking about it on the text thread, I didn't say anything. Nobody from the media reached out to ask me what I think.
That lady, they I know.
I'm just telling you I didn't get it.
I mean, I got a few, and I have chosen probably getting them, and she's probably.
Getting them, exactly.
I mean, I've gotten a few, and of course just organizers in general and people that are leaders of some organizations around the Women's March which is happening that week which weekend, which will be two days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, and people keep kind of asking us, you know, are we involved.
The first To make it simple, no.
We are not involved in the twenty twenty five Women's March. Just want to make sure that we put that out there. And I think everyone's going to do what everybody wants to do, and everybody's free to make whatever decision that they want to make on whether they want to participate in marches right now or participate in this particular march that's being dubbed the People's March. And it's interesting enough, about a year and a half ago, I already you know,
we got permits. We have our own permits because we didn't know how this was going to go. We didn't understand where we were going to be. We didn't even understand at that time who was going to be the Republican nominee. We did this way before it was clear that Donald Trump was the nominee, and so we.
Had certainly didn't think that Biden was going.
To be out that too.
We were actually the real perspective that we had was that we was going outside for Biden.
Actually we thought we was going to go back.
Outside for him, because you were there for four years and now all this is happening. We went to get those permits believing that we were going to show you in your next term, like we are outside all the way outside right now, because this is going to be your second term and you ain't got nothing to lose, And that's kind of how we.
Were thinking about it.
But I just say to people right now, like, as strategic OG organizers who've been around for a long time, people have to understand that the way we organize marches and how we think about organizing the things that we do is based on the political condition we find ourselves in, and not every minute, and not every month, and not every year is the same as the year before that or the year before that. We have watched violence from people, not all the people who voted for Donald Trump, but
elements of the movements that support Donald Trump. And for me personally, I think about a lot of things with all these marginalized people, with these threats of deportation, with the ways in which law enforcement had came out unequivocally
for Donald tr Trump. We know that the unions from the national to the local unions that endorse Donald Trump, Like, do you want to bring people in the same weekend where we know there's going to be an inauguration with potentially tens of thousands of people who are supporters of this administrative, this next administration for me personally, in twenty seventeen, we had no choice. Donald Trump was a new politician. We weren't sure yet if he was actually going to
commit or fulfill the things that he promised. So the idea was we going outside, because we want to make sure that you know that we're not sitting at home and letting you just go outside and do whatever you want. Although he did do many of the things that he said, So we had to make a point to Donald Trump and his administration that we were going to make sure you know where we stand as a movement. Do we
got to make that same point again? Do we not believe that Donald Trump doesn't think that the movement still don't agree with the things that he is proposing to do. That's kind of where I'm at right now. I think there's a point that was already made and doesn't have to be made at the beginning of his administration. I
think and Carmen alluded to this earlier. I think where I am right now is you got to go internal, you got to go on the ground, You got to be figuring out where do we then start appropriating resources to the community organizations that they need the most resources.
How do we develop the deep relationships.
To try to heal some of what has happened over the last few months, because we're going to need each other to protect our people. What are the mechanisms What does it look like for us to protect ourselves from ice raids in our community? Do we need to train more people instead of cop watch, ice watch? And there are people that are already doing that, Like you know what happens if you're next door building right and you're in the window and you're watching this whole thing go down?
What are your rights? Can you come outside? Can you record ice agents? What are the repercussions of that? The other thing that we know is that with this Hr. Nine four nine five, which people have seen all of us talk about, it passed in Congress, it's going to come up in the next Senate, which remember they have the Republican Senate, Republican House, and Republican White House.
That's a bill that's going to pass and it's.
Going to go after organizations who are going to be in opposition to the administration's agenda.
So that's something we got to worry about.
There's also this other thing that we'll talk about on a different show that comes from the Heritage Foundation also in some of these other conservative groups called Project Esther and Project Esther specifically a project that is going to focus on, you know, any groups that they believe to be supporting quote unquote terrorist organizations, which.
Is similar to the bill four h nine four nine five.
And the thing that people have to understand about four hr nine four nine five is that if the government says that you are a terrorist supporting organization, remember blacked identity extremists, climate people have been called domestic terrorists in the past. I mean Cop City people were charged with reco charges just like a year and a half ago. So this is real life things that happen. The burden of proof is on you, not the government. So the government could just say so and so and so and
so are terrorist supporting organizations. They're under investigation, we're going to shut them down and potentially worse charge their leaders or whatever. Yeah, they don't have to have evidence. Their government just could say it. It's just a statement that it's made, and it is. The burden of proof is on us to prove that what the government is saying is wrong. And mind you, ninety nine point nine percent of the organizations and leaders will be able to prove
that they're not what the government says they are. But after how much hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal services that people are going to have to put up lawyers and do all of that, because the in order to prove that you are not what the government says you.
Are requires a certain type of lawyer. It can't be like.
Our friend, you know down the block that helps us every once in a while with some paperwork. You need national security type folks that know how the government works on these materials support to terrorism type of cases. So the point is back to the women's arbitrary.
It's arbitrary and and there's a language in it that is not just about terrorism either. So it's it's it's it's very broad, and it really makes me feel. I know people are not gonna like this what I'm about to say, but it scares me that folks can be so clueless to write comments that asks me, well, why should we care about it? I mean, if you're supporting a terror and they really mean it. If you're supporting a terrorist organization, then there's something should be done about it.
Their mind doesn't even expand far enough to understand that you can be labeled that way whether you're doing it or not, just because you're dealing with a vindictive presidency and government that can choose to say just because you out here talking about free Palace. First of all, I've had people tell me that my clothing a sweatshirt that has a watermelon on it, which, by the way, black people eat watermelon too, so it might not even manit I'm saying free.
Palestine, but it is. That's what that's what it's for.
People have said, oh, that scares me, or that makes me feel like you're saying death to Israelis or to Jewish people. Right, so, how they will make the decision of who they label one way or the other, it's gonna be very much. It's gonna be very broad, right, and so you have to expand your thinking beyond believing.
And black folks, a lot of black people suffer with this because, you know, especially if you are from a family where mother, grandmother, grandfather, whatever, were people who told you you do what them folks tell.
You to do.
Follow the rules are the rules.
Don't be getting into nothing with mister Johnny them down there downtown. You already know they don't like us. You too black to go certain places at certain times, and it is trauma and fear. That's not who they want to be, but that's their reality. And so when there those are people who pretty much believe whatever they hear in the news, on in the newspaper, whatever the media says.
How people say, they can't be saying. They can't be telling you one thing on the news if it's not really true, that's right, right, Like there's no way they can.
But also black people are saying that for other good reasons, right because they know when these types of laws and the things that happen, when law enforcement comes, they always come for the black people.
Well no, but I'm talking about people who who are looking at me. I get those folks who are just like, don't just stay out of trouble. But that mindset often always, i mean often leads to if that's what they said, then it must be true because they won't lie like they just believe, you know.
So I'm saying, I'm.
Just I'm putting.
All that out there. Let me just say how I feel about the women's marketing.
That's what you say.
Well, I just want to end my point by saying all this that I said is to say that it's a dangerous time and we have to be very intentional about who we're putting outside and how we're bringing marginalized people to the street, because at the end of the day, as organizers, at least we do feel this way, we're responsible for people, and I don't want to be in a place responsibility for people's safety.
And also for the government to start deciding.
Now who are the people that are in opposition to yal.
I think that it should be called the women the white women's March. I think that white women should ask black and brown women to stand down.
You protect yourself, don't worry about it.
We're gonna go out here and we're gonna put ourselves in harm's way and in danger's eye, and we're gonna do the work for at least the next several months, at least for the next two years.
I don't know what the time period is.
And not put black and brown folks and small black and brown organizations in harms way. I don't think anybody would have been I got people sending me all types of things. They're sending me letters where they're calling for the Women's March not to do this march. I've got people sending me petitions, and people will send me all types of stuff where they're trying to say that this should not happen. I'm saying that it should happen, but it should be a c full of white women. Yes,
that's what I think it should be. That's my advice to the WAU.
I'm so glad we're having this conversation, and I know we've been texting about different things. And I think, first of all, just to reiterate what Linda was saying, we are not part of the Women's March, and so I love all of you who have been reaching out, but we are not going to be march.
It's been five years. You're telling me people don't pay attention for five years ago.
Well, I think people think major mobilization, you pop back up, you pop back up. But also they know that we're the ones capable of actually doing the mass mobilization.
Because people know us.
And I'm hoping that they do outdo what we were able to accomplie.
Absolutely, you know there.
Should be over twenty million, twenty million, white millions and millions, and white women, yes, and their white husband's, white fathers, white sons.
Right, I personally feel it is it is a waste of money. As people who have organized marches at that caliber, we know how much it costs. And our communities right now are suffering a lot of organizations are needing money for education, needing money for security, needing money for trying all these I know, and so there's just a lot
that we need. And if if I know, we had created a five O one C four so that we could get people civically engaged, and we should have been organizing these last four years.
We should have been getting out the vote.
We should have been civically getting women civically engaged, and we should have been actually turning those white women around that voted for Trump in twenty sixteen. We should have been reaching out to them. But that didn't happen. And I know it's not my responsibility, it's not your responsibility ability or Linda's, but I do feel that we should be doing something different, and that money that all these folks have should be going to the most marginalized communities.
And I don't know if on January eighteenth we're going to be seeing the same numbers that we did January twenty first of twenty seventeen.
Well, you know, first of all, I just want to say that I love and respect all of you. You know, I was there when the Women's March started, when you women put your lives on the line and took a lot of heat, and you know, I think that you can't recreate that. You know, I don't think anybody can recreate that. I think the energy around that march was
way different. I think, you know, like you said, Linda, we understood that we wanted to make sure that people knew that Donald Trump knew where we stood and that we were against him in the world made that statement.
I think at this point that we have evolved into different levels of leadership and strategies, and we understand now who we're fighting against, and the best way to fight him is to organize internally and actually not as broad and invisible, because they're making laws that actually target us now, that can actually take us out. So we have to be a lot more strategic as the way we strategize, Like you said, if the white women want to go out there and organize the march go right along. We
need allies, we need accomplices. So we need the white women to actually understand this moment. If you want to go the lie and be, you know, in solidarity with us, and we appreciate that, but at this moment, the level of strategy and organizing that we have to do has to be very different and has to be very intentional. So I just want to say that I appreciate you and I love you guys. I mean you ladies, because you know, because she said there's no guys, I got.
To say something on the record though, yes the Women's March, because then I feel like I didn't say my part. I will just say personally, over the last fifteen months, I have been so disappointed with the Women's March itself.
As someone who is one of the original co founders and cultures of the march, you would believe that a women's march that was founded by one Palestinian American woman who was in unequivocal solidarity with all marginalized people, where we were outside putting our bodies aligned for others, You would think at some point the Women's March would say we are women with power, and we are going to say the things that need to be said. The Women's
March in fifteen months set ceasefire one time. There's one post on their whole social media for fifteen months that says ceasefire, and that's all it says. It just says
the word cees fire. Then last week, I think because of the criticism that they were receiving about the march, they came out in addition to hundreds of other organizations calling on people to call their members of the United States Senate to support the Senator of Arnie Sanders, a blocking aid to Israel that was fifteen months after a genocide began, and even an organization that claims to support
reproductive rights, women's rights, gender justice. You would think that someone along the way would say, wait a minute, there are fifty thousand pregnant women in Gaza and we as the people, are bombing the hell out of them and making and that they have no access to healthcare. In fact, women were delivering babies without anesthesia and having sea section. So just want to say to people personally, and this has my personal position, should not interfere in what you
believe or what you think about women's March. But I just want people to know from the perspective of someone who was part of the original group of the Women's March, that's how I felt over the last fifteen months. And I now know which organizations truly stand for all people and who in the movement is willing to say and be fully and unequivocally in solidarity with.
Marginalized people around the world.
And I kind of figured out what their space is and what they've decided and what positions that they decided. Because most of the women that we organized with that the Women's March, who are no longer at the Women's March, have been outside. I've seen them. I've been seeing a lot even some of the white women Bob, a lot of the original women from the Women's March, like Bob Bob Revival Chorus, whatever, they come outside with the Kafias.
They're out at the pro Palestine rallies, really publicly out there. So I just wanted to say that because it's something that has been sitting with me, as you said, to make it in my back pocket, that I've kind of wanted to say, and like like we're like just to wrap this.
Up that you know, people do whatever people want to do.
But if we were just here to share our perspective about where we are and me personally, people are looking for me.
I'm down underground.
Like you know, there's a meetings coming up with major immigrant rights leaders, folks that are on the front line to decide what.
It's going to look like to protect our communities. Who needs resources.
Mapping also looking nationally, let's map the cities, which ones are not sanctuary cities, the cities where we know law enforcement will immediately cooperate with the Donald Trump administration. Because there are some governors and some mayors that have said, not us, We're not going to play that in our city.
But there are others that are like, we ready, we please pick us number one. We're over here. We just got to make sure that we are helping well.
And then you also have you have you have a layered It's just layered. We could go on all day.
I'm not even going to I just want to make sure to mention that you know, there are also people out here who are calling for all women's organizations to speak up about what's happening in the Sudan and in the Congo to African women, and we don't see anything on that either, So there's lots of work to go around that requires us doing more than having a public and not us them people from having a public march.
I just want to say one last thing if I may, and I know I don't really say this publicly, but I have felt betrayed by the Women's March, and so I'm also very angry that they're calling it the People's March because of how we were organizing in twenty sixteen and people wanting us.
To call it the People's March.
But it was precisely that reason that we called it the Women's March, because we needed to galvanize women and we needed women in leadership.
It needed to be women led.
But I feel.
Betrayed by them because we weren't.
Protected when we were being falsely accused of certain things, and it really has.
Harmed many of us.
And I know we have different levels of healing, and I feel like I'm now just kind of like at
that point where I'm talking more about it. I'm still angry, and I know Linda has said, Okay, we got to get over it, we got to move forward, but I feel like they they turned their backs on us, the current leadership that is talking about women's rights, that is talking about people protecting people, turn their backs on the very people that had organized the Women's March, and that was myself, you and Linda and as well as Bob.
Right and others.
But I would say, and I want to say, I thank you ladies so much for being here, for being vulnerable. And I think that it's important for us to acknowledge that when you say they abandoned us and they did this, and that they some of them are the ones who actually did the damage.
So it's not just the turning your.
Back, it's that they were part of organizing against us. We knew it, didn't know it as much at the time, but we learned it. And in my book I Live to Tell the Story, which is going to be released on February eleventh, there is a place where I say, when I get old and gray, I'm going to tell people about a black woman who was part of those organizing against us. And I said, but I can't tell you who to be at t ch was now because you can't handle it.
It's too it's too deep, it's too deep.
But let's also just not end this beautiful conversation. By the way, thank you so much for having us here. In my sentiment, the truth of the matter is, there was a lot of things that happened to us, but God said.
Oh God, still, we still still. That's why I live to tell the story.
That's why I just want to know that, you know, sometimes and this is what I believe in. And it's interesting because the people of gods that believe this too. Sometimes you got to go through the worst shit. And of course nothing we've experienced is even close to what people God's experience to be where we are right now.
To get to a better place. So I feel grateful.
I just want people to know that, you know, to Meeka got a second book coming out since we got to remember this, we're talking about something from seven years ago, you know, six years ago. Whatever, the things we've accomplished, the things we've been able to get you babies now, personally, professionally like we I'm just so grateful to God. And the other thing is this is this right here is
also a demonstration of what's feeling, what's not. This is still here right because we could have just been like cool, we was at the women's Mare. I mean we obviously knew each other before that, and we're still together and.
We will stay together.
We're still together fifture.
It's still the fifth Culture.
And my friend, that's what we love you, Bob Blad.
We love you, Bob Dope interview.
We appreciate y'all, love your peace.
It's always a beautiful moment when all three of you were in here and just listening to you, just reminis's so many, so many years of camaraderie and sisterhood and brotherhood, you know, just being a fly I called myself the fly on the wall at the Women's march, you know, and just seeing how you evolved from that, how theys evolved from that, and then we find ourselves in another pivotabal moment in history, you know, and just having that conversation.
So I just love, I love what we have as a family, you know, and just listening to your talk. So sometimes I just get caught enamored in the moments to listen to y'all talk.
Yeah, I mean it's you know, we talk to each other every day and we are one another's peace. We keep one another calm. I think all of us do. Angelo, yourself, me, Carmen, Jay ra mean. I mean the list goes on with a family that we've created that you know, we know that we know one another struggles even when one of us is not expressing it, you know, And so I thought that it was important that you know, not have people asking you, asking me, you ask her, and then
everybody and we all given different perspectives. You can get it from us in one place, how we feel where we are at this time. And I truly do believe what I said that in this moment, the white community needs to take a look at what has happened here and understand that they also have a serious problem. Black folks, mainly black black women, and black men are pretty much
on the same page. There's some who didn't vote at all, but for those people who actually bought themselves to the polls, they knew the assignment.
We knew the assignment, and.
So we pretty much have shown over and over again that we are willing to protect everybody while also trying to protect ourselves. That is not the case with our white brethren and sistern. They need to have many more opportunities to allow people of color to rest, to figure out our conditions, our situations, what we're going to have to face what it's going to look like to live under a regime, if you will or want to be, regime that is in many ways fascist and of course
a dictatorship. We need to be able to figure that out. And people shouldn't even be asking us to march. And I know there's some folks out there who will say, well, no one asks you specifically to me go, or you Linda, or you Carmena, you my sign. But there are people asking us because we're getting the phone calls, we're getting the questions about well, can't we do this together, can't we come together? Well why don't we look past the
things of the past and fight? And we have people asking us all of that, And I don't I think that the way to protect those people who you claim you're supposed to be so much for is to just say we got this. We're gonna go, We're gonna organize our people, and we're going to make sure that white women put ourselves in the line of and I don't want to say fire, but the line of the lion's eye. Go out there and do that. Don't even bother just
say dis march. Ain't even four people of color it's white people who are calling on white people to show up and do not shift that burden on other communities.
I one agree with you, that's right. So for my I don't get it today. You know, I've been having dialogue just over and over just trying to you know, just the moment we're in. It's like, I'm first of all, I just don't understand the people like I think that was my I don't get it last week that I don't understand the people that think now because you know, Trump was elected president, that people are just supposed to be quiet and just you know, all right, it's over. No,
now the work actually begins now. I was having a conversation, you know, I seen a post that actually been Crumpet posted and he was talking about how President Biden had just put sixty one new judges, black judges on you know, the benches, on the benches, and I was like, okay, that makes sense, they said, And he has over two hundred and sixty seven black judges that he's put on benches since he's been in office. And I thought that
made sense. And then people say, oh, nobody, kids, what have those people done in black faces and high places don't do anything for black people, and that's nothing, it's nothing in that concept. I just don't get right. I just don't I understand that there are there are going to be some black judges that don't do things that we need. There are gonna be some people that don't
do anything. But to just believe that we don't need black representation, right, that we don't need black people that come from our community to be in positions of power, to be able to interpret law, to dictate, to handle sentences, and that understand our culture, to understand where we come from. That we don't need none of them in any position of power. It's just it's so confusing to me that people have that that, you know, that notion, that they
believe that, like, what are we telling our kids? Were telling our kids to go to school, be smart, you can be a lawyer, you can be a doctor, and then actually when they actually get to those places, we're telling them that they have no value to us anymore. Right, It's confusing to me. We send these kids to school, you're paying tuition, you're paying all this thing. They scholarly, they studying the law, they've been through the reality, they've
probably seen their uncles go to jail. They've seen their mothers be you abused by the system, and they want to be getting the positions to actually change those things. And we're telling them that when they get there that they don't matter that now they're so they sold out because now they've actually done the things that we've told
them to do. It's just that I really am so confused with this mind stake, and I'm confused that how they tricked us into believing that because they are in positions of power all the time, and we watch them abuse the white people have been in the position of power for since we came here, and we watch how they've abused it, they've negatively impacted us. How when a young white boy goes before a white judge he's able to get probation for shit that they give us five
and ten years for. We watch it work for them. So why how did they convince us to believe that none of us care enough about us to be able to implement those same, you know, levels of empathy and understanding for our own people, Like why why do we think this way? Well?
I have so many different I have different points that are coming up as you're speaking. First, of all, who is the day on our side that or we we that you're talking about, because those people who have actually been engaged in struggle, for the most part, don't feel the way that you're talking about right or the way that you're what you're saying. I believe that one of the biggest issues here and why you get confused about things is because of the people you're talking to and
listening to. You are spending time communicating with and accepting the rationale of a lot of stupid ass people that's on the Internet, and that's why you're in this fish bowl of listening to people say very ignorant things. That's why I don't spend my time there. I don't spend my time there. It has become a very much so an entertainment tool for me and a messaging tool to get out things that I care about. Sometimes I might learn a little bit, but I am spending less of
my time. I've actually been training myself to say a thing if I decide to make a comment on the shade room or make a comment wherever, I might respond
one time. Other than that, I have decided that many of these people are trolls, so they are deliberately, even if they are trolls that have a real profile, because as we learn, I have the evidence in my phone that during this presidential cycle, this election cycle, there was a way that you could be paid to use your page to respond to things that you know, to respond in my comments, your common whoever. I'm not saying us
we were being targeted. I'm saying in general, you could pay to you would be paid to use your real profile to communicate with people. Because the trolling that used to be very prominent, or much of it, was people who have no page, no profile, and it's just like bots and they're talking and then you go on their pages, either it's either blocked or it is one picture or two pictures or whatever, and that was a clear giveaway
that these people are fake. So they are now actually paying real live people to use their social media accounts to be out there with the same talking points. So you could literally go up there and say the most sensible, sensible things, and you're going to be met with people who are going to tell you that it doesn't matter that they're black judges out there, you're gonna be That's
what you're gonna be met with. I don't even know why you waste your time, because what you're doing is expending energy talking to people who don't even.
They don't want.
I don't actually wait, I might respond, I respond to one or two people that I know at this point, I really you might get one or two comments out of me. But still the mind stay because I go down the line and I see a bunch of people having these conversations and they be and there's people that go, I don't have to do it because they're very much trained a shout out to Aya, Aya is gonna tear you up. She gonna tear you up from the beginning. And then there's a couple more people that I know
that immediately when somebody says, they go to it. So I watched the dialogue between them and then I see, you know, fifty or sixty other people saying this, and I'm like, what, who tricked you into believing this?
Dumb strung Well, you also have black people who have encountered a black judge that was the worst, the absolute worst, you prefer When I went in the when I went to vote, there was several judges, names of judges, right, I think it was like six or seven of them and up for election.
I looked at the names and I.
Literally did like place in a bet, because unfortunately I did not know all of those people. I knew the black woman, and I think I knew one more person. But I looked at those people and I literally chose the white man, saying to myself, sometimes you could get a white male judge that actually makes sense. They are a little more sensible by the law, by the rules. But there was some other people that was on there. I literally was like, I'm not going to vote for you,
because I have encountered. Of course, I voted for black women, but I've encountered oftentimes people from all different types of backgrounds that feel that they have a responsibility to do you as dirty as possible just so they can continue to prove themselves and be invited to the white people's thanksgiving. So I I understand that some people their response is coming from a place of trauma, But there are a large majority of people.
Who are really, really, really ignorant.
They're stupid, They're ignorant, and you be up there entertaining them and giving them your time, And this is why you over here confused as super.
What's wrong with people who tricked you into believing.
Because if you walk, you walk away from the Internet right now, and you just go up and down the street, and if you stood on the corner of this block and started to say exactly what you're saying, that Biden puts sixty one judges in place, and black judges and he has over two hundred and something and blah blah blah and da da, and you explain to people, the average person, regular person that you are seeing in person, is gonna say to you, I didn't know.
That that's actually great.
Or they're gonna say, well, I've had a black judge who's who did X Y Z to me?
So I don't know.
But almost no one that you meet in person is going to tell you that it doesn't matter that this man puts sixty one black judges in just in the last couple of weeks or months or whatever on on the federal bench.
It is not gonna happen. Those are people in a bubble on this stupid shit. I'm telling you. I am telling you, well.
I'm trying to say that there's a couple of them that I know, and they not just on there, and they will literally argue you down with this same talking point, and it's just like, I don't know how we got there. And it's confusing because, like you said, for the most part, it's people that I don't know, that I've never seen and they but there are people on there that I literally know, And when they have this conversation, they keep on saying these same things, and I'm like, why do
y'all believe that? Like, what makes you believe that this even makes sense? You know? So I just asked the question because and they keep trying to tell you the same thing. Oh, you know, this is what Malcolm said, This.
Is what this is Malcolm Martin, Stokely Carmichael, Marcus Garvey, Coretascott King, doctor Dorothy Hyde, who else maya Angelou. I'm just trying to think of the whole everybody that people might love, right, all of these Dorothy Cotton, all of these people, Reverend Jesse Jackson, not nearly, not one of them ever said that white people's ice is better, it's colder.
None of them said it is better to put white people in charge of everything and they're gonna make it all right for you because white people have been in charge. And guess what we have the highest levels of mass incarceration of any community. While there were white judges at some point, all white judges, we didn't start becoming judges until much later, after the courts had already been designed to be the catch place, the holding place for us,
the kangaroo court. That's where that came from, right, So it is I'm just telling you just if you I'll give I'm.
Giving you some advice today.
If you want real life responses and real life and meaningful dialogue, you should go to a street corner and just say your thing that you feel that you would say on social media on the street corner and have conversation with the people.
The reason why I'm having this conversation because I literally just did a podcast three days ago with two people that sat there and had these conversations, two black men, and they was literally arguing me down, saying the same dumb shit. So it's not it's not like in a bubble. It's not. If it was just on the internet with people I didn't see, I would be like, Okay, you're right, But listening to these black men regurgitate the same shit is it was. It was frustrating. And then when the
podcast was over and I'm reading the comments. It's people that are agreeing with me, like, yo, do how are y'all that ignorant? Who told you? How the shit that you're saying? Like, why y'all this ignorance? So it gave me some hope. It's like, Okay, at all is not lost. You know, there's a bubble a place where these people exist.
But I don't even know how they exist. I don't even know how that mind frame exists, you know, because they've really made us believe that, you know, that's one of the thing Michael said, who told you to hate yourself? Like what made you believe that the white people are going to do more for you than black people? Why? Why have you convinced yourself for that?
Well, because black people in positions of power, people don't feel like they've done enough for them.
But I understand why they don't feel like they've done enough because a lot of them can't do enough. A lot of them, like you said, a lot of them don't have the position of power, and then a lot of them are trying to appease people. So but I
want to believe. I want to believe that given the opportunity right if we continue to change the narrative, and we continue to reshape with America is, and we continue to put our culture in positions of power, I want to believe that ultimately we empower them to make those changes that they feel comfortable in them, they feel enough of us back them. They don't have they don't need white validation, they don't need none of that. And when we start to do that, then you'll see the shift.
But as long as we keep acting like our people don't matter, then we do nothing but a disservice to our own well.
I mean, you know how I feel about it.
So that brings us to the end of another episode of TMI. We appreciate y'all for making us a number one podcast in the world. Like we always uh TDM, we did oury thing. Shout out to our sisters Linda Sarsaw and Carmen Perez joining our show today. We love them. Make sure you follow them on social media's they are part of our organization. Linda is one of the co founders of Until Freedom and Carmen Perez is the president of the Gathering for Justice hier Badfont his organization. One
of our great leaders. Rip to him. We appreciate y'all. Look, make sure that you follow us on subscribe to our channel on YouTube. We need you to watch all of the shows and let us know what you love to, let us know who you want to see, let us know who you want to interview, let us know, give us all of your critiques, your criticism, and your love. We love you. We're gonna continue to do what we do.
I'm not gonna always be right, Tamika d marriages and I can always be wrong, but we will both always and I mean always, be authentic. That's