This Land is My Land

America's great and it'll get greater. That's why he's on stage. Sounded like a dictator. His text came out. He can't making big paper, trying to help Wall Street take what they can get later. If you was watching, be afraid of it all. If we talk civilization, it's the way that it falls. When it comes to November, be ready to brawl because they want the course. Tips Scale making a call. So they talked about the Supreme Court and then some climate change. I saw the nigga flying into

the blindest rage. Might need to rewind the frame because these niggas, it's like twice my age, twice the age. You better make it a triple. When these niggas was kids candies costing the nickel. We found ourselves in one hell of a pickle. This is why I don't be trusting these public officials. Ship my name is Dope Knife Franca waiting, hurry up. Well, I'm a little shell shocked, to be completely honest with everybody. We just we just

just finished watching the debate. Yeah, we pulled out the laptops and we poured a couple of glasses of wine and twisted up something. Well, I twisted up something and we watched the debate and that was fucking nuts. Heyo, Chris Wallace is fired. My homies sent me. He was like, what if Chris Wallace at some point had just been like, so for the background, Chris Wallace did a terrible job moderating the debate, just let Trump talk over him whole time.

It didn't really like help him or enforce him adhering to the guidelines, to the guards, to respecting the two minutes each candidate would give it into. My homie sent me. He text was that he was like, what if Chris Wallace had just been like would you shut the funk up for a goddamn minute, to which I responded, I would find Chris Wallace's home address and anonymously send this motherfucking nudes well as a reward for doing his duty of keeping that ship and check because I just devolved

into Toddler's bickering. I mean, I don't want to get I don't want to get a tinfoil hat ship. But I wouldn't be shocked if the point was for him to let Trump go on and ramble like that. I mean, there was barely any substance, and I mean it was it was pretty much dictated by Trump that there wasn't

gonna be any substance in the debate. He wasn't. I mean, at this point, I think anybody who is talking to you or pretending that Trump is in control of the facts of any situation or speaks with any substance or authority on anything, I don't know. I think you got a question what that person's motivation is or how smart that person is. It doesn't mean Joe Biden one, It

doesn't mean Joe Biden lost. I don't think that given what was going down, I don't think that there was anything to win as far as Joe Biden is concerned. It was just a ship show. Yeah. So they covered climate change, which I was pleased that they did. Uh. They talked about law and order, which you know, it's in regards to the protests that I'm taking place all across the country for the last five months. COVID was a big topic. I thought COVID was a spot where

Joe Biden was shining a little bit. But they did cover reparations at although they did not but you know who he is going to cover reparations, Well, that would be us, of course. So today we're finally getting around

to the topic that we've been waiting on, reparations. This will be first in imaginatively many episodes on the topic, but today we're particularly looking at our huments reparations grounded in the history of land policy in the States, and speaking with Ja Corey Arthur, hip hop artist and city council and elect in the city of Louisville about reparations in a black agenda for local governments. Yes, yes, yes, we feel we're owed for the labor that was stolen

from our ancestors. And you know, we'll get into the dollars and cents and of how much might be owed and what redistribution could look like in a later episode, but less well known than this, theft is the way that the wealth we have man is to accumulate has been pilfered again and again, never since. It's important that people understand how that ship contributed and led to the

racial wealth inequality that we see today. This link is one that Tatnesee Codes also makes in his landmark case for Reparations in Atlantic in two thousand and fourteen, a timeless read if you haven't checked it out. Yeah, by the way, Coats talks about sharecropping, debt pionage, about voter intimidation. Yeah, But what stands out to the piece for me at least, is the synthesis of the research on the various kinds of land that perpetrated against former slaves in their progeny.

Coats makes note of an eighteen month investigation undertaken by the Associated Press, involving interviews with more than a thousand people and examination of tens of thousands of public records, all weeks together to document theft of black land across the Eras, stretching all the way back from the Antebellum period.

Their work uncovered over four victims and twenty four thousand acres of land value to the tens of millions of dollars, all stolen through mechanisms as elegant as legal trickery, and those is blunt as cold blooded murder. So, for example, on October four, fifty hooded white men surrounded the home of David Walker, a black farmer in Hickman, Kentucky, and ordered him to come out for a whipping. Walker refused and said fire to the hooded men, who then said

fire to his house. According to accounts of newspapers at the time that resided in the Los Angeles Times article on the Apes research, Walker ran out, allowed by his four children, and his wife put their baby in her arms. All of them were shot by the mob. Three children were wounded, Walker, his wife, and two of his children died, including one who burned to death inside the house. No

one was ever charged with the killings. The records revealed at Walker's two and a half acre farm was simply merged with the property of the white neighbor, who sold it off to another man shortly after. The second man's daughter still owns the land today. So yeah, sometimes it's violent vigilantes, and sometimes the current bureaucracy of the state.

For example, in nineteen sixty four, The l A Times reports the state of Alabama suit cousins Lemon Williams and Laurence Hudson, litigating that they had no right to their to forty acre farms and Sweetwater, Alabama. The land, officials

argued was property of the state. A judge very simply ordered them off the land and there was nothing they could do about it, despite the fact that years later, in the Apies investigation, it was found that deeds and tax records clearly proved that the family had owned the land for almost a century. So how does that sort of ship have Like what's an example of that today?

I mean, we'll we'll talk about this in a second, but eminent domain has historically been a means through which governments have seized lands belonging to black folks and then you know, um, particularly in the era of urban renewal, and remains untold to this day, though I haven't seen a particular dot commentation of ways it could be used like in a racially oppressive manner to date. Like, I mean,

I wouldn't doubt if it's still going on. I mean, obviously it's not as like overt as hooded men showing up in trade. No, And I would love if we utilize like imminente dummain to like seize all the hotels that are empty right now and give them the homeless people. Ship like that, to like redistribute wealth and resources in

a decidedly anti racist, anti class this way. But you like typically it's always to just downtrod already downtrodden and Killer Mike's song Reagan Mike says, we all talk having greens, but not on the bus. Don't make the bus. We different would feed that people when that people need to eat.

This is seemingly decrying the lack of agricultural knowledge and land stewardship in the black community, but the fact is that violence, both mob induced and state initiated, have forcefully driven down our ability to provide for ourselves tending to the land ever since the days we have to do

so by force of others. While general farm ownership has declined broadly since the Industrial Revolution, is agribusiness becomes concentrated and fewer and fewer hands, black ownership has declined two and a half times faster than white ownership, according to a federal report in two and this land staff. It's not a uniquely Southern phenomenon, nor is it confined to

lands tended to Black folks. For agriculture. Owning a family home has always been a practical way to build well be as the family goes equity in their home through monthday mortgage payments and the home appreciates and value, then you are able to borrow against the equity in their home for their needs, or even sell the home at a profit. But they're looking at cash out. Not so much for African descendens of slaves, though, as Coats lays bear in his discussion of the fight for Black homeownership

in Chicago. From the nineteen thirties to the nineteen sixties, black folks across America were largely shut out of the legit mortgage market, and folks in Chicago as a result, turned to buying homes on contract, a predatory scheme that made them responsible for over inflated monthly housing costs as if they were renters, but then also paying for the upkeep of the place itself as if they were owners. In a contract sale, the settler kept the deed until

the contract was paid in full. So if a boiler blue and a black tenant had to come up with like five bucks to replace it and couldn't and in turn couldn't afford to pay their monthly mortgage payment. The seller with whom they made the contract could force them to forfeit their deposit, all of their monthly payments, and the property itself, evicting the family and selling the house again at an inflated price to the next black family

looking for the American dream. This happened over and over again, as reported in the Chicago News Stately, and I don't want to get too off topic, but this just kind of reminded me, And it's just like something that they didn't bring up. They didn't talk at all about the eviction crisis, what's going on right now? No, I feel like they barely touched on just the like how do you get the economy to recover from our current procession.

I don't blame Biden for that, No, that was totally a moderator moderator And obviously, yeah, it's like it's not even that the questions were necessarily all bad. I mean, obviously the whole linking of race and violence is some bullshit, But I just felt there was no control to that ship, so important things like all the tens of thousands of people like facing eviction right now in the middle of a pandemic, and stuff like that doesn't get brought up.

I'm sorry, I took it off topic, and I think it's really interesting how, Yeah, the questions they choose frame like what policies are viable like period, And so the fact that they don't even bring up because I found myself as a reluctant, you know, potential Biden voter, reassured by a lot of bidens like stridency and like steady

handedness throughout the debate. But I think that speaks more to the way that the moderator's questions frame what viable policies are that it does like the breadth of the candidates policy knowledge and in political will encourage Uh. In the first place, it's like, oh, within the scope of what they're talking about, this seems reasonable when it's like I, you know, I want a fucking green new deal, I

want a fucking mortgage and cancelation. You know, these are the things that I want and have been fighting for, uh, you know, through the limited powers I have as a local legislator. And because they don't even get brought up. It's like almost like a form of brainwashing or through watching and accepting the framing of these questions, like we

get sort of it's manufacturing consent. Yeah now, um okay, back back to Yeah, you ended it on black families getting evicted, So why the funk wouldn't they just get a normal mortgage. Well it wasn't so simple. While white homeowners themselves use every trick in the book, from restrictive covenants governing who could buy a house and from whom to straight up terrorists ship the government did their part too.

Congress created the Federal House and Administration in nine four to ensure private mortgages, causing a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size of the down payment required to buy a house, and lowering barriers and access to homeownership for many whites. However, the f h A also made us to the system of maps that rated

neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. Green colored A rated areas on the map indicated neighborhoods and high demand, that is, one to praise it put it lacked a single foreigner or negro. These were neighborhoods considered excellent prospects for insurance. Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated d and drawn in red and were usually considered ineligible for f h

A backing because they were called in red. That gave birth the term redlining that is come to be widely known as a racist practice with regards to mortgage lending. As practice of redlining declaring neighborhoods with black people live it's ineligible for mortgages spread to the already racist mortgage

industry as a whole. Since the f and private lenders wouldn't approve mortgages for properties owned by blacks either, black homeowners and communities couldn't sell their houses, so the homes essentially became worthless, and so by these means, blacks works sloded from the greatest mass based opportunity for wealth accumulation

in American history. Allow the tales of having built the country with our labor and that paid different the wide net of housing practices that have taken place, from mortgage lending policies to rental applications to the like violent physical theft of land by white vigilante mobs in earlier areas like it's all tied together in a way that black folks have been dispossessed of wealth we've endeavored to create against all odds across the decades, and it creates like

a secondary argument for reparations. Not only the laborer that was stolen to create the wealth of this country has benefited from the labor that this government and and uh white people, you know, white supremacists have stolen from us over and over again as we've attempted to climb. And not only that, but with urban renewal, many of these black communities were erased as federal governments flushed local ones with cash to clear slums and invest in public projects.

So it's a precursor to urban renewal. But something that operator in a very similar fashion is when the US seized land belonged to the sp family in Vera Beach, Florida,

your eminent domain to build an air field. I believe in the nineteen forties, sps were awarded thirteen thousand dollars for the seven acres, which included thirty acres of fruit grove, two houses, forty house lots, which amounted to that thirteen thousand sum that they were paid amounted to one six of the price per acre that the Navy paid white

neighbors for similar lands with a fewer improvements. After the Second World War, the Navy turned over the airfield to the city of Vero Beach, ignoring the SPS plea to buy back their land. The city sold part of fifteen hundred dollars an acre to the Los Angeles Dodgers for nineteen sixty five spring training facility. And in that former Navy land, sixty of which once belonging to the SPS,

was now worth more than six million dollars. And we've seen that here locally to a fighter recently engaged in Here in Athens is for justice and reparations for the community of London, to which is a black enclave that existed um near the University of Georgia campus starting in the nineteen hundreds and up until the nineteen sixties, where working class black folks had scraped together enough money to buy homes with the restrictive covenants that barred them from

buying properties at many white dominant neighborhoods, it was one of the few places in town that they could settle.

They built a community there, but under urban renewal, the University of Georgia received money from the federal government and support from the city government to essentially clear out and demolish the neighborhood, paying the families a paltry some somewhere from like fourteen hundred dollars for their homes and displacing them into public housing because there was nowhere else happens for them to live. They couldn't buy houses pretty much

anywhere else. This was in the nineteen sixties, and so a lot of those children who watched the bull dozers pull up and demolished the houses next door to them while they played in their yards, and whose parents had to pay rent to the University of Georgia to continue to live in the houses that they owned Jesus when they refused to move. Um, those children are still live today and like asking for the government to make amends for this conspiracy that they were complicit in back there,

back in the nineteen sixties. And the mayor himself today has noted that those houses, were they still standing today, were they not demolished to create student dorms, would be valued in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars have not millions of dollars today, And then think of the just think of like the ripple effect of having that landsday where it was supposed to stay exactly thinking about their students, of their their their children might have

actually been able to afford to go to the University of Georgia and what they could have used the equity in those homes to buy anything from opportunities for their kids to participate in competitive sports or s a t tutoring to college tuition or even something as simple as like simple luxury. It's like a vacation, and those opportunities were denied to them. They were given you know, you know, a stack and told to get out force in the public housing, which destroyed a lot of these families went

down with your fight. And so people took issue with the fact that we called this an act of white terrorism in the resolution that was presented. Uh, I think in terms of diplomacy, folks felt Folks by folks, I mean my fellow commissioners felt that that was really harsh language that would like activate tensions between US and the University of Georgia if we were to claim that this was an act of white terrorism. And so as well, there were seven stories of the legality because in the

Georgia State Constitution, there is a clause preventing, folks. It's called the caratuities clause, preventing local governments from just giving money to people. So we wouldn't be able to just give the money that's owed to the descended. That is send a little bit broad creative than that. And so what we did get out of that conversation was a fucking task force. I'm so like the task forces, I swear to God. I mean, how are you going to get done if you don't have a force to do it.

So a committee consistent of myself and a geographer and many of the living descendants of Lyndon Town to figure out what reparations looks like and within the bounds of law, what could it what could it look like here? So the so the fight is ongoing. I think, um, the public battle for it has been one, but now the more bureaucratic well, this is part of It's definitely the most I guess mainstream that reparations has been discussed in

my lifetime personally. Yeah, I mean I think when Mary and Williamson brought it up one of the first presidential debates for the first time. Yeah, she's a major a major party like had like really really yeah. I still don't understand why we wait for Trump to be president before we make it like as big an issue as it is. Well, if Obama had brought it up, they would have been like, oh you black and black. No, I know, trust me, I know, and I understand all that.

But it's just like we got open fascists trying to implement a fucking dictatorship, coup and ship. I don't know. Yeah, it's like they've controlled damn near all the government for the last three years. It just feels weird that we're trying to get Nazis to listen to us about REVERA

because they don't care at all. Well, I would argue that half of the country who didn't vote last time, many of whom are African American, would be the target audience of bringing that up now, and that's when we're trying to build their like movement around socialism, et cetera. As the left. Sorry, just purchased the microphone kind of

sucking drunk, get off my ass. Though, though the scope of viable policy is constrained by these debates and constrained by these candidates, I think that the left is very much alive in this country and there's a lot of room through things like the Gravelle Institute that has launched

this week. I saw that video that show was dope, and through conversations on the shop floor and in our classrooms as you know, you know, as myself as an educator, interfacing with young people to bring these these policies to life and to bring them to relevance through connecting with folks who are unlikely to engage civically at present, what

could if the government actually offered them something. Today we're joined by Jacory Arthur, councilman elect for the Metro City Council in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as a music educator and artists. How are you today to Corey Oh? In between fight and the fight and doing what's right, which this is one and the same, definitely dealing with the balances of people who are coming from places of ignorance in our fight for justice and trying to teach as much as I can, trying to educate so I can

eventually legislate. Yeah, So what does that educational process look like for it with the public, Because as an elected official myself, I find myself balancing between listening and trying to legislating ways that represent the general public while also using my platform to educate. So I wonder if what that looks like in your own experience. Well, in movement, work, leadership, and fellowship, you can communicate to the movement, you can have the movement communicate to you, and you can have

the movement communicate with within themselves. When you have to educate people about issues, it's important because sometimes they just simply don't know or they're unaware of the seriousness. But it's also important on the flip side for them to communicate those issues with you. I have an upper hand in this district in Louisville because I am a part of the neighborhood that has been the most neglected, the neighborhood that is the most challenged. That's where I live.

And on the other side of the district, we have almost the the inverse or the opposite of what we're dealing with when it comes to wealth positions and home ownership and job opportunities and educational attainment. I exist with the weakest links, so I know what we need. I am very much so the the person that politicians talk about when they run and they talk about them from a third person perspective. I talked about it from a first person perspective. I am the people that I represent.

So could you tell us a little bit about more about who you are and your background and your music history, educational history, and you know how you ended up running for office. I am my work essentially, I am my my different roles in life. I say that as Ja Cory, born, raised and still living in the western of Louisville. Proudly living in the western of Louisville, Originally from a neighborhood known as Parkland where Muhammad Ali was born and raised.

Now I live in the Russell neighborhood, just west of downtown. The West End is the highest concentration of black people in the state of Kentucky. I'm also known as twelve Dred as a recording artist, are performing composed hip hop and classical music, oftentimes fusing those genres together of work with the number of symphony orchestras of course here locally, but also around the world across the country, rapping and

performing as a classically training percussionists. I have two degrees in music education from the University of Louisville, right here in my city. I'm also known as Mr Arthur when I travel to schools, community centers, boys and girls clubs, teaching music, teaching life skills, teaching about black history. And I'm also known as Professor Arthur Simmons College of Kentucky, our city's HBCU, the first institution to allow higher education

for black people in this state. So between being Mr Arthur, Professor Arthur twelve hundred Kory, that all kind of led me to being known as Councilman Arthur here in the future, because I travel to schools in my professional career and I see the the disparity that exists and the differences that exist from school to school, and I can't realize that the bottom five schools, the lowest performing schools in this state are in the west, that of Louisver, where I am and I love so much and want to

serve so much, and they're all predominantly black, three quarters black. I can't exist as only a teacher or only as a musician who talks about these issues and teaches these issues. I have to go from that educate to that legislat world. If I truly want to impact these issues. So that's why I decided to run. That's why I won. I truly believe and here I am. I get inaugurated in January to actually get in the office and do something about all of these issues. Legally, did being a musician

impact your advocacy? Being a musician impacted my advocacy in a number of ways, because not only did I bake these issues into my music itself, but I also try to bring along the rest of the bunch of people who didn't necessarily feel as if they had an outlet to speak about these issues through through music, through all arts.

I'm also an arts organizer, So outside of me just performing and composing and recording the music, I'm going to organize around other artists and make sure that they are a part of initiatives, make sure they have access to grants, make sure they're not when I get access to funding, I break it down and feed the whole block. I very much so one that is willing to either come out breaking even or come out in the red sometimes just to make sure I'm feeding other people and helping

other people pay bills. That's more important to me than my individual success, because my individual success is not equal a collective uplift, and so many of our musicians in the black community, they get successful when they make it, and all of a sudden, they forget where they come from, They forget the people on the bottom to help them into the top. And they still referred to us in their lyrics. They still talk about the struggles of living

in black ghettos. Uh. That comes out of their lips, and then they turn around and talk about their rolexes or their cars and being able to travel around the world. It's almost kind of ironic that they put those lyrics together because meanwhile, we still live at the bottom of the society that we built, and they rapped the benefits

of all of our failure. So I was in a position where I could teach about that in my music as a as a teacher, as an artist, using artist just simply a medium to teach those issues and also do something about those issues, to organize and work. So we talked a little bit about how musicianship has informed your advocacy and perhaps even prepared you for public offers. But I wonder if there's any media framings that you have to push back on as a hip hop artist

working in politics. And education, and it grew out of UM having listened to an episode of Five Things with You in which an interview I asked you if you had both parents at home, and I wondered I heard that. I wonder, It's like, did she ask every interview with that, and if not, why you? But I appreciated the way that you clarified that you were raised by many people at cousins other family as a means of pushing back on dominant narratives about black families and asserting a positive

truth about how our communities work. So do you find that, uh, there are other types of media framings that you have to push back on UM. As a hip hop artist working within politics and education. What I like to do anytime talking with media, whether that's independent media, mainstream media,

or anyone in between, is to contextualize data. I don't like to entertain stereotypes, because what that interviewer in the podcast that you just referred to didn't contextualize is that really all successful people are coming from a place of being raised by a village white parents, white kids on the East side of Louisville. You aren't just raised by your two parents and then you go off to college

and you find some sort of success. You inherit wealth from the people who existed before your parents, your grandparents and great great great great great grandparents, and then your school is a community that helps raise you. You have families horizontally and vertically that contribute to you becoming a civically engaged, successful citizen. Some of that is privileged, and some of that is is structural, which is is definitely

tied together. So it's important to realize that a lot of those stereotypes are really just mints, which will we'll get into as we talk about reparations. But when I speak to media, I'm speaking using data. I don't like to really give my opinion or entertain stereotypes. I mean, there are studies that show black men are are the most involved fathers in this country. So we hear about black men not being involved in their children's lives over and over and over, and it's this repeated trope, but

when in reality, we're more involved than anyone. So I like to speak from data. I like to make sure I'm speaking from a place of of scholarship and not just stereotype. I'm an interesting place because yes I have I have protested in the streets, but I'm less interested in protesting in the streets at this point. I don't want to No, I no longer want to protest in the streets. I want to work on legislation that is

going to help you own that street. Yeah, I have a different role now, and I have to come to terms with that role, and other people have to come to terms with that world. We are all really supposed to just get in where we fit in. Some people, your only outlet is to protest in the streets. Some people, your only outlet is to make a song about racial injustice. Some people your only outlet is to paint a mural. Some people your only outlet is to have a podcast,

and that's okay. Some people's only outlet is to write laws. Some people's only outlets is to post a tweet about it. Some people were right about it. Everyone has a different role. Not everyone is supposed to do everything, and we have to realize that in this work where I'm at as an artist, as a teacher, as an activist, and eventually as a politician, I'm all of that kind of rolled up into one big ball, and my life would not be what it is if if those elements of my

life were not fused together. So the Brianna Taylor tragedy for me has forced me to lean into all of what I've already been doing even more. I turned it up even more. I was already rapping about gentrification, which

led to her her assassination. I was already rapping about systematic change with our law enforcement, which we've seen microscopically here locally, but it needs to happen in ways that are going to change the centuries from now, because our police department was actually started two centuries ago, eighteen twenties, and it was designed to patrol slaves, to kill slaves, to kidnap, it bring slaves back to the slave pins in downtown Louisville. So for for me, my involvement has

kind of evolved over the past few months. But so many people in Louisville and beyond Louisville, but so many people in Louisville here locally, from what I can see, are thinking too short term, thinking too small. We don't need to be fighting for justice for the past four months. We need to be fighting for justice for the past four hundred years. And I don't even just mean the past four hundred years. We need to be thinking about four hundred years from now in the future, and that's

why reparations is an essential conversation to happen. I want to ask you about that, like, what are your thoughts on that. If you don't advocate for reparations, there is no justice, like there's there is no racial justice or race relations being fixed or being healed, or any of this changing. If we don't have wealth, generational wealth to pass on to our children. We are the only group in this country that faced special mistreatment, so we need

special treatment. There are three groups in America and the United States of America. The people who already lived here, the natives, the indigenous people, the people who decided to live here, immigrants who were white, brown, yellow, and in between and in and in some cases nowadays they're black. And the people who were forced to live here. I descend from the people who were forced to live here. I am forced to live here. I did not hop on a plane and come to the United States of

America for scholarship. My ancestors were on boats and came here on slave ships. There's a huge difference between these three populations and what we've tried to do. It's almost create this, uh, this connectivity between us as black people who descend from slavery and every other old press group. There are plenty of oppressed groups. Your oppressed, and it's not the same as my oppression. My oppression was was law. My oppression prevented me from being a part of a

society that I built. My oppression is centuries long. My oppression was two hundred and fifty years of slavery, a hundred years of Jim Crew, where slavery locked us down and Jim Crow locked us out. So if we're not having a conversation about addressing that oppression through direct payments to the American descendants of slavery or Adolfs for short,

we're not having a conversation at all. We we can't talk about homeownership, we can't talk about black business, black banking, financial literacy, getting college degrees, none of that closes the racial wealth gap. The racial wealth gap is over a hundred trillion dollars wide. You don't fix a hundred trillion dollars with a degree from college, which in some cases keeps you in poverty even more. Because colleges are advertising degrees. The black folks who take out loans who don't even

get jobs in that field. Now you're just paying forty fifty years on loans and you and even got no job. There are millions of black people in this country who are unemployed, who got college degrees. So reparations is that is like, that's the nonstarter for me. If a candidate doesn't even advocate or support for direct payment reparations to aid offs, I would never vote for you. I would

never advocate for you. And if you're not talking about reparations when you're talking about racial injustice, you're not talking about racial injustice, You're just talking. So what does that

mean for you at the local level? I mean, I know, ideally and I agree with you, we need reparations at a federal level to bring to bear um the immense wealth that is undertaxed by these giant corporations the top one percent of people, and redistributing that to make up for the racial injustices that are people have suffered for four hundred years. But does that at all influence your legislative agenda for the Louisville Metro City Council. There can't

be local, local reparations. I mean, you can call it that, but it undermines the national project because of cities that are already penny pitching and desperately in need of dollars. If cities start talking about paying reparations to AIDS, then the federal government gets let off the hook and now all of a sudden they feel like they don't have to pay anything because Louisville just gave a ten million dollar grant to the Western a Louiver which isn't all black.

So what I do here locally is I'm going to make sure I'm advocating for an agenda that is black and concentrated in blackness and in a dowsinus. That doesn't mean reparations. That means centering policies on the people who

have been impacted by past policies. And what I also need to do from my elected official position is advocate for reparations going up the political ladder, putting pressure on the mayor to use his position as the president of the u S Conference of Mayor is responsible over of our country's population to put pressure on the federal government on administration that can actually make reparations happen. I can't make it happen down here in Louisville, and I'm not

interested in making it happen just in Louisville. We can't close the racial wealth gap in Louisville unless we close the racial wealth gap in America. We can't close the racial wealth gap in Chicago unless we close the racial wealth gap in America. Any city that you go to that has a black ghetto, all of them do. We

can't close those gaps locally. We can put band aids on the issues and we can move the needle a little bit, but it's going to take pressure from all politicians on a lower level to push to the higher level, to the folks who can actually implement this, to the Mitch McConnell's of the world, to the A O. C S of the world, to the Corey Bookers of the world,

to actually make this happen. And that's my responsibility. Of course, I'm still doing the work and advocating for a black agenda down here, but up here I'm barking and letting you know, yo, you need to fix us like you broke us. I hate when people say something was senseless.

We has senseless shootings and senseless killings. It makes sense to me if I can't pay my bills, if I can't put food on the table, I'm gonna do whatever I gotta do to make sure that happens, whether that's selling dope, breaking in your house to take your dope, or to take your money, doing whatever I can. Still in Killing and Dylan are happening because we are desperate to meet our needs. We are desperate to survive. Ain't no senselessness happening here. We were designed to destroy ourselves,

to destroy each other. Because the design for us to be destroyed didn't work. We are still here in this country after four hundred plessure years of the most inhumane treatment in history. I was just listening to a brother talked the other day about walking outside and how hot it was and how he couldn't wait to get home

to his air conditioning and drink cold water. Can you imagine working in a field under under that type of intense heat from can't see in the morning to can't see a night, and never getting to go home to to to comfort, never getting adequate anything, and you being born into that, and your kids being born into that, and your your mother's and your grandmother's being raped, your your men being being humiliated being forced to have sex with their mothers. Are you like to cuss on this? Yeah? Yeah,

where you think the term motherfucker came from? And I don't even cuss. I'm just saying that to drive a point home. We have gone through the most in you made unimaginable conditions known to mankind, and we are still here. So the the new form of methods isn't to necessarily destroy us, even though we see that happening. Because Brianna Taylor was destroyed, George Floyd was destroyed, from out Aubrey

was destroyed. We're still getting destroyed. But the new method of destruction in the black community is for us to destroy ourselves and to destroy each other. And that is the peak of the violence that we see. There was violence before the shooting industry actually occurred. The violence was you being starved. The violence was you not being able to get a job. The violence was you not even being able to afford to live in your place where

you're supposed to call home. That's violence in itself before we commit the violence of hurting each other. So could you give us a little more background on the the organ, like what y'all do where y'all. Members are located just for folks listening that might not be familiar with, Like what you say, what are you talking about? Like the movement a d OS one on one dot com. We do political education, a movement about three things. Identification, which

I just talked about. Do you descend from slavery? Do you descend from Jim Crow? You're not just black by look, you're black by lineage, reparations, you know, direct payments and an entire political package that goes into building wealth for our generations. And then concentration, which a political agenda, a black agenda that is anchored and who we are a lot of people get mad at us saying we don't advocate for other struggles. It ain't about that. It's called

American Descendants of Slavery for a reason. So if you don't descend from slavery, this ain't your movement. Go find some other coalition. We are anchored and data, and we are anchored and justice for a specific group, a very specific group. And if you need more information, a d O S one on one dot com. That's that's a group of movement I belong to. We got chapters all across the country, all right, thank you appreciate that. Hey, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Yeah. Yeah,

this was great, super enlightening alright. Love. So that was your Corey Arthur councilman elected hip hop artists in Louisville, Kentucky. And now we're going to try to discuss a little bit of music. Let's do it, okay. So for the music discussion, we're gonna be talking about rappers Killer Mike and t I specifically for some of their outspokenness about

the issue of reparations. And eventually we're gonna be taking a little listen and discussion about their two thousand eighteen song forty Acres that they did with the rapper b Rossi um now rapper activists Killer Mike has been outspoken about the topic of reparations the past, citing strong support for Representative John Connor's HR forty Bill, also known as the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposal for African

Americans Act. Speaking about an interview with Charlemagne the God for The Hollywood Reporter, he said, when you asked me about reparations, I have my ideas about where reparations are, but just as the people we haven't had our black

people meeting yet to see what we're asking for. But I think is why the Commission to Study and Develop Preparations proposals are so important, just like figuring out what it would look like, garnering input from the public about what it should look like, because there is some division in the community about whether it's direct cash payments, whether it's investments and infrastructure and community development, community programming and

predominantly black neighborhoods, etcetera. So we do I think, I you know, I agree with Mike here that we haven't had our black people meeting about what we're actually like, what we're asking for yet, he said. He went on to say Dr King started knowing his last two or three years of life. He started asking, he said, start asking for land, land grants, land lotteries. If you're an American descentan of slaves, this is all killer, Mike. I want some type of reparations to be paid, given or

acclimated to you. But before we get to that part, we have to know what we're asking for. And then he throws out sort of some figures that help us understand a potential scope and scale um in proportion to reparations payments. For example, what I would say is if George to five percent African American, and I would want of the marijuana business going forth to be African American.

That means in terms of landownership and development. So the actual cultivation of the crop, in addition to the vending and stores, the actual dispensaries, especially a whole another episode of the Randa get us here with reguards to repreations that are owned. Given the war on drugs. Yeah BT founder Robert Johnson over the summer put a number on it. He called for fourteen trillion dollars. He said, um, now

is the time to go big. Short answers too long to the long horrific questions about the stains of slavery are not going to solve the inequality problem. We need to focus on wealth creation and wealth generation. And to do that, we must bring the descendants of slaves into equality with this nation, not only for the sin or tullman of the sin of slavery and Jim Crowism in segregation, both to facto into Jura, but to cause America to live up to a concept in the notion that this

nation was born in the idea of American exceptionalism. I'm convinced the problems we can front today can be solved, but it takes a big, bold action. So we got some platitudes in there, but at least I don't really know about the American exceptional some ship. But I mean, again, this is all playing. I mean, you know, I guess, I guess I'm like a lot more understanding to like current like mainstream politicians and just mainstream figures having to

play that verbal game. And it's like when you know that the opposite is like they weren't talking about this ship at all, you know, showing me the platitude. It's about reparations, We're going to actually address it. Robert Johnson made this um statement on the CSNB CSNBC, the Business NBC channel, and it's like the response to it was one of their stuffy asked anchors was like, oh, Mr Johnson, I've known you for decades and I've I've never heard

you say anything that's quite frankly so extreme. So I know that you're serious talking about it, so please explain for you know what I mean. It's just like they're like exactly opening that conversation. I feel it is an important thing. And it's like if throwing out a term like American exceptionalism greases the wheels in the setting that you're in into the people, you know, the audience that you're because you don't have to convince me, you know

what I'm saying. Like I'm sitting here like, yeah, you know, we we get I get it, you know, but I'm not going to give them ship for the having to grease the wheels, you know what I mean. It's politics. Um, Now for the pure music discussion, we're gonna get into this track that I found called that I Found. This has been out there, but it's a two thousand eighteen song by a t I called forty Acres featuring Killer Mike and b Rossi. So let's take a little listen

to that. Not a prison yard like the kind of your house. Niggas gotta que Nica thought he made it because he got it here first. Hawn Pold had been out of here. I'm not quite new, all right, So that is definitely a banger. What are your first initial thoughts to that? So, something that I noticed as I was listening to this is that I fear I wonder if it perpetuates notions that have been forwarded through, like the Chappelle's show's discussion of like reparation, etcetera, just so

that people who don't know. Back in the two thousand three is two thousand four ish, Dave Chappelle did a famous skit where UM reparations got passed and like everybody went and bought a Cadillac and started a record later and here talking about putting the reparations in her handbag, talking about I have to put my reparations on a jeweler, about a time piece. Now there's no looking back. Yeah, that that's the hook at the refrain for the hook. Yeah, and in a mule er, I spent my reparations on

a jeweler, brought a time piece now ato looking back? Now, I'm asking the motherfucker's what the funk they're looking at?

And so to counter that myself, I think to recent study they've done on universal basic income in Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta, which my mentor Petita Love has taken part of the task force on, and they found that in black committed is especially when people passed UM a former basic income, Black folks especially spend that extra money on basic necessities, on food and groceries, on rent, on doctor's appointments, on clothing for their families, things that they

just needed to get by, as opposed to this popular conception of oh, there's gonna buy Jordan's and flat screens TVs and so I think they'll say and findings that they took away from that study that was done, an old fourth ward can apply to our broader thinking around what reparations will be used for. It like you give people money, they're gonna buy land, They're gonna buy education for their kids. They might buy a car. It's probably because I didn't fucking take the bus currently and are

trying to have a car. There's jewels throughout the song as far as like lines where they're they're they're saying some ship. That's like, oh, that's that was clever, that was Oh that was a good one. That was that

was a good point. That was a good line. But I mean, to be completely honest with you, I personally would think before hearing this, knowing how t I and Killer might have been talking about the issue of reparations, I guess I don't want to say it's disappointing, because I do think that the song is a banger, like the beat is dope. I think everybody's flowing, everybody's wrapping their ass off on it. The ship is dope, you

know what I mean. The song is dope. But just from a personal standpoint, it's like, I don't know, it doesn't feel serious, you know, it feels fun. It reminds me of the way I felt the first time I saw Djengo, you know, like I was going expecting it to be like this hard, you know, like a hard, unrelenting look at a particular topic, and then it was like, oh, this is like fun and that's how we normalized ideas

At the same time. I think that's the power of hip hop music too, interlace topics of political potency with just like Bracadoggio and just regular asked rhymes to like bring it into common currency with like in the culture. But that's where I think everyone excels in their verses because I think everyone is hitting on those hitting on exactly that within their verses. The hook refrain is the

part that you hear three times though. You know what I'm saying in the hook refrain is spent my reparation on a jeweler, which, yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure that if we ever do get a point to where we're like seriously discussing um reparations and like what it could look like, Tucker Carlson are gonna be like they're gonna spend it on a jeweler. Look, they're gonna site this is gonna play this on Fox News. Yeah. So I mean that's all. That's all I'm saying about it.

But I mean, I think objectively the song is dope. Like. Back in July July seventeen, to be exact, t I shared a two page open letter with the UK insurance firm Lloyd's of London for reparations for their role in the Transatlantic slave trade. He was quoted saying in the letter, our people have been financially impaired and economically disabled due to systemic oppression and the institutional racism that leaves behind. Your commitment to reparations is an honorable one, but commitment

without tangible actions is merely lip service. He writes. In the letter, we demand a specific call to action that includes, but is not limited to, direct reparations be made to families who were ripped from their native lands and sold as property while your company profited from the whole shameful endeavor.

Tai goes on to suggest four avenues for reparations. Ten percent ownership and Lloyd's to be given to the descendants of African slaves, accurate annual tracking of US reparations, a one million dollar cash loan with one percent interest every African American adult once in a lifetime for the next

two hundred years. And at least one African American member on its board, which really is not asking for much honestly, and with reguards of the board membership, I mean the rest would be fucking dope and owed frankly, um, but then representation on the board one member, Like that's how do y'all did y'all do that? Yet? Like do you where? Like what? What? I think that's kind of going to some of the point that I was making though, which is like I feel like I wish t I had

put that into a song. Yeah, you know, like I wish here wrapped about that. Yeah, Like I feel that. I feel that. I just feel there's a whole audience or a whole like segment of the population that would have absorbed that knowledge or that or would absorb that information better if it rhymed and it was over a dope beat, I just do I just I've always thought that's not like a criticism TI, that's just my feelings

on the fucking power of hip hop. With hip hop and all things politics as well, has been if you're waiting around for someone else to do it, fucking do do it. Hey, I do my part, y'all. Motherfucker's gotta go listen to that ship. Don't forget that when we're not hosting this podcast and we're not helping rent a city, that we're both two pretty dope hip hop artists at Dope Knife looked me up in the book, you know,

just talking shit. I walk it. Yeah, I'll do my part. Well, all right, we are definitely going to be doing a episode coming up soon about voting an electoral politics and hip hop's relationship to that. But um, yeah, if you saw what the funk we watched tonight, I mean, you know, we're kind of tipsy and I'm high, so you know we're coming through that filter. But I kind of felt like I should be really scared watching it. So I think that y'all should be check your voter registration, particularly

if you've moved recently. Make a plan to vote early in person or absentee. Uh, talk to some friends about getting out to vote too. And it's not just for the president. You can leave this ship blink for all I fucking care. But vote down ballot. Look at these Senate races and these House you know, these congressional races. Look at who's running for d A in your city and make sure you're informed in order to vote for those things as well. Uh, let's get into some rapping things.

Check check to check check check check? Want to check check? Want to how we do check? Check? Want to check check? Want to how we do check? Check to check check? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I said, welcome everybody to wait in our reparations. And can't nobody say that the people was never patient. And if you suck around them, we go start the demonstration. Been talking about the chifs of segregation. They want to go and tell you that they ain't got the money.

You see, they just lying when they need to bail out, the trillions get flying and when you want your vote, they may can just buy them. Maybe first, pay me for that red line, and yo, pay me for that red line in motherfucker. Yeah I'm about to come and remind them and all the minding that they didn't on our wealth and has a top on the fucking hell changing this stuff. They're trying to talk about something else,

not motherfucker deal with the cards. But tell I think what y'all thought in our communities taken stuff from us for Tekecades with compunity. It's been a hundred years and they paying us back. If these politicians what they say, it is whack if you speak on reparations for us saying with facts for accessors of slavery that everybody who's black. Yo, these people really want lares. But whatever really want is for the Acer front yard like David Walker own for it.

God chart pay us back for the terrorism. Is it hard? Hey, this is dope knife and we are waiting on reparations. See you guys next week. Everybody be safe. Waiting on reparations as a production of I Heart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.