Ed Gordon Wants To Know "What's Going On?"

and leadership. Thank you so much, Thank you for joining me. I have been very excited to speak with you for more for a few reasons. One because my background is in politics. I did not go to school for communications, but I got into communication is kind of because of activism.

And I think that as I have been going through your career thirty plus years, working literally at every network in every place, from b ET, CBS, NBC, you know the question that you open up your book with is a question that I want to open up our conversation with, which is throughout the course of your career you have seen so much. You have spoken to presidents, activists, leaders, members of Congress, and here we are in twenty twenty and the question that it still permeates is what is

going on? Well, I think that's always a question, right, what's going on? It's a fair question for any generation, but I think for African Americans in particular, because we were brought in quotes here to this country. The sense of us not having control and needing to ask what's going on? Not in the general sense of hey, what's happening and what's going on? But what is going on? Because we don't control It has always been a question that we've had to grapple with because often we don't

have control. We can't say, oh, well, this is going on or that's going on. Somebody else controls our what's going on? And so when I open up the book and I talk about Marvin Gay asking that question musically so many years ago and having the idea of some of those same issues, same ills being so prevalent today. You know, we say, oh, he was such a master.

He was, he was all of that, But it was less about Marvin being able to see into the future as it is just we've not changed in this country enough that it hasn't made some of those ills outdated for us. And that's the real sense of what's problematic to me. Do you find that that is a sense sometimes of hopelessness that black folks have, because when we look right at our history, when we look at the progress that we've made, I mean, you can go back

and you can stay. Well, we were brought here in bondage, and we were able to see a black president. So we want to be able to celebrate the paths that we have fought and the places that we've gone. But it doesn't look like a lot has changed from that though, right So a lot has changed, a lot has changed quickly. I think sometimes we forget that the change of a nation, those cogs move very slowly. We've been able to accelerate it very quickly. I think our sense of hopelessness as

a black people is very fleeting. I think there are times that we feel this isn't changing, It's always going to be the same. The white man keeps us down. But that's very fleeting, which is why we've been able to survive and thrive, many of us, some of us because we are wrong people. For as downtrodden as they try to portray us, for as sometimes as overwhelming as our conditions have been in this nation. I see us as a strong people, as a people that I won't

say no other people could have done this. I'm sure Jews would say that they lived through the Holocaust, and they did and all. But when you look at the sheer issues that we have dealt with were the number of years that we have dealt with, we are very strong people. Some of what we continue to trip over

is self inflicted. And what I hope in terms of this book is that we start to look at new narratives, have different conversations, look at the things that brought us here that may now be obsolete and we need to put them aside. I'm not talking about people. I'm talking about issues, because I think that we are in need in some respects of new narratives. But there are other

things that served us well. And I don't mean just the moo men in marches, And I'm talking about how we treat each other and what we've done, and this sense of black people really feeling like a family at times.

I think that's lessened in the sixties. I was born in nineteen sixties, so I don't know about the sixties, but I know about the seventies and the eighties, and there was this sense I think a lot more of even though now we say hey sister, hey brother, that sense is not the same as it was in the seventies. There was a real sense of sisterhood, brotherhood amongst our community. There was a real sense of if you lived down

the street, that you are my child too. You know, I think that has waned a little bit, certainly, just proximity Black people back then we all had to I remember one of I grew up in Detroit. One of the star Detroit Lions, Charlie Sanders, who was a tight end, literally lived three blocks away. He was an All Pro football player. Today he would live, he would live somewhere communities I wouldn't be able to. As we did walk up to his door, three twelve year olds knock on

his door. His wife answers, and we said, can we see Charlie, And then Charlie invite us in back to his den, show us his footballs, show us his trophies. That meant a lot to us. He wasn't this multi millionaire who lives somewhere else. Even though people and kids aspire to be Lebron James or whomever today, Steph Curry or whomever you can't touch them in the same way that we were able to. So I think there's some things that we need to think about getting back to.

And doesn't mean that a multibillionaire and millionaire's gonna move back to your community, but this sense of being able to touch them more often than we do well when in that sense, you know, I think about Nipsey Hustle, and I think about someone who actually was living in his community right and was very active and trying to build in his community, and then he was murdered in

his community. And we talk about that in the book, and some will say, some will argue that he shouldn't have been living there, that he should have maybe continue to help, but shouldn't have been necessarily living there and the way he lived there. So, but that's part of the discussion, that's part of the conversation. Is that right is that wrong? Is there no right or wrong? Is that an individual's choice. I just want us to do two things with this book. I want us to find

new narratives. I want us to start talking, not like we've been talking, just complaining or saying the same things. I want us to hold insightful conversations that empower us not just leadership, but empower twenty two year old who thinks she has no power to make change, or forty five year old who feels like I gotta continue working hard my nine to five to get that next promotion.

To know that we all have a stake in this game, and we all need to put something, some skin in the game of making all of us better, strong, or more independent, you know, becoming more financially sound as a community. So we're not living by means of gratitude to a corporation who funds Quite frankly, many of our organizations. These are the same companies, and we talk about this in the book. These are the same companies that in some

respects cause the ills in our community. Yet they give one hundred thousand dollars to a civil rights organization to put on their gala and their dinner, and we're cool with that. We have to start thinking about different ways

to attack our issues. Why do you think that we haven't been so expansive in the way that we've been thinking about the issues, Because I do think that it is important to have a space where you can vent, right Like we are the only ones that understand what it is like to be black in America, to have to navigate all of these different obstacles that frankly were created by other people for us. And so what do

you think? How do you because I know the point of this book is to create new narratives in power, in politics, in leadership, what do you think has been missing? So what makes it hard is that there's no right or wrong answer to that, because in some respects we have been expansive, we have overcome I remember I talked about it in the book Going to Chicago. I flew to Chicago to interview Barack Obama about a month or two weeks before he was going to announce that he

was going to run. I knew him a little bit, we'd had some phone conversations, but didn't really know him well. I knew that he wouldn't announce on this show that day, but he might give me a little nugget. And I remember asking him saying, you know, a senator there whispers about you possibly running. And then he got into whatever spiel he was going to give me, and I remember as he was talking, thinking in my head, yeah whatever, man, Yeah, bro,

you ain't winning. You know, just don't embarrass us, do you think, but you're not winning. But he believed, he believed, truly believed that he he could do this. He believed we figured this thing out with social media, with young people. What's our thresholder Without that new narrative, Without that new thought, we would have never seen what we saw, which gave my daughter who's twenty five and outlook and less baggage than I had at twenty five when I thought I'll

never see a black president. She doesn't have to grow up with that baggage. So I think that we sometimes don't give ourselves enough credit either. So the key is to just keep talking. What I'd love for us to do is maybe as organizations cobbled together for superhero fans and Avengers like Team you know of maybe some of the Black Lives Matter people and NAN and NAACP and

the Urban League, and tackle one specific issue. You can have your singular issues, but and I know that one specific whether it's education, whether it's police brutality, whether whatever

the case may be, closing the wealth. Ye find out what's that one issue that you all can agree on and say, look, we're gonna and then bring the things that you do best to the table and let's attack that, and let's ask all of us, here's the issue that we are going to attack, whether it's police brutality, which I thought maybe that would have been at when there was such a fervor with the spate of killings that we saw with Treyvon and Michael Brown and Sandra Bland

and Tamir Rice, and we can go on and on and that, and that started to die away, as most causes do. And I think about, you know, the Montgomery bus boycott and how great those people were to keep that going for over a year and never to lose the idea of this is what we're fighting for, this is what we're gonna do. And surely that wasn't a nation, but that was a community of people. And they didn't let anybody waiver, you know. They said, no, that you're

not getting on that bus. Dot, we'll get a car, we'll pay your cab fare, we'll you know, but you not getting on that bus. And they didn't. And it not only changed Montgomery, but really change the world at least America. That's I hope what we can do. It's not that the issues have changed so much. I think that it's the ways in which we have those conversations and the fact that we don't necessarily live in community

the way that we did. You could do a Montgomery bus boycott back in those times because it was a very small community. Now we are everywhere, and it feels like our problems are everywhere. So let's take one problem that affects all of us, no matter where you live, and that is racial profiling and the possibility of being unjustly arrested or killed by law enforcement. You can be a brother in the Bronx, or you can be a movie star in la and you can get pulled over

in the same way. You can be harassed in the same way. If they don't know it's Anthony Anderson or Jamie Fox or whomever you know, and heaven forbid if they move the wrong way before they even got into the winner, and they may not even know that it's Anthony Anderson or Jamie Fox. You know, they might know Denzel, but they may not know all of us. Right, there are issues that we could attack no matter where we live, our condition, our station in life, that we could say

this affects all of us. Or if we and this is not just black people, if we are of the belief that as we say our children are our future, and we really care about kids, then why are the school systems so poor? The vast majority of black kids who go to public schools will not be prepared for this modern world. I live in Brooklyn, and there are in the vicinity of where I live there must be at least ten public schools that are in walking distance

of my house. There are only black kids that go there, right, And from the outside it seems fine, But I know better because I have worked in New York City public affairs system and will know the public education system and know that they're all failing. And I say to myself, why why? Because Brooklyn is incredibly gentrified. New York is incredibly gentrified, and yet none of those white folks are putting their kids in public schools. And we have to

be honest about our conversations. We don't sometimes like to tell our truths out loud in public. I have argued with many a public school teacher who tries to defend often not necessarily their particular school, but the system as

a whole. And then they will say to me, well, you're a public school graduate, And I say to them, a proud one but the system I grew up in in nineteen seventy seventy one, seventy two through my graduation in high school nineteen seventy eight is not the same school system that a kid in Detroit would have to deal with today. So please don't tout me as a college or a high school graduate who went through the public school system who did well and assume that that

system could turn me out today. Yeah, that's incredibly important. Somebody who does have a very singular focus is Stacy Abrams. Stacy Abrams, having been robbed of the governorship in Georgia, is very focused on voter suppression. Is very focused on creating a machine to enlist and inspire and engage Black people, Latin X people, women, young people in activating their right to vote. That has always been a huge issue in the community. And we see what happens allah Donald Trump

when people decide to opt out of the system. Could that be something could be? It could be. I mean, you know, you look at Andrew Gillum and others who have also thrown their hat in the ring to make sure that they design organizations and watchdog groups to try

to suppress the voter suppression. So you have to ask yourself if the NAACP, if Urban League, if now maybe not Urban League because of their stance in terms of the organization they are, But whomever we want to dictate as those who would be on that front lines, maybe that would be one of those things that certainly if you did that as a collective versus all of these

little silos, it would be stronger. But I think we'll find out the medal of black people for this election if you don't realize now that sitting out got you not only Donald Trump. But I tell people it's not about Donald Trump. He'll either be gone in four or eight years. It's about all of these judges he's appointed, who have lifetime appointments, who will deal with your children

and make life harder for your children. So I think we have to start to say, hey, we cannot sit out, and you can't allow, even if you don't love the candidate, this to happen again. Because Hillary Clinton ran a poor campaign, she did not speak to black people in the way

she should. I would deal with her campaign once a month saying look, I got to a point where I said, if you're not going to sit with me, sit with Roland sit with you know, anybody, anybody, anybody, just talk to black folks in a way that you're not It's not enough to go with Beyonce and Jay Z on stage and take a selfie with Lebron James and assume that that's enough. It's not enough, So poor campaign, notwithstanding

what we have to do. What we have to do is say to whomever we give our vote to, we're gonna give it to you, but when you get in office, you will no longer take us for granted. Often an uneducated voter believes that their power stops at election day, right. The reality is your power should start the day after election day. You should be able to walk in you know, quid pro quo has become famous through Donald Trump, right, But that's what politics has always been about. Okay, I

gave you my vote. Now this is my expectation and not to be afraid to go in there and demand it. And that comes not only from individuals, but that should be our leadership. And it's not enough to demand that just because your leader has an open door policy with whomever as a president, that's not enough. You know, the fact that you get to take pictures and be at the press conferences. That's not enough. What else are we getting? I think that we've got to become more sophisticated in

our politics, you know. But I also think that that goes back to the failings of our public education system and the failings of civics in general. By background, I'm an educator, was an early childhood educator, believed very much in building up the education and creating global citizens that will take off on the world. And I think that what is always frustrating to me and what I try and advocate in terms of the responsibility of your citizenship.

Imagine having your daughter you didn't drop her off in kindergarten and pick her up in twelfth grade at graduation, but having no parent teacher conference, having no engagement whatsoever, and not following up and asking her who her friends were, who she's hanging out with, engaging with her teachers, and understanding what her interests are and how she's changing over that time. It's the same way that folks don't engage

with their elected officials once. That's just it. There's nothing in this book that is so earth shattering that we uncovered something new. The answers are there. We have to just believe that those answers work. And what's interesting is we have to stop chastising those of us that don't

agree that it should be left instead of right. The reason that I try to have this broad selection of people, you know, I mean literally the first name on the front cover is Maxine Waters, and the last name before we get to and many more's t I completely different, and we run the gamut in between. What we need to do is find commonalities in common ground and say, look, I may not agree that the answers charter schools, but I do believe that we have a problem with our

community and law enforcement. So let's hold hands on that you do charter. I'm gonna stick with public, but dog garn it, we're gonna work together on this. There are things that we can agree. We all need to say this impacts and affects all of us, and let's move to that. And again, I still say a good litmus test is the twenty twenty election. It's going to be

a test, all right, It's gonna be a test. Someone said to me, forgive me, But someone said to me the other day when we were doing an interview, but what are we gonna do if Trump wins. What do we gear up with? I said, then it's too late to gear up. Gearing up for Trump is right now gearing up. But Trump is making sure that you go to the polls. And not only you know it's cliche, but it works when you go take somebody and take

somebody else, and take somebody else. You know how you get four girlfriends and you go to the concert, Get those four and go to the polls. You gotta have five dudes to run a pickup game. Get them five dudes and let's go to the polls. It's real. There are solutions here for some of these problems. So Trump doesn't have to get a second term, and if he does, and if he does, shame on us. We have the numbers. Democrats always have the number. You always have the numbers,

which is why voter suppression is real. We have the numbers, which I don't think the suppression will be the same though this time I don't. I really don't. I do think that. Let me say this, if we're smart again, people like Stacy and you know, the eyes will be much keener than they were the last time. Doesn't mean that it can't happen. It doesn't mean that the right. I'm not suggested, but I am suggesting too. If you turn out. I mean, just look at the percentage of

people who are registered but don't vote. It's hard to suppress huge numbers, that's what I can It's hard to do that if you keep those numbers low, which is why the Russians and the Bots were you know, they're against black people because they said, if we can keep

them away, then we've got a better chance. So we have to again be an educated voter and know and understand that this is perhaps arguably the most important election of your lifetime save maybe you can argue on the other side Obama's was, but it's important, and it's even more important for our children. And so my take is we've got to turn out. We've got to turn out in so many numbers. It's almost like watching the NBA. Though it can happen, it's hard to lose a thirty

point lead. You can get down and they can come back twenty eight, but they couldn't get that last get to tie it up, or two to win it, even though they chipped away and got it down to twenty eight points. So it will be hard if you have record turnout to suppress that boat where it'll make a difference. Right, you can't lie about people wrapped around poles waiting for hours. You can, but that's true. Right, he did lie about

pictures of his inauguration. What is the thing that you most want folks to take away from your book Conversations in Black? What do you want people, young people, older people to walk away with that you have power, that you are not just on the sidelines, and that you have to accept what is coming your way. You cannot change everything. There's some things that you cannot control. But

a mentor of mine was a great Johnny Cochrane. And I remember Johnny telling me one day through the oj f ASCO every time something crazy would happen, I was in his office with him, and he said to me, and the only thing you have control of in a crisis is your reaction during it. And I want people to understand, no matter what is happening, you have control

of you. And if you can figure out your way to at least stabilize yourself or mitigate some of the the falling debris that's going to hit you, you're gonna survive it better. And so but you have to know that I can dodge it, I can pick up this garbage, can top and cover my head. Whatever the case may be, whatever metaphor you want to use, raining you get an umbrella, whatever it is. You have the power to help shape

your life. If you know when people say you control your own destiny, you can't control destiny, and it's true form of what destiny means. But you can control some things that come across your desk. And we have to start believing that we have more controled in our lives and our condition as a people here in this country than we've believed of late brilliant Ed Gordon. Thank you so much for joining PM mood. The book is Conversations in Black on power, politics and leadership. Pick it up

by it as a gift, Get it for everyone. We have a lot of work to do and it's incredibly inspiring. Thank you. Thank you for having me. If you want to hear more from me, check out my live daily political talk show, Woke, a f daily at DNR Studios. You can subscribe now at www dot DNR studios dot com. Slash Woke