Builders of a Better System Featuring Connie Di Cicco and Sia Henry

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Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.

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Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.

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The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.

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Hello. Welcome to another moment with Eric Fleming. I am your host, Eric Fleming.

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So today I have two young ladies on, Connie Di Cicco and Sia Henry.

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Connie is in advocacy around, I guess you would say, environmental issues,

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and Sia is an advocate around restorative justice issues.

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So, you know, these are two, like I said, young ladies that are really doing

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good work in their communities and wanted to uplift them and to talk about their

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journey, how they got there,

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and what exactly, you know, they're doing in their work.

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So I hope that you will enjoy those interviews.

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As always, we are asking for support.

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So if you would go to www.momenterik.com and do that, we greatly appreciate it.

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And, you know, like I said, we're going to make some changes.

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So over the next few episodes, and maybe just me on, I was trying to get schedules

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readjusted and all that.

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But, you know, until then, I hope you continue to listen to the podcast,

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continue to enjoy what you're hearing, and just, you know, just your feedback is welcome.

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And I'll get into some other stuff later on, but let's go ahead and kick this program off.

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And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.

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Thanks, Erik. The U.S. Supreme Court limited a federal law banning drug users from owning firearms,

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allowed the Trump administration to revoke temporary protected status for hundreds

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of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants, permitted federal government

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officials to turn away asylum seekers at U.S.-Mexico border crossings,

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and ruled that a Rastafarian man could not sue individual Louisiana prison officials

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for monetary damages after guards forcibly shaved him in violation of his religious beliefs.

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Congress passed a bipartisan housing bill aimed at boosting affordable housing

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supply, but President Trump refused to sign it.

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The U.S. Senate passed a House-authored War Powers Resolution directing President

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Trump to halt military action against Iran.

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he will step down following an

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internal Labor Party rebellion.

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Two consecutive severe earthquakes struck near Caracas, Venezuela,

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with models projecting the death toll could eventually exceed 10,000.

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New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani significantly consolidated his political power

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after three Democratic Socialist candidates he endorsed won major Democratic primary upsets.

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Kate Conley won the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Representative

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Mike Lawler in New York's 17th Congressional District.

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State Delegate Adrian Boafo won a crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring

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Representative Steny Hoyer in Maryland's 5th Congressional District.

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Maine Democrats nominated Matthew Dunlap to face Republican Paul LePage for

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an open, highly competitive congressional seat.

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A U.S. appeals court ruled that Ohio can enforce a law requiring social media

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companies to obtain parental consent for users under the age of 16.

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12 people were hospitalized following a mass shooting perpetrated by occupants

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of an SUV on a Chicago street.

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And former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan died at the age of 100.

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I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.

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All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. Now it's time for my guest, Connie Di Cicco.

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Connie Di Cicco is a native Georgian who started her career with a master's in

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filmmaking from Florida State University.

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After working as director of

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programming for a full-frame documentary film festival in North Carolina,

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she moved back to Georgia and eventually entered politics, starting with grassroots

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volunteering and then working as chief of staff for several members of the Georgia General Assembly.

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She ran for office in 2020 and worked as a campaign consultant afterwards.

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After two years with Georgia Conservation Voters as their political director,

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Connie now serves as the political campaign director for the Athena Coalition,

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where she now spends her days moving legislation, wrangling elected officials,

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and trying to make Georgia and America a little greener and a lot better.

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When she's not doing that, you'll find her baking something delicious,

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tending to her bees, or watching movies like it's her second job.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

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on this podcast, Connie Di Cicco.

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All right. Connie Di Cicco, how you doing, ma'am? You doing good?

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I'm well, thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here with you.

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Well, it was an honor for me to have you on as a guest.

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And I've known that since we talked about you coming on, there's been some changes

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in your life, not major, but some changes.

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So I appreciate the fact, because a lot of times when people go through those

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changes, like, Eric, I got to get it readjusted and all that stuff and they

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don't come. But the fact that you honored your commitment, I am really,

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really, really, really pleased about that.

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All right. So let's go ahead and get this started. What I normally do kind of

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is I do a couple of icebreaker exercises to kind of get the conversation going. Okay.

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So the first one is a quote that I want you to respond to.

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And the The quote is, something doesn't need to affect me, and something shouldn't

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have to affect me for me to understand when there is a problem that needs to

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be addressed and changed.

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Okay. So.

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A lot of times, you can feel, and at least I do, into it when you are needed.

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And this has been a little bit of a learned response for me.

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Listening more than speaking.

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But I do think that...

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Operating, feeling and operating from that sense, intuiting,

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how and observing what's going on in the room, in the environment with the people around you.

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And just taking your cues from that has served me very well in,

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how I respond to other people and that's within my career but also within my personal life,

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and it's on an emotional level but also an intellectual level and sometimes

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that takes a minute to process and kind of work through what those those moments mean,

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but that's how i that's how i respond to what that quote is to me,

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yeah so you know who said that right no who said that you did i did you were

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telling a story about something that happened at the school that your child goes to.

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And the principal said, well, your child's not in trouble, you know,

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or your child doesn't have the issue, but obviously your child had said something

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about what was going on at the school, so you went up to the school,

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and did it, and that was your response to the principal when he said that doesn't involve your son.

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So I just wanted to recharge your memory on that one.

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And most people are surprised when I do a quote that they actually said,

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as opposed to somebody else.

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All right. So the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.

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So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20. 13.

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There you go. All right. Do you think there is such a thing as unbiased news or media and why?

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No, I do not. This question of truth has come up. Wow, what irony. This is...

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Oh, yeah, I don't... No, I don't think that you can truly be unbiased.

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I mean, that's really hard. And especially in the news, I think that reporters

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and journalists really strive for that. And that even in our own lives,

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we're looking for the most objective,

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reporting we can and we think we find it and that's what we,

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that's what we're we're sticking with and and,

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but it's always question the source question the source and keep keep looking and then,

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what it what is it that you you believe and what are your experiences telling

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you and what truths are you seeing in your experiences,

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yeah because it's it's very i think and i i do think that's part of how we are

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moving through our lives is seeking truth and finding out like and maybe a better

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word for that is is answers,

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but objectivity is is very difficult there's so many filters that that comes through.

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That that's, I don't know if that's attainable. Okay.

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So how did a young girl from Roswell who grew up in the construction business,

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and majored in filmmaking get deeply involved in politics?

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You've done some really good research.

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You know, I, and I have, I've really,

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from a young age, was very interested in filmmaking and struggle with my own kids,

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in their career seeking and what they're interested in and try to keep them.

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From narrowing their field of choice and being too pigeonholed.

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But I do remember being their age and thinking, this is what I want to do.

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And it was documentary that I was drawn to, which was people have an idea about

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that, that that is presenting facts and that it is a sort of truth seeking and objectivity.

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When I was growing up, it was Ken Burns and Ken Burns was huge and had just kind of broken through.

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But it wasn't, even Ken Burns has a filter that everything comes through,

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and that is very, there's an agenda with what he is presenting.

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As much as I love Ken Burns and what he's done for documentary,

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my thought process and what I was trying to do with filmmaking was to go through

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a fiction filmmaking program.

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This was at a time when Law & Order was just coming into being and being very

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popular and using cinema verite processes.

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Learn fiction filmmaking, go through that formulaic process,

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and then make documentary films using fiction filmmaking techniques.

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That was my whole sort of agenda and what I wanted to do.

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And I got very lucky with what I was doing with my...

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I had a lot of setbacks in trying to learn what I was doing,

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but then I got very, very lucky in going through UGA and some wonderful professors

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and interesting opportunities.

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And then started my career actually at a documentary film festival and not making films, but,

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looking at the other side of that, of the people who had made the films and

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learning how to display those and how to put them together in programming.

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But that connected, looking back on all of that.

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It really connected to advocacy and people who had a passion for getting out

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something that they truly believed in, putting something together,

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putting their heart and soul into that, advocating for it.

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And when I look back on that, it was terrific training for what I do now,

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knocking on doors, trying to convince people of something that I am certain of.

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And so it's a real interesting journey.

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And even looking at what my dad was doing with his construction business and

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what he believed in, and kind of stepping outside of major builders who were

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huge in Roswell, Marietta Cobb,

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having worked for like John Whelan.

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And he had a real vision for what he wanted to do. He worked for Bob Merritt

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and John Whelan and major builders.

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But then he really wanted to bring custom home building to within his own way

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and built a family business. This one person.

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Who moved down there from Detroit and kind of like started this thing and built

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a career over 50 years of what he really believed in.

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And so that was sort of like my through line of kind of watching how all of this gets built. Okay.

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All right. You once said, I believe in the good of humanity and science and in the power of nature.

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Did your grandmother influence you in that way?

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My grandmother, I had two really big influences, ancestral influences.

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My grandmother, Carmella, lived with us, and then my dad.

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Found a house for free and put it on our property so that she could live next door to us.

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My grandmother, Carmela, was like my buddy. And we would take turns kind of

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like spending time with grandma next door.

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And my job was to take her shopping, grocery shopping. She taught me like she had like coupons.

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But she was more of like the baker.

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And she taught me that, like nourishing and bringing the family together and

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showing how that really connects people.

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And then I could see, like, again, another through line about how culturally

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that speaks. Like, our family was very Italian, but when we had friends come

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over, this really connected our friends.

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And it also connected like a Southern tradition. We could see, as I grew up,

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there were a lot of overlaps with Southern cooking and how Southerners come

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together and do this with a lot of different cultures.

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There were so many overlaps with that that I could see in other cultures.

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Other cultures. As I go to candidate meet and greets and I see Korean candidates

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and their mothers are trying to feed me in the same way that my grandmother

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would try and feed our friends. I was like, this is so beautiful.

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And this feels very familiar to me.

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I had another, my great grandmother, Teresa, she was.

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The real gardener. And she actually had a beautiful garden and she would can things.

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When we would go and visit her, she lived in Detroit. She had a whole.

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Pantry up above in her kitchen, but she made use of every single part of her

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garden. They would eat dandelion, they had dandelion salad, the flowers,

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everything was of use to her. She didn't speak any English.

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She became a citizen when she was 96. She died when she was 98.

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She was just a force. And because my mother's mother died when she was nine,

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she really raised my mom and her two sisters and,

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really had that sort of nurturing that she brought to the family and passed

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that on to my mom, who together with my dad, they became like a team when they were building houses.

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She would go out and find all of the plants to save and,

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together they they created she create she would she knew all the native plants

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from Georgia the native azaleas,

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those would think were things that she would mark even in our own property she

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was very good about that and we had this beautiful,

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all of the beautiful plants that she would find and plant and that's what she

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gave to me and kind of passed down this real appreciation for how to care for things and,

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how to preserve that.

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She and my dad were very good about that and it gave me a real love for Georgia. Okay.

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Why is Daughters of the Dust one of your favorite movies?

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You know, I said I got very lucky about some of the professors that I had at

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the University of Georgia.

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They created, they didn't have filmmaking at that time at the University of

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Georgia. And they created a degree for me, an interdisciplinary studies degree.

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Richard Newport was the film studies professor there.

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And this was one of the very first films that I saw.

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And Daughters of the Dust was I mean it actually touches on a lot of the things

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that I just talked about with my own grandparents and sort of that ancestral passing on but this was,

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you know the special space and

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it and it was about Georgia Gullah Geechee culture and like and also about,

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women, too, and passing on these very special kind of,

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preserving pieces of.

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What makes culture unique and kind of keeping these things precious.

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It made an impression on me, I think because I was also just so young and just

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coming into filmmaking, too, and seeing what representation can do.

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And new ideas, but also bringing different ideas to the screen and how important

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that was. That was something that was really impressed upon us.

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And it opened up a lot of,

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together with a lot of Spike Lee films, Martin Scorsese films,

00:21:49.061 --> 00:21:53.287
like seeing these things that touched in me,

00:21:53.664 --> 00:21:59.440
stuff that felt familiar, but seeing it on a big screen, it was, this is very important.

00:21:59.771 --> 00:22:04.603
And I know that sounds kind of trite, but this is why this matters.

00:22:04.603 --> 00:22:09.882
It's because it's so big, and because it feels familiar to me,

00:22:10.190 --> 00:22:15.723
we can't just keep seeing the same things over and over and over again.

00:22:15.723 --> 00:22:24.308
We have to be representing things that feel familiar to all different kinds of people.

00:22:25.776 --> 00:22:30.983
And so when I, and seeing films that were by Scorsese, and because it spoke

00:22:30.983 --> 00:22:34.042
to me, then I could relate to things that must feel

00:22:34.332 --> 00:22:38.843
familiar to people who see a Spike Lee film and it feels familiar to Spike Lee,

00:22:38.843 --> 00:22:44.153
you know, fans of Spike Lee or people who are Black, and then they can relate to that.

00:22:44.607 --> 00:22:50.593
Or like when there is a mishmash of culture and everybody can relate to that,

00:22:50.593 --> 00:22:56.179
then you can see, like I'm not from New York, but I can see how everybody is relating to each other.

00:22:56.474 --> 00:22:59.254
Then there's a little bit that everybody can take from this.

00:22:59.672 --> 00:23:06.523
That's really important, too. So all of this kind of spoke to me in a very deep

00:23:06.523 --> 00:23:13.262
way that kind of changed how I was relating to film in a fundamental way. Yeah.

00:23:13.894 --> 00:23:17.650
Yeah. Spike might have been too familiar. I remember when School Days came out.

00:23:18.331 --> 00:23:23.358
And I probably, I'd been out of college about maybe four years at that point.

00:23:23.717 --> 00:23:26.023
And I was like, Spike, what are you doing?

00:23:27.329 --> 00:23:30.966
Now our parents know what we were doing on college. What's going on,

00:23:30.966 --> 00:23:33.267
man? Why would you put that out there? You know?

00:23:33.909 --> 00:23:37.036
He had an interesting way of writing things. And he would write things with

00:23:37.036 --> 00:23:40.277
his sister. And I remember watching Crooklyn and my aunt had just died.

00:23:41.955 --> 00:23:45.596
And there were also good questions, too, that these films would bring up about

00:23:45.596 --> 00:23:47.121
who should be writing things.

00:23:47.638 --> 00:23:51.647
And those were good questions too right like,

00:23:52.286 --> 00:23:58.734
and and i liked the way that we talked about the questions of like who should be writing what,

00:23:59.250 --> 00:24:05.106
and and that was good too like we should be having these this discourse about

00:24:05.106 --> 00:24:07.692
it which bled into when i got the job with

00:24:07.982 --> 00:24:11.856
full frame film festival it was it was fantastic because then everybody could

00:24:11.856 --> 00:24:14.716
discuss this there wasn't necessarily a right or wrong answer,

00:24:14.716 --> 00:24:16.492
but we should at least be talking,

00:24:17.009 --> 00:24:21.356
about big questions and then other questions that people were bringing up that

00:24:21.356 --> 00:24:22.651
maybe we hadn't thought about.

00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:28.076
So yeah, I like this. Spike was not afraid to, he's never afraid to push it.

00:24:28.076 --> 00:24:29.066
Like, that's great. Yeah.

00:24:29.993 --> 00:24:33.426
Have you had a chance to meet the director of Daughters of the Dust,

00:24:33.426 --> 00:24:36.501
Julie Dash? No, I have not. No.

00:24:36.681 --> 00:24:38.446
You know, she teaches at Spelman now.

00:24:39.247 --> 00:24:42.256
Oh, really? Yeah. I think I read that recently and I was like,

00:24:42.256 --> 00:24:44.715
oh, this is, yeah, Yeah, that would be nice, yeah.

00:24:44.971 --> 00:24:47.728
Yeah, I'm trying to meet it myself.

00:24:48.014 --> 00:24:52.256
So you came awfully close to winning your legislative race in 2020.

00:24:52.886 --> 00:24:57.643
Why have you decided to stay in the advocacy lane and not pursue political office again?

00:24:59.073 --> 00:25:04.556
Yeah, it's a great question. And we did. We came super close.

00:25:04.556 --> 00:25:05.861
And I always say, you know...

00:25:07.329 --> 00:25:11.635
Losing was a great thing that happened to me because one, sometimes you have

00:25:11.635 --> 00:25:21.209
to, I don't want to say that it was a failure because there were so many wins within a loss.

00:25:23.905 --> 00:25:27.425
When you're running for office, though, it's a very public thing and it's really

00:25:27.425 --> 00:25:30.013
hard to have to say, oh my gosh, I lost my race.

00:25:30.443 --> 00:25:37.757
But it did open up like a lot of doors for me in terms of advocacy and doing other things.

00:25:38.742 --> 00:25:42.975
And it's it's this is a great question that you're asking me because I've been

00:25:42.975 --> 00:25:45.782
reflecting on things like this recently.

00:25:46.805 --> 00:25:50.821
I am on the board of Winless now, and I get to help other candidates.

00:25:53.700 --> 00:25:58.485
Women candidates, and helping them with their candidacy and their campaigns

00:25:58.485 --> 00:26:02.565
and kind of bringing what I learned to other candidates.

00:26:03.825 --> 00:26:08.135
That's been so rewarding for me. I don't know that I would have been able to

00:26:08.135 --> 00:26:10.803
do that without the campaign that I ran.

00:26:11.117 --> 00:26:15.044
I learned a lot about myself in that race.

00:26:15.492 --> 00:26:22.599
I learned about just how races are run in that race and just politics in general,

00:26:22.814 --> 00:26:24.834
which was kind of eye-opening too.

00:26:25.322 --> 00:26:28.435
It was not an easy race. It was really, really rough. And it was during the

00:26:28.435 --> 00:26:32.642
pandemic, which was like in its own kind of bubble.

00:26:33.315 --> 00:26:40.355
But getting to do the work that I do now is also very much relational.

00:26:40.355 --> 00:26:42.943
It's one-on-one a lot of times.

00:26:44.250 --> 00:26:48.515
And it's very, very, I've gotten to learn about a lot of things.

00:26:48.515 --> 00:26:53.005
I don't know that I would be learning if, of course, I would be doing something

00:26:53.005 --> 00:26:56.133
very different if I were running for office again.

00:26:56.533 --> 00:27:00.841
I never say never, so I'm not going to say that I'll never run for office again.

00:27:01.218 --> 00:27:04.655
But Danielle Bell is running for that seat now. She's doing great.

00:27:04.655 --> 00:27:09.633
And it's been nice to also be advising her and talking to her about her race.

00:27:10.004 --> 00:27:18.109
So things have changed. And I have truly loved the work that I've gotten to do since then.

00:27:18.690 --> 00:27:23.928
And so it's been very rewarding to be doing something else.

00:27:24.352 --> 00:27:26.838
And so we'll see what the future holds. Yeah.

00:27:27.442 --> 00:27:31.595
So campaigning in 2020, I don't know if you've ever seen this meme where the

00:27:31.595 --> 00:27:34.703
two dogs are talking to each other from a distance.

00:27:35.260 --> 00:27:38.093
And the dog's like, hey, what's your name?

00:27:38.817 --> 00:27:43.886
Tony, what's your name? Tony and Frank. That was kind of like campaigning in

00:27:43.886 --> 00:27:46.726
2020. It's like you're right there at the driveway and say, hey,

00:27:47.866 --> 00:27:52.286
I'm so-and-so. I'm running for this. It's like, hey, okay, just leave it at the mailbox.

00:27:53.306 --> 00:27:59.268
2020 was kind of a tough year to be out there knocking on doors and campaigning and stuff.

00:27:59.902 --> 00:28:05.086
2020 was, I mean, like we came so close without being able to really knock doors.

00:28:05.086 --> 00:28:08.412
I think we might have knocked doors from a distance one time.

00:28:09.894 --> 00:28:14.656
I did a lot of phone calls, and everybody will tell you that it's won by door knocking.

00:28:14.656 --> 00:28:20.216
That's what you're seeing even in races where there's a Democrat challenging

00:28:20.216 --> 00:28:24.866
another Democrat. That's how you're winning early in the primaries is by knocking

00:28:24.866 --> 00:28:27.926
tons and tons of doors. That's not a secret.

00:28:28.486 --> 00:28:31.620
That's really how you do it is just getting out there.

00:28:32.125 --> 00:28:37.959
And what we were finding was that district in particular had been overlooked

00:28:38.244 --> 00:28:40.682
for so long, nobody's doors had been knocked.

00:28:41.146 --> 00:28:44.420
And they were so hungry for that kind of attention.

00:28:44.925 --> 00:28:49.236
We would have loved to have done that. And it was kind of a double-edged sword, right?

00:28:49.236 --> 00:28:53.976
You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, because it was the pandemic

00:28:53.976 --> 00:28:57.876
and nobody really knew what was going to happen.

00:28:57.876 --> 00:29:02.295
And you were getting the advice to not do that because it could really,

00:29:02.928 --> 00:29:06.475
really backfire. And of course, nobody wanted to spread anything.

00:29:06.910 --> 00:29:08.466
It was really difficult.

00:29:09.645 --> 00:29:16.006
And then we did raise a tremendous amount of money, especially for first-time

00:29:16.006 --> 00:29:18.040
candidate and especially during the pandemic.

00:29:19.163 --> 00:29:23.764
When people were not working. So we did a lot, a lot of stuff,

00:29:23.764 --> 00:29:30.600
but having to do things outside of door knocking made it even harder and more expensive.

00:29:30.942 --> 00:29:35.124
So I think we would have done great. We would have done just so,

00:29:35.124 --> 00:29:36.944
so good had we been able to door knock.

00:29:36.944 --> 00:29:41.534
But more importantly, it would have meant a lot to the district and to those

00:29:41.534 --> 00:29:47.514
people to see a face and to see somebody for a change and to put the name with

00:29:47.514 --> 00:29:51.173
the face and have those conversations. Yeah.

00:29:51.806 --> 00:29:55.274
Yeah. And then the other point you brought up about, you know,

00:29:55.274 --> 00:29:58.107
when about your reflections about running.

00:29:59.110 --> 00:30:00.858
All it takes is that you win once.

00:30:02.184 --> 00:30:07.638
I've lost more races than I've won, you know, but I messed around and got elected

00:30:08.038 --> 00:30:10.221
to a legislative spot in Mississippi.

00:30:10.871 --> 00:30:15.678
And, you know, I got to be a Democratic nominee twice for U.S. Senate.

00:30:16.265 --> 00:30:20.614
So it's like, so in Mississippi, it's kind of like, well, Erik Fleming is this

00:30:20.614 --> 00:30:21.689
guy, you know what I'm saying?

00:30:22.281 --> 00:30:24.318
And then it's like James Carvel.

00:30:24.915 --> 00:30:29.564
He only won two races out of all the races he's been a campaign manager for.

00:30:29.564 --> 00:30:33.283
He got a senator elected in Pennsylvania, and he got a president of the United States elected.

00:30:34.159 --> 00:30:38.801
And he's a legend, but he lost a lot more racist than he won.

00:30:38.801 --> 00:30:45.101
So like you said, losing an election is really, really educational because if

00:30:45.101 --> 00:30:50.119
you win right off the bat and you keep winning, you might get a little cocky,

00:30:50.595 --> 00:30:51.801
you might get a little overconfident.

00:30:51.801 --> 00:30:55.541
We had a guy in Illinois when I was growing up named Michael Bacallus,

00:30:56.232 --> 00:31:01.411
and that man never lost anything. If he ran for, if there was an office for

00:31:01.411 --> 00:31:03.935
picking up trash in Illinois, he would have won it, right?

00:31:04.510 --> 00:31:08.621
And then he turned around and ran for governor and got his brains beat out and

00:31:08.621 --> 00:31:10.953
he just disappeared. Right.

00:31:11.569 --> 00:31:15.751
So, and then there's some people that just went all the time.

00:31:15.751 --> 00:31:19.669
We got a guy in Mississippi, Tate Reeves. He's never lost an election.

00:31:20.311 --> 00:31:24.121
He got elected treasurer. Then he got elected lieutenant governor.

00:31:24.121 --> 00:31:25.448
He got to be elected governor.

00:31:25.796 --> 00:31:28.919
And even some Republicans that I was cool with back in the day,

00:31:29.638 --> 00:31:32.935
I said, what's this? What's the secret for Tate Reeves? I don't know.

00:31:34.081 --> 00:31:38.082
You know because if you met him you'd be like he's the what,

00:31:38.861 --> 00:31:43.161
you know i'm saying he's like he's like the nerd of the nerds right he's he's

00:31:43.161 --> 00:31:49.379
not even cool in the in the geek class but but he won everything he ran for

00:31:49.686 --> 00:31:52.780
and so politics is real strange like that,

00:31:53.661 --> 00:31:57.381
and i'm usually one of those people that just believe that if that's what you

00:31:57.381 --> 00:32:03.081
want to do keep pursuing it but you know i know life happens too.

00:32:03.081 --> 00:32:06.221
And, and, and you seem to be doing a good job being an advocate.

00:32:06.221 --> 00:32:09.651
So I don't want to take you away from that per se, but just,

00:32:09.651 --> 00:32:12.941
I'm glad that you're still contemplating. I think that's the word.

00:32:14.141 --> 00:32:21.021
Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I, for somebody like me, who is, it was hard for me

00:32:21.441 --> 00:32:24.620
to, to say yes to running, but,

00:32:25.699 --> 00:32:30.578
The minority leader at the time asked me to run, and you don't really say no to that.

00:32:31.487 --> 00:32:37.291
But the fear of failure was what was keeping me from saying yes.

00:32:37.773 --> 00:32:43.358
I did say yes because I did not want to fail, but that was the best thing to

00:32:43.358 --> 00:32:46.734
happen to me. That's what I say. And I am a risk taker.

00:32:47.176 --> 00:32:52.048
I'm a high achiever, but I am a risk taker, which is, you know,

00:32:52.048 --> 00:32:53.983
I think those two things are tied.

00:32:54.401 --> 00:32:58.178
And so that's why I don't say like, we can say that I failed.

00:32:58.178 --> 00:33:00.328
That's fine. I accept that.

00:33:00.572 --> 00:33:03.278
But I'm also good now with saying, you know what?

00:33:04.431 --> 00:33:09.928
It's good to make mistakes. You should embrace mistakes. You should, even if you fail.

00:33:10.242 --> 00:33:14.050
And that is my attitude is what's the worst that could happen?

00:33:14.450 --> 00:33:17.888
You know, like what's the worst? Okay, so I lost the race, right?

00:33:17.888 --> 00:33:22.159
And I don't mean to be glib about that, but you need to learn from things.

00:33:22.484 --> 00:33:26.778
And you can't, okay, some people can win. You gave an example of some people

00:33:26.778 --> 00:33:28.864
who can win all the time. That's great, good for them.

00:33:29.299 --> 00:33:33.815
But I felt like the learning experience of that really served me well.

00:33:34.396 --> 00:33:40.664
Clearly, I am still here. The world keeps turning and if I can make something

00:33:40.780 --> 00:33:43.375
of that, that's the best thing.

00:33:44.266 --> 00:33:47.008
I can look my kids in the eye and

00:33:47.008 --> 00:33:52.998
I keep moving forward and I do feel like there's more for me after this.

00:33:53.358 --> 00:33:57.318
So that's what I keep kind of, and that's what I tell other candidates is,

00:33:57.318 --> 00:34:01.028
hey, listen, if you don't win this, that's okay. Because you know what,

00:34:01.028 --> 00:34:06.738
guess what? In two years, there's another damn race after this. So you'll be good.

00:34:08.414 --> 00:34:13.435
Yeah. All right. So a little bit, what is the Athena Coalition?

00:34:14.189 --> 00:34:22.443
Athena Coalition. actually grew out of challenging Amazon originally and sort

00:34:22.443 --> 00:34:26.893
of the stranglehold that Amazon has over.

00:34:26.893 --> 00:34:31.340
And it's grown since then, but, you know, in its originations,

00:34:31.845 --> 00:34:35.963
how Amazon was treating workers, the stranglehold it had over the marketplace.

00:34:35.963 --> 00:34:44.440
And as Amazon has continued to grow and it has become more of big tech now, and a monopoly,

00:34:45.279 --> 00:34:53.393
with other big tech companies, Amazon Coalition has kind of extended its reach into data centers.

00:34:53.393 --> 00:35:01.673
And that's where my role comes in, into challenging the data centers now in big tech. And I'm,

00:35:02.839 --> 00:35:08.761
the displacement of self-determination within our communities and allowing our

00:35:08.761 --> 00:35:13.651
communities to determine how they are going to decide their futures and kind

00:35:13.651 --> 00:35:17.601
of trying to return the power structure back to,

00:35:18.301 --> 00:35:22.570
from elected officials and really big tech,

00:35:23.354 --> 00:35:29.931
saying what direction we're going to go with our resources, the marketplace.

00:35:31.468 --> 00:35:34.996
And the future of our communities.

00:35:35.327 --> 00:35:42.501
And this is how I was working with Georgia Conservation Voters at a statewide

00:35:42.501 --> 00:35:47.481
and policy and electoral level. And now this is more of a regional and national

00:35:47.481 --> 00:35:49.251
reach with Athena Coalition.

00:35:49.898 --> 00:35:54.372
Yeah. So what is the deal with these data centers and why are they taking over the country?

00:35:57.306 --> 00:36:03.401
Well, the data centers are focusing, you know, first it started in Virginia

00:36:03.401 --> 00:36:05.384
and their reach has kind of grown.

00:36:05.842 --> 00:36:16.192
And it's an AI and security focus, but they have kind of lasered in on states that have,

00:36:16.941 --> 00:36:25.666
resources like water and plentiful energy, cheap plentiful energy and tax incentives.

00:36:26.347 --> 00:36:30.091
Well as fiber optics like the internet so

00:36:30.496 --> 00:36:35.581
they're coming to places where they can get this in abundance and for cheap

00:36:35.581 --> 00:36:42.241
so Georgia is one of those states where they're coming so that they can continue to to

00:36:42.661 --> 00:36:46.847
monopolize that space and kind of,

00:36:47.450 --> 00:36:52.932
my read is convince people that this is a necessity and.

00:36:53.843 --> 00:36:59.229
That's not really the case. And these are businesses.

00:36:59.710 --> 00:37:06.389
These are billion-dollar corporations that don't necessarily need these kinds

00:37:06.389 --> 00:37:11.361
of incentives to be operating in this way.

00:37:12.061 --> 00:37:16.999
Yeah, I agree with you on that, you know, about the tax incentives.

00:37:16.999 --> 00:37:19.425
And that was something we always had to deal with.

00:37:19.799 --> 00:37:24.929
But I was just telling somebody the other day about when I was in and Nissan

00:37:24.929 --> 00:37:30.250
showed up in Mississippi and they were giving away everything.

00:37:30.895 --> 00:37:37.602
And even to the point where they weren't even going to pay taxes in the local school district.

00:37:38.084 --> 00:37:41.889
And that's where the Black Caucus led by the representative from the county

00:37:41.889 --> 00:37:43.029
where it was being built.

00:37:43.633 --> 00:37:48.585
Well, we got we we got them at least to commit like a million dollars a year

00:37:48.926 --> 00:37:51.839
to the school district. You know, you've got to give us something.

00:37:51.839 --> 00:37:55.330
I mean, you're building the largest plant in North America and the kids.

00:37:55.632 --> 00:37:58.729
That's the way my man said it. He said, right. What about the kids?

00:37:58.729 --> 00:38:01.483
The kids not going to get new books and you got this big plant.

00:38:02.579 --> 00:38:09.119
So, you know, we we it's always a challenge to try to bring industry into a

00:38:09.119 --> 00:38:12.749
state because they they basically want to extort you.

00:38:12.749 --> 00:38:15.639
And that's what I call it. It's extortion. It's like, well, we don't want to

00:38:15.639 --> 00:38:17.765
pay any taxes at all. It's like, well, hold on.

00:38:18.096 --> 00:38:21.394
And then if you give them, we had a Frito-Lay plant in Jackson,

00:38:21.394 --> 00:38:25.524
Mississippi, and their incentive, I think, was like for 20 years.

00:38:26.429 --> 00:38:30.079
And the very day that that tax incentive incentive was over,

00:38:30.079 --> 00:38:33.559
that plant was closed and they had moved those jobs somewhere else.

00:38:33.559 --> 00:38:38.999
And so that's that's to me is is always a big problem, whether it's data centers

00:38:38.999 --> 00:38:43.055
or warehouses or whatever you want to do. It's like.

00:38:43.918 --> 00:38:47.436
The whole reason why you're here, and we could have a whole nother podcast about

00:38:47.436 --> 00:38:51.052
tax incentives, but I mean, that to me is a problem.

00:38:51.395 --> 00:38:53.726
Then the other thing, when you were laying out the criteria,

00:38:53.726 --> 00:38:57.956
I was like, is Georgia a state that has abundant water sources?

00:38:57.956 --> 00:39:01.586
Because it seems like every other year we got a drought going on.

00:39:01.586 --> 00:39:04.926
You know what I'm saying? So, I mean, you're exactly right. Now,

00:39:04.926 --> 00:39:09.146
in the examples that you gave, Nissan and Frito-Lay, they actually give jobs, right?

00:39:09.471 --> 00:39:14.736
Like, those are plants that have workers in them. I'm going to say the difference

00:39:14.736 --> 00:39:18.736
with a data center is it's less jobs than a McDonald's. Nobody works in these.

00:39:19.143 --> 00:39:26.096
So what's being promised is mega facility, acres and acres, right?

00:39:26.665 --> 00:39:32.717
The tens of thousands of square feet that are going to fundamentally change

00:39:33.036 --> 00:39:36.786
what a community looks like. And they're preying on disadvantaged communities,

00:39:36.786 --> 00:39:40.942
tier one districts that are already hurting.

00:39:41.250 --> 00:39:47.293
So they're going to come in and make promises to a community that needs something

00:39:47.653 --> 00:39:50.486
you're exactly right that georgia,

00:39:51.014 --> 00:39:55.336
is and that's the irony here georgia is not water rich and you know if you've

00:39:55.386 --> 00:40:01.056
lived here for any amount of time yes we do have droughts but we have also fought

00:40:01.056 --> 00:40:04.772
for our water They're famously called the water wars.

00:40:05.915 --> 00:40:16.227
And so those two determining factors there, we do not have a lot of water here.

00:40:16.796 --> 00:40:21.278
Typically, data centers tap into municipal sources. They tap into.

00:40:22.497 --> 00:40:29.641
And they're using aquifers too. And so this is going to be without like a lot

00:40:29.641 --> 00:40:34.371
of coordinated oversight. We are going to be in a situation.

00:40:34.959 --> 00:40:40.264
The other resource that is typically quoted is land, plentiful land.

00:40:40.635 --> 00:40:47.711
And so as they're moving out from the metro and the typical counties where they

00:40:47.711 --> 00:40:54.621
have been placed, They're going into rural areas and buying up a lot of land.

00:40:54.621 --> 00:40:59.496
At this point, it's now becoming speculative because just like with,

00:41:00.048 --> 00:41:03.711
if you remember, like right before the housing boom, that was also becoming

00:41:03.711 --> 00:41:09.547
speculative. We have lived through a lot of these scenarios and they were not great.

00:41:10.116 --> 00:41:16.716
Um and so the lessons that need to be learned from those previous scenarios are not,

00:41:17.363 --> 00:41:23.371
really being where it's like we we've erased the history and are not going back

00:41:23.371 --> 00:41:26.274
to those books and and saying but wait a minute,

00:41:27.086 --> 00:41:32.041
we we did this already don't you remember all those pipes sticking up from all

00:41:32.041 --> 00:41:38.371
those neighborhoods in 2008 that went bust that took a really long time to come back from.

00:41:38.371 --> 00:41:44.165
And a lot of people lost their businesses, their homes, their neighborhoods. Like that was not great.

00:41:45.941 --> 00:41:52.241
This is going to happen again. So Georgia did a lot.

00:41:53.260 --> 00:41:59.171
Ted Turner, the Olympics, all of that really put us in this position because

00:41:59.171 --> 00:42:02.501
that's what built up this great fiber optic network,

00:42:03.261 --> 00:42:09.201
to bring the data centers here today, that's part and parcel of what makes us

00:42:09.201 --> 00:42:12.495
attractive to the data centers today.

00:42:14.872 --> 00:42:19.516
It does need to be something that our representatives are speaking up against

00:42:19.945 --> 00:42:25.410
and listening to the locals, because that's what's happening now is in these

00:42:25.410 --> 00:42:27.438
counties, people are actually showing up,

00:42:27.914 --> 00:42:31.519
to county commission meetings, which you know doesn't typically happen.

00:42:31.850 --> 00:42:36.627
But now they're showing up in force and saying, we don't want this,

00:42:37.016 --> 00:42:40.940
because to your point, like the schools are suffering.

00:42:41.352 --> 00:42:46.860
We do not have hospitals in rural areas. Half of our counties don't have OBGYNs.

00:42:46.860 --> 00:42:50.891
We've had a lot of rural hospitals close over the past 10 years.

00:42:51.890 --> 00:42:57.409
We don't have the other resources that have been neglected.

00:42:58.134 --> 00:43:04.804
And for data centers to be coming in and getting incentives on top of this,

00:43:05.466 --> 00:43:08.966
and just sort of the frosting to all of this.

00:43:09.396 --> 00:43:14.731
They are businesses. They are subscriber services. We order things from Amazon.

00:43:15.480 --> 00:43:21.180
We're basically lining their pockets so that they can get these subsidies.

00:43:21.679 --> 00:43:25.040
And it's insult to injury.

00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:32.650
So we're relying on electives to start putting the hammer down and setting up

00:43:32.650 --> 00:43:34.198
some guidelines and saying,

00:43:35.104 --> 00:43:41.983
unless you do this, you cannot come because these again are mega facilities

00:43:42.290 --> 00:43:46.290
that pound out pollution. They pound out noise.

00:43:46.522 --> 00:43:51.909
These communities have to listen to this 24 seven. Once it's there, it's there.

00:43:52.205 --> 00:43:54.638
Those property values sink.

00:43:55.584 --> 00:44:01.705
And so, again, that self-determination factor, those communities need a voice

00:44:01.705 --> 00:44:04.663
in those decisions that are being made. Yeah.

00:44:05.262 --> 00:44:11.285
I kept, when you said that last line, I kept thinking, I was thinking about

00:44:11.285 --> 00:44:16.865
the color purple and see what it's like, until you do right by me, right? Yeah.

00:44:17.565 --> 00:44:23.821
I think that's kind of a mindset that legislators should take on these issues.

00:44:24.396 --> 00:44:26.648
All right. So I got a couple more questions. Okay.

00:44:27.273 --> 00:44:31.845
You once said representation is a two-way streak. Many people think they've

00:44:31.845 --> 00:44:37.370
done this civic duty by checking the box and voting, but really that's the beginning of the process.

00:44:37.782 --> 00:44:41.815
There's a through line, which is following those people who have been elected

00:44:41.815 --> 00:44:46.485
into office and engaging with them on key legislation and laws you think need

00:44:46.485 --> 00:44:50.553
to be written on what you want them to be doing for you.

00:44:51.041 --> 00:44:56.271
Voting is the start of the process. That building, the state capitol, that's our building.

00:44:56.672 --> 00:44:59.394
We all belong there. We all have a voice there.

00:45:00.143 --> 00:45:06.558
So my question to you is, what more can be done to get all Georgians engaged in politics?

00:45:07.707 --> 00:45:14.975
Well, you know, I think that this goes back to sort of those beginnings in filmmaking,

00:45:14.975 --> 00:45:19.175
because I think people seeing people who look like them,

00:45:19.866 --> 00:45:26.566
in the people's house would really help for people to be more welcome there.

00:45:27.151 --> 00:45:34.290
I think people are surprised. Nine times out of ten, what I've heard is, I can go there?

00:45:34.894 --> 00:45:38.046
Yeah. Yeah. This is for all of us.

00:45:38.302 --> 00:45:42.185
It's actually where we all belong, but it's such an intimidating place,

00:45:43.072 --> 00:45:47.135
it doesn't feel like it. And that's because it really wasn't.

00:45:48.070 --> 00:45:52.218
I hate to say this, it really wasn't built for all of us, but that does need

00:45:52.218 --> 00:45:55.278
to change because truly it is for all of us.

00:45:55.278 --> 00:46:01.015
And part of being on the board of WinList and part of working in elections is

00:46:01.270 --> 00:46:05.828
electing people of, you know, a lot of times in campaigns when I'm working with

00:46:05.828 --> 00:46:08.876
people, they're saying, well, I'm just a mother of four.

00:46:09.120 --> 00:46:13.503
And that's awesome. That is terrific because I don't know a better project manager

00:46:13.816 --> 00:46:16.167
than a mother of four. You're going to be great.

00:46:16.804 --> 00:46:22.358
I listen to a lot of people and they're talking about their work in all kinds

00:46:22.358 --> 00:46:24.348
of different things. And I'm like, you're going to be terrific.

00:46:24.949 --> 00:46:27.898
We haven't had somebody elected in that field.

00:46:28.708 --> 00:46:35.380
The amount of legislation that's passing through these committees covers all kinds of things.

00:46:35.642 --> 00:46:41.608
And it cannot just be people who are retired, lawyers, or the typical people

00:46:41.608 --> 00:46:44.401
who have been elected over and over and over.

00:46:44.686 --> 00:46:51.292
There has to be a variety of voices down at the Capitol to represent everybody.

00:46:51.553 --> 00:46:55.968
If you've been unable to pay your bills at some point, you should probably get

00:46:55.968 --> 00:46:59.907
elected so that people can understand what that feels like.

00:47:00.266 --> 00:47:05.368
You know, like there needs to be a lot of different voices down there so that

00:47:05.368 --> 00:47:09.878
they can understand what ratepayer protections should really look like.

00:47:10.459 --> 00:47:17.368
And that's my true I think once we start getting a little bit of the entire

00:47:17.368 --> 00:47:20.578
state represented, it's going to make a very big difference.

00:47:20.578 --> 00:47:26.387
And people will really start saying, that guy, yeah, that, because that's just like...

00:47:27.159 --> 00:47:30.976
That's just like watching Goodfellas and saying, that sounds,

00:47:30.976 --> 00:47:35.383
wow, that pasta sauce looks just like when my grandma's making.

00:47:35.726 --> 00:47:39.993
Yeah, okay, that feels very familiar to me and I can relate to that part.

00:47:40.335 --> 00:47:44.584
Not all of it has to relate to you, but I can relate to that part.

00:47:44.880 --> 00:47:48.253
That part of Crooklyn, I'm feeling that part.

00:47:48.497 --> 00:47:51.356
Maybe they're not of my family and they don't look exactly like me,

00:47:51.356 --> 00:47:53.332
but I can relate to that part.

00:47:53.686 --> 00:47:59.486
And that's what, to me, representation should really kind of feel like.

00:47:59.486 --> 00:48:04.268
It's not going to be every single piece of legislation or every bill, but that part.

00:48:04.813 --> 00:48:08.220
Because this is a very big state with a lot of tensions.

00:48:09.163 --> 00:48:13.749
And a lot of people, and we come from everywhere. We come from different states.

00:48:14.080 --> 00:48:18.576
Some of us have been born here, but that is representation to me.

00:48:19.214 --> 00:48:23.731
And I think people need to know the other side of that is that you belong here.

00:48:24.242 --> 00:48:29.638
You know, whether you want to be sitting at a committee or whether you just

00:48:29.638 --> 00:48:32.156
want to come and visit, you belong here.

00:48:32.597 --> 00:48:36.742
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just so many when you, you know, just talking about that,

00:48:37.288 --> 00:48:43.318
I just remember like when we would have, I remember we were trying to kill an

00:48:43.318 --> 00:48:51.288
amendment about making hunting a constitutional right in the state of Mississippi.

00:48:51.288 --> 00:48:55.908
And I don't hunt, but, you know, it was like, so I leaned into all my,

00:48:55.908 --> 00:48:59.408
you know, colleagues that did hunt. I even borrowed one of my colleagues hunting

00:48:59.408 --> 00:49:03.047
license to speak against the bill, right? And demonstrate some things.

00:49:03.874 --> 00:49:07.878
So it's important to have people from, we were dealing with some in the funeral

00:49:07.878 --> 00:49:12.348
business. I had some knowledge, but not, you know, the whole process.

00:49:12.348 --> 00:49:15.478
So it was like, hey, man, you own a funeral home. What does this look like?

00:49:16.038 --> 00:49:21.911
How's this going by? So it helps not only the constituents, but it helps the

00:49:22.137 --> 00:49:27.078
actual legislators to have a diverse group of people where you can lean on other

00:49:27.078 --> 00:49:29.988
folks' expertise and personal experiences and stuff.

00:49:29.988 --> 00:49:36.198
So I think that is good to continue to diversify, not just because when people

00:49:36.198 --> 00:49:40.113
say diversify, it's like, oh, we got to have more women, more black folks, all this kind of stuff.

00:49:40.426 --> 00:49:47.056
Now, you need people that are just as ordinary as possible, but they have a certain skill set.

00:49:47.253 --> 00:49:50.928
You know what I'm saying? If we're talking about building, you might need a

00:49:50.928 --> 00:49:56.315
few construction workers, you know, construction company owners in the legislature to just to,

00:49:57.042 --> 00:50:01.138
have a resource that you can tap into before you make this vote that's going

00:50:01.138 --> 00:50:03.363
to impact the state one way or the other. Right.

00:50:03.955 --> 00:50:06.562
I agree. I agree with that.

00:50:07.432 --> 00:50:11.292
All right, let's close it out with this challenge. Oh, go ahead.

00:50:11.672 --> 00:50:15.128
Finish this sentence. I have hope because.

00:50:16.167 --> 00:50:18.605
Oh, so many things.

00:50:21.049 --> 00:50:26.967
I have hope because at least once a day.

00:50:29.477 --> 00:50:42.389
There is someone that I need to come across who is the reason for that day.

00:50:42.749 --> 00:50:52.692
I mean, who has a story that makes me reflect and gives me hope.

00:50:54.024 --> 00:50:59.172
Insight and actually makes me smile and say,

00:51:00.484 --> 00:51:04.118
that was it that that was the connection,

00:51:05.097 --> 00:51:12.915
and that does give me hope because I think that it is those connections,

00:51:13.751 --> 00:51:19.424
we may never see each other again but the connection with somebody even if we're

00:51:19.424 --> 00:51:26.824
only a moment is what is sustaining to me and giving me hope. Yeah.

00:51:27.642 --> 00:51:33.674
Yeah. All right. Connie Di Cicco, if people want to get in touch with you,

00:51:33.674 --> 00:51:37.204
if people want to find out more about the Athena Coalition and the work they're

00:51:37.204 --> 00:51:38.316
doing, how can they do that?

00:51:39.640 --> 00:51:46.466
You can reach me at Connie at athena4all.org.

00:51:47.216 --> 00:51:47.686
Okay.

00:51:48.539 --> 00:51:52.764
All right. Well, Connie, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

00:51:53.060 --> 00:51:57.844
This has been a real, real enjoyable conversation. And, you know,

00:51:57.844 --> 00:52:02.944
I'm not really the smartest person in the room, but I do have a propensity to

00:52:02.944 --> 00:52:07.079
find people who are really interesting and are really doing some good work.

00:52:07.565 --> 00:52:11.304
And I'm really glad that you accepted my invitation to come on.

00:52:11.902 --> 00:52:16.564
And part of my rule is that once you've been on, you have an open invitation

00:52:16.564 --> 00:52:18.714
to come back. You don't even have to wait for me to tell you,

00:52:18.714 --> 00:52:20.321
just say, Erik, I need a platform.

00:52:20.954 --> 00:52:28.179
And we'll make sure that you get on. But again, I just wanna thank you for coming on the podcast.

00:52:28.754 --> 00:52:32.124
I cannot thank you enough. This has been such a delight for me.

00:52:32.124 --> 00:52:36.190
You are wonderful. Thank you so much. This was just terrific.

00:52:36.732 --> 00:52:38.307
All right, guys, and we're gonna catch y'all.

00:52:58.488 --> 00:53:03.567
All right, and we are back. And so it's time for my next guest, Sia Henry.

00:53:04.221 --> 00:53:09.227
Sia Henry is a Black attorney, racial justice activist, and abolitionist who

00:53:09.227 --> 00:53:12.952
has spent over a decade in the criminal legal system reform space.

00:53:13.550 --> 00:53:16.992
Sia is the founder and executive director of the Hood Exchange,

00:53:17.404 --> 00:53:21.114
where she is introducing formerly incarcerated Black communities,

00:53:21.742 --> 00:53:26.687
to international travel throughout the African diaspora, creating opportunities

00:53:26.687 --> 00:53:31.523
for folks to connect with their history and begin to heal from racism and trauma.

00:53:32.118 --> 00:53:37.197
She is also the Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary

00:53:37.197 --> 00:53:39.937
Association for Psychedelic Studies,

00:53:40.529 --> 00:53:45.007
where she is working to ensure Black, Indigenous, and other communities have

00:53:45.007 --> 00:53:48.906
meaningful access to transformative healing experiences.

00:53:49.521 --> 00:53:54.694
Sia previously worked with the Restorative Justice Project at Impact Justice,

00:53:55.041 --> 00:54:00.480
supporting community-based organizations and criminal legal system partners around the country.

00:54:01.150 --> 00:54:05.805
In establishing pre-charged restorative justice diversion programs that,

00:54:06.229 --> 00:54:11.317
without relying on prosecution or incarceration, bring those who have caused

00:54:11.317 --> 00:54:16.016
and been impacted by harm into healing and accountability processes.

00:54:16.479 --> 00:54:19.886
She also spent a number of years doing conditions of confinement work,

00:54:20.299 --> 00:54:25.267
engaging in impact litigation and training to improve conditions for incarcerated

00:54:25.267 --> 00:54:30.086
people with physical and developmental disabilities and mental health issues

00:54:30.440 --> 00:54:33.575
and those most at risk of sexualized violence.

00:54:33.958 --> 00:54:37.946
She graduated from Harvard Law School and Duke University.

00:54:38.393 --> 00:54:39.967
Ladies and gentlemen, it is

00:54:39.967 --> 00:54:44.958
my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Sia K.

00:54:56.623 --> 00:54:59.966
All right. See you, Henry. How are you doing?

00:55:00.559 --> 00:55:04.695
I'm great. How are you? I'm doing fine, sister. Doing fine. I'm really,

00:55:04.695 --> 00:55:06.439
really honored to have you to come on.

00:55:08.802 --> 00:55:11.575
There was something that you were doing that caught my attention,

00:55:11.575 --> 00:55:13.730
and I found out you were doing some other stuff.

00:55:14.183 --> 00:55:19.675
So I said, oh, this is going to be a good interview. So I usually start my interviews

00:55:19.675 --> 00:55:22.075
off with a couple of icebreaking exercises.

00:55:23.164 --> 00:55:27.240
So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.

00:55:27.829 --> 00:55:31.205
And the quote is, if you know where

00:55:31.205 --> 00:55:35.405
you came from, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

00:55:36.338 --> 00:55:40.325
Yeah. So that, I believe, is James Baldwin. And it's actually on a,

00:55:40.795 --> 00:55:46.362
I believe it's on the, the quote is on the landing page for my organization, the HUD Exchange.

00:55:47.074 --> 00:55:52.947
And the idea being that, you know, oftentimes so many of us are very limited,

00:55:53.516 --> 00:55:58.253
in what we believe is possible for ourselves, for our communities.

00:55:58.677 --> 00:56:02.615
And I think that part of the reason for that is because so many of us don't

00:56:02.615 --> 00:56:07.942
fully understand where we come from, who we come from, the wisdom,

00:56:08.354 --> 00:56:11.005
the resiliency, the greatness that we come from.

00:56:11.005 --> 00:56:14.205
And so that's really important. It's like that whole concept of Sankofa,

00:56:14.205 --> 00:56:18.753
right? The idea that you have to look backwards in order to be able to move forward.

00:56:19.286 --> 00:56:21.131
Yeah, that's cool.

00:56:22.775 --> 00:56:26.473
So the next icebreaker exercise is what I call 20 questions.

00:56:27.367 --> 00:56:31.423
So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20. Seven.

00:56:32.042 --> 00:56:36.805
Okay. What do you consider the best way to stay informed about politics,

00:56:36.805 --> 00:56:38.315
current events, health, etc.?

00:56:40.258 --> 00:56:44.738
Oh, this is a tricky one because I'm not good at this. Definitely not social

00:56:44.738 --> 00:56:47.925
media, most likely. I haven't been on social media in 13 years.

00:56:48.549 --> 00:56:53.488
I would say, I mean, the reality of it is that you're not going to be able to

00:56:53.488 --> 00:56:55.366
stay on top of every subject.

00:56:55.779 --> 00:57:00.048
And so I think that, you know, having, so at least I'll just speak for myself.

00:57:00.048 --> 00:57:02.138
What I do is I have an iPhone.

00:57:02.758 --> 00:57:06.668
IPhones have that built-in news app. So I tend to kind of scroll through that

00:57:06.668 --> 00:57:10.368
just to kind of get some highlights and have a general sense of what's happening in the world.

00:57:10.368 --> 00:57:13.414
And then for specific topics or issues that,

00:57:13.885 --> 00:57:17.678
are important to me that catch my eye, doing my own research,

00:57:17.678 --> 00:57:20.450
checking multiple sources, making sure that I'm not just,

00:57:20.844 --> 00:57:23.628
you know, getting all of my information from a single influencer,

00:57:23.628 --> 00:57:27.808
a single set of influencers or media or a single media outlet,

00:57:27.808 --> 00:57:29.268
really doing my own research.

00:57:29.651 --> 00:57:34.066
And, you know, anytime I hear something from someone or someone tells me something,

00:57:34.496 --> 00:57:38.098
I immediately Google it just to kind of fact check that information.

00:57:38.098 --> 00:57:42.618
Because I think that, you know, especially I'm a millennial and especially in

00:57:43.038 --> 00:57:48.216
this space that we're in where there's so much information and we're constantly surrounded

00:57:48.651 --> 00:57:52.638
by information and opinions, it can be kind of hard to really weed out what's

00:57:52.638 --> 00:57:54.752
true, what isn't, what's an opinion, what's a fact.

00:57:55.316 --> 00:57:56.918
So that's what I do.

00:57:59.316 --> 00:58:02.791
Tell the listeners about your journey to become an attorney,

00:58:02.942 --> 00:58:05.955
racial justice activist, and abolitionist.

00:58:07.122 --> 00:58:13.746
Sure. So I have always been really interested in why people do things.

00:58:13.746 --> 00:58:19.606
And I think that comes from a really deep sense of curiosity without judgment.

00:58:19.606 --> 00:58:23.786
And so, you know, in high school, for instance, I wrote a paper on serial killers

00:58:23.786 --> 00:58:33.626
because I was really interested in why certain people would engage in that level of harm and depravity.

00:58:33.626 --> 00:58:38.938
And so I went to college kind of debating between being a lawyer and a psychologist.

00:58:39.477 --> 00:58:43.656
And then I had, I believe it was a sociology class where I had a professor assign

00:58:43.656 --> 00:58:47.236
us a few chapters from Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.

00:58:47.236 --> 00:58:48.845
It's an amazing book. Everyone should read it.

00:58:49.633 --> 00:58:56.056
And really started to get a better understanding of the war on drugs and the

00:58:56.056 --> 00:58:58.696
reality that the war on drugs was not about drugs at all.

00:58:58.696 --> 00:59:03.086
It was really about criminalizing blackness and anti-warness.

00:59:03.086 --> 00:59:06.436
But obviously, you can't just legally do that. And so it was kind of a roundabout

00:59:06.436 --> 00:59:11.056
way of being able to criminalize especially black and brown folks.

00:59:11.056 --> 00:59:15.036
And so I began to learn how the U.S.

00:59:15.596 --> 00:59:19.466
Prison system really was born out of slavery. It was essentially our country's

00:59:19.466 --> 00:59:23.318
response to our supposed abolition of slavery.

00:59:23.829 --> 00:59:30.886
And at the same time, me being young, I had also befriended a number of people

00:59:30.886 --> 00:59:35.076
who were selling drugs throughout the state of North Carolina.

00:59:35.076 --> 00:59:36.596
I went to Duke University.

00:59:37.522 --> 00:59:41.112
In doing that, I'm hanging out with these people and seeing this really interesting

00:59:41.112 --> 00:59:44.812
discrepancy between how society talks about people who sell drugs,

00:59:44.812 --> 00:59:49.162
especially black men who sell drugs, and seeing that this is this discrepancy

00:59:49.162 --> 00:59:52.092
between that and the humanity that I was seeing in them.

00:59:52.092 --> 00:59:57.472
And that made me very interested in the war on drugs and ending the war on drugs.

00:59:57.472 --> 01:00:00.752
So I went straight through from undergrad to law school. I went to Harvard Law

01:00:00.752 --> 01:00:05.192
School, and my little 22-year-old self, I went to law school with this idea

01:00:05.192 --> 01:00:07.952
that I was going to end the war on drugs and get all the black people out of

01:00:07.952 --> 01:00:09.256
prison, and it was going to be fantastic.

01:00:10.039 --> 01:00:14.602
But then probably within two weeks of being in law school, I had a professor

01:00:14.602 --> 01:00:18.200
who said, there's morality, and then there's the law.

01:00:18.820 --> 01:00:22.502
And it was in that moment, I was like, oh, no, am I in the wrong place?

01:00:22.502 --> 01:00:25.342
This, you know, that doesn't sound right to me because our laws,

01:00:25.342 --> 01:00:30.732
our policies, any, you know, for any society should really be deeply rooted

01:00:30.732 --> 01:00:36.522
in our morals, our values, and a sense of care and concern for each other.

01:00:36.522 --> 01:00:40.633
And I essentially had this professor who was, you know, just very blatantly

01:00:40.917 --> 01:00:44.508
and truthfully acknowledged that that's not how our legal system is set up.

01:00:45.512 --> 01:00:51.132
So I became very disillusioned with the idea of practicing law and really kind

01:00:51.132 --> 01:00:55.552
of spent the rest of my time in law school trying to figure out how to not engage

01:00:55.552 --> 01:00:57.064
in the traditional practice of law.

01:00:57.343 --> 01:01:01.702
And thankfully, around that same time, I stumbled, I kind of just happened to

01:01:01.702 --> 01:01:03.833
go to a talk about restorative justice.

01:01:04.439 --> 01:01:10.042
And, you know, heard about the process, ended up doing an internship with one

01:01:10.042 --> 01:01:15.102
of the women who was on the panel, Sajjata Balada, who's a very well-known person

01:01:15.102 --> 01:01:16.490
in the restorative justice space.

01:01:17.065 --> 01:01:22.232
After law school, ended up moving to California to continue working with Siddhartha

01:01:22.232 --> 01:01:23.707
and the Resortive Justice Project.

01:01:24.585 --> 01:01:30.625
And what we were doing was we were essentially a national, a very small national

01:01:30.625 --> 01:01:32.785
training and technical assistance and support team.

01:01:32.785 --> 01:01:37.575
So we were supporting communities around the country, major cities,

01:01:37.575 --> 01:01:40.445
Philadelphia, Durham, Miami,

01:01:41.065 --> 01:01:44.858
Oakland, California, Richmond, L.A., supporting communities around the country,

01:01:45.374 --> 01:01:51.025
in establishing what we call restorative, pre-charged restorative justice diversion programs.

01:01:51.025 --> 01:01:57.005
And so we trained community-based organizations in facilitating restorative

01:01:57.005 --> 01:02:02.545
justice diversion processes and then also negotiated with DA's offices,

01:02:03.185 --> 01:02:09.145
prosecutor offices in those same communities to get them to agree to send cases to this program.

01:02:09.145 --> 01:02:14.035
And so what the programs looked like was they were for people engaging in serious

01:02:14.035 --> 01:02:17.264
harm in their communities, specifically for more serious types of harm,

01:02:17.717 --> 01:02:20.173
robbery, burglary, rape, assault.

01:02:20.959 --> 01:02:23.865
I don't know why I said rape. Rape would ideally be part of this,

01:02:23.865 --> 01:02:29.455
but none of the programs that we were advising at the time at least were dealing

01:02:29.455 --> 01:02:32.135
with that level of seriousness of offense.

01:02:32.135 --> 01:02:35.849
But anyway, so what the process would, how it would look was,

01:02:36.302 --> 01:02:40.675
let's say I robbed you, Erik. So instead of the DA's office charging me with

01:02:40.675 --> 01:02:45.295
robbery, they would send my case to the community-based organization that had

01:02:45.295 --> 01:02:46.728
been trained in the process.

01:02:47.309 --> 01:02:51.055
And then a team of facilitators, a pair of facilitators from that community-based

01:02:51.055 --> 01:02:54.806
organization would meet with me and then independently meet with you.

01:02:56.807 --> 01:03:01.015
And then also meet with our respective loved ones and make sure everyone's willing

01:03:01.015 --> 01:03:02.351
to participate in the process.

01:03:03.003 --> 01:03:06.533
Do a ton of prep work that can take either weeks or even months.

01:03:07.055 --> 01:03:10.865
And then once you and I were both completely ready and comfortable,

01:03:10.865 --> 01:03:15.115
we would then, the facilitators would then bring us all together for a conference.

01:03:15.515 --> 01:03:19.857
So the only people in that room, in that space, would be the facilitators,

01:03:20.304 --> 01:03:24.461
me, you, and then whoever we brought with us as our support system.

01:03:24.925 --> 01:03:28.965
So, and I'm really highlighting that because this wasn't about...

01:03:29.825 --> 01:03:36.405
About the system basically kind of stealing our ability to address and work

01:03:36.405 --> 01:03:38.575
through conflicts and accountability.

01:03:38.575 --> 01:03:44.025
So if you look at the traditional criminal legal system, in that same scenario,

01:03:44.425 --> 01:03:47.625
if I was arrested and prosecuted, the criminal case would be U.S.

01:03:47.625 --> 01:03:52.245
V. Henry, with my robbery against you being considered a robbery against the

01:03:52.245 --> 01:03:56.215
state, a harm against the state, as opposed to harm against you as an individual, as a human being.

01:03:56.848 --> 01:04:01.325
So at that conference, I would have a chance to apologize because I would have

01:04:01.325 --> 01:04:05.347
been prepped and coached in how to give a good apology.

01:04:06.001 --> 01:04:08.955
I would have a chance to apologize, explain why I did what I did.

01:04:09.373 --> 01:04:14.382
You would have a chance to explain how the robbery has impacted you, the resulting trauma.

01:04:14.741 --> 01:04:17.425
Our respected loved ones would also have a chance to speak. And then at the

01:04:17.425 --> 01:04:21.555
end of that conference, everyone in the room would collectively come up with

01:04:21.555 --> 01:04:26.265
a plan to support me in making things right to you, my family,

01:04:26.265 --> 01:04:28.163
my community, and also myself.

01:04:28.738 --> 01:04:32.125
And then as long as I complete that plan, usually within six months,

01:04:32.505 --> 01:04:33.725
no charges were ever filed.

01:04:34.374 --> 01:04:37.985
Processed significantly better than what our criminal legal system does.

01:04:40.323 --> 01:04:45.233
Tens of thousands of dollars cheaper, 90 plus percent victim or survivor satisfaction

01:04:45.233 --> 01:04:47.812
rate, significantly lower recidivism rates.

01:04:48.358 --> 01:04:50.633
Because if you think about it, it's really a process that, A,

01:04:50.633 --> 01:04:54.693
really centers the needs of the person harmed instead of the needs of the state,

01:04:54.693 --> 01:04:55.731
like I was saying before.

01:04:56.160 --> 01:04:59.873
But it's also something that we all know and already do instinctively.

01:04:59.873 --> 01:05:04.443
It's something that indigenous people and, you know, just people generally have

01:05:04.443 --> 01:05:10.453
done for centuries, right? We've all engaged in some type of harm in our lives.

01:05:10.453 --> 01:05:14.149
We've all caused harm, you know, different levels of seriousness.

01:05:14.741 --> 01:05:19.573
So what's the ideal? Ideally, what have we done, ideally, when we've caused

01:05:19.573 --> 01:05:22.160
harm, when we've hurt a friend, a family, a loved one?

01:05:22.292 --> 01:05:25.143
We apologize and we try to figure out how we can make it right.

01:05:25.560 --> 01:05:27.371
So it's essentially what this process is about.

01:05:28.025 --> 01:05:32.943
So my heart will always be with restorative justice diversion work.

01:05:33.343 --> 01:05:38.813
I think it's, you know, it's a process that, the model that we were training

01:05:38.813 --> 01:05:42.993
people in was based off of a model from New Zealand.

01:05:42.993 --> 01:05:48.123
So currently, New Zealand's entire juvenile legal system uses that approach,

01:05:48.123 --> 01:05:53.193
they call it family group conferencing, to address all youth harm.

01:05:53.193 --> 01:05:58.433
So to all, you know, crimes committed by young people, that is the default approach

01:05:58.433 --> 01:06:02.583
that New Zealand uses. And it's actually based off of their indigenous Maori,

01:06:03.143 --> 01:06:04.647
approaches to responding to harm.

01:06:05.610 --> 01:06:08.960
So that's the work I was doing for a number of years. And then it got to a point

01:06:08.960 --> 01:06:13.788
where I realized I really needed to get a better understanding of,

01:06:14.670 --> 01:06:18.287
the criminal legal system and what it was doing, what it looked like,

01:06:18.670 --> 01:06:23.360
as opposed to just kind of, you know, trying to create processes to replace

01:06:23.360 --> 01:06:26.983
the system without having a better understanding of what the system looked like.

01:06:27.424 --> 01:06:32.430
So I ended up spending a number of years doing prison and jail conditions of confinement work.

01:06:32.430 --> 01:06:39.333
So a lot of that was working at a law firm, a nonprofit law firm that was.

01:06:40.410 --> 01:06:43.545
It does the leading conditions of confinement work in the country.

01:06:44.287 --> 01:06:48.310
And so a lot of the lawsuits were class action lawsuits, for instance,

01:06:48.310 --> 01:06:53.360
against the California Department of Corrections on behalf of all incarcerated

01:06:53.360 --> 01:06:57.532
people in California state prisons with physical disabilities.

01:06:57.998 --> 01:07:00.989
So I think people in wheelchairs, people who are deaf or blind.

01:07:01.414 --> 01:07:04.460
There was another lawsuit representing people with mental health issues,

01:07:04.460 --> 01:07:08.050
another one for people with developmental disabilities, another one for people

01:07:08.050 --> 01:07:09.600
with serious medical issues.

01:07:10.286 --> 01:07:14.580
And so I was spending a lot of time in prisons. I also, because I just couldn't

01:07:14.580 --> 01:07:20.768
get enough, was also volunteering in San Quentin State Prison as a college English teacher and tutor.

01:07:21.378 --> 01:07:26.670
So I was spending a ton of time in maximum security prisons and also touring some jails, etc.

01:07:27.681 --> 01:07:31.920
And did that for a number of years. And both, it was very interesting work.

01:07:31.920 --> 01:07:33.468
It was very heartbreaking work.

01:07:33.967 --> 01:07:39.640
Also met a lot of really incredible, amazing people who were incarcerated at

01:07:39.640 --> 01:07:43.489
the time. Thankfully, a number of them have since been released and were still friends.

01:07:44.463 --> 01:07:52.663
But in doing that work, I will never forget, I was sitting at a conference with our co-counsel once.

01:07:52.663 --> 01:07:56.403
We were having a big meeting about a strategy for this, one of the class action

01:07:56.403 --> 01:07:59.563
cases. And all these cases have been going on for 10, 15 plus years because

01:07:59.563 --> 01:08:00.823
that's how our legal system works.

01:08:01.483 --> 01:08:05.901
And we were talking about a particular prison that was incredibly violent,

01:08:06.435 --> 01:08:09.473
really essentially in a lot of ways kind of, you know, the correctional officers

01:08:09.473 --> 01:08:12.322
have largely allowed gangs to kind of run a lot of things.

01:08:12.908 --> 01:08:17.003
And, you know, every time we would try to go visit that prison and interview

01:08:17.383 --> 01:08:18.943
incarcerated people, a lot of

01:08:18.943 --> 01:08:23.323
times the incarcerated people we tried to interview in one-on-one private,

01:08:23.915 --> 01:08:28.793
you know, attorney-client privilege settings, a lot of times those incarcerated

01:08:28.793 --> 01:08:30.906
people would refuse the interview.

01:08:31.552 --> 01:08:35.973
So they would refuse to speak to us. And that was because every time after we

01:08:35.973 --> 01:08:41.013
left from doing an audit of that facility, the correctional officers would retaliate.

01:08:41.013 --> 01:08:42.808
And that would look a number of different ways.

01:08:43.063 --> 01:08:48.943
Starving people, beating them, taking away their property, depriving them of

01:08:48.943 --> 01:08:50.641
their mail, phone calls, et cetera.

01:08:51.252 --> 01:08:55.381
And so we're talking about this, our law firm and our co-counsel.

01:08:55.903 --> 01:09:00.121
And, you know, someone at one point said, you know.

01:09:01.765 --> 01:09:04.285
We were essentially trying to figure out what we could do about the retaliation.

01:09:04.285 --> 01:09:05.445
And someone said, well, we can

01:09:05.445 --> 01:09:13.496
file a motion asking the judge to order the prison staff to not retaliate.

01:09:14.112 --> 01:09:19.162
But then someone else made the point that, well, it's not like they have permission now to retaliate.

01:09:19.696 --> 01:09:24.415
And it was like in that moment that Audre Lorde's quote, you'll never dismantle

01:09:24.415 --> 01:09:26.528
the master's house using the master's tools.

01:09:27.021 --> 01:09:30.615
Really like it was in that I had this light bulb moment where I was like I understand

01:09:30.615 --> 01:09:35.245
what that means and because to me what I was understanding was that litigation

01:09:35.245 --> 01:09:40.577
and the traditional practice of law is oftentimes very much one of the master's tools,

01:09:41.028 --> 01:09:44.810
in the sense that you can make certain changes you can,

01:09:45.419 --> 01:09:48.391
require certain things but at the end of the day we're never gonna,

01:09:48.937 --> 01:09:53.605
you know litigate our way out of racism classism homophobia xenophobia all of

01:09:53.605 --> 01:09:57.470
the things that takes community building, relationship building,

01:09:57.889 --> 01:10:01.958
trust building, you know, changing hearts and minds and not just changing policy.

01:10:02.580 --> 01:10:06.725
And so that realization coupled with all of,

01:10:07.485 --> 01:10:15.133
the violence and the harm I saw, you know, touring prisons and jails really,

01:10:15.762 --> 01:10:19.547
got me to a point where I started identifying as an abolitionist.

01:10:20.075 --> 01:10:24.235
And what that really meant to me was, and I think a lot of times people hear,

01:10:24.235 --> 01:10:26.561
oh, abolition, you just want to let everyone out of prison tomorrow.

01:10:27.368 --> 01:10:30.348
Just let everyone run amok. That is not what abolition means.

01:10:30.348 --> 01:10:35.798
Abolition means creating a society from the ground up where people have access

01:10:35.798 --> 01:10:37.988
to the resources and the things that they need.

01:10:38.486 --> 01:10:42.888
Everyone has access to those things, the things that they need to be well,

01:10:42.888 --> 01:10:48.068
both mentally, physically, and to thrive, so that we don't see the type of harm

01:10:48.068 --> 01:10:52.481
happening in that type of society that you do, you know, for instance, in the U.S.

01:10:53.015 --> 01:10:56.958
And then when harm does happen, when conflict does happen, because it's just

01:10:56.958 --> 01:11:03.400
natural when you bring human beings together, you have processes like restorative justice, diversion,

01:11:03.974 --> 01:11:08.898
and other types of healing and accountability processes that don't require removing

01:11:08.898 --> 01:11:12.808
someone from their community, which causes a whole other host of harm.

01:11:12.808 --> 01:11:14.720
So I just said a lot of things. I will stop talking.

01:11:15.778 --> 01:11:20.148
Well, that was very detailed, but I appreciate it.

01:11:20.922 --> 01:11:26.478
No, I'm serious because, you know, I read something that you wrote called,

01:11:26.478 --> 01:11:29.723
What Do We Do While Waiting to Realize Prison Abolition?

01:11:30.728 --> 01:11:36.408
And I thought that was very compelling because it also explained why you do what you do.

01:11:36.868 --> 01:11:41.158
So we won't get into that article, but I will tell my listeners,

01:11:41.158 --> 01:11:45.927
please read that if you want to kind of get into Ms. Henry's brain a little more.

01:11:47.029 --> 01:11:50.408
Which person has influenced you the most in your life and work? Thank you.

01:11:52.063 --> 01:11:56.703
I love these questions. In my life, definitely my father. He is the absolute

01:11:56.703 --> 01:11:58.590
best person I will probably ever meet.

01:12:00.268 --> 01:12:03.643
I don't think he ever planned on having kids. He had my sister and I are in

01:12:03.643 --> 01:12:12.121
his mid-40s. And just growing up, it has been such a blessing to grow up with someone who you see.

01:12:13.523 --> 01:12:18.253
He's the perfect embodiment of the idea of treating people the way you want

01:12:18.253 --> 01:12:20.089
to be treated, being a good neighbor.

01:12:20.600 --> 01:12:24.103
I just have countless stories of, you know, we're from Brooklyn,

01:12:24.103 --> 01:12:27.821
New York. He still lives in the house that my sister and I were born in. We were born at home.

01:12:28.492 --> 01:12:33.343
And just seeing the way he interacts with people, he shows up for his neighbors.

01:12:35.237 --> 01:12:38.813
Strangers, you know, for no other reason other than it's just the right thing to do.

01:12:38.813 --> 01:12:42.063
And so I think that I've really carried that throughout my life.

01:12:42.063 --> 01:12:43.483
And so even thinking about, you

01:12:43.483 --> 01:12:46.986
know, people who have engaged in really serious harm and behavior that,

01:12:47.603 --> 01:12:51.389
you know, we are very rightfully either mad at and or scared of,

01:12:51.841 --> 01:12:56.523
being able to still see the humanity in them, being able to not just define

01:12:56.523 --> 01:12:58.495
people by the worst thing that they've ever done,

01:12:59.122 --> 01:13:04.363
and still being able to kind of to look for those bright spots and opportunities for connection.

01:13:04.943 --> 01:13:13.840
I think in my career, there's been a A lot of people along the way who have helped shape.

01:13:14.865 --> 01:13:19.304
Different pieces of my ideology, of the way I look at the work that I do.

01:13:20.139 --> 01:13:26.285
I would say really the main name that's coming to mind is my old mentor and

01:13:26.285 --> 01:13:29.193
supervisor in the restorative justice space, Ajatha Balaga.

01:13:30.121 --> 01:13:37.075
She is a, I believe, first-born, first-generation parent, sorry,

01:13:37.075 --> 01:13:39.405
daughter of immigrant parents.

01:13:39.405 --> 01:13:44.755
They migrated from India, and she was living, I think, in some rural town in

01:13:44.755 --> 01:13:46.798
Pennsylvania, I believe, but don't quote me on that.

01:13:47.245 --> 01:13:51.085
Either way, the relevant part of her story is that from the age of six to 16,

01:13:51.085 --> 01:13:52.545
her father was molesting her.

01:13:53.294 --> 01:13:57.575
And she has talked very publicly about this for a really long time.

01:13:57.575 --> 01:14:03.367
And the entire time, you know, she talks about how she wanted him to stop.

01:14:04.071 --> 01:14:08.945
But she knew that if she told the police or she told someone that there was

01:14:08.945 --> 01:14:13.885
a really good chance that her parents would be deported and her and her sister

01:14:13.885 --> 01:14:15.163
would end up in foster care.

01:14:15.629 --> 01:14:18.375
And that's not what she wanted. She just wanted him to stop.

01:14:18.375 --> 01:14:21.286
She still loved him as her father. She just wanted him to stop.

01:14:21.900 --> 01:14:28.625
And I think that her story and her story kind of goes on from there with her,

01:14:29.105 --> 01:14:32.533
you know, wanting to go to law school to originally to be a prosecutor to,

01:14:33.132 --> 01:14:37.483
prosecute people, other people who've engaged in child sexual abuse and then

01:14:37.883 --> 01:14:42.855
going on a journey and ended up having a private conversation with the Dalai

01:14:42.855 --> 01:14:46.695
Lama where he asked, you know, have you been angry for long enough?

01:14:47.408 --> 01:14:52.871
And I'm only telling bits and pieces of her story. Folks can look her up. But...

01:14:53.800 --> 01:14:57.160
You know, especially as a young person straight out of law school,

01:14:57.160 --> 01:15:00.087
I graduated from law school at 24, I believe,

01:15:00.824 --> 01:15:05.410
and having a lot of thoughts and opinions and, you know, kind of like righteous

01:15:05.410 --> 01:15:09.820
anger and not really knowing how to funnel that or really having.

01:15:11.408 --> 01:15:15.093
A comprehensive view or understanding of,

01:15:15.691 --> 01:15:19.280
what I believe, just having a lot of feelings and not knowing how to communicate

01:15:19.280 --> 01:15:24.480
that or not knowing how to have a critical lens and analyzing different approaches

01:15:24.480 --> 01:15:27.780
and different, you know, kind of ideologies, Sajadra really,

01:15:28.420 --> 01:15:31.611
helped shape that in me as a young person fresh out of law school.

01:15:32.293 --> 01:15:37.240
Okay. A child who isn't embraced by its village will burn it down to fill its

01:15:37.240 --> 01:15:40.133
warmth. Why is that your favorite African proverb?

01:15:40.679 --> 01:15:44.300
I love this proverb. I've quoted it now in two things that I've published.

01:15:45.572 --> 01:15:49.232
Because it's so true. So and kind of going back to what I was saying before

01:15:49.232 --> 01:15:55.236
about, you know, so I heard someone say once that the U.S. is the most individualistic society.

01:15:55.805 --> 01:16:00.762
And I truly believe that because there's this kind of underlying assumption

01:16:00.762 --> 01:16:06.632
that if you are successful in this country, it's solely because of your hard

01:16:06.632 --> 01:16:07.722
work and ethic and merit.

01:16:07.722 --> 01:16:10.874
And if you are unsuccessful, if you're living in poverty, et cetera.

01:16:11.600 --> 01:16:15.048
It is also solely because of your own fault.

01:16:15.640 --> 01:16:21.572
And really ignoring the interconnectedness of humans, of all of us,

01:16:21.572 --> 01:16:24.446
you know, with other living beings and the land, et cetera.

01:16:25.027 --> 01:16:30.612
And so I love that quote, because one thing that has really concerned me that

01:16:30.612 --> 01:16:33.069
I've been seeing over the last several years,

01:16:33.664 --> 01:16:37.462
is this idea of cancel culture, where, you know, oftentimes a celebrity,

01:16:37.462 --> 01:16:42.932
but just someone even just in smaller communities, someone engages in some type of harmful behavior.

01:16:42.932 --> 01:16:46.219
Let's say, you know, look at, for instance, R. Kelly or Diddy, right?

01:16:46.632 --> 01:16:50.682
Someone engages in some type of harmful behavior, and the knee-jerk reaction

01:16:50.682 --> 01:16:55.972
in this society is to, you know, is to cancel them, to cut them off.

01:16:55.972 --> 01:16:58.861
You know, we don't listen to that music anymore. We don't talk about this person.

01:16:59.331 --> 01:17:02.726
And I understand that knee-jerk reaction.

01:17:03.134 --> 01:17:07.152
But if you go back to the early, you know, to the often time,

01:17:07.152 --> 01:17:09.413
but again, kind of going back to what I was saying at the beginning of this,

01:17:09.982 --> 01:17:14.862
is that my first question whenever I hear about someone engaging in some type

01:17:14.862 --> 01:17:16.925
of heinous behavior is always, why?

01:17:17.482 --> 01:17:19.554
How did we get here? How did this happen?

01:17:20.753 --> 01:17:27.633
99.9% of the time, that person has some type of traumatic story in their past,

01:17:27.633 --> 01:17:29.168
especially in their childhood.

01:17:29.631 --> 01:17:33.133
You know, a majority of the time, if not all the time, when people are engaging

01:17:33.133 --> 01:17:36.150
in harm is because they're acting out of their own trauma.

01:17:36.935 --> 01:17:42.343
And so, you know, if I told you that there was a child across the street,

01:17:42.343 --> 01:17:45.610
a 10-year-old child across the street that was being abused,

01:17:45.928 --> 01:17:49.134
I think we would all agree that that child needs and deserves help.

01:17:49.757 --> 01:17:53.733
Oftentimes though that that child does not get the help and that that they need

01:17:53.733 --> 01:17:56.056
and deserve so that child grows up,

01:17:56.642 --> 01:18:00.273
they become 18 and now all of a sudden they've crossed over this magical line

01:18:00.273 --> 01:18:03.973
where they're they're considered an adult and they're considered wholly and

01:18:03.973 --> 01:18:07.913
entirely responsible for their behavior even though they haven't been given,

01:18:08.373 --> 01:18:10.705
or equipped with any of the resources,

01:18:11.252 --> 01:18:15.413
or support that that they need to work through their traumatic experiences to,

01:18:16.073 --> 01:18:20.515
figure out how to heal and move forward and be a kind, loving adult out in the world.

01:18:20.985 --> 01:18:25.573
So then when they start engaging in that harmful behavior, now all of a sudden

01:18:25.573 --> 01:18:29.333
we react with calling for punishment and seeking revenge.

01:18:29.809 --> 01:18:36.583
And it creates this really cyclical cycle that this country has just been stuck in for centuries.

01:18:37.076 --> 01:18:43.398
And so that is really, that's my favorite African proverb, because it really kind of brings home the,

01:18:43.948 --> 01:18:49.443
point that if you, again, if you surround people with the community and relationship

01:18:49.443 --> 01:18:53.003
and the resources that they need, they're not going to engage in the type of

01:18:53.013 --> 01:18:54.973
behavior that we don't want to see later on down the road.

01:18:55.564 --> 01:19:00.788
Yeah. All right. So with the time remaining, I want to get into the work that you're doing.

01:19:01.702 --> 01:19:05.452
Like I said, you work with MAPS.

01:19:06.075 --> 01:19:11.693
And so that's what intrigued me because of the work you're doing with that organization.

01:19:11.693 --> 01:19:14.219
And I believe it's multidisciplinary,

01:19:15.496 --> 01:19:19.756
Association for Psychedelic Studies. Did I get that right?

01:19:20.356 --> 01:19:23.736
Yes, it's a very long, ridiculous name. Yeah, so that's why everybody calls

01:19:23.736 --> 01:19:28.406
it MAPS. But before I get to what you do with MAPS, I found out that you started

01:19:28.406 --> 01:19:31.616
this thing called the Hood Exchange. Why did you do that?

01:19:32.384 --> 01:19:37.283
Yeah, so I started the Hood Exchange in, I believe around summer 2022.

01:19:39.964 --> 01:19:44.524
And so I love traveling. I go to at least two new countries a year.

01:19:44.524 --> 01:19:47.240
It's kind of part of just my own mental health practice.

01:19:47.758 --> 01:19:51.744
And I've been traveling since I was a child. My mother's side of the family

01:19:51.744 --> 01:19:54.270
is from Barbados. My mother was born and raised in Barbados.

01:19:54.936 --> 01:20:02.106
And so my love of traveling has really allowed me to learn how different cultures

01:20:02.442 --> 01:20:07.969
approach life, approach community, approach joy, all these different aspects of life.

01:20:08.485 --> 01:20:12.961
And that's really impacted me a lot. It's impacted how I engage with other people,

01:20:13.373 --> 01:20:14.884
my outlooks, my views, etc.

01:20:16.043 --> 01:20:21.084
And unfortunately, for so many reasons, the majority of Black people and majority

01:20:21.084 --> 01:20:23.282
of people who look like me don't travel.

01:20:23.904 --> 01:20:26.394
Have never been out of the country, maybe have never even been out of their

01:20:26.394 --> 01:20:28.908
city or even in some instances, their neighborhood.

01:20:30.384 --> 01:20:34.264
And because of that, really, in a lot of ways, don't understand that the way

01:20:34.264 --> 01:20:38.086
we are living in this country is not necessarily normal.

01:20:38.736 --> 01:20:44.774
And so I just had this idea one day of pairing my love of traveling with my

01:20:44.774 --> 01:20:49.474
love of working with and supporting directly impacted people,

01:20:49.474 --> 01:20:52.134
people who've been directly impacted by the criminal legal system.

01:20:52.783 --> 01:20:56.924
So I started the HUD Exchange, which is specifically the whole kind of underlying

01:20:56.924 --> 01:21:02.724
goal is to expand Black imaginations about what's possible for ourselves and each other.

01:21:02.724 --> 01:21:07.554
And so we're doing that by taking formerly incarcerated Black people between

01:21:07.554 --> 01:21:12.164
the ages of 18 and 30 and introducing folks who've never been out of the country,

01:21:12.164 --> 01:21:16.624
getting them passports and taking them on completely free to them trips.

01:21:18.684 --> 01:21:24.114
To other countries within the African diaspora. So it is just me doing that

01:21:24.114 --> 01:21:25.884
work. So we've only been able.

01:21:28.084 --> 01:21:32.299
To raise the money to do one trip so far. So I took a group of young people,

01:21:32.776 --> 01:21:37.286
from Atlanta to Ghana in April 2024.

01:21:38.316 --> 01:21:45.176
It was by far the absolute most incredible, most beautiful thing I've ever done,

01:21:45.176 --> 01:21:47.116
thing I've ever been a part of.

01:21:47.644 --> 01:21:51.086
And we ended up actually making a documentary about the trip.

01:21:51.086 --> 01:21:54.353
That was not the intention, but we just ended up having all this really amazing footage.

01:21:54.841 --> 01:21:56.986
We were like, we have to make a documentary. And so we did that.

01:21:56.986 --> 01:22:00.003
We had a screening for it in Atlanta, actually, in November.

01:22:00.524 --> 01:22:05.436
And I'm in the process of hopefully being able to raise additional money to

01:22:05.436 --> 01:22:09.548
take folks on a new cohort of people on another trip next year.

01:22:09.941 --> 01:22:14.956
Okay. And you use the word imagination because one of the things that's on the website,

01:22:15.562 --> 01:22:22.486
it goes into detail about the imagination problem and that we don't tap into

01:22:22.486 --> 01:22:27.668
that enough to visualize how we as Black people can achieve certain things.

01:22:28.489 --> 01:22:33.396
So I asked the listeners to go check that out because when I saw that phrase,

01:22:33.396 --> 01:22:38.686
that quote, the imagination problem, I said, huh, I think that's not the way

01:22:38.686 --> 01:22:42.420
I normally say that. But, yeah, that's pretty cool. So...

01:22:43.439 --> 01:22:48.639
What specifically is MAPS? Yes. So MAPS has been around for 40 years.

01:22:48.639 --> 01:22:52.224
It's celebrated its 40th year anniversary in April.

01:22:52.922 --> 01:22:57.899
And kind of in a nutshell, it's essentially the leading nonprofit organization

01:22:57.899 --> 01:23:03.589
that is creating the educational, legal, and cultural context for people to

01:23:03.589 --> 01:23:05.787
have safe access to psychedelics.

01:23:06.536 --> 01:23:11.339
So what does that mean? So MAPS does a ton of research, and I won't get into

01:23:11.779 --> 01:23:15.719
all of that, but we have led this process of getting, for instance,

01:23:15.719 --> 01:23:19.445
MDMA-assisted therapy approved by the Federal Drug,

01:23:20.094 --> 01:23:22.869
Administration, or sorry, Food and Drug Administration, the FDA.

01:23:23.627 --> 01:23:28.589
The idea, kind of underlying idea here being that prior to the waging of the

01:23:28.589 --> 01:23:32.599
war on drugs, which happened in the early 70s, there were a number of psychedelics

01:23:32.599 --> 01:23:34.399
that were being used both,

01:23:34.899 --> 01:23:39.299
in indigenous settings, namely plant medicines like ayahuasca,

01:23:39.682 --> 01:23:42.897
peyote, etc., especially being used in indigenous settings.

01:23:43.403 --> 01:23:49.299
But then also synthetic substances like MDMA and LSD being used in,

01:23:49.619 --> 01:23:56.039
for instance, in therapist offices to support people in healing from trauma, etc.

01:23:56.714 --> 01:24:02.129
The war on drugs basically shut all of that down, made pretty much all psychedelics

01:24:02.129 --> 01:24:07.729
schedule one substances, which legally makes them the most kind of legally characterizes

01:24:07.729 --> 01:24:10.552
them as the most dangerous of all the drugs.

01:24:11.150 --> 01:24:17.079
And that criminalized possession, sale, but then also research into these substances.

01:24:17.079 --> 01:24:20.259
And so that's one of the things that MAPS has been working really hard to roll

01:24:20.259 --> 01:24:25.999
back, both in researching substances and then also advocating for policy changes.

01:24:25.999 --> 01:24:30.999
So I specifically am the Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at MAPS.

01:24:30.999 --> 01:24:36.189
And so I work very closely with state legislators, grassroots organizations

01:24:36.189 --> 01:24:38.400
who are looking to decriminalize.

01:24:39.253 --> 01:24:43.723
Certain psychedelic substances, whether it's psilocybin mushrooms or quote-unquote

01:24:43.723 --> 01:24:49.913
magic mushrooms and other similar psychedelic substances to make it so when

01:24:49.913 --> 01:24:54.073
you decriminalize substance, it basically becomes law enforcement's.

01:24:55.421 --> 01:24:56.884
Lowest enforcement priority.

01:24:57.561 --> 01:25:01.633
So working with states to either decriminalize those substances or establish

01:25:01.633 --> 01:25:05.833
regulated access processes where so currently,

01:25:06.353 --> 01:25:11.143
Colorado and Oregon and now most recently New Mexico have become the first states

01:25:11.143 --> 01:25:15.959
where they have regulated access to psilocybin, which means that you can go to a licensed facility,

01:25:16.446 --> 01:25:21.193
and have a person do a medical mental health intake with you to see if this

01:25:21.193 --> 01:25:24.353
is something safe for you to participate in.

01:25:24.353 --> 01:25:28.159
They sit and they then sit with you while you actually do mushrooms.

01:25:28.693 --> 01:25:32.883
And then there's usually a several multi-week long, what we call integration

01:25:32.883 --> 01:25:35.951
process, where they support you in...

01:25:36.966 --> 01:25:40.696
Integrating the experience that you the different experiences or lessons that

01:25:40.696 --> 01:25:44.856
you learned or you know realizations or epiphanies that you had while under

01:25:44.856 --> 01:25:48.322
the influence of those mushrooms they support you in figuring out how to integrate,

01:25:48.774 --> 01:25:53.000
those experiences and lessons into your life moving forward and in healing ways

01:25:53.424 --> 01:25:56.776
so and i know that this probably to some listeners is probably going to sound

01:25:56.776 --> 01:25:59.344
like very hokey and weird and hippy dippy but,

01:25:59.969 --> 01:26:04.556
people everywhere from the va is you know at The federal level has been studying

01:26:04.556 --> 01:26:09.306
MDMA, especially for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression,

01:26:09.306 --> 01:26:13.926
suicidality, substance use disorders, et cetera, especially for veterans.

01:26:13.926 --> 01:26:17.212
We now have major universities like Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford,

01:26:17.601 --> 01:26:19.416
who are also studying psychedelics.

01:26:19.416 --> 01:26:22.819
The federal government even just signed an executive order in April,

01:26:23.289 --> 01:26:28.036
fast-tracking research of psychedelics and really calling for an increase in

01:26:28.036 --> 01:26:31.266
access to psychedelics for certain patient populations.

01:26:31.266 --> 01:26:35.924
So this has all been really interesting. The part of the work that I'm the most excited about,

01:26:36.545 --> 01:26:41.046
is exploring the possibility of psychedelic-assisted healing to help address

01:26:41.046 --> 01:26:45.026
the needs of people directly impacted by the criminal legal system,

01:26:45.026 --> 01:26:46.286
especially folks of color.

01:26:46.286 --> 01:26:51.636
So kind of going back to that idea of the war on drugs and it's the way it has

01:26:51.636 --> 01:26:55.666
largely just decimated, you know, a lot of black and brown communities,

01:26:55.666 --> 01:27:00.888
especially low income communities of color that have been historically oppressed and exploited already.

01:27:01.813 --> 01:27:05.243
And then all of the added trauma of, you know, mass incarceration,

01:27:05.243 --> 01:27:08.077
which really came about as a result of the war on drugs,

01:27:08.651 --> 01:27:13.733
figuring out ways because, you know, last thing I would say is that in the psychedelic

01:27:13.733 --> 01:27:19.723
policy field, veterans have really been centered in that space and their overwhelming

01:27:19.723 --> 01:27:23.016
rates of PTSD and suicidality, et cetera.

01:27:23.643 --> 01:27:29.973
And unfortunately, the conversation that few of us are having is that Black

01:27:29.973 --> 01:27:34.243
and brown folks from low-income communities are, you know, experience basically

01:27:34.243 --> 01:27:35.873
the same exact rates of PTSD,

01:27:36.535 --> 01:27:39.344
substance use disorder, suicidality as combat veterans.

01:27:40.254 --> 01:27:43.973
Not to, you know, not to mention that a lot of combat veterans also themselves

01:27:43.973 --> 01:27:47.563
end up finding themselves to be incarcerated later on because that's how our

01:27:47.563 --> 01:27:49.043
country takes care of our veterans.

01:27:49.043 --> 01:27:54.100
And so that's the work that I'm really excited about is looking at kind of pairing,

01:27:54.535 --> 01:27:59.423
you know, the criminal legal system reform and abolition space and the different

01:27:59.423 --> 01:28:01.391
unmet needs when it comes to mental health,

01:28:01.907 --> 01:28:07.063
and trauma, pairing that with the psychedelic community and the possibility

01:28:07.063 --> 01:28:11.294
of psychedelics to help people heal from from really debilitating mental health issues.

01:28:11.935 --> 01:28:16.353
Yeah, because in a recent article you wrote for Psychedelics Today,

01:28:16.353 --> 01:28:19.067
you said trauma does not exist in isolation.

01:28:19.334 --> 01:28:23.553
When violence, incarceration, instability, and loss become common features of

01:28:23.553 --> 01:28:27.762
daily life, they stop feeling exceptional, they become normalized.

01:28:28.273 --> 01:28:35.373
So I'm glad that you incorporated the work that you're doing trying to use legalizing

01:28:35.373 --> 01:28:42.205
these psychedelic drugs for to deal with PTSD outside of the battlefield. Right.

01:28:43.533 --> 01:28:47.203
But I do want to talk. I did want to talk to you because there's this whole

01:28:47.203 --> 01:28:51.413
thing about Ibogaine. Am I saying that right? Ibogaine? Ibogaine?

01:28:52.833 --> 01:28:57.273
Yeah. And it's like, so what is the big deal with it and why has this particular

01:28:57.273 --> 01:28:59.290
drug gotten this attention?

01:29:00.211 --> 01:29:04.921
Yeah. So it's really interesting how we got here. Before joining MAPS almost

01:29:04.921 --> 01:29:06.810
four years ago, I had never heard of Ibogaine.

01:29:07.333 --> 01:29:11.051
Most people I know have never heard of Ibogaine. So Ibogaine is interesting.

01:29:11.051 --> 01:29:17.021
It is a psychedelic that comes from the iboga plant, which pretty exclusively

01:29:17.021 --> 01:29:19.139
grows in West Africa, like Gabon.

01:29:19.823 --> 01:29:26.411
And so in Gabon, the Witi tribes, like their traditional tribal communities

01:29:26.411 --> 01:29:31.891
use iboga for their spiritual, cultural practices and ceremonies, etc.

01:29:32.977 --> 01:29:38.021
Recently, in coming years, it has gained popularity in the States because it's

01:29:38.021 --> 01:29:41.421
found to be incredibly effective at curing opioid addiction.

01:29:41.421 --> 01:29:46.821
And so we know that, you know, when Black folks are dealing with an addiction, it's criminalized.

01:29:46.821 --> 01:29:49.986
When white folks are dealing with an addiction, It's considered a public health,

01:29:50.557 --> 01:29:55.261
issue, a public health crisis, and people are scrambling for solutions.

01:29:55.261 --> 01:30:00.241
So what Ibogaine does, I'm personally not completely familiar with all the details,

01:30:00.241 --> 01:30:05.069
but it essentially resets your physiological,

01:30:05.815 --> 01:30:10.864
composition, resets kind of like your brain receptors, that might not be the right word.

01:30:11.328 --> 01:30:16.326
It essentially returns you to a pre-addiction state and then opens up a multi-week,

01:30:17.168 --> 01:30:21.604
period where you can then replace that addiction with healthy habits.

01:30:23.691 --> 01:30:28.571
I will say that it is not the safest of psychedelics. Psilocybin mushrooms tend

01:30:28.571 --> 01:30:30.396
to have the lowest risk profile,

01:30:31.566 --> 01:30:36.786
But because of its ability to cure opioid addiction, states like Texas have

01:30:37.076 --> 01:30:42.866
dedicated or are looking to match $50 million in researching Ibogaine,

01:30:43.406 --> 01:30:47.126
similar to that executive order I mentioned that the federal government that

01:30:47.126 --> 01:30:53.826
Trump just signed is dedicating a minimum $50 million towards researching Ibogaine.

01:30:53.826 --> 01:30:58.556
So that's been very interestingly, like these psychedelics all of a sudden,

01:30:58.556 --> 01:31:03.736
that has really kind of risen to a spotlight that I had not predicted.

01:31:03.736 --> 01:31:09.221
All right. So I got a couple more questions in the space that we got. Sure.

01:31:09.831 --> 01:31:14.001
You have been privileged to travel to at least 46 countries in your life.

01:31:14.367 --> 01:31:17.926
What motivates you to come back home and continue to do this work,

01:31:17.926 --> 01:31:19.888
especially in this political climate?

01:31:20.795 --> 01:31:23.968
Yeah, that's a tough question. It's hard. It's definitely hard.

01:31:24.224 --> 01:31:27.546
Honestly, I think it's my love of Black people. It's the reason why I do everything.

01:31:27.546 --> 01:31:28.676
It's the reason why I live in Atlanta.

01:31:29.466 --> 01:31:35.446
I just really love Black people around the world, but especially Black Americans.

01:31:35.446 --> 01:31:40.006
And just the years that I have spent in our prisons, in our jails,

01:31:40.006 --> 01:31:44.776
doing diversion work, working alongside and fighting for formerly incarcerated

01:31:44.776 --> 01:31:48.886
Black folks, that is really what keeps me motivated, what keeps me going.

01:31:50.906 --> 01:31:56.857
You use the word privilege and I absolutely agree and I don't take that lightly I feel like,

01:31:57.970 --> 01:32:03.310
Oftentimes, Black people who have a certain level of privilege to leave,

01:32:03.310 --> 01:32:09.950
to do something else, to, you know, do anything else, really, a lot of times we do.

01:32:10.510 --> 01:32:12.463
And I don't blame the Black folks who do.

01:32:13.129 --> 01:32:21.070
That being said, from a very early age, I think I've always been very bothered

01:32:21.070 --> 01:32:27.664
by injustice and how certain people are treated as less than or made to feel as if they don't matter.

01:32:28.557 --> 01:32:33.370
And I think that over the years, decades, whatever it's been,

01:32:34.130 --> 01:32:36.133
I think I'm just at a point where I know too much.

01:32:36.743 --> 01:32:41.665
And we really, especially at this point, can't afford losing one more person from this fight.

01:32:42.244 --> 01:32:47.350
And so while I recognize that I have the privilege to move tomorrow,

01:32:47.350 --> 01:32:49.860
I can move to Barbados. I fantasize about it all the time.

01:32:50.330 --> 01:32:53.940
I also feel like in that privilege, I have an obligation to other people who

01:32:53.940 --> 01:32:57.595
look like me to not just leave folks behind.

01:32:58.343 --> 01:33:02.730
Yeah. Well, if you need somebody, I know a lady. I know a lady that can hook

01:33:02.730 --> 01:33:04.264
it up. She's been on the show twice.

01:33:04.682 --> 01:33:10.130
Oh, I love that. Finish this sentence. I have hope because. Yikes.

01:33:11.414 --> 01:33:16.160
I have hope because of people like my father. People who, you know,

01:33:16.160 --> 01:33:23.250
my dad is 82 years old and my entire life, I have seen him not let this world

01:33:23.250 --> 01:33:25.220
turn him into an angry shell of himself.

01:33:25.220 --> 01:33:29.770
I've seen him consistently show up for not just the people he loves and cares

01:33:29.770 --> 01:33:33.969
about, but people he literally does not know people, random people on the street.

01:33:34.265 --> 01:33:37.270
And, you know, sometimes it really is.

01:33:37.650 --> 01:33:41.010
I mean, those aren't little things, but it is, you know, the people close to

01:33:41.010 --> 01:33:45.972
you who keep you going and fill you back up that like that's what what keeps me going. It's.

01:33:46.690 --> 01:33:49.690
Yeah, that's my answer. Okay. All right.

01:33:49.690 --> 01:33:53.340
So you mentioned that you need some money for this Hood Exchange, right?

01:33:53.340 --> 01:33:57.950
So how can people reach out to you to raise money for the Hood Exchange?

01:33:57.950 --> 01:34:02.600
How can people reach out to you about information that MAPS is doing or just

01:34:02.600 --> 01:34:04.701
want to pick your brain? How can they do it?

01:34:05.262 --> 01:34:09.690
Yeah, thank you for asking. So folks can visit hoodexchange.org,

01:34:09.690 --> 01:34:14.504
which is H-O-O-D-E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E.org.

01:34:14.968 --> 01:34:20.855
You can also email me at SIA, S-I-A, at hudexchange.org to talk about HUD Exchange-related things.

01:34:21.323 --> 01:34:24.840
And then if you're interested in MAPS-related things, you can shoot me an email

01:34:24.840 --> 01:34:29.562
at SIA at MAPS.org or just go to MAPS.org. I believe that's at our website.

01:34:30.049 --> 01:34:34.370
MAPS, every other year, hosts the world's largest psychedelic conference.

01:34:34.370 --> 01:34:38.460
In 2023, it was about 12,000 people. Last year, it was about 8,000.

01:34:38.460 --> 01:34:42.254
We're hosting the same conference in May 2027 in Denver.

01:34:42.643 --> 01:34:45.530
It's been in Denver the last couple of times. And so if folks are interested

01:34:45.530 --> 01:34:50.070
in that, you can also check out the Psychedelic Science 2027 website,

01:34:50.070 --> 01:34:53.745
or like I said, you can also just shoot me an email and I'm happy to share more information.

01:34:54.087 --> 01:34:58.990
Well, I would put even money if in Kalshi or wherever those predictive things

01:34:58.990 --> 01:35:00.759
is, it'll probably be in Denver for a while.

01:35:01.650 --> 01:35:05.363
Probably. I would love to be in Atlanta, but that's just me.

01:35:06.610 --> 01:35:10.140
All right. Well, see you, Henry. Look, thank you so much for doing this.

01:35:10.140 --> 01:35:12.225
I appreciate the work that you're doing.

01:35:12.690 --> 01:35:16.490
I wish you much success, especially with the Hood Exchange.

01:35:16.490 --> 01:35:23.110
I really think that that is a noble effort to expose formerly incarcerated people

01:35:23.110 --> 01:35:27.750
and young people to travel outside of that comfort zone.

01:35:27.750 --> 01:35:31.800
You'll be surprised how many people here in Atlanta have never even left this

01:35:31.800 --> 01:35:36.280
city, and we have the busiest airport in the world. So I just commend you for

01:35:36.280 --> 01:35:39.503
all that. So thank you again and for coming on the podcast.

01:35:39.914 --> 01:35:41.888
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

01:35:42.500 --> 01:35:44.734
All right, guys. And we're going to catch you on the other side.

01:35:56.944 --> 01:36:03.639
All right, we are back. And so now it is time to close this thing out.

01:36:04.857 --> 01:36:11.064
I want to thank Connie Di Cicco and Sia Henry for coming on the podcast.

01:36:11.064 --> 01:36:14.704
I hope that you learned a lot about those young ladies, you know,

01:36:15.084 --> 01:36:16.584
and the work they're doing.

01:36:16.584 --> 01:36:21.161
I really admire Connie for, as they say,

01:36:21.678 --> 01:36:28.864
sticking your toe in the water and running for office and staying engaged in

01:36:28.864 --> 01:36:34.650
the process and helping make sure that not only do we know stuff about,

01:36:35.604 --> 01:36:39.035
these data centers that's popping up everywhere,

01:36:39.761 --> 01:36:43.208
but just to keep people informed about issues.

01:36:43.992 --> 01:36:50.247
The organization she works with started off going after Amazon,

01:36:50.556 --> 01:36:55.154
and now that Amazon is getting into the data center thing, it just seemed like

01:36:55.154 --> 01:36:58.049
a natural fit for Connie to be involved with that.

01:36:58.847 --> 01:37:06.783
And hopefully she'll continue to do what she's doing. Same with Sia Henry.

01:37:08.088 --> 01:37:12.498
Sia, with her organization and the organization she works with,

01:37:12.498 --> 01:37:20.652
MAPS, dealing with these psychedelic drugs, hopefully you will do a little more research into that.

01:37:21.258 --> 01:37:26.068
I think what she's trying to do with it, because we've been hearing a lot of

01:37:26.068 --> 01:37:29.940
talk with these drugs dealing with veterans and trying to help them recover,

01:37:30.605 --> 01:37:36.727
but, you know, to deal with people that have trauma, period, especially black folk.

01:37:37.418 --> 01:37:41.298
Especially those who are formerly incarcerated. I think, you know,

01:37:41.298 --> 01:37:44.424
her angle in working with this group is vital.

01:37:45.528 --> 01:37:50.648
And then her other project, dealing with the Hood Exchange, the group that she

01:37:50.648 --> 01:37:52.648
started to allow people to travel.

01:37:53.770 --> 01:37:57.584
She's been very fortunate to be able to have traveled all over the world,

01:37:58.228 --> 01:38:02.928
and she wants other black folks to have that experience.

01:38:02.928 --> 01:38:09.328
And the plan was to get people who were formerly incarcerated to have that experience,

01:38:09.328 --> 01:38:12.193
but she started off with young folks.

01:38:12.975 --> 01:38:17.216
And I think that's a group that needs to be targeted as well.

01:38:18.387 --> 01:38:21.307
You know, because it's just all about imagination.

01:38:21.978 --> 01:38:25.618
It's all about broadening your mind and exposing yourself to things.

01:38:25.618 --> 01:38:34.709
And I think that's a huge problem in this country that we are not imagining.

01:38:35.431 --> 01:38:38.398
Not getting into that in a minute, but I just want to thank those young ladies.

01:38:38.398 --> 01:38:41.457
And both of them are based in the Atlanta area, by the way.

01:38:41.772 --> 01:38:49.105
And, you know, so it's really, really good to have to see people in Georgia,

01:38:50.323 --> 01:38:54.018
doing incredible work, as well as everywhere else in the country.

01:38:54.018 --> 01:38:55.914
That's the beauty of this podcast.

01:38:56.541 --> 01:39:01.718
Get to talk to people from all over. And it's just encouraging.

01:39:01.718 --> 01:39:04.824
Now, I do have an update about Wala Blegay.

01:39:06.307 --> 01:39:11.664
Walla did not win. She was in that race with Boafo.

01:39:11.839 --> 01:39:14.717
I guess I'm going to have to learn how to say his name, Boafo,

01:39:14.717 --> 01:39:17.241
because he's going to Congress.

01:39:17.971 --> 01:39:22.591
But Walla was in that race against him. I think she finished fourth.

01:39:23.306 --> 01:39:29.667
But she's still going to be a Prince County commissioner, Prince George County

01:39:29.667 --> 01:39:32.750
commissioner. So she didn't lose her job.

01:39:33.330 --> 01:39:37.202
In some states, you have to give up your job to run for office like Georgia.

01:39:37.742 --> 01:39:40.987
And in other states like Mississippi and Maryland, you don't have to give up

01:39:40.987 --> 01:39:45.177
your job to run for another office as long as you're, you know,

01:39:45.177 --> 01:39:47.682
you're, it's not in the same election year.

01:39:49.302 --> 01:39:53.828
So at least she'll still be in a position to serve and I congratulate her for,

01:39:54.554 --> 01:40:01.639
getting out there there were some circumstances in that race that I won't get into but,

01:40:02.507 --> 01:40:09.417
she did good and very very happy that she jumped out there to run it was an

01:40:09.417 --> 01:40:14.804
open seat seat that hadn't been open since the 1980s, I guess. Yeah.

01:40:15.898 --> 01:40:22.317
So, anyway, you know, and I still, we're still monitoring some of the other

01:40:22.317 --> 01:40:29.024
guests that have been on, that are running for things and give you updates just to go along.

01:40:30.287 --> 01:40:32.079
Prayers to the people in Venezuela.

01:40:33.674 --> 01:40:39.711
That are dealing with not one, but two earthquakes that happen back to back.

01:40:40.481 --> 01:40:46.034
And like they said, right now, they said the death toll is close to 500 as we're

01:40:46.034 --> 01:40:49.387
recording this, but they're projecting it to be much, much higher.

01:40:50.081 --> 01:40:55.434
So, you know, go to, you know, like the International Red Cross websites if

01:40:55.434 --> 01:40:59.348
you want to help out, that kind of thing. That's always where I guide people,

01:41:00.251 --> 01:41:03.049
to take care of circumstances like that.

01:41:04.211 --> 01:41:09.353
So anyway, let me just say this real quick, and then I'm going to end it.

01:41:09.717 --> 01:41:16.974
The Supreme Court came down with some decisions, and next week they'll have some more decisions.

01:41:18.230 --> 01:41:23.746
They have not tackled or have not shared their birthright decision yet.

01:41:24.309 --> 01:41:30.034
I am still optimistic that they're going to understand that the 14th Amendment

01:41:30.034 --> 01:41:33.628
applies to everybody and not just black folks.

01:41:34.694 --> 01:41:40.903
But, you know, we'll see how that plays out. We saw a lot of 6-3 decisions.

01:41:42.158 --> 01:41:47.754
And it looks like now there was one decision that they were unanimous in.

01:41:47.754 --> 01:41:51.806
That was this case called Pung versus Isabella County, Michigan,

01:41:52.381 --> 01:42:00.278
where basically the estate of this guy, Mr. Pung, they owed some money on taxes.

01:42:01.267 --> 01:42:07.824
And a previous court ruling had said that the surplus that they get from the

01:42:07.824 --> 01:42:11.335
auction, since they didn't pay the taxes, they put the property off for auction.

01:42:12.228 --> 01:42:15.644
There was a previous case that said that whatever surplus money,

01:42:15.644 --> 01:42:20.754
once the debt is covered, because a lot of times, and I know in Mississippi

01:42:20.754 --> 01:42:24.404
they did it because I worked at the tax collector's office, you know,

01:42:24.404 --> 01:42:26.810
whatever money they got, they kept it.

01:42:27.726 --> 01:42:30.216
And so the estate...

01:42:31.774 --> 01:42:36.104
Got some money back. Like I said, a previous Supreme Court ruling said that,

01:42:36.104 --> 01:42:39.554
no, it's like once the debt is taken care of, you got to give the extra money

01:42:39.554 --> 01:42:41.677
back to the estate, right?

01:42:42.353 --> 01:42:47.834
And so the estate got some money, and they got it at the auction price,

01:42:48.334 --> 01:42:53.409
and the Pung family wanted the fair market value back.

01:42:53.892 --> 01:42:58.513
And so a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court said, no, that's not how that works.

01:43:01.111 --> 01:43:12.624
You know, since y'all were, y'all precipitated the auction, then you got what you would get.

01:43:12.624 --> 01:43:16.117
The debt's been settled and then whatever was left, you got that back.

01:43:17.023 --> 01:43:23.800
So they wanted the remainder of, because I think the debt was only like $2,400. Yeah.

01:43:25.590 --> 01:43:30.962
And the family wanted the fair market value of the house, which was $190,000,

01:43:31.637 --> 01:43:36.020
and they sold it for like $76,000, $77,000.

01:43:36.569 --> 01:43:42.857
So they still got over $70,000 off of property that they had defaulted on the taxes.

01:43:43.652 --> 01:43:46.780
So they should have just took their ball and ran with it, and that's what the

01:43:46.780 --> 01:43:49.736
Supreme Court, all nine of them, agreed with that.

01:43:51.381 --> 01:43:54.650
You know, but there were some interesting decisions.

01:43:54.650 --> 01:44:00.740
The two decisions that go to one decision that's, well, it's two decisions that

01:44:00.740 --> 01:44:03.080
Mark Wayne Mullen would go down

01:44:03.080 --> 01:44:06.690
in history as winning because he was the plaintiff in both of those cases.

01:44:07.366 --> 01:44:10.073
I mean, yeah, yeah, he was a plaintiff.

01:44:11.690 --> 01:44:16.720
And the one case that's really, really disturbing people and getting people

01:44:16.720 --> 01:44:21.950
in uproar is the fact that they combined two cases, Mullen versus Doe and Trump

01:44:21.950 --> 01:44:26.613
versus Miat, to, well, I don't know.

01:44:26.764 --> 01:44:29.720
I had to think about who the plaintiff is and all that.

01:44:29.720 --> 01:44:32.638
But the reality, the gist of it is,

01:44:34.198 --> 01:44:44.801
is that 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians are no longer under TPS,

01:44:45.370 --> 01:44:46.932
temporary protective status,

01:44:47.701 --> 01:44:53.477
which means that as of today, federal government can ask these people to leave.

01:44:55.810 --> 01:44:59.118
And I don't think Syria is stable.

01:45:00.128 --> 01:45:04.290
I definitely know Haiti is not stable. But now they're sending these people

01:45:04.290 --> 01:45:07.300
back to this unstable situation.

01:45:07.300 --> 01:45:11.730
And, of course, the Haitian issue was a big issue because President Trump,

01:45:11.730 --> 01:45:16.870
when he was running for office at the debate, famously said that the ones in

01:45:16.870 --> 01:45:19.920
Springfield, Ohio, was eating cats and dogs.

01:45:19.920 --> 01:45:22.600
Y'all remember that? Remember that stupid thing he said?

01:45:23.377 --> 01:45:27.318
Well, so that put the Haitians on target.

01:45:28.723 --> 01:45:33.570
The thing that's really, really crazy is that they're kicking these folks out,

01:45:34.364 --> 01:45:38.853
but they're allowing these South African farmers who are not under any duress.

01:45:38.853 --> 01:45:43.253
The country is stable and they're giving them temporary protective status.

01:45:43.253 --> 01:45:49.173
Now, what's going to happen with them is that now that this decision is taking

01:45:49.173 --> 01:45:55.346
place, if they haven't already, now these people are going to be moved into the asylum part.

01:45:55.985 --> 01:46:01.433
They're going to start protecting them because they know, based on the Supreme

01:46:01.433 --> 01:46:05.254
Court ruling, that the next president, the next Democratic president,

01:46:05.527 --> 01:46:07.501
is going to go in and kick them all out.

01:46:08.453 --> 01:46:13.893
Right? That, you know, they shouldn't have been granted the status in the first

01:46:13.893 --> 01:46:20.286
place because, again, there wasn't any proof of any duress.

01:46:20.551 --> 01:46:24.744
Whatever proof they had was manufactured. It was a lie.

01:46:25.983 --> 01:46:30.539
Their country is not unstable. They are not experiencing discrimination.

01:46:31.212 --> 01:46:32.582
They are not being targeted.

01:46:33.258 --> 01:46:38.666
These people from Haiti, these people from Syria, they work.

01:46:39.377 --> 01:46:42.973
And that's the whole deal about the temporary protected status is supposed to

01:46:42.973 --> 01:46:49.743
allow people to come in, get situated in the United States, and then apply for asylum.

01:46:49.743 --> 01:46:53.313
Now, hopefully a lot of these people will go ahead and put in their paperwork

01:46:53.313 --> 01:46:55.018
for asylum if they haven't already.

01:46:55.976 --> 01:47:01.230
Because the next case, Mullen versus Al Ultralotto.

01:47:03.453 --> 01:47:10.173
Says that if you are still in your country and you apply for asylum, you can be rejected.

01:47:10.643 --> 01:47:16.683
You physically have to be in the United States to file for asylum.

01:47:16.683 --> 01:47:22.812
And the Border Patrol officers can turn you away, right?

01:47:23.614 --> 01:47:28.003
If they feel as though they're being overburdened or whatever,

01:47:28.003 --> 01:47:33.685
which on the border, the southern border of the United States,

01:47:34.045 --> 01:47:35.937
that's pretty much every day.

01:47:37.213 --> 01:47:44.291
So that case allows Border Patrol, Customs, INA, whatever.

01:47:47.605 --> 01:47:52.233
INS, I should say, they can just start turning people around.

01:47:52.233 --> 01:47:57.323
They can say they want asylum, but if they're not on U.S. soil,

01:47:57.323 --> 01:48:01.913
they can't do it. So what I'm hoping is that the Haitian folks will go ahead

01:48:01.913 --> 01:48:05.884
and, if they hadn't started the process already or the Syrians—.

01:48:07.846 --> 01:48:12.049
Then they can go ahead and do that and try to stay that way.

01:48:12.763 --> 01:48:19.706
But, you know, a lot of them probably can't afford the legal help or whatever,

01:48:19.706 --> 01:48:22.915
but I'm sure some people are trying to step in to try to keep them here.

01:48:23.826 --> 01:48:26.839
So we'll keep track of that, see how that's going to go, right?

01:48:27.679 --> 01:48:34.453
The other decision that my good friends from Pearson and Pearson brought up,

01:48:35.149 --> 01:48:39.456
was the case with Landor versus the Louisiana Department of Corrections.

01:48:39.807 --> 01:48:43.129
That was the case with Mr. Landor. He was a Rastafarian.

01:48:43.702 --> 01:48:50.636
He had dreadlocks. These two guards at the Department of Corrections decided

01:48:50.636 --> 01:48:54.075
that he wasn't going to have them dreadlocks in the prison.

01:48:54.680 --> 01:48:59.936
He tried to explain to them, and he showed them paperwork, that he was protected

01:48:59.936 --> 01:49:05.171
under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000,

01:49:06.519 --> 01:49:10.519
and they basically ripped the paper up and shaved those dreadlocks off.

01:49:11.688 --> 01:49:19.216
Well, now the state of Louisiana, under that law, has given Mr.

01:49:19.216 --> 01:49:23.794
Landor, has agreed with Mr. Landor to settle.

01:49:25.486 --> 01:49:31.736
What Mr. Landor wanted to do was sue the guards that cut his hair and the Supreme

01:49:31.736 --> 01:49:33.542
Court said the law doesn't allow you to do that.

01:49:34.287 --> 01:49:37.731
You can sue the state, but you can't sue individuals.

01:49:39.156 --> 01:49:43.623
So it's a form of qualified immunity, right, for those officers.

01:49:44.338 --> 01:49:48.493
That's what the Supreme Court said. And that was one of those 6-3 splits on that one.

01:49:49.275 --> 01:49:55.106
Now, you know, I think, you know, those are the kind of decisions that you may

01:49:55.106 --> 01:50:01.826
not like with the Landor decision. But that wasn't a political decision.

01:50:02.133 --> 01:50:04.357
That was interpreting the law.

01:50:05.284 --> 01:50:13.006
And if we want to change the law, we can amend that R-L-U-I-P-A. We can amend it.

01:50:13.835 --> 01:50:18.716
But I say we, I'm talking about Congress. Let's just say they can amend the

01:50:18.716 --> 01:50:23.723
law where individuals can be personally valuable as well as the state.

01:50:24.381 --> 01:50:29.906
Then the Supreme Court will challenge, determine whether that's constitutional

01:50:29.906 --> 01:50:32.683
or not because somebody's going to challenge that if they do change it.

01:50:33.905 --> 01:50:39.455
But, you know, that was the case that we had highlighted the last time we had all got together.

01:50:40.102 --> 01:50:42.668
And so I wanted to update people on that.

01:50:43.656 --> 01:50:47.576
I was kind of rooting for Mr. Landor on that one because, you know,

01:50:48.416 --> 01:50:52.094
I couldn't find anything to find out what happened to those officers.

01:50:53.306 --> 01:50:54.926
It was implied that there was

01:50:54.926 --> 01:50:58.420
some disciplinary action taken on those officers for doing what they did.

01:50:59.335 --> 01:51:07.618
But didn't imply anything about them being fired or whatever the action was. It wasn't detailed.

01:51:08.632 --> 01:51:11.286
So, you know, I don't know.

01:51:13.105 --> 01:51:19.122
One thing I want you to understand about this group of folks that are in power now,

01:51:20.353 --> 01:51:25.136
like in some cases you can, like in the Landor case, it's a matter of interpretation,

01:51:26.021 --> 01:51:29.305
which is basically what the court is supposed to do.

01:51:29.305 --> 01:51:33.742
In other cases, you can tell there's some political overtones with it,

01:51:35.041 --> 01:51:36.886
especially the immigration cases.

01:51:37.921 --> 01:51:46.250
Pete Hexf is showing his racist colors every day that he's in office as the Secretary of Defense.

01:51:46.630 --> 01:51:53.425
Mark Wayne Mullen and Kristi Noem before him, with Steve Miller directing the

01:51:53.425 --> 01:51:57.703
band in the background, is showing their true colors.

01:51:58.398 --> 01:51:59.873
And here's my thing, right?

01:52:01.220 --> 01:52:05.573
And now we're getting to the point now where Donald Trump killed a bill.

01:52:06.366 --> 01:52:10.285
Well, he hasn't actually killed the bill, but he was supposed to sign a bill

01:52:10.285 --> 01:52:17.405
that the House and the Senate passed to deal with the housing situation in the United States, right?

01:52:17.405 --> 01:52:22.715
Because right now, the biggest problem, of course, you're kicking a lot of the

01:52:22.715 --> 01:52:26.178
immigrants out, so construction has slowed, right?

01:52:26.602 --> 01:52:29.702
The president has put tariffs on materials.

01:52:30.516 --> 01:52:35.513
It's raising the price of building the houses, so that's kind of slowed construction down.

01:52:37.104 --> 01:52:43.094
Now, the other thing is that these corporations, these large investment companies,

01:52:43.094 --> 01:52:48.364
are buying up properties and paying cash for them because people selling the

01:52:48.364 --> 01:52:49.548
house, they just want the money.

01:52:50.441 --> 01:52:57.363
These corporations are coming in and buying the house and then turning around and renting it out.

01:52:58.463 --> 01:53:03.034
And polling has showed that the majority of the American people want to buy

01:53:03.034 --> 01:53:06.101
a house because they want to have an asset, right?

01:53:06.865 --> 01:53:13.212
And it's actually cheaper to own a home theoretically because you're paying a mortgage.

01:53:14.005 --> 01:53:19.946
But it's cheaper to own a home, to have a home in your name, than it is to rent.

01:53:21.069 --> 01:53:26.124
And I was just listening to somebody talking about rent in New York City,

01:53:26.124 --> 01:53:29.451
like a two-bedroom apartment is like $4,000.

01:53:30.460 --> 01:53:35.584
Downtown Atlanta can get up to about $2,000. New York, $4,000?

01:53:35.584 --> 01:53:38.591
It's a lot of money to pay for an apartment.

01:53:39.570 --> 01:53:46.388
Now, a mortgage in New York is cheaper than, well, it all depends on where you stay in New York.

01:53:46.829 --> 01:53:50.144
I think if you stay on the island, it might be the same.

01:53:50.739 --> 01:53:57.696
But I think it's cheaper to own a home or a condo or whatever than it is to rent.

01:53:58.832 --> 01:54:02.193
So the president was supposed to sign that bill.

01:54:02.907 --> 01:54:06.324
And then literally at the last minute, he said, nope, I'm not going to do it

01:54:06.324 --> 01:54:10.284
because I want to make sure that people can't vote in this election.

01:54:11.228 --> 01:54:17.857
He wants the legislation passed that would basically wipe out nearly 70 million Americans.

01:54:18.993 --> 01:54:23.663
Where did I get 70 million? So with this SAVE Act that he's talking about,

01:54:24.636 --> 01:54:27.877
it wants you to show ID, right?

01:54:28.764 --> 01:54:32.749
Multiple forms of ID, not just your driver's license.

01:54:34.332 --> 01:54:39.102
Most of us, when we register to vote now, we register, especially with federal

01:54:39.102 --> 01:54:44.916
elections, we register once we renew our driver's license or obtain a driver's license.

01:54:45.727 --> 01:54:46.902
You're automatically in the

01:54:46.902 --> 01:54:53.071
system. And whatever name is on that driver's license is how you register.

01:54:54.510 --> 01:54:59.632
So, you know, some people change their license when they, especially women,

01:54:59.632 --> 01:55:03.332
when they get married, they change their license or fuck their name.

01:55:03.332 --> 01:55:04.266
But a lot of people don't.

01:55:05.439 --> 01:55:11.788
They just renew it. So now the law says that if the name doesn't match,

01:55:12.424 --> 01:55:15.222
and so you get a birth certificate and the name doesn't match,

01:55:16.329 --> 01:55:17.606
then you're not going to be able to vote.

01:55:18.356 --> 01:55:22.762
Now, if you got a passport with your married name on it, along with your driver's

01:55:22.762 --> 01:55:24.882
license, they can allow you to vote.

01:55:25.626 --> 01:55:28.094
If everything lines up with the address, all that stuff.

01:55:29.062 --> 01:55:32.754
But that's a poll tax, because now you're going to have people paying $150 to,

01:55:33.471 --> 01:55:35.381
get a passport just so they can go vote.

01:55:36.332 --> 01:55:40.512
It was the same like 20-some years ago when they were talking about changing the real ID.

01:55:41.516 --> 01:55:47.042
A lot of us got passports because we were told that if your state's ID doesn't

01:55:47.042 --> 01:55:54.180
conform to the real ID law, then you won't be able to get on a plane for a domestic.

01:55:55.221 --> 01:56:00.862
But of course, we had a government that could function back then.

01:56:00.862 --> 01:56:03.782
And so they negotiated and they compromised and all that stuff.

01:56:03.782 --> 01:56:09.002
And eventually everybody got their IDs, every state got their IDs up to the

01:56:09.002 --> 01:56:10.542
standard of the real ID law.

01:56:11.262 --> 01:56:15.692
And everything is kosher, right? So all you got to do is show your driver's

01:56:15.692 --> 01:56:20.452
license and get on the plane. Heck, you know, some states you can put your driver's

01:56:20.452 --> 01:56:23.330
license on the phone and check in that way.

01:56:25.006 --> 01:56:30.626
But now they're talking about with voting, you've got to have multiple pieces of ID.

01:56:31.561 --> 01:56:37.399
That's crazy. It was a battle already to just deal with the voter ID.

01:56:38.926 --> 01:56:44.716
Right? Excuse me. But now he wants to do that. He wants to end mail-in voting,

01:56:44.716 --> 01:56:46.605
even though he votes by mail.

01:56:47.601 --> 01:56:54.238
He said, well, I'm the president of the United States. I can vote by mail. And it's like, okay.

01:56:55.197 --> 01:56:58.959
But no other citizen gets that privilege. That's what you're saying.

01:56:59.150 --> 01:57:01.710
The military people won't have that privilege.

01:57:02.082 --> 01:57:04.416
They say, no, no, we're not saying anything about the military.

01:57:04.416 --> 01:57:10.821
Well, if you're trying to set a time and ask another Supreme Court case that's coming, right?

01:57:11.448 --> 01:57:17.497
So if the ballot for the soldier that's stationed in Okinawa doesn't get in in time.

01:57:18.583 --> 01:57:23.136
Because California gives you seven days, and most states are like,

01:57:23.136 --> 01:57:29.642
if it's postmarked, By election day, it'll be counted whenever it gets there, right?

01:57:30.307 --> 01:57:37.786
Now, in some cases, most of the races are decided by the time that some of those letters will come in.

01:57:38.126 --> 01:57:41.438
They'll count them and it will be in the final tally.

01:57:42.250 --> 01:57:48.086
But as far as, you know, deciding the election, the election may be decided

01:57:48.086 --> 01:57:49.812
already by the time the vote comes in.

01:57:50.846 --> 01:57:53.935
If not, then you wait, right?

01:57:54.623 --> 01:58:00.068
But, you know, California understands that they have millions of people voting.

01:58:00.682 --> 01:58:06.022
And so, and most of the people like to vote by mail. So they give them a week,

01:58:06.585 --> 01:58:12.750
just as long as it's postmarked by election day, within a week of the election, it'll be counted.

01:58:13.632 --> 01:58:19.542
And that's why it took a minute to figure out who was going to advance to the general election.

01:58:20.068 --> 01:58:23.736
Not the stupid stuff that Donald Trump's talking about, the stupid shit he's

01:58:23.736 --> 01:58:28.170
saying about it's rigged and all that stuff. It's not rigged.

01:58:29.678 --> 01:58:35.518
And he wants to take credit for the, he said he called California or something

01:58:35.518 --> 01:58:41.124
and all of a sudden Steve Hilton was on the ballot. No, he got enough votes.

01:58:42.726 --> 01:58:44.172
To be in the general election.

01:58:44.606 --> 01:58:48.518
You, Mr. President, didn't do a damn thing to make that happen.

01:58:49.104 --> 01:58:53.948
The voters of California decided that Mr. Hilton and Mr. Becerra would advance

01:58:53.948 --> 01:58:56.900
to the general election in November. That's how that works.

01:58:57.676 --> 01:59:02.829
You had nothing to do with that. No magical phone call, no magical press conference.

01:59:03.788 --> 01:59:08.459
You don't have anything to do with that. So, you know,

01:59:10.092 --> 01:59:17.607
so he decided that he was going to shut down an issue that needed to be addressed,

01:59:18.469 --> 01:59:22.439
so he can do more stuff to try to stop the election.

01:59:23.705 --> 01:59:26.561
Now, they've already tried to redistrict everything.

01:59:29.078 --> 01:59:35.448
In the middle, you know, in midterm. However, you know, it's like it's supposed

01:59:35.448 --> 01:59:40.165
to be every 10 years, but they wanted to redraw everything before this election.

01:59:40.839 --> 01:59:44.334
They've got the Supreme Court to approve certain decisions.

01:59:45.256 --> 01:59:51.960
And now they want to pass this bill to disenfranchise 70 million people at the minimum.

01:59:53.198 --> 01:59:57.806
Because all these women that get married, they're going to, you know, they change their name,

01:59:58.837 --> 02:00:02.645
they're going to be disenfranchised because their birth certificate,

02:00:02.860 --> 02:00:05.568
which not a lot of people keep their birth certificate around,

02:00:05.568 --> 02:00:09.328
but their birth certificate is not going to match their driver's license if

02:00:09.328 --> 02:00:11.055
they change their name legally.

02:00:12.398 --> 02:00:15.343
So there's that. Right? Right.

02:00:18.057 --> 02:00:20.047
They're doing all this stuff because,

02:00:21.113 --> 02:00:25.438
they're going to get murdered in the election if y'all show up to vote.

02:00:26.962 --> 02:00:31.039
And the president is banking on the fact that you're going to show up.

02:00:31.700 --> 02:00:35.023
So he's trying to do everything he can to alter it.

02:00:36.059 --> 02:00:39.378
And because it's all about him.

02:00:40.259 --> 02:00:44.387
Because he said he's been telling people, if the Democrats get control of the

02:00:44.387 --> 02:00:47.558
Congress, then they're going to try to impeach me again.

02:00:48.528 --> 02:00:54.072
But as I've said before, if you don't want to be impeached, don't do impeachable stuff.

02:00:55.118 --> 02:01:03.027
You know, these no big contracts. He wants to blame this imaginary boogeyman

02:01:03.027 --> 02:01:05.686
that magically snorkeled,

02:01:06.744 --> 02:01:11.887
from one end of the reflecting pool to the other with some kind of device to cut the bottom.

02:01:13.417 --> 02:01:17.687
That's why it's peeling at the bottom. No, because when you got up there and

02:01:17.687 --> 02:01:21.737
had a press conference, you said nothing was going to happen like that.

02:01:22.177 --> 02:01:25.185
You specifically said that it couldn't be cut.

02:01:26.218 --> 02:01:32.375
But now the paint is peeling off. The algae is growing. But it ain't his fault.

02:01:34.189 --> 02:01:38.763
President, you might be right. It ain't technically your fault because you didn't actually do the work.

02:01:39.708 --> 02:01:44.047
But the person you hired, it's definitely their fault because they didn't know what they were doing.

02:01:45.084 --> 02:01:49.119
And instead of opening the process up, you wanted to hook up one of your boys.

02:01:49.976 --> 02:01:56.293
And that's why they discourage hookups at the government level because of stuff like this.

02:01:57.181 --> 02:02:00.799
Right? And I've seen it. I've seen it up close and personal.

02:02:00.799 --> 02:02:06.931
We had this one company that was sucking up every state government contract,

02:02:07.448 --> 02:02:08.632
when it dealt with construction.

02:02:09.628 --> 02:02:13.694
And they had gotten so many contracts that they couldn't do the work.

02:02:14.863 --> 02:02:18.199
And the minute the state said, City of Mississippi said, yeah,

02:02:18.199 --> 02:02:22.519
well, we're going to pull this contract. These folks filed bankruptcy.

02:02:23.198 --> 02:02:28.189
So you had all these projects on hold because one company got greedy because

02:02:28.189 --> 02:02:30.251
they had a hookup, right?

02:02:31.123 --> 02:02:35.709
I had even introduced a bill to say that if you got so many millions of dollars

02:02:36.109 --> 02:02:40.649
in state contracts that you can't bid on anything else until you complete a

02:02:40.649 --> 02:02:44.526
project that will drop you back below that threshold. Right.

02:02:45.592 --> 02:02:49.579
At that time, I think it was like $10 million. If you got $10 million of state

02:02:49.579 --> 02:02:54.710
contracts to do projects, that should be enough.

02:02:55.786 --> 02:03:00.565
Do that job. Finish those jobs. and then you can rebid.

02:03:01.293 --> 02:03:05.288
That way other people will have a shot at getting a contract.

02:03:06.582 --> 02:03:09.084
Especially some of these black construction companies, right?

02:03:09.845 --> 02:03:13.029
But, you know, greed is...

02:03:16.651 --> 02:03:22.842
It's that avarice that makes capitalism terrible, right?

02:03:23.470 --> 02:03:27.491
And that's all we got going on. We got greed. We got racism.

02:03:27.491 --> 02:03:30.354
We got all sorts of otherisms going on.

02:03:31.320 --> 02:03:34.676
And that's what's causing the problem.

02:03:35.607 --> 02:03:38.794
If you can stop people from being greedy, which will be hard,

02:03:39.392 --> 02:03:44.749
if you stop people from hating, which will be hard, we can move forward.

02:03:45.722 --> 02:03:49.861
You know, all these people talking about these Christian ideas and all that,

02:03:49.861 --> 02:03:56.972
and, you know, they want the Ten Commandments posted, and every day they violate each one of them.

02:03:57.536 --> 02:04:01.811
You got a candidate running in Texas where they've mandated that the Ten Commandments

02:04:01.811 --> 02:04:10.449
is on every wall and every classroom in the state posted, and he's violated all 10 of them.

02:04:11.510 --> 02:04:15.307
Now, the murder one I can't prove, but I wouldn't put it back.

02:04:16.218 --> 02:04:18.875
But he's knocked out at least about seven.

02:04:20.286 --> 02:04:24.455
So, you know, we got to...

02:04:26.384 --> 02:04:31.104
Henry, when she put her program together for the Hood Exchange in her website,

02:04:31.104 --> 02:04:34.151
she talks about the imagination problem, right?

02:04:34.965 --> 02:04:40.864
And she was addressing the fact that, you know, people don't imagine themselves

02:04:40.864 --> 02:04:44.897
traveling, leaving the country, leaving the neighborhood that they live in.

02:04:45.514 --> 02:04:52.979
Atlanta has the busiest airport in the world, and some people have never left the city limits.

02:04:54.204 --> 02:04:59.419
So somebody had said that that was called an imagination problem.

02:05:00.090 --> 02:05:05.364
They can't see themselves just doing a basic thing like traveling somewhere,

02:05:05.364 --> 02:05:08.373
going somewhere different than where they live, right?

02:05:09.138 --> 02:05:12.139
We've got an imagination problem about how government works too.

02:05:12.967 --> 02:05:17.884
Government is not supposed to be this greedy, racist institution. It's not.

02:05:18.679 --> 02:05:22.266
It's supposed to be the arbiter of fairness.

02:05:23.436 --> 02:05:29.064
The government is supposed to be the last bastion for the little guy to look

02:05:29.064 --> 02:05:32.231
out for them because business has gone business.

02:05:34.028 --> 02:05:38.768
They're going to make money. So you need a referee. There was this famous sports

02:05:38.768 --> 02:05:41.607
announcer who used to say, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.

02:05:42.597 --> 02:05:47.170
And businesses try every day. They're trying to make money every day.

02:05:48.074 --> 02:05:53.745
So there needs to be an institution powerful enough to keep them in check.

02:05:54.457 --> 02:05:55.920
And that's what the government is.

02:05:57.012 --> 02:06:02.616
There are state governments that prefer certain citizens over other citizens.

02:06:03.386 --> 02:06:06.203
That's been proven throughout the history of this country.

02:06:07.152 --> 02:06:11.628
And so there needs to be an institution powerful enough to call those states,

02:06:12.584 --> 02:06:17.076
on the carpet and say, no, they're U.S. citizens first.

02:06:18.134 --> 02:06:24.298
And U.S. citizens should be treated this way. They just happen to live in your

02:06:24.298 --> 02:06:27.022
state, but they're U.S. citizens first.

02:06:27.918 --> 02:06:30.783
And they should be treated as such, right?

02:06:32.045 --> 02:06:35.072
So, you need government to do that.

02:06:35.750 --> 02:06:41.327
But the government has to be as close to impeccable as they should be.

02:06:42.006 --> 02:06:44.948
They should be, at the very least, fair and just.

02:06:45.950 --> 02:06:48.150
But when the government is corrupt...

02:06:49.692 --> 02:06:54.782
Her door. It's just everything's out of control. It's chaos.

02:06:55.741 --> 02:07:03.219
Insanity, impositions of power. But you, the American people, can change that.

02:07:04.240 --> 02:07:07.787
Now, I don't know what it's going to take for some people because,

02:07:08.414 --> 02:07:13.985
you know, I just get amazed like somebody I went to high school with posted,

02:07:14.246 --> 02:07:17.272
the Obamas didn't pay the contractors for the library.

02:07:18.091 --> 02:07:19.454
The Obamas didn't pay anybody.

02:07:20.379 --> 02:07:28.202
And it was like the foundation that was set up to build a library hired contractors,

02:07:28.202 --> 02:07:32.492
and contractors hire subcontractors. Now, what's going on between the contractors

02:07:32.492 --> 02:07:33.723
and the subcontractors?

02:07:34.725 --> 02:07:37.962
Barack and Michelle ain't got nothing to do with that. But I had a high school

02:07:37.962 --> 02:07:43.492
classmate put on there, a black woman, literally that lived a block away from

02:07:43.492 --> 02:07:47.849
me, say it was these black folks' fault that these people weren't getting paid.

02:07:48.245 --> 02:07:49.702
Put it out there on social media.

02:07:50.310 --> 02:07:51.911
And claims to be a Christian.

02:07:52.979 --> 02:07:59.972
I had a guy come on social media that was an elected official in Jackson and

02:07:59.972 --> 02:08:03.947
say that, yeah, they're sabotaging the pool.

02:08:04.754 --> 02:08:07.156
Antifa is sabotaging the pool.

02:08:08.129 --> 02:08:12.104
An elected official, somebody that's supposed to be intelligent,

02:08:13.156 --> 02:08:21.132
competent, is repeating the same bullshit that a man that has no empathy no

02:08:21.132 --> 02:08:23.277
contrition is spouting.

02:08:24.324 --> 02:08:25.885
That's insanity, folks.

02:08:26.958 --> 02:08:29.482
Because if you talk to these people, you know that it's like,

02:08:29.482 --> 02:08:33.272
well, you know, he does pop off. You know, he does say crazy things.

02:08:33.852 --> 02:08:38.782
Hey, that might be an indication that he might not be right for this job.

02:08:40.419 --> 02:08:46.745
He might agree with you on a particular point. Look, bro, can I be straight up with y'all?

02:08:47.250 --> 02:08:52.239
I can find people that are homeless, that if I talk to them about a particular

02:08:52.239 --> 02:08:54.419
issue, they're going to agree with me on something.

02:08:55.477 --> 02:08:59.111
I'm not going to turn around and put them on the city council in my city.

02:09:00.183 --> 02:09:03.539
I'm not going to elect a mayor of the city. I'm not going to elect them governor

02:09:03.539 --> 02:09:05.711
of the state. I'm not going to elect them president of the United States.

02:09:06.888 --> 02:09:13.062
My main focus is, brother, can we get you someplace to stay? Can we get you some help?

02:09:14.184 --> 02:09:17.029
I'm not going to put them in a position where they're making decisions about

02:09:17.029 --> 02:09:19.525
my life. That's just real talk.

02:09:20.632 --> 02:09:26.461
So why do we excuse this fool? Why have we given this crazy person,

02:09:27.230 --> 02:09:30.508
this person that is not fully human?

02:09:31.549 --> 02:09:34.428
Because if you don't have any empathy, if you don't have any contrition,

02:09:35.481 --> 02:09:37.553
if you don't have a soul, you're not fully human.

02:09:38.525 --> 02:09:43.425
Right? Now, all of us are supposed to have a soul, but a lot of people ain't in tune with it.

02:09:44.469 --> 02:09:49.079
And we don't need to put them in positions of leadership. We don't need pets

02:09:49.079 --> 02:09:52.799
of those kind of people in leadership positions.

02:09:52.799 --> 02:09:57.319
And when I say pets, I mean people that'll do anything to get fed and have a

02:09:57.319 --> 02:10:00.042
place to stay in that political party.

02:10:00.983 --> 02:10:02.839
Don't matter if they're black, don't matter if they're white,

02:10:02.839 --> 02:10:04.839
don't matter if they're Latino, don't matter if they're Asian,

02:10:04.839 --> 02:10:09.189
don't matter if they gay, don't matter if they straight, if you're espousing

02:10:09.189 --> 02:10:15.001
the thoughts of a fool, then you are a fool yourself.

02:10:16.098 --> 02:10:17.346
And I'm not voting for you.

02:10:19.038 --> 02:10:22.642
Hope that the majority of the people that listen to this podcast,

02:10:23.102 --> 02:10:25.848
if not all of you, agree with that sentence.

02:10:26.629 --> 02:10:31.980
And if you were inclined, or you have in the past voted for these foolish people,

02:10:32.624 --> 02:10:37.773
I admonish you to stop, because it is hurting all of us.

02:10:38.384 --> 02:10:42.141
Not just the people that you don't like, it's hurting all of us.

02:10:43.080 --> 02:10:47.951
Some of you are feeling that lesson right now, but you have the power to change it.

02:10:48.815 --> 02:10:55.408
We don't need a president that's committed to tearing stuff up or vandalizing stuff.

02:10:55.877 --> 02:11:01.071
Yeah, when you put gold plating all over the White House, that's vandalizing it, bro.

02:11:01.880 --> 02:11:06.849
Ain't nobody approved that. He literally has a gold sign saying the Oval Office.

02:11:07.360 --> 02:11:14.191
There's a reason why you didn't put a name on the part where the president sits. It's called security.

02:11:15.010 --> 02:11:17.858
You're just basically saying the terrorists are like, oh, see,

02:11:17.858 --> 02:11:22.002
it says Oval Office right there. That's where we need to go. Why would you do that?

02:11:23.044 --> 02:11:26.632
Your vanity is a byproduct of your insanity.

02:11:27.745 --> 02:11:31.077
You see where I'm going? Just basic stuff.

02:11:32.250 --> 02:11:36.150
And we got to shut all that down. And we got to learn from this lesson.

02:11:38.300 --> 02:11:42.334
There's some people who's like, it's amazing that America has lasted 250 years.

02:11:45.206 --> 02:11:48.476
Based on the last 10, I understand why they think that way.

02:11:49.533 --> 02:11:54.476
But all that can change. You have the power to do that.

02:11:55.317 --> 02:12:01.062
You can make that change happen. You are the change that you seek.

02:12:02.326 --> 02:12:06.408
All right, I'm going to end it on that. Thank y'all for listening. Until next time.