Specs & Social Change Featuring David Dunaway and Lakeland Barnes

WEBVTT

00:00:00.017 --> 00:00:06.117
Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.

00:00:06.417 --> 00:00:08.977
I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.

00:00:09.337 --> 00:00:12.737
If you like what you're hearing, then I need you to do a few things.

00:00:13.257 --> 00:00:19.397
First, I need subscribers. I'm on Patreon at patreon.com slash amomentwitherikfleming.

00:00:19.757 --> 00:00:24.637
Your subscription allows an independent podcaster like me the freedom to speak

00:00:24.637 --> 00:00:27.957
truth to power, and to expand and improve the show.

00:00:28.517 --> 00:00:32.837
Second, leave a five-star review for the podcast on the streaming service you

00:00:32.837 --> 00:00:35.577
listen to it. That will help the podcast tremendously.

00:00:36.437 --> 00:00:41.917
Third, go to the website, momenterik.com. There you can subscribe to the podcast,

00:00:42.297 --> 00:00:47.257
leave reviews and comments, listen to past episodes, and even learn a little bit about your host.

00:00:47.817 --> 00:00:51.857
Lastly, don't keep this a secret like it's your own personal guilty pleasure.

00:00:52.577 --> 00:00:57.097
Tell someone else about the podcast. Encourage others to listen to the podcast

00:00:57.097 --> 00:01:02.417
and share the podcast on your social media platforms, because it is time to

00:01:02.417 --> 00:01:04.177
make this moment a movement.

00:01:04.637 --> 00:01:10.197
Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.

00:01:15.377 --> 00:01:20.197
The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.

00:02:00.606 --> 00:02:05.666
Hello, welcome to another moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.

00:02:05.966 --> 00:02:12.066
So today, got a couple of guests on. I got one, David Dunaway.

00:02:12.826 --> 00:02:20.126
He's written this interesting book about the history and the impact of eyeglasses.

00:02:20.626 --> 00:02:28.326
And you'll be surprised when you get into the history not only of eyeglasses, but a lot of objects.

00:02:29.686 --> 00:02:33.626
You'll be surprised about the political connections and all that stuff,

00:02:33.646 --> 00:02:35.086
so we're going to get into that.

00:02:35.586 --> 00:02:38.526
The name of his book is called A Four-Eyed World.

00:02:39.246 --> 00:02:45.686
So we'll be talking about his book. Then I've got a young sister on named Lakeland Barnes.

00:02:46.006 --> 00:02:53.666
Lakeland is a community organizer and nonprofit consultant.

00:02:54.386 --> 00:02:59.306
Based out of Augusta, Georgia. And she is doing some incredible things.

00:02:59.306 --> 00:03:05.526
So we'll get to share what she's doing in her community to try to lift people up.

00:03:06.666 --> 00:03:11.126
Thank you all for listening. We've got a really...

00:03:12.696 --> 00:03:17.196
We've got to really be in tune with what's going on.

00:03:17.476 --> 00:03:22.816
And I'll talk about a couple of things that's on my mind at the end of the show.

00:03:23.096 --> 00:03:27.836
But I just really, really thank y'all for listening and spreading the word.

00:03:28.816 --> 00:03:33.336
We're starting to get some feedback. I mean, we were getting feedback,

00:03:33.536 --> 00:03:37.516
but it's like it's picked up a little bit as far as people appreciating the

00:03:37.516 --> 00:03:40.836
show and appreciating the format and all that.

00:03:40.836 --> 00:03:44.456
And, you know, it's one of those things is just like an audible book.

00:03:44.576 --> 00:03:46.476
You've got to set some time to really listen.

00:03:48.096 --> 00:03:52.836
But, you know, I want y'all to have a real interview to listen to.

00:03:53.496 --> 00:04:00.336
It's one thing to kind of do like the major media outlets and have a high profile

00:04:00.336 --> 00:04:02.156
guest on for like five minutes.

00:04:02.656 --> 00:04:06.396
Try to explain what they're doing or what's going on right this moment.

00:04:07.156 --> 00:04:11.316
And, you know, it's just kind of like in and out. But, you know,

00:04:11.416 --> 00:04:18.356
I want y'all not only to get to know who they are, but what motivated them to do what they do.

00:04:19.856 --> 00:04:29.836
And go a little in depth as far as, you know, what the issues they're working on, right?

00:04:30.596 --> 00:04:33.616
So, you know, it's not your typical...

00:04:35.796 --> 00:04:42.116
Podcast in the sense that I'm really trying to do some fancy or,

00:04:42.116 --> 00:04:45.216
you know, I'm starving for money or attention.

00:04:46.156 --> 00:04:52.976
Although I do ask for donations and you can go to www.momenterik.com if you want to do that.

00:04:53.376 --> 00:04:57.656
You can subscribe, you can donate, write reviews, the whole nine yards.

00:04:58.096 --> 00:05:05.676
But I really do this to really uplift people, not just the folks that come on

00:05:05.676 --> 00:05:08.596
the show, but to uplift you all and,

00:05:09.476 --> 00:05:14.456
give you some hope and just keep reminding you that there are thousands of people

00:05:14.456 --> 00:05:17.696
out there, people I'll probably never get to meet or even interview,

00:05:17.956 --> 00:05:20.856
that are really doing some incredible stuff.

00:05:21.656 --> 00:05:30.676
And if you've noticed this year during the show, I've been asking people about why they have hope.

00:05:31.456 --> 00:05:39.776
And in this time where it seems like the folks that we would define as the powers

00:05:39.776 --> 00:05:44.576
that be are just doing whatever they want to do and don't really care about

00:05:44.576 --> 00:05:46.976
anything, especially us.

00:05:47.516 --> 00:05:51.996
So I just want to remind you all through this podcast that there's some people

00:05:51.996 --> 00:05:57.336
out there doing the work, and there is hope for all of us because these people are doing the work.

00:05:58.416 --> 00:06:03.496
So I just wanted to say that to kind of get things started. And so now it's

00:06:03.496 --> 00:06:05.876
time to kick this podcast off.

00:06:06.176 --> 00:06:10.976
And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.

00:06:17.207 --> 00:06:23.727
Thanks, Erik. Detainees at the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center in

00:06:23.727 --> 00:06:28.307
Newark launched an indefinite hunger and labor strike to protest their confinement.

00:06:28.747 --> 00:06:33.447
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton will plead guilty to mishandling

00:06:33.447 --> 00:06:35.827
classified documents later this month.

00:06:36.107 --> 00:06:41.387
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use a congressional map that eliminates

00:06:41.387 --> 00:06:43.207
a Black-majority district.

00:06:44.123 --> 00:06:50.003
Louisiana Republicans approved a new congressional map that eliminates a majority black district.

00:06:50.503 --> 00:06:55.643
Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Javier Becerra advanced to the general

00:06:55.643 --> 00:06:59.183
election after California's open primary for governor.

00:06:59.783 --> 00:07:05.103
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Vass secured a November runoff in her re-election bid

00:07:05.103 --> 00:07:07.143
against Republican Spencer Pratt.

00:07:07.683 --> 00:07:12.203
Democrat Rebecca Bennett won her primary to challenge Republican Representative

00:07:12.203 --> 00:07:15.683
Thomas Keene in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District.

00:07:16.363 --> 00:07:21.403
Republican Marionette Miller-Meeks and Democrat Christina Bohannon each won

00:07:21.403 --> 00:07:25.943
their respective primaries, setting up a general election matchup in Iowa's

00:07:25.943 --> 00:07:27.323
1st Congressional District.

00:07:28.043 --> 00:07:32.523
Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen announced the Trump administration

00:07:32.523 --> 00:07:34.583
might halt international traveler

00:07:34.583 --> 00:07:39.403
processing at more than a dozen airports located in sanctuary cities.

00:07:39.803 --> 00:07:44.323
The U.S. Department of Justice requested that a federal judge recuse herself

00:07:44.323 --> 00:07:49.943
from a Georgia voter registration case due to her link to a judicial misconduct investigation.

00:07:50.323 --> 00:07:54.963
A U.S. appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can temporarily bar

00:07:54.963 --> 00:08:00.063
transgender individuals from enlisting in the military while blocking the expulsion

00:08:00.063 --> 00:08:01.523
of current service members.

00:08:02.023 --> 00:08:07.083
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of several female and

00:08:07.083 --> 00:08:08.843
black male naval officers.

00:08:09.263 --> 00:08:14.483
President Trump appointed Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.

00:08:15.323 --> 00:08:20.503
The NAACP asked for a federal court to block the U.S. Postal Service's proposed

00:08:20.503 --> 00:08:22.523
restrictions on mail-in voting.

00:08:22.943 --> 00:08:28.603
And a South Carolina jury acquitted convenience store owner Chike Rick Chow

00:08:28.603 --> 00:08:34.283
of murder in the 2023 fatal shooting of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack Belton.

00:08:34.283 --> 00:08:38.243
I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.

00:08:44.403 --> 00:08:48.403
All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news.

00:08:48.803 --> 00:08:53.283
Now it is time for my guest, David Dunaway.

00:08:53.703 --> 00:08:59.123
David Dunaway is a professor of English at the Universities of New Mexico and

00:08:59.123 --> 00:09:05.003
Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the author and editor of 10 books of history and biography.

00:09:05.323 --> 00:09:10.463
His award-winning documentaries are heard on NPR and internationally.

00:09:10.723 --> 00:09:17.983
He hosted a show on Albuquerque NPR affiliate KUNM for 20 years and has appeared

00:09:17.983 --> 00:09:22.563
on PBS, CNBC, and C-SPAN's book TV.

00:09:22.863 --> 00:09:30.003
He resides in Los Ranchos, New Mexico, and his new book is A Four-Eyed World,

00:09:30.523 --> 00:09:33.283
How Glasses Change the Way We See.

00:09:33.743 --> 00:09:38.143
Ladies and gentlemen, It is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

00:09:38.143 --> 00:09:41.363
on this podcast, David Dunaway.

00:09:52.445 --> 00:09:56.245
All right. David Dunaway. How you doing, sir? You doing good?

00:09:57.145 --> 00:10:00.165
Doing great. Looking forward to this conversation. Well,

00:10:00.285 --> 00:10:05.045
I'm honored to have you on because you're going to talk about something that

00:10:05.045 --> 00:10:11.225
you and I both relate to is that this four-eyed world that we live in.

00:10:11.365 --> 00:10:12.725
And that's the name of your book.

00:10:12.885 --> 00:10:19.145
So most of the discussion is going to be based off of what you wrote and the

00:10:19.145 --> 00:10:25.025
impact that eyeglasses have made in the world.

00:10:25.205 --> 00:10:30.105
But before we get into the discussion, I do a couple of icebreaker things.

00:10:30.725 --> 00:10:34.085
So the first thing I want you to do is to respond to this quote.

00:10:34.977 --> 00:10:44.297
All your problems are opportunities. That is Robert Louis Stevenson who uttered that.

00:10:44.517 --> 00:10:53.057
And I often think that's a great quote because too often we overlook,

00:10:53.597 --> 00:10:57.317
we're looking back and we're not looking forward.

00:10:57.597 --> 00:11:01.337
And so I agree with that.

00:11:01.337 --> 00:11:09.297
Maybe the challenge to that phrase is the word all, because there are some problems

00:11:09.297 --> 00:11:15.257
that are not opportunities, particularly around serious health issues.

00:11:15.657 --> 00:11:18.817
But other than that, I'm down with that quote.

00:11:19.217 --> 00:11:22.637
Well, you know, I understand where you come from with that.

00:11:22.757 --> 00:11:26.977
But in some cases, you know, even the health challenges, right?

00:11:26.977 --> 00:11:32.097
So say, for example, you, you, you know, you get diagnosed with diabetes,

00:11:32.097 --> 00:11:38.037
then that gives you the opportunity to eat better and try to live a better lifestyle.

00:11:38.257 --> 00:11:41.037
There's I'm one of those half full kind of people.

00:11:41.397 --> 00:11:46.597
So I try to look at, you know, the best opportunity and stuff.

00:11:47.757 --> 00:11:51.617
And I picked that quote because you had a whole bunch of them in the book that

00:11:51.617 --> 00:11:56.817
I could chose. But I picked that one because that kind of seems like the overarching

00:11:56.817 --> 00:11:59.177
theme of what you were trying to do.

00:11:59.837 --> 00:12:04.617
And we'll get into that in the discussion further. But it seemed like that was

00:12:04.617 --> 00:12:07.617
kind of the overarching theme of what you're trying to do with the book.

00:12:07.997 --> 00:12:10.337
But let's get this other iceberg out the way first.

00:12:11.455 --> 00:12:16.855
This is a segment we call 20 questions. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

00:12:17.735 --> 00:12:23.975
17. All righty. What's something about people who see the world differently

00:12:23.975 --> 00:12:26.095
than you that you've come to appreciate?

00:12:27.315 --> 00:12:28.975
Wow, that's a tough one.

00:12:31.475 --> 00:12:34.295
Those of us who are limited in our

00:12:34.295 --> 00:12:38.335
vision come to the world in

00:12:38.335 --> 00:12:41.175
many cases necessarily with a

00:12:41.175 --> 00:12:48.675
pair of lenses between us and what surrounds us i call us glassers because i

00:12:48.675 --> 00:12:56.575
think it's a lot better than the term four eyes i have learned that well from

00:12:56.575 --> 00:12:59.675
the beginning when i started wearing glasses when I was five,

00:12:59.975 --> 00:13:04.615
I learned that people really did see the world differently than I did.

00:13:04.855 --> 00:13:10.955
That not everybody had to get a foot away from something in order to see it clearly.

00:13:11.215 --> 00:13:17.115
And I suppose that's the first big realization I had about the difference between

00:13:17.115 --> 00:13:20.715
those of us that are living with visual challenges.

00:13:20.955 --> 00:13:24.115
It is that notion that not everybody is.

00:13:24.975 --> 00:13:33.255
Yeah, I got you Alright, so Why did you decide to write A Four-Eyed World? Well.

00:13:35.059 --> 00:13:42.199
I've always been intrigued by books that try and make a world out of a single device or substance.

00:13:42.819 --> 00:13:48.759
There's a great book called Salt, which retells European history and a bit of

00:13:48.759 --> 00:13:53.839
African history on the basis of the need and desire for salt,

00:13:54.079 --> 00:13:58.079
not just for preserving food,

00:13:58.359 --> 00:14:04.719
not just for taste, but for preserving food, and how really civilization was

00:14:04.719 --> 00:14:13.499
channeled by our search for salt and spices that took us all across the world,

00:14:13.639 --> 00:14:16.179
took Europeans all across the world.

00:14:18.939 --> 00:14:24.439
Glasses are omnipresent in my life. They're the first thing I touch in the morning

00:14:24.439 --> 00:14:26.259
and the last thing at night.

00:14:26.499 --> 00:14:32.439
I can't cross the street without glasses, and I wouldn't try either.

00:14:32.859 --> 00:14:44.199
So what we're looking at is a, well, it is kind of a device that many of us

00:14:44.199 --> 00:14:47.339
keep closer than any other,

00:14:48.199 --> 00:14:52.239
except perhaps if we wear our watch to bed.

00:14:53.799 --> 00:14:59.899
Glasses, in some sense, are a form of social glue because without it,

00:14:59.999 --> 00:15:02.859
we would be banging into each other.

00:15:02.859 --> 00:15:07.539
We would be misunderstanding each other because we couldn't see the details

00:15:07.539 --> 00:15:10.599
of each other's faces and reaction.

00:15:11.379 --> 00:15:17.019
Glasses are more central to our life than, even if you don't wear them,

00:15:17.399 --> 00:15:19.379
than most people understand.

00:15:20.579 --> 00:15:29.059
Worldwide, 58% of road accidents have been tied worldwide to defective vision.

00:15:29.459 --> 00:15:38.519
And there's a simple way to solve that problem with a miraculous device called eyeglasses. Yeah.

00:15:40.217 --> 00:15:50.157
Yeah. So I felt I needed to make my contribution to this as someone who's worn them all his life.

00:15:50.277 --> 00:15:56.317
And then I thought I could kind of raise glasses into something that is not

00:15:56.317 --> 00:16:02.577
overlooked, but people will be fascinated by its history,

00:16:02.897 --> 00:16:07.877
its sociology, that is how people rate people who wear glasses.

00:16:07.877 --> 00:16:17.417
Even if they don't say it out loud and the future of glasses which is in its way a little bit scary.

00:16:17.957 --> 00:16:22.877
Well, speaking about scary you stated that you lost half of your vision between

00:16:22.877 --> 00:16:28.737
the ages of 10 and 13 yet as part of your research for this book you went a

00:16:28.737 --> 00:16:31.497
week without your glasses so

00:16:31.497 --> 00:16:36.697
I have a two-part question why would you do that and what was that like?

00:16:37.715 --> 00:16:44.595
Well, maybe it's a little crazy trying to remember what it was like,

00:16:44.815 --> 00:16:48.335
what life was like before we all had glasses.

00:16:49.955 --> 00:16:54.415
Most of glasses are 750 years old.

00:16:54.695 --> 00:17:03.755
Homo sapiens go back, you know, a good 30,000 years. So most of humanity's time

00:17:03.755 --> 00:17:09.415
was not with a way to see better by a device.

00:17:10.535 --> 00:17:15.595
I wanted to know what that was like, and I wanted to know what does it really

00:17:15.595 --> 00:17:17.395
mean to wear glasses today?

00:17:17.795 --> 00:17:24.775
You wear glasses, I wear glasses, some two-thirds of the American population

00:17:24.775 --> 00:17:28.955
wears glasses, and they overlook what it means.

00:17:28.955 --> 00:17:36.915
So that was one direct way to experience and enter into an understanding of

00:17:36.915 --> 00:17:42.055
what it means to wear glasses by essentially not wearing them.

00:17:43.235 --> 00:17:52.795
And I was happy with that, except for the challenging experiences I have had.

00:17:52.795 --> 00:18:02.755
During that week, I, you know, I pour a glass 150% full with the water spreading

00:18:02.755 --> 00:18:06.715
across the kitchen floor, which was something of a challenge.

00:18:06.995 --> 00:18:12.155
I injured myself. I almost gave it up three or four times.

00:18:12.615 --> 00:18:18.695
It was a struggle. It was a struggle to live without glasses when you're seriously,

00:18:19.115 --> 00:18:22.535
in my case, myopic or farsighted. And.

00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:27.820
I don't necessarily recommend that people try that experience.

00:18:27.860 --> 00:18:33.600
What I want them to do is to pull off their glasses and look at the world around

00:18:33.600 --> 00:18:42.000
them as they see themselves without any assistance, without any artificial devices.

00:18:42.440 --> 00:18:49.020
And for me, even though I don't wear glass, I don't see well without my glasses,

00:18:49.020 --> 00:18:52.360
I experienced a whole new world.

00:18:52.360 --> 00:18:59.440
A world that was mine, a world that was not mediated, you might say,

00:19:00.340 --> 00:19:03.220
by having a pair of glasses on at all times.

00:19:03.500 --> 00:19:09.880
And it allowed me to rethink my relationship with something that I overlook.

00:19:11.338 --> 00:19:18.458
Yeah. You know, it was, it was very interesting reading the journal part of,

00:19:18.598 --> 00:19:21.138
of the book. Cause you kind of did it a unique way.

00:19:21.318 --> 00:19:26.818
It was like, you would do the chapter and discuss like maybe the history or,

00:19:27.058 --> 00:19:29.918
you know, it's impact on movies or whatever.

00:19:30.218 --> 00:19:33.818
But in between each chapter, you were you know

00:19:33.818 --> 00:19:37.958
journaling a day without glasses and

00:19:37.958 --> 00:19:43.358
yes I was just like and you know and it was like you know when you said you

00:19:43.358 --> 00:19:49.738
injured yourself I felt that pain right but the scariest thing I think out of

00:19:49.738 --> 00:19:54.238
that whole experience was you went out to an event.

00:19:55.878 --> 00:20:01.238
Where people knew you and have known you to wear glasses all the time.

00:20:01.478 --> 00:20:09.158
And just the story you told about that, I think that was the most terrifying part for me.

00:20:09.698 --> 00:20:14.518
Just reading that, I was like, there's no way I would have went anywhere outside

00:20:14.518 --> 00:20:16.998
of that house without my glasses.

00:20:17.038 --> 00:20:20.458
Well, you're absolutely right. It was very scary.

00:20:20.698 --> 00:20:25.018
I'm a member of the Albuquerque Press Club and have been for many years.

00:20:25.238 --> 00:20:28.798
I'm a journalist in radio and print.

00:20:30.878 --> 00:20:35.998
And walking into a room without my glasses was a crowded room.

00:20:36.078 --> 00:20:38.378
That was the first time I ever did that in my life.

00:20:39.178 --> 00:20:41.878
And I'm not entirely sure I'd do it again.

00:20:42.878 --> 00:20:49.638
People would wave at me, but I couldn't tell it was me they were waving at or somebody else.

00:20:50.858 --> 00:20:57.098
I kept trying to serve myself the food and it kept falling away from me.

00:20:57.258 --> 00:21:03.498
I couldn't even tell where it was because it sure wasn't on my plate or on my fork. And,

00:21:04.335 --> 00:21:11.815
it made me realize something that I don't like to think about,

00:21:11.815 --> 00:21:20.835
that those of us who have serious visual challenges fall within the category of the disabled.

00:21:21.215 --> 00:21:25.515
And I never wanted to put that name on myself.

00:21:26.195 --> 00:21:31.635
With glasses, I see pretty well. I can't get to 2020, but.

00:21:32.476 --> 00:21:39.416
Not too far off. But without them, I'm not the same person.

00:21:40.016 --> 00:21:45.356
And so that struggle to understand what people have gone through,

00:21:45.596 --> 00:21:51.056
to understand what people with even worse vision than myself have gone through

00:21:51.056 --> 00:21:53.216
became a personal struggle.

00:21:53.516 --> 00:22:00.216
And it's one that challenged me to do things like walk into a room of 50 people,

00:22:00.536 --> 00:22:10.176
a third or a half of which know me, and just risk, well, a certain discomfort,

00:22:10.176 --> 00:22:12.756
maybe a certain shame as well.

00:22:13.216 --> 00:22:18.516
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, that took a lot of guts to honor that commitment.

00:22:18.736 --> 00:22:22.636
I understand that you're a member and all that, and you were trying to support

00:22:22.636 --> 00:22:27.276
the group, but yeah, I don't know. I've been like, Hey, I'm not feeling good

00:22:27.276 --> 00:22:29.936
this week. Take a pass on that one. Yeah.

00:22:30.556 --> 00:22:33.556
I might've, might've had to come up with some, you remember you,

00:22:33.776 --> 00:22:37.736
well, I don't know if you ever did that, but you know, to call in the worker, like, Oh yeah.

00:22:38.936 --> 00:22:44.796
You know, that kind of thing. I would explain your kinship with a door.

00:22:45.076 --> 00:22:48.176
And I don't even know how to say this person's name. Adoas.

00:22:49.296 --> 00:22:52.316
Aldous Huxley. Aldous. Yeah. Aldous. Yeah.

00:22:53.116 --> 00:22:58.556
Okay. Here's a man after which, for all intents and purposes,

00:22:58.896 --> 00:23:03.136
the first term highbrow was called.

00:23:03.756 --> 00:23:11.836
He's there. He's born in the 19th century and lived and died up to the day that John F.

00:23:11.916 --> 00:23:20.816
Kennedy died in November 22nd, 1963. He was generally regarded as one of the

00:23:20.816 --> 00:23:26.696
most brilliant writers of his century, the 20th century.

00:23:28.839 --> 00:23:35.259
I got engaged by him way back when I was in high school, and I was one of these

00:23:35.259 --> 00:23:40.739
kids with the thick lenses that read all the time, day and night, because,

00:23:40.959 --> 00:23:44.199
frankly, there wasn't many other opportunities.

00:23:44.199 --> 00:23:46.859
There weren't many other opportunities for them.

00:23:47.059 --> 00:23:54.479
And I ran across his Brave New World, which back in the day was a part of every U.S. story.

00:23:55.315 --> 00:24:00.695
High school, junior high school curriculum. It was about amusing ourselves to

00:24:00.695 --> 00:24:08.615
death, about how we become distracted, how the world is full of cloned people.

00:24:08.855 --> 00:24:14.295
And those people are, in fact, created into classes.

00:24:14.295 --> 00:24:21.775
So you're born with a class and that's not so fair nor so much fun.

00:24:21.775 --> 00:24:25.335
He had serious visual challenges.

00:24:25.475 --> 00:24:31.735
When he was in high school at Eton, a famous private school in England,

00:24:31.735 --> 00:24:40.115
he accidentally blinded himself, probably through a strep infection,

00:24:40.375 --> 00:24:46.675
a dirty towel that someone else was using, and he lost his sight.

00:24:46.835 --> 00:24:52.795
He became blind for 18 months. And to give you some idea of the capacity of this man,

00:24:53.015 --> 00:25:02.455
he taught himself Braille, and he also taught himself to play the piano blind during that period.

00:25:02.835 --> 00:25:09.475
And he never recovered. His corneas were so scratched that it was looking at

00:25:09.475 --> 00:25:13.175
him was like looking into two tiny blue clouds.

00:25:13.175 --> 00:25:20.235
And he struggled, and I have to say it's sobering that here's a man with that

00:25:20.235 --> 00:25:22.875
kind of visual difficulty,

00:25:22.875 --> 00:25:29.695
injury, that was able to write 60 books and become one of the world's best-selling

00:25:29.695 --> 00:25:32.895
authors during the 1920s.

00:25:34.070 --> 00:25:39.330
How amazing is that? And so he also put aside his glasses.

00:25:39.750 --> 00:25:42.170
He tried operations. They didn't

00:25:42.170 --> 00:25:49.130
work. Today, we could have cured his opaque corneas and let him see,

00:25:49.270 --> 00:25:57.270
but we didn't have that technology back in the 1930s, 40s, or 1950s, unfortunately.

00:25:57.270 --> 00:26:03.790
And his widespread view of the world and his willingness to challenge himself

00:26:03.790 --> 00:26:09.270
to see where nature had failed him was for me an inspiration.

00:26:10.210 --> 00:26:15.910
Yeah, yeah. I know he tried different experiments, you know,

00:26:15.970 --> 00:26:19.430
to try to strengthen his eyesight and all that stuff.

00:26:20.290 --> 00:26:26.090
And I guess, you know, for him, he had some success, but everybody else was

00:26:26.090 --> 00:26:27.670
saying, yeah, you still can't see.

00:26:28.910 --> 00:26:33.770
Well, I'm afraid there's some truth to that, and I don't know what else to say

00:26:33.770 --> 00:26:36.490
except that he tried everything he could,

00:26:36.730 --> 00:26:44.350
and visual re-education, learning to find a way to see by relaxing your vision

00:26:44.350 --> 00:26:50.410
and relaxing the tension that you carry through meditation and other devices

00:26:50.410 --> 00:26:54.070
ultimately worked for him. He could function like.

00:26:55.072 --> 00:26:59.872
Largely function without his glasses. That having been said,

00:27:00.032 --> 00:27:04.532
his wife was very used to who he married in his 20s,

00:27:04.692 --> 00:27:10.352
was used to helping him around and telling him about people who were across

00:27:10.352 --> 00:27:15.632
the room that he couldn't see and guiding him across the street.

00:27:16.352 --> 00:27:26.352
And without Maria Huxley's incredible support, both in his writing and his managing low vision.

00:27:26.612 --> 00:27:36.232
He managed himself to do an amazing amount of thinking and writing with a lot of lessons for today.

00:27:36.452 --> 00:27:40.672
I wrote two books about him. One is called Aldous Huxley Recollected,

00:27:40.672 --> 00:27:45.092
and another is about the european immigrants

00:27:45.092 --> 00:27:48.492
in hollywood during its golden age and

00:27:48.492 --> 00:27:51.892
it's just called huxley in hollywood yeah and

00:27:51.892 --> 00:27:55.832
and you know in the book that i've just completed a

00:27:55.832 --> 00:28:03.692
four-eyed world how glasses changed how we see in that in that book which we're

00:28:03.692 --> 00:28:11.932
talking about i go back and and and look again at how he struggled to see and what that meant for me.

00:28:12.912 --> 00:28:16.212
Yeah. Tell the listeners the story of Roger Bacon.

00:28:16.872 --> 00:28:24.772
Okay. Well, this is kind of a sad story. It's a tale of a man who...

00:28:26.193 --> 00:28:33.573
Went to jail for trying to invent glasses. I know that sounds really crazy,

00:28:33.573 --> 00:28:35.593
so I'm going to have to give you the backstory.

00:28:36.193 --> 00:28:40.953
When glasses were first invented at the end of the 13th century,

00:28:40.953 --> 00:28:50.233
a great long time ago, the Catholic Church was deeply suspicious of the, well,

00:28:50.773 --> 00:28:57.253
of the effects of people, anybody, learning to be able to read sacred texts

00:28:57.253 --> 00:29:00.993
without a priest interpreting them.

00:29:01.053 --> 00:29:06.833
They kind of wanted to keep control over the Bible and how it's understood.

00:29:07.253 --> 00:29:12.873
And they then thought that glasses were the work of the devil.

00:29:13.133 --> 00:29:18.393
In fact, some of the first illustrations of the devil occur around the time

00:29:18.393 --> 00:29:23.633
of the invention of glasses, and he usually is wearing glasses.

00:29:23.913 --> 00:29:27.433
Though why he can't see, nobody says.

00:29:28.696 --> 00:29:36.076
So, Roger Bacon was something of a genius who started Oxford at age 13.

00:29:36.076 --> 00:29:39.496
Now, that's something not many people could do.

00:29:39.636 --> 00:29:43.976
And he spoke six languages, including Arabic.

00:29:44.376 --> 00:29:51.716
And that allowed him to study the scientific texts of the great Persian and

00:29:51.716 --> 00:29:58.976
Arabic inventors as early as the 10th century who discovered the properties of lenses.

00:29:59.456 --> 00:30:04.376
And so he kept telling everybody, hey, this is going to amaze you,

00:30:04.496 --> 00:30:09.576
but if you put a lens in front of your eye, you can see images clearly after

00:30:09.576 --> 00:30:11.936
you reach the age of, say, 45.

00:30:12.636 --> 00:30:19.936
He was right. But the Franciscan order that he was a part of took the position

00:30:19.936 --> 00:30:23.516
that the church did, that this was the work of the devil,

00:30:23.756 --> 00:30:28.716
and the more he succeeded in showing the properties of lenses,

00:30:29.116 --> 00:30:36.936
the more they persecuted him until finally they locked him in a dark cell and

00:30:36.936 --> 00:30:39.756
pushed food through a slot in the door.

00:30:39.936 --> 00:30:46.476
For seven years he sat there in the dark for trying to help people see.

00:30:46.836 --> 00:30:54.276
When he died, His supposed last comments were, I regret having given myself

00:30:54.276 --> 00:30:57.416
so much trouble to help people see.

00:30:58.476 --> 00:31:03.676
Yeah. What was Benjamin Franklin's contribution to eyeglasses?

00:31:04.786 --> 00:31:09.526
Well, most Americans know of Benjamin Franklin,

00:31:09.526 --> 00:31:16.886
and probably what they know of is him putting a key on a kite and flying it

00:31:16.886 --> 00:31:19.806
in the air in a storm to attract lightning.

00:31:20.226 --> 00:31:27.386
He did do that, but he was a great deal more. He was a statesman. He was an inventor.

00:31:27.666 --> 00:31:28.886
He was a printer.

00:31:29.206 --> 00:31:32.686
He was a newspaper publisher. Sure.

00:31:34.611 --> 00:31:41.591
But he had suffered what most of us suffer, which is a thing called presbyopia,

00:31:41.891 --> 00:31:48.631
which is what sends people to buy reading glasses when their eyes and them age.

00:31:49.011 --> 00:31:55.871
Forties, fifties, sixties, most people need reading glasses to see up close.

00:31:56.151 --> 00:32:00.671
Even if they're nearsighted, they need them.

00:32:00.671 --> 00:32:08.971
Now, on a long journey, when he was representing the American colonies in France and England,

00:32:09.331 --> 00:32:16.611
he had gotten tired of changing his glasses to look out the window and see the

00:32:16.611 --> 00:32:19.891
scenery or to look up close and read.

00:32:19.891 --> 00:32:26.351
And so he got this idea in his head that he would, when he got back to town.

00:32:27.011 --> 00:32:36.031
Saw, find someone who could saw a lens that would be part distance vision and part close-up vision.

00:32:36.231 --> 00:32:41.311
This is today what we call bifocals or, as a matter of fact,

00:32:41.471 --> 00:32:43.891
what we call progressive lenses.

00:32:44.331 --> 00:32:50.671
There, there's no line between the top and bottom. He was not actually the first

00:32:50.671 --> 00:32:56.971
person to invent these glasses, but he was certainly the first person to popularize them.

00:32:57.131 --> 00:32:59.331
And as a matter of fact, at the French

00:32:59.331 --> 00:33:05.471
court, he would walk in wearing his glasses, and for the first time,

00:33:05.671 --> 00:33:12.871
people began to have a sense that important people could need and wear glasses.

00:33:14.671 --> 00:33:20.051
What is myopia, and why do you think we are in an epidemic concerning myopia?

00:33:20.431 --> 00:33:27.371
Well, myopia is something that happens to starting with children.

00:33:27.591 --> 00:33:30.391
As they grow, their eyeballs grow.

00:33:30.711 --> 00:33:38.871
And if certain conditions are not right, their eyeballs will grow too wide,

00:33:39.131 --> 00:33:43.531
too long, sort of like a football rather than a baseball.

00:33:44.471 --> 00:33:52.271
And there is a very simple way of avoiding that, which really every grandparent,

00:33:52.631 --> 00:33:58.071
every aunt, every uncle, every parent needs to know, because it can save your

00:33:58.071 --> 00:34:04.631
kids a great deal of trouble in the years to come. It goes like this.

00:34:05.631 --> 00:34:13.391
The son is the best optometrist, as the New York Times headed an article on this very topic.

00:34:13.531 --> 00:34:21.611
If your child goes out daily Two to three hours in the bright sunlight playing

00:34:21.611 --> 00:34:25.851
What happens is that a child,

00:34:26.635 --> 00:34:34.535
It inhibits the production of an enzyme in your body called retinal dopamine,

00:34:34.535 --> 00:34:44.095
which is what causes your eyes to grow too long and have a focus which is in front.

00:34:44.335 --> 00:34:50.415
The lens in your eye by itself sends the image not to the retina where it can

00:34:50.415 --> 00:34:58.115
be passed to the brain through the optic nerve, but in front of the lens, the retina.

00:34:58.295 --> 00:35:02.535
And what glasses do is they kick that back to the retina.

00:35:02.655 --> 00:35:07.435
And that's why we have different prescriptions, because different people have

00:35:07.435 --> 00:35:12.455
different issues with getting that image to the retina.

00:35:13.515 --> 00:35:19.675
It's not much. You can even have your kids, if they're serious readers, read outside.

00:35:20.115 --> 00:35:27.975
But a combination of use in early childhood of screens, like playing with a phone,

00:35:28.535 --> 00:35:32.135
of overusing computers as your

00:35:32.135 --> 00:35:39.355
eyes are developing from roughly the age of four to the age of 19, and,

00:35:39.914 --> 00:35:51.254
These things, in combination with not getting outside, are causing myopia problems around the world.

00:35:51.674 --> 00:36:01.534
Today, in Singapore, in Southeast Asia, some 95% of teenagers have to wear glasses.

00:36:01.914 --> 00:36:06.954
In China, that amount, the percentage of people wearing glasses,

00:36:07.234 --> 00:36:09.814
has doubled in the last half century.

00:36:09.914 --> 00:36:13.154
And it's happening right here in the United States.

00:36:13.534 --> 00:36:19.814
As we focus more on small screens, as students are pressured to work harder

00:36:19.814 --> 00:36:27.094
and harder to succeed later on in life, you get a situation where they're not

00:36:27.094 --> 00:36:28.454
outside playing anymore.

00:36:28.454 --> 00:36:30.894
They're inside playing with screens.

00:36:31.194 --> 00:36:37.834
And the combination of those two things is really a problem for your health.

00:36:38.674 --> 00:36:45.594
And that problem extends because once you're seriously nearsighted as a kid,

00:36:45.814 --> 00:36:49.354
you go out into the playground and people are going to pick on you.

00:36:49.474 --> 00:36:50.714
They're going to tease you.

00:36:50.874 --> 00:36:55.454
And sometimes kids can't handle that. And...

00:36:56.406 --> 00:37:02.986
Just freak out and no longer feel that they're one of the gang,

00:37:03.146 --> 00:37:08.386
that they're desirable, that they're a good person. They think of themselves as losers.

00:37:08.446 --> 00:37:11.146
It affects their social development.

00:37:12.306 --> 00:37:18.066
It also creates a condition later on in life where you're more likely to have

00:37:18.066 --> 00:37:23.986
retinal detachments, where the retina detaches from the rest of the eye,

00:37:24.186 --> 00:37:31.386
and macular degeneration when your overall visual health is declining.

00:37:31.646 --> 00:37:40.486
All of these things are a result of severe myopia, so you want to avoid it if you possibly can.

00:37:40.686 --> 00:37:48.126
There are even today brand new other ways of avoiding the development or slowing

00:37:48.126 --> 00:37:49.726
the development of myopia.

00:37:50.126 --> 00:37:53.706
Sorry, this is a long answer, but it's a really important topic.

00:37:54.006 --> 00:37:56.106
There are special contact lenses

00:37:56.106 --> 00:38:01.446
kids can put in. There are special eye drops that can be given them.

00:38:01.626 --> 00:38:07.726
And these things will slow the process of developing serious myopia.

00:38:07.926 --> 00:38:14.826
But frankly, sending the kids out to play in a supervised, safe environment is a lot easier.

00:38:15.546 --> 00:38:21.926
Yeah. All right. I got a few more questions. You had mentioned about the kids,

00:38:21.986 --> 00:38:26.206
you know, feeling some kind of way if they have to wear glasses.

00:38:26.586 --> 00:38:31.746
But if two thirds of the world's population wears glasses, why is there a stigma?

00:38:31.926 --> 00:38:37.906
Why is it that people still have these feelings that they're inadequate because they wear glasses?

00:38:39.068 --> 00:38:44.228
Well, it actually goes back to the 13th century and what we were talking about with Roger Bacon.

00:38:44.968 --> 00:38:49.128
Pretty much as soon as somebody figured out how to make a pair of glasses,

00:38:49.428 --> 00:38:52.348
somebody else denounced them as the devil's work.

00:38:52.548 --> 00:38:59.608
And that went on for centuries. And then it kind of bled into the idea that

00:38:59.608 --> 00:39:07.188
if you show yourself wearing glasses, you show yourself as weak.

00:39:07.428 --> 00:39:13.988
For women in particular, maybe the idea was that you would pass along some physical

00:39:13.988 --> 00:39:15.488
weakness to your children.

00:39:15.488 --> 00:39:23.848
It came to be that wearing glasses, particularly for women, was considered about,

00:39:23.848 --> 00:39:29.308
what's the phrase in this article that I read?

00:39:30.128 --> 00:39:36.288
A century ago, wearing glasses was a bit like brandishing your wooden leg in public.

00:39:37.568 --> 00:39:41.088
And of course there's that old comment by

00:39:41.088 --> 00:39:44.408
poet dorothy parker men seldom make

00:39:44.408 --> 00:39:48.328
passes at girls who wear glasses and

00:39:48.328 --> 00:39:51.308
and since then it has it has

00:39:51.308 --> 00:39:57.968
continued but in different ways go out this afternoon or evening to a restaurant

00:39:57.968 --> 00:40:07.028
or a bar or coffee house and watch as the minute somebody pulls out their phone

00:40:07.028 --> 00:40:10.628
to take a selfie, everybody rips off their glasses,

00:40:10.968 --> 00:40:16.568
particularly the women, because they don't see themselves as glasses wearers.

00:40:16.688 --> 00:40:21.948
They see themselves as physically perfect, and who wants to show that you have

00:40:21.948 --> 00:40:25.168
some small imperfection?

00:40:26.078 --> 00:40:29.498
Yeah, yeah. So I guess that leads to this question.

00:40:29.698 --> 00:40:35.958
Have glasses shaped our culture, or has culture shaped the wearing of glasses?

00:40:36.438 --> 00:40:39.478
Oh, gosh, that's another good one.

00:40:40.218 --> 00:40:45.338
Obviously, humans had a well-developed culture long before glasses existed.

00:40:45.638 --> 00:40:48.238
We built roads. We had wheels.

00:40:49.078 --> 00:40:56.138
We managed to learn to cook and raise food. So culture is a dynamic process

00:40:56.138 --> 00:40:59.578
that is constantly in flux and changing.

00:40:59.938 --> 00:41:03.018
What glasses did was, first of all,

00:41:03.378 --> 00:41:12.138
enable people to work beyond their 40s and vastly increase the productivity

00:41:12.138 --> 00:41:16.598
of society because a person who was 50,

00:41:16.718 --> 00:41:20.978
a person who was 60, They could still hold down a job if they had a pair of

00:41:20.978 --> 00:41:28.258
glasses to put on so they could read better and see better what was up close.

00:41:29.038 --> 00:41:36.418
This in turn led to whole industries like education, like publishing,

00:41:37.258 --> 00:41:41.178
like literacy, like colleges.

00:41:41.178 --> 00:41:50.278
Because if you couldn't see well, how were you going to read all those books and articles and learn?

00:41:50.578 --> 00:41:57.078
It opened up new frontiers in trade because you could see the person you were

00:41:57.078 --> 00:42:01.498
trading with and he or she could see the objects they were buying.

00:42:03.482 --> 00:42:12.722
It created a new world, a brave new world for people who could finally see past

00:42:12.722 --> 00:42:16.082
the limitations which nature gave them.

00:42:16.242 --> 00:42:19.142
And that's the story of a four-eyed world.

00:42:19.402 --> 00:42:26.382
It's the struggle that we have had as humans to perfect our sight and to see

00:42:26.382 --> 00:42:31.382
beyond the limitations that we may have been born with. Yeah.

00:42:32.102 --> 00:42:34.642
Do you think glasses shape our politics?

00:42:35.522 --> 00:42:40.062
Okay. Well, I have a funny and very topical story.

00:42:40.282 --> 00:42:47.042
I live in New Mexico, and Deborah Haaland was just picked up by Democratic voters

00:42:47.042 --> 00:42:50.562
75 to 25 over her opponent.

00:42:50.942 --> 00:42:56.362
And Deborah wears glasses. And Deborah also happens to have been my student

00:42:56.362 --> 00:43:00.522
in college writing classes for a year and a half.

00:43:00.802 --> 00:43:06.862
And so I was, she, she appears in public usually without her glasses,

00:43:06.862 --> 00:43:12.582
but she doesn't care much for contact lenses for a variety of reasons.

00:43:13.122 --> 00:43:17.862
So I was talking with her, helping to edit her autobiography,

00:43:17.862 --> 00:43:20.422
which also comes out next week.

00:43:21.422 --> 00:43:27.682
And I said, you know, Deborah, I think you should consider going out and getting

00:43:27.682 --> 00:43:31.662
new glasses, and I want your daughter to pick them out for you,

00:43:31.882 --> 00:43:37.622
not yourself, because we don't want professional glasses.

00:43:39.446 --> 00:43:47.086
Old-fashioned glasses. We want you to show a little spark in your glasses,

00:43:47.086 --> 00:43:52.366
like mine, which your listeners can't hear, which are bright red in color.

00:43:52.806 --> 00:43:59.966
There's so many styles available to us, new choices made out of new capacities

00:43:59.966 --> 00:44:03.826
for frames that we can choose that.

00:44:03.986 --> 00:44:10.706
And to come back to your question, glasses, yes, are a very important part of

00:44:10.706 --> 00:44:14.366
the image that a politician presents.

00:44:14.566 --> 00:44:18.206
The recently elected, I think it's about a year now,

00:44:18.726 --> 00:44:27.346
Prime Minister of Canada changed his glasses out from strict black squares or

00:44:27.346 --> 00:44:29.826
rectangles to something a little

00:44:30.066 --> 00:44:38.386
and immediately his profile with the voters increased because they saw him as

00:44:38.386 --> 00:44:43.706
a bit more with it than wearing very much old-fashioned glasses.

00:44:44.046 --> 00:44:50.386
And that's just a recent example of how politicians have remade themselves by

00:44:50.386 --> 00:44:52.446
putting on different pairs of glasses.

00:44:53.066 --> 00:45:01.286
Yeah, it was like I was, there was a study done in 2018. It's a University of Grognagin.

00:45:01.586 --> 00:45:03.366
It's in the Netherlands. Yeah.

00:45:03.887 --> 00:45:09.907
But their study said that U.S. politicians had increased electoral success if

00:45:09.907 --> 00:45:12.887
they wore glasses. And they were even breaking it down, I think.

00:45:13.347 --> 00:45:16.107
Or maybe that was you that was breaking it. It was somebody that was breaking

00:45:16.107 --> 00:45:24.027
it down about if they wore glasses and had a beard, they did better and all that kind of stuff.

00:45:24.227 --> 00:45:28.227
And then, you know, Truman had to wear glasses.

00:45:28.647 --> 00:45:31.847
Both the Roosevelt's wore glasses. so you

00:45:31.847 --> 00:45:35.267
know and that was part of their persona you

00:45:35.267 --> 00:45:38.347
know whenever they did a caricature of them they always had

00:45:38.347 --> 00:45:44.147
the glasses in there because i i can't say it's a front of punish what that

00:45:44.147 --> 00:45:51.707
roosevelt had the ones with no frames it was just they would pass pass nez it

00:45:51.707 --> 00:45:56.907
means pinch your nose It was the old glasses that didn't have frames.

00:45:57.327 --> 00:46:02.447
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt made those popular, but they were something that happened

00:46:02.447 --> 00:46:10.027
in the 20s from the 1880s to the 1930s for all intents and purposes.

00:46:10.287 --> 00:46:12.867
But sometimes they weren't very practical.

00:46:13.227 --> 00:46:18.227
They often came with a ribbon that ran down and it would get in your food.

00:46:19.227 --> 00:46:24.867
Who needs glasses that get down in your food? So that gave way.

00:46:25.087 --> 00:46:27.047
But you're absolutely right.

00:46:27.307 --> 00:46:30.447
Even Adolf Hitler, who needed...

00:46:31.254 --> 00:46:37.354
Glasses, seriously, was not allowed to wear them in public because that was

00:46:37.354 --> 00:46:41.634
thought to indicate a weakness of the Fuhrer.

00:46:41.714 --> 00:46:46.514
So they kept those glasses off him at all times. I don't think I've ever seen

00:46:46.514 --> 00:46:48.554
a picture of him with glasses.

00:46:48.854 --> 00:46:56.254
And there are many other examples of famous politicians who have either turned

00:46:56.254 --> 00:47:02.274
to glasses to jazz up their image because many people associate wearing glasses

00:47:02.274 --> 00:47:04.194
with enhanced intelligence,

00:47:04.194 --> 00:47:09.414
perhaps because it was associated with reading a great deal,

00:47:09.954 --> 00:47:16.334
particularly giving you eye strain under diminished light.

00:47:17.334 --> 00:47:21.694
So there are other qualities associated with wearing glasses,

00:47:21.694 --> 00:47:29.774
but the best one arguably is that it makes some people think you're smarter than you might be.

00:47:30.134 --> 00:47:36.234
Right. You mentioned the moment in 1783 when General Washington asked his soldiers

00:47:36.234 --> 00:47:39.314
for permission to put on his spectacles.

00:47:39.754 --> 00:47:42.234
Do you know what the backstory was on that?

00:47:43.219 --> 00:47:46.419
Well, again, spectacles in the

00:47:46.419 --> 00:47:51.319
age of George Washington in the American colonies were not produced here.

00:47:51.479 --> 00:47:56.079
They were produced in Europe as they had been for centuries,

00:47:56.079 --> 00:47:57.919
and they were all imported.

00:47:58.319 --> 00:48:04.979
And so it wasn't exactly promoting domestic industry to put on a pair of glasses.

00:48:06.219 --> 00:48:09.179
Also glasses were very expensive they

00:48:09.179 --> 00:48:12.359
often came with silver frames okay in

00:48:12.359 --> 00:48:15.279
the early days because silver and and

00:48:15.279 --> 00:48:20.679
gold for that matter for the very rich are easy to metals to work they're soft

00:48:20.679 --> 00:48:28.819
metals as opposed to steel which once it's cast you can't do a lot with so he

00:48:28.819 --> 00:48:33.479
did not want to show himself as someone who, a man of wealth.

00:48:33.639 --> 00:48:38.299
He was not a man of wealth. He was a surveyor, for goodness sake, when he started.

00:48:39.119 --> 00:48:44.379
So I think he was a little hesitant before he put them on, but he talked to

00:48:44.379 --> 00:48:51.259
his troops and he said, as you can see, my eyes have grown weak from serving my country.

00:48:51.999 --> 00:48:56.119
And I think that's something that people were able to relate to,

00:48:56.499 --> 00:49:07.559
that you give up some of your visual ability for the right of people to serve the people.

00:49:07.899 --> 00:49:13.419
Well, it was very deliberate that he did that. So the backstory on that was,

00:49:13.419 --> 00:49:15.479
if you've heard of Horatio Gates.

00:49:16.473 --> 00:49:21.073
He was Washington's rival, and he wanted to be the commander,

00:49:21.673 --> 00:49:23.853
the head commander of the Continental Army.

00:49:24.353 --> 00:49:28.553
And so by about this time, they'd been fighting for a while.

00:49:28.793 --> 00:49:33.873
A lot of guys hadn't been paid and all that stuff. So Gates was kind of organizing a mutiny.

00:49:34.373 --> 00:49:40.233
And so Washington found out about it and showed up. And so in the middle of,

00:49:40.893 --> 00:49:44.953
you know, he started reading his note. And then in the middle of kind of reading

00:49:44.953 --> 00:49:46.553
it, he looked like he was having a little trouble.

00:49:46.693 --> 00:49:51.193
So he reached in and put his spectacles on. And that's when he said that famous quote.

00:49:51.613 --> 00:49:59.013
But what he was trying to do was shift the thing and let the officers know,

00:49:59.193 --> 00:50:03.093
because it was primarily officers in the room, that he was one of them.

00:50:03.493 --> 00:50:06.733
And I know y'all have been struggling, but I've been struggling too.

00:50:07.153 --> 00:50:11.073
And so he basically quashed a mutiny just by taking those glasses out.

00:50:11.713 --> 00:50:16.793
Fascinating. That is the fact I have never run into, but I think it is entirely

00:50:16.793 --> 00:50:22.493
characteristic of George Washington and his political intelligence. Yeah.

00:50:23.273 --> 00:50:25.753
Real quick, in your book, you

00:50:25.753 --> 00:50:29.293
suggested that smart glasses could bring it into privacy as we know it.

00:50:29.453 --> 00:50:33.353
I think that's pretty obvious, but kind of talk about where you were coming from with that.

00:50:34.253 --> 00:50:38.573
Well, okay. Smart glasses come in a variety of types.

00:50:38.853 --> 00:50:44.353
There's virtual reality glasses, which shut you off pretty much completely from

00:50:44.353 --> 00:50:49.553
the world around you and plunge you into some designer's dream world.

00:50:49.813 --> 00:50:55.253
And then there's augmented reality glasses, which lets you see through your

00:50:55.253 --> 00:51:03.213
lenses as they are, but also hang a little image on top, on the right or on the left or above.

00:51:03.213 --> 00:51:09.493
And that image displays information which glasses have been able to capture.

00:51:10.333 --> 00:51:17.873
And MET has been making Ray-Bans, special augmented reality glasses,

00:51:18.233 --> 00:51:20.073
that will give you information.

00:51:20.073 --> 00:51:23.213
For example, you're trying to assemble some furniture.

00:51:23.213 --> 00:51:28.633
You can get a schematic hanging in front of you. You're trying to fix your engine.

00:51:28.633 --> 00:51:35.633
And again, you can get something that hangs in front of you to help you make your way where.

00:51:36.213 --> 00:51:39.953
So it's a social good. Anybody who works without their.

00:51:41.257 --> 00:51:45.157
You know, hands has a need to,

00:51:45.537 --> 00:51:51.437
I mean, works with their hands, has a need, a serious need for help because

00:51:51.437 --> 00:51:56.677
they can't be opening a manual to look at these things. So it's a social good.

00:51:57.297 --> 00:52:02.297
Where things turn dark is already something that's happening.

00:52:02.297 --> 00:52:11.657
Meta is about to launch facial recognition on these augmented reality AR glasses,

00:52:11.657 --> 00:52:17.217
which means you can walk down the street and see the name of pretty much anybody you see.

00:52:17.397 --> 00:52:23.057
Now, there are a lot of errors in that, and it's not a big jump between that

00:52:23.057 --> 00:52:29.777
and the police using them to find out if you have a record, people using them

00:52:29.777 --> 00:52:31.757
to find out your marital status.

00:52:32.297 --> 00:52:37.257
Your economic status. All this data is hiding around on the internet,

00:52:37.257 --> 00:52:43.597
and it's just waiting for someone to take the next step and pile all that data

00:52:43.597 --> 00:52:50.177
into a database, which your glasses will be able to read and display to you.

00:52:50.497 --> 00:52:55.057
And for me, that's turning the public sphere into a goldfish bowl,

00:52:55.277 --> 00:53:02.937
where anybody walking by you can be taking pictures and recording sound of everything

00:53:02.937 --> 00:53:08.477
they see and hear and streaming that to whomever they like.

00:53:08.837 --> 00:53:13.637
This is not the far future. This is already happening,

00:53:13.637 --> 00:53:21.837
and it raises a political question of when we will recognize that this new technology

00:53:21.837 --> 00:53:30.997
requires legislators to take the next step and regulate it before, like AI,

00:53:31.517 --> 00:53:33.097
it gets too far.

00:53:33.956 --> 00:53:38.896
Yeah, yeah. And that's why I wanted to make sure we touched on that before we end it.

00:53:39.336 --> 00:53:44.176
So what do you want readers of your book to get from it?

00:53:45.016 --> 00:53:49.776
Well, I first want them to be able to find the book. So I'm going to give a

00:53:49.776 --> 00:53:51.796
website where they can do that.

00:53:51.956 --> 00:53:54.636
It is aforeeyedworld.com.

00:53:55.476 --> 00:54:00.156
That's it, aforeeyedworld.com. And you're there and you can read excerpts,

00:54:00.256 --> 00:54:04.116
you can read reviews, you can read a little bit about me as well.

00:54:05.096 --> 00:54:11.616
I want them to take away this notion of protecting their children and their

00:54:11.616 --> 00:54:15.176
grandchildren by getting them out to play.

00:54:15.176 --> 00:54:19.656
Even if you have to sit with them while they're doing it, they need that bright

00:54:19.656 --> 00:54:22.536
sunlight for their eyes to develop normally.

00:54:23.556 --> 00:54:28.616
Next, I want them to understand that there is no shame in wearing glasses.

00:54:29.076 --> 00:54:36.036
Though people have tried to create a notion that, and it has lived with us,

00:54:36.156 --> 00:54:41.156
particularly for women, that wearing glasses makes you look weak,

00:54:41.596 --> 00:54:45.196
it's time to ditch that idea entirely.

00:54:45.516 --> 00:54:54.536
It's time to stop children from being teased and bullied because their eyes are weak.

00:54:54.876 --> 00:55:01.536
And finally, it's time for those of us who've been wearing glasses since we were children.

00:55:02.898 --> 00:55:08.558
Stop and consider what that might have done to us because of people's stereotypes

00:55:08.558 --> 00:55:16.398
and bias and prejudice against wearing glasses and how that bled over into how they saw us.

00:55:16.518 --> 00:55:22.438
And then the final step, how we saw ourselves. Yeah.

00:55:22.898 --> 00:55:29.338
Yeah. And your book is, like you said, it's more than just the history of glasses and all that.

00:55:29.478 --> 00:55:37.898
I mean, you go deep into the social impacts and even with your journal journey,

00:55:37.898 --> 00:55:44.338
as far as not wearing them for a week, it was a lot of introspection that you revealed in that.

00:55:44.498 --> 00:55:48.718
And so that makes the book a very, very fascinating read.

00:55:49.078 --> 00:55:52.158
Finish this sentence. I have hope because...

00:55:53.725 --> 00:56:00.425
I have hope for glasses wearers, glassers, because thanks to Harry Potter and

00:56:00.425 --> 00:56:03.665
many other different kinds of image,

00:56:03.965 --> 00:56:09.705
new image portrayals in the movies, in books of people who wear glasses,

00:56:09.705 --> 00:56:16.065
I have hope that the stigma against wearing glasses will one day vanish.

00:56:16.765 --> 00:56:24.065
Yeah. Well, David Dunaway, you've done your part in producing this book, A Four-Eyed World.

00:56:24.305 --> 00:56:28.725
And I am really, really honored to talk to you. I was really honored to read the book.

00:56:28.985 --> 00:56:34.705
And I wish you much success in that. But outside of going to the website,

00:56:34.945 --> 00:56:39.745
is there a way people can get in touch with you to kind of pick your brain some

00:56:39.745 --> 00:56:42.125
more about this or other stuff?

00:56:42.245 --> 00:56:47.745
Because when you read the book, people will realize how well read you are.

00:56:48.085 --> 00:56:55.445
And so I'm sure that if they read it, they'll have some questions about Huxley

00:56:55.445 --> 00:56:58.425
or anybody else that you mentioned in the book.

00:56:58.425 --> 00:57:06.005
Well, probably the easiest way is just to go to the website which features the book,

00:57:06.185 --> 00:57:13.945
and it's called aforeeyedworld.com, because from there you can reach out to me. I'm all over the web.

00:57:14.165 --> 00:57:18.805
I write books. I'm a professor. I teach. I lecture.

00:57:19.265 --> 00:57:24.845
These days, I'm talking mainly about Route 66 because this year is the 100th

00:57:24.845 --> 00:57:30.425
anniversary of the world's most famous road, about which I've published three books already.

00:57:30.425 --> 00:57:33.465
So i look forward to hearing from

00:57:33.465 --> 00:57:36.325
people after they've read my book and want

00:57:36.325 --> 00:57:42.385
to raise questions doubts look again at the experience that they've had throughout

00:57:42.385 --> 00:57:47.685
their life of wearing glasses and what it meant to them all right well david

00:57:47.685 --> 00:57:53.465
thank you again for coming on thank you eric it's been fun yes sir all right guys we're.

00:58:13.834 --> 00:58:20.354
All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Lakeland Barnes.

00:58:21.054 --> 00:58:26.114
Lakeland Barnes brings more than a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector

00:58:26.114 --> 00:58:31.274
and over 10 years working with governmental systems, where she has developed

00:58:31.274 --> 00:58:35.714
a deep understanding of policy, governance, and community needs.

00:58:35.714 --> 00:58:39.874
With a background in political science, she has dedicated the last seven years

00:58:39.874 --> 00:58:44.714
specifically to advocacy and civic engagement, equipping communities with the

00:58:44.714 --> 00:58:48.014
tools and resources to drive meaningful change.

00:58:48.014 --> 00:58:54.354
As both a professional and a mother, Lakeland's commitment to advocacy has only grown stronger.

00:58:54.834 --> 00:58:59.794
Motherhood has given her an even greater sense of urgency to ensure that all

00:58:59.794 --> 00:59:05.214
communities, especially those historically marginalized, have a voice in the

00:59:05.214 --> 00:59:07.254
decisions that impact their daily lives.

00:59:07.974 --> 00:59:12.634
Her work reflects a passion for building bridges between people and institutions,

00:59:13.334 --> 00:59:18.534
amplifying underrepresented voices, and fostering long-term civic participation.

00:59:18.834 --> 00:59:23.494
Whether in nonprofit leadership, government collaboration, or grassroots organizing,

00:59:24.114 --> 00:59:28.054
Lakeland's career reflects her belief that advocacy is not just a profession,

00:59:28.274 --> 00:59:32.014
but a calling rooted in service, justice, and equity.

00:59:32.334 --> 00:59:38.034
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast.

00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:54.300
All right. Lakeland Barnes, how you doing?

00:59:55.160 --> 00:59:58.620
I am doing well. I'm doing well, Erik. How are you doing today?

00:59:58.820 --> 01:00:02.160
I'm doing fine, ma'am. I'm doing good. I'm really glad that you can make it.

01:00:03.140 --> 01:00:07.020
And I'm kind of excited because I like talking to young people.

01:00:08.120 --> 01:00:14.780
You know, I was young once and I used to, I used to, I got real involved when

01:00:14.780 --> 01:00:17.220
I was young, especially when I was in college.

01:00:17.500 --> 01:00:22.100
And so whenever I see young people getting engaged, it really,

01:00:22.100 --> 01:00:23.560
it really gets me excited.

01:00:24.140 --> 01:00:28.240
And since I have this format, I like to try to highlight as many of them as I can.

01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:32.560
So what I want to do is start off like I normally do with a couple of icebreakers.

01:00:32.960 --> 01:00:36.540
So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.

01:00:37.040 --> 01:00:45.120
Okay. And the quote is, for by him, all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth,

01:00:45.500 --> 01:00:50.800
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers,

01:00:51.020 --> 01:00:56.180
all things were created through him and for him. What does that quote mean to you?

01:00:56.720 --> 01:00:59.880
Erik, that is so funny that you read that scripture because that is actually

01:00:59.880 --> 01:01:01.340
one of my favorite scriptures.

01:01:02.040 --> 01:01:04.780
And what it means to me is the fact that.

01:01:05.888 --> 01:01:09.468
I think sometimes we put God in a box. I think that we determine,

01:01:09.828 --> 01:01:12.968
oh, because this feels good to me, that means he made this thing.

01:01:13.108 --> 01:01:17.208
But this thing that feels bad to me, he could not have had any parts in it,

01:01:17.448 --> 01:01:19.168
but he created all things.

01:01:19.728 --> 01:01:23.988
So whether it feels good to us or not, he has created all things.

01:01:24.168 --> 01:01:26.888
All things that sit under the sun, he has dominion over.

01:01:27.208 --> 01:01:32.728
And so for me, it kind of changes my mindset to get me to understand that just

01:01:32.728 --> 01:01:37.248
the way that I think is not totally who God is.

01:01:37.408 --> 01:01:41.448
It's not all that he does. It's not all who he is because he did all things.

01:01:41.668 --> 01:01:48.388
And it takes me back to in the story of David where David was having to run

01:01:48.388 --> 01:01:50.968
from Saul, about to get killed.

01:01:51.088 --> 01:01:54.568
The Bible says that God caused an evil spirit to fall over Saul.

01:01:55.388 --> 01:01:59.348
Most people would say, well, no, that can't be true because God can't control

01:01:59.348 --> 01:02:03.328
evil spirits, but he controls all things. He has dominion over all things.

01:02:03.688 --> 01:02:08.628
And so just because it doesn't look good or it doesn't feel good doesn't mean that it's not of God.

01:02:08.908 --> 01:02:11.748
And so, yeah, that's just one of my favorite scriptures. And I think it kind

01:02:11.748 --> 01:02:16.488
of just changed the way that I view God and just view just the things of the world.

01:02:17.288 --> 01:02:22.148
I got you. All right. So now the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.

01:02:22.928 --> 01:02:27.248
Okay. Okay. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

01:02:28.008 --> 01:02:31.228
1 and 20, 15. Okay.

01:02:31.888 --> 01:02:36.568
When you think about the challenges our country faces, what gives you hope?

01:02:38.629 --> 01:02:42.209
When I look at the challenges that the country is facing, what gives me hope

01:02:42.209 --> 01:02:45.869
is the fact that community is still standing up in the face of adversity.

01:02:46.269 --> 01:02:54.209
I think that community is the most integral piece to fighting against a system that isn't for you.

01:02:54.429 --> 01:02:58.609
I think community is the ultimate form of rebellion, especially here in America,

01:02:58.609 --> 01:03:01.689
because capitalism seeks to divide community.

01:03:01.689 --> 01:03:05.889
And so people still showing up for one another, still protesting,

01:03:06.069 --> 01:03:09.629
making their voices loud, taking food boxes to their neighbors,

01:03:09.989 --> 01:03:13.089
walking the streets, asking people, are they OK or do they need anything?

01:03:13.369 --> 01:03:18.329
That gives me hope because that lets me know that we are coming together instead

01:03:18.329 --> 01:03:20.629
of splitting further apart. Yeah.

01:03:21.249 --> 01:03:25.089
All right. So that's one question you don't have to answer later on.

01:03:25.089 --> 01:03:29.989
Because usually I try to close out with that, with a question about hope.

01:03:30.209 --> 01:03:35.069
But since you picked number 15, we'll go ahead.

01:03:35.409 --> 01:03:41.649
What led you to drive change and growth as a community organizer and nonprofit consultant?

01:03:43.529 --> 01:03:48.529
Okay, so funny story. In high school, I...

01:03:49.738 --> 01:03:52.818
Witnessed somebody getting bullied at school. So my senior year of high school,

01:03:52.958 --> 01:03:53.958
I saw somebody getting bullied.

01:03:54.098 --> 01:03:59.138
And I'm just not a person who thinks that you should harm others. That's just not my MO.

01:03:59.398 --> 01:04:02.618
And so I went to my principal and I told him, I don't like that this is happening.

01:04:02.798 --> 01:04:05.978
I don't want this to happen. You need to do something about it.

01:04:06.478 --> 01:04:10.758
And he looked at me and he said, I'm not going to do anything about it. You are.

01:04:11.118 --> 01:04:15.218
And so he said, we have this organization at the school. It's called SAFE.

01:04:15.318 --> 01:04:19.298
I need you to be the president over it. And I need you to get other students

01:04:19.298 --> 01:04:21.278
involved. That was my challenge.

01:04:21.718 --> 01:04:23.458
And so that's what I did.

01:04:24.318 --> 01:04:27.818
I literally was crazy because I started getting mailed to the school.

01:04:27.938 --> 01:04:30.918
Teachers were like, girl, what are you doing? Why are you getting mail here?

01:04:30.998 --> 01:04:33.778
But it was because I was getting those materials, sharing them with students

01:04:33.778 --> 01:04:38.838
and teachers, trying to engage them in a way around bullying that wasn't,

01:04:38.838 --> 01:04:43.198
you know, the typical conversation. And so that was kind of my first start.

01:04:43.418 --> 01:04:47.358
It made me see that sometimes when you go to power and you talk to power,

01:04:47.678 --> 01:04:50.998
they may put the challenge in your hand to fix it. So then what do you do?

01:04:51.978 --> 01:04:55.218
And so I left high school, went to college.

01:04:55.818 --> 01:05:00.798
And when I got to Atlanta, because I went to Georgia State, when I got to Atlanta,

01:05:01.198 --> 01:05:03.758
it baffled me how many homeless people were living there.

01:05:04.238 --> 01:05:07.878
I had never in my life seen this many homeless people. Matter of fact,

01:05:08.038 --> 01:05:11.038
I don't even think I had saw just that many people in general.

01:05:11.598 --> 01:05:14.758
But then to see that many homeless people really, really broke my heart.

01:05:14.898 --> 01:05:19.658
And so I wanted to figure out what are some things that I can do to help.

01:05:20.463 --> 01:05:24.163
Actively impact that, you know, that demographic. And so some of the things

01:05:24.163 --> 01:05:26.723
that I started doing was giving out blankets, giving out food.

01:05:27.203 --> 01:05:30.203
I would walk down the street and just check on them. Hey, how are you doing

01:05:30.203 --> 01:05:32.063
today? You need anything? You took your medicine?

01:05:32.563 --> 01:05:35.463
Not because I was rich. I mean, I was a poor college student,

01:05:35.623 --> 01:05:39.563
you know, but doing things like that made me happy.

01:05:40.203 --> 01:05:46.983
It fueled my, not just my joy, but my passion. And I wanted to realize that

01:05:46.983 --> 01:05:49.203
I had a passion and affinity for people.

01:05:49.463 --> 01:05:53.143
And I wanted to help people and I wanted to do something that benefited my community.

01:05:54.083 --> 01:05:58.423
Because everybody wants to be famous, but nobody, nobody wants to do the work

01:05:58.423 --> 01:06:01.583
of community to be famous, if that makes sense. And so I said,

01:06:01.643 --> 01:06:02.323
that's what I'm going to do.

01:06:03.063 --> 01:06:06.103
I'm going to be a person who is going to make a change in their community.

01:06:06.243 --> 01:06:09.723
When people say Lakeland Barnes, I want them to say, yes, I know Lakeland because

01:06:09.723 --> 01:06:14.443
she helped me do X, Y, and Z, or she walked with me through X, Y, and Z.

01:06:15.003 --> 01:06:20.143
And since then, the bug, I can't get rid of it. I love doing nonprofit work.

01:06:20.323 --> 01:06:23.463
I believe that even through my work as a nonprofit consultant,

01:06:23.843 --> 01:06:29.043
it's a joy being able to see nonprofits, even if they are struggling or just

01:06:29.043 --> 01:06:32.943
starting out, it's a joy to see them in the work that they want to do and the

01:06:32.943 --> 01:06:36.923
work that they choose to do, because a lot of times it's work that's overlooked.

01:06:37.103 --> 01:06:39.223
It's work that most people don't feel is important.

01:06:39.483 --> 01:06:43.863
And so it's always beautiful to me to be able to champion them and to encourage

01:06:43.863 --> 01:06:46.463
them because most of the time it's not that people can't do it.

01:06:46.643 --> 01:06:50.243
It's just that they don't have the support to do it. And so through my role

01:06:50.243 --> 01:06:53.283
as a nonprofit consultant, I get the opportunity to pour into people.

01:06:53.843 --> 01:06:57.443
And then also through as a community organizer, I get to talk to people every

01:06:57.443 --> 01:07:00.663
day, literally. That is my job. I get to, you know.

01:07:01.594 --> 01:07:05.634
Not only try to engage them at the work that I'm doing, but asking them, how are they doing?

01:07:06.014 --> 01:07:09.494
How's life going? Because believe it or not, most people don't get that.

01:07:09.674 --> 01:07:12.554
Most people don't get somebody asking them, how was your day today?

01:07:13.194 --> 01:07:16.774
You know, what's going on with you and actually getting it, you know?

01:07:17.094 --> 01:07:21.534
And so all in all, I hope that wasn't too long.

01:07:21.714 --> 01:07:26.034
But that is how I've been able to drive community change,

01:07:26.034 --> 01:07:30.934
simply just by showing up in the community, loving on people being there being

01:07:30.934 --> 01:07:36.274
honest and allowing my experience my life experience to kind of frame the way

01:07:36.274 --> 01:07:41.954
in which i engage with community so you said you went to georgia state yes sir

01:07:41.954 --> 01:07:45.614
okay why did i think you went to savannah state for a reason.

01:07:46.660 --> 01:07:54.800
Because so I did go to Georgia State and then I went to Savannah State, put it like that.

01:07:55.180 --> 01:07:58.640
I went to Georgia State. I came from Augusta, went to Georgia State.

01:07:58.880 --> 01:08:04.720
And let's just say I it was just too much for me. It was too big of a school.

01:08:04.980 --> 01:08:07.640
You had classes with 120 people in it.

01:08:08.160 --> 01:08:12.100
And I was like, this is overwhelming. But I also don't want to go home.

01:08:13.180 --> 01:08:18.360
And so I spent, so I think after me going to Georgia State for about two years,

01:08:18.720 --> 01:08:20.920
I took like a couple years off.

01:08:21.560 --> 01:08:24.980
You know, there are plenty of reasons why I took that time off,

01:08:25.100 --> 01:08:28.500
but for the most part, it was because I was genuinely overwhelmed in Atlanta.

01:08:28.740 --> 01:08:30.100
It's always something to do.

01:08:30.760 --> 01:08:34.500
It's always somewhere to go. And that was just overwhelming from somebody who

01:08:34.500 --> 01:08:36.100
didn't come from that environment.

01:08:36.920 --> 01:08:40.880
And so, yeah, Georgia State was a great time, met a lot of great people,

01:08:41.160 --> 01:08:43.500
some of the best professors in the world at Georgia State.

01:08:43.660 --> 01:08:47.200
But no, Savannah State is home. That's home.

01:08:47.580 --> 01:08:55.420
Okay. So what about going to an HBCU other than you had smaller class sizes,

01:08:55.420 --> 01:09:00.920
you weren't tempted as much, I guess, in Savannah as you were in Atlanta.

01:09:01.220 --> 01:09:05.580
What else did that environment do to help you become the person that you are now?

01:09:06.560 --> 01:09:12.440
So I always wanted to go to an HBCU after I had spent a year at Georgia State

01:09:12.440 --> 01:09:18.440
because at the time I didn't know the difference between a PWI and HBCU. I knew like.

01:09:20.490 --> 01:09:23.310
I guess, like through learning what the differences were, but I didn't know

01:09:23.310 --> 01:09:25.670
like going there practically what the differences were.

01:09:25.870 --> 01:09:31.070
And so I think that being able to go to an HBCU, the benefit in that is that

01:09:31.070 --> 01:09:34.810
one, coming from a PWI, teachers don't really care.

01:09:35.530 --> 01:09:39.030
They genuinely don't care, especially with us at a school that size.

01:09:39.210 --> 01:09:44.250
They don't care if you show up to class. Oh, well, if you need extra tutoring,

01:09:44.590 --> 01:09:48.130
they're going to send their TA to do it. You're not going to be able to talk to them.

01:09:48.390 --> 01:09:52.290
And even if you just really wanted to walk in through their office hours,

01:09:52.510 --> 01:09:58.670
even though most students don't utilize that because of the difference in their size,

01:09:59.090 --> 01:10:01.470
even though a lot of students weren't utilizing office hours,

01:10:01.670 --> 01:10:03.470
a lot of students were utilizing office hours.

01:10:03.470 --> 01:10:07.590
And so teachers really, you kind of fell by the wayside in a lot of things.

01:10:08.130 --> 01:10:12.370
But I found at Savannah State, I was able to talk to my professors.

01:10:12.730 --> 01:10:15.390
Like I could stay after class if I had questions and ask them.

01:10:16.030 --> 01:10:20.110
Being in the South, Southern courtesy is a thing. Going to a PWI,

01:10:20.310 --> 01:10:22.310
they don't care. That's not a thing.

01:10:22.850 --> 01:10:27.870
But at HBCUs, they slow their cars down for you to cross the street.

01:10:28.350 --> 01:10:31.870
You know what I'm saying? If you don't have enough money for the cafe that day,

01:10:31.970 --> 01:10:33.150
it's not, oh, well, you can't eat.

01:10:33.470 --> 01:10:35.770
They're going to figure out to make sure they're going to work with you to make

01:10:35.770 --> 01:10:39.930
sure you do eat, you know, for me, HBCUs were more about community.

01:10:40.190 --> 01:10:45.310
And I do think that young black children come in, you know, from places where

01:10:45.310 --> 01:10:47.970
there are people who don't look like them predominantly.

01:10:48.390 --> 01:10:53.230
I do think an HBCU is an experience they should have because it's a joy being

01:10:53.230 --> 01:10:54.430
around people who look like you.

01:10:55.428 --> 01:10:58.648
I know a lot of people won't admit it, but when I'm around people who look like

01:10:58.648 --> 01:11:01.908
me, I kind of, you can kind of breathe a little bit because you kind of,

01:11:02.048 --> 01:11:05.428
even though you don't know them, you know them.

01:11:05.768 --> 01:11:08.608
You know what I'm saying? And so, but I think that's with any culture.

01:11:09.168 --> 01:11:12.948
And so, yeah, I think that HBCUs are a great school. They always have the best

01:11:12.948 --> 01:11:15.148
professors. I think I need to put that out there.

01:11:15.648 --> 01:11:21.128
HBCUs have the best or some of the best professors in the world, might I argue.

01:11:21.128 --> 01:11:27.928
I've learned from some of the most talented professors, and they weren't being

01:11:27.928 --> 01:11:31.008
my professor or trying to be nice to me because they needed me to help them with an essay.

01:11:31.268 --> 01:11:35.148
They genuinely just wanted me to be better, and they wanted to make sure that

01:11:35.148 --> 01:11:40.848
what I give to the world doesn't just benefit me, but other people who look like me.

01:11:41.835 --> 01:11:46.635
Yeah, I agree with that sentiment. I, you know, I went to Jackson State.

01:11:47.275 --> 01:11:53.175
Okay, go Jackson State. Yeah. And, you know, so it was the same experience.

01:11:53.175 --> 01:11:56.635
I mean, I got accepted to, like you say, PWIs.

01:11:57.035 --> 01:12:00.755
You know, I had dreamed of going to an Ivy League school. I had gotten in.

01:12:01.215 --> 01:12:04.035
But when Jackson State said, you ain't got to pay for anything,

01:12:04.035 --> 01:12:06.135
I was like, all right, I'm going.

01:12:06.335 --> 01:12:09.315
I'm going to see what's happening. Plus, growing up in Chicago,

01:12:09.495 --> 01:12:12.495
there was that connection with Walter Payton, right? So he went there.

01:12:12.755 --> 01:12:17.975
So it was like, OK, I'll go down there. And it was the best thing that ever happened in my life.

01:12:18.135 --> 01:12:24.595
It was able to, like you said, be around these professors because not only are

01:12:24.595 --> 01:12:26.095
they smart, but they're dedicated.

01:12:26.415 --> 01:12:32.815
And see, that's what takes them to another level. They really care about you trying to succeed.

01:12:33.355 --> 01:12:36.435
Some of them might think that they're your parent and you have to like check

01:12:36.435 --> 01:12:37.915
them. It's like, you know, look. Yeah.

01:12:39.275 --> 01:12:43.215
But, but my folks are like literally nine, 10 hours away from you.

01:12:43.555 --> 01:12:49.715
But other than that, you know, it was, it was a really cool experience and they let you thrive.

01:12:49.875 --> 01:12:54.255
And, and, you know, I was a student leader. So it was like the president of

01:12:54.255 --> 01:13:01.935
university was like, Eric, you, you, you got some time Tuesday to come up to my office. Yeah. Okay.

01:13:03.035 --> 01:13:06.155
You know, I want to run some things by you yes sir

01:13:06.155 --> 01:13:08.935
all right you know i mean you wouldn't you wouldn't get

01:13:08.935 --> 01:13:11.675
that at princeton you wouldn't get that at harvard or yale not

01:13:11.675 --> 01:13:15.075
unless your daddy gave like a million dollars or something you know what i'm

01:13:15.075 --> 01:13:20.895
saying so yeah i i agree with that so i just i i wanted to kind of get that

01:13:20.895 --> 01:13:29.135
that vibe from you because usually the hbcus do not get the credit that they deserve okay,

01:13:29.646 --> 01:13:35.866
HBCUs deserve more than they get. I think more black students should go to HBCUs.

01:13:36.046 --> 01:13:39.966
I think that they should choose those at schools because like you said,

01:13:40.066 --> 01:13:43.206
they are dedicated and they care about you. They care about your growth.

01:13:43.906 --> 01:13:48.126
Like I remember my, I have a lot of friends who graduated from Spelman, a lot of them.

01:13:48.466 --> 01:13:52.466
And I remember going to campus and them being like, man, I don't know how I'm

01:13:52.466 --> 01:13:55.166
going to pay my tuition. Like my family ain't got it like that.

01:13:55.666 --> 01:13:58.886
And then two weeks later they wake up and their whole balance is cleared.

01:13:59.646 --> 01:14:03.766
You know, that's what I mean by like they care because going to Georgia State, oh, young tuition.

01:14:04.166 --> 01:14:07.966
Oh, there's issues and discrepancies. Oh, OK, well, figure it out or we're going

01:14:07.966 --> 01:14:09.006
to drop you from these classes.

01:14:09.526 --> 01:14:12.306
You know, so that's just something I also want to highlight,

01:14:12.386 --> 01:14:16.886
like HBCUs care about your growth. They want you to grow and they want you to thrive. Yeah.

01:14:17.526 --> 01:14:20.726
So let's talk about a couple of clients that you're working with.

01:14:21.006 --> 01:14:25.486
The first one I want you to talk about is SheWill. Yes, sir.

01:14:26.306 --> 01:14:30.826
OK, so SheWill is actually a nonprofit. started by my mentor.

01:14:31.326 --> 01:14:34.366
Her name is Sheena Williams, hence She Will.

01:14:34.666 --> 01:14:38.166
But it is a financial literacy nonprofit for young ladies.

01:14:38.326 --> 01:14:44.486
It teaches them how to balance a checkbook. It teaches them how to figure out how to spend money.

01:14:44.646 --> 01:14:46.806
It helps them figure out career plans for themselves.

01:14:47.046 --> 01:14:51.686
It's really a holistic nonprofit to kind of empower young ladies to not only

01:14:51.686 --> 01:14:54.926
get out in the world and survive, but to have the skills to thrive.

01:14:55.266 --> 01:15:00.506
And so a lot of the work that we do is based in South Carolina because that

01:15:00.506 --> 01:15:01.766
is where Michigan is from.

01:15:02.819 --> 01:15:06.259
But we also do work in Atlanta as well. And we're getting ready to start doing

01:15:06.259 --> 01:15:07.419
some work here in Augusta.

01:15:07.839 --> 01:15:11.859
But I want to say I've been, at first I started at SheWill as like a mentee.

01:15:12.379 --> 01:15:15.619
I think I met Michina when I was like 15, 16.

01:15:16.259 --> 01:15:19.199
And she was like, girl, I like you.

01:15:19.359 --> 01:15:21.859
I like you. And I need to be in your life. I want to pour into you.

01:15:21.979 --> 01:15:25.279
And so I was able to get that mentorship from her.

01:15:25.559 --> 01:15:29.179
When I went to college in Atlanta, where she is currently residing,

01:15:29.779 --> 01:15:33.519
she would pick me up and take me to lunch. we would talk about things.

01:15:33.679 --> 01:15:34.739
She would ask me what I needed.

01:15:34.999 --> 01:15:39.119
And so that mentor aspect kind of stuck with me. And so as I continued to matriculate

01:15:39.119 --> 01:15:41.659
through college and just through life, and she was like, Lakeland,

01:15:41.819 --> 01:15:42.679
man, these are some of the things

01:15:42.679 --> 01:15:46.499
I want to do, but I just don't know who can hold the work, you know?

01:15:46.859 --> 01:15:50.079
And she was like, but I would love to ask you because I know that you care about

01:15:50.079 --> 01:15:53.459
the work that we're doing. And I know that you actually care about young ladies.

01:15:53.799 --> 01:15:58.179
And so while I was in college at Georgia State, she said, this is what I need you to do.

01:15:58.279 --> 01:16:01.839
We're going to do a tour across the whole eastern seaboard for the summer and

01:16:01.839 --> 01:16:06.959
I need you to figure out how to get that done and.

01:16:08.014 --> 01:16:10.014
I was like, girl, I don't know how to do that. You know what I'm saying?

01:16:10.214 --> 01:16:13.694
And so, but just through her mentorship and her leadership, we were able to

01:16:13.694 --> 01:16:17.134
create something that was sustainable, something that's still going now.

01:16:17.274 --> 01:16:22.694
And so just moving through time, I've been able to go from mentee to program

01:16:22.694 --> 01:16:27.334
coordinator to now being part of their volunteer coordination team and also

01:16:27.334 --> 01:16:30.534
just working with them to figure out what they want their image to be,

01:16:30.654 --> 01:16:32.354
how they want to share that with the world.

01:16:32.654 --> 01:16:36.794
And so I've just been blessed to be able to work with them. And I think that

01:16:36.794 --> 01:16:41.754
every young lady could benefit from SheWill services because it's more than

01:16:41.754 --> 01:16:42.914
I said, like getting the job.

01:16:43.074 --> 01:16:45.434
We actually mentor the young ladies. We take them on trips.

01:16:45.634 --> 01:16:48.194
We talk about self-esteem. We point to them confidence.

01:16:48.514 --> 01:16:51.394
If they need to talk to me, they know they can call me, you know,

01:16:51.614 --> 01:16:52.614
like they have my number.

01:16:52.774 --> 01:16:53.974
And so that's the type of work that

01:16:53.974 --> 01:16:58.234
SheWill does. Like we want to be in communities with the young ladies.

01:16:58.474 --> 01:17:02.454
We want them to feel comfortable enough to talk to us. And also right now we're

01:17:02.454 --> 01:17:05.314
building out what we're calling SheWill Rock.

01:17:05.334 --> 01:17:08.474
But they're these summer boxes.

01:17:08.714 --> 01:17:10.694
You can either get one for the summer or for the school year.

01:17:10.874 --> 01:17:14.354
But it allows the curriculum that we teach, instead of you having to come to

01:17:14.354 --> 01:17:18.074
us, we give you that curriculum and it actually walks you through step by step.

01:17:18.074 --> 01:17:20.194
So a child can do it on their own during the summer.

01:17:20.594 --> 01:17:24.094
Or if you're a teacher and you wanted to bring this into your classroom,

01:17:24.314 --> 01:17:28.334
there are resources for you to be able to teach all students, males or females.

01:17:28.634 --> 01:17:33.674
So, yeah, that's just some of the work that I've been able to do with SheWill. Okay.

01:17:34.154 --> 01:17:38.094
The other one is the ReNforce organization.

01:17:39.094 --> 01:17:43.274
Yes, sir. So I am currently the community organizer for ReNforce.

01:17:43.614 --> 01:17:47.254
We are just we are an organization that centers justice impacted people.

01:17:47.434 --> 01:17:51.614
So that means anybody who has some type of criminal record or running with a

01:17:51.614 --> 01:17:53.914
criminal legal system, whether directly or indirectly.

01:17:54.454 --> 01:17:57.514
And when I say indirectly, I mean like your family, your friends,

01:17:57.674 --> 01:18:00.654
people who are affected by it just because you're affected by it.

01:18:01.857 --> 01:18:06.617
And so my job as the community organizer is to find a way to bridge the gap

01:18:06.617 --> 01:18:10.937
between the needs of justice impacted people here in Augusta and bridge them

01:18:10.937 --> 01:18:16.677
with the needs of just the just the regular citizens at large of Augusta and

01:18:16.677 --> 01:18:21.237
helping people see how justice impacted people's fight is their fight, too.

01:18:21.737 --> 01:18:25.437
And so I'm blessed to be a part of an all-woman, all-Black woman team.

01:18:25.777 --> 01:18:28.837
That's always been one of my dreams to work in an all-Black woman team.

01:18:29.477 --> 01:18:33.177
And I think that we are doing a good job with the work that we're doing.

01:18:33.497 --> 01:18:36.617
We do workforce development, so we help people get jobs.

01:18:36.837 --> 01:18:41.757
We help equip them with skills like we have a medical building and coding cohort

01:18:41.757 --> 01:18:44.417
coming up within the next 30 days.

01:18:44.917 --> 01:18:48.797
We provide housing for women who are getting out of jail because a lot of people

01:18:48.797 --> 01:18:52.397
don't know, but there are not many transitional homes for women.

01:18:52.757 --> 01:18:56.197
Most of them are geared and centered towards men. Most women don't get that.

01:18:56.917 --> 01:19:01.737
And we also, you know, do community work like we do trainings and educations

01:19:01.737 --> 01:19:06.897
working with different companies across the not just across the state, but the U.S.

01:19:06.977 --> 01:19:10.597
Trying to get them to understand what it means for people to be just as impacted.

01:19:10.877 --> 01:19:15.117
How does their interaction with the system impact the way that they may show up to work?

01:19:15.257 --> 01:19:19.737
And what are some ways in which employers can be more sympathetic and more understanding

01:19:19.737 --> 01:19:22.757
of what that looks like and how they can work with just as impacted people?

01:19:23.687 --> 01:19:29.627
So do you funnel people like somebody, a young lady that's in ReNforce?

01:19:29.807 --> 01:19:34.327
Can you slide them over to SheWill to get some of that service too?

01:19:34.487 --> 01:19:38.887
Because it would seem like somebody that's transitioning out of the correctional

01:19:38.887 --> 01:19:44.027
system would also need some of the skills that SheWill does or SheWill just

01:19:44.027 --> 01:19:45.927
primarily for younger people.

01:19:48.107 --> 01:19:55.107
So SheWill, the organization, is mainly for young ladies. So anybody's typically we say 18 and under.

01:19:55.627 --> 01:19:59.207
And then once you are between like the ages of like 18 to 22,

01:19:59.347 --> 01:20:00.747
we try to bring you in as a mentor.

01:20:01.027 --> 01:20:04.507
But we do, She Will does teach classes to adults as well.

01:20:04.807 --> 01:20:07.747
So, but that's just not the main function of the organization.

01:20:07.747 --> 01:20:12.787
And so I do have the opportunity to say, hey, here are some things that are

01:20:12.787 --> 01:20:15.807
some skills that I think you could use. And these are some places you can go.

01:20:15.967 --> 01:20:18.107
We do connect people to different resources.

01:20:18.647 --> 01:20:22.107
Like I said, we give them skills. We through workforce development,

01:20:22.307 --> 01:20:24.727
we already do like reason made building and career workshops,

01:20:24.947 --> 01:20:27.127
which is some of the stuff that she will does.

01:20:27.807 --> 01:20:32.427
And then we have another partner, like a banking partner that comes in and helps people discuss credit.

01:20:32.687 --> 01:20:35.907
What does it look like for you to want to get a house? How what does it mean

01:20:35.907 --> 01:20:40.467
for you to save right now? And so we do have other organizations that we can

01:20:40.467 --> 01:20:42.367
connect with to give people those resources.

01:20:42.647 --> 01:20:47.467
But surely if somebody has a daughter that they think could use these resources

01:20:47.467 --> 01:20:52.287
or a young lady who is has encountered the criminal system herself,

01:20:52.587 --> 01:20:55.207
we send I can send them to she will. OK.

01:20:56.187 --> 01:21:00.887
All right. In this political climate, what challenges have you had to overcome?

01:21:01.687 --> 01:21:04.807
In this political climate, what challenges have I had to overcome?

01:21:05.947 --> 01:21:07.627
To be quite honest.

01:21:09.221 --> 01:21:13.821
I can't say that I can think of any. And it's not because that is free of challenges.

01:21:15.201 --> 01:21:21.141
It's because truly the same playbook has been ran over and over and over again.

01:21:21.381 --> 01:21:25.481
And as somebody who studies history, as somebody who watches every documentary

01:21:25.481 --> 01:21:30.721
I can get my hand on, I am keenly aware of what's happening right now.

01:21:30.801 --> 01:21:32.201
And it doesn't bother me.

01:21:32.301 --> 01:21:35.121
And not in the sense that I am not upset with what's going on.

01:21:35.181 --> 01:21:39.061
I'm saying it doesn't bother me because I know how to win.

01:21:39.221 --> 01:21:41.301
I've seen how people have won.

01:21:41.501 --> 01:21:44.401
During the civil rights movement, they gave us a blueprint and a roadmap.

01:21:45.101 --> 01:21:48.961
And so I think the challenges that we're facing are not new.

01:21:49.361 --> 01:21:53.441
And they're necessarily not for me to overcome. It's for us to overcome.

01:21:54.001 --> 01:21:59.001
And so I'm not really pressed about what's happening because I truly believe

01:21:59.001 --> 01:22:03.281
that we are watching the demise of a kingdom, that we are watching it fall in real time.

01:22:03.281 --> 01:22:10.261
And so surely the challenge isn't how do we deal with today's time?

01:22:10.601 --> 01:22:16.201
I think the challenge or the question should be, what are we planning for?

01:22:16.801 --> 01:22:20.561
How are we planning to handle tomorrow, if that makes sense?

01:22:21.061 --> 01:22:24.781
Like today, we're just watching the kingdom fall. You can't stop it.

01:22:25.081 --> 01:22:27.781
We could have stopped it 20 years ago, maybe 30.

01:22:28.201 --> 01:22:32.621
We can't do that right now. But what are we planning to do when the kingdom falls?

01:22:33.281 --> 01:22:37.721
You know, and so that's the challenge. Has there been any impact in the work

01:22:37.721 --> 01:22:40.361
that you do? Oh, absolutely.

01:22:41.721 --> 01:22:45.481
In today's time, working in a nonprofit is not...

01:22:46.788 --> 01:22:51.328
The most cool thing to do. Because of some of the targeted legislation surrounding

01:22:51.328 --> 01:22:55.828
philanthropists and benefactors to nonprofits, it's been challenging for us

01:22:55.828 --> 01:22:56.908
to find, you know, money.

01:22:57.088 --> 01:23:01.688
To be quite honest, it's been challenging for us to find grants because people

01:23:01.688 --> 01:23:04.868
are afraid if I give you this money, now I'm going to be targeted for,

01:23:04.888 --> 01:23:06.128
you know, helping nonprofits.

01:23:07.188 --> 01:23:13.028
Because a lot of people are now having to be engaged in politics before.

01:23:13.748 --> 01:23:16.688
I mean, engaged in politics now in a way that they were not before

01:23:16.688 --> 01:23:19.448
because I mean for a

01:23:19.448 --> 01:23:23.228
lot of people not being involved in politics didn't really matter but now

01:23:23.228 --> 01:23:26.268
everybody sees that even if you don't do politics politics does

01:23:26.268 --> 01:23:30.748
you and so now everybody wants to be everybody had everybody trying to yell

01:23:30.748 --> 01:23:34.228
and everybody wants to do something but the challenge is it's like how do you

01:23:34.228 --> 01:23:39.928
organize all of that at one time and utilize it and so in my work it's been

01:23:39.928 --> 01:23:43.888
challenging trying to get people to see like yes guys let's go in with pitchforks and torches.

01:23:44.688 --> 01:23:48.808
Also, when we go in with these pitchforks and torches, where are we going to

01:23:48.808 --> 01:23:52.308
go to ensure that we're getting the thing done?

01:23:52.428 --> 01:23:54.748
Because it's not enough just to carry a pitchfork and a torch.

01:23:55.088 --> 01:23:58.228
What are we going to do? What's the game plan and what's the strategy?

01:23:58.748 --> 01:24:02.828
And so sometimes some of my challenge is trying to pull people back and say,

01:24:02.948 --> 01:24:05.428
yes, I'm with you, let's do it.

01:24:05.688 --> 01:24:10.388
But also let's create a strategy. So when we get in there, we're not all just

01:24:10.388 --> 01:24:14.068
running around, you know, for the sake of, you know, running around.

01:24:14.748 --> 01:24:17.648
I hope that makes sense. No, that makes a lot of sense.

01:24:17.788 --> 01:24:21.508
You know, and I was still thinking about your first answer, you know,

01:24:21.588 --> 01:24:26.488
as far as you personally, because, and I said it on a podcast recently,

01:24:27.028 --> 01:24:32.648
you know, Jesus was a rabbi for only three years of his life.

01:24:33.568 --> 01:24:38.648
For 17 years of his life, he was a carpenter. And I said, there's a reason why

01:24:38.648 --> 01:24:40.548
that was, because, you know,

01:24:40.990 --> 01:24:45.030
You were talking about the pitchforks. People want to come with pitchforks and

01:24:45.030 --> 01:24:46.290
torches and all that stuff.

01:24:46.750 --> 01:24:50.970
Yeah, you know, if it's time to tear some stuff up, let's tear some stuff up.

01:24:51.010 --> 01:24:55.870
But you also need to have a hammer, a nail, a ladle, a plumb line.

01:24:56.070 --> 01:24:59.590
You need to be able to build something, too, because once that kingdom falls,

01:24:59.710 --> 01:25:02.530
as you say, a new one has to rise.

01:25:02.530 --> 01:25:09.190
And that's one of the lessons that I think we miss in our Christian walk is

01:25:09.190 --> 01:25:15.550
that we want to fight injustice, but we don't define what justice looks like, right?

01:25:16.290 --> 01:25:21.330
And, you know, what does this new thing, you know, I tease my friends with the

01:25:21.330 --> 01:25:24.230
nation all the time and say, y'all just want to leave or y'all just want to

01:25:24.230 --> 01:25:27.090
build your own thing and leave us alone, you know.

01:25:27.090 --> 01:25:35.470
But at least they got a vision about what perfection or what justice or what,

01:25:35.470 --> 01:25:38.590
you know, a system that is fair looks like.

01:25:38.790 --> 01:25:42.670
And that's, you know, and you go back with Marcus Garvey and all that stuff.

01:25:42.790 --> 01:25:46.890
I mean, everybody, even the people, even the white folks that had good intentions,

01:25:47.070 --> 01:25:50.310
like Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, they wanted us to go back to Africa.

01:25:50.810 --> 01:25:54.670
They had a vision. They said, we don't trust these white folks that we deal

01:25:54.670 --> 01:25:58.390
with all the time. Y'all, once y'all get y'all freedom, y'all get up out of

01:25:58.390 --> 01:26:02.670
here and go back to y'all, you know, reestablish your roots, you know.

01:26:03.775 --> 01:26:08.455
But at least they had a vision. And a lot of times I hear people,

01:26:08.575 --> 01:26:13.215
especially people that are my contemporaries or younger that are in politics.

01:26:14.215 --> 01:26:17.675
And, you know, they always talk about, well, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

01:26:17.795 --> 01:26:23.395
But nobody tells the story about what that what that city on the hill looks like.

01:26:23.535 --> 01:26:30.375
Ronald Reagan was about the closest ever to kind of when he talked about the morning after. Right.

01:26:30.975 --> 01:26:33.695
Now, I don't know where we were going to.

01:26:33.775 --> 01:26:36.595
Play in that movie in his morning

01:26:36.595 --> 01:26:39.355
after it didn't seem like we he was trying to

01:26:39.355 --> 01:26:42.755
tell us ketchup was a vegetable right but it was

01:26:42.755 --> 01:26:45.615
like but he he's he was able to

01:26:45.615 --> 01:26:48.915
that's why they call him the great communicator because he was able he gave

01:26:48.915 --> 01:26:54.415
people this vision it's like oh yeah when morning comes america's gonna look

01:26:54.415 --> 01:26:59.775
like this you know what i'm saying so that's i think that's real important for

01:26:59.775 --> 01:27:03.055
us when we, when we start talking about,

01:27:03.775 --> 01:27:07.655
you know, we got to tear this system down and all that stuff.

01:27:07.795 --> 01:27:09.875
What are you going to build in its place?

01:27:10.515 --> 01:27:14.735
How is the new system going to look? So, I, you know, so you,

01:27:14.815 --> 01:27:17.415
you, you definitely on the right track.

01:27:17.535 --> 01:27:20.115
Cause like you said, there's nothing new under the sun.

01:27:20.275 --> 01:27:22.395
We've done all that we've been through this before.

01:27:23.095 --> 01:27:26.395
And I've been telling people either on a podcast or directly,

01:27:26.395 --> 01:27:30.775
if some of these white folks want to know how to get through this Trump stuff,

01:27:31.095 --> 01:27:33.175
you might want to talk to some black folks.

01:27:33.455 --> 01:27:36.675
Yeah. Yeah. Especially from the South, because we've been through it.

01:27:38.255 --> 01:27:45.075
We know what fascism and authoritarianism look like. That's what Jim Crow was, you know? You know.

01:27:45.888 --> 01:27:48.848
But not even just that, even you saying that about, you know,

01:27:48.928 --> 01:27:50.988
ask black people from the South specifically.

01:27:51.628 --> 01:27:56.388
I have this philosophy that everybody has a role. And in this moment,

01:27:57.108 --> 01:27:59.588
black people's role is not to be out in the streets fighting.

01:28:00.208 --> 01:28:03.988
Shoot me, somebody be mad at what I'm just saying. But black people should not

01:28:03.988 --> 01:28:05.508
be out in the streets marching.

01:28:05.748 --> 01:28:08.368
We should not be protesting. We shouldn't be doing any of that.

01:28:08.468 --> 01:28:14.008
But what we should be doing is helping create strategy and vision for this because

01:28:14.008 --> 01:28:17.428
we know what's happening and we know where it's going.

01:28:17.728 --> 01:28:20.668
And the reason why I say it shouldn't be Black people in the streets is because

01:28:20.668 --> 01:28:23.388
we know what the response is when Black people congregate.

01:28:23.868 --> 01:28:29.108
And we know what excuse they're going to use. We know the tactics.

01:28:29.328 --> 01:28:34.308
So if you care about Black people, allies, if you care about Black people,

01:28:34.348 --> 01:28:35.768
you shouldn't want us on the front line.

01:28:35.928 --> 01:28:39.448
Actually, you should be asking us, hey, we've seen y'all struggle like this.

01:28:39.768 --> 01:28:46.248
Not only teach us how to struggle for our rights, but also show us how to still

01:28:46.248 --> 01:28:47.808
have community at the same time.

01:28:48.668 --> 01:28:53.488
Because Black people have, we have done a great job, even if we dislike some

01:28:53.488 --> 01:28:58.508
of the aspects of our community, we have done a great job at maintaining community where others have not.

01:28:59.048 --> 01:29:02.948
And so that is where Black people fall into this.

01:29:03.408 --> 01:29:06.868
And so I just think that we all have a role to play and it does not,

01:29:07.048 --> 01:29:12.448
and part of that role is figuring out what the vision is for this next kingdom.

01:29:12.688 --> 01:29:16.848
And I think that that is something that Black people should be charged with doing, my person.

01:29:18.098 --> 01:29:23.138
So what is the most pressing issue for your generation that you would like elected

01:29:23.138 --> 01:29:25.978
leaders to address? Oh, wow.

01:29:26.878 --> 01:29:31.798
The most pressing issue? Okay, I'm going to give you two, but I have to give

01:29:31.798 --> 01:29:34.278
you two because I want to give you one domestically and one internationally.

01:29:35.538 --> 01:29:41.978
And so domestically, I think the biggest issue, of course, is always going to

01:29:41.978 --> 01:29:45.558
be addressing capitalism, just to put it frankly.

01:29:46.378 --> 01:29:51.118
Because the fact that people are having low wages, the fact that it's hard to

01:29:51.118 --> 01:29:56.518
find affordable housing and or you being able to afford your own home instead

01:29:56.518 --> 01:29:58.618
of those homes being bought by companies,

01:29:59.558 --> 01:30:03.138
all the things that we are seeing are direct descendants of capitalism.

01:30:03.538 --> 01:30:07.418
And so I do think that capitalism can be useful and it can be necessary,

01:30:07.418 --> 01:30:11.478
but I do think our elected officials should take a look at the ways in which

01:30:11.478 --> 01:30:17.218
the implication does not meet what they are saying they want capitalism to be.

01:30:17.438 --> 01:30:24.418
And I think just by addressing those umbrella things, it will right-size America

01:30:24.418 --> 01:30:26.438
and put us back on the course of being great.

01:30:26.878 --> 01:30:30.958
So yeah, fixing those things that are attached to capitalism,

01:30:31.178 --> 01:30:36.218
so the way that we judge the economy or credit, just the things like that.

01:30:36.518 --> 01:30:41.718
And internationally, of course, I just think that we don't even need to be in

01:30:41.718 --> 01:30:42.838
them other countries business,

01:30:43.558 --> 01:30:49.578
I don't believe that we should be fighting foreign wars Especially when America

01:30:49.578 --> 01:30:53.638
has been a part of creating those issues that have started said wars,

01:30:54.398 --> 01:30:58.498
It's like we are very good at picking up rocks and throwing our I meant throwing

01:30:58.498 --> 01:30:59.578
rocks and hiding our hands.

01:31:00.859 --> 01:31:04.999
And then we get mad that other countries have this thing for us.

01:31:05.199 --> 01:31:08.859
I just think that if America stayed out of other people's business and focused

01:31:08.859 --> 01:31:13.599
on what's happening here domestically, I think that we would be seeing,

01:31:13.619 --> 01:31:18.419
we would just have better things here in America, just in general.

01:31:18.659 --> 01:31:22.779
So, yeah, I just think that we need to stop fighting other people's wars and just mind our business.

01:31:23.699 --> 01:31:26.519
Yeah. Okay. Well, you know,

01:31:26.799 --> 01:31:32.799
and part of this new kingdom we were talking about, that may be the course,

01:31:33.039 --> 01:31:38.579
you know, because the Monroe Doctrine and all that stuff was like,

01:31:38.599 --> 01:31:41.359
focus in on America first, right?

01:31:41.359 --> 01:31:47.359
But what happened in World War II, since we helped, we fought in both theaters

01:31:47.359 --> 01:31:52.159
and the good guys won, I guess, for lack of a better term.

01:31:52.399 --> 01:31:56.059
We got we got charged with two roles.

01:31:56.359 --> 01:32:02.399
The first role deals with what you talk about capitalism is that the U.S. dollar is the standard.

01:32:03.319 --> 01:32:09.419
As far as world economics go, the U.S. dollar, that's y'all's responsibility. The U.S.

01:32:09.859 --> 01:32:13.819
Dollar is the standard that everybody else's currency is going to be based on.

01:32:14.119 --> 01:32:19.419
Then the second obligation was that we signed up to be the policeman of the world.

01:32:19.639 --> 01:32:25.239
Right. So when stuff's going down, but when you talk about policing.

01:32:26.533 --> 01:32:32.093
Police officers technically are not supposed to go in and start the crime and

01:32:32.093 --> 01:32:34.213
then arrest the people doing the crime, right?

01:32:34.553 --> 01:32:39.333
They're supposed to come in and say, Oh, you were doing something wrong. We need to stop that.

01:32:39.533 --> 01:32:43.173
So when you see persecution in

01:32:43.173 --> 01:32:47.613
another nation, you're the United States obligation is supposed to go in.

01:32:47.853 --> 01:32:51.773
Hey guys, you shouldn't be treating these people like this.

01:32:52.033 --> 01:32:54.793
Let these folks live their lives, whatever. Right.

01:32:55.513 --> 01:33:01.353
But, We've perverted that. The whole situation in Iran is our making.

01:33:01.913 --> 01:33:07.073
Our making, beginning to end. Yeah. The Iranians had a democracy.

01:33:07.513 --> 01:33:10.673
They had somebody that, you know, was popular.

01:33:10.933 --> 01:33:16.413
And the minute that those folks cut into that capitalism and said,

01:33:16.493 --> 01:33:18.973
hey, look, we want to control our own oil.

01:33:19.273 --> 01:33:23.153
Right. And that's not a novel idea because our neighbor to the south,

01:33:23.333 --> 01:33:28.913
they do that. You know, they control the oil. The government controls the oil and gas.

01:33:29.073 --> 01:33:32.993
That's why when you have all this OPEC crisis and we paying five,

01:33:33.213 --> 01:33:38.813
six dollars and stuff for gas, they're not paying that in Mexico because they control it.

01:33:39.073 --> 01:33:43.413
And so but I guess since these folks were pumping the oil as well as,

01:33:43.553 --> 01:33:45.153
you know, they wanted to control.

01:33:45.733 --> 01:33:51.813
So we we got that guy out and they ended up getting a king, the Shah.

01:33:51.813 --> 01:34:00.573
And the Shah terrorized those folks until the folks had an uprising and it was a religious uprising.

01:34:00.833 --> 01:34:03.833
And that's what we're dealing with now. And so...

01:34:04.956 --> 01:34:08.336
You know, it's it's one. So that's where your point.

01:34:08.516 --> 01:34:13.096
When I ran for the U.S. Senate, one of my campaign platforms was like,

01:34:13.276 --> 01:34:18.936
instead of closing a base in the United States, let's close one overseas first.

01:34:19.616 --> 01:34:24.616
If we're having if our dollars are being stretched out, then we we're supposed

01:34:24.616 --> 01:34:28.576
to be neighbors with everybody anyway. We're supposed to have all these allies.

01:34:28.836 --> 01:34:32.216
It's just like, look, we need to have some training over here in Oman.

01:34:32.216 --> 01:34:37.136
Okay, we'll provide you some space, but we don't have to build our own base for that.

01:34:37.416 --> 01:34:40.696
You know what I'm saying? We just go over there, do the training.

01:34:42.076 --> 01:34:49.196
We train in Morocco. I didn't know that until a couple of black soldiers died last month.

01:34:49.736 --> 01:34:52.996
You know, that every year we go to Morocco and train with them.

01:34:53.256 --> 01:34:56.836
So why do we need to have a base everywhere on the planet?

01:34:56.976 --> 01:35:00.916
Plus, we have the biggest Navy in the world. So it's like, if you've ever seen

01:35:00.916 --> 01:35:04.436
an aircraft carrier or been on one, that's a city.

01:35:05.116 --> 01:35:09.636
It's like thousands of people. It's got planes. That's a base,

01:35:09.816 --> 01:35:12.516
a floating base floating around the oceans.

01:35:13.016 --> 01:35:17.976
So we don't need to spend that money instead of closing bases here.

01:35:17.976 --> 01:35:20.356
But that could be a whole nother podcast.

01:35:20.996 --> 01:35:25.176
We don't need to get in that. But I feel what you're saying,

01:35:25.636 --> 01:35:32.036
right, that, you know, we need to, and I've always made the argument we do capitalism wrong.

01:35:32.816 --> 01:35:37.276
Because if you look at England, they say, oh, you know, they are socialists.

01:35:37.416 --> 01:35:41.656
They got all this, you know, universal health care and all that stuff.

01:35:41.816 --> 01:35:46.456
And, you know, and I say it. Yeah. And the doctors are driving Mercedes Benz

01:35:46.456 --> 01:35:49.976
just like the doctors here with universal care.

01:35:49.976 --> 01:35:57.436
And the most solid currency in the world is the British sterling pound you know

01:35:57.436 --> 01:36:02.436
it takes almost two of our dollars to be one of theirs yeah so it's like.

01:36:03.480 --> 01:36:09.760
You know, they got issues, but they're doing capitalism better than us because at least their people,

01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:13.820
I don't know why they don't go to the dentist, but as far as every other health

01:36:13.820 --> 01:36:17.560
condition, they go to the doctor and they ain't got to worry about it.

01:36:17.680 --> 01:36:19.320
They ain't got to pay for nothing. You know what I'm saying?

01:36:19.700 --> 01:36:23.980
So, I mean, you know, it's just, we got a lot, we still got a lot of work to

01:36:23.980 --> 01:36:26.620
do, but that's y'all young folks. I'm going to let y'all handle that.

01:36:28.060 --> 01:36:31.900
What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps and

01:36:31.900 --> 01:36:35.560
become a community organizer slash non-profit consultant?

01:36:36.240 --> 01:36:41.900
The one piece of advice I always tell people is do not chase every fire.

01:36:42.920 --> 01:36:46.220
The world is burning down. The world is on fire.

01:36:46.440 --> 01:36:49.360
You are going to see, if you look to your left, you're going to see a fire.

01:36:49.500 --> 01:36:52.240
You look to your right, you're going to see a fire. You look in front or behind,

01:36:52.420 --> 01:36:53.660
you're going to see a fire.

01:36:54.380 --> 01:36:58.760
And when you first get into this work, you feel like, I can do it all.

01:36:58.880 --> 01:36:59.880
I'm going to do it all. I'm going

01:36:59.880 --> 01:37:02.160
to change this and I'm going to change that and we're going to do it.

01:37:02.500 --> 01:37:06.420
And what people don't realize is you're going to drain yourself so quickly.

01:37:06.960 --> 01:37:10.940
So you got to pace yourself and you got to let the main thing be the main thing.

01:37:11.200 --> 01:37:13.360
You got to focus on what you can focus on.

01:37:13.780 --> 01:37:17.960
The other stuff, the unfortunate fact is that ain't yours to carry.

01:37:18.280 --> 01:37:22.320
You let somebody else carry that. You carry what you can, do what you can.

01:37:22.500 --> 01:37:25.280
And I liken it to being in the middle of a wildfire.

01:37:25.540 --> 01:37:29.580
If you've ever been in a wildfire, everybody knows that inside of a wildfire

01:37:29.580 --> 01:37:33.040
are also smaller fires that make it this wildfire.

01:37:33.540 --> 01:37:37.660
So if you and a group of people are walking through this wildfire trying to

01:37:37.660 --> 01:37:40.420
get out and you see a clear path to get you and your people out.

01:37:41.442 --> 01:37:47.162
But you see another fire three miles that way and another fire five miles to your right.

01:37:47.462 --> 01:37:52.222
Are you going to stop taking those? Are you going to stop from getting out of

01:37:52.222 --> 01:37:55.042
that fire with those people just to go save the others?

01:37:55.562 --> 01:37:59.622
It would be it sounds good to say yes, but you're going to kill everybody.

01:37:59.842 --> 01:38:03.022
The people you're trying to say and the ones who are following you.

01:38:03.522 --> 01:38:07.702
And so that's always my biggest piece of advice. Don't chase every wildfire.

01:38:07.882 --> 01:38:12.282
Just chase your fire. Put your fire out. because if you can put out that one small fire,

01:38:12.862 --> 01:38:16.722
even if you can't put out the other ones around you, you at least have created

01:38:16.722 --> 01:38:21.502
an environment safe enough to where now the fire ain't going to encroach because

01:38:21.502 --> 01:38:22.942
you don't put the water out.

01:38:23.782 --> 01:38:27.202
You've sprayed the water on your own fire. So now that it's wet and now that

01:38:27.202 --> 01:38:30.102
it can't be, the fire can't utilize that.

01:38:30.262 --> 01:38:33.302
Maybe now then you can go pick up something else.

01:38:33.662 --> 01:38:38.102
But until then, wait, it's okay. You get your people out until it's time for

01:38:38.102 --> 01:38:40.422
you, until somebody else picks up the others.

01:38:40.742 --> 01:38:43.242
Somebody can always come behind you. Trust and believe that.

01:38:43.762 --> 01:38:45.962
So, yeah, that's always my biggest piece of advice.

01:38:46.482 --> 01:38:50.122
Yeah, that's good advice to tell people in politics, too, because,

01:38:50.342 --> 01:38:55.562
you know, when you get in a position, you see everything.

01:38:56.022 --> 01:38:59.742
And you get exposed to a lot more things that are going on. It's like,

01:39:00.482 --> 01:39:02.002
oh, my God. You know what I'm saying?

01:39:03.742 --> 01:39:09.662
And, you know, you tend to have to be an expert on a little bit of everything

01:39:09.662 --> 01:39:11.902
because you got to vote on stuff and all that.

01:39:12.422 --> 01:39:18.642
But I feel you because, you know, there was so much stuff I wanted to do.

01:39:18.802 --> 01:39:23.222
But the one thing I could do that impacted me, a friend of mine got killed.

01:39:24.365 --> 01:39:30.385
A railroad crossing. And a year before, four people in the district that I ended

01:39:30.385 --> 01:39:33.865
up representing, four people got killed at another railroad crossing.

01:39:34.325 --> 01:39:40.145
One girl survived, but she got knocked from the truck into somebody's yard.

01:39:40.445 --> 01:39:44.165
And that was the only way she survived because everybody else,

01:39:44.365 --> 01:39:47.625
her dad, her uncle, and her cousins got killed.

01:39:48.025 --> 01:39:53.345
And so the one common denominator was the fact that neither one of those crossings had gates.

01:39:53.905 --> 01:39:59.845
And so I was trying to figure out, well, why do these not have gates?

01:39:59.985 --> 01:40:03.925
But I go everywhere else in the city and they do have gates.

01:40:04.245 --> 01:40:09.805
And then when I got in, you know, so I said, that's something I need to work on when I get there.

01:40:09.885 --> 01:40:12.505
And once I got there and they started telling me all this stuff,

01:40:12.625 --> 01:40:14.985
I was like, well, we got to change some of this stuff.

01:40:15.965 --> 01:40:20.785
And so my first three years in the legislature, I was changing stuff.

01:40:20.905 --> 01:40:23.625
I was moving money around. I was doing everything I could.

01:40:24.005 --> 01:40:28.365
So by the time I was out, you know, after nine years of service,

01:40:28.605 --> 01:40:31.745
at least those areas had gates.

01:40:32.265 --> 01:40:37.965
And Mississippi was, when I first got elected, they were the number one state

01:40:37.965 --> 01:40:46.245
in railroad traffic fatalities. and I took so much satisfaction in watching Raphael Warnock.

01:40:47.249 --> 01:40:50.649
Talk about how Georgia was now in the top 10. And I looked at that list and

01:40:50.649 --> 01:40:52.349
I said, Mississippi is not even the top 10.

01:40:53.229 --> 01:40:59.029
And, you know, I took pride in the fact that a lot of the work that I did is

01:40:59.029 --> 01:41:01.989
the reason why Mississippi is not in the top 10 anymore.

01:41:02.709 --> 01:41:06.929
And so, like you said, it's like, go put that fire out.

01:41:07.349 --> 01:41:11.569
And then once you get that done, then you can start focusing in on everything else.

01:41:11.669 --> 01:41:15.729
Now, you know, if it's something black going on, we all going to have something to say.

01:41:15.849 --> 01:41:18.729
If they trying to take away, a congressional district if they're

01:41:18.729 --> 01:41:22.589
trying to deny us the right to vote if they putting more

01:41:22.589 --> 01:41:25.409
people in the jail if they shooting us in the street we all gonna say

01:41:25.409 --> 01:41:28.549
something about it but some people

01:41:28.549 --> 01:41:31.769
should take the lead and some should just follow

01:41:31.769 --> 01:41:36.409
instead of everybody trying to get to the microphone you know what i'm saying

01:41:36.409 --> 01:41:39.809
so i mean that's that's basically what you're saying and i totally agree with

01:41:39.809 --> 01:41:45.909
that and that that shows even though you're you're younger than me you have

01:41:45.909 --> 01:41:49.329
an incredible amount of wisdom that people need to tap into.

01:41:49.989 --> 01:41:53.689
And so I'm really, really glad that we had this time to talk.

01:41:53.869 --> 01:41:59.929
If people want to talk to you more, if people want to reach out for your consulting

01:41:59.929 --> 01:42:04.469
business or some of the organizations that you currently work with, how can they do that?

01:42:05.307 --> 01:42:08.767
Yes, sir. So it's very simple. If you want to get in contact with me,

01:42:08.907 --> 01:42:15.947
you can find me Facebook, Instagram, and I guess, and now TikTok, now TikTok.

01:42:17.467 --> 01:42:20.107
All you have to do is just type in my name, Lakeland Barnes.

01:42:20.467 --> 01:42:22.227
I'm going to pop up more than likely.

01:42:22.407 --> 01:42:25.187
You're not going to find anybody else with my name. So type that in.

01:42:25.307 --> 01:42:29.867
You'll be able to find me. If you want to find more information about SheWill,

01:42:30.267 --> 01:42:36.727
just literally type in underscore SheWill on all of your platforms.

01:42:36.727 --> 01:42:39.207
So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all the things.

01:42:39.767 --> 01:42:46.327
If you're also looking for Reinforce, our name is spelled R-E-N, capital N, Force.

01:42:46.747 --> 01:42:50.147
And just type that in. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram,

01:42:50.487 --> 01:42:52.227
Twitter, TikTok, all the things.

01:42:52.747 --> 01:42:56.307
So, yes, if you are looking for me, just type in Lakeland Barnes,

01:42:56.547 --> 01:43:03.407
L-A-K-E-L-A-N-D, Barnes, B-A-R-N-E-S, and you'll find me on all my social media platforms.

01:43:03.827 --> 01:43:08.287
Feel free to tap in, ask me any questions. But if you don't have any of those

01:43:08.287 --> 01:43:11.087
social medias, you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn as well.

01:43:11.587 --> 01:43:17.907
Well, Lakeland, I greatly appreciate you taking the time. I enjoyed conversing with you.

01:43:18.707 --> 01:43:23.967
One of my rules is that once you've been on, you have an open invitation to come back.

01:43:24.107 --> 01:43:27.287
So you don't even have to wait for me to ask you to come back on.

01:43:27.427 --> 01:43:31.987
If there's something going on that you need a platform for, just let me know

01:43:31.987 --> 01:43:33.027
and we'll make that happen.

01:43:33.167 --> 01:43:37.867
So I look forward to that moment because I know you're going to get into some stuff.

01:43:39.267 --> 01:43:42.587
We're going to have to talk about it and put it out there. So,

01:43:42.827 --> 01:43:44.847
again, thank you for coming on the podcast.

01:43:45.607 --> 01:43:48.067
Yes, I know. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

01:43:48.207 --> 01:43:50.087
And like you said, you know I'm going to get into something.

01:43:50.087 --> 01:43:52.267
So I will be bringing something back to you.

01:43:54.127 --> 01:43:54.987
All right, guys.

01:44:08.560 --> 01:44:10.800
All right, and we are back. So

01:44:10.800 --> 01:44:16.460
I want to thank David Dunaway and Lakeland Barnes for coming on the show.

01:44:17.340 --> 01:44:22.360
David's book, Four-Eyed World, is a great read.

01:44:23.000 --> 01:44:27.620
It's really, really unique in how he put it together.

01:44:29.160 --> 01:44:32.520
And, you know, the way that he does it.

01:44:33.683 --> 01:44:39.883
It all makes sense when you get to the end. So I suggest that you go to that

01:44:39.883 --> 01:44:45.783
website, four-eyed world.com and, you know, and, and, and get that book.

01:44:45.903 --> 01:44:48.463
It's really, really, really, really entertaining.

01:44:49.083 --> 01:44:53.983
And it has so much detail. We, as long as that interview was,

01:44:54.143 --> 01:44:56.603
we only really scratched the surface of the book.

01:44:56.763 --> 01:45:02.643
And, you know, I really kind of forced it to, And I was really glad that he

01:45:02.643 --> 01:45:07.863
was gracious with his time where I could flesh out at least a lot of the highlights.

01:45:07.983 --> 01:45:11.123
But it really, really is a good book.

01:45:11.643 --> 01:45:17.283
And you can tell that this guy writes for a living. So go out and do that.

01:45:17.463 --> 01:45:22.723
And then with Lakeland Barnes, with her organizations that she works with.

01:45:22.843 --> 01:45:24.963
Now, she has her own consulting company.

01:45:25.563 --> 01:45:31.583
And I want to highlight that. So if you have a nonprofit, whether it's in Augusta, Atlanta,

01:45:32.403 --> 01:45:37.203
you know, somewhere in the northeastern part of the state, and you need some

01:45:37.203 --> 01:45:42.323
advice or some help, Lakeland Barnes is one of those people that you can reach out to.

01:45:43.263 --> 01:45:48.523
The two projects that she's working with right now, She Will and Reinforce,

01:45:48.703 --> 01:45:51.263
you know, and they focus in on women.

01:45:51.263 --> 01:46:00.883
And which SheWill, as she explained, SheWill is a nonprofit that helps young women, you know.

01:46:01.843 --> 01:46:07.563
Girls learn early on about financial literacy and why that's important, right?

01:46:07.783 --> 01:46:10.983
And then Reinforce helps formerly

01:46:10.983 --> 01:46:17.283
incarcerated women transition back into society, which is much needed.

01:46:17.423 --> 01:46:22.103
And that's something that's undervalued. There's groups out there all over the

01:46:22.103 --> 01:46:25.023
country, and I know this because—.

01:46:26.652 --> 01:46:33.852
One, you know, when I was elected, that was one of my causes in and out of the

01:46:33.852 --> 01:46:39.492
legislature, was dealing with people reentering into society after they did that time.

01:46:40.152 --> 01:46:46.992
But something that, you know, is, you know, women and really black women,

01:46:47.052 --> 01:46:49.572
it's really a struggle for them.

01:46:49.572 --> 01:46:53.712
Some people think, oh, well, you know, they'll take a chance on a woman before

01:46:53.712 --> 01:47:00.472
a man, maybe, but the elephant in the room is that we're having more black women

01:47:00.472 --> 01:47:02.272
incarcerated than ever before,

01:47:02.632 --> 01:47:06.612
which means that groups like Reinforced need to exist.

01:47:06.612 --> 01:47:13.332
If we can kick the elephant out of the room, then maybe we can focus on other things.

01:47:13.552 --> 01:47:17.592
But those two organizations are very, very vital.

01:47:18.552 --> 01:47:25.012
And, you know, there's Augusta, if you don't know Atlanta or other Atlanta,

01:47:25.152 --> 01:47:29.312
Georgia geography is really close to South Carolina.

01:47:29.612 --> 01:47:32.412
It's like if you sneeze, you're in South Carolina pretty much.

01:47:34.061 --> 01:47:41.101
So they have a reach in a couple of states. That's what I'm saying. Both organizations.

01:47:41.901 --> 01:47:47.141
So, you know, and I just admire young people that are doing work.

01:47:47.941 --> 01:47:52.901
And it was really an honor to be in a position to lift her up and,

01:47:52.941 --> 01:47:59.241
you know, just have a conversation with her about why she does what she does, what motivated her.

01:47:59.241 --> 01:48:07.081
Because it's always fascinating to find out what motivates young people to get

01:48:07.081 --> 01:48:08.281
out and do this kind of work.

01:48:08.401 --> 01:48:12.941
Because like I said in the interview, I was young once and I was motivated to do the work.

01:48:13.421 --> 01:48:22.461
So it's just fascinating to hear young people now and find out what drives them to do what they do.

01:48:22.581 --> 01:48:26.201
So I greatly appreciate her and others like her.

01:48:26.861 --> 01:48:30.021
She hit me up to a couple of people that I need to reach out to.

01:48:31.181 --> 01:48:34.521
And one of them has already responded.

01:48:34.821 --> 01:48:38.781
I haven't made a formal invitation for this young lady to be on the show,

01:48:38.921 --> 01:48:40.761
but at least I got a connection.

01:48:41.701 --> 01:48:49.901
So we'll go from there. But any chance that I get to lift young folks up, I'm going to do that.

01:48:50.201 --> 01:48:54.101
And it might steer my podcast in a totally different direction.

01:48:55.261 --> 01:48:57.381
Don't hold me to that, but I just...

01:48:58.890 --> 01:49:02.890
Yeah, we'll leave it at that. Speaking about young people, I want to deal with

01:49:02.890 --> 01:49:09.470
something tragic that happened over the week, and it was mentioned in the news segment.

01:49:10.070 --> 01:49:12.930
Again, Grace, thank you so much for doing what you do.

01:49:13.110 --> 01:49:16.130
And you've been on this journey with me for a little bit now,

01:49:16.310 --> 01:49:18.090
and I really appreciate what you do.

01:49:18.630 --> 01:49:21.490
There was this young brother who would have been 16 this year.

01:49:21.610 --> 01:49:23.750
His name was Cyrus Carmack Belton.

01:49:24.750 --> 01:49:29.930
So Carmack Belton was 14 years old, and he had gone to this convenience store.

01:49:30.310 --> 01:49:34.950
Now, from what I understand, this convenience store has had some issues,

01:49:35.310 --> 01:49:39.650
meaning the owner has had some issues with young people before,

01:49:40.690 --> 01:49:47.230
as far as, you know, suspecting them doing something like shoplifting or whatever

01:49:47.230 --> 01:49:52.130
and then, you know, taking some kind of action, either physically assaulting

01:49:52.130 --> 01:49:54.110
them or chasing him out of the store or whatever.

01:49:54.430 --> 01:50:02.030
In Cyrus's case, when you watch the video, and I don't know if this was Mrs.

01:50:02.250 --> 01:50:06.970
Chow, but it was some woman that was standing, and you can't,

01:50:07.030 --> 01:50:10.610
of course, with those surveillance videos, you can't really CCTV,

01:50:10.610 --> 01:50:12.250
you can't really get audio.

01:50:13.810 --> 01:50:22.330
But the scenario that was drawn up in the court was that Cyrus was being accused

01:50:22.330 --> 01:50:24.090
of shoplifting some water,

01:50:24.990 --> 01:50:28.830
which is really strange considering he is at the counter.

01:50:29.630 --> 01:50:36.630
Now, if a young man, and, you know, I was a young man once, if you're a young

01:50:36.630 --> 01:50:42.790
man and you're trying to get a five-finger discount, you're not going to go to the counter.

01:50:42.970 --> 01:50:45.290
You're going to get what you want and get up out of there.

01:50:46.050 --> 01:50:53.350
You're going to try to be as discreet as possible you know just you know slide

01:50:53.350 --> 01:50:57.450
in slide out I'm not encouraging anybody to do this I'm not giving you tips

01:50:57.450 --> 01:51:01.070
I'm just telling you real talk right that.

01:51:02.508 --> 01:51:07.228
People don't want to be seen, especially in this day and age where there's cameras everywhere, right?

01:51:08.108 --> 01:51:12.108
But this young man is at the counter and he's being accused of stealing something.

01:51:12.728 --> 01:51:20.328
And then, for no apparent reason, at some point, Mr.

01:51:20.468 --> 01:51:26.968
Chow and his son chased Cyrus out of the store.

01:51:27.808 --> 01:51:32.008
And I guess Cyrus was like, look, I don't want to be bothered with this.

01:51:32.008 --> 01:51:35.288
Y'all tripping. And so he takes off, right?

01:51:35.728 --> 01:51:44.408
And they pursue him and they get so far and then Mr.

01:51:44.508 --> 01:51:50.608
Chow pulls out his gun and shoots Cyrus in the back while he's running away.

01:51:51.028 --> 01:51:53.708
So he kills him.

01:51:55.948 --> 01:51:59.528
And, you know, from from Mr.

01:51:59.688 --> 01:52:06.448
Chow's perspective, his argument was that his son and Cyrus got into it at the store.

01:52:06.628 --> 01:52:09.048
And so he was defending his son.

01:52:09.648 --> 01:52:13.668
But just y'all understand what Mr.

01:52:13.828 --> 01:52:17.668
Chow did, law enforcement officers cannot do.

01:52:18.488 --> 01:52:25.268
Right. By Supreme Court ruling, police officers cannot chase somebody and shoot them in the back.

01:52:25.768 --> 01:52:33.308
You know, if you do that, you better have a dispatch copy, copy of a dispatch

01:52:33.308 --> 01:52:35.048
saying that this person was wanted.

01:52:35.548 --> 01:52:42.948
They were armed and dangerous. You felt that they were a threat to society at large.

01:52:44.379 --> 01:52:52.039
You shoot and kill somebody running. But it's pretty limited in that capacity, right?

01:52:52.459 --> 01:52:56.939
And then a private citizen, depending on what state you're in,

01:52:57.099 --> 01:53:03.379
you do have a stand your ground law, but you have to prove that your life was in danger.

01:53:04.559 --> 01:53:10.059
And, you know, some call it stand your ground in some states that say fight or flight, right?

01:53:10.379 --> 01:53:15.779
Where it says if you can't run away from danger, then you have a right to defend yourself, okay?

01:53:16.299 --> 01:53:20.459
None of those scenarios was in place with Cyrus.

01:53:20.879 --> 01:53:27.639
He was running away from who he thought was some crazy folks that owned the store.

01:53:29.633 --> 01:53:33.613
He was shot and killed. This was in 2023.

01:53:34.433 --> 01:53:41.793
So fast forward to last week, the trial for Mr.

01:53:41.913 --> 01:53:47.313
Chow was concluded and he was charged with murder.

01:53:48.413 --> 01:53:52.053
And, you know, he had his defense team.

01:53:52.253 --> 01:53:57.073
They did what they constitutionally obligated to do, which is to provide counsel

01:53:57.073 --> 01:54:00.213
for him. The state made their case.

01:54:00.433 --> 01:54:03.473
And this is in all in South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

01:54:04.053 --> 01:54:08.373
So a jury came out with a not guilty verdict.

01:54:09.593 --> 01:54:15.273
And of course, the mom and the father were very distraught about it.

01:54:15.513 --> 01:54:23.673
And, you know, she expressed her pain afterwards as if not only about the verdict

01:54:23.673 --> 01:54:28.753
coming back not guilty, but all the death threats that she has gotten on social media,

01:54:29.213 --> 01:54:35.793
all the hateful comments like he deserved it, you know, one less Negro in the

01:54:35.793 --> 01:54:38.113
world. You know what I'm talking about.

01:54:39.773 --> 01:54:41.473
The maggots were at work.

01:54:43.253 --> 01:54:49.633
So needless to say, these three years have been painful. And then for a jury

01:54:49.633 --> 01:54:52.153
to come back with a not guilty verdict, it just...

01:54:53.705 --> 01:55:00.065
It was devastating, right? Because it wasn't a doubt that Mr. Chow shot him.

01:55:00.485 --> 01:55:05.425
Now, one of the things they were saying was that he had a gun.

01:55:05.565 --> 01:55:10.105
And so they did find a gun on his person. Talking about Cyrus.

01:55:10.265 --> 01:55:11.585
They did find a gun by him.

01:55:11.825 --> 01:55:15.505
But the gun didn't come out.

01:55:16.085 --> 01:55:21.305
There's no video of him brandishing the gun. and the gun didn't come out till

01:55:21.305 --> 01:55:27.145
after he was shot and it fell out of his pants or his pocket, whatever it was, right?

01:55:27.565 --> 01:55:33.865
So again, if the guy, if anybody, even if they have a gun, if they're running

01:55:33.865 --> 01:55:37.365
away from you, you are not in danger.

01:55:37.805 --> 01:55:43.885
If you are chasing them with a weapon, they're the ones in danger, right?

01:55:44.205 --> 01:55:49.965
Now, it would have been interesting if the young man, if he did have a gun and

01:55:49.965 --> 01:55:51.445
he turned around and shot Mr.

01:55:51.565 --> 01:55:56.745
Chow, who was shooting at him, how that would have played in South Carolina.

01:55:56.965 --> 01:56:04.605
But anyway, my whole thing with that is this is the state's fault.

01:56:04.725 --> 01:56:09.885
This is the prosecutor's fault because you didn't give the jury options.

01:56:10.325 --> 01:56:17.445
You went for the home run. You were trying to put this man in jail for life,

01:56:17.685 --> 01:56:18.805
for killing this young man.

01:56:19.045 --> 01:56:24.085
Now, for many of us in the black community, we're down with that,

01:56:24.405 --> 01:56:26.445
but we want them to go to jail.

01:56:26.845 --> 01:56:35.185
And so you didn't give the jury the option of a lesser charge because a lot

01:56:35.185 --> 01:56:38.085
of times in situations like that,

01:56:38.365 --> 01:56:42.085
if there wasn't any intent, and there's this young lady.

01:56:42.845 --> 01:56:46.685
Excuse me, there's this young lady on Instagram, like Lauren,

01:56:46.685 --> 01:56:52.505
the lawyer, she broke it down really, really good because she was following the trial.

01:56:53.005 --> 01:56:55.425
And one of the things she pointed out was that,

01:56:56.793 --> 01:57:02.313
that the jury came back before they made the decision and asked for instruction.

01:57:02.313 --> 01:57:05.193
And the word that they were stuck on was malice.

01:57:06.013 --> 01:57:15.093
So in South Carolina and most states, malice just means you had a plan to kill somebody.

01:57:15.513 --> 01:57:21.973
It was in your mind that, you know, whether it's the next black person,

01:57:22.233 --> 01:57:27.893
whether it's Cyrus or whether whatever, you had an intent to kill somebody that day.

01:57:29.336 --> 01:57:36.296
And of course, the prosecution couldn't prove that because it was almost like

01:57:36.296 --> 01:57:39.636
a moment of passion. Right.

01:57:40.436 --> 01:57:46.256
Mr. Chow thought somebody was stealing something from the store and doing something

01:57:46.256 --> 01:57:48.496
that you don't advise people to do.

01:57:48.716 --> 01:57:53.956
He decided to chase the person with his own gun out the store,

01:57:54.776 --> 01:57:56.776
track him down and kill him. right?

01:57:57.456 --> 01:58:04.036
But he didn't wake up that morning thinking that I'm going to kill me a black person today.

01:58:04.556 --> 01:58:10.896
So that narrowed the scope of what the prosecutors could do. They proved he shot him.

01:58:11.336 --> 01:58:14.416
There's no doubt that Mr. Chow shot and killed Cyrus.

01:58:15.056 --> 01:58:18.856
But murder was the only option you gave the jury.

01:58:19.016 --> 01:58:25.036
If you gave the jury options to say, well, if he doesn't meet the test for murder,

01:58:25.036 --> 01:58:28.976
you have to find him guilty of manslaughter, right?

01:58:30.616 --> 01:58:37.296
And you could have stuck other charges, discharging a weapon within the city limits of Columbia.

01:58:37.536 --> 01:58:43.436
You could have charged him with attempted murder, you know, even though Cyrus

01:58:43.436 --> 01:58:50.516
died, still could have charged him with something else, involuntary manslaughter, right?

01:58:50.836 --> 01:58:56.476
It wasn't your intent to kill him. your intent was to get him off of your property, right?

01:58:56.856 --> 01:59:00.836
Scare him away. And you ended up killing him. It's just like if you get into

01:59:00.836 --> 01:59:04.056
a fight with somebody, you're not trying to kill that person when you're fighting

01:59:04.056 --> 01:59:07.896
them, but if you hit them in the right spot, person drops dead.

01:59:08.116 --> 01:59:11.576
Well, that's involuntary manslaughter, right? It wasn't, you didn't have an

01:59:11.576 --> 01:59:14.316
intent to do it, but you did do it. You did kill somebody.

01:59:15.236 --> 01:59:19.876
So they could have, if the prosecutors had not been greedy and just,

01:59:19.896 --> 01:59:23.276
you know, and given the jury options, Mr.

01:59:23.436 --> 01:59:26.896
Chow would be in jail today for killing another human being.

01:59:27.136 --> 01:59:29.336
But instead, he's out free.

01:59:29.756 --> 01:59:32.716
And that has caused an incredible amount of tension.

01:59:34.612 --> 01:59:38.652
Literally, every police car in Columbia, South Carolina was at that man's convenience

01:59:38.652 --> 01:59:42.372
store. You couldn't get in there to get any gas.

01:59:43.752 --> 01:59:48.212
If you didn't know this man was involved in a trial or anything like that.

01:59:48.392 --> 01:59:54.892
I mean, literally, there's video footage of police cars. It's like they were staging.

01:59:55.572 --> 02:00:00.332
Felt like they were getting ready to do a big raid. They were like all parked in that parking lot.

02:00:02.112 --> 02:00:06.072
And, you know, I guess to protect him or whatever from the community being upset,

02:00:06.672 --> 02:00:12.632
but they couldn't stay there 24 hours, and there's some video showing that the

02:00:12.632 --> 02:00:13.792
store has been vandalized.

02:00:13.872 --> 02:00:19.372
The question is, did that happen at an earlier point, and that prompted the

02:00:19.372 --> 02:00:22.992
police to come, or did that happen after the police left?

02:00:23.712 --> 02:00:26.712
But you can see that the store was vandalized and all that.

02:00:28.712 --> 02:00:36.252
So the community is hurting We don't encourage people to be vindictive to this

02:00:36.252 --> 02:00:43.232
man The system did what it was supposed to do I blame the prosecutors for being greedy,

02:00:43.992 --> 02:00:49.852
Because the whole thing is you want people to atone Justice is not about revenge

02:00:49.852 --> 02:00:53.032
It's about atonement Mr.

02:00:53.212 --> 02:00:57.452
Chow should not be walking around free after he killed somebody.

02:00:57.652 --> 02:01:00.192
He already had three years of freedom after he did that.

02:01:00.672 --> 02:01:07.832
That jury should have been given the latitude to put him in jail some kind of way,

02:01:08.792 --> 02:01:17.512
because he's had a track record of dealing with young people in a violent type of way.

02:01:18.072 --> 02:01:26.832
Nobody died until Cyrus, but he had a track record. And that was inadmissible in court, right?

02:01:27.032 --> 02:01:29.252
Because I guess they were all misdemeanors or whatever.

02:01:31.172 --> 02:01:38.532
So I just wanted to give you my opinion on that. And I just hope that,

02:01:40.014 --> 02:01:46.814
People, you know, everybody, a lot of people have egos and a lot of times prosecutors

02:01:46.814 --> 02:01:52.074
that have big egos want to have this landmark case.

02:01:52.974 --> 02:01:56.734
And because, you know, most of those folks get elected. Right.

02:01:57.254 --> 02:02:02.194
And so they want to be able to say, I'm the one that put Chow in jail.

02:02:02.394 --> 02:02:05.134
You know what I'm saying? Show up in the black community and say that. Right.

02:02:06.309 --> 02:02:13.469
Wanted to have his moment instead of prosecuting, just doing his job, right?

02:02:14.029 --> 02:02:22.309
So that's on them. And now a guy who has killed a black teenager is walking

02:02:22.309 --> 02:02:25.109
free in the South, right?

02:02:25.889 --> 02:02:34.069
Anyway, so I, you know, the family has retained one of the up and coming black

02:02:34.069 --> 02:02:36.109
politicians. I say up incoming.

02:02:36.229 --> 02:02:41.689
He was in there when I got there in the legislature in South Carolina.

02:02:41.689 --> 02:02:43.009
He's the minority leader.

02:02:43.389 --> 02:02:48.309
I think he's married to a former Miss South Carolina, and he's younger than

02:02:48.309 --> 02:02:53.129
me, and his brother has really built his stock up.

02:02:53.289 --> 02:03:00.989
Outside of Jim Clyburn, this is probably the most powerful black politician in South Carolina now.

02:03:01.769 --> 02:03:05.609
And he is an attorney and he is the family attorney.

02:03:05.849 --> 02:03:12.469
So they're going to go the civil route and Mr. Chow will probably be like OJ.

02:03:13.129 --> 02:03:17.049
Well, a lot of people still don't know if OJ actually did it,

02:03:17.329 --> 02:03:21.569
but he was found, OJ was found not guilty, but he ended up paying a civil penalty.

02:03:22.089 --> 02:03:26.349
So that's where the comparison comes in. I think that Mr. child is probably

02:03:26.349 --> 02:03:30.809
not going to be in business much longer, I think they'll be able to get damages

02:03:30.809 --> 02:03:33.709
in the Sybil case for wrongful death.

02:03:34.469 --> 02:03:37.829
But we'll keep track of it and see how that goes. It'll probably be another

02:03:37.829 --> 02:03:40.349
year before we have a resolution that way.

02:03:41.189 --> 02:03:44.309
So I wanted to get that out there.

02:03:44.729 --> 02:03:48.489
Now, there's another thing that's happening that didn't really get a whole lot

02:03:48.489 --> 02:03:55.169
of news, but I I picked it up on social media, and the source that I got it

02:03:55.169 --> 02:03:56.589
from is pretty reliable.

02:03:56.849 --> 02:04:03.549
This is people that pay attention to what's going on, even if the news doesn't pick it up.

02:04:05.202 --> 02:04:10.822
And we're in the state of Texas. So as you know, we got this big Senate race

02:04:10.822 --> 02:04:15.362
coming up with James Tallarico, the state representative there,

02:04:15.742 --> 02:04:18.942
against the attorney general of the state, Ken Paxson.

02:04:19.642 --> 02:04:27.162
If you're in Texas, nobody in Texas should vote for Ken Paxson ever again in life, ever in life.

02:04:27.842 --> 02:04:33.802
His own folks tried to impeach him. And his wife, who happened to be a state

02:04:33.802 --> 02:04:37.402
senator at the time, she should have been recused from voting.

02:04:38.182 --> 02:04:46.402
Nonetheless, she got enough votes to stop them from keeping him out of office

02:04:46.402 --> 02:04:51.242
and not being able to run for anything ever again. But he was impeached.

02:04:51.642 --> 02:04:55.262
And it's a majority Republican legislature in Texas.

02:04:56.042 --> 02:04:59.822
Yeah, so you got that going on. So you're trying to galvanize.

02:04:59.982 --> 02:05:06.222
Now, James Tallarico, he's the one who beat Jasmine Crockett for that U.S.

02:05:06.302 --> 02:05:07.862
Senate seat in the Democratic primary.

02:05:08.962 --> 02:05:14.242
And the reason basically why Jasmine ran was because they basically drew her out of her district.

02:05:16.121 --> 02:05:18.761
She didn't want to run against another Democratic incumbent,

02:05:18.761 --> 02:05:23.881
so she ran for the U.S. Senate and probably should have won.

02:05:24.381 --> 02:05:29.181
You literally had white women saying, I wanted to vote for Jasmine,

02:05:29.381 --> 02:05:33.841
but I don't think she's going to win in November, so I voted for Telerico,

02:05:34.141 --> 02:05:36.061
right? Y'all saw the video.

02:05:37.401 --> 02:05:40.301
Well, I think it's a little more than that. I do.

02:05:41.421 --> 02:05:48.441
Just, you know, the fact that you think that a black person can't win statewide ever, you know,

02:05:49.381 --> 02:05:57.281
it's racism without the vitriol, you know.

02:05:58.981 --> 02:06:06.001
Previous guest, Bessie Hodges, she can articulate it better than me because

02:06:06.001 --> 02:06:07.581
she's a white woman, right?

02:06:08.713 --> 02:06:17.113
But and some other guests, Miss Susuki Graham, Robin DiAngelo, Jacqueline Batalora.

02:06:17.553 --> 02:06:21.293
I mean, there's some white women on here basically calling white folks out,

02:06:21.653 --> 02:06:24.973
you know, on that kind of mentality.

02:06:25.473 --> 02:06:29.733
Nonetheless, so the Democratic Party is going to have their big dinner.

02:06:29.953 --> 02:06:35.513
Each state party, you know, has like an annual dinner fundraiser.

02:06:35.513 --> 02:06:39.073
And it's kind of, it turns into a rally, get all these folks.

02:06:39.493 --> 02:06:45.833
So one of the things that this social media person pointed out was that,

02:06:46.433 --> 02:06:51.473
they've got all these speakers, they're bringing in Bernie Sanders and Pritzker

02:06:51.473 --> 02:06:57.213
and all these other folks, they're bringing all these folks in to speak at their fundraiser.

02:06:57.313 --> 02:07:01.593
They call it the biggest Democratic Party fundraiser in the nation, right?

02:07:02.333 --> 02:07:04.033
Nobody black is on the program.

02:07:05.393 --> 02:07:12.993
Nobody black is on the program. You would figure at least Christian Menifee

02:07:12.993 --> 02:07:17.753
should be on there, considering that he survived, calling Allred, who's run for the U.S.

02:07:17.833 --> 02:07:25.133
Senate, and just got reelected basically back to Congress, and he had to defeat

02:07:25.133 --> 02:07:30.613
a white woman who was an incumbent to do that because of the redistricting.

02:07:32.065 --> 02:07:37.605
And so it's not a net gain there. Menifee had to beat Al Green because of the

02:07:37.605 --> 02:07:39.105
way the district was drawn.

02:07:39.725 --> 02:07:46.725
Now, Al could have run in a district that had the same number but not the same constituents.

02:07:47.185 --> 02:07:51.105
He could have ran for his same district by number.

02:07:51.705 --> 02:07:58.145
But, you know, he wanted to represent Houston because that's where he is.

02:07:59.145 --> 02:08:02.305
And so the Lions, he felt he couldn't win.

02:08:02.785 --> 02:08:10.165
So he ran in 18, and 18 has been historically the Houston district, right?

02:08:10.305 --> 02:08:12.945
They used to have two, now they got one.

02:08:13.945 --> 02:08:19.805
We had Al Green, and Al Green has outlived Sheila Jackson Lee,

02:08:19.865 --> 02:08:24.745
and then Sylvester Turner came after her, and both of them have died within

02:08:24.745 --> 02:08:27.265
a span of two years, right?

02:08:27.805 --> 02:08:32.985
So when they finally called a special election, because those folks didn't have

02:08:32.985 --> 02:08:39.065
representation for basically a year, Christy Menefee won the special election.

02:08:39.265 --> 02:08:42.305
He beat a young lady who had been on the city council, I believe,

02:08:42.565 --> 02:08:45.065
Amanda Edwards, and he got in there.

02:08:45.505 --> 02:08:50.745
And so since Al wanted to stay in Congress and represent Houston,

02:08:50.965 --> 02:08:52.525
he had to run against Mr. Menefee.

02:08:53.285 --> 02:08:57.765
It's meant if he beat him in a primary, which is basically a general election in that district.

02:08:58.445 --> 02:09:04.325
So, you know, he's going to be back the next term.

02:09:04.705 --> 02:09:12.485
Now, I assume somewhere on the program he'll introduce somebody, maybe.

02:09:12.945 --> 02:09:17.965
I just can't imagine you got a sitting congressman.

02:09:18.045 --> 02:09:22.285
You got two black sitting congressmen, about to be sitting congressmen.

02:09:23.567 --> 02:09:27.547
November election, and neither one of them are headlining on the program.

02:09:28.327 --> 02:09:35.387
You know, maybe, I don't know, they might have one do the prayer or something, I don't know.

02:09:35.827 --> 02:09:39.447
But they're not keynoting. They've got all these folks from out of Texas,

02:09:40.547 --> 02:09:43.407
white folks, keynoting, but not the people in.

02:09:43.467 --> 02:09:49.947
And of course, the people come to see Jasmine Crockett, and I don't know what

02:09:49.947 --> 02:09:53.667
role she's going to play. Maybe once they call these folks out,

02:09:53.827 --> 02:09:55.687
she might be the emcee. I don't know.

02:09:56.567 --> 02:10:00.527
All I know is that she's not on program. She's not a keynote.

02:10:00.847 --> 02:10:03.367
All Red's not a keynote. Menifee's not a keynote.

02:10:04.267 --> 02:10:11.487
And Tau Rico is, you know. I mean, he's the nominee, so naturally he would be on it. Yeah.

02:10:12.147 --> 02:10:20.407
So I even see, and I don't want to say her name, but the young lady that's running against Greg Abbott.

02:10:21.007 --> 02:10:24.607
For governor in in hosa i think her name is.

02:10:25.998 --> 02:10:29.878
And then they didn't even, now, maybe they're going to have something in the

02:10:29.878 --> 02:10:35.618
program to honor Representative Collier and I think Senator Jones,

02:10:35.698 --> 02:10:39.658
it might be Representative Jones, who led the walkout,

02:10:39.958 --> 02:10:43.418
right, to slow down the redistricting effort.

02:10:43.738 --> 02:10:47.118
Remember, they all scattered. They were in Illinois and everywhere else.

02:10:47.538 --> 02:10:49.258
So they couldn't have a quorum.

02:10:50.278 --> 02:10:57.598
And Ms. Collier, when they came back, they passed some crazy rules saying that

02:10:57.598 --> 02:11:04.698
if you're here, you can't leave the chamber or you can't leave the building.

02:11:05.198 --> 02:11:09.938
It was something really stupid just trying to make sure that the Democrats didn't take off again.

02:11:10.398 --> 02:11:14.298
And they literally locked Ms. Collier in the Capitol building.

02:11:14.538 --> 02:11:17.218
And it's a huge building. I mean, if you've ever been to Austin,

02:11:17.358 --> 02:11:21.158
Texas, it's the largest state capitol building in the nation.

02:11:21.838 --> 02:11:28.318
And they locked this woman in there for a couple of days, right? She couldn't go.

02:11:29.258 --> 02:11:34.458
And, you know, so you didn't have a spot for her on the program.

02:11:35.118 --> 02:11:39.058
Now, they may give her an award for courage or whatever.

02:11:39.778 --> 02:11:46.658
I'm sure they're going to honor them in some way, right? because these ladies

02:11:46.658 --> 02:11:51.878
were the leaders. They were the voices for the walkout.

02:11:53.266 --> 02:11:57.506
But they're not keynoting. So, you know, I get it.

02:11:58.246 --> 02:12:05.026
Texas is a big state. You might be able to get a Senate seat this year based

02:12:05.026 --> 02:12:13.006
on the fact that the most indefensible candidate is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.

02:12:13.866 --> 02:12:19.806
Yeah. I just think that's crazy. You know, that you, you're not,

02:12:19.966 --> 02:12:24.166
you didn't even, and if they are going to speak, you didn't put them on the program.

02:12:24.166 --> 02:12:28.866
It's like the people in the respective states want to see their state people.

02:12:29.166 --> 02:12:34.086
It's nice that these national folks that have national ambitions show up.

02:12:34.846 --> 02:12:40.806
But your draw is going to be your local elected officials at your state party function.

02:12:41.546 --> 02:12:46.466
You know, it was kind of a big deal in Iowa to show up at their dinner.

02:12:47.866 --> 02:12:53.046
But since Iowa ain't the first state no more on the Democratic side, not so much.

02:12:54.226 --> 02:12:58.286
But, you know, the parade will go through there when they have their dinner, it'll go through.

02:13:00.186 --> 02:13:03.766
Nonetheless, I think that's that's sending a terrible message.

02:13:03.766 --> 02:13:07.906
It's very, very tone deaf how they put this program together,

02:13:07.906 --> 02:13:13.746
because if Tallarico is going to win, black folks have to support them.

02:13:15.223 --> 02:13:20.203
I'm not on the ground, so I don't know what kind of outreach he's really doing.

02:13:20.683 --> 02:13:26.463
I don't know if he's just banking on the goodwill of black people to vote Democratic.

02:13:28.203 --> 02:13:35.383
But if the way that they've structured the fundraiser for the state Democratic

02:13:35.383 --> 02:13:37.023
Party is any indication,

02:13:37.503 --> 02:13:40.943
that goes back to the argument that people have and say that,

02:13:41.103 --> 02:13:43.883
well, you're just taking the black vote for granted. Right.

02:13:45.823 --> 02:13:50.883
So, hopefully they'll fix that. And before the dinner,

02:13:51.123 --> 02:13:57.343
it'll be a pleasant surprise to see all those faces and all those names I mentioned

02:13:57.343 --> 02:14:01.563
actually getting a prominence program,

02:14:01.883 --> 02:14:04.283
spot on the program. But we'll see.

02:14:05.783 --> 02:14:11.883
So, before I go, I think I started talking about Graham Plattner last week, but...

02:14:14.278 --> 02:14:17.818
When this episode drops, it'll be the day before the primary in Maine.

02:14:18.718 --> 02:14:23.198
So, you know, people in Maine have a unique situation.

02:14:23.618 --> 02:14:28.098
Their governor, Janet Mills, was recruited to run for the U.S.

02:14:28.178 --> 02:14:34.878
Senate after Plattner had already been campaigning by Chuck Schumer and the crew.

02:14:35.938 --> 02:14:40.458
And Janet wasn't getting any money, wasn't getting any support, so she dropped out.

02:14:42.238 --> 02:14:46.178
And, you know, Graham is a little younger than me, not much,

02:14:46.298 --> 02:14:47.798
but he's a little younger than me.

02:14:47.938 --> 02:14:51.638
He's definitely younger than, because I'm younger than Janet Mills.

02:14:51.818 --> 02:14:57.578
Janet Mills is about 75 years old and she's, I think, was a two-term governor

02:14:57.578 --> 02:15:01.358
and then, you know, she was attorney general before that.

02:15:01.678 --> 02:15:05.058
She's had a long, solid political career in Maine.

02:15:05.838 --> 02:15:12.258
So because of the stuff that's happening now with Plotner, there's been some concerns.

02:15:12.838 --> 02:15:20.398
I've had some people in, you know, Democratic circles, even some guests that

02:15:20.398 --> 02:15:24.418
have come on and, you know, they weren't really big fans of his,

02:15:24.538 --> 02:15:25.738
but they don't live in Maine.

02:15:26.278 --> 02:15:30.818
For some reason, the people like this oyster lobster farmer,

02:15:31.878 --> 02:15:33.698
right? They love this guy.

02:15:34.238 --> 02:15:39.358
So much so that Janet Mills suspended her campaign, but by the time she suspended

02:15:39.358 --> 02:15:42.438
her campaign, they couldn't take her name off the ballot.

02:15:42.718 --> 02:15:52.978
So the folks in Maine will vote on Tuesday, June 9th, and they can.

02:15:55.120 --> 02:16:02.520
Do a plausible protest vote if they think that Plattner has not exhibited the

02:16:02.520 --> 02:16:06.480
qualities to really be a Democratic nominee and really beat the snot out of

02:16:06.480 --> 02:16:11.020
Susan Collins like they thought he would when they when he first started running.

02:16:12.500 --> 02:16:16.360
And to his credit and to his wife's credit, they've been out there trying to

02:16:16.360 --> 02:16:21.140
say, look, you know, the whole sexting thing.

02:16:21.640 --> 02:16:25.580
We done dealt with that in our house. He ain't doing that no more.

02:16:25.860 --> 02:16:27.180
He ain't ever going to do that again.

02:16:28.000 --> 02:16:32.180
You know, it was right around the time I think he had just got married,

02:16:32.180 --> 02:16:35.680
and then he just started running for the U.S. Senate about the same time.

02:16:36.520 --> 02:16:38.020
So they say they've dealt with that.

02:16:38.960 --> 02:16:43.480
And she was like, don't worry about what's going on in our house.

02:16:43.700 --> 02:16:45.220
Worry what's going on in your house.

02:16:45.680 --> 02:16:48.800
Vote for the person that's going to make sure that you can take care of your

02:16:48.800 --> 02:16:51.360
bills, that you don't have to worry about your health care, yada, yada.

02:16:51.800 --> 02:16:53.680
Vote for my husband, right?

02:16:55.040 --> 02:17:01.780
And, you know, so we got people that for some reason they they were working

02:17:01.780 --> 02:17:04.880
with him, but they have also worked in Republican campaigns.

02:17:04.940 --> 02:17:08.320
And so they're trying to trash him.

02:17:08.500 --> 02:17:12.840
And The New York Times tracked down, I think, every woman he dated.

02:17:13.500 --> 02:17:17.820
And there were a couple that said, well, you know, he he might grab me by my

02:17:17.820 --> 02:17:20.160
shoulders or grab me by my wrist or whatever.

02:17:20.700 --> 02:17:23.560
But then they ran into a lot of women and said, oh, he was a gentleman.

02:17:23.560 --> 02:17:26.620
And he's really nice guy. He's a he's a sweetheart. Right.

02:17:27.400 --> 02:17:32.420
So I appreciate the fact that they were thorough and didn't just go for the

02:17:32.420 --> 02:17:37.400
tabloid headline and really gave a fair perspective that there were some people,

02:17:37.680 --> 02:17:44.080
women in his life that don't think that he's an abuser or misogynistic or all that kind of stuff.

02:17:45.732 --> 02:17:51.432
But the people in Maine have a choice and they can actually vote a protest vote

02:17:51.432 --> 02:17:54.792
that would count because if for some reason,

02:17:55.312 --> 02:18:01.132
and I'm going to be real honest with y'all, John Fetterman is playing into this thing, too.

02:18:01.692 --> 02:18:05.912
He hasn't endorsed Plattner. He hasn't endorsed Mills.

02:18:06.992 --> 02:18:13.692
But people took a chance on a rugged type different politician on the Democratic

02:18:13.692 --> 02:18:16.652
side in Pennsylvania in voting for Fetterman.

02:18:16.832 --> 02:18:20.532
You know, the guy that doesn't wear suits and, you know, seemed to be community

02:18:20.532 --> 02:18:22.652
minded, was saying all the right things.

02:18:22.812 --> 02:18:26.552
Bernie Sanders swooped down and endorsed him. And so, you know,

02:18:26.632 --> 02:18:28.692
he had he had all that going for him.

02:18:29.832 --> 02:18:36.832
Then he had the stroke. And then he started voting like he forgot he was a Democrat. Right.

02:18:37.572 --> 02:18:41.852
He wasn't the same guy that he was in Braddock. Of course, there's some people

02:18:41.852 --> 02:18:44.052
in Braddock that's like, oh, no, that's that's him.

02:18:44.652 --> 02:18:49.272
But everybody else in America was fooled. And they thought that this guy was

02:18:49.272 --> 02:18:53.652
perfect, especially in this Trump era. Right.

02:18:54.432 --> 02:18:59.192
And so there's a lot of people that are thinking, well, if Plattner's kind of

02:18:59.192 --> 02:19:03.712
doing this and doing that, he didn't know about the Nazi tattoo,

02:19:04.052 --> 02:19:06.752
whatever, maybe he's going to be another fed up.

02:19:07.172 --> 02:19:09.872
And so there's some people that's going to be hesitant about that.

02:19:09.992 --> 02:19:14.792
But to his credit, to the campaign's credit, there are a lot of women that are

02:19:14.792 --> 02:19:16.912
saying, yeah, we vote for this guy.

02:19:17.652 --> 02:19:23.752
Is he perfect? No. But Susan Collins is terrible. and she'd been there long enough.

02:19:24.072 --> 02:19:27.932
We know what she ain't going to do. We know what she's capable of doing.

02:19:29.312 --> 02:19:31.312
She can come on back home.

02:19:32.812 --> 02:19:39.252
But the question's going to be do we vote for take the chance on this guy that

02:19:39.252 --> 02:19:41.992
he's going to rise to the occasion,

02:19:43.212 --> 02:19:47.492
or do we just say, you know what, Janet's still on the ballot.

02:19:48.012 --> 02:19:49.652
Let's vote for the governor and,

02:19:51.016 --> 02:19:55.996
You know, she may only serve one term, but at least Susan Collins to be out.

02:19:57.336 --> 02:20:01.896
That's up to the folks in Maine to make that decision. Y'all know what y'all need.

02:20:02.096 --> 02:20:09.836
Y'all know who is the best representative for you all to fight for your interest in Maine.

02:20:12.376 --> 02:20:17.396
It's, you know, the majority of the population doesn't think Susan Collins is that person.

02:20:18.076 --> 02:20:21.356
The debate is, is Graham Plattner that guy?

02:20:22.676 --> 02:20:26.936
So y'all had that choice. It'd be interesting to see what y'all do.

02:20:29.176 --> 02:20:35.776
So, you know, following next week's episode, you'll, you know, I'll be able to report.

02:20:36.156 --> 02:20:39.936
And Grace will read off how that worked out.

02:20:41.236 --> 02:20:46.816
But yeah, you know, we're in a really, really terrible, terrible time.

02:20:47.816 --> 02:20:49.236
And I've said that a lot.

02:20:50.584 --> 02:20:56.004
It's terrible in the sense that it's unconventional. It's not terrible to the

02:20:56.004 --> 02:20:58.424
point where we're hoping against hope.

02:20:59.084 --> 02:21:05.384
So the bottom line is if you want justice in South Carolina,

02:21:05.764 --> 02:21:15.364
if you want respect in Texas, if you want accountability and transparency in

02:21:15.364 --> 02:21:17.424
Maine, y'all have to vote.

02:21:17.684 --> 02:21:21.544
Point blank, period. You've got to vote.

02:21:22.004 --> 02:21:27.604
And whatever you decide to do, whoever you get behind, show up for them.

02:21:29.044 --> 02:21:33.224
I'm a Democrat, so I wish that all of y'all would vote for every Democratic

02:21:33.224 --> 02:21:35.764
candidate and keep it moving.

02:21:36.064 --> 02:21:38.884
The primaries are supposed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

02:21:39.284 --> 02:21:44.824
Once we do that, support those Democratic nominees. That's my wish.

02:21:45.524 --> 02:21:50.644
You know, in reality, that's not going to happen 100% of the time, but it is what it is.

02:21:51.424 --> 02:21:52.864
But I want y'all to vote.

02:21:53.724 --> 02:21:57.684
Again, it's one thing to show up at every No Kings rally. It's one thing to

02:21:57.684 --> 02:22:01.644
get on the internet and voice your concerns.

02:22:02.364 --> 02:22:05.724
It's one thing for y'all to all start podcasts.

02:22:06.424 --> 02:22:10.024
It's awesome. Or do TikTok videos. It's great.

02:22:10.624 --> 02:22:17.964
But the bottom line is, if you don't want the Republicans to take it away from us, you got to vote.

02:22:18.844 --> 02:22:22.264
There's an old adage in sports, and I've probably said it before on the show,

02:22:23.404 --> 02:22:26.764
don't make it close where the referees can take the game from you.

02:22:27.524 --> 02:22:31.224
Beat the brakes off of these folks. Let's send a message.

02:22:32.284 --> 02:22:38.044
John Ossoff should beat the brakes off whoever is the Republican nominee for Senate.

02:22:39.737 --> 02:22:44.497
Jared Brown should beat the brakes off of the senator from Ohio,

02:22:44.937 --> 02:22:47.257
right? We need Jared Brown back in the Senate.

02:22:47.657 --> 02:22:51.337
You know, we just, we need to win all of them.

02:22:51.857 --> 02:22:54.077
New Mexico, all of them.

02:22:55.217 --> 02:23:01.217
Montana, all of them. Iowa, all of them. We need to win all of them.

02:23:01.477 --> 02:23:04.777
We need to have a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate.

02:23:05.357 --> 02:23:11.657
That's our only hope to shut down what's going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

02:23:12.337 --> 02:23:16.137
And once you stabilize and shut him down for two more years,

02:23:16.497 --> 02:23:22.157
then we can keep a Democratic Congress and get a Democratic president in there.

02:23:23.477 --> 02:23:27.377
Because the Republicans are giving us no options. None.

02:23:27.577 --> 02:23:32.877
They're not showing any leadership. All they're trying to do is make an 80-year-old

02:23:32.877 --> 02:23:37.057
man happy in his last days.

02:23:37.877 --> 02:23:39.617
We don't have time for that.

02:23:40.497 --> 02:23:45.597
We need real American leaders to provide real American leadership.

02:23:46.217 --> 02:23:52.217
And like I said to Ms. Barnes, and I'm going to leave on this note, it's time to rebuild.

02:23:54.177 --> 02:24:02.817
This 250th anniversary of our independence is the milestone for the new America.

02:24:04.737 --> 02:24:10.617
Donald Trump has done his best to dismantle everything, so that gives us a chance

02:24:10.617 --> 02:24:18.177
for us to get into leadership over the next two, three years and rebuild it the way that it should,

02:24:18.657 --> 02:24:24.717
to live up to what Langston Hughes promised what America will be.

02:24:25.737 --> 02:24:29.137
All right, that's all I got. A lot longer than what I wanted to talk about,

02:24:29.257 --> 02:24:31.417
but I had to get those things off my chest.

02:24:31.857 --> 02:24:35.077
So thank y'all for listening. Until next time.