It Could Happen Here - The Big Montgomery Alabama Boat Fight

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Robert and Prop talk about the big Montgomery dock brawl, and what the Internet has made of an averted racist beat down.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

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a podcast that is being recorded far too early in the morning. With me to help me stay conscious is my friend and coffee entrepreneur, Prop, a.k.a. Jason Petty. Prop, how are you doing, buddy? Man, I'm wonderful on this fine day. I almost did aka song forgetting which show i was i was like oh wait that's a zeitgeist bit happens to me all the time yeah so which bit for which show am i supposed to do right now here's here's here's what we were talking about before the show which is that we're both exhausted despite sleeping normally this week i feel like this may be something to do with these aliens everybody's talking about.

Something's going on here. It's, yeah, aliens or just this like kind of week-long sort of holiday festival I've been a part of that apparently all of Black America has been participating in. We're all experiencing a level of bliss I don't think we've had in a long time that is uh that is our subject of today which is uh i think the term generally being used for it is the montgomery riverboat brawl that seems to be what we've all settled on um yeah aka the fade in the water. I mean, there's new spirituals and hymns. Weed Unwritten. The Ballad of Black Aquaman. Yes.

Love that kid. But before we get into all this, we should talk about what actually happened. Because I'm going to guess there's at least a chunk of people listening who are like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? Yes. The short of it is a couple of days ago, video dropped two different clips, I think are mainly what's what people are watching of a fight at a riverboat dock in Montgomery, Alabama. And basically what happens is you had this this riverboat and it's, you know, Montgomery, Alabama's got a lot of tourism. It's one of these big boats. It holds about 270 people, I think.

Takes them up and down the river. You know, you go up and down the river. You look at the pretty things. I assume there's beer or something. You know, all sorts of cities do this. So this boat is heading back into dock. And they've got all these people who want to get off the boat because they've been on for a while. And a line of people to get back in.

And a line of people to get back in a line of people to get back to get on the next one yeah yeah um and you know they have a a set spot that is their spot no one else's to park their boat at the dock uh as is usual for a large business like this and some dudes with a pontoon boat uh have taken it up they've parked there so the captain gets on the pa uh for quite a while and is like, hey guys, move your pontoon. Hey guys,

you got to get that pontoon out of here. Hey y'all, if you don't get that pontoon out of here, I'm going to call the cops. And if you have open containers, the cops are going to fuck you. You don't want that. So why don't you just move?

And these guys get like shitty at him and start like yelling at him and cursing at him, flipping him the bird. So he sends over his co-captain and the captain of the boat from the videos I've seen appears to be a white dude. The co-captain is a middle-aged black man.

He gets off the boat and he goes over to just like move the pontoon boat, right? Which is the thing that boat people do when situations like this occur. This is not like an unheard of situation. And while he's doing it, a whole bunch of the presumably the dudes who own this pontoon boat who are all white surround him and start attacking him. And at one point, it looks like five or six people trying to.

And he's, for the record, he's holding his own. For a while, he's holding his own. As long as you can, yeah. And then a number of nearby people start running to his aid, including at least one of the kids on the riverboat, hops out or like hops into the water and like swims across. Yeah, you want to talk about the rest of this? Yeah.

Yeah. There's a Hood Politics episode we recorded where I try to do like initial reactions and try to add some like color to this, which will come out a little later. This will come out before that. But there's, yeah, so you're watching the video. You can't, it's all inaudible. So you can't really hear, except for the people recording you hear them talking yeah i'm talking right but judging from there's so many context clues to understand what's happening right so as the co-captain the black dude's getting off the boat to come talk to these

white boys right the way that you could just you know when someone's like and unfortunately for white people y'all can't when you're drunk just your skin shows it you know i'm saying like oh yeah you could just see okay this dude's like your skin's very flush with color right now so you're you're clearly drunk you know i'm saying and it's hot as hell because it's montgomery alab right? It's also Montgomery, Alabama. So just from seeing the interaction and the body language of both people in this conversation, you're like, okay, this conversation is getting intense. And then once the white gentleman decides he's going to put hands on this black dude,

the black dude throws his hat up into the air he sure does he sure does as a unit now robert is that not a universal bat signal i would go so far as to say it's like that's damn near like a mortal combat opener right like they have it is universal it is universal this man is about to throw hands yes it's like all right uh we about to throw hands right so it's so good it's so good so at that point that's when like a clearly like clearly either these white boys are are very inebriated or have grossly underestimated the feeling of collective identity black people have because when they decided to jump this man you're in front of hundreds of black people oh yeah who are all waiting in line to get on this boat right who are already pissed at you because you're not moving yeah right so so when he

does that as you can see there are people running you know black men running as fast as they can to kind of help you know this uh this this co-captain who by this point is being stomped because he's, he's overpowered by five people. And then you see this young man swimming to the shore, which is like, he's a, I mean, that guy's a national treasure now. I don't know that guy, but I can tell, we can tell a couple of things about him. One of them is that he

reacts quickly in a crisis. Yes. Yeah, and the other is that pretty good swimmer. Pretty good swimmer. And he's in a lot better shape than most of us. He must be a teenager because how are you going to have the energy to swim there and then still start doing work? Well, and then pull yourself

up onto a dock when your clothing's all soaked. Very impressive feat. Yeah. So anyway, so as that happens, people finally catch up. The boat finally gets a chance to dock. Now these other people who were on the boat and watched all this happen are like,

now it's our turn. So they get off the boat, go to the pontoon, shirts off. Again, another universal signal. If I've taken my t-shirt off, we're going to throw down. So they start throwing down. I mean, it's women getting involved. And then now it becomes this entire brawl, right? And if you've ever been in situations where brawls break out, they kind of move and shift as different people decide they want a part of it and other people get tired and somebody's finally, you know, is nosebleeding, whatever.

And while this is happening, there's a few clips where you can see whether they're security officers or police, they're kind of just watching. Yeah. Kind of like, I don't know if we need to do anything about this just yet. Now, finally, the brawl gets around the corner and a brave old man, old head, who sees his opportunity while, who has brought the internet. And he's got the soul of a sniper. This man is like watching and waiting to act. Yes. Yes. So at this point, there are some security officers involved who have finally been like, all right, man, maybe we should stop this.

And it's almost like, again, you can't hear it. But judging by their body language, the cops are kind of like, I don't know, man. Them white boys kind of asked for it. Like, and you know what I'm saying? So they're just kind of watching like, hey, man, you asked for it, man, and this is what happened. You should have moved your boat. Shouldn't have been talking shit. Should have moved your boat.

Like Cat Williams says, shouldn't have been talking shit. Yeah. talking shit yeah so um so anyway they do this and this this hero of a man grabs a white folding chair and just whacks a dude over the head with it who was attempting to attack some other people now clearly again if you've been in a brawl i I may be adding color. That's not on the video. But like if you've been in a brawl, you understand at some point you kind of black out and you just you just get punch drunk. So while he's hitting a guy with a folding chair, there's this other white lady who's attempting to intervene with the interaction that one of the security or cop guys is having with turns turns out, with probably one of her compadres. And this is, by the way, a mixed gender brawl. There's like, yeah, this is not just dudes throwing hands previously to this point.

Yeah, it's girls on girls. It's girls on dudes. It's dudes on girls. It's a brawl, you know? It's girls on dudes. It's dudes on girls. It's a brawl, you know. So the officer, like officers do when you try to intervene with them, having interactions with somebody, pushes the lady away. Now, the lady's in riverboat Crocs. Right. So her feet just fall right through the Crocs. Right. She gets pushed down and just happens to be in the eyesight of this of-year-old man with a folded chair.

And while she's down, he just turns and just whacks her over the head with this chair. Oh, he sure does. He sure does. He gives her the WWE special. I mean, just New World Order. Suck it. Just smacks her with a folding chair and at that point you it's almost like and again it's all inaudible but you just see the officers go like shit man yeah now we gotta do something now we got like fuck man now we gotta arrest you dude right so yeah so the cops finally go like what the fuck man they take the chair from

the guy and the dude his body language is so like like he doesn't even know what's happening like i'm just swinging you know so when the officer finally takes the chair and they like they're like dude you hit the lady you hit the lady you hit the lady we gotta we we yeah we gotta do something here we gotta arrest you now. Yeah. Right. And which, of course, the Internet watching it and even the person holding even the person shooting the video. We all like, oh, yeah. No, no. Yeah.

He's definitely going to jail. That guy going to jail. Everybody else. Y'all might be fine. He's going to jail. Yeah. And that's pretty much where the where the video stops. Yeah.

So it has it has obviously gone everywhere since then. There's a lot of writing about like, yeah, why this has like taken off so much and been seen as so inspirational to people. I think it's because it seems we've all seen like too many videos that are just kind of the first part of this. We're like, yeah, there's like a bunch of racist white. And by the way, there's at least you can't hear it on the video. But people have said that like these folks, when that co-captain came down, were like shouting the N-word at him and stuff. Yeah. So we've all seen the variants of this that are just like, yeah, some some black man or black woman getting abused by a bunch of racists. And this one starts looking like that and then turns into like like a beautiful comeuppance.

Like these people picked a fight against a man they thought was like alone and kind of heavyset and older and that they could like wail on and just wound up getting absolutely housed. Just housed. Based on at least what I'm looking at here, it looks like three of the white folks involved in this have been charged with crimes. The police are talking to the chair guy. It's unclear yet like what exactly charges he's going to catch. it's unclear yet what exactly charges he's gonna catch

he was on a radio show a morning show in Alabama with just sort of a internet personality that in the black community we're all very familiar of and so they asked her

or they asked him the lady asked him okay you had the chair and the lady was already down. Like what? What? What happened? He said it feels like it's like we wrote this script where he goes, man, I blacked out. He said, I just thought about Rosa Parks and that lady that wouldn't give the seat to her. I was like, I'll give her a chair. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs,

and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all.

It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonorum, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of

tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

You know, fights are ugly things, but also in some ways, beautiful things. Fights are ugly things, but also in some ways beautiful things. There's a lot going on in this video. I'm not surprised that it's been taken by so many people. There's some lessons I think bystanders can take from this. From one thing, if like 50 people are having a giant brawl, might want to get out of there. Just leave.

Yeah, just bounce. You should know to leave. Yeah. Not a good thing to get out of there. Just leave. Yeah, just bounce. You should know to leave. Yeah. Yeah. Not a good thing to get in the middle of. But second, if you're parked in someone else's boat spot, maybe instead of shouting racial slurs, get your fucking boat moved. It's not.

It was like, yeah. I think what it's it speaks to so much because this was such an avoidable situation. Yes. This is completely avoidable, bro. Just slide over a little bit i feel like if you've like if you've driven a car on a highway then you've seen a semi truck and when the semi truck come just get out as well like why why is you picking this fight man just he can't it's a big old 18-wheeler. Just, it's just courtesy. That's a bigger, so I'm just saying, like, that's a bigger boat than you. You're more nimble. You can move.

And clearly, it's a line of people waiting to get on. I just don't understand. Yeah. No, no, that's one of the things I think that's involved here that's interesting to me. Is that there's this, this is not just i mean like obviously the fact that these guys were uh bigots is is a factor here but there's also just this increasingly common uh freedom that the most selfish people in our society feel to be like aggressive about the fact that they don't owe anyone else like basic yeah like politeness right right? Like the, the very basic though,

270 people are being inconvenienced because I parked my shit in the wrong space. I should bounce, you know, I should probably at least say, Oh, sorry, I fucked up.

But instead like, no, we're going to make this a thing because like we get to park wherever the fuck we want and fuck you. Like that, that kind of attitude is, is like, it's so frustrating.

Like I can't even get myself under the head of someone who would do what these guys did and not like feel like they were an asshole. Like I had to do the thing every now and then. I think most of us do where like, I parked my car in like a, like a red zone or something because it's like i gotta be it's like there's no spaces i'm 30 seconds right yeah you get out and someone's seen you like in the fucking red and they're like and yes you know like i know

everyone does it at one point man i'm sorry like yeah dude i'm so sorry bro i'm so sorry look i'm gone i'm gone my bad yeah totally and to have the the fucking chutzpah to just like look at a boat of 270 people be like fuck all of you like i want to keep my stupid ass part doing here for some reason yeah and then the willingness to be like what the fuck you're gonna do about it well we'll jump you or just that overall chutzpah, like you said, of just like, whatever, I'll take all of you. Like, really? Really? Like, yeah, I think that there's a lot to color here, too, with the fact that, first of all, this is where it's taking place. I mean, we're still in Montgomery, Alabama here.

And on a dock that was obviously and verifiably a dock where slaves were dropped off at. You know what I'm saying? So you have that history, right? You have the history of the Montgomery bus boycotts. You know what I'm saying? So you have that history, right? You have the history of the Montgomery bus boycotts. You know what I'm saying? Like this is the city where Rosa Parks did the thing. You know what I'm saying? Like this is where it happened.

So there's so much history in the city. And on top of that, like, I mean, there's high schools in Alabama named Robert E. Lee, like Robert E. Lee High School. Like we're talking about a place that, I mean, it was in the news in the arts that like. I mean, there was a high school that just desegregated like in the year 20 something. Like they got there. Yeah. Yeah. They just desegregated a high school. Right. It made the news in 2010 because they finally had a a desegregated prom

but that was just the prom and it's just that the prom white school invited the black they not they can't go to school together they could just do a dance with this this is what this is the state that this happened in so you're you're like you're in this like and i hate to like otherize them but i'm gonna otherize them in the sense that this is some like multiverse bizarro world where you what desegregation is recent you know i'm saying so when you have that type of thing you first of all you have to have you have to remember like both of those things are sitting in sort of the collective consciousness of that community whether especially for the black people who are like this this the world

we live in but we've also proven that if you push us far enough you know i'm saying like we're not gonna stand for it you know we'll pick up a folding chair we'll pick up a folding chair which has become something of a symbol uh in the last new open carry yeah i saw at least one tiktok video that was just uh it was like um there's like a couple of people watching as this uh young black guy in a walmart like was holding up and like testing it like the way that you would like a gun at the gun store. He's like,

yeah, man, the memes have been glorious. I've seen folding chair earrings. I've seen doc, but the one is this, is that I, I said,

uh, I said, Robert, a video of, of, of the folding chair getting interviewed. Yeah. Oh, he's one of the, first of all, that's one of the funniest accounts you could ever follow.

But he was just like, man, you know, I was just sitting there, and then we started doing charity work. And which account is that? Oh, yeah, Ace Vance. A-C-E-V-A-N-C-E. He does just the most incredible voiceovers. Yeah. But the chair was just like like we was handing out charities

i was doing charity work oh it's glorious freely giving ass whoopings like have a seat you might step up have a seat anyway it's so good um but i i i think that that like is important i think another thing that i think is interesting specifically for the It Can Happen Here audience, which one thing I love about this show is y'all give so much historical context to whatever we're looking at, you know what I'm saying, as almost like proof of concept that not only can it happen here, it is happening here. You know what I'm saying? like proof of concept that not only can it happen here it is happening here you know i'm saying um and i think for this one there was this interesting um moment this is another good follow for you guys got him uh consciously uh so his name is the consciously he was a like like world-renowned

like debater um a master debater i kidding. Uh, but he was a world renowned, um, debater. He was one of the first, like, like him and his partner was like the first black, like co-champions in like professional or a college level debate anyway. Um, so he's a brilliant, brilliant thinker. He's like, you know, of the year styles whatever right anyway um content creator anyway he brought up this this point among sort of the uh the the black community that what came out of this too was this hashtag of like really how our ancestors handled slavery. Yeah, like of the amount of resistance. The amount of resistance we actually had, you know what I'm saying?

And even just like I would even encourage just like a simple google search of the amount of rebellions you know you just whether you're talking about the famous ones like the haitian rebellion uh which we did a bastard's pot about you know i'm saying we're like these fools these fools threw off their their oppressors you have you got nat turner nat turner you know i'm saying um which i talk about more on on on hood politics but like i my seventh grade like historical figure report was on nat turner and i bet and i was bused to like a suburban like middle school for a little bit so i'm walking into the suburban middle school with with my nat turner paper i'm a poor english teacher she had to be thinking i don't know what she was thinking but anyway um yeah you know i'm saying you have like there was ones there was there were one in

new york there was the one in 313 colonies like we have such a history of like rebellion and resistance like don't think not to mention slave ships that were overtaken you know i'm saying by their captors like you know i'm saying so these things have, there is a rich history of us, of us rebelling. So, like, it's almost a point, a point of lesson, a point of learning for the Black community too. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, like, a really useful, teachable moment while everyone's kind of amped up about this thing to talk about. I've heard it described as like left-handed power, kind of in some books that would talk about not just, you know, we've been chatting about which are these kind of big moments of insurrection

among enslaved people, but like the everyday acts of resistance by people who are enslaved, like while they are, you know, on the plantation plantation stuff, different ways of like pulling autonomy of like, you know, teaching their kids how to read or, you know, taking, you know, getting things like money or extra resources, you know, out of the out of the people who are attempting to. Yeah. To own them like methods of escape and resistance, you know, all these methods of like preserving traditional art and religion while, you know, in chains, like all that kind of stuff is also. Yeah, I hope it I hope it like spurs some of that, you this, that are currently being recorded, plus a lot of the community that both of us represent, like, yeah, we're not pacifists. No, no. At all. You know what I'm saying?

Hmm. Like at all, you know what I'm saying? And I find that discourse to be interesting, too. And especially around, you know, if you're you're in. And I'm like, you know. Neither is the broader racist community like you're not pacifist either. Like you asked for the smoke you got the smoke yeah like what is more american than this hey guys i'm kate max you might know me from my popular online series the running interview show where i run with celebrities athletes athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.

After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.

Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes

with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google

search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge

and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRad on the i hot radio app apple podcasts wherever else you get your podcasts check out better offline.com it's i think a more optimistic chapter, especially like as we we head into 2024, as we deal with like kind of these continuing efforts to disenfranchise, particularly black voters across large chunks of the South. I'm glad that we've got this what will hopefully continue to be a powerful image for people to to kind of rally behind this is a this

is a nice thing to have it's uh yeah i don't know and it's interesting like people things are said in a video like this that is just kind of like chaotic brawling um but it speaks to people in a way that you know a history textbook uh maybe isn't going to reach them because there's just something so kinetic and powerful about watching a large group of people realize that an injustice is going down and then be like, well, I guess we've got to throw hands to stop this shit. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a microcosm of like a century and a half or so or a couple of centuries of history whether it yeah whether it's a absolutely the couple centuries of history and then you're like at at least 10 years of witnessing you know black bodies being brutalized when no one when no one was there to help. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Just seeing a video and like,

Oh, just watching a video. Terrible thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then seeing no recourse, like,

okay, well there's, well, there's never, I mean, are we going to wait for the justice system? You know, the best thing we've gotten so far is like,

no, no knock warrants. I mean, I mean, thanks. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know,

at a state, you know, like, like you know at a state you know like so so and and a lot of promises of police reform you know i'm saying so you just you don't i i mean like during trump's presidency there was i mean there was an uptick in lynching like you know i'm saying like these fools are getting old school, you know? So it is without hearing any video, without knowing anything that those men were actually saying, whether they were just run of the mill pricks or just racist pricks, whatever it was, it is a, again, if you're a black person in Alabama,

If you're a black person in Alabama, it is completely reasonable to believe that if we wasn't there to help, that man would have been on the bottom of that river. Yeah. That man would have been strung up in a tree in the woods and we'd have never seen him again. Yeah. I mean, just the sheer like rapidity with which he was surrounded and put on the ground by a large number of men did not suggest that they were – that the additional dudes who had arrived to wail on him were in a mood to like de-escalate the situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, I mean, I feel like that's like a reality that, you know, you. This. It's almost like for the rest of the country, it's like this.

If you wonder like this is the reality we need you to understand when we say I could die. You know, I'm saying like when you talk about all racism and I think it's just some people are stupid. There's fucking bigots everywhere. Like, no, when we say it's life or death, like, that's what you're witnessing. Like, he could have died that moment. You know what I'm saying? And I think at a, whether it's front of mind or back of mind, that is something that as a person of color, like, you just kind of know that, like, this this this would this if it would have just been a fight you know i'm saying then i think if it was just just been a brawl like most people would have just stayed out of it like if them two just if they just were two guys swinging on each other

that's usually the smart play if it's just two guys swinging on each other they just yeah you take your phone out and you watch you're just like all right man hey get your licks in you know you cheer for your boy but like i'm gonna jump but when somebody jumps in it's like okay i'm gonna help the homie but you jump in helping the homie in montgomery alabama then it's like all right yeah you just he might die so we gonna it's different yeah yeah uh anything else to get to on this? Man, I think I might be, I think one more thing I think to add is because there's so much built up tension, you have to talk about the Florida of it all. You know what I'm saying? being aware of the idea that like, you're right in front of our face. Like you're trying to erase history. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, and I just five minutes ago,

watched that PragerU video for kids about, um, about Christopher Columbus and slavery. And it was just like, well, you know, and this is approved content for children. Like, well, you know, at least we didn't kill him. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And like, well, you know, in Europe, we draw the line at like cannibalism.

And these people that we're enslaving, like they practice it, you know? So're enslaving like they practice it you know so i guess it's kind of you know yeah maybe slavery's not bad and slavery i mean it's all over the world they've always had yeah yeah yeah you know i'm saying so like they learned useful skills yeah well i mean you know okay so there was no skills in africa like so you're trying to tell me this this civilization civilization that is the bedrock of civilization where all the humanity come from. You know what I'm saying? We ain't know how to do nothing.

Right? Yeah. I don't know. Like, if you're, yeah, it's so frustrating because it's, I think they're trying to, like, draw a line between, I don't know, the way slavery was often practiced in, practiced in the Mediterranean, where there was a lot of manumission. People were often freed, and when they were freed, there was not ongoing stigma against having been a former slave. With a racial slavery system in the Americas that was completely different, where manumission very rarely happened. And when it did, you were still subject to heinous restrictions on your personal liberty. Like it's just not a comparison.

Yeah, trying to use the lack of awareness of just even the term slavery and what you mean by that. You know what I'm saying? Using it to your advantage. It's like, well, anyone who's read a book or two can be like, ah, what you did was different. You know what I'm saying? And you know it. You a book or two can be like uh what you did was different you know i'm saying and you and you and you know it you know it's different you know i'm saying um yeah like

serfdom you know involuntary servitude debt slavery any whenever if there was ever two tribes and a tribe got raided by another one there was slavery like i know like that it exists since the dawn of time not what you talking about though you know i'm saying and you and you know it you know so you're playing on that so i just think like collectively us just like keep hearing this shit and keep having to like you know keep your cool and try to fight it in the ballots and just and just the the just the mind fuck of like these folks y'all really you're gonna you're gonna vote for a dude that's out on bail that's a felon like this this nigga's facing 70 years and y'all really finna y'all really finna really trying to put this man in office again like just it's such a mind

fuck that you're like man i just need to hit i just need to hit a white lady with a chair like i don't i just i'm just gonna hit a white lady with a chair. Like, I don't, I just, I'm just going to hit a white lady with a chair. Yeah. And, yeah. And we, you know, something I've brought up many times on Hood Politics is understanding sort of, like, the collective sort of black American psyche is we just process trauma through humor. Like we when we make a joke out of everything and it's really so we're just not like pushing random white people into moving traffic, you know, just because if not, you'd be like, what's his name? James Baldwin says that he was like to be black in America is to I'm butchering the quote, but to be constantly under the surface at a rage level that you're constantly trying to push down. You know what I'm saying? So I feel like the humor, why we got so many jokes about like, nah, chair homie going to jail. Like, here go your bail money.

But that shit was amazing because like, you just, good job. You know what I'm saying? And Aquaman coming out the water. Like, why we make jokes about it is like, well, yeah, I mean, this is it's funny. And if not, we'd be enraged all the time. Mm hmm. Well, prop. Hey, man.

Yeah, I do feel like this is a good lead in for the fact that we are we are actively, well, preparing to do our Robert E. Lee episodes, which have taken a lot of reading. But I think you're going to enjoy. I can't wait. Because, again, I just like I'm already locking and loading the jokes. Like, I can't wait. Yeah. He's such a baby. I think.

Like, that was the thing that surprised me. Like I expected like, okay, well this guy's, you know, a bad person for obvious reasons being the military leader of the Confederacy. But like the degree to which this dude is a fucking baby is a, right. Yeah.

We're, we're, we're going to have a good time with this one. I also, I, I, I also, as a thought experiment,

my question would be, okay, Robert Evans, if you were in Montgomery at that moment, I just, how would you handle that? I mean, if I see a bunch of people wailing on a single dude,

even outside of a situation where it's clearly racist, I'm going to try to stop that. Cause I don't want to watch someone get beaten to death in the street. Yeah. Like, unless they have it coming. I don't know if it's get beaten to death in the street yeah like unless they have it coming I don't know if it's like a guy with a swastika armband and people are kicking him on the ground I might not intervene I don't know in that I might in that case I might just

to try to stop people from catching a fucking murder charge but like um yeah I feel like now at the point at which there's like 60 people fighting on the dock I don't know that I'm I'm running into that I like for one thing it seems like 60 people fighting on the dock, I don't know that I'm running into that. Like, for one thing, it seems like enough people are there. But yeah, you see a bunch of people like kicking the shit out of a man trying to do his job. You should try to intervene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like those fucking security should have gotten in there faster.

But like, yes, I would hope that I would run in at that point and attempt to stop the, this, what was happening. Yeah, absolutely. That's good. And I would, I don't think I would have had the presence of mind to pick up that chair though. The chair is,

yeah, no, I just, I would hope that like, it would be, I just wonder like, cause again, once you black out and get punch drunk,

it's like, I would hope that like they, that the black people around would have the wherewithal to be like no no no he's with us yeah yeah well we'll see yeah that dude's with us no no no he's with us he's good he's good he's good i think that's that's part of why you don't roll in when there's like 60 people fighting but also at that point yeah yeah yeah it's it's hard to tell how do you how do you help and if you've got like five people beating a man on the ground, it's easy to know how to help. You try to get that guy up and away from them.

You try to get them off of him. If you've got what are effectively like two or three dozen fights going on on a dock, it's like, well, do you just like start throwing hands? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just punch someone. Who do you hit? Yeah. Everybody punch somebody. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just punch someone. Who do you hit? Yeah. Everybody punch somebody. Yeah. Just like, you know, you just grab, like, find children and just kind of like, let me just move y'all out the way. Y'all back up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You should, I think, when you're, anytime you're encountering a situation like this, like your first, like, what can I do that will help? You know, again, it's easy if there's a guy getting beaten or if there's someone seriously injured that needs medical care if it's at a point where it's like well this is just fucking chaos then maybe you just watch yeah yeah yeah get it get it get a higher vantage point just make sure you can watch the watch where it's going you don't want to get sucked in you know because you might get trampled you know i'm saying yeah. Keep your fucking don't don't fall into your phone because shit like that spreads. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. So true. Yeah. Lots of usable piece of information. Yeah. For this. Otherwise, just jokes full podcast. Yep.

Yeah. Well, we all had a good time today. Prop. Where can the people find you if they if they would like to do that? Man, please. I am on the same network you are. I'm on the Hood Politics pod. My socials are all Prop Hip Hop. Like you said, I am a coffee

business owner. It's Terraform Cold Brew. You can use promo code Hood and get 15% off your cold brew needs. Please help me sell this. Please help me sell. Please buy this coffee. Good Lord. I suck a lot of money into this shit.

Please buy the coffee. But yeah, man, Prop Hip Hop and yeah. And yeah. And Hood Politics Pod. I'm on the network, man. And please check out the show. Yeah. Check out Hood Politics.

Check out Props Delightful Coffee. And yeah, you can find us right here tomorrow, unless it's a weekend, in which case you can find us here when the weekend ends, the next weekday. We're here every weekday. We never stop. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash

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