Mick Unplugged - Empowerment Through Action: Mark Morial's Strategies for Community Transformation

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Marc Morial sits at the rare intersection of politics, activism, and business – a civil rights titan whose journey from transformative New Orleans mayor to National Urban League CEO offers profound lessons in leadership and community building. The foundation of Morial's remarkable career began in childhood, watching his parents' civil rights work from the sidelines. What began as "childcare" – tagging along to NAACP meetings and voter registration drives – became the classroom where he absorbed leadership from community giants. This early immersion shaped his lifelong commitment to economic justice and equality of opportunity. As New Orleans mayor, Morial tackled seemingly insurmountable challenges with innovative approaches. Faced with record crime rates, he refused to choose between enforcement and prevention, instead rebuilding the police department while simultaneously creating unprecedented youth programming – summer camps, job programs, and initiatives specifically for girls who had been overlooked by previous administrations. His "Gumbo Coalition" administration championed inclusivity, featuring record numbers of women and the first Asian American and LGBTQ cabinet members in city history. When Morial arrived at the National Urban League, he found an organization proud of its history but "operating in the past tense." Through visionary leadership, he's expanded the organization fivefold, broadening its portfolio to include workforce development, housing assistance, entrepreneurship programs, and strengthened advocacy work – all while building powerful coalitions with other civil rights organizations. Today, Morial warns of an unprecedented assault on civil rights progress and urges listeners not to succumb to complacency or despair. "In the short run, you hear noise but don't feel the damage. In the long run, the noise will subside, but the damage will be done," he cautions. His call to action is clear: defend fundamental American principles by getting involved, using your voice, and mentoring the next generation. Ready to be part of the solution? Visit NUL.org to join advocacy efforts or find a local affiliate in your community.  Connect & Discover Marc: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcmorial/?hl=en X: https://x.com/marcmorial?lang=en LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-morial-59b05130/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcmorial/ FOLLOW MICK ON:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickunplugged/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mickunplugged/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MickUnpluggedPodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickhunt/Website:https://www.mickhuntofficial.com  Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mick-unplugged/

Be part of the work of community. Yeah, things are tough out there. Some people don't have any time. You got time to send some tweets. You got time to send some IG posts. You got some time to put some messages out there. Follow us, retweet, repost, re-IG. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership, and relentless growth.

No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another powerful episode of Make Unplugged, and today we're going to get personal and emotional.

My guest today led New Orleans through rebirth and now leads a national charge for equity, justice, and economic power. He's a civil rights titan, an author, and CEO, and his impact echoes from city halls to Capitol Hill. He's someone who's had a profound mark on my life and we're gonna talk about that a little bit today. He's commanding, he's the visionary, he is unyielding. He is Mr. Mark Morial. Mark, how you doing today sir? Hey, I'm good to be with you, Mick. Thank you very much. Thanks for the generosity of the introduction too. Man, I'm good to be with you, Mick. Thank you very much. Thanks for the generosity of the introduction too. Man, I told you offline, I am the honored one. Man, the impact that you have had, not just on me,

but I'm gonna say millions of others. It is second to none. The man that you are, the leader that you are, but most importantly, the heart that you have and the leader that you are, but most importantly, the heart that you have and the inspiration that you showcase. Brother, you mean the world to me, Mike. Oh man, thank you for saying that. And I look, I stand on the shoulders of others. I always want people to know that that animates my spirit and it is ruled by life, which is observation of others who play leadership roles in my community that I grew up with, in my family, but also on the national stage.

They've always been inspirations to me and I just appreciate the chance to continue to serve and put people first, you know, in this work, you have to be a public servant, you gotta love people, you gotta love them with all of their, you know, good, bad and ugly, because we all have good, bad and ugly. So I'm always, you know, honored and stand on the shoulders of others. You know, I was a young guy

and because of my father and mother's involvement in civil rights and politics, I got a chance to, I kind of tagged along, saw things that, you know, childcare was you come with me to the NAACP meeting, you come with me to the voter registration drive, you come with me while I run around town. You know, that was childcare. You got to go. We ain't got no babysitter, you got to come with me. And, you know, in those times, sometimes you were aggravated. Man, why am I? I want to be home with my friends. I want to be on the block. I want to be playing football. I want to be hanging out.

You know, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten years old. And you don't realize how you were absorbing through observation the work of giants, legends, legendary leaders in New Orleans, legendary community leaders and ministers and labor leaders and politicians that I just got an opportunity to observe as a very, very young person. And I know now what I didn't know then and that it was being poured into my being. That's amazing. That's amazing, Mark. And one of the things that I pride myself in

is having a because, that thing that's deeper than your why. People probably understand my kids are my why, my wife is my why, but there's a reason that they're my why, and I call that your because. So if I were to ask you, Mark, man, like, what's your because? What's your purpose? Why do you keep doing what you do? I think it's about economic justice. It's about equality of opportunity. It is about people having a life of dignity, prosperity, and

the ability to use their God-given talent. That is what motivates me. That's been my life's work. Whether government has been a vehicle to accomplish it, whether civil rights has been a vehicle to accomplish it, whether civil rights has been a vehicle to accomplish it, whether my private law practice where I represented a wide range of people and institutions is a vehicle to accomplish it. That's what really, really energizes and animates me. And I've got a special affinity for the youth, special affinity for young people

because my career politically, particularly was I was always the youngest guy in the room. You know, I had an early start. I got elected when I was young. I was the youngest. Cleo Fields and I served in the state Senate together back in the nineties, early, early mid nineties. And he and I were the youngest guys in the U S Senate. And this, you know, I mean, rather than this in Louisiana 90s, early, early mid 90s. And he and I were the youngest guys in the US Senate.

And I mean, rather than in Louisiana State Senate, I got elected mayor 35 was youngest guy in the caucus, the conference of mayors. So being a young guy in the room, sometimes with a chip on my shoulder, fighting for some respect, was something that gives me this real, real idea that you gotta nurture young people,

you gotta give them an opportunity, you gotta let them be who they are. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. One of the things that I admire about you, and this is how you touched me at a young age, I had just graduated college, you had just become the CEO of the Urban League,

the National Urban League. And I saw you at a press conference one time, man. Like I was visiting New Orleans and you were having a press conference and I didn't know what a press conference was at 22 years old, right? Like I watched and I stopped. And you stood to me at the intersection of politics,

activism, and business. And you're one of the few people that really have done that. Like a lot of people don't understand, like there are people that are career politicians. There are people that are career activists. There are people that are career activists, there are people that are career business leaders. You sit at the intersection of all three and it was at that moment that I said there's a bigger purpose for me because I saw somebody that looked like me that was standing in a room talking so eloquently but talking with purpose and talking with clarity and so much so eloquently, but talking with purpose and talking with clarity and so much inspiration that a 23-year-old me stood there and said, there's something more I can do with my life. How do you- That's touching, Mick, because sometimes you never know if people are watching. You never know if people are listening. You never know if you're having an impact. I mean, you know, I was able to, you know, I was a young entrepreneur.

First venture was 15 years old. It was a summer janitorial service at Three Friends. We got together. We cut grass. We cleaned cars. We cleaned windows. We waxed floors and houses in the neighborhood I grew up in. And then later on, another friend of mine, we actually incorporated a company and we were party and especially event planners, right? At 18, 19, 20, 21 years of age, we were event planners. You know, we would rent out clubs. We'd cut a deal with the owner. We wouldn't rent. We'd say, look, here's how this works. We'll take a slow night. What's your slow night? Wednesday's my slow night. You take the bar. We're going to put a $5 charge on the door. That's what it costs in those days. And we're going to promote this all over town. And we're going to have a thousand people. And

we're going to keep the door and you keep the bar. And that was our business model. And we would put flyers and we'd go to every other club, every other party, college campuses and pass these flyers out. And it was, it was a venture. And a third venture I had was gotten the cap and t-shirt business. venture I had was got in the cap and t-shirt business and one, two customers. I had the New Orleans World's Fair was a customer and the New Orleans Breakers US football league team and a USFL team in New Orleans. They were customer.

So I had these, uh, you know, entrepreneurial activities. And while I was doing this, I was in college or in law school. So I was doing this while I was doing something else. And truly business formation and entrepreneurship is part of civil rights because what it is, it's about building economic independence, economic independence, income, and wealth. And our ancestors, forefathers, foremothers who lived from the end of slavery until the civil rights generation were incredible entrepreneurs and pioneers. They built businesses, they built funeral homes,

they built insurance companies, they built construction businesses. You know, I remember in my, in New Orleans when I grew up, black people could not, they wouldn't sell houses to black people. So what black people would do would, and in their working class and middle class black people would buy a lot and get a black contract and build a house. They would build the type of house they couldn't buy. Right? Right. Get a lot, build a house and they were black contractors, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Gano. I mean, these guys were incredible, right? Because they were great builders

and they built with high quality and they used all black artisans and craftspersons. You know, they used black carpenters and black drywall folks and black bricklayers and black concrete people and black guy with the pile driving company. You know, we had a true We had a true black economy. It was the economy where people were building independence and lived independently. We had that.

I saw a census from New Orleans in 1940 that there were 40 black grocery stores in New Orleans in 1940, that there were like 10 black newspapers in 1940, because the white New Orleans, you couldn't shop in white New Orleans, generally. And so our folks, and not only in New Orleans, but in Memphis and Birmingham and Montgomery and Atlanta and, you know, sure in Greenville and Columbia and Charlotte and Raleigh and Durham, Durham being one of the capitals of black capitalism, I mean, built communities and built businesses and built sustainability. I mean, it was something to behold, you know, when we think about it.

And then when civil rights came, we became much more mainstream. It was about the job in government or the job in the private sector, the job of the company that we couldn't get, that our parents couldn't get. In a place like New Orleans, before 1965, 66, 67, a black person could not even be a garbage man, right? A black person could not buy, drive a bus. A black person's only job in government was as a janitor, unless you were in the all- black school where you were teachers and administrators and coaches and principals. Right.

And so it's, you know, I reflect on that because I think you can't effectively navigate the future unless you have some sensibility of the past and all of the work that helped generations of people, you know, get over it, move past it, and the struggles and the battles that they waged. Wholeheartedly. Wholeheartedly. And I'm going to talk about some of your accomplishments now, because I know you're very humble, right? But I think sometimes you need to hear about the goodness of things that you did, man.

Like when you were the mayor of New Orleans, lowest crime rate that they had ever had, right? You brought economic growth back to the city. You cleaned up the perception of what New Orleans was on a national level. You did those things. And I don't think people understand the brevity of that, because it's not like you can just go in there and snap your fingers in a hat. Man, it was hard work. Now, we created a bit of a movement, and it was a movement to rebuild New Orleans.

I felt like we had to create a movement atmosphere, a movement atmosphere to get people active and involved. The violence problem is what compelled me to run for office. We were having, you know, we had 450 murders, something of that sort. 1993, 1994, we had a corrupted, ineffective police department. And all the, I drove around, driving past some playgrounds, broken bottles, broken basketball goals. I said, this is not gonna sustain it. This is not how it should be. And it really, in almost a fit of just passion,

I said, I'm gonna do something about all of this. And so I embraced a strategy to deal with violence that was multifaceted. In those days, people would get in these long debates. Oh, you know, we need more police. No, we need more social programs. We need more this. I said, you know, we got we got more of all right.

But all we're going to we're going to fix this police department. And ultimately, we're going to need some more policemen. But we're going to have a different quality of officer. We can have a different quality of officer. We're going to have a different set of standards. We're not going to have this underperforming lackadaisical system. And then I said, we're going to invest in youth. So that first summer I took office in May, put together 40 summer camps, put together 3,000 summer jobs for

youth. And I told every agency in the government, you all are going to contribute to this summer jobs program. Nobody can have their own little program. And I'm going to have a lottery to pick the participants. I got no politics in this and I had a big lottery and I got some of the Saints football players to come out and pick the numbers out of the hat. So I wanted to change the system in terms of how you did, how you got involved. You don't have to know somebody, right? You basically, you know, this is, and I divided up the slots by councilmanic

districts. We had five, but it set the template for investing in youth. We invested in midnight basketball. We invested in starlight basketball, which was for girls. We learned when we brought all the young people together that the recreation department did not have any programs for girls, nothing really. So we hired a women's athletic director and created a whole set of programming for girls. You know, we were just, you know, I was the kind of person, kind of, you know, if we talk and say,

look, give me some ideas. And if people came up with a good idea, I'm like, let's go do it. You know, we're not gonna get caught up in the paralysis of study, we're gonna try to do it. If it doesn't work, we'll, we'll, we'll chuck it, we'll put it on the side and we'll go do something else. And so we had all of this, you know, youth program and it was contagious because as the city did it, then churches and faith based organizations decided to create their own camps, their own youth programs. So we had this whole almost revolution in youth programming in New Orleans in those days.

I also did something that, you know, it was dramatic. I put a curfew in place and I'm a civil rights, civil libertarian person. But as too many of these kids are getting killed that night, they're out. Look, we're gonna help the parents. You have to be in now. If you're going to work, you got an exception. You go to school activity. But New Orleans also has an attractive nightlife. A few French quarter, we got we got we got Frenchman Street, we got all kind of so you know, people like to be out. But we had to we had to deal with the fact that we had too many youth getting hurt. And we did the curfew in

a very different way. We did not take the young people we did we we picked up off the street to jail. We brought them to a community center. We called them to a community center. We called the curfew center and we called their parents. Come pick up your son. Come pick up your daughter. No questions asked. Come pick them up.

And it had a dramatic impact. And so, we were ideating and creating all these initiatives and these programs and then trying to do things differently, right? We were trying to do it. So we had to clean up policing. We had to put police substations in public housing. We put police officers on bikes. We put them on foot. The chief I had, Richard Pennington, was an incredible chief. He said, I'm going to find some guys who grew up in the Desire of Public Housing development and I'm going to let them patrol there. He said, you can't put guys, officers, men and women in these neighborhoods and they're all, none of them have lived in these neighborhoods.

Yes, sir. You got to pick some folks and they're going to be known and they're going to be comfortable and they're going to understand the rhythm of the place. So they don't go in there like they're a bunch of outsiders. Police officers are not the military. You know, they're there to protect and to serve. Yes, sir. Militaries that are protecting defend.

It's a protecting defense. It's a different mission. So it was a tremendously successful, also was very aggressive about black business and minority business and women-owned businesses having an opportunity, doing business with the city and doing business on major projects. And I had opposition from people in that regard. And I knew it was just people

protecting their own economic turf. You know, I had to break that up to the extent that I could. We had a very successful run. I left office with the highest approval ratings of any mayor in modern New Orleans history. I won two elections, both by significant margins. Uh, and we just worked every single day at open hope, open door policy at city hall. If, as far as community groups and, uh, you know, if somebody wants to come,

you know, talk, raise an issue, I'm, I'm trying to hear you. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with you. So I was at, and I also was, I think I picked this up from my father, being just a straight shooter with people. You come down and talk to me, you're going to get an answer, it might be a yes, it might be a no, but you're going to get an answer. Right? That's it.

Am I going to play you and delay, and oh man, I'm trying to think about it. I'm gonna say, look, I don't think I can make that work or you know what, your idea is good, but it's half form, come back with a better idea. So we, you know, we did a lot of, you know, I had an open door policy with the business community, many of whom did not support me initially. I had an open door policy and we had a tremendous relationship with the ministerial and faith leadership in the city. We convened them on a quarterly basis. We held a luncheon for them on a quarterly basis to talk about the affairs of the city. We had a great relationship with labor, labor Again, you know, we have periodic I believe in engaging with people on a periodic basis because you know I took the I got to hear what they're saying

Yeah, I need to I need to hear I need to hear and sometimes I need to hear it Uninterpreted by staff and others Yeah, you know I got to hear I got to hear and then say, say, okay, I hear you, but am I following? Help me follow. So, you know, that's the kind of, you know, administration and leadership we had. And look, I had a tremendous number of great people around me, young people, lots of young people, some gray beards to a record number of women in leadership positions. We had the first Asian Americans to serve in a cabinet. I had the first LGBTQ cabinet member in New Orleans history. I mean, I had an inclusive administration. I called it the Gumbo Coalition.

Yes, sir. Yeah. And, and so that was, you know, that was that was a run in in in in being mayor of a major American city is a tough job. It is a demanding job. It is a painful job sometimes. But I loved every minute of it. Because I felt close to the people and the people treat you like you're their, you know, their big brother, older women who treat me, I'm like their son, you know, they treat you like you're their neighbor, right? And that relationship with the people is something I really, really treasure. with the people is something I really, really treasure. Absolutely. And you did it with dignity, you did it with grace and you did it from a point of inspiration. I'm always gonna say the most inspiring person I know

is you and I mean that's why I stole. Thank you, man. But you took that purpose and I'm gonna say you completed the mission, right? But then there was a bigger mission, right? The urban league comes calling, right? But then there was a bigger mission, right? The urban league comes calling, right? So talk to us about accepting that call, accepting that purpose. You know, when I got the call to basically asking me if I would interview for the job,

I was about six to eight months out of office. I began practicing law at a great law firm. And the first thing I thought of was Whitney Young and Vernon Jordan. And I thought of they were role models of mine. I mean Whitney Young, I followed his career to the pages of Jet Magazine. Vernon Jordan, I met when I was a teenager and later on met him again because his daughter went to college with me at the University of Pennsylvania. Mick, can you hear me? Is it going okay? Yeah.

And so I thought, wow, this is a historic civil rights organization. This is a historic civil rights organization. This is a great opportunity. This is a national stage of advocacy. Uh, I didn't know at the time as I applied and got the job that the organization needed a serious uplift and a serious makeover generationally. It had become proud and agent. Uh, very proud, but we had a lot of,

the organization to some extent was operating in almost in the past tense, right? And sometimes what happens when you're operating in the past tense, you don't know it on the inside, but everybody on the outside knows it. Unless you can confront that as opposed to fighting it. I had someone who worked for the league the first month I was there said, well, you want us to brag about our accomplishments.

He said, you don't understand. That's just not our way. I said, that used to be your way. I said, I believe in advocacy. I believe in promotions. I believe in hype. I do not believe in, let's just do it and don't tell anybody about it.

And so we led a significant remake of the organization. I mean, the predecessors, the people who served before me, they were right for those times. When I took over, I was in my mid forties and they wanted a younger person and they wanted someone with political chops and some management ability.

And I mean, the rest is history, We created, so now, 20 years later, the organization's five times as large as it was back then. We're building a brand new headquarters building. We'll be moving in in September. We have seen a dramatic expansion of our programs, workforce development, housing. We've brought an entrepreneurship program into the portfolio of the league. We have expanded our advocacy on a national level. We have embraced coalition building with other civil rights and social

justice organizations. It's been dramatic. And I've said, we have to be there on major issues and we have to be present. And we have to run quality programs. Urban League is unique in that we do civil rights advocacy, but we also do direct services programming. And that direct programming is really what defines us. You want a job, go to the Urban League.

You want to get trained for a job, go to the Urban League. You try to become a homebody, go to the Urban League. You are looking for a safe, wholesome afterschool program for your job, go to the Urban League. During COVID, we were vaccinating, I think we vaccinated a quarter of a million to a half a million people through a promotional campaign we had.

We have an entrepreneurship initiative where we provide services, free technical services to entrepreneurs. We serve about 10,000 of them in any given year. This is the work that we do and we've worked to expand that work and it's the work that distinguishes us from other organizations. And so, you know, we're, you know, I like to use it to, I say we're sui generis, we're a unicorn in the space.

And some people say, well, you think you can do all of the above. Actually, all of the above is really singular in that we are fighting on behalf of people to build the policy and then we're involved in the execution of the very same policy. And that's the connective tissue between the work we do in public policy and advocacy and the work we do on a programmatic side. and advocacy in the work we do on a programmatic side. Yeah, and you're exactly right. Like I tell people all the time, I told you, I talked to Les,

we talk about you specifically twice a month, because for the 23 year old me, so going back to that moment that I was touched, I heard of the Urban League. I knew what the Urban League was, but I thought the Urban League had ceased to exist. I thought it was one of those things like SNCC and SLCC. It was there, but it's no longer here. And I remember calling my mom and saying, hey, I thought the Urban League was no more, but the Urban League is back. And my mom was like, no, they're not. Right? And I was like, no, they're back.

And so I've been able to see over the last 20 years, the resurgence, the back in the community, the advocacy for what you're just talking about, inspiring youths, connecting with business owners, connecting with city and government officials, that you are, in my words, these are the words of Mick and Mick only, that unique one of one for our community. And I genuinely mean that. Well, I feel that, you know, one of the other things I've tried to do here at the league is work closely with other civil rights leaders.

And work closely with Reverend Al, Derek Johnson, Melanie Campbell, the Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, National Council of Negro Women, Leadership Conference with Civil Rights. And then we work with the Latino, Asian, and other communities as well. So

one of the philosophies that I try to embrace is coalition building. And in a coalition building and mindset, everybody swims in their own lane but we're swimming in the same direction. It doesn't mean that we agree on tactics and strategy for everything under the sun. It means, and I just felt like there was too much petty personality rivalries among African American leaders. And I just, to me, it makes nice talk, nice gossip, but it doesn't get you anywhere. And I also think that the adversaries of our leadership, they throw wedges in between us if we allow that to happen.

And I just feel like it's counter of productive, but that you can have constructive disagreements. Absolutely. Absolutely. So for the listeners and viewers right now, with you leading the National Urban League, what's one shift that everybody needs to make that can not only support the Urban League, but support America. We are in an environment today with the new administration where there's an assault on civil rights. There's an assault on much of the progress we've made, many of these executive orders,

efforts to shut down agencies, efforts to purge. Look, the head librarian of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, distinguished African American woman who was fired for no reason. And then they say, well, she's DE&I. Well, you're not saying she's, you're saying she's black. She was fired because she was black. That sickens me. And so we're in a period now where

people have to recognize how important it is for them to be engaged, use their voice, use their vote. It is not easy to deal with what we're dealing with. But there's an assault. There's really an effort to undermine progress. And see, in the short run, you hear noise, but you don't feel the damage. In the long run, the noise will subside, but the damage will be done. It's like a cut.

It bleeds and then it gets infected. Right? And so we have to recognize that in this moment And so we have to recognize that in this moment and that to assert that is not just about, it's not about partisan politics. It's not what it's about. It's about standing up for some basic American principles. It is a basic American principle to me that everyone should have fair access to the American dream. It is a basic principle to me that everyone should have an unobstructed right to vote. It is a basic principle to me that we should have freedom of speech and freedom to learn

about our history and our culture. I think there's some basic things that are very fundamental that appear to be under attack, that are under attack. And I just feel like I don't want people, we can't be weary, tired, complacency is our enemy. Despair is not a strategy. Being pissed off and angry is not a strategy. Being pissed off and angry is not a strategy. Except to the extent that it energizes us to do something. That's where we are today and

I, you know, would encourage people to get involved. If you want to get involved in the Urban League, go to NUL.org sign up. You can be part of our advocacy efforts and that sort of thing. You can join a local affiliate in 92 communities across the nation. If the Urban League is not for you, join an organization that's committed to civil rights and social justice. Be a part. Use your social media to not only post beautiful pictures of yourself, but also to

advocate for the kind of change and community improvement. But mainly we have to be active and involved. Get involved through your church, get involved through a community group. So important. Yes, sir. I love you more than you know, man. I respect you for the path that you have given to me. And I don't want to leave without giving you the floor, man. I know you've got a lot going on, a lot that's upcoming. So talk to us a little bit about this gumbo coalition and some other things that they have coming up I'm gonna go to Amazon go to an online book sale. I've got a leadership book called the gumbo coalition go to HBO max there's a documentary on myself and Janet McGee a very very

Incredible leader. She leads the largest Latino civil rights organization in the nation, Unidos US. Go check out some of the work that we are doing. But my appeal to people is to be active and involved. Be part of the work of community. Yeah, things are tough out there. Some people, I don't have any time. You got time to send some tweets. You got time to send some Things are tough out there. I don't have any time. You got time to send some tweets. You got time to send some IG posts. You got some time to put some messages out there.

Follow us, retweet, repost, re-IG it. Use your social media voice, but get active, be involved. And then the other thing too, let's always reach back to the next generation. Reach back. And I, you know, I've got a 23 year old son and an 18 year old daughter and my 23 year old son, I've been, you know, encouraging him by example and by words, they look, you guys now are old enough to go back to your high school

and I talked to some young guys and just encourage them. Right. high school and uh and talk to National Urban League Conference in Cleveland in July. Go to NUR.org for more. If you wanna come down there and set up, let us know. I will totally do that. I will do that. I've got some- Get back in touch with us. And we'll, we usually have a podcasters row and,

you know, radio row, et cetera. We will totally make that happen. We will totally make that happen. We will totally make that happen. To all the viewers and listeners, remember, your because is your superpower. And more importantly, like my guy, Mr. Marlboro says, go make impact and go do it today. I appreciate you. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mick Unplugged. and we'll see you next time. waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at mcunplugged.com. Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.