The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Erica Ford Talks LIFE Camp, Support From The White House, Cannabis Injunction + More

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

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Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy, Charlamagne Tha Guy. We are The Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building and a friend to the room. We have Miss Erica Ford. Welcome. Peace, peace, peace. How you feeling? I'm feeling, I'm feeling. That paper planes hat is very fresh. Yes. And hopefully you got to get yours. Absolutely. Let's get them their hats. Let's give them the two hats right here. She said she sent it up here, but we just haven't received it yet. Or we didn't check the mail.

These are the custom life camp hats. Paper planes, life camp. Greatness is a process. Coming together with pieces of lifestyle, you know, so that we can help elevate and change lives. I love that. Now, if you don't know, Erica Ford is doing something very special this weekend at MetLife, not MetLife Stadium, at Shea Stadium.

City Field. City Field, as they call it. It was Shea Stadium. It was Shea Stadium. It was Shea Stadium at City Field. I seen you practicing because you're throwing out the first pitch. You ain't look too good, but I know y'all seen you practicing. You just got to do better than Stephen A. Smith.

You got to do better than Stephen A. Smith at 50. Yes, I will. Those two. Those are Queens guys. You got to do better than them. I will. I will represent. I at 50. Yes, I will. Those two. Those are Queens guys. You got to do better than them. I will. I will represent. I will represent.

I've been practicing. I'm going to get it to the plate. And Emery from Paper Planes is a catcher. And so I'm the pitcher. He's the catcher. And we're bringing together this movement so that we can help change more young people's lives. Dope. So what is Party We Can't Play?

It's coming out tomorrow to the Mets game and not only enjoying the fun and helping to build this move, because a lot of times people look at joining movements and peace as corny, and I don't want to do that. That's not for me. That's for them people over there, the preachy people, right? So we want to show them you can have fun. You can be fly.

You can be part of doing something positive and having fun and all of that at the same time. so we're telling people to come out we're having dj booth breezy um lynn and a lot of other folks are coming out and participate in the tailgate party in the parking lot of city field and then i'm throwing out the first pitch at six o'clock and and then we'll be there for the game but it's launching the whole movement you know bringing together those two slogans visions missions of greatness as a process and peace as a lifestyle how'd you connect with rock nation and emory so we've been working with shaka we worked with shaka for many years um then connected from shaka this young man named teddy

and the fam fam group that they have they do our college tours so they do scholarships for our kids and we've been working together Teddy came and threw the hat on my table like you like this and I was like get the out of here you know and the rest is history it just brought it together

and it's doing the work you know when you're consistently out there doing the work then I remember I said to shock a lot years ago right when i was just arrogant right like why can't jay-z support me why can't jay-z support me right and she was like do your work right and when you do your work then things align with you but don't beg for somebody to support you and i just kept doing my work shock will always give it to you, Shaka. I love Shaka so much, man. I do too. Now you've been doing this for such a long time, right?

Somebody posted a picture of me and you, I mean, back in Queens. It was a long time ago. I mean, you were doing the work for the long time and you decided to slow down a little bit. What does slow down mean for you? Because there's no slow down for you. So what does that mean for Erica Ford? So I want to go back to why I had to slow down for you so what does that mean for erica ford so i want to go back to why

i had to slow down right um in a lot of times when we run to the fire run to the trauma um it depletes us right and so i got sick like i would be in at night choking trying to breathe and my whole nervous system was depleted and so so I had to like physically stop. And so I physically stopped doing nothing for three months. Right. And so now I'm coming back just as the CEO. I will not be running the day-to-day operation of Life Camp. I won't be out there running and, you know,

fighting with the police and interrupting shit and taking guns out of people's hands. None of that stuff no more. But at an elevated place of showing up at events and organizing, raising money for life camp and doing teaching, teaching, teaching, because I've learned a lot in these 30 years. And I want to teach and give back to young people who are stepping into this field. You know what's scary about that, though? They always say older people for counsel, young people for war. But the problem is a lot of people in this generation, they're not ready for war. You still built for it. Like you've done fought wars, you've been in wars, you're still

ready to fight now. Who are you going to pass the torch to? It's just so funny that this young lady who came with me, Tiffany Lamella is actually the interim executive director and who I'll be passing the torch to if she passes that process. But we have a group of good young people who are ready. And we have a training academy that we launched with the University of Chicago two weeks ago where we are actually training folks from around the United States to do this work. So as you know, the last time I was here, we talked about Biden bringing down money. And so some of this money that has been brought down is to do the training to prepare people to do this work effectively and efficiently. And so that's what we've been doing. I'm part of a national group called the Black and Brown Peace

Coalition. And from that work, we've opened up this training academy. And the first cohort has been launched. And it's a six-month program. And so hopefully from, not hopefully, from this training, they will learn how to effectively lead and do this work on the front line. You were just at the White House, right? Were you there when Quavo was there too? Or was that something else? I wasn't there for when Quavo was there,

but I was there when we opened up the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. So last Friday, the White House launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. So last Friday, the White House launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention first ever. And this will allow real support to come to the ground continually for the work that we're doing. My good son, I call him my political son, Greg Jackson, got one of the jobs as a deputy director. And another young man, Robert, got the other job. And so they're the deputy directors. And a lady named Stephanie is the director under the leadership of Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris.

So has the White House been keeping promises? Because I know they pledged some money. They did. They did. They have been keeping their promises. The Republicans have been blocking as much as they can, but that's why President Biden has doing executive orders now to just override a lot of that stuff. And so they have been, as much as they can, putting down funding, changing where money used to go to

other places so that it can hit the ground of CVI workers across the nation. And so they have been in that lane, put the most money in this work. I was going to ask with New York, right? You know, Charlemagne and myself talk about New York and how much has changed, right? How much we see and hear more and more violence, whether it's, you know, in a subway or it's shooting or it's mental illness. Since the new mayor has come in, has it been more, has it been worse? Has he been more helpful? What have we seen? Because on the outside, it doesn't look any better at all. And even reading the paper every day and just hearing the stories, it just seems like it's getting worse.

So it is in the area. So it's a multi-pronged question right in particular areas is getting better right the areas in which we're are you know our collective New York City crisis management system is doing the work it's getting better as it relates to gun violence gun violence is down but now as we see around the the city there's different kind of crimes, right? There's people going in looting stores and, you know, robbing people and stuff like that. And so as we continue to grow the work that we're doing, and we have a problem in New York City.

There's been an influx of folks coming into New York and they're not being able to be placed in proper homes and have the ability to live. And so what are they going to do, right? They're going to come into the community and try to live the best way they know how. And so we can't have that, you know? And so I know with our team, we work to make sure that peace is a lifestyle in a real sense. And so we have peacekeepers. We have our interrupters. We have our special ops team. We have brothers and sisters that we put throughout our target area and make sure that those things don't happen.

And so hopefully it'll continue to grow and hire new people to do this type of work throughout the city. I feel like the solutions have always been there, right? Way before the migrants came, but you're not even taking care of the people who are here and implementing those solutions with them. So of course you're not going to be able to take care of the migrants either. That's what he said. Now, what's the cannabis injunction that's going on? So rich white folks who have these big MSOs, multi-state operations, basically put a lawsuit in using the veterans.

They did many different lawsuits. This last one, they used the veterans. And they blocked the cardholders, which is the brothers and sisters who got falsely arrested for selling cannabis back in the day. And so they were allocated license or organizations like ours who work with those individuals. And everybody was given license and they put an injunction in and it caused to stop the freeze of our ability to do anything. And so we couldn't open up. We couldn't move forward in our process to, you know, get the full license because it's actually in order to get the full license, there's things you've got to do. So we weren't able to finish the process.

October 4th, it's all for naught. But what they wanted to do when they were successful at doing was slowing the process down so that there's a few amount of people who can come into the game before they come into the game and so now on october 4th is open to everybody anybody could apply right and so it's really unfair because you already had a head start that's like we in a marathon you 20 miles ahead you're gonna come back to trip the person behind you because they catching up like look like are you that greedy you know yes yes you know

they so so that's what's happening in the cannabis and so when we see them open like we we should not support these stores you know we should not support these big MSOs that come into our community and try to act like they down with us and have you come into their store to buy their product. But they're in the back room stopping people who really need equity in their community from getting access to equity. I always had a problem with that because, you know, a lot of times what they would do is, like you said, they will find somebody that's wrongfully arrested, right? Use them to get the license because most of the people that are wrongly accused or arrested, nine times out of 10, don't have the bank to actually support a dispensary, right? Because it takes a lot of money, architectural and everything.

So what they usually do is they usually back them. And then after two years, you can get rid of them. Right. And that's what's happening in a lot of these different states. And they have to find a way to fix that and they also have to find a way to make it not that expensive because it sounds right yeah we're going to give you the the first and this that the other but who has that amount of bank to actually be able to do the architecture to do the research to get the actual licenses and all that it's almost it's almost impossible. So they gave the individuals $2.5 million or an allocation

of $2.5 million and a space. But like you said, they're the landlord, right? And so at any point in time, they can't take the space. They just change your name, put somebody else in, right? If you can't pay up, right? And I think it's after three years or something like that, or they can say, okay, you can do it, but now you can't afford the growing equipment. You default. You default. You know, and so there needs to be real equity. I agree.

Definitely in this. And cannabis, as we see, because when you talk about, there's a bunch of illegal cannabis stores all over New York City. All over. Trump's busted out. All over. And they're not closing those. They're not putting up injunctions to stop those.

They're not going out. But the brothers and sisters who, you know, went through the process the legal way and, you know, spent time in jail, lost money, lost family, interrupted their whole process. You're going to come at them like It's just the typical American way. Absolutely. And we've got to continue to change it. We've got to talk about the Spirit Award now. You're doing the Spirit Awards before the game, right? That's right.

What are the Spirit Awards for people who don't know? So the Spirit Awards is awards that we're giving out at the Mets game tomorrow to individuals, organizations that have really been a critical part in helping people achieve their goals and aspirations or just bringing up peace bringing up the the vision and mission of what we stand for for life camp supported us for years and so we wanted to give it to the breakfast club so great because of the years that y'all have been supporting us thank you very much thank you so much and so and i and i gotta ask so i'm looking at the weather and it says rain tomorrow. Is there a rain date?

That's up to the Mets. Okay. Okay. All right. Just asking. Damn. Eric don't run everything in New York. You don't have mercy. I'm just asking.

You know, hopefully it starts raining after the first pitch. Later in the day. Okay. Well, we appreciate you for always coming up. And you know you always have an open door policy here. Anytime you want to come by, you know the address. Just swing on by and whatever you need. And as far as us to support you, whatever we can do, we are absolutely positive.

Any other things we need to be looking out for from Life Camp? I'm sure. We're doing a pop-up next week. Come on, help a Tiff. Help a Tiff. Oh, we got our, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have our, so it was our 20th anniversary gala, but I got sick, so we had to postpone it. And so now it's our 23rd anniversary gala we have coming up in April. But we have a lot, this academy that we're doing in the office with the White House and helping make that a success is really where we're going to put our energy as well as making sure that the 113 precinct that we work in is the safest precinct in the United States of America. And we're going to use our precinct to be the example of what we can do, because as you say, you're absolutely right.

When you invest in what works, when you invest in what works, then it's allowed to grow and force. And so the city would already be in a space where we you know people coming in would fit into our structure right but the structure wasn't built that's right you know and so we're going to build the structure in southeast queens there we go people want to volunteer what percent is that 113 113 percent okay and life camps always taking donations by the way always taking donations lifecampinc.com. Always taking donations. Get your Paper Planes hat. It's live on the website. It's live on Paper Planes.

Support the work. Support the movement. Let's do this. All right. Well, it's The Breakfast Club. It's Erica Ford. Wake that ass up early in the morning. The Breakfast Club.