wellRED podcast - BLACK LIVES MATTER

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

BLACK LIVES MATTER

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion, because you used to, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

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They're the. Hello, well-red family and into the biscuit family. I'm going to put this at the beginning of both podcasts this week. There's been some talk online About what to do with your content this week There was a trend called Blackout Tuesday That I always understood to mean Don't post your little dick jokes

Don't post your songs about taking your girl down to the river That you should be entirely focused on This moment in history And the issues surrounding it specifically Racism, Black Lives Matters, and police brutality. But a lot of people took it to mean, apparently,

that out of respect for those issues, we should be completely silent. We have, as you know, by listening to this episode right now, chosen not to do that. And I think everyone should choose not to do that.

Blackout Tuesday was never meant to be everybody be quiet. It was meant to be everybody amplify black voices. fill the space with black voices, don't leave the space. So what follows is our experiences, protesting, and a conversation about what needs to happen. And we're not doing that to put ourselves in place of black people and black voices.

We're doing that because this is a white space for the most part. If you're listening right now, just percentage-wise, you're white. And we're trying to both help you and give you information. and thoughts and perhaps conversation starters with your own family, and we are trying to convict you to do those things. That being said, there is an essay written by my friend Jerry Brown. It is on my Twitter, my Instagram, and my Facebook page, that I would challenge you all to read.

and it's an open letter to white women who keep asking what they can do to combat racism. I believe she addresses it to white women because she, as a woman, is often asked by white women. So white women, don't clutch your pearls. I think she's writing to you because your group is the only one who's reached out to her, white men. At the end of it, she provides a list of names

and organizations that you can look to to educate yourself. I'm going to read some of those now. Tourmaline, T-O-U-R-M-A-L-I-N-E. By the way, as I do this, I guess I could read their handles, but I don't even know what platform that handles on. Just use your Google.

Janet Mock, a storyteller, the Audrey Lorty Project. India Moore, India with a Y. Laverne Cox. Angelica Ross. Stephanie E. Jones-Dash Rogers. Stella Megney, M-E-G-N-I-E. Trayvon Free.

I follow Trayvon on Twitter. He is brilliant. Neil Drumming. Sarah Clark. Shawnee Ashley. Hope Giselle. B.R.N.E. Brown. B.R.N.E. Brown.

Lauren Froderman. Comfort F-D-O-K-E. These are artists, activists, people of color who are discussing race from their perspectives in living, I'm quoting the essay here, beautiful black and brown lives and have helped me, me and being Jerry, grow into a better person. Now that's not the whole list.

Go to the essay, you can read the whole list. I just know that if I read the whole list, you guys would all fade out on me. The point is that it exists. it's there for you. As usual, a black woman has done the work. All you got to do is click on it and learn and be open, and we all got to do that.

I would also highly recommend that you guys read White Fragility. It is a book by a white woman that has really affected me. My black cousin recommended it as usual, another black woman doing the work and it really walks you through psychologically the types of inherent prejudices your society gave you

and how you can combat them. If you're of the more academic persuasion, I also recommend you read the new Jim Crow which will lay out for you how police have sent slavery and up until now, been used to control and imprison black bodies. And that's really, guys,

that really is the least you can do. Love you all. So we're here. Here we are. Here we are. I want to, is there, will people, will any people actually see this? I know, that's a lot.

I'll put, I'll put this one up, yeah. Okay. I'm very, I'm very, and if everybody out there that was watching on YouTube, I'd been putting them up a little late because it's just, it's better to not put the YouTube up at the same time our audio goes out. So I've been told by the podcast geniuses. But once I started doing that, I got out of the habit of it.

And I'm like 15 episodes behind on getting them up, but I will put this one up. Okay, so just a short disclaimer of what we was talking about before we actually started recording. If you ever do watch this and see my face, the ridiculousness with which outwardly in presenting myself does not reflect how I'm feeling internally about. the current state of our country situation just so everybody knows. I've got a pink headband in because I'll just wash my hair and otherwise my hair will be all over the place and I don't have any man headbands.

All I got is Katie's. And barbershops are closed so my facial hair is wild as hell right now. But none of that is intentional. I just don't care anymore. I wanted to start with a... You don't look ridiculous really at all. It's just so funny for me to hear you say that to Corey. Yeah, well, I think that, like, if you, if you hadn't have said anything, then people, like, our liberal fans, not from the South, would have been like, wouldn't have even thought about what you're looking like, and all our friends from back south, be like, yeah, Trey, where's pink headbands now. He's been out there three years, make a fucking chance.

You don't look that pink either for the room. Yeah. Really? Well, I mean, it's quite, that's good to know. It's quite pink, though. But anyway, well, you know, just overthinking things as I want to do. I was thinking about what I'd always heard was a Chinese expression earlier today, and I looked it up and I wanted to read this to y'all. I'm sure everybody's heard it, I think. This is from Wikipedia.

The expression, May You Live in Interesting Times is an English expression, which purports to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically. is better in uninteresting times of peace and tranquility than in interesting times, which are typically times of trouble. Despite being so common in English as to be known as the Chinese curse, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. There is no known equivalent expression in Chinese. It is most likely connected to analysis from

late 19th century speeches from Joseph Chamberlain who attributed to the Chinese. But anyway, that expression has been on my mind a lot lately for obvious reasons. And then I looked it up and it's like there's not a single, it's almost like there's never a single thing from, you know, Anglo or American history, popular history that doesn't have like a raven background. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Like that's an ancient Chinese curse.

It's where I always says it. It's just not at all. Like it has nothing to do with them. But it's certainly. relevant to where we're at right now, regardless of where it comes from. Yeah, for sure, man. I could really go for a dose of boring, for sure. Yeah.

You, what, shit, what was it? Just don't hit because I can't remember. You brought it up, Corey. I think on here, a recent episode of something about, like, I think it had to do with Biden versus Bernie stuff. And they were talking about how many Democrats are just complacent with, like, with like boring or not not having to worry about or you know the president stepping out of line oh yeah like that do you remember what i'm talking about yeah we were talking about how i think

it was like a whole group conversation we were talking about how awesome it would be if if we didn't hear from the president right so on the on the note of not having to hear from or worry about the president and what they're up to. There's another thing I wanted to do that's a little more lighthearted, but still, I think, very relevant to the times at hand before we get into the real, like, darkness of it all. But this is how dark and shitty things are right now. I nearly had, like, I don't know if you call it an existential crisis, but certainly a mental crisis. The other night caused directly by the movie Independence Day.

the 1996 summer tent pole blockbuster will smith. But yeah. Not only Blockbuster, but like when you think of, kind of like when you hear the word professional wrestler, you immediately think of Hulk Hogan. When I hear Blockbuster, literally the first movie that comes to my mind is Independence Day.

Right. So I rewatched Independence Day with my boys the other night. I've started showing them some like... Did it hit for them? Yes, it did hit for them very hard. I've started showing them like some more PG-13-ish type of stuff. stuff that hit for me. They're only seven and eight, but that's how my dad was with me, because my dad was more hardcore. I'm pretty sure I watched Die Hard with my dad when I was like

six or seven. So it's like a slightly... Now it's really not that bad though. Like if you go back and rewatch it. Like die hard now is, because it was R then, but like it's easy PG-13 now. So I've been doing some of that like War of the Worlds, Grimlins, tremors. I loved all those. And the other night we watched Independence Day. And it holds up. Movie rules. It's stupid. Of course, is. It's a big summer blockbuster, but as far as they go, it's like top, top shelf. It holds up. It really kicks ass. But we're sitting there watching it, and we get to sort of the big emotional climax in the movie, which is when Bill Pullman's character, who is the

President of the United States, stands before the crowd on the precipice of the great final battle of mankind against, you know, the alien invaders. gives that legendary speech, you know, that ends with, you know, July 4th would no longer be an American holiday from this day forward, but the day we remember that this is when we, that's by far the best part of that movie is they were like, by the way, this is going to happen on July 4th. Right, yeah, he's like, when we stood up and said, we will not go quietly into the night, we will not stand without a fight, you know, yada, yada, today is our independence day. Everybody remembers that, and it's very effective. And so I'm sitting there,

watching it. And at first, the first thing popped into my head was like, man, fucking imagine Donald Trump having to make a speech like this. And at first, at first, I started laughing about,

you know, internally, mentally, like it cracked me up. I was like, that would be a funny scene. Would be to see a Trump impersonator doing like his best version of what this is and how funny that would be. But then, but then my train of thought continued, on and I've gradually started to get very upset based on this because I was like the next part

I thought I was like, God damn man, the thought of Donald Trump being the one in charge at some like pivotal turning point in, oh shit, oh my God, oh shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that's literally what's happening right now. And then I started thinking about how, because right after he gives that speech, he then climbs into a fighter jet and leads the, you know, the last charge of all mankind or whatnot. And I just started thinking about how, like, yes, it was ridiculous. Even in 1996, I'm not saying it wasn't.

But still, just the idea of like, that was sort of, that's what a, that's what the president of the United States was in pop culture, like, yeah, fictionalized in pop culture. when they're thinking like, we need the prototype of a great American president for this role in this movie. And that's what they come up with. A war hero, fighter pilot, family man who's empathetic and a great order and inspires people and then leads by doing and all this shit. And just imagine if the equivalent type of blockbuster was coming out now and they got to like the, they probably wouldn't even have the president. The president would get killed off in the first five minutes because it would be laughable to even try to do that anymore.

Somebody tweeted the other day that Trump has forever ruined like presidential hostage movies because like now if somebody, now if you're watching a movie and they took the president by hostage, everybody in the crowd will be like, get his ass. Yeah, right. We don't go. I know. I know. That's what I'm saying.

That's why I was thinking. It's like it's not you couldn't. No, it would be laughable to try to have an inspiring like presidential character like that in a new movie now. And it probably will be that way for some time. That's how much he's damaged the reputation of the office and of this country at large. obviously with everything like now, he ain't doing no better. It's only worse fucking when the looting starts, the shooting starts.

He names Antifa a terrorist organization right in the middle of all this. Like imagine tailing a 98-year-old papal that fought the Nazis or whatnot, that being anti-fascist makes you a terrorist in this country now. And it's like, I don't know. Things are so bad, but I keep thinking about it and then feeling even worse because of the fact that who is in charge at this moment.

And of course, it's not a coincidence either that he's going to be in charge when all this shit is going on. But like... God, man, I just don't know. I don't know... Well, I don't...

I guess... The thing I've been... No, I don't either. And the thing I've been struggling with... Yeah, I've been struggling with it today is like just the fucking the deafening silence on all Trump supporters

with his... his complicity towards this because like, dude, you know, to hear these people tell it, you know, the way they've been telling it through my whole lifetime at least is like, if something happens during a president's presidency, it was their goddamn fault. Like, let anytime some bullshit happen under Obama, it will. It's Obama's fault because he's the president, except for this shit. Like this shit, there's no way that it could be the commander in chief's fault, that the country is literally on fire right after botching a pandemic.

of this, there's no way that this is the leader's fault. This is somehow, like the party that tries so hard to preach, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and claim responsibility for your mistakes is the one that is completely going, uh-uh, not me, uh-uh, not me, and making fucking insane batshit excuses as to why they shouldn't be held complicit over stuff that it's like, look, man, if it's not you, then what is your fucking job? Do you even do anything? Yeah, right. If it happened, if it happened during Obama's president, it was Obama's fault. If it happens during Trump's President,

it's Obama's fault. Yeah. But I mean, you know, they've been in that way as far as deflecting and all that. But yeah, it's very, very frustrating. And for the record, I'm not one of the type of people

that blames the president. I try not to blame the president for literally everything that happens because that's insane. Like, they can't stop everything and they can't start everything. It's just they absolutely do. And this right here, though,

you can see like, it just is his goddamn fault. Maybe not the actual act of George Floyd being murdered. I'm not necessarily going to put that on Donald Trump because Donald Trump wasn't president during the Rodney King shit. And Donald Trump wasn't president. So a lot of that, some of that shit happened under Obama too. I'm not going to blame him on that. But I am going to absolutely blame him for going on Twitter and being a fucking child and for not showing leadership at all.

And for inciting riots and for loving that this is happening. I'll blame him for how he's reacted to something that I don't think was his fucking fault. Right. I, like, I've always been, anybody's on me for long enough knows that I've always, I feel like been a pretty level-headed person about like political climate or crises at large or whatnot as far as like thinking, not just thinking outwardly, but truly believing like, you know, it's okay. Like this two shall pass and maybe we'll come out the other side of it better off yada-y-a-a-a-of-a-of whatever. Like these things happen and sometimes I need to happen. but it'll, you know, it will pass and we'll pull through it. And that type of thing. And I've always genuinely felt this way. And I think that, like, right now in this moment is, I think, the first time in my life as a, like, politically, culturally conscious person that, you know, I'm like, I mean, I'm afraid.

Like, I don't know. Like, I'm scared right now and I don't know what the hell is going to happen. The other thing is I've been thinking this whole time. ever since November 2016, I've been thinking mostly because like we ain't going to get him out. We're not going to kick him out. I know that. What we have to do is survive until November 2020. And then if we can get him out, it will, you know, we can get past it.

That's all we got to do is make it these four years. And January 1st, 2020, I was feeling pretty good about that. It's like we got three years down. We're in the home stretch now. But right now, man, like November. Remember 2020 is like literally closer than it's ever been in this process, but also has never felt farther away to me, I don't think. And I know and I hear you.

And my thing too is like I look at all this stuff that's going on and in my head I can make compelling arguments for this hurting him in the election and I can make compelling arguments for this really helping him in the election. Like there's part of me that's like, all right, all those fucking people on the fence. if it's possible to still be on the fence in 2020. Like I get being on the fence and sick, well, I don't get it, but like it was a thing that happened,

so I'm just going to get past that. Being on the fence in 2016, 17, maybe even 18, but this point, I don't think you're still on the fence. But if there are some people that are still on the fence, surely to God this made him go, God damn,

he's not a leader. Like, he's not a leader at all. He's not leading us through this situation. And then there's going to be some people who were totally in on and that we're just, I can't bring myself to do this. shit. But like at the same time, it's double down time again, and they're the biggest group

of double down motherfuckers ever. And like, they're still totally buying into the whole like, this is realistically, both sides are bad and anti-fah's doing more harm than our side. Hell, they only killed one person. Look at all these riots and businesses, businesses, blah, blah, blah. We've got to open the economy. So like, I don't know, man. There's part of me that thinks he's going to win another goddamn landslide. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I just don't even, I have what I feel about it, but I don't even like to talk about it openly because even though I'm not a superstitious person, I just don't like tempting fate like that or whatever, you know. Well, Drew, you've been to some of the protests there in L.A. What's your experience been like? Yeah, I guess before I say that to respond to some of the things you said and, you know, Trey, the whole thing about speaking it into existence.

I mean, I guess I'm leery of that as well, but my honest thought is this is going to drive turnout. for the election generally and I don't think that's a good thing in terms of winning the election generally and they're going to hold they're already holding quote unquote

antipa up as this boogeyman and thinking about their ability to do that has existentially I think led me to my darkest moments a couple of some of the things

I saw, which I'll get into in a minute. They're going to take the death of a black man at the hands of a white cop and use it as justification to label Antify terrorists. And then they are going to eventually arrest

many black leaders under that moniker. If they don't just eventually add Black Lives Matter to it. And the callousness and political savvy that they have displayed in the last 48 hours to do that. And liberal people and liberal media or even just regular media's inability to see it and playing along with it has been stunning.

And I don't say that to defend Antifa because I don't know what Antifa is. I know it stands for anti-fascist and I'm for that. that. I know that there's supposedly a group in Portland of about 40 or 50 who started specifically to fight the Prou Boys and Alt-Rights and Bugaloo Boys who are all racist, alt-right, crazy fucking people who buss and fly into Portland to fight. So if they are doing that, I think I'm for them. And then I had one experience personally that I've talked about on here before where the Antifa prevented white supremacists from shutting down in Edward Nelson rally when he was running for state senator.

in Tennessee. Now that doesn't mean Antifaz perfect, but what I'm trying to get at is I don't know who they are, no one does. So when they get labeled a terrorist group, don't be surprised when prominent leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement get lumped in and get arrested.

Don't be surprised when some of your friends and some of the people you follow get put on lists. It's fucking happening. Like I'm trying not to freak out, but Trump just leaked to the press that he's probably going to do something called, I don't think it's called the Insurrection Act.

It's a very old law that gives him a lot of power if he declares a certain type of emergency. And the people who are going to suffer are leftists and black people, and I'm afraid that it's the perfect political move. They didn't blame the black people. that was super fucking smart because for the first time and at first this gave me some hope for the first time in a long time

I saw very right-wing people saying man that was murder right yeah and so they didn't blame the black people and it was super fucking smart and they're saying it's why Antify and we're going to try to make them terrorists

and I'm telling you like it's not going to happen to me because I'm not vocal enough or famous enough. But if I were, let's say that our podcast had Joe Rogan-type listenership, I would be put on the goddamn list. Right. And that's, for me, one of the things that's so dark and scary, if I were black,

I would have on top of that the realization that people care clearly way more about property and having arguments about property than they do about black lives. I mean, when you see people admitting it was murder, but moving immediately on to the looting and their problems with it, it's very indicative of how they feel. But, and I said it on the other podcast, when DJ and I talked about it on Into the Abisket, you don't need to listen to me for that.

You need to listen to black voices. And some of the ones that you can listen to, you can look up Cornell West, you can look up Killer Mike's speech. DJ and I talked about it, Killer Mike's speech shocked me because it seemed to go against some of the things he stood for in the past, but I've got to listen to black leaders. You know, I've listened to it twice.

I'm going to listen to it again, and hear what I'm missing. D. Ray Macchison is one of the Black Lives Matter movement leaders. Michelle Alexander, I think that's her name, who wrote Jim Crow, the new Jim Crow. And then there's a guy that I just learned about, Kendrick, what is Kenrick's last name? I'm going to find it for you guys in a minute, and I'll tell you, he's part of the build power movement in L.A., and their whole movement is about defunding police.

These are people you need to listen to about that. If you want to know what happened with me, though, I will tell you. I went to protest on Saturday. I got there on time. I heard Kendrick speak. It was powerful. He was talking about defunding police. I didn't know this.

Apparently 54% of Los Angeles. Angeles County's budget goes to police. That's a crazy statistic. 54% over half of all the money they're spending is going to police. And the city where the crime rate has fallen every year for a long time.

Right. Yeah. It's like the defense budget as far as that goes, you know. And they look like army people. Right. Yeah. They're militarized. I'll about the specific subject of like defunding them and things like that, I also feel like that's like what has to happen. I wish there was some way to like just effectively and maybe you do it in waves,

so we're not just literally without law enforcement or whatever for a amount of time, but they could all just be like all of them sort of like laid off and then there's some kind of procedure to get back on the force with an independent agency, which should be created regardless, an independent agency should be regardless The sole purpose is to do nothing but, you know, regulate the police. But here's what I've been wondering, and I'm not trying to be a devil's advocate. I'm seriously, I wonder about this. They have this very, very powerful union, right?

The Fraternal Order of Police, one of the most powerful unions in the whole country. And I'm wondering, like, how the sort of, like, political murkiness of attacking any union at all, given the larger scope of like the necessity of unions in general and how much good I believe unions have done as a concept. But obviously this particular one is a huge part of the fucking problem. So like, how does that work? Well, I've never seen any protests, organization, coalition. Police union ain't never marched with any fucking body. Right.

But them goddamn sales. And almost every leftist I've ever known as acknowledged, even inside other unions, that unions can be co-opted. The power can be usurped. You know, they can be perverted. Most people who are really, really into that shit argue that in the private sector, what they really want is the employees to own over half the company. And then you don't even need a union per se.

The company is its own goddamn union. So intellectually, there's ways around that. What I will say, on top of that, his name is Kendrick Sampson, listen to him. And I'm not saying that to you. I'm saying, like, if you're out there right now and you're wondering about this stuff, there's literature out there. It's all there. You know, black voices are laying this out for us.

All we have to do is follow them. And I really think a big problem in this country has been on every side because of internalized racism. all of our inability or unwillingness to do so. Right. And then specifically, Trey, I would respond to you and say, you know,

yeah, you'd have to have some layoffs, you know? There's other ways to do it too, though. Give them a smaller budget so that they can't buy tanks. You know, just reduce their budget and tell them, we don't want you to,

you don't have to pay anybody less. You know, just stop spending so much money on the drug war. I think I might have a personal experience that might illuminate sort of how that part of it all works for people. I'm sure a lot of people already know, but like I used to work in federal contracting and show you how like budgets work. Like, and this is like a systemic thing in my experience. What would happen every single time is I worked in contracts. So I had to deal with all the different like parts, like subdivisions in the Department of Energy. you know, the facilities people, the environmental cleanup people, all of them, whoever,

they all had contracts and they all had budgets. And every single time when budget was coming up, where they're ending the end of a fiscal year, the budget cycle, every single one of them would do this thing, no matter which department it was or how innocuous it might seem or whatever, would do this thing where if they had not legitimately utilized their full budget that year, they would do whatever they could to find places to put that money. Like I remember one time in particular, the facilities people repainted our parking lot and gave out a little contract for that

because they had X amount of dollars left in the budget for that year. The parking lot had been repainted the year before and was completely pristine. And I remember asking them like, why? Because they don't want a surplus. They, yeah, they, and the, the thought process is, we want that money in the budget next year. If we, yes, if we're not using,

if we're not using the amount of money we have in our budget, they'll give us less next year. So we have to use this much so we'll have more because we need a budget. And so what happens with that and like with the police, like you're saying, Drew, is like, you know, they get a couple more tanks or whatever else, like other stuff that they don't fucking need. But they're never going to stop spending money on those things

as long as they keep having the budgets that allow them to do so because that's why they're doing it in the first place. It's this big cyclical bullshit. But yeah, that's just sort of how the government at all levels kind of operates in my experience, and it's a big part of the problem. Yeah, I have no doubts, and I have no doubts that they spend that money on gear that they don't really need, that is designed to intimidate. And I know that they spend it on training that is clearly not good enough or not taking.

Just real quick, if you do listen to those. black voices and other things they all call for is some sort of community board that has real power right to oversee this particular uh officer i won't say his name who uh choked george floyd to death i think he had it was either 13 or 18 yeah interaction he killed an unarmed man before and he had either 13 or 18 investigated examples of abuse if you have a community board if you spend that budget on a community board that has real power and real teeth and aren't cops aren't internal investigations right but we all know what would happen to that community board by the way they would be threatened and this is what I was saying about a dark

moment for myself is like we may have already lost the farm boys and I, and for a specific reason that I will get into when I tell what happened or what I saw, I am holding on to hope. And that reason is young people. And I'm going to get emotional. The first day I went, I heard Kendrick Samson speak. They sang and they prayed. And I marched and I saw so many different young people full of events.

energy and full of hope and they were white and they were black and they were brown and they were Asian and they were there for George Floyd and themselves and their own future. On that day while we were marching, something happened where the people in front of me were like, go back, turn around. I was with our friend Carmen. I got up on something where I could see and where the people were turning around was close to us, but some people were still going. There was a split and there were police there. I didn't see the cops split us, but that is what happened. At that point, it had been about three hours, and I said, Carmen, you know, cops are here.

What are you thinking? We decided to leave. We were walking back to our car, and we heard a noise, and we saw people running. Carmen had been, we'd been carrying back and forth. It was her idea to bring it, like a traffic cone. She had seen where, if somebody shoots a tear gas, you put it over it, and then you pour water down there and you can put the canister out.

That's cool. So she went that way. I took the cone from her because I could run faster with the cone. We cut down an alley because we saw this police officer like chasing these people in a SUV cruiser.

We went down the alley to get around on the other side where they were. We saw them there. They were stopped. Police were out. No one was hitting them and they weren't hitting anyone, but it was real gnarly.

Like I don't know how to describe it. There was another cruiser there parked in a weird way. I didn't see how this started. Long story short, those cops took off. Someone knocked out the back window. Then they started beating the fuck out of that cop car. Cops didn't come back. They got their guns that shoot rubber bullets.

They're marching towards us. We are told by people with megaphones take a knee. We're told white allies to the front. We're told don't be violent. We're told all the things you're supposed to. be told and that they say you're supposed to do according to the white people who are like, I hate the violence. People with megaphone, you're talking about organizers on the side of the protesters with megaphone saying always. Okay. All right. To be, you know, in the spirit of being

completely honest, I saw one kid with a slingshot towards the back shooting a slingshot with, I guess, rocks over towards where the cops were coming at us. He got dealt with before the cops got close. Someone pointed out that shooting your little fucking slingshot from five rows back of black people and white people who are willing to stand in the front without weapons. Like if you're going to fight the cops, go fucking fight the cops. Right. Yeah.

And he was either shamed, you know, I didn't see it all, but he was either shamed or physically dealt with. He was gone. Face to face with the cops, this last 10 minutes or so, I'll just skip it. I mean, it was us chanting and kneeling and chanting and kneeling. And then backing up. And eventually they left. And this one young black guy, probably 19, was like, we move the cops off the block.

And he was celebrating it. And he wasn't celebrating it like, I hope they all die. He was celebrating it like, he said, I ain't never seen N-words move cops off the block. It was like, we have power. And it was truly sincerely inspiring. And then they burnt that cop car. And some people have a problem with that. I thought it hit too.

I think that, I think normally it don't hit, but in this particular instance, it hits. Like, I mean, look, like,

you need a climax to what you're doing, like, look and burn the shit. Unless somebody's in the cop car, I can't think of any scenario where it would. I mean, just cars on fire, dude.

No, I know. And people were taking pictures and, like, the shitty influencers were up there, like, posing and people were calling them posers. Hell, we paid for that goddamn cop car anyways.

Burn that motherfucker. Yeah, we burn our car. Fuck y'all. Exactly. My point, though, being is we can walk through at some point all of the types of looting and damaging things, but at the fucking top has to be burning cop cars with nobody in them and police precincts with nobody in them. That has to be the easiest one to justify. Whether you agree with or not, you have to admit it's the easiest one in this area.

They're the ones that did it fucking burn the shit. You didn't hurt nobody. You only hurt property. Absolutely, man. I mean, I think that's what most of it should be. And if I'm not, I'm not going to, again, in the spirit of not holding back watching a black man be a cop car with a skateboard in Los Angeles. That's awesome. You know what I mean?

Just something about a black skater, you know what I'm saying? I was about to say, like, you had me three ways. So we left. And I went home and I was texting DJ that night. I said, man, I feel really resolute. These fucking young people, you know. know, and I went back. And I went to Santa Monica yesterday, and we were later.

I didn't hear anyone speak. And as I was walking towards where it was, we had to park like seven blocks away. As I was walking, I walked past a lot of looting. A lot of people breaking into the van store and the Nike store. Lulu Lemon had its, well, windows boarded up and everybody was making jokes. You know, we're stealing from Lulu Lemon, you know. I did see where it was a funny picture, at least. been doctored, but it was all these buildings on both sides that had been looted and in the

middle was a crock store that was fine. I saw young black people looting. I saw young brown people looting and I saw young white people looting. I saw a few cops in those areas walking around. I saw some undercover cops. I saw no one stopping them. The van store was being particularly ransacked at the moment that I walked by it. Like I saw some empty stores that had been ransacked, but this van store.

the skater store was getting hit pretty hard. A lot of young people. And again, going back to the looting thing, you can judge that, you can not judge it, you can say it's justified. You can not say it's justified. My whole point is I understand it. A, and B, it's not really the point.

Yeah, especially, go ahead. I was saying that's how I've been, I mean, I've been trying not to have kind of conversations right now with people that I know that I know how they feel. You know what I'm saying? Because it's not worth my time. This is not one of those situations, where we're going to find common ground on this,

but the only answer that I have is, I'm with you, I don't understand how looting helps. I really don't. I don't understand how looting helps. But, you know what, black people don't understand?

Why they keep getting fucking killed just for being black. So you're not supposed to understand it. If I can find any reason in there at all and any point that does make sense, it's that, yeah, this is supposed to confuse you

and make you go, what's the reason for this? Because that's how they feel every single day of their life. Again, I don't, It's hard for me to justify fucking up a business when just go fuck up the cop, the fucking precinct. But at the same time, I'm not the one that feels that way.

And it's like when someone commits suicide and someone goes, how could they do it? And it's like, well, you don't fucking know the, you don't know what was going through their brain when it happened. Can you imagine if you're at that point in your life, I'm not comparing the two, by the way. I'm not comparing looting to commit and suit. I'm not trying to do that weird thing. But I'm saying if you get to that point in your life where you think this is the only thing that I can do, I'm so out of my fucking mind that this is the only thing I can do, then of course you don't

understand why, because you haven't been there. You don't fucking know. Right. And that's trauma. That's how people deal with trauma, and there's plenty of examples in psychology books and elsewhere. That's how, especially young people, often do deal with trauma, is breaking shit. Yeah, for sure. I still do it.

Jesus Christ himself looted in the temple. He overturned tables. He flipped over chairs. He let people's animals go. That was their property. That was a valid. legal business at the time. He absolutely did all of that because he had enough. And when I have had conversations with people, I've just been saying, we all have the same answer for when it's okay to break stuff. It depends. And that being the case, I'm trying not to judge these people. I will

acknowledge that I saw people there that I don't feel like we're doing anything other than being opportunistic. I know that. My point is simply, that's a conversation, in my opinion, for a different time and besides the point of what we're talking about here. Yeah, that always happens. Right. You know, like that's human, or now, you're always going to have that every time, no matter what. Yeah.

There's always going to be people who are being opportunistic and, you know, turning any situation to their advantage that they can. And like you're saying, I agree with you. It's all like, it's beside the point.

That's not, none of that's the point. That's like a side effect, but it's not the thing at hand here. It's not what's really going on or what's important about any of it. Okay. Right.

So then the part, I guess, about dark moments and dark days, aside from how I know this is all going to be used to hunt down opposition in the name of a black man. Again, what an incredible thing to think about. About 100 feet from that vans, I saw two lines of cop, about 10 deep, so 20 police officers on a corner with their backs away from where the looting was happening right behind them. Now mind you, I've walked by four or five cops. I've seen unmarked, definitely undercover cops, watching people loot.

I get to these police officers. They have their back to where 100 feet behind them, a van store is being looted. And I round the corner, and those cops are looking at a protest in the middle of Ocean Boulevard. And I joined that protest. And that... What is it? sorry that was a moment not necessarily right then but one that I look back on where it's like oh they're only talking about the looting because they know the American people give a shit

about it they literally didn't care about it like I can't I've even tried to play devil's advocate not because I want to give the police the benefit of the doubt but because I'm trying to figure out what somebody might say to me you know and what I saw, what I personally saw to, like, combat it, the only thing I could figure is they had tried to stop the looting and it got messy. And they figured let people take stuff instead of stop them to knock the violence down. If that's the case, let people march. Right, yeah.

Which I'm about to get into. Yeah, to me, it's just they're protecting their best interests. And in my opinion, it is in their best interest for people to be looting. and it's not in their best interest for people to be sitting there actually peacefully protesting and just speaking their mind. Because when people are sitting there peacefully protesting and speaking their mind, which they still don't want you to do, even though they say, this is the right way to do it. The things go viral. So they want to silence those people. But when someone's looting, that's fucking great.

They want every goddamn store to be destroyed so that at the end of the week, they can look at the number. They can look at the, they cost $5 million. Hell, our economy just opened up after this pandemic. if we can't take any more. And then this is how they don't care about you. They're opportunists, blah, blah,

they want you to loot, dude. And that's, that's one of my reasons for, like, not doing it, even though, like, I'm not ever going to tell anyone how to grieve, anyone how to protest,

anyone how to mourn. But, like, I do believe that it hits for them really hard that people are looting, like, really hard. And you said it, you said it's not in their best interest. And I guess what is hitting me,

and this is, again, something I think I knew intellectually, but now I know, like, almost on an emotional level, if that makes sense. sense.

It's crazy to think that our police in this country's best interest is for people to loot. Of course it is. And that's what I said about, we might have already lost the farm boys. Like if Trump told police to stand, like he didn't and he won't, but if he told him to stand down,

just let the fire burn until it burns, they wouldn't. I don't think. I don't think they'd fucking do it. Like, I think that they are anyone who's not completely no it's not some of them that's what I'm saying because it's a paramilitary structure

quit then if your job if you worked at a place or someone murdered a man by choking him for nine minutes in broad daylight and the next day your boss told you to shoot rubber bullets at 25 year olds no I hear you no no buddy I hear you I'm just saying I do believe that there's at least a couple

people that if the president said, hey, stand down, that they'd be like, all right, fuck it all, you know. I was only doing it, I was only doing it for the furor anyways. And I hope you're right. All right. So I saw that. I went to the protest. They were having conversations with police officers.

And this is an important story to tell too. And this isn't me going not all cops, but this is me acknowledging a thing that happened and talking about the good outcome from it. One officer took all his mask off. He hugged somebody. who had a bullhorn. He talked to them. They had a conversation. He talked to another person with the bullhorn. They had a conversation. I couldn't hear any of that. They were reporting back to us. We were chanting and then we would die down so that they could tell us what they were talking with

the officer about. His name was Officer McGee. We were told that Officer McGee said that he understood where we were coming from, that something had happened with the looting, some type of violence that had required a state of emergency to be declared. And because of that, we just couldn't be in the street. And they want us to move to the beach. beach. After some back and forth and frankly some arguments between the three people with bullhorns, it was decided that we would move to the beach. One of the guys with bullhorns hugged that officer. They posed for a picture. He was the only person with the bullhorn who wasn't black. It wasn't white either, but it made me very uncomfortable that he was, you know, now

time to pose. But that's what happened. That officer deescalated, talked to people, took off his shield became a human being, and people decided, you know, for better, for worse, decided to move to the beach. And there were people there that didn't want to move to the beach, but that's what happened. And so we were going to protest at the beach. But when we did that, after we moved, we could see the rest of the street. It was hard because of trees and all the fucking tanks or humbys that look like tanks and cops. We could see, I realized, they had split the protest again.

We were on one side talking to a line of cops. Then there was a line of cops facing the other direction talking to other protesters. As we moved to the beach, we heard an explosion and looked over there, that direction. Well, we said, let's go over there because that's a place where it looks like they're not moving to the beach, and there's no way for them to get to the beach because of where they're at, because this happened to be right where the I-10 comes in. They split them where I-10 is coming into Santa Monica. So those people had no way to escape.

there was a ramp there and then there were cops the only way they could walk to the beach. So we said, let's go over there and check it out. We get over there. There's a further distance between the police and the people. And without trying to like over-dramatize it or make too much of a long story of it, there's some conversation

about what's going to happen. Everyone says if you're just getting here, they told us at 4 o'clock they're shooting at us. That's what they told. These unarmed, mostly white people in the front, black people and brown people behind them, that if you're not out of here by four, we're shooting at you. Four o'clock comes, they don't shoot.

Four o two comes. They say they're about to. I'm very angry black man of probably about 35, justifiably angry. I'm not trying to do the stereotype thing. He starts talking about how he's got dead friends, and they're always doing this. And if we're not here to really fight,

then what are we doing here? And he throws a water bottle. Now, he's standing all the way off to the side. He's not standing in the middle. not even really in the road. He's kind of on the sidewalk. He throws a water bottle that lands as a man, I will tell you, on my life, maybe 30, 35 feet from these cops. Maybe. And they shoot. Rubber bullets. There's a flashbang, which I wasn't familiar with. It sounds and looks like a fucking bomb went off. We all ran. And then we came back. And then that just happened over and

over again, two things that I'll highlight. One of the times they shot, no one threw a water bottle or anything their direction. One of the times they shot, a man came. He had on a shirt that said, Wage Love, and he told us that he was acting as a liaison. He told this crowd, what had been told to me when I was in the other crowd. There's in a state of emergency. Something gnarly happened, a stabbing or a shooting or something. We can't be here, but they said, we could go to City Hall. We're going to go peacefully to City Hall. There's some arguing.

The black man who first threw the water bottle was like, I'm not fucking doing that, but a lot of other people were like, look, we ain't got no weapons. We can't fight them. Let's go protest at City Hall. We were about to do that. He's been back and forth now twice. We agree in general that we're going to do that with a few people saying they won't. He turns to go tell them that.

If I'm lying, I'm dying, they shoot at him. And this motherfucker kicked a rubber bullet or a beanbag with his foot, just boom just kicked it down and i did like that to like what the fuck and i will say that whoever he had been talking to told the guy who shot at him stop but he'd been back and forth like i i feel like that was to make us react sure oh yeah um there got hits it's called inciting a goddamn riot andy got hit during one of these back and forth with rubber bullet in her leg after that deal with that guy oh and I will say I do think that there were people there

who were trying to get everyone else and other than that first guy threw a water bottle they weren't black but there were people there who were like we should throw rocks and stuff people weren't doing it still but there were people saying that there was a construction site right there people started grabbing plywood and plastic and hiding behind them

I hid behind one at one point and it got hit with something after they did that with that black guy who was trying to get us to go to city hall and shot at him, they shot tear gas. And that is what ended it in that area. Carmen had gotten separated from us. I went looking for her in the front part of the park. Andy and Sean, I guess I shouldn't say everybody's name of that.

I want me to. Our buddy, Trey, knows you. Funny accent. Yeah. Him and his girl and Andy went towards the back of the park. I went looking for Carmen. I got what I can only describe as overwhelmed with the tear gas situation. She answered her phone or called me.

I don't remember. Luckily, we got through to each other. She said she was helping people in the park by pouring water on their faces. I eventually found her. By the time I got back to Andy, she had had somebody pour milk all over her face. She was choking. We decided not to go to City Hall, to go home. to go home.

When we got to our car, we got an alert on our phone that there was an 8 o'clock curfew. 20 minutes later, at 520, we got an alert that said there's a 6 p.m. curfew. It took us 45 minutes to get to our car. Now, I'm not saying that if we had been, you know, gotten there at 6.05, we would have been necessarily arrested for being five minutes later, but my point is that shit was a trap.

there's no way everyone could get out of there in 40 minutes right yeah they're right god damn you can't do shit in 40 minutes they apparently arrested 4,000 people or so they didn't process all of them I was about say fucking how they sent literally every cop there to the protest after the looting had already happened and was basically over

they sent them there after telling them to go to the beach in the city hall and we did to arrest everybody. And they did. And all those things, seeing the cops with their backs to the looting, getting that alert 40 minutes before, you know, it took effect knowing that no one could actually abide by that even if they wanted to. Seeing that cop shoot the guy who was acting as a liaison and a community leader. The Coca-Cola company, Cure Dr. Pepper and PepsiCo are bringing consumers more choices with less sugar than ever before.

From sparkling, flavored, and bottled waters to zero sugar sports drinks, teas, and sodas, consumers are taking advantage of these choices. In fact, nearly 60% of beverages sold contains zero sugar. To learn more, visit balance us.org. Again, I knew all this intellectually, I think, but it fucked me up a little bit. Because if they're that willing to do it openly, and the media will continue to blame the agitation on outside influencers. Because what you've seen here is an evolution.

You're not allowed to blame black people anymore because people in America, the zeitgeist, the consciousness is that's not fair. But we're still not ready to blame police for agitating stuff with their fucking riot gear and their weapons and their tear gas and their tanks. So they blame these outside agitators. And I'm not saying these outside agitators don't exist,

but they're so easy to take care of. The protesters will offer them fucking up. Like they will sacrifice these other things. Exactly. I saw it in D.C. I saw like three or four videos in D.C. Of somebody smashing like the street with a hammer or something like that. And these black protesters went, took their fucking mask off.

And it was a gray-haired dude. And they were like, get the fuck out of here. Like, you're not helping. Have y'all, y'all heard of, and I'm not saying that this is what is happening there. I think it's probably a bunch of different types of people that are doing that. sort of thing, but agent provocateurs, you guys know what I'm talking about?

I mean, is that... It's like, it's cops. Yeah, yeah, undercover cop, yeah. Who go and do that exact shit, like for that exact reason. There was that one very viral video. You can see the video. You can see that, yeah, yeah.

The very viral video of that dude in Minneapolis who wasn't even really engaging in the protest and was like, could not have looked more suspiciously copy. Right. He looked like an extra in the fucking second Avengers movie. Yeah, he was back there breaking these windows and shit.

Well, they identified him and his ex-wife ratted on him and was like, those are my fucking boots. Oh, that's right, yeah. Oh, what a quarter of wearing his wife's boots. And by the way, by ex-wife, I mean, she filed for divorce apparently like a week ago. Yeah. The media, I don't, dude, I don't

I don't understand. I mean, I do. I can come up with a lot of reasons, I guess, but they're all, you know, unfortunate, disappointing. But I don't get the media with all this shit right now, specifically because of all the different incidents of cops directly assaulting the press in the middle of this stuff, even when they are identifying themselves as, first of all,

most of the time they don't even need to identify themselves as press. I got a full fucking camera crew. A lanyard. Their sheriff tucked in. All the credentials and shit right there. And the cops are still fucking shooting now. They blinded a reporter in Nashville. Yeah.

With a fucking rubber bullet or pepperball and one of those things right to the face. And yet there's still this whole narrative of the agitators. Yeah, man. And the looting and all this stuff. And I just don't understand. Well, to be fair, some local news people are talking about those things. But I think what's happening. This is just my opinion, Trey, is a genuine inability and somewhat unwillingness and, frankly, fear for the wolf blitzers of the world to think that police are just shooting reporters for no reason.

It's much easier and safer to believe these evil boogey men, half of which are white supremacist and half of which are these far left communists, are coming in here. and the rest of us are just good-hearted Americans, police and black people who I have, you know, in the last decade only, decided I love, you know, and I can't help but start to be a dick there because I feel angry about it. But let me try to do it in an empathetic, slightly more human way. It goes against everything they believe about how the world works, and it is sincerely scary. And part of the reason I'm trying to give them some empathy is, even though I knew it intellectually watching it fuck me up yeah that one video

you know the curfews are all the curfew we got a 5 o'clock curfew today but all the curfews are they exist really just to make it so that the police could take any action they want against any person who's out after the curfew

regardless of what that person is doing and that video of that one that one video Minneapolis one of the first that's their curfew those fucking cops just walking through a regular neighborhood. And there wasn't even people in the streets of the neighborhood. They were literally on their porches, which the governor of Minnesota had already explicitly clarified

was completely okay and legal. And the cops were shooting at them. Real quick, and this is important. That was the National Guard, not the cops. Go ahead. I thought it was both. I knew they had that National Guard thing in the front, but those dudes all in black and stuff,

it wasn't a mixture of both. Even if it is, I think it's important. for us to point out that the feds got involved. The National Guard was part of it. Right, yeah, the National Guard was in the front of the line. They looked different to me. I definitely thought it was both. And the ones who were, like, shooting were the ones who I thought looked like cops,

but maybe they were all guardsmen. I don't know. But the way, not just the fact they were doing it, I mean, it is just the fact that they were doing it, but also the way they were acting about it, like they were in a call-a-duty game or something. They literally, one of them called out, light them up!

And then they just started shooting. civilians on their porch and it's like Roscoe Jenkins Leroy Jenkins Leroy Jenkins was the Martin Lawrence movie that was actually hit for me but it's just like the mentality that so many of them have is why I'm so worried

about any kind of resolution or de-escalation of this thing because like they that's how they work they're all in like a fucking video game and they're a a gang. They have a gang mentality. They get matching tattoos. When I worked in Miami, there was a group of them that got in trouble because they all got matching tattoos on the drug unit, and it was

a skull with guns, and you weren't allowed on the drug unit to get smoke coming out of your gun barrel unless you killed somebody. Wow. I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to say, I'm going to say two things before we get out of here, because it's only two things I have left to say on the situation. The first of which is probably the most Alex Jonesy I've ever seemed. But, goddamn two months ago, I don't know if I said it on this podcast, but I definitely said it on Twitter. I told everybody as like, look, we've been on lockdown for a long time and these fucking police stations ain't made their goddamn quota. So as soon as we're allowed to leave again, y'all watch the fucking highways because they're

going to be fucking pulling people over left and right to make up for these goddamn months of speeding tickets. And look at these motherfuckers now with these goddamn curfews. I'm not saying that's the only reason why, but I'm telling you there's part of it, too. They're making up for fucking lost time. Secondly, secondly, at this point, four years into the, or three years into the podcast, I'm certain that this is an echo chamber. Like, you, if you're somebody that doesn't at least 84% agree with pretty much everything

we've said up until this point, you're probably long gone. But for anybody out there who is just having to listen in the car because your spouse, your wife, or you're gay, you're gay and you're, you know, one of them to. One of them, two, if you're out there listening and you're not part of that echo chamber, I have one thing to say about this situation. If you look at this thing, if you step back and look at this thing, and you were fine with, I saw Dale Murphy, Brave's Great, tweet the other night that his son had got shot in the face of the rubber bullet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, this is bullshit, what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah. And somebody posted several people, actually, you won't believe it. Brave, former Braves fans, it seems, posted on Del Murphy. he's page like, well, if your son didn't want to get shot in the face, maybe he shouldn't have been protesting. Like, so anyways, if you're the type of person out there that has that type of belief, or you're sitting there fine with saying, well, hey, the media screws around anyways. The media should get shot. If you're one of those people that has that belief, then just admit right now that you don't care about the Constitution. Like you say that you do, just admit right now that you don't care. All you want to do is have a fucking gun. Just admit right now that you don't care if you believe those two things. And that's,

that you give a fuck and that you've never given a fuck. That's all I got to say on this subject. Yeah. I thought that's where you were going. And if you didn't, I was going to, yeah, emphasize that too. Right. These are straight up, like, the highest constitutional rights that any of us have.

The first one. The first fucking one. Right. Are being just, you know, totally disregarded and disrespectful. Like they thought of this one before they thought of the guns. Right. They only thought of the guns. because they were like, if somebody tells us, we have to shut the fuck up, we're going to need to shoot them.

So then they thought of the guns. Right. Like cops, like the fucking, even the only part of the Constitution they do give a fuck about is ostensibly supposed to really be. So you can defend yourself against shit like this. This, yeah. And, yeah, no, they just, right, I'm totally with you. I don't want to hear them harping on about the Constitution ever fucking again. But it's just like them with like being pros.

life when they're not at all, you know, obviously they're pro life while you're in the womb, but as soon as you come out, they don't give a fuck about anybody's life. So, I mean, they ain't going to stop, but they absolutely should because they've made it very clear that they don't really give a fuck about the

Constitution or anybody's rights. It's a, that's a big part of why it's scary is we're borderline brainwashed to believe. And I think with good intention as we come up that you debate your way through all your problems in this country. That's a big part of what protesting

and voting is all about. And the reason that I'm struggling right now is I don't know if we can do that. And from what I saw yesterday, I know we can't fight them. Right. If all of us had had a gun, it didn't, it wouldn't have mattered. They had helicopters and tanks and like, and like, again, I knew that intellectually, but like, I saw it. Right. It was, it's wild to see the massive amount of cops and all their gear. Uh, and then, and then, and then, on the way out of Santa Monica, 120 more cops came, because when they hit the curfew,

they sent every unit in the county. But they're worried about crime, guys. They're sending every unit in the county to a protest, but they're worried about crime. Anyway. Yeah, no, I know. And ignoring the looters, because they want them to fucking do it.

It's bullshit, man. And I don't know how to beat them. And that is what makes me scared and angry and upset the most. But going back to the kids, four of them, I'll keep fighting for them. I'll keep trying to have hope. And they do give me hope.

They are smart. I did see a lot of amazing kids. And I think they're better than us. I mean, I think every generation is frankly better than the last. And hopefully there is a country for them to inherit. But I'm not going to pretend like I'm positive, fellas. And I mean that like in the most dire. I'm not trying to be Alex Jones way.

I think that fascism is not coming. is here. Yeah, no, I hear you, man. Like I started, and this is fucking, this is so, this is such a thing for a white dude to say, but like I was thinking the other night, because I've never, like you hear celebrities, and I'm not put,

call myself a celebrity or even saying I was thinking about doing this really, but you hear him say, oh, if Trump gets elected, I'm fucking, I'm moving to Canada. And they never do, of course, because that's insane.

And I always thought, yeah, no matter how bad it gets, I would never want to leave. And I've also thought, well, I just don't have the fucking, I couldn't just leave because my career,

like I'm an American comedian. If I was to move to New Zealand, I wouldn't fucking make it. But I was thinking the other night, when all this shit started happening, I was like, dude, if I just literally,

if I had retirement type money, I think I'd fucking leave right now. And that's irresponsible because I'm a person, I'm a white dude that can vote. I should stay here and be a good person. But it's, yeah, I'm with you,

man. Like I, this is like Trace at the beginning of the podcast, and you just said now, I genuinely feel helpless, hopeless, and kind of fucking scared. And I know that this is all like, who knows if we would feel this way, if it wasn't coming off the back of already a shit year? Like if we hadn't just had the pandemic and this had happened,

would we feel so helpless and hopeless? Because it's not like this hasn't happened before. But either what, I mean, I'm not trying to take it. No, that's right. We got pandemic, depression, uprisings, tumultuous situation, and we got a fucking nightmare in the White House. All the same.

No, I specifically meant, no, I specifically meant, like, it's not like George Floyd has never happened before. And I'm not trying to take away from his death at all. It should not be diminished. But what I'm saying is like, we've dealt with this specific thing, but like, yeah, you add the pandemic, add all that.

So, but it doesn't, it doesn't, you can't say, what if this didn't happen? Because it fucking did. There's no sense. There's no sense in playing the what if game when we are in the middle of a pandemic. The fucking economy is down. We have a fucking nightmare child in the White House. And now this has happened.

So, yeah, I don't know. I don't feel good. And I'm, you know, I don't know, man. And I also like, what the fuck can I do? Well, I mean, I'll, you know, I'll say it. This is what you do. You listen to black voices, as I said. You help and you witness.

You help and you bear witness, whether it's money, We're marching or calling a senator. You do something. You help and you bear witness. It's going to be money if those are the options. Well, at least you're being honest. That was multiple choice. I mean, I don't know.

You helped without knowing it. I won't flash the whole thing. That's your number on my arm. What? If I got arrested. Oh. You were my phone call. And by the way, everyone else in the car, too.

Maybe not Carmen, but like our buddy that I mentioned, he was like in his accent. I got no one to call. Yeah. I'm sorry, put this one down. Oh, yeah. You're talking about, and I don't know what the answer is either, especially like in this moment. Like I don't know how it like de-escalates because to me the only way it could really de-escalate is if you, is if cops everywhere did some of the shit that like the, I saw it.

cops in like Flint did or El Paso did, were the ones where they like put all their shit down and take a knee or march with the people or whatever. But that's not going to happen. And without that happening, I don't know how it ends in the moment. That's part of what freaks me out so much. But there are, like, there are,

and we were talking about some of them earlier, and black leaders are already laying these out. Like, there are regulatory and legislative measures that could absolutely be taken that would go a long way towards addressing this police state bullshit, but it's just a matter of actually getting those things done. And you'd like to sit on like a community level or state level at least, because obviously the federal government's a fucking loss cause.

But like they're all the cops, you know, big cop is just so ingrained in the highest levels of American society and shit that I, you know, I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm hopeful about that. But there are answers to it, We just have to employ them. Because it's just like when the fucking, when the, you know, the capitalist were literally just chopping people up and putting them in the can meat they made in their factories and whatnot and all that stuff.

You know what I mean? Like there were answers to that too. And then. And there were abandoned a lot of them. But there were violent. But there were violent protests. Right. Bloodshed.

And the capitalist did. have guns. Right. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, that's what I think we got to do in general. I'm trying to be hopeful. I wanted to say one thing. Oh, it was, I saw the pictures of those people kneeling and all that stuff too.

And I'm glad that those cops said that and did that. I will say in nearly every picture I saw, if you go to the replies, someone was like, almost every time someone's like, I was there an hour later, they shot us with tear gas. Yeah. Yeah. The kneeling was to get them to leave. Right. It wasn't to say really that I'm with you.

It was to say, I agree if you'll leave. Well, somebody posted that picture of Jerry Jones, too. They were like, I'm tired of this fucking acting because it was like one day Jerry Jones was kneeling with the players. And then the literal very next day was like, any of my players caught protesting the flag will not play. You know, like they want it for that quick little fucking picture and sound bite or whatever.

And then it's over. So it's horseshit. Nothing. I saw a police chief in Houston. give a speech to the protesters. He was out there without a mask on right among him. And I think he meant what he said as a human being. I also know as a police chief, though,

that he arrested everybody after a certain time and then blamed all the violence on anyone but his own cops. And that's just not honest. Yeah, man, no doubt. And, you know, I don't know about you guys, but I ain't got much left in the tank to say about it. Not because I want to jump off here, but just because, I mean, at this point,

hell we've done this episode before not this you know specifically on everything that's happening here but it's not like we haven't had to talk about this and at this point it's just like fuck man I don't know what we're going to do but god damn it vote fucking vote that's the only thing that I know to do that it's within my power that I can that I can do that I can do and that some of you can do fucking vote and you know like like Drew was saying just you know support be supportive and be in the right side of it. For sure. For sure. For sure. Money talking to people

engaging. And I guess have the guts to engage with your white family members. Yeah, that's why I've seen a whole lot of black people saying that, you know, white people talk to other white people and let them know that, you know, how you feel about this and everything. You know, obviously I feel like. I miss, they'll let you know how you feel, how they feel. I mean, I've seen so much. I've just seen all this anti-white and anti-collectual. stuff like all whites are evil and I'm like no you have it no if you saw a picture of a meme of

somebody saying black lives matters said they were going to kill all white people uh a fucking white supremacist group made that mean you have not seen that right yeah and I with me in particular I'm lucky that most of the white people in my family are close to me I already feel the same way but also even those that don't like and I mean you know they all they know how I feel about I was about to say, like, I feel lucky in the sense that, like, yeah, the only reason I'm not having to have these conversations is because, yeah, again, they're just not going to bring it up. Yeah, but I think we have to bring it up. No, I know, but, dude, like, there's some that I hear you, but, like, it's like, you know, you know what they say? They say, they say don't wrestle with the pig because, you know, you just get muddy and the pig liked it.

That's how it is with a lot of these motherfuckers. like they are fucking blue blue stripe flag having it don't matter it doesn't because they're they're the same ones like you said that like they're going to see that meme and they're like they're going to show that to me and go look here and I'm like a fucking white supremacist has made that and they go oh that's what the liberal media wants you to think they fuck da da so like no I mean some of them I can't have that conversation with because that time is more valuable spent doing something else because they don't give a fuck they're going to double down they're just racist and they fucking hate they're glad that George Floyd is dead some of them are

glad that he's dead. They don't give a fuck. And these aren't my friends, by the way. I'm talking about just people I see out that you know. Yeah, but that's different, you know. I don't think you need to cost people at a grocery store, but, you know, I think you've got to talk to people. And because

I saw so many people saying things like this looting is not about justice for Mr. Floyd, but I do hate that they killed him. It's like, oh, the talking's working. I can talk to that person, though. But my point is, that person a year ago was saying, where's the rest of the video? My point being, the talking is slowly working and it's too little and it's too late,

but we have to keep doing it just in case there is a future. We have to. Not for nothing. I also think, and I too think, you know, we can, we definitely can wrap it up. But I also, yes, the talking is working. I think another thing that is working is that like the repeated assault upon these people's senses of video evidence of cops being fucking murderers, meaning like the necessity for body cams and all that shit and like smart smartphones and everything, because like they've always been this way, they've always been doing it. But now, they can see them now.

Now everybody can see it. And like, I don't care how entrenched you are. Well, some people are too entrenched to come out of it. But for your average person who otherwise would have been very much on the side of the police, Like you see enough videos of a fucking cop shooting somebody or choking somebody to death or whatever over and over again. And eventually you start to think like, man, fuck, maybe there is something wrong here. So like I'm saying, and my point with that is it's at a head right now. I'm really worried about how it's going to go.

But I don't. We had a conversation after one of these horrific incidents early on in the podcast where I was saying, and I don't think that it ultimately behooves the cops to continue to just be the way that they are. Of course not. And publicly, and I'm saying like, you know, I think that that also is a big part of hopefully changing people's minds. It's like they've laid their true colors so bare. So hopefully enough people will realize this dude needs to be convicted a fucking murder. Right.

The lady in Texas was convicted of murder. A couple more of those happened. And then, I mean, I'm not saying there's still not going to be some trigger-happy people who genuinely were like, I was afraid for my life. But like, surely to God, they're going to realize, hey, man, we can actually go to jail this time. We can't be fucking doing this. You can't choke somebody out on fucking camera, bro. I don't know.

I think I need to mention just in relation to that, it just came out I just saw it first of all Louisville killed a man last night Louisville police shot a man there in the riot last night they claimed they heard a gunshot

and then they just opened up on a whole group of people was probably one of theirs well it just was announced by the mayor that none of them literally no cops had on their body cameras

oh yeah which means they were instructed all of them to not have them on that that should be illegal fascism like that's well who's gonna who arrest the cops who watches the watchman no right well that's the thing that's what that's what

yes hopefully if they some more start getting convicted they will start at least thinking themselves maybe i shouldn't murder this time but also like we just need we can't they have to start holding themselves accountable but we cannot just wait for them to actually start policing themselves like we have to put some fucking measures in place that only apply to cops and are only about policing and instead of just like, yeah, murder applies to all of us. And if you're a cop, the law applies to you too. A huge step is making sure they all fucking understand that. But we need shit that is only for them.

You know what I mean? Like regulations and laws and stuff that only apply to cops. And if you want to do that job, then you have to abide by those. And we need an independent fucking agency or collective of these community boards, whatever we need some independent auditors that can. hold these motherfuckers accountable and that's the only way it's ever going to start to change. It's like what Chris Rock said. He's like, look, man, there's some jobs that just can't have bad apples. Right. Yeah. You know, he's like, he's like, you would never see United, like, be like,

most, you know, most of our pilots are good, but we got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains, you know, sorry. Right. Like, no, sometimes you got to all be good. Yeah. Right. Right. Because with pilot, they have enough fail safes in place to where that type of thing cannot happen because they realize that it's unacceptable for that shit to happen. There's no reason you can't do that same thing with cops, you know, like it can't happen. And there's ways to keep it from happening no matter what the fuck they say. All right. Well, guys.

We solved it, obviously. Yeah. We always do. If you're out there, I'm sure, I know on Drew's page, probably you've got, you've, you've shared some links in the past couple of days of places you can donate. If not, I will throw some up before this episode goes out. There's a cool thing that I saw on our buddy,

Kenny DeForest, page. I think he shared that, like, it's a thing where you can, you can go and they, like, split the tab for, like, bail or some shit like that. So, like, you can donate a lump sum, and it will get divided amongst several people's bails. You know what I'm saying?

So it's like a go-fund me for, like, everybody that somebody has organized. Obviously, research all that shit before you do it, you know, and make sure it ain't some fucking hacker and Abu Dhabi trying to get one over on you. But there's ways to donate. If there's a march in your area, go to that,

donate, help people out. And as Drew said, and as everyone should be saying, just listen to Black Voices and be safe. Yep. All right, well, love y'all. Love y'all. Skeer. Thank you.