The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to the edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, which started in Oakland in 1966. Today, I’m honored to be joined by Billy Jennings, AKA Billy X, well-known archivist in Oakland, member of the Black Panther Party, a photographer who runs the official Black Panther Party alumni website called It’s About Time. Thank you for joining me, Billy.

Billy X Jennings:

Hey, thanks for having me again. Good morning to everyone.

Mansa Musa:

And as we talked earlier, I was in different spaces and hoping I had met you while I was in Oakland. So this would more or less be like a reunion, but this is my first time meeting you. I’m really honored. I heard a lot about you. I know a lot about your work, and it’s an honor to be able to interview you about the party and some of the things and some of your experiences.

Billy X Jennings:

Okay.

Mansa Musa:

Please introduce yourself to our audience, who you are and how you came to be involved in the Black Panther Party.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, my name is Billy X. Jennings. I’m a member of the Black Panther Party. I joined in 1968 when I was 17 years old. And I came about joining the party because I’m from a historical town in Alabama in the South where most original members came from the South and migrated to California. So I came from a place called Hopson City, Alabama. And the tradition there, Hobson City have had the right to vote since 1890. And we were one of the only black municipal cities, little towns that could vote and had that right to do that. And so I came from a very strong area that had embedded that kind of thought into my mind. And when I traveled to California and I saw the Black Panther Party on TV for the first time in 1967 when they went to Sacramento, California, it blew my mind.

I was in high school at the time and I immediately changed our social… We had a social club called the Buccaneers. I changed it to the Panthers the next day. I didn’t know anything about the party with just that symbolism and how they stood up to the police and read their demands and so forth. It made a change happen in me. And it wasn’t until I graduated from high school, I decided to move to Oakland. And when I moved to Oakland, it was during the time that Huey knew the trial had just started and I was going to a college that’s two blocks away from where Huey was going on trial at the courthouse. And when the trial started, we would hear them saying Free Huey off the preg, free Huey. And I went over there one day and I was reading a book simultaneously at the same time called The Audible Malcolm X.

So what I read, I had read in the book already, but I heard Bobby Steele speak at a rally for Huey and they were saying the same thing. So it got me really interested in the party. And so I started going to the rallies to Free Huey. I met some Panthers and then they said their Panther office was going to open in my area. And when it did, I went down and joined, became a Panther in training and I’ve been working with the party ever since.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And take us back to the party’s founding because you came in two years after its founding. And also you came in to your own observation and to what we know to be a fact, you came in at a point where they had just started to become on the radar of the feds, but more importantly, they was definitely on the radar of the Oakland police, LA police. And so talk about what was it like to be able to be in that space and ultimately find yourself in a position to be the bodyguard for Huey Newton once he got out.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, my process started at the very beginning. In 1968, there was a certain method the party employed. Before you became a Panther, you had to become a Panther in training, which requires six to eight week training. They give you a list of books that has about 35 different books, about books by Franc Fanon, Mao Saintong, Che Guevara, Pruma, and other revolutionaries to read. And you had to attend political education class on a weekly basis. Panthers at that time was required to read two hours a day. A Panther had to secure and have what we call technical equipment. Technical equipment was a firearm of some type, because at that time I joined the Black Panther Party, it was called Black Panther Party for self-defense. Later on, we dropped off the self-defense, but at that particular time, the party was engaged into patrolling

Police officers in the community, observing them and making sure they don’t beat and brutalize people. So the first six weeks is reading and studying and learning the rules of the Black Panther Party. And then you’re given a section. The city is divided into different sections. I worked in the section four in East Oakland. Section four had a section leader. They had a geographical area that they were responsible for. And so I was in section four. At that very beginning when I first started, we were theorizing about the breakfast program. It hadn’t came about, but we were still looking for geographical locations to have these breakfast programs in the future. So we did that. And every Panther is required to sell the Black Panther Party newspaper, which is the voice of the party. And at that time, the party was growing tremendously by leaps and bounds.

We had people flying into California from Kansas City, Chicago, New York, all to get this education. Before you can open up a chapter of the Black Panther Party or a branch of the Black Panther Party, you have to come to Oakland first and get educated. And you have to meet the leadership. The leadership has to eyeball you and find out your level of consciousness, what type of person you are before you can go back and represent the party. So this whole process was going on. People were flocking to the party. The party got so big that in 1969, we had put a stop on membership and we call that particular part of the party’s history the purge because the party had grown… I mean, the party was attractive. I mean, black coats, leather coats, I mean sunglasses and Afros at the same time. So this was a big thing for our culture.

At the same time, our culture level was rising even in music. James Brown had a record out in 1968 that elevated people’s social conscience, I’m Black and I’m proud. It moved people from the level of being a Negro, because that’s what the newspapers and that other people was referring us to. But in our community, we’re referring to ourselves as Black or African. And when James Brown came out with Black and I’m Proud, you could never go back to ever saying he was a Negro no more. There was different progress being made, but James Brown couldn’t sing no song like that. It wasn’t for groups like the Black Panther Party. Groups like The Shot Light Can’t Sing got to give more power to the

Mansa Musa:

People

Billy X Jennings:

Like the Black Panther Party, paving the way to educate people to lift up their consciousness. And so my role in the party, I came up as a Panther in training. I became a officer of the day, which is the person who runs the office. And from there I was transferred to central headquarters. Now, my name came about because my captain at that time was a legendary Panther called Robert Bay. Robert Bay ran the East Oakland office. Robert Bay was also an age of the central committee. And when Huey Newton got out of jail in 1970, the central committee made Robert Bay his permanent bodyguard and assistant. Now, I worked in that capacity as well after Huey got out of jail, mostly going to… I went to court with Huey on a daily basis because he was let out on appeal. He wasn’t just let out.

He had to go back to court and defend himself. And so my job became that. And also at the same time, I became to the Newton family. Mr. Newton, Mrs. Newton, I lived three or four blocks from them. I would walk over their house around the corner, mow their lawn. I’d be taken to the pharmacy, driving to doctors because they’re old people and they don’t drive so much. So that became my responsibility and me and Huey’s relationship grew behind that. So we had good personal relationship.

I worked central headquarters. Working at central headquarters was key to who I am today because I know Panthers from everywhere because every Panther had to call the central headquarters on a weekly basis or if the office gets ready or they need lawyer resources and stuff like that, I pick up the phone, write on the messages or tell them what they need to know. So I know Panthers from almost all the chapters and branches. And so I worked that group for a while. Then I was drafted into Bobby Seal’s campaign when he ran for mayor of open. I ran Bobby Seal’s campaign office in East Oakland. And it was an organizing event on the highest level the parties had ever been. I mean, the party is known for organizing, but to go into electorial politics and do what we did for a first time basis, it changed over.

Even though Bobby lost that election, it changed openly because it opened up so many doors. Part of his job was to kick down doors because we were the Vanguard. We had lead to struggle and there’s other people who follow behind us. I mean, our life was constantly in threat because we were on the front line, police department, clientele pro, all those things aimed at members of the Black Panther Party. So not only did we have the burden of dealing with the system, we had to deal with the authorities as well.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about, and you’re familiar with Eddie Conway, right? And so Eddie Conway, when he got locked up, he organized a chapter for the Black Panther Party in the prison, which I became a part of. And everything you outlined, as you was talking, I was reflecting on, we had to read at least two albums. We had every aspect of the thing that you outlined as what the party was doing, Eddie had us doing the same thing. We had political education classes, we had military classes, we had first aid classes. All our class was structured around an environment that we was in, and our technic class was finding a hole to get out of prison by any means necessary. So we had that type of mentality. So Billy, as an archivist, you have a lot of distortions in terms of the images that’s being projected of the party and it’s been dubbed Panther Porn, and just to note that it’s images that’s being perpetuated by the federal government, it’s images that’s become more idolization of the party versus the images as an archivist.

What would you say is the most positive or how would you characterize the imagery of the party as from an archivist in terms of educating people and raising their conscience? I see you with a shotgun. I know you in Sacramento. I know why you in Sacramento and I know why you coming out like that. That’s a good thing. But then I turn around, I see somebody standing on the corner. They got a picture of somebody standing on the corner with their mug broke and they got a bandela on and it had nothing to do with organizing, had nothing to do with raising people’s conscience. It’s got more to do with projecting the image of a thug, for lack of a better word. Talk about that if you can.

Billy X Jennings:

Well, the party was vilified on the highest level from the government who lied on us continuously to the media that used disinformation to scare people. The big image they had was, oh, these Negroes, they have guns. They’re angry. They hate white people. That’s their basic pitch on everything. Let it be Republican New Africa or any Black group, they paint them as very threatening group. And because we had guns, I mean, there was nothing… It wasn’t against the law in California to have guns, to have them in public long as they was not loaded, which we knew that. So the images they printed of the Black Panther Party was to vilify us and to scare white people and to frighten Black people. So it was all a part of their method to control who we were. They were trying to identify who we were. We could only define that.

We defined our own selves. And so that’s why we started a Panther newspaper in 1967 to get our voices and views out. So even though we had Time, Newsweek, Life Magazine, the Black Panther Party was cranking out close to 250 to 300,000 copies of papers per week into the community to combat this disinformation about the Black Panther Party. The 10 point program outlines what the Black Panther Party was all about, what we stood for.

Only on one aspect, which is 0.97, we talk about defending ourselves with guns. Other

Than that, we’re talking about social change in all levels, in education, housing and so forth. That was a threat to them because they did not want anyone to rocking the boat and we are rocking the boat. We are waking people up from their deep sleep. I mean, we’re telling people to read. We’re showing people what books to read. We are the Vanguard. People are following us. They didn’t want that. We had people in the white community, they wanted to join in with us. We had people from the Latino community, they want to join with us. You had people from around the world reading the 10 point program and looking at the positive aspect of the Black Panther Party. And that’s how we get the New Zealand Panthers and the Panthers from Africa and Panthers from India and the UK because of our social programs, how we was dealing with the oppressor here.

And so they follow those same examples there. They started social program, they started demanding and fighting for their rights. And that’s what the oppressor hates. They hate for people to wake up. And we were waking up big time in the 60s with the music, the culture, the back to Africa, who we are. How could you be a Negro in 1970 after all has been presented before you? So those things have changed. The party was a part of that change, that

Mansa Musa:

Consciousness. Talk about, because to your point, I remember reading the paper and when United Farm Workers, the party was one of the first papers to one, educate people on what their issues were, two, organize the boycott certain wines that they was taking and exploiting their labor and not giving them equal pay. So talk about the party’s social contribution to raising people’s concept, but more importantly, the elasticity of it, because can you see some of the influences today? Oh,

Billy X Jennings:

Definitely. Definitely. I can see the influences of the Rainbow Coalition. And that was something that Fred Hampton talked about. I could see the coalition building of the Black Panther Party. We’re working with the Brown Beret, the Young Lords, the Young Patriots. We’re working with the welfare rights groups. We’re working with the BSU, the Black Student Unions on campus. We’re working with prison groups. There was a number of prison groups throughout the country that started Black Panther Party off in San Quentin, in Algeria, Raway and other prisons because the ideology of the Black Panther Party was strong. What we were talking about, there was backbone to it. Everything we did was dialectic materialism, right? We were dialectic people. We looked at things from all sides. We just didn’t look at things in one side. Black Panther Party was an international group from the very start. Dewey and Bobby were international.

You can look at our reading list, those 35 books that come from Fanon, that’s from Africa, Mao Zeitang from China. So there was all kind of influences in the party. And so it was a big job just working to educate and organize people on all levels. Because in our community, action speaks. People learn in various ways, but in our community, people relate to action. They see something, they learn from it. Just like the breakfast program. We started the breakfast program in California and within two weeks it was a national program because people said, “Hey, we can do that here. This is how they did it. We can do it here.” The party set examples that people could follow in every aspect. We were on the forefront of fighting racism on all levels.

MANSA MUSA:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.

Joining me today is Andrea James, activist in every sense of the word. I want to say abolitionist, but she’s an activist in every sense of the word, organizing, and is currently running for the governor of Massachusetts.

Thank you for joining me, Andrea.

ANDREA JAMES:  Thank you for having me. It’s really great to be back in your studio, and just to have the privilege of being a part of how you disseminate information. It’s really an honor to be here, and I thank you for this opportunity.

MANSA MUSA:  And we want to go on record right now saying that here at Rattling the Bars, we recognize that it’s a so-called two-party system. And we recognize that, when you’re dealing with electoral politics, that if you’re not a traditional Democrat or Republican or so-called Independent, according to their definition, you’re not going to get the recognition. So we are here primarily to level the playing field. It’s not our endorsement of it, it’s more opportunity for her to talk about her candidacy, why she’s in this position, why she’s running, and what she expect. 

And with that being said, introduce yourself to our audience, Andrea.

ANDREA JAMES:  Well, I want to say thank you for introducing me as an abolitionist. I mean, I am an abolitionist. I have had a direct experience that causes me to understand that this country has had more than 250, but 250 recognizable years of incarceration of prison and prison building and incarcerating people in cages. And actually, I believe in direct experience and that that’s what leaders should have, some level of direct experience so that there’s an urgency around the issues that need to be worked on. And so I’ve had the experience of incarceration myself personally, and I happen to know, having lived in a women’s prison, that they only cause further harm and that they are antithetical to getting us to a place of having whole, healed, and healthy communities and people. So I am a prison abolitionist, absolutely. And thank you for referring to me in that manner.

Why I’m running has a lot to do with that experience in 15-plus years specifically. Decades prior to that in my lifetime came from a family, African American family of Civil Rights folk breaking color barriers and so forth in law, in the field of medicine. My grandmother was the first Black nurse in the city of Boston. I’m from a community that is the most incarcerated community in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. We’ve been in Massachusetts for seven generations, in the same old house in Roxbury for five generations. 

And so why I’m running is this alchemy of these life experiences that have brought me to where I am in my life today with my understanding of these issues and also who I am today. And that includes all of my life experiences, not just the highs that I’ve reached and the accomplishments that I’ve had and the academic achievements that I’ve had the privilege to be exposed to, but also my incarceration, which has been one of the most important experiences of my life that propelled me.

This was 20-plus years ago. I made a mistake in my law practice. I wound up on a prison bunk in federal prison for wire fraud. And what I received and learned from that experience after having been a criminal defense attorney, after having worked my entire adult life on ending mass incarceration and bringing attention to that issue and then having the direct experience of myself of living in a prison, I knew immediately after being surrounded by all these women, I had to survive 24 months of incarceration. I was laying next to, head to toe, head to toe, head to toe on a prison bunk next to sisters who had been in there for 24 years. I mean, I knew. 

My parents were researchers of people of African diaspora. When I was a kid, they were traveling all over the world with us, showing us different cultures of our people. And one of them was a trip to Gorée Island, where we saw where they enslaved African people, put them into caves, waited for ships to come, load them on like cargo, and take them to every single place on the planet to work as labor. And when I was in that prison, I wrote a book, a memoir called Upper Bunkies Unite. And because I was on a top bunk and I remember looking up over this sea of Black women and being like, damn, the first thing that came to mind all those years later was Gorée Island, was how they stacked us.

And so I’m running for all of that, and I’m running for more of the immediacy of creating change right now. I’ve been going to the Massachusetts state House for 15 years writing policy, writing legislation, giving of my voice, my experience, to panels and state legislative hearings and congressional hearings, and being trotted out for all of the things on the federal level policy. And enough is enough. Enough is enough. 

And I have done every piece. I’m older. I’m older. I believe in pouring into our young because they’re brilliant. They have a language now that like, what y’all talking about, but I like how it sounds. But we need to break the ceiling of the caste system that they expect us to continue to live under. And I refuse to do it any longer. I refuse to be made a chump in an electoral process that is not addressing the needs of the people that are millions, that, actually, in Massachusetts, have become the majority of people who are dissatisfied with either of the establishment parties, meaning the Democrats or the Republicans, that 67% of voters in the commonwealth of Massachusetts have become unenrolled. 

Now, does it mean that they’re all the way over here, prison abolitionists and to the left and progressives like I am? I don’t even call myself a progressive because that’s been co-opted in so many ways to help democratic socialists get into office and so forth that do not go far enough for me. However, we need to be a part of this in more ways than just being on the table. 

We need to shake up. I mean, you talk about rattling the bars, the electoral process needs to, those bars need to be rattled. We get people into office and they think the job, the hard work, was getting elected — Which is an arduous process even when you have their millions of dollars, which we don’t — But still too many of our electeds have gotten into office and they thought getting into office was the job. And then term after term after term, they’re just comfortable. It’s like, they have a job. They have a nine-to-five that they go to.

MANSA MUSA:  Let me ask you this here.

ANDREA JAMES:  Yeah.

MANSA MUSA:  OK. So, you already clarified the so-called progressive. We agree that the term in and of itself says one thing, but the behavior says something else. But you are running as an Independent. Now juxtapose that against Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has ran as the longest Independent, but how do you see yourself when you say you’re Independent? Is your Independency similar to Bernie Sanders, same, or are you saying Independent in fact and not in theory?

ANDREA JAMES:  I’m Independent in fact. I mean, I’m running on issues.

MANSA MUSA:  Come on.

ANDREA JAMES:  I am not running on any party platform, and I refuse to be constricted by a party platform. I unenrolled because I was a member of the Democratic Party, I was raised by strong Black Democratic women over the generations in my family. I unenrolled because I thought it was unconscionable what the Democratic Party has become. And I believe that it is a duopoly between the Republican parties and the Democratic parties.

That being said, I wasn’t running on any party because I’ve seen the party that I expected to do, carry the water and make the noise on behalf of the issues that are affecting so many people. When they weren’t doing that term after term, elected position after elected position, I decided the party platforms are not going to carry the work that needs to be done. So I said, I’m going to work on these four issues.

Now I care about a lot of other issues, trust me. But right now in the compounded crises that people are going through, everyday people are going through in the communities like mine across the country, but specifically across the commonwealth of Massachusetts, we’re a commonwealth. It’s different when you’re a commonwealth, that means of the people. We become a corporate wealth. And our campaign is it’s the commonwealth, not the corporate wealth. We are under the oppression and control of a corporate agenda right now in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. So wealthy donors and corporations are getting the focus and the attention that working families, underemployed, unemployed, formerly incarcerated people, people who have gone through a state of struggle, the focus should be on. We’re a commonwealth. But I’m running on four issues.

MANSA MUSA:  Come on, talk about it.

ANDREA JAMES:  So that it is very clear because they’ve co-opted the term “affordability.” They’ve listened to our language and taken our language, both the Republican and the Democratic candidate, and morphed our abolitionist language into their establishment party agenda. 

So I said, I’m not dealing with none of that. I’m an Independent, meaning I am running on issues, not any sort of party platform or party identity. We don’t have an Independent party in Massachusetts. We’re just called unenrolled/Independents. So it’s not even that I’m running on a platform called Independent. I’m running on four issues: housing, universal healthcare, childcare, and equitably funded education. 

Why those issues? Because I am the voice of the people who have been just tamped down into a caste system that is only growing and widening. So before it used to be all of us, Black, Brown. We have a wealth gap in the commonwealth of Massachusetts that is astounding that nobody even wants to talk about. It’s always like, why has it got to be about race? Because everything is about race, baby [Musa laughs]. And so we’ve got to discuss that. But we’ve got an unemployment rate that is double for Black people in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

And so, these are things that we have to talk about, but the issues that I’m running on are issues that would create an immediate lift. I call it lifting from the bottom and closing the gaps. When you talk about unaffordability, it is at a crisis level in this state and around the country, but housing, universal healthcare, childcare, and equitably funded education immediately gives economic empowerment to the people, the millions of people just in the commonwealth of Massachusetts alone, the wealthiest state in the country, that has been completely left out of that.

So, we have nurses and firemen right now who can’t afford places to live. And so it has expanded. It’s no longer just formerly incarcerated people who got no chance in hell — That’s got no chance in finding support, I should say. We still make it, but in finding support in climbing out of that hole they tried to bury us in and get back on our feet and raise our children and bring our families back together and restitch the fabric that they’ve shredded economically, family-wise. But it’s expanded to a lot of the middle class, so to speak, who are now feeling the same level of pain, even as they still are intact and have their jobs and may have a house or may be able to figure out how to pay their rent, but really are not making a living wage themselves.

And so housing, universal health care, why universal health care that’s single payer health care. I’ve traveled the world in the work that I’ve done as an expert on women and incarceration. I’ve talked to parliaments in different countries about the issue. I’ve visited women’s prisons all over the world. And while doing that, I have had the experience of those countries and their major cities and how they address policy. Well, housing is a number one thing in many of these places, but also they have universal healthcare. They’re not beholden to what we’re stuck with, which is the CEOs who make $200 million, with a M, a year who run health care companies in the United States. And we have no benefit of it. We pay high premiums, we have deductibles, and most of the time we have to ask if they’ll fix something for us and it’s denied.

And so universal healthcare is one way to immediately infuse some economic stability in the families and in the everyday people in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. If we have single-payer health care, which means the state takes over completely — Which we are uniquely poised to do here because Massachusetts already controls its own health care market — And so the only reason we don’t have it is that because the governor and the other leadership in the commonwealth of legislature are beholden to the wealthy donors who are the CEOs and their rank and file who donate money to these campaigns. Because there is no other way to explain in the commonwealth of Massachusetts where we already control our own health care marketplace, where it does not make fiscal sense or it’s not fiscally responsible to not have single-payer health care, that we still have it, except that we will hold in place because of the lobbyists, the health care industry, and the CEOs that make us have to pay all of this money for health care that does not produce the level of health and wellness that we deserve.

MANSA MUSA:  OK. Let me ask you this here then. OK, so you already acknowledged that you got this wealth gap, and you got in terms of the political structure. So how are you managing being competitive in the sense of being able to get out and get your message out unless are you getting PAC money? Are you getting corporate money? So how are you funding your campaign? How do you see it? Because like you say, you up against, just to your own point, it ain’t commonwealth, it’s corporate wealth. If it’s corporate wealth, right?

ANDREA JAMES:  Millions and millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. The Republican candidate in this race, there’s three of us. First of all, mainstream media is beholden to the Democratic Party and they only refer to her. And in reference to the Republican candidate running against us, they only refer to one opponent running this race against our current Democratic governor. There’s three of us. There’s not just two. So mainstream media plays a huge role in completely blocking. 

Took 10,000 signatures, they didn’t think we could get it as an independent candidate. We got 13,311 certified signatures from the secretary of state — Certified at the secretary of state’s office, which means I am on the general election ballot on Nov. 3. 

Mainstream media has refused to include me in anything. We did our first mainstream media interview that aired Sunday morning, the very first one, but yet that same network is hosting one of the few debates that the current governor, Mara Healy, has agreed [to do]. They left it up to her. They let her do all the deciding. There’s three candidates, but she’s the one that got to decide where she was going to show up. Fine. They’re excluding me from the debates, the mainstream networks. I’m a candidate. I am on the ballot, and I am being excluded from being in the debate. 

When I asked the other network that I just did the interview with, why had they not invited me into the debate between the gubernatorial candidates? And they said, because the people have expressed that they only want to hear from the establishment parties. Well, that’s interesting in Massachusetts where 67% of the voter roll are currently unenrolled Independents. So who are you talking to?

And so, it doesn’t matter. What Donald Trump is doing right now with mainstream media on the national level, CNN and all them, he just kicked them out of the press [inaudible] their credentials, and they’re on the sidewalk outside of the White House trying to do an interview, being fed information from inside the press room. That’s exactly what these networks are doing to me by inviting us into the debate and allowing the voters to hear the messages, to be informed voters, and not just mainstream media being able to determine who gets to be heard and who doesn’t get to be heard. That’s violation of constitutional rights, of [the] First Amendment, there’s a plethora of wrongness with it, and that shouldn’t happen.

And so then we got to talk about the money, right? So the current governor’s a millionaire, but she also has millions of dollars that have flowed into her campaign by corporations, the CEO. And then all you got to do, it’s all public knowledge. Anybody can look at ours, they can look at theirs, and you can see where the money’s coming from. And it’s all the wealth and power in the commonwealth and people of wealth and power who want to make sure that the Democratic platform stays intact.

Now look at the Republican candidate that’s running against us. He’s got a $31 million mansion in Montana somewhere, a summer home in Montana. But he, at the start of his race, said, I’m putting $10 million into this race. So they’ve got commercials running, they’ve got all kinds of stuff that we don’t have. So the only thing that we have is an opportunity to be blessed, to be invited into opportunities like this, like what you have always provided for us at Rattling the Bars, but it’s about boots on the ground. And that’s one thing that our style of organizing didn’t change because it shifted to electoral politics.

So we know how to do this. It’s still hard because you have to pay for signs. You have to pay for, even though — Here’s an example. I don’t know if you can see it because my screen —

MANSA MUSA:  Yeah, I can see it.

ANDREA JAMES:  But throughout this entire campaign, our money has been spent on toner and paper. You know what I mean? Because we’ve been talking to Independent candidates, Kshama out in Washington State, and just talking to their campaign managers about how y’all getting this done against multi, multimillions of dollars that are just, they’re not even talking about us yet because they don’t want to give any rise to the awareness of people that there is a person like myself running. So they’re just suppressing everything else by covering everything with signs, with commercials, things that we just don’t have. 

So we’re doing our best. We’re boots on the ground. It took them two days to get 10,000 signatures to get back on the ballot. It took us months because we were grassroots. I stood outside in the rain, the heat, the snow, whatever for months, personally asking people if they would sign my ballot sheet. But also it gave me an opportunity to have conversations with people about what’s their pain points, what do they need in their lives to create joy? It’s not just about the struggle we’re going through, but where are the investments to create joy in the lives of the people of the commonwealth, all of us.

So it has been a really — And then again, Massachusetts is a blue, blue state. We got a blue governor, which is another reason why I ran because I’m like, hold up. The line in the sand for me was we went — So, Massachusetts was one of three states up until 2000 that allowed incarcerated people to vote, full access to the ballot. They took that right away from incarcerated people in 2000 because the brothers inside of a men’s prison here called Norfolk State Prison started to organize themselves. And they started to organize themselves because of the hard draconian sentences that more of these young brothers were starting to come into the prison with these real heavy sentences hanging over them, young. 

And so the Legislature was predominantly white and male was like, oh wait, you going to organize yourselves and your families on the outside? We make 7% of the population, Black folks in Massachusetts. We make up 51% of the carceral population. First of all, make that make sense. Math ain’t mathing, OK?

So they said, we’re going to strip you of the right to vote. And they did. They had to move heaven and earth. They had to change the Massachusetts Constitution to strip us of the right to vote inside.

Now, we have been fighting to reinstate that ever since. And so, they got a congressional hearing in one of the sessions, and we went and poured our hearts out. And with my testimony, I lined up the fact that this is voter suppression. This goes back to denying Black people the right to vote whenever you have a disproportionality in the numbers of Black folks in the state and the levels of incarceration, on and on. Well, they didn’t even reconvene after the hearing to discuss it. It never made it out of committee. It was what every other piece of our legislation that we have worked on over decades went to what they call “went to study.” 

That was it for me. Y’all ain’t even going to huddle and discuss this after we came in and poured our hearts out about why it’s important as people who have had direct experience with incarceration for people inside to vote. I was a mother. I had a 5-month-old little baby boy when they made me go into the prison, a 12-year-old daughter, and young adult, a son and two daughters. I had good reason to still have my right to vote.

MANSA MUSA:  Right. Answer this here, Andrea. And I want you to put yourself in this space, your candidacy in this space. So when we was at the Free Her March, I asked you about that, and this is what you said. You said when we first started this, the first time we came down here, we had a hundred people. The day that we was down there, we had blocks and blocks and blocks of people. We had Freedom Plaza flooded. So that’s one. I want you to put your candidacy in these two spaces. How do you see your candidacy in this light?

I was in Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts, I think year before last, where they was doing a showing of the movie called “The Strike,” where they shut down Pelican Bay, where the men shut down. How do you see your candidacy in terms of you was in a prison where they was treating y’all like animals, y’all made y’all minds up when y’all got out, when y’all got in a position to change the narrative, you was going to change it systematically and continuously, you changed it. Her movement. 

When I was down there where the buses was at, I ran into a lot of sisters I had dealt with and interviewed. Everybody was energized. Strike. They organized this strike throughout California under a situation where they ain’t even had the ability to communicate. So put your candidacy under that type of light.

ANDREA JAMES:  Well, we did. We started our work as incarcerated women inside of a federal prison and we were like, You know what? We don’t hear nothing about us, the separation of us from our children, whatever. So we organized ourselves in that prison, and we didn’t have no way of… We were writing letters and sending kites outside, whatever we could do to raise awareness of the issue of the incarceration of women and our separation from us from our children. But if you look at the life of a woman on a prison bunk, every issue that we are fighting for has been a factor that led them to that prison bunk. The lack of housing, the lack of health care, the lack of education, the lack of childcare, the lack of resources for the most vulnerable among us. And so that’s the first thing.

The second thing is I’m older. I’m older, and they want to create a narrative, and have created a narrative, that we have no more value and we don’t count. And the issues that we’re talking about, nobody should listen to because we have incarcerated or formerly incarcerated as part of who we are. And because of that, we just valueless now. We have no more authority. We cannot be accountable. We cannot be relied upon to run these institutions, to run these states. 

And they have these positions like Qiana Johnson, county clerk. What? Come on now. We got the first formerly incarcerated Black woman who is now the clerk in Prince George’s County. This is what we talking about. We’ve got a new Black woman mayor in Washington, D.C. because of the rallying and the intense work that Black women did, formerly incarcerated Black women did, to change that and put new leadership into that seat. 

So I want to be that. Let me break the mold. You know what I mean? It’s a win-win for us as far as I’m concerned because I’m challenging that. Yeah, they’re like, oh, now they started out only writing stories. There’d be one page of a story when I announced my candidacy a year ago and the whole page was filled up linking my case and talking about my transgression of wire fraud and went to federal prison as a lawyer and one little line that said, oh, and by the way, she’s running for governor.

So I’m like, OK, somebody has to step out and kind of be like, OK, I’m the whipping post. You know what I mean? Because I’m going to push back on that. And what? I don’t have time to talk about that. I have time to talk about why it’s important to have people with direct experience who actually know and have the urgency, the transparency, the accountability that it requires that we don’t currently have from our current legislature, from our current governor, particularly in Massachusetts. Massachusetts just received the Black Hole Award in the country. That means the least transparency in any state in the United States. The least. We have the least effective legislature in the entire country. So we have to do something different. 

And they’ve made it impossible pretty much if you have a felony conviction to run for things. You can’t be a state legislator for the felony conviction in Massachusetts, but guess what they didn’t think anybody would have the nerve to do as a formerly incarcerated person? Run for governor. But also I’m not a politician. I’m a community organizer, and I have no interest in making a career out of starting from school committee and working my way up and sitting around in the state legislature. I’m going straight to the top.

MANSA MUSA:  To the top. Yeah, that’s right.

ANDREA JAMES:  Where we can get the things moving that we need to have moving. And so if this just tills the soil, I have had so many sisters in our network across the country say, hey sis, I’m going to run for office now. You’ve inspired me. That’s what I’m talking about.

MANSA MUSA:  One thing for sure and two things for certain, you got a broad network in terms, I seen the response that you got from men and women coming out that’s in this space. So what kind of feedback, because you told me earlier that you’ve been traveling across the state. And I want to say this, because Massachusetts got the misnomer of being a progressive state, the Kennedy and whatnot, but talk about what kind of response you getting from the people that you’re talking to across the state. And I know you going everywhere, every crevice. Talk about the response you’re getting from the people that’s going to be responsible for you getting elected, because I believe you can get elected and you will get elected.

ANDREA JAMES:  Well, those are the communities that I’m in where no other politicians seem to go. The people who represent those communities go there when it’s election time and then they become the untouchables. Nobody sees them or hears from them. I’ve been in the western part of the state, which is closer to New York than it is to Massachusetts. They wear Yankees caps as opposed to Red Sox hats because they are completely disconnected. I’m talking about what’s the Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, these towns that… I was in Holyoke last year and this sister said to me, you came all the way out here. And I was like, of course I came out here it’s a part of Massachusetts, isn’t it? She was like, nobody comes out here. They can’t even tell you who the governor is in those parts of the state. And it’s mostly Black and Brown. Black, Brown and poor. And they’re feeling like they don’t even vote. 

And so we have this tiny, tiny base of predominantly Democrats who are holding a party platform in place. There’s not enough Republicans in Massachusetts to make that matter. And they are predominantly white. They do not have the direct experience of struggle economically, and they have co-opted the term “progressive,” and they go to things like No Kings and hold signs because that’s the only kind of way that they’re feeling like they could make a difference. They will never vote for me. And so I’m like, if you vote for me, I would love, great, you have a choice. We just want you to know that. I [inaudible] communities that are in the housing developments, you know what I mean? Up in the projects. I’m knocking doors there. I’m talking to people in towns where people are like, Don’t nobody vote out here. And I’ve never voted. But we’ve been simultaneously doing a voter registration drive along with this campaign from day one.

We have a false belief amongst the majority of formerly incarcerated Black men that I’ve found out running this race over the past year that do not even know that they can vote because they’ve been told when they leave the prison. Massachusetts, if you’re felony conviction in a state prison, they took the right to vote. But the minute you walk out of that door, if you were registered before, all you got to do is go and vote again. If you aren’t registered, you can register and vote in the next election. We can vote as formerly incarcerated people in Massachusetts as long as we are not currently serving a state prison sentence for a felony conviction.

If you’re in jail in Massachusetts, you can vote. You can vote while you are serving a misdemeanor sentence in a county jail, access to the ballot. Do they have it? No. So those are the people that we’re talking to.

And again, we live. I get it. So many people have said to me, Black people have said to me, sis, I don’t vote. I would vote for you, but I can’t vote. I’m formerly incarcerated. We correct that and say, You can. We get them registered. We tell them, you don’t have to go into the voting place. You can get a mail-in ballot. You can do all these things. The other piece of that is no matter what, too many Black and Brown folks have said to me, I don’t even believe in the process, sis. I don’t vote. 

And now my response to that is one in six Black children in the commonwealth of Massachusetts go to bed hungry. 30,000 children, predominantly Black and Brown and poor kids, sleep in a car or under some makeshift shelter every single night in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. If they still go to school, they go to schools that are woefully, unequally funded, underfunded, and they just had more teacher layoffs.

If you say to me, I’m asking you, I’m an elder Black woman running for office. We’ve never had a candidate like me. I’m asking you to get engaged just to vote. Just vote. Vote for us. Vote for our issues. If I’m wrong, I’m willing to step out of the electoral process and to do. What are you doing? When I tell you that, do you have children? Most of them tell me yes. Do you care about the Black child over here who’s going to bed hungry every night, that’s sleeping on the street? If you have a better way to approach that, I’d like to know. If you have an alternative to getting somebody like myself in the governor’s seat to create immediate significant radical change that is going to start not from a budget that they’ve created that has no transparency, that nobody knows if it’s true, if it’s not true, that we voted for an audit that we can’t get.

We don’t know how much money’s there. We don’t know who’s deciding where money should be allocated. If you don’t understand the power to not start from a budget that we don’t even know if it’s true or not, but instead start from the issues and the people that need the support the most and make that the priority for the work and where the money is being spent. Then tell me what you have as an alternative for me to make sure as a mother who raised Black children, as a grandmother who now has grand babies and is from a community that the fabric has been shredded by all of these systems, you tell me what your proposal to me is so that I’m not wasting my time any longer so I can make sure that these Black babies and these poor families, white, Black, Brown, whatever, we don’t have any more children who are hungry and sleeping on the street.

MANSA MUSA:  Andrea, tell our audience as we close out how they can get involved with your campaign or how they can get more information rather about your campaign.

ANDREA JAMES:  We don’t have millions of dollars. We barely have any dollars. Our money comes from mostly poor, formerly incarcerated Black, white, Brown women who just are urgent to create change in their own families and communities who are struggling just to feed their kids, find a place to live and the whole bit. AJFOR — That shows my age. My kids were like, Ma, why didn’t you just put the number four? Because I didn’t know — So ajforma.com, that’s our website. You go there, there’s a volunteer form, there’s a donate button. No amount is too small. We get $5, $10, $15, $20 donations, and that has carried us for whatever we’ve been able to get the signs, whatever we’ve been able to do. We’re doing lit drops right now. Lit drops are where you carve out turf and you literally drop in literature like this so that people know we’re running and knocking on doors, door knocking.

Anybody who’s run campaigns like we have to stop prison builds and so forth, you’ve door knocked with me. Come and stand with me and door knock for this campaign now. It is change. And so that’s how they can. Ajforma.com, hit us up, send us an email, whatever you want to do, ajames@ajforma.com. All the information’s on our website. And we’ve got 45 [days]maybe, I don’t know, Nov. 3 is the election day. We are in the 11th hour, and still too many people in the commonwealth of Massachusetts who want or are looking for change don’t know about this campaign because mainstream media has intentionally left us out. And so we need help. We need boots on the ground who can go do a standout for us, disseminate our lit for us, put a yard sign if you have a yard or a window sign if you have a window. We need to raise awareness and we need to do it right now.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Reporter 1:

Breaking story in Frederick. We have been told that ICE agents have been camped out in the Taskers Chance neighborhood. Neighbors

Reporter 2:

Say ICE has made a move on one home under the cover of night. That’s exactly what you are seeing right now.

Soolah:

There were protestors next to me. There are protestors across the street. And then I turned to this car and it was right here. And then I heard out of the side, the siren go off and I turned and here’s this car coming at me from on the sidewalk. By

Reporter 1:

Friday night, protestors were chanting on the sidewalk, also trying to block the street and a home they believed ICE was targeting. That’s when Santos says ICE became aggressive. This video shows when an ICE officer drove up on the sidewalk toward protestors. Santos and local activist Sula Kemp say ICE officers became violent.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I’m standing here in Frederick, Maryland, just over an hour west from Baltimore, and I’m standing in a quiet residential neighborhood where just over a week ago, ICE agents in unmarked cars swarmed this neighborhood, surrounded the house behind me. ICE agents are on video beating peaceful protestors with their batons, menacingly driving their cars onto the curbs into the directions of protestors. And I’m standing here with Sula, who is a local resident of the area and who was here the night of those events. Sula, thanks so much for joining me here. Can you walk listeners through what happened and what you saw that night?

Soolah:

Okay. I was asked by as many people were asked to come and help. So I had that time and I was able to come down and I saw different ICE peoples actually around this whole neighborhood. They were in different pockets and locations. I hadn’t even come to this street. I had gone to two streets down and then the next street right over and you could see where they were positioned. And then there was also one that was driving around that seemed to be sort of intimidating by chasing cars, which I thought was really strange behavior because you didn’t see anything on the vehicle to say who it was. It didn’t say police, it didn’t say anything. Didn’t have any markings on the cars. So we didn’t know who they were. Assumed they were ice and their lights were just kind of on. They’re just sitting in their cars parked on the street.

So then there was a call later. I was there about three hours and then somebody had just said they need people on this street specific. So I was like, “Well, I’ll just walk over.” And they said that there was one car that had a spotlight on protestors. And what they were apparently trying to do on this street was just line the sidewalk, a public space with protestors. So that was fine. So I was like, “All right, let me take my phone and go to the other side and get the perspective of the spotlight being put onto the protestors.” So I did that. I first took a bit of video from this side as an observer and then went to the other side and stood there and watched just cars. And then all of a sudden as I was standing on the sidewalk, I heard a siren go off, just a few bursts of it.

And I happened to turn my camera and there was a car on the sidewalk coming toward me and telling me, and everybody who’s on the sidewalk, “Move, move, get out of the way.” At some point they sa, “You’re impeding a federal investigation.”

Maximillian Alvarez:

We’re talking about a car driving up

Soolah:

Right

Maximillian Alvarez:

Here where we’re standing.

Soolah:

Right. On the sidewalk, public space.

Maximillian Alvarez:

These are people’s houses. They’re driving onto people’s property.

Soolah:

Well, and if you or I had done that, what would’ve happened to us?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, they’d throw my ass in jail.

Soolah:

Reckless endangerment of people. And it was crazy. They stopped for a hot second and I jumped onto the grass at first and then I stepped back onto the sidewalk because I was like, “I don’t know what’s happening.” Just a natural response. I was like, “Wait a minute, I’m on the sidewalk.” So I stepped back on the sidewalk and then he started really coming. He did not stop and he sped up toward me first and then there was a woman behind me. And then there was another person, another protestor that they did hit and started to push with their car.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So you were standing right around here?

Soolah:

I was right here. And there was a car there. There was a car across the street. So I had my camera on this car. There were protestors next to me. There were protestors across the street. And then I turned to this car and it was right here. And then I heard out of the side, the siren go off and I turned and here’s this car coming at me from on the sidewalk. I jumped over to here. He passed me. He hit another protestor and then pushed that protestor out of the way. And then the protestors at some point have been sitting down, just linked arms, sitting down, singing and chanting right in the middle of the street, which is fine. They can do whatever they want to.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Community members surrounding one of their neighbor’s homes to try to protect them. Yeah. And then agents of the state come in and start beating the hell out of them for it.

Soolah:

Yeah. So they sat in the road and then they did get up and did that protection. And it’s a typical thing that people do to blockade, but peacefully, they didn’t do anything. They just linked arms. You can’t do much when you’re linked arms. And it’s a whole group of people. And then all of a sudden Frederick Police were coming and then they moved up to the porch area and started beating them up.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You and I are standing here right now on this quiet residential street. People who are watching this may have only seen a small slice of this street on line. What they can’t see is that this is the quietest residential street you can imagine. There’s nothing happening here. You would think with all the ICE agents and vehicles that were here last week that this would be a hotbed of overrun with criminals and criminal activity. It’s just families and houses.

Soolah:

Yeah, it’s very quiet here. You can drive around here and people are working, people are doing their lives and that’s it. So it’d be like every day storm into your everyday world in your suburban America, and that’s what happened. And when you look at now, it’s quiet, it’s peaceful here. So they brought a sense of terror and they brought a sense of unsafety. So yeah, the main set of protestors, they’re stationed on the sidewalk here right at the stop sign. There’s a whole group here. And then there was an ice vehicle here. There was an ice vehicle behind –

Maximillian Alvarez:

Right behind

Soolah:

Where I’m standing. Right behind where you’re standing. Because they started sort of parading in, it looked like a little ice parade. And I’m just joking about that because it was so weird. Once they got into the house, I could hear up in one of the rooms them banging stuff around. And another protestor had asked me, who was observing, asked me, “Do you hear that?” I was like, “Oh yeah,” because it was loud. I don’t know how the house was on the inside when this was all done, but this was a lot. And then I actually went and looked through the back part. They had a shed or some kind of building out in the back there, and you could see these guys go into the back and they started searching. They didn’t know how to get open the shed or whatever because it’s big, but eventually they did.

And it was eerie. It was very eerie.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it feels reminiscent of the Gestapo view.

Soolah:

It does because who bangs down a door like that? Who goes through looking for whomever? And apparently they didn’t take anybody. I don’t understand why it all happened in the first place.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. So all that terror for nothing?

Soolah:

All that terror for nothing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

How do you move on from something like this? How does this community move on? How are folks responding?

Soolah:

I know right now they’re collecting donations for the people who were beaten because they had hospital bills. And it’s really hard because I don’t know them all personally. I came because just like anybody else, we don’t know each other half the time, but we do see something in need. So they do have a donation set up for them specifically. I am not sure what the next steps are. I know that I have personally tried to contact the attorney general’s office a few times. I haven’t heard anything yet. And I’m hoping that somebody who’s above, in some kind of governmental stance or something, because who feels safe going to the police when you watch the police stand there? There’s the question. I didn’t report anything to them, even though I had a vehicle come at me on the sidewalk. I doubt anybody else is really going to feel comfortable or safe, and maybe that’s the point.

Maybe that was the point too. I can’t speak for that, but it’s just what goes in my head, why would I contact you to tell you what happened? So I want to go higher up.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And so when you were here and you had federal agents and unmarked cars and you also had local police, did you feel in that moment like the police were there to protect you?

Soolah:

No. And the wild thing too is on the car that, at least this car that came at me, you couldn’t tell who they were because their license plate was tinted out. There’s nothing identifying that either. So who are these people? I don’t know if Frederick Police had some kind of directive because I don’t know what even drew them out here in the first place. Maybe they heard that people were getting beat maybe, but they were here before that happened. So maybe they have to take a specific. I don’t know. I literally do not know. And if that’s the case, if they have a specific directive or they don’t know what to do, maybe that needs to be talked about. Maybe something like this, when you have unmarked cars doing reckless behavior with their cars, doing reckless behavior towards other people, what is the community’s protect and serve folks going to do for the community?

Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Who are you protecting? Who are you

Soolah:

Serving?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Not us.

Soolah:

There are tax dollars going into all of this too, that people are going to step back and go, “Wait a minute, what’s happening here? I’m putting money toward them and it’s whoever was called out here for that night.” Who knows? I don’t know. But at the end of the day, who are they protecting?

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Today we are joined by Courtney Teasley, who consider herself and identify herself as a legal disruptor and justice strategist. We’ll be discussing her perspective on how she is intervening in the criminal injustice system and her work challenging the prison industrial complex as it exists today. Thank you, Courtney. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Courtney Teasley :

Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited. I’ve heard a lot about this podcast, and so thank you so much for this opportunity to talk to your audience.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Let’s start by introduce yourself to our audience and tell our audience how you came into this space, but more importantly, what is a legal disruptor and a justice strategist? What’s your identity as how you identify those things? So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Courtney Teasley :

Yes. So my name is Courtney Teasley. I am a licensed attorney in Nashville, Tennessee. I have practiced mainly criminal defense for the last 13 years and am now a retiring lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer, because I have done all the things within the criminal justice system from teaching and training in mock trial, training and coaching other lawyers to open their own law practices, and also then to teaching as a criminal justice educator over at a historically black college and university here in Nashville called Tennessee State University. So I taught there for a number of years as well. And then that is where I was able to see the big three that were creating this cycle. I call them the big three education topics that people from what I like to call the DAMM community, D-A-M-M, and that’s the disproportionately affected marginalized minority community. And people from that community are often not educated in the big three that I call financial literacy, criminal justice literacy, or legal literacy, and civics.

And these three lead directly to mass incarceration. And so after running a campaign, it was a historical campaign here, we unseated a criminal court judge for the first time ever in Nashville. I decided to create a legal education company to help fill that gap of legal literacy that so many of us never received and that basically you had the cops saying, “Hey, ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law, but you never taught me the law.

That’s legal literacy and then financial literacy. You keep me in cycles of poverty. You keep me broke. You don’t teach me ever how to really make money.” And so that leads right back into the criminal justice system. And then finally civics, the last one we’re undereducated in, you teach us nothing more than go vote. You don’t teach us anything else around how to actively participate as a citizen. So we don’t really take advantage of the things that we should. We don’t really hold people accountable the way we should. We don’t show up the way we should when it comes to voting because of that. So that’s why I created my company is called MFN and I created it with the intent to help reduce mass incarceration.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And it’s interesting that you identify three areas that you say are essential in disrupting this cycle. So let’s talk about those. Let’s talk about those things. Walk us through your program. How do you engage the community or who is your target audience?

Courtney Teasley :

Yeah, so like I was kind of telling you why I created it, I forgot to mention a very important part of that all the things we do are proactive in the criminal justice system, meaning I feel like if mass incarceration is going to go anywhere, the efforts to fight it must happen before someone has been found guilty or someone has pled guilty. We know 97% of people take pleas. And so the majority of efforts in the criminal justice system usually are happening after someone has already pled guilty and been found guilty. They have received that ultimate if, made a felon. Their rights may be restricted. They have a lot of different things. They have a lot of different hurdles at that area versus fighting proactively where I think we can be a lot more strategic and a lot more effective. So that’s my company focusing in on the proactive portion of fighting back.

And so how we do this and how I engage in the community, and I think you asked me also who is my targeted audience. And so the ways that we’ve been. My target audience is who I was telling you, the damn community, disproportionately affected marginalized minority community, the 97% of people who take pleas, the people from areas of town that others may look down on. I’m talking about the hood.

The people who most likely come into contact with the criminal justice system, that’s my target audience. And so we engage the community through multiple efforts, whether it’s through our partnerships and collaborations with schools, churches, community centers, organizations that care, from us going out and creating the activations where we’re bringing the legal literacy, but we’re bringing it in a fun way where people actually want to take part in and they’re getting to understand it, they’re getting to participate. So we do that and then we do some advocacy training where now we train organizations how to fight back proactively. So I’m a criminal defense attorney and when I say a justice strategist, I’m a fighter and I’m a strategic person first. And

So I’m going to pull back the veil and I’m going to show you what the criminal justice system really is and then I’m going to teach you how to do what I teach my lawyers how to do, play chess and not checkers, how to fight back unapologetically, vigorously. And so that’s what we do in our advocacy training. And so that’s how we engage the community. A lot of times we’re doing events where we’re going out to people who are having events in the community and a lot of people just don’t feel competent in teaching legal stuff. And so we bring that to you because we speak the language of the damn community, D-A-M-M community, African American English.That’s how I’m so successful as a lawyer because I’m bilingual. I speak two languages and that’s how the community resonates. If my life is on the line, I don’t need you speaking above my head.

So that’s how we engage in the community in an authentic way.

Mansa Musa:

When you saying legal literacy, are you educating me on understanding my rights somewhere like the Black Panther Party had, when they came out, they was going around, they was telling people they had the right one to be on, but they wasn’t saying your right to bear saying you have a right to be arm, but you have certain rights when the police pull you up and stop you. You have a right to not say nothing. You can ask to speak to somebody. When you say legal literacy, you talking about pre, post incarceration or do you deal with people at all sectors, like a person in society or people in prison or people that got out on what we call paper, out on parole?

Courtney Teasley :

Yeah. So with legal literacy, when I’m speaking about that, we’re talking about all facets of it. So I have books already for the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, books on that. And I teach out on the Sixth Amendment because that book is not out yet. We have plenty of books that are coming out, but the Fourth and the Fifth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment is the one that just came out. And actually I’ll send y’all over a copy of it so you can check it out.

But the way that we really just break, it’s packed full of pre-protection. Now, and when I say pre-protection, that means protection that jumps in from the moment you’re accused of anything. A lot of times we like to rely on the Fifth Amendment and wait until the police tell us, oh, you got the right to remain silent or you’re being forced to testify and you’re like, oh, I plead the Fifth. However, no, the Fifth Amendment, it actually came into play the very moment you were suspected. So when that cop gave you a call and said, Hey, I want to talk to you, you know what I mean? We’ve heard from such and such. You mind coming down here talking to me? At that moment, even though they haven’t told you that you’re a suspect or whatever it may be, you have the power to say, oh, hold on.

I think I’m going to choose to stay silent. I’ll have my lawyer contact you. So you get to make a determination whether it’s in your best interest to talk about anything. So you have that pre-protection. And so that’s how we kind of engage with the amendments that really pop up in the criminal justice. The fourth, fifth, and sixth are the ones that we focus in on when we’re teaching our advocacy training. But those come into play when you’re incarcerated.

If you’re just on bail and you’re waiting, well, those are in play. Or even if you’ve been found guilty and you’re appealing, those are in play. You need to be able to understand those. And so then for other ones that we don’t have books on, then you rely on a person like myself to be able to train you on what that means for your organization or your specific

Mansa Musa:

Situation.

Courtney Teasley :

Okay.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. And then in financial literacy, because I was telling off camera that when I got out, I hadn’t established no credit, but I had established a savings. So when I went to get an automobile, my mind was I ain’t want no car note. So I wind up paying $15,000 for 2015.

Courtney Teasley :

Oh

Mansa Musa:

God. And had I had established credit, I would’ve had made out better. But since then I had established credit. I went to a dealership in 2023 and I had the same amount of money and because I had good credit, I was able to get a 2023 and I paid the same amount of money I paid to get for that 2015. So my concern with the financial literacy, what is this? Because when you talking about the damn community, a lot of us don’t have a pot to piss in the window to throw it out. So we don’t have no funds. So are you teaching how to create your own business? Are you teaching how to go about getting grant, how to get money and then how to manage it? What is this, your financial literacy model? I

Courtney Teasley :

Love that you asked that. So after I declared retirement from the practice of law, I went and got certified as a business coach and I’m also a certified strengths coach. And so I basically am talking, when I’m teaching about financial literacy, I did that to go be able to teach my lawyers who were never taught anything about business. But when we transition it over here to people in the damn community, we started the very basics, like you said, learning about building credit. It’s just something so simple that it’s like a lot of times we don’t think about it or we’ve been so used to having not so good credit that we try to disregard it, that we never try to maybe get it back together. Well, and I understand that, but I think that there are multiple ways that you can start building your credit in smaller ways that a lot of people don’t talk about.

So we like to bring in financial strategists and people who are investors who actually have done these types of things to help you understand what to do. A lot of times, think about it like this. When you were just talking about you had a savings and the thing is you’re thinking about how can you make more money? How can you do whatever? You got your job. Then it’s like, well, who is here teaching us about investing? These are things we never learned about. Nobody’s sitting here giving us the playbook on what to do or how to do it. Like you said, you might be working a dead end job, a job that doesn’t promote you. Well, then you need to learn about what kind of jobs are out there, what kind of jobs, what kind of skill set do you have? What have you already done?

And then how can we use those same skills to get you a job that now has advancement opportunities? So it’s just all of those things that come together and that comes with us partnering with other organizations and actually bringing the experts to you to be able to help understand how do I segue now? I have not partnered yet and I’m open to it. I have not yet partnered with an organization for reentry where we’re teaching the coaching to them, but I have connections with one of the world’s top traders just in the last couple of years. I did an interview with him and he’s actually a Nashville native and he came down and he did a gig where he just talked to us all about investing, the bare minimum, how to start, what to do. Then you want to get somebody else. What’s a 401k?

How do I start it? What’s the IRA? You bring the experts to be able to bring it down, take all the high paid jargon out of it and speak the language of the damn community and explain to me, how do I get my ducks in a row? How do I protect myself and my children? And so that’s what I think we do well with partnering with other orgs to help

Mansa Musa:

That. And then we talk about civic and that in of itself speaks volumes in terms of our lack of understanding of electoral process, our lack of understanding of different institutions that regulate, responsible regulatory type things that affect us. So what is your civic model? Because when we learn civic in school, we know that at a certain age you get a right to vote. We know now that that’s not a guarantee with the latest Supreme Court decision, but be that as may, what’s your civic model?

Courtney Teasley :

Yeah. So with civics, my big thing has always been people get so mad, especially the new generation, it’s like, oh my God, they don’t vote. They won’t do this. They won’t do that. And it’s like, well, you got to teach them more than just go vote. It’s more to civics than just going to vote. And I like to bring up a case that I was fighting vigorously back in 2023. It was called disruptmanchester, if you look on Instagram or Twitter. And a family with five children, five Black children were driving through Manchester, Tennessee and had their children taken and forced into foster care all over marijuana. And so in that case, I had to publicly put it out to people and let them know what’s going on in this city that we consider a sundown town. A lot of Black people have known it to be that over the years.

And so we know what it is when these people are taking Black children and forcing them into foster care. And so when you’re making it public and you’re letting other people know what’s going on, and basically I call it criminal defense organizing, “Hey, this is what they’re doing to us in real time. We need you to be concerned about what’s going on.” I want to ignite their civic abilities and a lot of times they have to know what that means. And your civic abilities just meant, “Hey, you got the power to come court watch. You know that you can come. You have a right to come into a courtroom. You have a right to sit in here and see what they’re doing.” That’s accountability, making sure that the people that your taxes pay, that they’re accountable to you. And then also when we had issues where we were saying, “Okay, well, you guys took the children.

The state trooper did this, the county did this.” Well, people started to request records. So as citizens, like, “Hey, I’m requesting to see the stop. I’m requesting to see your personnel records. I’m requesting…” So that’s the type of thing when you’re igniting people to understand that as a citizen, because government officials, public officials, you pay them, your taxes pay them, you have the right to inquire into anything that’s going on, and you have the right to demand answers, you got the right to transparency, you got the right to ask for, you can file complaints, you can come court watch. So igniting them to see that your civic duty far exceeds just voting, right? You have power and you just need to know how to utilize it.

Mansa Musa:

In the District of Columbia, before you answer, we got the right returning citizens. Anyone formerly incarcerated, you’re a DC resident, you got the right to vote. And so we got that right. But with this latest decision that came out the Supreme Court, we looking at how they might try to take that back because the federal government got complete control over the District of Columbia, everything relative to District of Columbia, the federal government. We’re not a state. We got home rule. So talk about how you look at people that’s disenfranchised because that’s your costume population specifically. And not only that’s them and their family, because their family is highly affected by their incarceration.

Courtney Teasley :

Absolutely. So basically with what you’re talking about is probably going to go more into efforts that are reactive, but very necessary. And so what I did recently is incorporate a nonprofit so that way we are able to partner with organizations that do a lot of the rights restoration. And so most recently we hosted a judicial forum and in the judicial forum, we talked about, we educated them first on what all these seats, because right now we have a special election for judges going on right now. So we educated them around that. And then we had a forum so they could hear from the people. But one of the big pieces was we wanted people who did not have their rights, who may have been made felons at young ages. We wanted them to be able to come in and inquire about how to get your rights back so we can start that process with them.

And so what we do is we’ll have them come in, let us know, “Hey, I’m interested in getting my rights back or however, just let us know you’re interested.” And then we can do the connections with making sure you get that done. And we do that through collaborating with other orgs who are already doing it. So that’s how we try and fight back reactively by partnering and empowering, kind of like you were just saying, how you give amplify people’s voices. So we try to do that with other organizations. We’ll connect with them and allow them to do what they’re doing best in that field around rights

Mansa Musa:

Restoring. Yeah. And I mentioned earlier that I was incarcerated. Prior to being released, I did 48 years in the Maryland system. And a lot of what you’re saying, we would educate ourselves on all those levels. You had guys that did financial listing, they studied the stock market. They understood it and they invested their money. We had people that was jailhouse lawyers and did legal and was proficient at that. And then we had people that came together around organizing the community around social issues in general. If a person, and I’m looking at the prison population in particular, if a person in the prison population, when they let me out, they gave me $50.

They didn’t give me no bus ticket. They let me out in the city. They let me out in Baltimore City. I reached out to my family. I ain’t know if they had got the message or not, but that’s what I left out with $50 after serving all that time. The average person leave out a prison in the Maryland system with about that much money before they leave. If they leave with any kind of money, it’s not enough money for them to sustain themselves. So what’s your economic, that component and why you call it the missing curriculum and how do that factor into the system eradicating it or stabilizing the people that’s coming out?

Courtney Teasley :

Yeah. So I love that you asked this and I think you’re talking about when I call it why financial power is a prerequisite for social justice. Because one thing for me is as a criminal defense lawyer, I didn’t take the public defender route. I didn’t want to work for the government. I didn’t want my hands tied. I didn’t want to go to handcuffs. I wanted to be able to fight because the moment you fight a little too hard, guess what they going to do? Take your money from me, right?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Courtney Teasley :

So that’s the way they keep us in order. And so I wanted to be able to fight without having that issue. And so I started to see that the fact that I was private practice, I was able to create, I charged my worth the majority of the times, but because of that, I was able to create scaling fees, sliding fees, low income, and represent people who really needed it because I charged my worth over here in my law practice the majority of the time. The people who can’t afford it were able to pay that and the people who were not able to afford it, I’m still able to represent you because I get to create that. I didn’t need the government to tell me to do a pro bono or to take a court appointment. I knew how to serve my community. And so one thing I kind of started to see is I would do all the things.

I told you I did the mock trial. I was the NAACP legal redress chair. I was the equality and justice committee chair for the Tennessee Association Criminal. I was all these things. And I started to see that real change. Y’all trying to burn me out. You know what I mean? And you’re not going to pay anybody for it. So I started to see that if the narrative being pushed is if you want to help your community, you need to do it for free and long hours, do it under a nonprofit, don’t get paid much. And I was like, well, that’s the reason none of these initiatives are long lasting.

Mansa Musa:

They

Courtney Teasley :

Only last for a little bit of time. And then as soon you run out of money and then now you can’t help anybody else. And so what we have to do is be able to be self-sustaining. So when people in our community are creating businesses, when I had my legal education company and 10% of all my product profits go back into the very people who are fighting proactively. So one of the Middle Tennessee National Action Network, I trained them and my trainings was $5,000. Well, they didn’t have to pay for that because people that actually were supporting and buying our product books and buying into our other things. And so that is, to me, a model that other businesses can take and see that, look, there are problems in our community. I’m making money over here. Well, let me figure out how to best assist.

And then that means in your situation, when you’re talking about a person coming from prison, well, if you have a business that actually cares, that you’re partnering with a business and they’re like, you know what? This is hard. People are trying to get back on their feet. We want to be able to make sure that they can do just that so that person can come and maybe they can do an externship. They can get a job over here and then they can get a stipend up front. Whatever it is, we are the ones who have to create the solutions. Nobody’s coming to save us. And the solutions that are coming through nonprofits are the monies. Come on, we’re under this administration. A lot of people aren’t getting money for anything that’s assisting Black people in general. So it’s going to be up to our community to be able to build financial power, to be able to become financially literate and to be able to be creative in actually helping assist.

For me, I care about any mass incarceration. For somebody else, it could be something different, but it’s going to be up to us to create those solutions and then partner with the ones that are doing it.

Mansa Musa:

And I think your approach to this mindfulness and skill building, it goes back to an era where we was educating for liberation. So I think we get caught up on how we see the problem and therefore we let that be determined the solution. But more importantly, who telling us what the problem is? Not so much as it how we see it. Let me rephrase that. Somebody telling us this is what the problem is, and then we say, okay, then the solution is, and trying to get a solution, it become, to your point, we try and get something from the government and the government ain’t going to fund you to get your freedom. That’s not happening. Government ain’t going to come and say, okay, because we still waiting on our 40 acres of the mule. And

Courtney Teasley :

It ain’t

Mansa Musa:

Coming. It ain’t coming. So the best thing we can do is do what we’ve been doing. But Courtney, I really appreciate you coming and having this conversation. And I hope our audience can really understand the importance of this approach, mainly when you’re dealing with the cost population. I know from experience that when people come into that system much like yourself and provide education, information and knowledge that we’re receptive. And there was a lot of people that was locked up with me, all of us that got out in the last 10 years. And a lot of what we learned while we was incarcerated, we’re doing it now in the Baltimore community and other communities. But you got the last one. What you want to tell our audience about how they can get in touch with you and how they can support your work?

Courtney Teasley :

Thank you so much, Mansa. First of all, what you just said is exactly why I’m doing the work I do and why I focus proactively prior to someone becoming incarcerated, prior to someone taking a plea or pleading guilty because I think it sucks that you did 48 years. Could you have helped me prior to that? And a lot of times you’ll see the Innocence Project, which is good and they’re doing good work, but it’s like people are only getting out and that effort’s only coming in after people have done 30 and 40 years. And it’s like, I think we can do something way before then while they’re fighting their cases more proactively. And so you can find me over on TikTok. I do a lot of legal literacy education over there. I have a whole course up there called Easy Way to On Your Right.

It’s Criminal Justice Literacy 101. It went most viral. We have over 30,000 followers and we have so many resources like a fight your case manual. So anyway, come over and follow us at MFN, that’s E-M-E-F-F-E-N. And we’re also over on, if you want to follow me personally, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, Courtney Teasley, or you can find me on Instagram @thecourtneyteasley. And so YouTube, again, we have the same thing. It’s not MFN, it’s @blacklawgirl. So if you want to find us on YouTube, it’s @blacklawgirl.

Wherever I am, look, come find me, come get me, and let me know. I love to come collaborate with y’all wherever you are. Let me bring the legal literacy and let me bring it in a fun way that’s easy to understand.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, this is Taya Graham and welcome to this breaking news edition of the Police Accountability Report. Now, as I always make clear, this show has a single purpose, holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. But today, we will achieve that goal with a little bit of a twist and a surprise, an exclusive interview with a controversial cop watcher who was just released from a halfway house in Colorado after spending five years behind bars. His name is Eric Brandt. He’s a Denver activist and advocate for the homeless, also a prolific YouTuber who built a large following with his antics on the streets and his successes in the court. Now, Eric’s thought copwatching isn’t for everyone. His tactics were flamboyant, to say the least.

Some said they were simply over the top. Law enforcement often deemed them illegal. In 2021, Eric was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of telephonic harassment of Denver judges. The charges with results of serious threats that were made over the phone. However, the sentence was also considered extremely harsh at the time, and Eric apologized to those affected. And now, due to good behavior and perseverance, we have the breaking news. Eric was released today, and we’re going to be talking to him for his first interview since his exit from the aforementioned halfway house. But first, I want to check in with my reporting partner and co-host Stephen Janis. Now, Stephen, Eric is not just someone we covered, but he was also the subject of our most recent documentary, I Am But the Mirror of the Story of American Copwatching. Can you tell us a little bit about the documentary and Eric’s role in it?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, it basically was about Eric because when Eric received such a harsh sentence, we though we had to tell his story in depth. So I spent years becoming an Eric Brandt expert. I would say unequivocally, I am the foremost Eric Brandt expert in America at this point. So if anyone

Taya Graham:

Wants to talk – At least on the

Stephen Janis:

East Coast. Yes. But I mean, Eric’s story was a story of great achievement and great tragedy. And he was extremely creative, but also controversial. And I think as you said, he received this very harsh sentence. So it really gave us a prison to look at copwatching in general because copwatching is a very creative sort of organic movement. Eric was a part of it. And looking through the lens of Eric’s experiences, I think made the film really interesting. So I was appreciative of having that access to his life. And now, like I said, I’m ready for my interview on NBC, ABC, anyone wants to talk about Eric Brant, come to me. I’ll talk.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Now, before I get to Eric, I just want to say Eric was one of the most colorful cop watchers we have ever seen. He is a Navy veteran who served his country and he’s also a prolific filer of very successful lawsuits. But more important today, he was released from a halfway house. It marks the end of a five year ordeal for him. Eric, welcome back and thank you for joining us.

Eric Brandt:

Thank you, Taya.

Taya Graham:

Now first, Eric, I have to ask, how are you feeling and what was going through your mind when you finally walked out that door for the final time?

Eric Brandt:

Sorry.

Taya Graham:

I can understand it. I’m sorry, Eric. I know it can be tough to talk about. Just take a moment if you need it.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, take a moment, Eric.

Eric Brandt:

Sorry guys.

Stephen Janis:

No, no.

Taya Graham:

It’s okay. Take a moment.

Stephen Janis:

Of course. Of course.

Taya Graham:

We understand. Absolutely. At five years and finally having this moment, there are a lot of emotions that must be coming to the

Stephen Janis:

Forefront. Do you want us ask another question or?

Eric Brandt:

Well, I guess you saw it now that I just had the release. Yeah. Wow, that kind of hit me. Yeah, you asked me what I was feeling and I was like, oh, I guess I am having a feeling. Yeah. It’s

Taya Graham:

Understandable.

Eric Brandt:

It’s been the last two weeks have been surreal, right? Honestly, I’ve been like blah. I know that the date is there. I don’t have anything else to do. I just work. I know that I’m going to have a computer, so I don’t want to do any of my litigation work on the phone. It’s too hard. So I’ve just been blah, milling around for the last two weeks and that’s crazy. I know. And today I had administrative things that I had to do and I’m sorry that I lost it on your camera.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s okay. It’s completely understandable.

Stephen Janis:

I remember Eric when we were talking maybe a year ago, you thought the parole board was not going to grant you release. What do you think finally convinced them? I know you’ve been on great behavior and you hit every achievement you were supposed to inside the system. What do you think kind of finally pushed you out that door?

Eric Brandt:

I don’t know what eventually convinced them to release me. I’m a little surprised that I wasn’t released earlier. The risk instruments suggested that I should have been. So I really was pessimistic about it. And then when I got the halfway house, I was surprised the halfway house application went by very quickly. Once I was in the halfway house, parole was likely at that point. And I know that you and I talked about things. I didn’t really share a lot of that with the public at the time because there were certainly opportunities for people to try and sabotage that. But

Once I was at the halfway house, I had a pretty high degree of comfort that they would choose to release me. And then I had my hearing and it went status quo. It went what the instruments should have suggested, which is release upon completion of the halfway house program. I think that’s what the public expects, right? If they release you early before you finish the program, they’re like, “What’s the purpose of the halfway house program?” If they were to have delayed that further, then they would almost have to justify that publicly. So I think that that was really the only appropriate answer. And you and I knew about this, of course, some time ago, but again, we kind of kept it under wraps for a while.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Eric, I hate to take you back to the past, but it’s something that a lot of us have difficulty imagining. If you could just talk about what those past five years incarcerated were like, how did you survive them and what did you do to help work towards actually getting out?

Eric Brandt:

Well, for one thing, I’m not criminally minded, right? So I’m in with a bunch of criminals. You get to know these people. A lot of the guys that are in there, they’re in there for a reason. And all of my instruments scored pretty low on things and my requirements and my needs were a lot lower than a lot of people. I have good education, so I wasn’t in a lot of the educational programs. So my situation was a little different. Behaving is actually easy to do. And I know that when people look at my work, what they see is misbehavior and they really have to delve deeper. And then I think that you guys did a pretty good job of that with the documentary, which I recently got to see finally. But there’s a lot that was going on there. So it wasn’t misbehavior because it was misbehavior.

It was misbehavior or civil disobedience, if you will, for a purpose. And so the classic things that I didn’t have the sexual misconduct issues that are prevalent in there. I didn’t have the theft. I didn’t have the violence, the frauds, drugs, all of these things that are really what the majority of the people I was around were involved in, that just wasn’t me. So behaving was always easy for me and my five-year track record shows that. So what did I do? I used my time to help develop programs. I helped develop a veterans program. We did a lot of service. We did a lot of community service, not just in service to the guys in the prison, but we actually extended that and did community service in the local community.

Taya Graham:

Didn’t you help pack up Thanksgiving dinners for families outside of the prison?

Eric Brandt:

Oh yeah, absolutely. We got feedback from that immediately too. We raised money internally from the inmates and we were able to raise enough money to put together. The first year we did it, we made 40 boxes and it was a complete Thanksgiving dinner box for a family. So everything that you would have at Thanksgiving was in this box. And we got immediate feedback. One guy, his wife had just passed and he didn’t know what he was going to do. And then we got a thank you card from a family whose house had just burned down. They were moved into a hotel room with their three kids. They had nothing except for the Thanksgiving dinner box.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Well, Eric, was there ever. I remember talking to you when they brought you down to Louisiana for that other case. Was there ever a time when you kind of gave up hope or you felt like we’re not. Because I remember being really worried about you in that particular part. And just so people know who are watching, we talked to Eric at every point that we could while we were working on the film and just trying to keep in touch with him. Was there ever a point where you’re like, “I’m never getting out of here,” or you ever felt like this wasn’t going to work out for you?

Eric Brandt:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. When I went in, 12 year sentence, I was pretty harsh and I always believed in the back of my mind that there would always be something else. They would drag something up from somewhere. And so then when they grabbed me for Louisiana, I was like, “Yep, this is what I expected.” So I already pretty much knew going into it that that was going to be the rest of my life.

Taya Graham:

Eric, I have a question. There were a lot of people who stood by you during this incarceration and they were ready to stand by you for the full 12 years. What do you want to say to those supporters who stuck by you during your incarceration? What would you want to say to them?

Eric Brandt:

What is wrong with you people?

Taya Graham:

That’s an Eric Brandt answer. Yes.

Eric Brandt:

I can’t even begin to quantify or even understand the tremendous amount of sacrifice that so many people have made. And we have as a group consciously. Again, you and I have had so much communication in the last five years that we haven’t shared with the public and for good reason, but I’m perpetually blown away at how much support there is. I couldn’t have done it without you guys and I couldn’t even begin to list all of the names. I’d almost feel embarrassed if I listed one because I wouldn’t be able to list all 5,000 of them. But I would get things out of the blue from people. Marita Gladson, I’ll tell you about Marita Gladson. She sent me cartoons and jokes on a nearly weekly basis for the entire time. Oh my

Taya Graham:

Gosh. That’s

Eric Brandt:

Amazing.

To the point there where we would come downstairs and check the list to see if we had mail for the day and the officers would be in there and they would see me in the hallway and they’d wave me over because they saw Marita’s envelope and they knew they were going to get their Marita jokes that day. They recognized the Marita envelopes. Lacey R. Abby Irizarry, Melody, Johnna, Aaron, Joe Cool. I mean, some of these people, do you have any idea how angry these people would get if I didn’t call them by a certain time of the day? And you know how I knew they were angry is because the captain would call me to the office and want to know why he was getting phone calls.

Taya Graham:

There you go.

Stephen Janis:

That’s cool.

Taya Graham:

It just shows how much concern these folks have for you.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

I was going to ask you, because I never really got a chance to ask you this, but when you were in that courtroom and they gave you 12 years, because I did a lot of research, I could not find a sentence for threatening speech without some act of violence, which you did not do anywhere across any case I could find. I couldn’t find a case even remotely close. I mean, people threatened congressional members of Congress and got in two or three years. What did you think when the judge handed down that sentence and why was it 12 years?

Eric Brandt:

I’m stunned. To this day, I find it stunning. I turned to my lawyer and I said, “Did he say consecutive?” And she’s like, “I think he did.” We didn’t even comprehend it at the time. And you have to maintain a certain kind of decorum in that circumstance, and it was really my intention to accept my consequences with dignity.

Taya Graham:

I just want to pivot here a little bit because we haven’t really had a chance to speak to you publicly about the film that featured your story. Now you’re not the only cop watcher in the story, but you are a central figure. Now, okay, I’m not saying you have to necessarily give the film a thumbs up, but how did you feel watching your life unfold on screen?

Eric Brandt:

Well, so full disclosure to everybody, when I was in Louisiana, you guys sent some draft work to my lawyer. It hadn’t been through any post-processing. It wasn’t complete, but you sent it to her in case there was anything in there that we could use for mitigation. I thank you. I appreciate that. So I had the opportunity to see it or to see parts of that. I got to see it once through just really briefly. The first thing that I noted to my lawyer was I said, “Thank goodness it’s not all about me.”

Taya Graham:

It was

Eric Brandt:

Such a great story and so much of that story was not me. And that’s the point, right? I’m only on this stage for a brief time and the world is run by those who show up, and it was nice to see that there was momentum and good happening in people’s lives. It was so nice to see so many different positive aspects of all these people that are in union with my circle, but they’re doing their own thing. I was just so thankful that it wasn’t about me. Thank you. I’m

Taya Graham:

So glad. It was such a pleasure to work with you and to, like you said, one of the things that we learned through doing the documentary is that there was this circle of people that you touched that sort of reached out kind of like a constellation all across the country. And it was kind of amazing to see the effect that the copwatching and the copwatching community was having in communities all across the nation. So it was really beautiful.

Stephen Janis:

One thing I was making, I was like, the whole idea of YouTube is the minute you go on YouTube, things just go downhill and you don’t connect. But you guys were the opposite of that. It was like you went from YouTube into real life connections where

Eric Brandt:

You

Stephen Janis:

Were – It’s amazing

Eric Brandt:

How many of those connections are still active.

Stephen Janis:

I know.

Eric Brandt:

It’s impossible for me to respond to everybody in a given day. It’s just so much going on and there’s so many people involved and these are real people with real lives and yet still somehow find time for each other. And that’s what I really got out of your program was that things are really kind of good out there. People are living lives and that’s all we can hope for is that people live a good life.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I didn’t want to just fall into the same narrative of the YouTube spiral, which is sort of the mainstream media take on it that, oh, these are people who were like-minded in their pushback against what they felt was a faulty government, and they were able to help connect with each other in ways that were not possible without YouTube. So that’s why I focused on that part of it. I didn’t just do you got sentence. That was the beginning, but really the end was about what came out of those relationships. It’s cool to hear you say that you still have them, right? I mean, you’re still connected to these people.

Eric Brandt:

And what I think is really great is that so many of these people, they’re able to live their lives and then we touch and our gears mesh for a little while and then we live our lives. So we’re not dependent on each other. If you go off and do your thing, you’re not going to ruin my life. You’re not going to ruin my life. You’re going to enrich my life while we’re connected, and I am happy that you’re enjoying your life when we’re not connected. And so a lot of folks, we touch and then we go and we touch and we go. And even a lot of people that maybe there wasn’t a great super mesh, it’s still there. I think that’s how human connections work.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I agree. One thing I wanted to ask you about, I’ve always wanted to ask you this, you have a lot of fans and a lot of critics and some people who say Eric Branch just went too far. I don’t care what he wanted or how he felt about the homeless or police. What do you say to them now? Given the perspective you have of more time, how do you feel about the people who are like, “I think Eric Branch is into the antics. He’s not really fighting for something specific, but just making a show.” How do you answer them now?

Eric Brandt:

Well, I suppose that’s a compound and complicated question.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, sorry.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I was never in it for the antics, right? The street theater was the vehicle. Sorry, our rooster is apparently objecting to the interview over here.

Stephen Janis:

He doesn’t like your answer?

Eric Brandt:

No, the rooster of. I have a critic right here. No, I mean, I don’t know how you address critics. I have. I’m sorry, guys.

Stephen Janis:

No, it’s okay.

Eric Brandt:

He’s got to get his girls under control here. I’ve actually spoken with a lot of my critics, and I have a lot of critics who have turned. I would say critics that have turned friend or at least friendly, and that’s important. So the reality is I’ve never been afraid to sit down and talk with somebody intellectually, but sometimes it’s really hard to open the door, and sometimes the contrast is important too. So for example, if you look at my five-year institutional record, they make notes, they put things in the notes, you can read that and you can see the character of the person. And what you see in there is a lot of interactions with would-be foes, right? These are cops. It’s the government, it’s the man. The reality is that you are the government.

I am the government. This is government by the people, and governed by the people only works when the people bother to show up and do it. So when we have put trust, and frankly, a lot of money in the hands of these strangers, then yeah, we need to have good relationships with them. And different kinds of message and different kinds of activism at different stages requires a different kind of hat to be worn, and I’m very good at wearing the hat that’s necessary or that the work tells me it needs to be worn at the time. So what would I say to my critics? I would say, “Come have a conversation with me.” I’m not going to put any of my critics on blast. They might not appreciate that, but those of you that are watching, you know who you are, and we’ve had some good conversations, and I would have those conversations again.

Taya Graham:

It’s interesting you were talking about wearing the different hats, because one of the difficult parts of the film was trying to show how many successes you had at filing lawsuits, and you had a really big win with Liberty Freak, making case law that I believe enshrines in the 10th circuit, the right to film police. I think this came out when you were incarcerated, that’s when that ruling came out. So what are your thoughts about this win, and do you have any other lawsuits that are still cooking?

Eric Brandt:

I don’t have any that are still cooking. We had some pretty good ones going and the defendants died, and that pretty much puts an end to the litigation because you can’t get damages out of a corpse. I think I’ve had now, in my entire career, I’ve had three or four defendants die before trial. That’s terrible for a lot of reasons, and your questions don’t get answered because the litigation becomes moot. When I came to the halfway house, for the last two years, I’ve had no litigation open. I do have an active litigation right now that I can’t really talk a whole lot about.

Taya Graham:

You

Eric Brandt:

Can read what’s been filed on Pacer, that’s as much as I can give you now, but that litigation is earned, and there are some questions that need to be answered there. I lost track of the question. What was the question? Litigation successes.

The point of the work is not to have a litigation success, right? There’s no such thing as a successful litigation. All litigation is injurious, and so I wouldn’t encourage people to do litigation or to go into it for the litigation. The risks are very high. Take the liberty freak when Irizarry versus Yahia, for example. I was the primary author of that initially because we were together, and you may recall that I actually was found guilty for that incident, and so therefore I lost my part of that lawsuit under collateral estoppel. It was barred because I had been found guilty, and I, in fact, got a six-month jail sentence out of that. So this guy tries to run me over, and I ended up with a six-month jail sentence out of that, but Abboty didn’t. Abody didn’t even get charged, so his continued to move forward.

When the judge granted the officer’s qualified immunity, that’s when things really sped up. We learned that a lot of people watch these cases. The attorneys that wanted to take up that appeal crawled out of the woodwork for him. So getting it to the 10th circuit, yeah, that was my work in collaboration and collateral with Abody. Is that a great success? Well, no, there’s no such thing as a litigation success. It would’ve been better if it had been legislated instead of litigated. So I don’t consider litigation to be a success. Good litigation is difficult, it’s expensive, it’s risky, and you really don’t know what the outcome is going to be. As strong as you. You’ve got a slam dunk case. Slam dunk in the real world is like 80%. You’re not going to get better than that. You could get a weird adverse ruling and lose a perfectly good case, or more importantly, you could have a really good question with the wrong judicial environment to bring it in, and you could end up with a bad ruling.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, we end up in the Fifth Circuit, which is also where good lawsuits go to die.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. I’m pretty sure that the Fifth Circuit placed a moratorium on brains. I read that somewhere.

Stephen Janis:

Which for people that don’t know, Fifth Circuit basically covers Texas.

Eric Brandt:

I know.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just letting people know who don’t know because we’re talking about 10th Circuit would be the Denver area.

Eric Brandt:

Let me tell you one of the great comedies in my life is the Ninth Circuit.

Stephen Janis:

Which is where? Which is, just so people know.

Eric Brandt:

Okay. This is where the comedy comes in. The Ninth Circuit includes Idaho and California.

Taya Graham:

That’s a little

Eric Brandt:

Schizophrenic.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Wow.

Eric Brandt:

And it’s dominated by the San Francisco side, so those poor libertarians up in Idaho have to endure this liberal shit. Can I say shit on TV? I’m sorry.

Stephen Janis:

No, no, no. Speak the truth. No, I

Eric Brandt:

Do find that to be judicially comedic.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Eric Brandt:

Litigation successes though. I mean, the litigation is necessary sometimes, unfortunately, and it’s part of how we push back. There’s virtually never any accountability at the street officer level, and that’s unfortunate. And how much better would the world. Do you have any idea how many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on attorney’s costs in Irizarry versus Yahia?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, you had the electronic frontier, you had the Cato Institute.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, you had amicus briefs that were supporting you from really great

Stephen Janis:

Institutions. From really high powered organizations that probably have very expensive lawyers, I would imagine.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah. I hope that didn’t buzz through on you. I’m rejecting a call. I’m sorry. Yeah. Even in my case with the jury nullification, we had the ACLU come out from New York. Wow. They were given time to speak at the questioning of the Supreme Court here, Colorado Supreme Court. We had an amicus brief again from the Cato Institute, surprisingly. And if you took. Well, let’s take a look at the Westminster case. I was arrested for speaking about police brutality at the public microphone. It took six years to get to trial. Six years.

Taya Graham:

The

Eric Brandt:

Federal jury was impaneled. They found the city guilty or liable. In civil court, it’s liable. They found him liable of violating the First Amendment by dragging me out of the podium and arresting me for trying to talk about police brutality at my public microphone time. And I will tell you that I did tell the mayor it would be in his best interest if he let me finish my speech. That case cost the city of Westminster about $400,000 just in attorney’s fees alone.

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Eric Brandt:

And the judgment was fairly small. It was $12,000. So you want to talk about litigation successes. There’s not a lot of money in civil rights, right? I wasn’t beaten. I was in jail overnight.What’s the real injury here? The real injury is to the community. It’s to the constitution. So while prosecutors like to say, “Oh, all these crimes, the victim is the community.” Well, that’s also true with civil rights violations, but they don’t pay out. So the fee shifting, the ability to recover attorney’s fees if you win is great. That can help convince cities to settle with you, but unfortunately, that’s money that does not go into officer training.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, good point.

Eric Brandt:

So we have a bunch of officers that we’re going to presumably say that at least a substantial fraction of them go into the business because they want to do something good for the community. And what they end up is they end up in this morass of, “I have to write my report a certain way so that I don’t lose my case.” That takes a few years for them to figure that out. So the reports go from being detailed and honest to being vague and boilerplate and embellished, and they’re not really remembering the incident. They know how to write the charges for the eight big charges that they file on a daily basis, and it’s really not refreshing their memory. It’s just one of the things. So they become jaded, and you have to remember that they’re being trained by a population that believes that they’ve been taxed enough already.

So we’re giving them the absolute most training that we can squeeze out of a population that is taxed enough already. Now, layer that onto the litigation costs. So Westminster, instead of being able to pay $400,000 for officer training, they instead paid lawyers to take that money out of their community. Those property owners were taxed for that.

That cost of litigation passes right onto the bill with no representation. Cost of litigation is the one thing that they tax you on that you don’t have a say because it has

Taya Graham:

To be

Eric Brandt:

Paid. So the community paid for that. Did they really get a half a million dollars worth of training out of that? And I seriously I don’t really question that. So what’s the word there? Again, there is no such thing as successful litigation. All litigation is an injury to the community and to everybody involved.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Eric, let me shift gears a little bit here. What do you think, you remember people called you a copwatcher. I think you were a copwatcher. I don’t know if

Taya Graham:

You’ve

Stephen Janis:

Been able to follow it from prison, but what do you think about the copwatcher movement at this point that you were a big part of? And in some cases it seems like it’s like James Freeman took down his YouTube channel. There’s been a lot of, I think, commotion in the community. Do you think it’s still as viable as it was five years ago or is it kind of waning or what do you think?

Eric Brandt:

Well, let me first be honest that I don’t have enough time to watch all of these channels. Right,

Stephen Janis:

Of course.

Eric Brandt:

So I guess I’ll give you some off the cuff observations that I’ve made in the last few months that I’ve been able to do that. First of all, when you put yourself out there and you put yourself in the public light, not only do you have supporters, but you also have critics.

And worse than critics is you have the silent enemies. You have the people that are watching your channel just to find the grew up. No, I’m talking about when your life is completely on blast all day long, then you have placed a target on your back. The guy in Texas, the head of the police union, Grimaldi or whatever his name is, I remember him saying once, “We are sick and tired of having a target on our back every day.” And I’m thinking to myself, “Well, stop putting it there.” Well, that’s the same thing with a copwatcher. You’re sticking your neck out. You are exposing yourself to liability. You’re exposing yourself to them taking a tiny little jaywalking ticket and turning it into a prison sentence. You have to look at the great risks that are there. If you have a family, if you have kids to pick up from school and you get arrested doing activism, social services is happy to give those kids a ride and you’ll see them in six months maybe.

If you have a mortgage, you can’t. We’ve seen a lot of cop watchers. I’m using the term copwatcher very loosely. I’m not famous.

Stephen Janis:

I’m famously

Eric Brandt:

Despised labels, but I’ve known a lot of activists, we’ll call them activists, that have lost their employment over their activism. So cops do go to these employers and say things to them and try to do that. That’s another reason why I’ve not shared where I’m employed because I don’t want turmoil with my employer. Does that make sense? That totally makes

Stephen Janis:

Sense. Because

Eric Brandt:

There’s risks there. There are mala factors out there. If we say that 99% of the population is good and 1% is genuinely malevolent, then if you have a channel with a hundred thousand people, you still have a thousand malevolents out there working against you and you’re just one person. Yeah. I haven’t thought of that way. There’s a lot of risk there. And so it’s not at all a surprise to me that some of these activists are flash in the pan, if you will. They do their little activism, they get into a little bit of trouble, then they’re done. And that’s as much as we can expect out of a population, that’s a tax. People can only handle so much tax and so much pressure. It requires all kinds. I will say, I don’t think I’m a big fan of the standing on the side of the road with the Zoom lens in the dispensary.

I’m not sure that I’m really advancing the First Amendment. I may be creating animosity with the First Amendment if we’re basically going after private citizens. And I’m not a big fan of the watch these people freak out until the one asshole gets sauced. I’m not a fan of that. I don’t think that that’s advancing the First Amendment very well. I think that that’s trying to make money in clicks and views. I’m not finding a lot of value in that work, but that makes me the critic and they have to make their own decisions. So

They’re there and I think that we have to tolerate it and accept it whether we like it or not. And you may like it, I don’t know. And your viewers may like that stuff. It does seem to get noticed, but that’s not my fan. My attack is against the government. I want government actors to be made aware and I want the public to be aware of the government misconduct because they’re the ones that ultimately make the decisions. They make the pressure. If you’re out there on the street creating the scene, then there are people in the back that are talking about it. If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to you about the power of how these things make it to the dinner table conversation. I had jury selection going on in an incident in Westminster, this is now about a decade ago, and we’re questioning the jurors.

And one of the jurors says, “I don’t know if this is the same guy, but my kids came home from school a while back and they were talking about a guy with this big sign and with this uncomfortable message. And we had to explain to our kids that this was not the language that we espouse, this is not how we like to live in our lives, but they used it as the teachable moment to explain the function of the First Amendment and the Constitution. So who am I to say that a particular incident does not reach the dinner table in a certain way?” And ultimately those are the people that talk in the background and that’s where the real power comes from. So I think that copwatching is still active and alive. I still see it. I do like some of these channels like John Eagle’s channel and Audit the Audit channel where they kind of go in depth on the story and they seem to put a lot of work into that.

And I would certainly, what’s that channel? She’s got the hair. We were talking with her earlier today. Oh, the police accountability report, that one.

Taya Graham:

I’m glad I’m on your list. Of course

Eric Brandt:

You’re on my list. But these are also important, right? So you have this street antagonism and then we have Tea Graham coming into us with the intrepid reporter in the field, Stephen Janice, and they kind of break down an incident or they break down a story. There’s a lot of money that goes into that kind of journalism. And so it’s so complicated and there’s so many moving parts and it’s really important for people to appreciate all of them.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, we confronted that, but go ahead Tea, you had the next question.

Taya Graham:

I wanted to ask you something because we’re talking about criticism and I was just wondering, just looking back on your life, on your activism, do you have any self-reflection or criticism for yourself? Because I know, for example, I was there when you were in the courtroom in Colorado and I saw you make a statement apologizing to the folks who were affected by your speech. But looking back now, do you have any criticism for yourself or is there anything you would change?

Eric Brandt:

Oh, that’s a complicated question. Do I have criticism for myself? Absolutely. And a lot of criticisms are internal. Some of them we’ve talked about. Yeah. I mean, nobody gets it right all the time. And that’s kind of the problem when you’re out there with the spotlight on you 24 hours a day is that all of your flaws are out there. And I’ve owned my flaws. I tell people I’m bulletproof. Everybody knows I’m a schlub, right? I mean, pick the negative moniker and I’ve probably done it at least once. So that makes me essentially bulletproof. You can’t attack me. Go ahead. Try to insult me. And you have to, to a certain degree, have that kind of attitude if you’re going to go into this. You have to have a thick skin. You have to be able to handle it. I will confide in you now today that what really pushed me over the edge was them taking Otto’s kids.

Taya Graham:

That

Eric Brandt:

Was existential to me. That was so horrible. And that was too much vicarious trauma for me to endure that broke me.

Stephen Janis:

I’m sorry, Eric.

Taya Graham:

I understand that. A lot of people were very deeply affected by that.

Eric Brandt:

Oh, horribly affected. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And just because he was with us, all that, I’ve seen all of that case from both sides. I’ve seen all the body camera footage and none of it made it any easier to swallow. It made it harder. It was even harder if you knew the backside of it. So I’ll tell you that the biggest criticism is that I had too much going on at the same time. I mean, my strength was that they would kick me down and I would get right back up. And I had so many things that were being juggled and then the auto incident was just more than I could bear.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Just so people who are watching, just so they know, Otto, the watchdog, he took his kids camping and they separated him from his kids accusing him of –

Eric Brandt:

For three years.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, for three years. So it

Taya Graham:

Was an ordeal. And that’s for Otto’s First Amendment activism. Otto was primarily, essentially police would approach him for holding signs. He was not putting a camera – Still approach him. He still out there. He’s still out there holding those signs, but putting cameras in people’s faces. He wasn’t approaching police officers. He was merely standing on the side of the road holding signs. And that was the beginning of his persecution.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, Eric, so what’s next for you? I mean, we’re kind of wrapping up and listen, we appreciate your time.

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. Oh,

Stephen Janis:

I appreciate your time. What’s next for you? What’s your future look like? I mean, people want to know, what are you going to do next?

Eric Brandt:

I had intended to get out and go to the ranch and build my ranch. And there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there and that’s my forever home. That’s what I want to build.

Stephen Janis:

With a septic tank, right?

Eric Brandt:

With the septic tank, right? My life’s ambition is a pile of shit and I’m excited about it. Well, I think it’s – Oh, you guys

Taya Graham:

Are

Eric Brandt:

Going to have to bleep out a lot on this video, aren’t you? Yes. I

Taya Graham:

Think it’s absolutely wonderful that you’re creating a life for yourself where you’re going to be able to live off the land and give back to the land, help cultivate your chickens, maybe grow some food. I’m really into pepper stuff myself, ready for the urban apocalypse. So I definitely appreciate being able to live off the grid. Well, if

Stephen Janis:

There is no population left

Taya Graham:

There.

Eric Brandt:

I want to essentially build a biodiverse zone.

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Eric Brandt:

My goal is 50 trees a year for 10 years.

Stephen Janis:

Oh,

Taya Graham:

That’s

Stephen Janis:

Great.

Eric Brandt:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Very nice.

Eric Brandt:

I hate to say, I have a certain amount of experience and education and expertise, so you’re not going to see Eric Brandt running down the street with sparkly purple toenails and a giant fuck the cop sign. That’s just not in the cards. So

Stephen Janis:

Those days are over. Those days of crazy YouTube videos are over.

Taya Graham:

No more Pikachu outfits.

Eric Brandt:

Maybe Pikachu.

Taya Graham:

Don’t give

Eric Brandt:

Up Pikachu. My situation is now different, right? I can’t tolerate another prosecution. The most minor thing now, if I lose, would be a very major thing for me.

Stephen Janis:

Eric, well that- That’s great. I kind of had a feeling that you weren’t going to stop working on this type of reforming the criminal justice system. And I commend you and laud you for that. That something you’re doing when you just got out. But we really appreciate you joining us today. Absolutely. It’s been fascinating discussion. We have very much enjoyed covering your career and film. Yute, you want to

Taya Graham:

Take up? And also being one little part of that constellation, of that Eric Brandt constellation. We’re grateful for you helping us be a part of that community. So thank you, Eric.

Eric Brandt:

Thank you so much for being there.

Taya Graham:

We really appreciate you joining us and sharing your thoughts and your feelings during this critical moment in your life. And we really appreciate your candor about copwatching and the criminal justice system and your own personal reflections about what you’ve been through. Now, Steven, for me, there’s not going to be any rant today for me. I mean, I thought this was a really profound conversation. I feel like there’s nothing I have to say here. I mean, love them or hate him. Eric is always insightful and thoughtful and kind of a mad genius, but not just about his own work, but the broader issues that prompted his activism. But Steven, before I walk us out, do you have any thoughts about our discussion?

Stephen Janis:

Well, it’s just interesting that Eric has projects already kind of percolating to do reform. It’s interesting to see that the activists within him did not die in prison. It came out. And also, well, I think a lot of people don’t understand the trauma of being incarcerated.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

And to see Eric’s emotional reaction should be, I think everyone should see that because it’s not a big deal. It’s not a small deal to put someone in a cage and confine them. And Eric showed how that affected him. And I think we should all recognize that. Absolutely. We have to be careful about how we run our criminal justice system for a variety of reasons. But the emotional toll it took on him really moved me. And also the fact that he understood that we tried to connect the dots in his life and others and show it in a way that wasn’t just mercenary or that we use the conflict to create a story, that we showed a story of some positivity and some true emotional connections. So I was really glad that he saw that because I worked very hard to try to bring that out of the film.

So it wasn’t just about crazy cop watchers. As Eric points out, they’re people with lives.

Taya Graham:

Steve, that’s a really good point. I mean, we could have made that documentary incredibly sensationalistic, but instead what we wanted to show was the community that was there. And I’m really glad that Eric was so open with us. Okay. We’re going to keep you up to date on Eric and his work, putting his life back together, and also his upcoming litigation or legislation. We’ll see what happens. And we’re also working on new episodes of the police accountability report, which we hope to debut soon. So please stay tuned. And finally, our camera will be in the courtroom when a judge hands down his decision in the dramatic trespassing trial of Long Island Audit. This was after the popular cop watcher defended himself against charges that he broke the law when he knocked on the door of Connecticut State Trooper Brian Fahey. And as always, please be safe out there.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to this breaking news edition of our Police Accountability Report livestream. Now, we decide to do the show because there have been serious widespread disruptions across the 1A and Copwatcher YouTube community, namely a broad and still unexplained demonetization of an array of channels related to both copwatching and First Amendment auditing. Whether this is targeted, random, part of YouTube’s overhaul to its partnership system, what it means for some very popular activists is what we will unpack today. And to help us, we’ll be joined by two influential copwatchers, Long Island Audits, also known as Sean Paul Reyes and Wright’s Crispy or Finn Vargas. Both have been instrumental members of the Copwatcher movement and both have been affected by YouTube’s mysterious move to end their ability to monetize their content, at least on YouTube for now. But before I get to them, I want to check in with my reporting partner, Steven Janis, who has been researching and reporting on what’s happening.

So Stephen, thank you for joining me indoors. Tay,

Stephen Janis:

Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be indoors. I don’t plan to stay here, so let’s get this going.

Taya Graham:

All right, so let’s get right to it, Steven. What is the scope of this move by YouTube and perhaps its origins?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, we’ve been debating that and it seems like it kind of came out of nowhere. There was no warning to any of the channels and it’s really difficult to decipher because YouTube has not made any public comments on why this has happened, but it has caused a lot of distress in the Copwatcher community. We’ve been hearing from many channels about this. People that we know, people that we’ve been talking to for years have reached out to us and told us this is happening, but no one seems to know why we have a theory we’re going to talk about in a second, but it’s just kind of like out of nowhere.

Taya Graham:

Oh, and I also want everybody watching to know, as you can tell, this is very live and we’re going to do our best to put your chats on screen and to also read your comments whenever possible. But let me just get back up right into it. I just want to say hi to the mods out there, Lacey R and Noli D. Thank you guys so much for being here. Okay, let’s get back to it. Dave, if you don’t mind putting up on the screen the graphic that shows the copwatchers and auditors. So if you take a look, there are some familiar names here like ANCAP Copwatch. There’s also James Freeman, John Felax, NC Tyrant Hunter, and of course Long Island Audit and Writes Crispy. Now, these are some of the channels we have been able to confirm directly. There really is quite a bit of uncertainty.

And let me also say this, if you are one of the channels affected, please reach out to us and let us know so we can compile an accurate and definitive list as we want to cover this closely. And I also want to say a special thanks to Friends in Code for providing us with some very valuable information. Agreed. But of course it’s not just who was affected, that’s a big question, but why? Now the YouTubers who told us they have been affected said the email they received was nebulous to say the least. Dave, if you don’t mind putting JPEG2 on the screen.

So I’m going to read some of it and then we can discuss a theory Long Island audits discussed and that you’ve been doing some reporting on. Okay? Yep. So let me just read this first. It says in the email or rather on the screen, “Your channel isn’t earning right now. After reviewing your channel using a combination of automated systems and human reviewers, we found that does not follow YouTube channel’s monetization policies. Our review found that your channel contains the following, violations of creator responsibility policy. Your channel has violated our creator responsibility policy.” Stephen, what does that even mean? It

Stephen Janis:

Doesn’t mean anything really. It’s a very nebulous, like you said, sort of definition. I dug deeper into it and it was something about reputational harm, very, very things that would be part of the normal process of journalism or reporting. I mean, anyone could create reputational harm by just reporting something that someone disagrees with or having a conflict or having a conversation. So it’s really, really loose, vaguely worded, and I think that’s the point. I think it gives YouTube a maximum flexibility, just kick people off of monetization however and whenever they want. And I don’t think it has any guidelines that are useful to any channels in terms of how to follow these. I don’t think you can follow them. So it’s really, I think, purposely vague.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, how has the Copwatcher community and the First Amendment activists responded?

Stephen Janis:

Well, a lot of anger because I think there was no warning or no sort of like, you need to do this or you need to do that. I mean, and these channels have been up and I would note that all the channel, their videos are still out there. Now, sometimes YouTube, when it really is offended by a video, will take it down or force you to take it down or take down your channel for copyright strikes, all sorts of things. But this just kind of came out of nowhere. And I think that’s why that’s feeding, I wouldn’t call it conspiracy theories, but some thoughts about there’s something behind this more than just YouTube trying to enforce its creator responsibility. I think people feel there’s something deeper there going on and something more nefarious. And I think that’s why we’ve been looking into it.

Taya Graham:

Now, there’s a theory that has emerged thanks to Long Island audits that you have been reporting on, Steven, and that we, of course, will discuss with him shortly, but we want to try to lay it out for you first. Now, as we’ve reported before on the show, Sean Paul had a fraught encounter with a powerful police union official named Lou Savillo. Sean Paul had visited police headquarters to ask about lawsuit settlements for police brutality, but the visit turned chaotic fairly quickly. Now, Long Island Audit was arrested and the ensuing fallout actually caught the attention of the New York Post, which blared headlines claiming that the resulting YouTube posts had led to angry phone calls to the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association members. Now, Reyes was eventually arrested, but Savillo is actually more powerful than just the head of a local police union. And it’s possible the dispute escalated.

Turns out he’s the president of an organization called UCOPS or the United Coalition of Public Safety. And in that capacity, he weighed into a national controversy that may have given him behind the scenes leverage. So Stephen, we’re going to watch the video where Savillo endorses Todd Blanche and discuss the theory about how his influence may have played a role in what we’re seeing on YouTube. Dave, if you don’t mind playing clip three, the Savillo clip. I’m

Speaker 3:

Lou Savillo and I’m the president of UCOPS. UCOPS is a coalition of law enforcement unions that represents over 100,000 active and retired law enforcement officers. Recently, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. We discussed how police officers are being threatened, doxed, and even targeted for violence in their own homes. The AG expressed strong support for our law enforcement officers and stated that prosecuting these crimes would be a top priority for his administration. Todd Blanche has a keen intellect. Moreover, he has a discerning nature. He also is even-handed with justice, making him the perfect candidate for our country’s top prosecutor. This is why UCOPS and the thousands of police officers we represent are urging the United States Senate to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Okay, Steven, I know you’ve had some run-ins with police unions. I’m sure you have something to say here. Well,

Stephen Janis:

No, the important thing to remember here is Todd Blanche at that point was facing a lot of pushback. He was the acting Attorney General and was trying to get the Senate to approve him to become full confirmed Attorney General. And he was facing a lot of headwinds because he would not renounce Trump’s sort of $1.76 billion giveaway fund to people who had been supposedly wronged by government, the weaponization fund. So he was in really, really kind of rough waters and he was looking for help. And then this organization called UCOP steps in and says, “Hey, we should endorse this guy. He’s great. All 100,000 police officers are behind him.” And I think it was a very important moment for Todd Blanche’s confirmation.

Taya Graham:

And you know what? We also got a copy of a July 9th letter sent to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, that offers a full throated endorsement of Blanche. Now, Stephen, why is this important? What was going on with Blanche who at the time was acting attorney general? He

Stephen Janis:

Was just really searching for a life raft because a lot of Republican senators were like, “We’re not going to approve you.” Tom Tillis from North Carolina was like, “We are not going to approve you if you don’t renounce Trump’s weaponization fund.” And of course he wouldn’t do it. He parsed on it, he kind of danced around. But then these guys come in and say, “Hey, this guy’s great. All the cops, 100,000 cops,” which I’m going to get to about that being sort of a very flimsy claim, “are going to support you.” And I think so they were trying to bail out Todd Blanche, who’s a very powerful man.

Taya Graham:

I want to discuss a bit what he said in the video that police officers are being doxed and harassed. And I think that’s curious that he brought this up specifically, and you’ve also been doing a little digging on UCOPS organization highlighted in the letter that Lou Cevello just said he’s the head of. So what have you found?

Stephen Janis:

Well, so UCOPS is supposed to be this big organization that represents 100,000 police officers, but only was started in 2025. It has about $60,000 in revenue. It has about four or five people who don’t work for a full-time or volunteer. So it’s, I would say sort of an AstroTurf, which is claiming to represent tons of people, but being a little bit of an artifice because they don’t have any money, they don’t have any staff, and there’s no information on their 990s, which is their tax form, about how many members they have. So UCOPS kind of came out of nowhere, and I think that makes it a little bit of a strange thing to say, “Well, I represent UCOPS, which represents 100,000 police.” There’s really very little evidence of that.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So I think we’ve established a connection between a powerful police union president and the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country, namely the Attorney General of the United States of America. But to connect the dots further, we’re going to bring one of the guests, the man at the center of the controversy, and one of the most popular copwatchers out there, Long Island Audits, also known as Sean Paul Reyes. Sean Paul, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Long Island Audit:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So first, I’m just going to say a quick acknowledgement to Chuck Bronson, Noli D. I think I see Johnny Bravo out there. People are showing up and I’m hoping they’re showing their support as well. So let me ask you just to start out, how are you doing and how did you find out about your channel being demonetized and how is it hitting you? I mean, how are you dealing with it personally?

Long Island Audit:

Well, as you know, I’m usually on the road as I am right now, and my brother-in-law actually called me multiple times and I called him right back. I was in the middle of something and I was like, “Are you all right?” And he’s like, “Hey, every First Amendment auditor is getting their channel demonetized. Is your channel demonetized?” And I was like, “No, I don’t believe so.” So I opened up my YouTube studio and my phone app and it said you were removed from the partner program. So that’s how I found out. It was definitely shocking news for sure. I’ve been doing this for five years now, built a platform of over a million subscribers and just never had a violation. Till this day, my YouTube studio says no violations whatsoever. So I’ve never had a copyright strike, never had a violation.

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Long Island Audit:

And they demonetized me.

Taya Graham:

Oh, wow. That’s incredible. I’ll just say I know some channels that have gotten strikes from personal experience. There is some other news related to your work that occurred yesterday. So you really had quite a day yesterday. You were found guilty of trespassing. Can you talk a little bit about what happened?

Long Island Audit:

Yeah. So Judge Guinari in the Danielson Superior Court found me guilty of criminal trespass in the third degree in the state of Connecticut. He found that as a matter of law, the private road dead end to no turnaround sign was not a vehicle sign. He said in his decision that he rejected my argument that that was a sign meant for vehicles. I think it’s pretty clear from the verbiage on the sign that it is really pretty clearly meant for vehicles. So I’m hopeful on appeal, but this is part of the process. The process is the punishment. They brought this judge in out of nowhere. I’ve been switching through judges so quickly, different judges, different jurisdictions. The process is the punishment and I’m going to continue to, hopefully in the process of an appeal, we can get a win here, but I don’t think anybody really believes that that sign was meant for a pedestrian.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, Sean, this is hard to believe because there’s sort of a presumption that you can go up and knock on someone’s door. If they tell you to leave, you leave, you’re fine, which is what you did. I mean, there’s Supreme Court precedent here. Why did the judge ignore the law in this case? I mean, did he ignore the law?

Long Island Audit:

Yeah. I mean, his interpretation of the law, because in this case, his interpretation’s the only one that matters as of right now. His interpretation of the law is that unless if there is some sort of animosity between you and the person beforehand, then therefore you lose that privilege to conduct a knock and talk because you should know that you’re not welcome because of the alleged animosity and prior problems. But to me, if I’m a tenacious reporter, which I think I am, and I follow up on these stories, there’s a lot of public officials that one could argue in a court of law that have animosity with me and therefore I lose all my privileges.

Stephen Janis:

I was just thinking that because if we’re reporting on someone, they don’t like what we’re reporting, they’re aware of that, they’re angry. And I have shown up at people’s houses and places of work and stuff when I’ve been writing stories that have been critical of someone who could easily make the case that there was so-called animosity. I mean, has that ever been explored as far as you know? Because that strikes me as a really fine line and really gets into First Amendment monitoring and deciding what is conflict and what isn’t. I mean, is that something that’s been explored?

Long Island Audit:

I believe, Steven, that this is a case of first impression. That’s what it’s called in the legal world. And I think that this is something that the judge is just ruling on his own. I couldn’t find any case law where it takes away your privilege of a knock and talk animosity. And he did find that there was animosity he did find. And again, on his part, there’s a lot of animosity. I just talk about him on my channel and talk about what he’s done and what I’ve found out through investigations. And at the end of the day, I love my family and I don’t think about him after work. I’m just putting him up on there. He’s a bad man, but there’s been many, many, many bad men in law enforcement that I’ve come across over the last five years. Patrick Psycho, Ryder, Danbury where he said he would kill me 20 years ago.

There are so many examples and I would knock on any of theirs door. It wasn’t personal. I’ve knocked on dozens of government officials doors at this point.

Taya Graham:

Right. You know what? Before I ask you this question, I just wanted to make a note that one of the people that was trying to confirm the real press, NH NOW, yes, they were also demonetized. So it is hitting people out there. Wow. Sean Paul, I was wondering what are some possible consequences for you? I hate to ask, but are you going to be sentenced and could you face jail time?

Long Island Audit:

So I was already sentenced after I was found guilty by Judge Guinari. The state’s attorney did not ask for any jail time when they were making their case. Brian Fahey’s adult daughter and his wife spoke at the sentencing and the judge sentenced me, ultimately decided to sentence me to 90 days of incarceration, but suspended and one year probation. They actually have a little funny insight is that they were like, “Okay, well you’re going to transfer your probation to Suffolk County obviously, right?” And I was like, “No way. I will traverse all the way to Connecticut before I put my probation in Suffolk County with Lucivilo.”

Stephen Janis:

Okay. Well, let’s get back to YouTube and I’m very sorry that happened to you. We’ll be waiting to see what happens next. But do you think it’s a coincidence you had this encounter with Lucivillo and then suddenly Todd Blanche. I mean, he endorses Todd Blanche and then suddenly YouTube, which has been known to do carry the water for the Trump administration, decides to start demonetizing copwatchers and otters. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Long Island Audit:

I personally don’t think it’s a coincidence. It’s my theory. Could it be any other reason? Sure, it’s a theory. I’ll say that, but there’s a lot more things that go into it. Lucivillo and the union that he leads has been talking nonstop in the last weeks on radio programs that they own about directly targeting the monetization of these YouTubers. And they specifically mentioned YouTube, they specifically mentioned monetization, and this was just as late as two weeks ago. They were talking about these things and then this happens. I think it’s clear that the administration under Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice rather, I don’t think they would have an issue with sending a letter or an email to Google. And also the district attorney in my county actually subpoenaed Google for the last 14 months on a violation trespass case for the last 14 months of my earnings, and Google handed over everything immediately.

Really? And

Stephen Janis:

Google didn’t push back on that at all? At

Long Island Audit:

All. Motion to quash. Before I could even submit a motion to quash, which was only a couple days later, the district attorney had a disc full of all of my subscriber information. Your

Stephen Janis:

Subscriber information? What?

Long Island Audit:

No way. I don’t know about individual subscribers, but I don’t know if they mean, because it says subscribers with an S, but in parentheses. So I don’t know if it’s every single person or just me or maybe just my members on the channel. I don’t know exactly what it entails. I haven’t gone through the disc. My lawyer currently has it, so I have to go through it and that’s one of the many things on my plate rightnow.

Stephen Janis:

That is extremely invasive. I mean, that is extremely scary and not good.

Long Island Audit:

A non-trespass case, I obviously was leaving, the video shows that, but a trespass case to get 14 months of financial information from Google. Again, the common denominator with the police union president, the district attorney here is all that they’re focusing on monetization, financial aspect of YouTube.

Stephen Janis:

Now those charges were dropped or the ones from the encounter at the PBA, at the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association headquarters, those charges were dropped, right?

Long Island Audit:

The criminal charge was dropped, but what they do is they’ll drop it to a violation of the law, which is not a crime, and they’re prosecuting me on that right now. So basically on a non-crime, they got the subpoena as well.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. It sounds to me like just a fishing exhibition that was facilitated by a bogus charge. But sorry, Tay, go ahead.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s okay. I just wanted to let you know, if you guys see me looking down, it’s because this chat is amazing and I’m learning a lot of information here. I just found out that I for an eye free press is on the list. NC Tyrant Hunter, who I’m glad to see. Good to see you, NC Tyrant Hunter, says he can’t even get into his Google account. So this is hitting people. This is really scary. This is really scary. I even saw that the Batoosize channel had been demonetized, but it has just been restored. So perhaps that’s a sign of hope. Sean Paul, I want to ask you, what’s your thoughts on the reasons provided for the demonetization by YouTube, like violation of creative responsibility policy? I mean, why is this happening now? Because copwatchers and First Amendment auditors have been on YouTube for at least a decade.

Why is it happening now and what do you think that policy means?

Long Island Audit:

As you stated earlier, it’s very vague. I read the policy obviously, and there’s nothing really that stands out, just basically reputational harm on or off the platform. It speaks about actions being taken off the platform as well as on the platform. It’s extremely vague. I’ve never had any violations or copyright strikes on my channel in the last five years since the channel was started. So I have no idea. I have no idea what else it could be, what type of reason Google has behind doing this massive demonetization of channels like First Amendment auditor channels. I have no idea.

Stephen Janis:

Have you appealed to YouTube and communicated with them or heard anything back from them? Have they given you a message or have you at least appealed or what’s going on in terms of YouTube and your communication with them? So

Long Island Audit:

I still have time to file an appeal. I wanted to wait and see what would be the result of some of my peers that already had submitted appeals were going to be. So now that some appeal decisions are coming back, I plan on filing an appeal in the coming days. And contrary to popular belief, just because I have a million subscribers doesn’t mean I have any sort of special connections with YouTube. Right,

Stephen Janis:

Right. And what have your peers said? Have people won their appeals? I mean, I know Batusai, I think won his appeal. Has anyone reported to you what has happened to them in the appeal process? So

Long Island Audit:

The only person I’ve spoken to about the appeal process was Philip Turner, and he had told me what he appealed and how he got his monetization back. I know there’s Rogue Nation had done an appeal. I don’t know what’s the status of that, but there are a couple people out there that did appeals and I don’t know the status of them though.

Taya Graham:

Okay. I just want to shout out Chuck Bronson out there and I see the Humboldt Squid. Good to see you. Humble Squid. You know who you are. I know who you are. Good to see you. But Sean Paul, back to you. I know I keep on going back and forth between the chat, but I just want to make sure everyone knows out there how much I appreciate them being part of this live chat. So I would just want to do something to kind of strengthen the idea of ties between Google and the current presidential administration. So for example, Google Maps did change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, which I think suggests they’re willing to comply with any requests from the current administration because for example, MapQuest didn’t do this. So what do you think is the potential role of those folks in the administration?

Long Island Audit:

I think it’s definitely possible that I wouldn’t put it past Attorney General Todd Blanch for sending at least a letter to Google saying that maybe we classifying these people as domestic terrorists. They use that term a lot for a lot of different people that they do not like or who do have different points of views for them. They automatically label them domestic terrorists. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an incoming memo or there is one already that in existence that First Amendment auditors are domestic terrorists now. But at the end of the day, we really don’t know. It’s all speculation, but there are some sort of connections between the police union president and Todd Blanche. And I think it’s quite hypocritical because he talks about these violence docs, specifically violence against law enforcement officers, but he supports an attorney general who would give money and who has participated in the pardons of individuals who have used violence against law enforcement officers.

So I think it’s very hypocritical on his part. I think he says that just to serve his own ends and he doesn’t really care about law enforcement officers.

Stephen Janis:

Just a note, I have watched hundreds of thousands of hours of copwatcher videos, never seen anyone come close to what happened on January 6th in terms of what the people that they pardoned, that they cleared, that they wanted to compensate with taxpayer dollars who were beating cops. And so I’ve never seen anything, anything remotely. In fact, I’ve never seen a cop watcher strike or in any way threaten a police officer in that way. So the hypocrisy, Sean, is insane, right? I mean, that’s insane.

Long Island Audit:

Yeah. They try to gaslight the country. They’re trying to gaslight Americans and they want to be the heroes and the victims at the same time.

Stephen Janis:

Now we reached out to UCOP, this supposed organization with all volunteer, five volunteers and no money. And we asked them – The

Long Island Audit:

Police union has a lot of money though. They have 15 –

Stephen Janis:

Well,

Long Island Audit:

Yeah, we’ll get to that.

Stephen Janis:

But the UCOP thing is really weird. Do you think that’s some sort of ASO turf or what do you think that is? Because it just doesn’t seem like it’s a real org.

Long Island Audit:

I haven’t looked into it as deeply as you have focusing on the police union, but I mean, if it doesn’t have any members listed, again, I’ve looked into Lucivillo, the president of that organization apparently, and the players of the PBA. And there’s internal affairs reports where he’s alleged to have told officers to lie, picked officers up from DUI arrests. There’s so many different things I wouldn’t put past him for any sort of nonsense. And

Stephen Janis:

I want to make a point here that I hadn’t made before because I went through all the Suffolk County finances. Suffolk County and New York State have some of the highest property taxes in the country. And one of the reasons for that is policing. The Suffolk County budget said that $1,400 per household is what that police department cost. So your work to expose this is so important because people, I mean, I think they’re getting fleeced. Why do they have the highest property taxes in the country? Because they have state troopers retiring for $100,000 a year salary. I mean, isn’t policing tied to the fact that you guys are suffering with some of the highest tax rates anywhere? Yeah,

Long Island Audit:

For sure. I mean, it’s crazy that they talk about so hypocritically, they talk about the monetization side of First Amendment orders while having $15 million in assets. The police union in Suffolk County is quite hypocritical. $15 million in assets and I believe only $2 million in liabilities they claimed on their forms. So $13 million and they bring in $5 million every year in revenue. But then the police department, that’s just the union. The police department has a whole hundreds of millions of dollars. And if you’re counting – It’s a billion dollar a

Stephen Janis:

Year. Suffolk

Long Island Audit:

County. If you’re counting all law enforcement in Suffolk County, yeah, it’s over a billion dollars a year. Crime infested

Stephen Janis:

Long Island.

Long Island Audit:

Right, exactly. And again, what they do, Steven, is they like to gaslight and push their police propaganda. This is why they have podcasts. They’re reaching out into social media. It’s because they want to push this propaganda that, oh, Suffolk County’s one of the safest counties in the country. But at the same time, the Suffolk County, I’ve been lifelong resident of Suffolk County. Suffolk County’s one of the safest counties in the country because of the people of Suffolk County, not because of the law enforcement officers.

Stephen Janis:

Exactly. And if you want to equate public safety with the number of police, it doesn’t add up. So I think that’s why, as you pointed out, they have this propaganda arm. I’m sorry, Tay, I didn’t – No,

Taya Graham:

That’s okay. All right. I’m going to ask a question that might sort of put you on the spot, Sean Paul, so forgive me for doing this, but let me ask you, if they respond, would you be willing to debate Lou Savillo on the Real News if we could hook it up? Oh,

Long Island Audit:

He would never do that, but yes. Well, listen – It’s worth asking. I have video of him saying that he would come on the channel, so maybe you could play that for him when you asked him. You come on your channel, but I would love to debate.

Taya Graham:

Brian would be neutral third party?

Long Island Audit:

I’ve seen his debating skills and it’s just propaganda mush, so I would love to.

Stephen Janis:

Okay. Well, that’s a date.

Taya Graham:

We can set that

Stephen Janis:

Up. If we can do

Taya Graham:

It, we will. I promise. So I know you had another question for Sean.

Stephen Janis:

No, I think we’re done.

Taya Graham:

Are you good? I mean, I just want to make sure because – Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, I don’t want to keep him for too long.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

And so when do you file your appeal on your trespassing case? What is the next step for you? Yeah.

Long Island Audit:

So the next step is I’ve been talking to multiple attorneys. I’ve had multiple attorneys with me this entire way. So these attorneys are, now that their retainer is over, we’re speaking about getting a new retainer for them to file the appeal. And I’m excited. I think it would be a bad precedent in Connecticut to allow any sort of vague signage to be used as some sort of notice under that statute. So I’m hopeful and I plan on fighting it the whole way. This is part of the journey. You win some, you lose some, 14 arrests and one criminal conviction for now. I think that’s a pretty good record to have.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. And Sean, before we let you go, Sean Ray, sorry, what do you see the future of copwatching? We were talking before the show and you and Chris, we were talking about we’re going to keep going, which is going to eliminate one of the greatest sort of arguments the frauditer, anti-copwatcher community makes that you guys are just about clicks and views. Are you getting any feeling among copwatchers that people and auditors are going to keep going regardless and not just give up because of this? I

Long Island Audit:

Hope so. And at the end of the day, I think it’s such a disingenuous argument to make it about monetization when the fraudater, the trolls out there talk about monetization when all of these people, how am I supposed to conduct a proper investigation and travel and do all these things when I’m facing an organization that has not only the power of the law on their side, but $15 million in assets to use against me to do what they need to do? That’s why I purchased the billboard truck. I’ve invested into my company. And at the end of the day, it is a company, but it’s a mission as well. And I’m happy to continue the mission and it’s definitely going to change a little bit depending on whether I get my monetization back. But I think even now, it’s just going to change because I’m going to do more long form content now.

I’m going to do more more over the legal things, show you the videos that necessarily wouldn’t be good for the algorithm, but I know a lot of people appreciate. So it’s going to expand the investigation. I think that’s

Stephen Janis:

Great. I

Taya Graham:

Love it. Yeah. And

Stephen Janis:

Also, it might be interesting to FOIA Groton or whatever part of Connecticut it is, see how much money they spent prosecuting on trespassing charges. That’d be interesting. Yeah, we’ll probably do that. We’ll probably do that.

Taya Graham:

Sean Paul, I can’t wait to see that because just like you said, there are things that when you have to bow to the algorithm that you can’t put up because you know they won’t get views or investigations that you want to do that are going to take a lot of time. And so you might put it on the back burner. I’ve had that experience and it’s painful to do that. And so this might really set you free. And I think we had Lacey R. Put your Patreon in the live below. So if people want to support these coughwatchers who are losing their channels, now’s your time. Full

Stephen Janis:

Disclosure, I’m a Patreon member of Line Isles. Just so everyone knows,

Taya Graham:

I’m

Stephen Janis:

Biased, but-That’s

Taya Graham:

Journalistic ethics to say the truth there. Journalistic ethics. I’m

Stephen Janis:

A $25 a month Patreon member.

Taya Graham:

I

Stephen Janis:

Thought you said 10. No, it was 25. I went all in. I appreciate it. No pizza this week.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So we want to thank you again. I mean, you literally had to stop on the road to speak to us, so we really want to thank you for your time and we absolutely wish you the best of luck. And thank you for taking the time with us, especially because you’re kind of going through it right now. So we really appreciate you coming on. Guess

Long Island Audit:

What? I still got the smile on my face. I’m still healthy, still got my family, still have my good friends and good people in the space that are working really hard like you guys and Rites Crispy that you guys are going to talk to.You guys are doing great work and I’m happy. The trolls needed one little happiness in their life. I’m happy for them. When you live with your life with such misery and pain, I mean, it’s just every day you need a win once in a while, so enjoy it.

Taya Graham:

I think they will savor it while they can. Thanks again, Jean-Paul. We really appreciate you. Come back.

Stephen Janis:

Come back soon. I will.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So Stephen, we’re going to continue our discussion with Copwatchers who are caught up in YouTube’s questionable shift in policy. And we are so happy to be joined by Finton Vargas, otherwise known as the creative force behind the popular channel. Writes Crispy. Hey, Writes Crispy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Rights Crispy:

Hey, thank you, Taya. Thank you, Steven. Thanks for having me and thanks to everybody in the chat, everybody who’s watching now and in the future. I appreciate you.

Stephen Janis:

We appreciate you. We appreciate you coming on.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. And

Stephen Janis:

Being patient.

Taya Graham:

Yes. And so first-follow.

Stephen Janis:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Taya Graham:

So first, let me just do a wellness check with you. How are you doing and how are you dealing with the decision of YouTube’s to demonetize your channel?

Rights Crispy:

Thank you for your concern and thanks for asking. But as I’ve always told everybody, I do well by doing good in my profession. This is just a bonus hobby for me. I don’t do this for money. It’s a nice bonus to have, but as we were saying before, now the trolls don’t have a reason to say that we’re doing this for the money. And if we are, what’s the difference between major news networks that get a lot of ad revenue for their sponsors and everything? I think trying to find a villain in somebody who gets paid in America, it’s what country do you think this is? We make money doing things. But I’m doing all right, thank God. And I know that Rogue Nation did get a response back from YouTube saying that they’re going to escalate it. So it wasn’t a decision, but it was a response.

So that’s good.

Stephen Janis:

What does that mean, escalate? Does that mean they’re going to continue considering it or what does that mean?

Rights Crispy:

I guess the person who received his appeal said that they were going to send it to a higher up.

Stephen Janis:

I see. Okay. Well, that’s better than having the door shut right

Taya Graham:

Away. Right, exactly. It’s a step in the right direction. That’s good to hear. But

Stephen Janis:

I mean, to your point, when you think about if you took the collective monetization of every YouTube auditor out there, it wouldn’t amount to the budget of one metropolitan police department.That’s

Taya Graham:

The truth. Or

Stephen Janis:

Let me tell you this much. When I was a reporter dealing with police departments, they had multiple staff members, like seven or eight, nine, 10 people whose only job was to deal with the media or the press and to get their point of view out there. They had massive multimillion dollar budgets to hire people who were only job was to harass us or tell us we were wrong or yell at us or call us up in the middle of the night. So what YouTubers bring in is pennies on the dollar of what the police unions and the police departments have to spend. So why are people always giving you a hard time about making $20 from a YouTube video? Yeah, it’s

Rights Crispy:

Not just the police, but I’m working on a few stories. Like I told you guys before we started, I’m not going to stop doing this. I have some really important stories that I have to get out. And I stopped feeding the algorithm on YouTube years ago. I think my last paycheck last month was a couple hundred bucks and before that, I don’t remember when I got paid before that. So it’s not something that I’m getting paid off, but I am doing a lot of good work and I’m getting it out there. And like I told you guys also, the only thing I want people to pay is attention. We have a lot of big stories coming out on the Wrights Crispy channel.

It’s not just police. Like I was saying, there are government agencies that have do nothing jobs and we discover that we find their credit cards being used for wasteful purposes and we point that out. I have an attorney here, our city attorney, he also is an attorney for eight municipalities. He gets paid about $20,000 a month. That’s $160,000 a month if that’s what all the municipalities are getting. And he’s not advising the cities correctly. They want to put in data centers, they want to keep flock cameras up even though our Department of Transportation has stopped it. But I don’t want to get off on a tangent. I want to –

Stephen Janis:

No, no, it’s interesting.

Rights Crispy:

It’s

Stephen Janis:

Interesting.That’s great accountability work, man. It needs to be done.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

And it’s not getting done in many communities because of YouTube and the algorithm and the way our ecosystem is kind of constructed around conflict

Taya Graham:

And

Stephen Janis:

Not like

Taya Graham:

This all reported. The way the attention economy

Stephen Janis:

Works. So let me get you, I just was curious what you thought about some of the ideas that Todd Blanche might be doing this at the behest of police unions or that police unions have been advocating for this and that they gave Google like, “Hey, you got to kick some of these people off monetization.” Do you give any credence to that or what do you think of that theory?

Rights Crispy:

I wouldn’t put it past them. Again, I thank you both for the work that you’ve done since I’ve known you, but especially last September you were in DC and you were interviewing the victims of the Epstein files. Oh yes. That’s one of the main reasons why I got into this. I know that none of those trafficking rings operate without some corruption in our government involved. And for Todd Blanche to say that it’s not a crime to party with Epstein when there are young kids in that room, yes, it is. That’s who we’re dealing with. And if we want to think about how he goes and meets with somebody from Google, I don’t put it past him. Like I said, the narrow-mindedness of these tech companies, look at what happened, the old Twitter, which is now X, remember they banned somebody in Canada for using the wrong pronouns.

However, they allowed the Taliban to continue their channel or their. So the narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy is ridiculous, especially in our modern cruelty. America has become a cruel and vicious place.

Taya Graham:

We

Rights Crispy:

Reward the shallowest, the loudest, the meanest. And for them to think that we are the ones who are being offensive by knocking on a door. I’m flabbergasted at what happened yesterday in Sean’s trial. I mean, that’s clearly established. You can go and drop off a UPS package. You can go and knock on a door and ask for answers.

Stephen Janis:

Politics, when people go and knock on doors and say, “I’m here.”

Taya Graham:

Or if you have a Bible in your hand and you want to talk to people, you’re allowed to knock on doors. It’s an American

Stephen Janis:

Tradition,

Taya Graham:

Even

Stephen Janis:

In a. A door to door salesman. Yeah.

Taya Graham:

I just want to ask you, have you heard from any other channels about this? Because you might have noticed, I’ve been looking down into the live chat. Some people have been demonetized. Other people have luckily missed the swinging sword over their head, the sword of Damocles there. Have you heard from any other channels? What are some of the things you’ve heard from your fellow cop watchers?

Rights Crispy:

Yes, I’m in a group chat. I was actually speaking with Nasty Nathaniel. Shout out to Nasty Nathaniel. When I got a call from Rogue Nation who asked me if I had gotten demonetized, we all checked at the same time. Then we went to the group chat. We were all like, “Hey, you guys checked and everybody’s…” Except for I think a few, Chuck Bronson, I don’t think was affected. Rogue Nation’s other channel was not affected. Major Lee Awesome. He has a lot of new, good content on there. But going back to when I started this, I saw Aurora, Colorado. There was a doctor that was trying to move some Boy Scout equipment in his own office building, and there was a police officer parked in his parking garage. Do you guys remember that?

Stephen Janis:

I’m sorry, I don’t, but –

Rights Crispy:

Well, he was confronted at gunpoint and he gave this speech after everything blew over. He said, “Use your white skin, use your straight teeth, use your education, give your money until it hurts. Give your freedom until you lose it.” And I took that to heart and I’ve done all that. I’ve given more money into this than I’ve gotten out of it. So it’s really not about the money. And the J-Town Press, Lana, just last year alone or the year before I think, she paid, I think $75,000 in records requests and other such fees for getting the story out there. That’s two Florida school teachers’ yearly salaries.

Stephen Janis:

That’s amazing.

Rights Crispy:

And that’s one DMV supervisor’s yearly salary.

Stephen Janis:

One thing you brought up about Todd Blanche and the Epstein victims, Tea’s reporting in Washington DC, the way she made sure that we were there and the way she talked to almost every single victim, I just wanted to acknowledge was an amazing thing to witness. Thank you. And she was there for every moment. I mean, I was right behind her, but – With the camera right there. She was leading the way and I’m glad you saw that because Tea was just amazing about really getting the stories and getting to know the people.

Taya Graham:

And for the record, TikTok was not always fond of my clips.

Stephen Janis:

But to your

Taya Graham:

Point – That’s

Stephen Janis:

Another story. Todd Blanche pretty much dissed the victims. He would only meet with them for an hour or something and it was very, very. That’s another knock against this whole administration, the way they treated, the way Pam Bonnie wouldn’t look at the women. I don’t know if you have anything to say about it.

Taya Graham:

No, it was incredible to see all of those women who, in doing this, I don’t think people realize when those Epstein victims came forward, or survivors perhaps is a better word, when those Epstein survivors came forward, these women have to relive some of the most traumatizing experiences of their lives publicly. They have to talk about something that’s probably one of the worst things that’s ever happened to them. And then they have to deal with the scrutiny of the public with people think, oh, they just want to do a lawsuit for money or oh, they’re just doing this because of a political reason. And these women have been suffering for years. These women have been reaching out to the FBI and the DOJ for years. So it was just heart-rending to see people literally turn their back on these women.

Stephen Janis:

And to your point –

Rights Crispy:

People are talking about these women and trying to question their integrity and why are they. Think of them 20 years younger. That’s who they were when this was happening to them. And I read this story in December 2018 from the Miami Herald and it put a knot in my stomach and I haven’t been able to untie that knot. And now that everybody knows what I’ve known for the last eight years, it’s sickening to see that we are in the age of apathy. People are just looking past it. Keep telling that story, Taya. I will. Thank you. Steven, please keep it up.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank

Stephen Janis:

You. And it points to why you have to hold law enforcement accountable. They’re not always heroes, right? Because as you point out – Sometimes you got to motivate them a little bit. As the stories were told to Taya, people reached out to law enforcement. Law enforcement ignored them. Yes, they did. And in 2008, they gave Epstein that sweetheart deal of 18 months of being overnight in prison, but he was still abusing women. He was actually

Taya Graham:

Still abusing women at the office he was allowed to go to during the day when he was supposed to be in prison.

Stephen Janis:

To say we don’t need cop watchers is absurd.

Taya Graham:

I completely agree. Alex

Stephen Janis:

Acosta

Rights Crispy:

Is the DA for the SAO who gave him the sweetheart deal, right?

Taya Graham:

Alex

Rights Crispy:

Acosta then became the labor secretary under term one of Trump.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. And

Rights Crispy:

Now guess where he is? He’s on the board of directors of Newsmax. So if that’s where you guys are getting your news, shut it off.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I actually didn’t know he was on the board of Newsmax. Thank you for that. Good fact. Not that I was watching, but.

Rights Crispy:

Back to the YouTube money thing, you were talking about what are they doing about this? Can somebody sue or anything? I know that the Federal Trade Commission is doing an investigation on the bait and switch aspect of it where they’re telling people, and Steven was mentioning how vague it is, these rules that we have to follow. There’s so many things that we can or can’t do. And it’s weird because we’ll watch a channel and there’s somebody spraying somebody with a garden hose in the garden section of Home Depot, and they’re fine. They don’t have a troll channel to bother them at all, and they get away with all that. We are holding our government officials accountable and people start looking at us. We’re not taking a penny of their tax dollars. The person who is taking their tax dollars is not doing their job right.

We’re showing them that, but they’re focused on us.

Stephen Janis:

That’s such a good point.

Taya Graham:

That’s an excellent point. I just want to ask you if you had any thoughts on the violation of the Creator Responsibility Clause. I mean, what do you think that even means and how do you think it applies or doesn’t apply to your channel or to Copwatchers? I mean, this clause is really odd.

Rights Crispy:

Yeah, I was taken aback. Again, when I started, I tried to model myself after more moderate channels like Jeff Gray, Honor Your Oath, Civil Rights Investigation, and Rogue Nation. I really liked their approach, and I saw people doing what I thought was just getting a chip off their shoulder. I tell cops, “Hey, we need those guys too to test your bearing.” But I just decided on my first audit, I said it, “I’m not going to be that way. I’m going to be professional, courteous, respectful, and I’ll give what I get. I’m not just going to be a sucker. I’m going to go up there and I’m going to hold their feet to the fire if I have to, but I’m going to do it in the most respectful manner that I think is possible.” We’ve seen a lot of people take that approach after I started doing that, and I’m glad to have inspired a lot of people to do it that way because that way we can actually make a positive change, I don’t think in our government, but in our country with people so they can see us doing what they should be doing and get them to hold their local municipalities accountable.

But we also have seen people chasing and feeding the algorithm, and they couldn’t pander any harder with their trying to provoke people. I mean, I get that a lot of people who I work with have taken that approach. They’ve gone to dispensaries and stuff. I say heroes work there, leave them alone.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, no, I’ve seen some of those videos and I can’t really figure out what the hell that’s all about. But to the Copwatcher community and the people who are doing the work like you’re doing, the government accountability specifically, do you think this lack of stability in the monetization ecosystem and YouTube in general is going to. What is it going to do to the future of this community that has been very important to keeping police in check? What do you think bodes for the future for people who do this?

Rights Crispy:

Well, it will get rid of a lot of people who do depend on this. They are working with YouTube. That’s their livelihood. And I’m not saying that they’re just making clicks and views. They do good work. It’s just they need to pay their bills.

One of the OGs, the guy, I think his first audit or Copwatch was in 2009, Tommy from Mass Accountability, that guy has really put in a lot of good work and he exposed the “shit list” in Salem, Massachusetts, and he’s out there right now and he’s trying to make money off of YouTube. I don’t know if he was hit. I haven’t talked to him, but he would struggle if he didn’t have that YouTube income. I know he’s doing good work, so it sucks to lose somebody like that. If somebody realizes, “Oh, I can’t make a quick buck off of this,” and I’ll start doing something else that is just questionable or that some people don’t like, they’ll find something else to do. They won’t do it in the YouTube genre. Tuapri was a prankster and did pranks and stuff, and then he jumped into the auditing community.

So they’ll move around, they’ll find something else, they’ll find another way to get paid, but we are going to lose good citizen journalists.

Taya Graham:

Wow. I think you make such a good point because it’s kind of funny. There are people who say, “Oh, well, this is just for money or just for clicks or views.” And it’s like, “Well, I thought this was a capitalist country, and if you did work, it was okay to be paid for said work.” But the thing is that I don’t think a lot of people realize so many folks who run these channels barely make enough money to cover their camera equipment or to even bond out of jail if they get thrown into jail. People really are not making tons of money out there. People are doing this because they really care. And so it hurts to think that this well of activism that was so grassroots, so natural, just really just came from the ground up, could be shut off at the source because these places like YouTube, they essentially are digital commons.

This is where we can go now. And if they turn off the spigot, they basically control what narrative the rest of the country sees. It’s just really disturbing. But I just wanted to get back to Long Island Audits for a second, just to get your thoughts on the verdict of Long Island Audits trespassing case. Do you have any concerns about how his case was treated? Because essentially was just going up to the door and knocking, and now he could potentially be facing time behind bars.

Rights Crispy:

Yeah, it’s repugnant on its face for that judge to have done that, but I’m shocked. We have a broken system. Oh, no.

Taya Graham:

News flash for me, right? Big newsflash for me.

Rights Crispy:

Right. No, that’s what I tell people in every situation when we’re dealing with the government is don’t pin your hopes on an illusion that you’re going to make a change and they’re going to be like, “Oh, you know right, you’re right. McDonald v. Rundle, take those cuffs off of him. You can go home.” No, you can go there with all the facts and all the law in the world. If the guy in the row behind the bench is feeling some kind of way about you, you’re not going to see justice that day, and you’ll have to take it to appeal where it’s, I think, a little bit more scrutinized. But look at how did we get qualified immunity in the first place? It had to be fought all the way up to the Supreme Court that a Black man could eat in a restaurant. They could segregate.

I mean, not segregate, they could integrate, and the cops didn’t want to do that, so they arrested him and they took it to court and they were like, “Nope, I know what the feds said, but here in our beautiful state, we want to keep it that way.” And then they took it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and even in the Supreme Court back then, they said, “Fine,” begrudgingly gave him his right to eat wherever he wanted, but from now on, cops have qualified immunity, and that’s how they got it, is from that Jim Crow law that was being enforced. I’m

Taya Graham:

So glad to explain that. It was basically

Stephen Janis:

Like the Ku Klux Klan law, 1983 federal law that was supposed to allow people to sue public officials to enforce their constitutional rights. The ironic fact is that qualified immunity, which has been a barrier in many circuits to. Yeah, that is ironic. So what’s the future? What’s the future for copwatching and what’s the future for you? Just kind of closing out the last question.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, I was going to ask

Stephen Janis:

The question. I’m sorry, Steve.

Taya Graham:

No, it’s the same question. We’re just seeing in sync.

Stephen Janis:

How do you see the future unfolding and

Taya Graham:

What’s

Stephen Janis:

Going to happen because of this, what we’re calling the great demonetization of YouTube? Well,

Rights Crispy:

I think a lot of people will get re-monetized, and hopefully I will too. It’s a nice bonus, like I said. If not, we can’t be stopped. We’re going to keep on going. I have stick it to the maniosis. It’s fatal.

Taya Graham:

Oh, I love that. I’ve never heard that before. I really like that.

Rights Crispy:

You watch School of Rock.

Stephen Janis:

What makes you think that you guys are going to win the appeals? What do you think is on your side?

Rights Crispy:

Well, for instance, I think it’s a machine algorithm that made all these decisions. I don’t think it was one person going around and watching every one of our videos. I think if anybody had gotten a yellow flag or something before on their channel, that might have affected us. Because again, why would they only do some copwatchers and not all of us? I think maybe some music or something might be affecting. I think it’s something technical, but again, I wouldn’t put it past all those clowns that we mentioned before and the police unions because they really love to hate us. And the other quote that I was saying, I have it here, it’s to be hated for loving freedom has been the weirdest experience of my life.

Stephen Janis:

That’s so interesting.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I think I understand as a journalist, you write what you think is the truth, and then people hate you for it, and you have to reconcile that. You have to learn to work through that, that, well, I’m giving my best representation of the truth, which I would hope would be beneficial to the community, and there are people that just have vested interests in a power structure, and they hate you. And what’s weird about it is that institutions like policing have people who will go out and attack you who seem to have no reason to do so or no vested interest in the institution, just seem to be blinded by the propaganda, right? I mean, it’s like –

Rights Crispy:

I have two theories of one of two or both, either they don’t have the guts to stick it to the man like we do or stand for their rights, and they hate seeing somebody else showing them that they can and they don’t. Wow. Or they want to kill the messenger because we’re showing them that their heroes are actually cowards or jerks and they don’t like it, or both. And I think –

Taya Graham:

That makes a lot of sense.

Rights Crispy:

To inspire people. I’m here to let people who are like-minded know that they’re not alone. I also love to turn people around. People ask me all the time, “Oh, why’d you do this?” And when I explain it to them, I’m like, “Oh, wait a minute. Hold on.” And they get educated. My wife and I sing the Bonnie Taylor, “Turn them around,” because we turned them around, and that’s one of my favorite things. Shout out to Wolfie Gladly, who taught me how to be positive with the trolls and just have fun with them and let them know to search inward for the source of your misplaced anger. Wow.

Stephen Janis:

That is a good

Rights Crispy:

Way to approach it. Be aware of your own anger. Why are you mad at me? You don’t know me. I didn’t do anything to you. That

Taya Graham:

Is a very evolved way of handling it. Yeah, that’s very evolved and very healthy way. To be able to deal with the

Stephen Janis:

Negative comments.

Taya Graham:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, we appreciate you taking the time.

Taya Graham:

We appreciate you so much. We’re so glad you joined us. We’re so glad you were willing to be flexible with us. We appreciate your work, and I hope you keep us updated, and that if you hear from anyone else in the Copwatcher community, let us know how it’s going. Are people still continuing to get demonetized? Because as we showed earlier, there’s a chance that even though you said it might have been just an algorithmic thing all at once, there could be someone who’s putting their thumb on the scale. Well, the

Rights Crispy:

2A community was also hit. I’m sorry to interrupt. No, the 2A. Oh, the

Taya Graham:

2A? Interesting. Oh, really? Because I reached out to HBO Matt to see if he came. Well, HBO Matt

Stephen Janis:

Did get demonetized,

Taya Graham:

Right? No, no, no, he wasn’t. I spoke to him. I messaged him as of two days ago. He was not. He wasn’t demonetized. I don’t know if that’s changed, but I did know the 2A community got hit too. So 1A and 2A.

Stephen Janis:

Anyone here from Corners News?

Taya Graham:

I asked him about Corners, but actually I’ll reach out to him later. Yeah. And just please keep us updated because if we can, we’d like to be a resource for everybody. And also, we want to see how far this goes. Is it hitting 1A? Is it hitting 2A? Do we need to worry about any of the other As in our constitution? Do we need to worry about them? Yeah.

Rights Crispy:

It was HBO Matt who told me the gun channels got hit too.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Okay. All right. Well, I’ll check in with him again. Finn, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you so much. Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

And keep doing the great work you’re doing.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Citizen journalists

Stephen Janis:

Are the best.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. I appreciate you. We have utmost respect for it.

Rights Crispy:

Dittos. I mean, you guys are inspirational. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Aw, thank you. Thanks to everybody. That’s really kind. That’s really kind. Thank you. Oh, wow. That was right to Krispy. That was so great. Well, I guess I shouldn’t comment on our own interview. I though his interview was really wonderful. Well, it’s interesting

Stephen Janis:

To hear people. What inspires me is people do this under the most difficult circumstances, take on power with just their own sort of wits and the limited resources. Very limited resources. They’re undaunted. I know. And that, to me, is inspiring because journalism is a weird thing. It’s not like being a lawyer or something. You’re not accredited or something.

Taya Graham:

You’re in a gray zone. Yeah,

Stephen Janis:

You’re in a gray zone and it’s not something that makes you rich,

Taya Graham:

Famous

Stephen Janis:

Or anything. It’s just you get the –

Taya Graham:

Unless you’re

Stephen Janis:

On

Taya Graham:

Cable news.

Stephen Janis:

Right. But it’s something that gives you satisfaction from doing the work on

Taya Graham:

Behalf

Stephen Janis:

Of people.

Taya Graham:

You’ve got to care about it.

Stephen Janis:

And that ethos is pervasive throughout copwatching and other forms of YouTube accountability. And it’s kind of cool and really heartening to see that. Some people just get it, this bug, and they want to let the community know what’s going on, and they want to hold people accountable. And it’s just great to see it, that it’s still a spirit in this country, sort of a civic tradition, I think. We’re fierce accountability people, and to see other people just do it, and no matter what, they’re going to keep going, is pretty awesome.That’s

Taya Graham:

A really great way to describe it. That’s a civic tradition, that it’s kind of in the blood of Americans, that we care about. The First Amendment, all the amendments, our Constitution, the Bill of Rights. It matters to us. Those of them who go out to protect it in their own way, I think that’s really

Stephen Janis:

Normal. None of

Taya Graham:

Them went to journalism

Stephen Janis:

School, right? They’re not people who had

Taya Graham:

The

Stephen Janis:

Traditional training, but they figured it out.

Taya Graham:

They sure did.

Stephen Janis:

And then once they figured it out, they became very passionate about it. Just like we did.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, exactly. As journalists, that’s why we’re passionate as journalists. And so it’s great to see other people develop that same passion. And

Stephen Janis:

I was an English major, so whatever.

Taya Graham:

Well, Steven, I think that was a really intense discussion about an important topic. Absolutely. And I think all of us, meaning journalists and cop watchers, all of us understand how fragile and tenuous the right to push back against power is, which is why at least in the past, the courts have given great leeway to people over what they post and how. Do you have any final thoughts you want to share before I do my warning rant alert?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, thank you for the warning. It’s interesting because this debate is over the economics of an information ecosystem, and the control that YouTube has is kind of difficult to parallel with anything I can think about. When you start a newspaper 50 years ago, you could put it in boxes out in the sidewalk, you could mail it to someone, you could have subscribers through the post office, but now YouTube has become the only place to monetize this kind of content besides Facebook and TikTok, but the kind of serious long form content. And so I think that’s kind of scary, right? That’s kind of Philip K. Dick kind of dystopian that this one particular attention machine can sort of cast people off and that creates a very unstable kind of economic system and ecosystem for people to create information and to report back to us. So this is in many ways very, very disturbing.

And then Long Island, I was talking about the subpoena of people’s subscribers and getting into that. I don’t know. I don’t think YouTube is going to represent, given the way they have responded to the Trump administration and changed Lake Ontario to Lake America and how quickly they have caved, I don’t think they’re the right people to be defending en masse a ecosystem of First Amendment information. I think they are a bad actor in this in some ways. They have created a devastating attention machine, but I don’t think they have the same ethos of protecting the ability of people to express their use. And all these channels have never been taken down or anything. They’ve been there and then all of a sudden. So it just shows you how precarious this is. It seems great on one level that everyone have their own YouTube channel, but now it’s very precarious and it’s a little scary to say the least.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Steven, I think you made a really great point about how there is a concentration of power. And I really think that it’s important to point this out Because a world where the control of the distribution of information is bound to just a few private companies, that’s a dangerous world because that means, like I mentioned earlier, they can control the narrative. They control what we see, what we watch, what we learn, what information we take in. And that is a type of power I don’t think that’s ever been seen before in history.

Stephen Janis:

Maybe back in the day.

Taya Graham:

Right. Back where there were medieval peasants and only upper class people were literate or something. Okay. Maybe back then that was controlling the narrative. Ever

Stephen Janis:

Since the

Taya Graham:

Printing

Stephen Janis:

Press, it’s been more

Taya Graham:

Diffused.

Stephen Janis:

And now it’s oddly gone in the other direction in many ways, just evidenced

Taya Graham:

By

Stephen Janis:

What’s happened.

Taya Graham:

That’s a really great point. And I guess what I’m going to do is just start my little rant. Is that okay?

Stephen Janis:

I’m okay. I’m here.

Taya Graham:

I’m here. I’ll get

Stephen Janis:

The popcorn.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, buckle up. So what I wanted to share with everyone is that I think the idea that keeps occurring to me as we discuss what YouTube has done to copwatchers and First Amendment auditors and apparently Second Amendment auditors is fairly simple but has some complex implications. And that is, it’s hypocrisy, just the blatant and contradictory use of the notion of creator responsibility as a justification for taking away the ability of YouTube activists to monetize their work. I mean, the idea in principle sounds reasonable enough. When you read the words and discern the logic behind them, they don’t seem irrational, but then you start thinking. And then the question becomes unavoidable. Like really Google, the company that gave us Alex Jones and the flat earth conspiracies, the company that has been monetizing conflict for decades and profiting off lies and embellishment and fabrication since it was birthed and now out of nowhere, they’re suddenly concerned about this sort of nebulous sense of decency without any warning or outward provocation.

The oligarchs who run this obscenely rich company seem to become uncomfortable with content that holds power accountable in ways that are not always pretty or easy to watch. Well, I mean, Google, where was that moral qualm when child victims of the Newtown Massacre were being accused of being crisis actors when their parents were being doxed and hounded by Jones and his legions? It took Google quite a while to deal with that mess if they actually did it all. But all this debate over content, creator responsibility and the nuances of Google standards misses another really important point. Something that the powers that be would like to ignore, but we’re not going to let them. Who actually made copwatching possible and even necessary? Well, it wasn’t Wright’s Crispy or Joe Cool or Long Island Audits or Out of the Watchdog or Friends in Code or Eric Brant or Noli D or Lacey Art.

They didn’t create the environment of the law enforcement industrial complex that made policing one of the most powerful institutions in America. No, they didn’t. Power, inequality, and the police themselves invented copwatching. It was their overreach and abuse of the law that demanded a response from the people subject to it. It was their power drunk officers and biased judges and poorly constructed laws that sewed the general discontent that made any of this, basically all of this possible. I mean, let’s remember, copwatchers and 1A auditors wouldn’t garner millions of views if people didn’t tell Google through their watch habits that auditing content was relevant to their lives. YouTube’s merciless algorithm doesn’t dole out watch time to videos that no one is interested in. The platform is not a charitable foundation constructed for the public good. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It is the most efficient, reactive, adoptive, and yes, destructive attention machine ever constructed by human beings.

It’s the most elaborate ruthless flame for a moth of human cognition that has ever been devised. People watch the aforementioned YouTubers because the algorithm has determined they want to. Copwatcher videos get traction because of YouTube’s own technology and it’s crafted an audience that wants to see cops held accountable. And if you think police power is not a problem that requires people with cell phone cameras to address it, just consider something. The most recent police shooting in Pennsylvania and the role video is playing in its adjudication. 22 year old Glenwood Earl Seicher was walking to a friend’s house after a pub crawl when he stopped at the wrong address. After he knocked on the door, homeowners called the police fearing that someone was breaking into their house. Turns out that wasn’t true because Pyscher was actually sitting quietly on their back patio when police arrived. Enter Sean Farrell of the upper Potsgrove police.

He arrived on the scene, told the young man to show his hands, which he did peacefully and then inexplicably shot him twice in the chest killing him. Farrell has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, but here’s the most important point. When backup arrived on the scene, Farrell told the fellow cops that that young man had been shouting and gesticulating wildly, that he was screaming and threatening and all of it was not true. It was an absolute lie. But imagine if Officer Ferrell didn’t have body-worn camera, imagine if there was no video, what would’ve happened then? Well, I can tell you because I witnessed it here in Baltimore before cell phone cameras became ubiquitous. Nothing. Nothing at all would happen. No changes, no questions, no justice. Sure the family would’ve protested. His friends would’ve sworn up and down that he was a good kid incapable of scaring a cop, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

The officer would’ve been believed and an innocent man’s murder would’ve gone unavenged. So when YouTube or Google decides to shut down the ability of cop watchers to monetize their videos, it’s not just an inconvenience. It’s shutting down the people’s flock camera, so to speak, the cameras that are documenting power and the abuse of it. The one instance where the camera is turned on them, not us. And that is why this great demonetization should concern all of us. It’s not just about cop watchers. It’s not just about auditors or crazy YouTubers. It’s not just about who gets to shout the loudest or act the craziest. It’s about who has the right to tell our stories, who has the means to represent us. It’s about our voice and who hears it and who doesn’t. And that’s why here at the Real News and the Police Accountability Report, we will continue to report for you.

I want to thank – Wow. Was that all right?

Stephen Janis:

That was quite the Rantea.

Taya Graham:

I was moved. I couldn’t help it. After seeing this happen all week, we’ve been talking about it. We’ve been seeing people’s channels struck down and I was a little fired up. But

Stephen Janis:

You make a really good point because I covered a lot of police brutality and a guy would get shot in the back and police would come of sort of furative movements or whatever. It didn’t matter what anyone in the community, even people who witnessed it didn’t matter what they said.

Taya Graham:

10 witnesses and it wouldn’t matter.

Stephen Janis:

Until there was video. And that changed everything just like in our city, of course, with Freddie Gray, when people had the video of him being dragged into that van, Freddie Gray who died in police custody and the subsequent uprising. Without video, it just didn’t matter. The police always had the benefit of the doubt and a lot of, I think, bad shootings or criminal shootings went unprosecuted because of that. Absolutely. So your point about the camera and whether or not we need cop watchers, I think answered that question, I think for anyone.

Taya Graham:

Thank you.

Stephen Janis:

Just wanted to say that.

Taya Graham:

I really appreciate that, Steven. Thank you.You’re welcome.

Stephen Janis:

You’re

Taya Graham:

Welcome. Well, I have to thank Long Island Audit and Rice Krispies for joining on Rice Krispies. I called them Rice Krispies. Rice Krispy, sorry. Rice Krispy for joining us. And to anyone out there who might be experiencing demonetization on YouTube, please reach out to us. Even if you’re not a Copwatcher or First Amendment activist so we can try to understand the scope of this problem, you can reach out to me directly at par@therealnews.com or leave a comment here in the comment section. I’m going to be going through the comment section later. I’m going to be giving out hearts. I’m going to be looking for a comment of the week, but I also really want to see if there are people who’ve lost their channels. I want to be able to reach out to you or at least make a note that this has happened to you because I really want to keep track of this.

I have a running list and I want to confirm as many demonetizations as possible so we can really get a handle on what’s happening here. Agreed. I want to thank our moderators, Noli D and Lacey R. For their help. Thank you, Noli D.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

And of course our friends in the studio, Dave, Max, James, Jocelyn and Ryan. And of course, I have to thank my amazing co-host, Steven Janis, who knows better than anyone the power of pointing a camera at a powerful person. So thank you, Steven.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. And thank you to the studio. Thank

Taya Graham:

You David and Max

Stephen Janis:

And everyone for helping out.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, they do. They were heroic. Oh my gosh, Cameron. Sorry Cameron. Thank Cameron.

Stephen Janis:

Don’t forget Cameron. Cameron was very helpful.

Taya Graham:

We appreciate you all. And so I want to thank everyone watching who took the time to stay with us to the end. Like I said, I promise to go into the comments later and respond to comments. And I’m going to try to do a comment of the week. I’ll probably have it out midweek. So take a look. It might be yours. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. And as always, please be safe out there.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

So we are here at Eddie Conway’s front porch, which is, we call it People’s Museum. I’m here with Dominque Conway, the wife of Eddie Conway. Tell our audience what Eddie Conway meant to you or who was Eddie Conway to you?

Dominque Conway:

That’s really, that’s hard to sum up, to be quite honest. Eddie was so many things to me and so many other people, but Eddie was, quite honestly, he was my hero as he was to many other people. He was a Black Panther. He was somebody who also served 44 years in the Maryland prison system and didn’t allow that time to break him. During that time, Eddie worked with hundreds of men in the prison system, many of whom have come out and done their own programming and continued to do really great things in the community. So at the end of the day, Eddie was just a man. But he loved people. He loved humanity and he exuded that. He loved nature. He loved animals. He exuded that pretty much in everything that he did. And I wanted to capture some of that. I wanted to capture his legacy.

I feel like it’s very important for us to own our narratives and to give those proper narratives because it’s easy for many people to just see Eddie the icon. I want them to see Eddie the man.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about how this came about in your mind and how it became a vision for people who could see.

Dominque Conway:

Well, I wasn’t even planning to come back to Baltimore. You know this, right? But I don’t know. I woke up one day, I saw this house online and thought about all the things we’ve talked about, what we want to do, and it was the perfect place. Also, I think at that time I felt like we need to do something to really preserve his legacy. I have a lot of documents, a lot of papers, a lot of things that need to be archived. And I’m like, we need to do that. It would be easy to say, oh, maybe they should go to a university. But I think we need our own people’s archives. We need our own spaces where we not only celebrate and remember, but we tell accurate histories of resistance, of black liberation in particular, but not even limited to that, the experience of indigenous people, the experience of Latino people.

We need to be able to own our narratives and share those stories with youth, with people in the community. One of the young men who’s going to perform today, he’s doing spoken word. We’ve been telling him, Hey, this is your space. Host spoken word events here. So we’re looking to get people in to just do what they want to do. We have a small theater group that meets here at times and just comes together to do storytelling. So we’re just opening the space up and wanting the community to come in.

Speaker 3:

So this is real news. So let me give you some real events. Mr. Conway, I call him Mr. Conway. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that. From day one, we met inside a prison. I was doing youth work and he was doing outreach work inside the institution and someone had a good idea for us to come together. And right off the top, when I met him, immediately we connect. Immediately, he was everything that I read about, everything everyone told me about real charismatic, real intelligent and planning. And our first encounter was straight away about the people. And day one, we established a curriculum called Friend of Friends, which was a grassroots program inside the institution that developed outside here to where we at today.

Mansa Musa:

And you said that Eddie was instrumental in helping people constantly go in prison. And that’s where I met Eddie at. And to a point, as you’ll talk to some other brothers today to resonate this point, Eddie was responsible for a lot of us getting political education. And when you look at the time that he came into the Maryland prison system, what was going on in this country, a lot of people was resisting the establishment in society and they were putting him in prison. When Eddie came in the prison system, he didn’t come in the prison system. I’m Eddie Conway. I’m here to change. I’m the natural of the Maryland prison system. No, he came in, I’m trying to get out of prison. But the conditions made him be who he is. He responded to the conditions. Condition was so horrendous that he started educating. And one thing he said in his book, COINTELPRO, the greatest threat ever say agitate, educate, organize.

This is what he’s saying that this was a model that he want people to understand how they look at things. So I’m an example of the impact that Eddie had on people. When I got out, it was no brainer for me to fall in ranks, to become a part of this process. This house right here, if I got out tomorrow, I would be in. If I got out a year from tomorrow, I would be here. Wherever we at in this space, wherever Eddie or Dominique is doing something, we in that space. So that’s what Eddie pretty much, like Dominiqu said, it’s hard to sum up for Eddie, but we try to get people to understand that Eddie was a human being and a man and our hero always got different views on him. But at the end of the day, Eddie was a person that loved our people and did everything humanly possible to get our people to understand their right to self-determination.

Speaker 4:

I was working in the library. He comes up to get science fiction books like Star Track and stuff like that. I used to be like, “That’s nothing revolutionary.” He says, “It is. These are the things that’s going to come. This is information that was redone, replayed and put into a book.” He said, “It’s a lot of information inside fiction and it’s the history wrapped up in fiction.”

Speaker 5:

So let me first start off by saying friend of a friend. When I first learned about Friend of a Friend and I asked where the name came from, I was taught that the name came from the times of slavery and underground railroad with Harriet Tubman. People just couldn’t go knock on anybody door because the Underground Railroad was a group of people or a system of people that helped people along the road on the way to freedom. So when people would knock on the door, they just couldn’t say anything random. So when they would ask who was it, you would say a friend of a friend. And that’s how we knew that the people were official. That was the secret code. So when we say a friend of a friend, we speaking about family, we speaking about unity. We speaking about a safety net, a safety system where we could come to and be whole as family and put ideas together, think tanks, so to speak.

Speaker 4:

Eddie Conway was like a mentor and a father to me. I came in the Maryland Penitentiary Act the age of 22 years old, stayed in prison for 28 years. And during that time, Eddie Conway gravitated to me and pulled me in tight and gave me some things that I could actually make better decisions with. And ever since then, he had me under his wings.

Speaker 3:

So our experiences have always been from four different institution. Me and Eddie Conway had a different relationship. I think everybody would say the same thing had a different relationship. Him and I shared a mutual common ground about young individuals and the growth and development of young guys in prison as well as society. So our relationship was trying to build that gap between prison and society. And everything that he represent was about the community.

Mansa Musa:

So we was doing libation in Gilmore Projects and honor Eddie and our ancestors. And a guy rolled up that was on a bicycle and he was a little kid when they first moved down Gilmore and Dominique said, “Man, he was a pain.” And this is what he said. He rolled up, he seen Ms. Dominique. And this is what I said. I sai, “What she means?” Now Ms. Dominique was good. So this is an example. This guy just came out, he’s still in the neighborhood, but his memories of what we was doing in Gilmore Projects is memories of us recognizing him and saying, “You got worth, so what do you want to do with your worth? We’re here to help you maximize on your worth.”

Speaker 4:

So from that, I paid a lot of close attention to Eddie and he showed me. During that time I was already a member of the Black Gorilla family and field marshal. So I had a real good rapport inside the prison with every organization, every gang. And Eddie gave me a way to construct a unified effort of prisoners to keep down the trouble, the violence, keep down a lot of the unnecessary stuff that take place in prison with a lot of our youth. So when I got released. Well, he got released first and I was a facilitator in the program in which he created him and Ms. Dominique, friend of a friend. I was a facilitator. And it was from the facilitation that led me to college, from college out here in the street into college and to running my own business. If it wasn’t for Eddie, I’d probably still be in prison acting crazy.

So I loved him for that and he guided me all the way until his last breath. So I respect it and here I am doing the work that he taught me to do.

Speaker 5:

Oh man. So Mr. Conway was, he was one of a kind. He was exceptional. It is such a blessing when you can learn from people who experience historical times, who lived through the movement, to be able to garner that wisdom, to be able to be blessed with that type of information. I know that I was totally blessed. It’s sad to say, but I found my best leaders inside of prison. Mr. Conway was definitely one of the best of them. I learned a lot from Mr. Conway. He was a leader. He was a man. He was moral. He was principled. He was exceptional in his walk. He was consistent. He had values. He had knowledge to distill. Whenever you ask, he was ready to give a blessing. He was always strong. He always stayed 10 toes down. So nothing but mad love and much respect for Mr.

Conway, a living legend. Well, he’s passed, but he’s still a living legend. His spirit lives on through all of us.

Speaker 3:

He was genuine how his approach and how he did things and how he organized, how he was able to organize people was one of the things that stuck out a lot about Mr. Conway, right? How he was able to organize. Me, myself, I was still in prison when we lost Eddie, so I didn’t get an opportunity to work with him while he was out there, but I was still working beside him while I was still incarceration because he still kept his hands inside the institutions while he was flying throughout the country, building up the communities. I still was inside holding it down for him and his name along with his wife, Dominique. But I would like to say our experiences and he left a lasting impression on me about how we should build, how we view education and how we view our community and the young people just growing up in it.

And that last impression he left, man, is really profound, if I could say the least. He impart a lot of information on me and a lot of history. That’s one of the things I will say as well, that know your history so it won’t repeat itself, but if it does repeat itself, it repeats itself in a proper way. So that’s some of the things that I would like to say he imparted on myself personally is history and how to deal with the people based upon that. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. But I miss him. I really do miss him. I wish he was here now to view some of the things that all of us collectively as a group, because we was a family. And now that we all out here together and we building together, we missing our hierarchy. We really missing our hierarchy out here.

Even though the sister here, she holding down on his presence, we holding down his presence, but we could feel the emptiness of his not being here, although we do feel like he’s here with us.

Dominque Conway:

Right now in particular, obviously I miss Eddie every day. That’s personal, that’s love. But politically, I miss Eddie because he had such a keen analysis about everything and just the information he would provide about what’s happening in the present. But also because he had that history, he had that history of being part of the resistance, being part of a movement that was the vanguard of the revolution at the time. He had so much information, but I think it is critical. So many people are passing away. Ward Churchill, for example, was a giant. Ward is gone. So it’s really more important, I think now than ever for us to be engaging and working in multi-generational ways, which is really a very traditional way of working in say black, indigenous, and Latino communities. We have to really return to that and not see young people as a separate group.

Age is real, but generation is a social construct too. So we have to break that down and really engage, like I said, in a more multi-generational.

Mansa Musa:

And we look at all revolutionary. Malcolm was young. Huey, Bobby, Lou Bobby Hunt, they was young. These were young people that had big ideas and got together and organized their thinking around changing social conditions. And I’m with Dominique on that.

Speaker 5:

So of course I got to acknowledge and honor Ms. Dominique Conway as well, the matriarch, who is our Harriet Tubman in these days and time, who is one of my teachers. I’ve learned from a lot of women, but I would say that Ms. Conway, Ms. D taught me a lot just about self and acknowledging and having race pride and being a linchpin and a leader and what it takes and means to be a leader. So I couldn’t go do this brief interview without saying, thank God for Ms. D, because Ms. D was angel in my life and still continue to be. So much respect to her, Eddie First Lady, and thank you for having me.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Speaker 1:

I’m going to be super brief. I largely just want to, again, thank everyone for coming out. I’m the producer of this film, but I’m sure you guys know you can’t do something like this by yourself, right? So I want to also thank the Baltimore Legacy Project Youth Crew who’s outside, who took your. I mean, they’ve just been really on point getting B-roll setting up. Really appreciate them a lot. Also, the folks that you saw in the film, thank you so much for trusting me with your voice, your story. I don’t take that lightly. And when I say you don’t do it by yourself, one of the. Oh, I also want to shout out. She’s not in here, but the narrator is actually here too. She’s part of Baltimore Legacy Project Youth Crew in the front. Her name’s Empress. Yep. But someone who is definitely in the thick of all of this with me is there’s several cinematographers, but there was one person who was the lead cinematographer, more or less the director of photography on this project.

They were also the editor who edited all of this. They also edited the trailer that I did, and there was a lot of back and forth. Do this, do this. I mean, that’s a person who I spent really most of my time with in terms of creating this. And I just wanted to give a few moments for him to just say a few words. His name is Imani. He’s making his way up here. His name is Imani. Imani.

And I’ll let you finish explaining.

Speaker 2:

No, great job, everybody. Thank you all for coming out. This was amazing, right? I mean, this was one of the best things I worked with. I’ll be real quick. My name’s Imani Mulayer. I was part of the production crew, but also the founder of the Baltimore Cinematic Universe. And for some people who know it, some people don’t, I can just let you know we are a film studio. We’re new in Baltimore with a core mission is to change division of Baltimore around the world to have a new perception of our city. Yeah. So yeah, I’m a TV producer, lifelong TV producer, two-time Emmy Award-winning. We have a whole staff of award-winning filmmakers. We have a whole advisory board of all the leading industry experts in the city. We launched in December thanks to Nancy from the Parkway. I think she was here. But yeah, there you go.

Thanks, Nancy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Nancy Froctor back there. And since then, we already have four TV shows, one feature film, one vertical series, either in active development or already shopping to major networks. And so I started working with Rashim because I was like, how do we offer this to the Baltimore community? All of our resources, all of our pipeline. So after the success of this documentary, I said, that’s what we can do. So today I want to announce that’s what we’re doing. The Baltimore Cinematic Universe is opening up our film studio to the city, to individuals, to organizations. If you have a story that you need to tell, we do everything from feature films, TV shows, web series, social media campaigns. More importantly, we produce and we distribute. We get it out. We promote and market it. So your video will be seen by the people who need to see it.

And we work at all production levels, all budget levels. We just want to continue our mission to get that real Baltimore out. So feel free. You can contact me directly. I’ll be here for the rest of the evening. We’re online, baltimorecinematicuniverse.com. My email, Imani, I-M-A-N-I at baltimorecinematicuniverse.com. All social media, all that. But yeah, yeah, we’re here to stay. We’re going to make a difference in the city. So hopefully we can do it with y’all. Thank you.

Speaker 3:

All right. If you are a panelist, come on up to the stage. Beyond the Wire. One of the things that I’ve said, and y’all have heard me say versions of this in other premiers, that one of the beautiful things about this film is that I think it gives words, images, narratives to a feeling, to an instinct, to an inclination that I think a lot of people had, but just put words and the images to it. And one of the things that when I talk in general in policy arenas about the work of violence prevention, like the work of it, I think for a lot of people, it’s rather abstract. A lot of people don’t know the work. So what I’m going to first ask each of you to do is to introduce yourself, your organization affiliation work, and then answer this question. When a lot of people think about public safety, they think about the courts, thinking about police, think about jail.

And that’s not what any of y’all do. So in your introduction of yourself, if you can talk about your own contribution to declines in violence and homicides in Baltimore, talk about your work and your contribution to it, because it’s important for the audience to have a concrete sense of what the work is. So I’m going to start at the end with Brother Anthony and then come down this way.

Speaker 4:

I like

Speaker 5:

The plane. Thank you. Good evening, afternoon, everybody. First and foremost, I want to thank God for this opportunity. Of course, giving him all of the honor, all of the praise and all of the glory. I also want to begin by, of course, thanking Dr. Rashim for this amazing opportunity and the great work that she has done and continue to do with this project and helping us control the narrative about the real Baltimore, as we say. So I want to begin with a quote here that kind of just set the tone for me. And those who do this work will already know where this quote is from. And those connected with this facility absolutely will know where this quote is from.

Do your little part. Do whatever you can to help change these conditions because we’re moving into a critical period in history, not just for poor and oppressed people, black people, but for humanity itself. Do whatever little you can, but you need to do something. That quote is from one of my elders, one of my mentors who helped mold and shape me to be who and what I am today. The late great Eddie Conway, Eddie Marshall Conway. And so I’m honored to be here at the Real News Network where his influence is still alive and well in the work that we do. I also want to thank all of these amazing panelists here who are literally the boots on the ground and doing the work that we do. I’m honored to just share space with them anytime we get the opportunity, especially Ms. Erica here. The other two I’m with every day, practically seven days a week.

But Ms. Erica here, we have the lived experience at doing this work. She literally did the victim offender mediation in my own case, who set me down with the families of the victims in my own case, literally. So anytime I have the opportunity to be in the same space with her is a blessing because that got me off to doing the work. I couldn’t engage the work without doing that first after my own release. So right after that, that kind of gave me the license, the permission to do what was in my heart to do anyway, which was kind to help other young 15 year olds in Baltimore City not make the same horrible decision that I made at the age of 15. For the last four years, I’ve had the great honor and privilege of serving as a community engagement specialist for We Are Us where we literally boots on the ground, door to door, block by block, street by street, engaging the people in this city that most people don’t want to engage.

But we’ve been up to that assignment and that task over the last two, three years. As of August 1st, I’ve kind of moved into a new space. I’m now the director of reentry services for the We Are Us organization where I have the opportunity to work more hands-on with the people behind the walls who are preparing to come back home into the community to kind of get their mind, their heart, their spirit right, to let them know that they have a debt to pay as well even after and beyond their release from incarceration to kind of fix some of the stuff that we kind of messed up in our communities. So that reentry space and work is what I’m headed into now. And I’ll leave it at that.

Speaker 6:

Hi everybody. So I’m Erica Bridgeford. And I just got to say out loud, I just now over there realized who he was. I mean, I’ve been engaging with you in community. We’ve been hugging. I did not realize he was the same person in that mediation because the work that we do at the Baltimore Community Mediation Center is confidential work. So from the mediator side of it, we had permission from Anthony and the person that he was in mediation with. A part of what they talked about gave permission for him to tell his story about their conversation and for us to tell the story. But I’ve always told it in anonymity. So I never remembered what his name was. I remembered he was 15. I know what happened, but I never remember what his name was or what he looked like. And this is my third time seeing the film and it just hit me.

I was like, “What he talking? What?” And so over there I had to like. So okay. So I’m just blessed and amazed and shocked at my own ADHD and menopausal brain right now.

But a piece of that too is that I literally meet thousands of people a year. I have trained thousands of people at this point to be mediators and in conflict management. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of mediations. So I’ve been in person and during the pandemic, it was during the pandemic. So we did it on Zoom, but in person, helping people resolve their conflicts, mediate things. We say it’s never too early and it’s never too late for people to sit down and have a conversation about what’s really going on between them. And so even after there’s been harm, even after people have filed assault charges, they still have the power to make the decisions about what does justice look like to them? What does resolution look like? All of that stuff. And so I have been, before I got involved in mediation, so I’m turning 54 years old this year and that’s when y’all ppose to say, “Girl, you look good.

Okay.” My favorite thing to do on any panel because I almost didn’t survive birth, but that’s a different conversation. So for at this point, over 30 years of my life, I’ve been doing something in this city to help nurture Baltimore’s peace and Baltimore’s joy. And so to Dayvon’s point, all of the things that my contribution has been taking the pain of my brother being murdered in the streets of Baltimore, my stepson being murdered, two of my cousins who were brothers being murdered and years apart from one, just since I was 12 years old, seeing people die in the streets of Baltimore, taking that pain and letting it remind me of the purpose that God gave me as my parents called me into being. And anywhere that I go saying, “Oh, if there’s something I don’t like, what is my soul calling me to do about it?

What is my part to do about it?” So I became a mediator in 2001. I became a trainer in 2002. I helped lead the 300 Men March movement. Now Baltimore Peace Movement, which was Baltimore Ceasefire. Funny story. When I left 300, I said, “Y’all not going to get me to lead a movement.” So I don’t know how I ended up leading a movement. I also, when I became a mediator, I was like, “Oh, executive director, that don’t look like the fun job. I’m never doing that job.” And now I’m the executive director at that same place. And so I’m blessed to be standing in my purpose and doing my purpose work. And I know that it is not a mistake that I was born at this time in history in Baltimore City to parents who were teenagers who said, “Let’s have a child that’s going to change the world.” And they intentionally named me after people who they believed were changing the world.

And then they nurtured me as a Black girl born with one hand in West Baltimore. They nurtured me to be everything I could possibly be. I scare them to this day.

I’ve been talking since I was five months old, so they never knew what was going to come out of my mouth. They always had to go meet with teachers because I was challenging authority. My children worry about me. It’s not safe to be in the streets after a murder happened. And that’s when I’m going. And so they nurtured me to not just be physically who I’m supposed to be, but spiritually to walk in strength and power and to not look at it like, “Oh, it’s dangerous.” I look at it like, “Oh, I’m covered. I got a gang of angels, ancestors, spirit gods.” Everybody walking with me. So it never occurs to me that I’m in danger. All it occurs to me is that people are hurting and I’m showing up with love. And I hope that people are open and allow me. I’m grateful that people allow me into their neighborhoods to just give them any little bit of love that they might need in those spaces.

And so like I was saying in the film, and I will keep saying, it doesn’t matter who is in office and what they do in their four or eight years that they have, that time is not enough to see what we are seeing happening right now in this city with these drastic drops. It is decades of work before them. It is people who kept saying, “We love our city. We’re not giving up on our city.” While the narrative is throw Baltimore in the trash, we kept saying, we going in the trash. You see trash, we see gems and value. And we kept pouring love into our city because our city is us. You can’t separate yourself from where you live. If you say, throw the city in the trash, where do you think you going there? I mean, you living in dumpsters now? And so a big part of my part to what’s happening right now is I am aware and I’m grateful that when people see my face, they see a symbol of hope.

When people see me and I say, “Oh, I look broken, but I’m whole, just like Baltimore looks broken and it’s whole.” I’m grateful that one thing I get to be at this time in history is a symbol of hope and hope in action, not just hope in theory.

Oh, that’s right. We’re used to passing mics down. We have our own this time.

Speaker 4:

It’s on. Okay. Well, what is it? Good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon. Well, I’m Ebony Harvin. I’m a pastor of New Solid Rock Church, which is located in the Pigtown area. I first want to just give honor to God. Honor to God, honor to God, honor to God. Thank God for all of you guys here. The great doctor that wrote this and put all of us together. I work with We Are Us, and I’m the project manager for the Thrive Academy. And Thrive Academy, I deal a lot with young people. And that’s my passion. I love young people. When I say I love young people, I love young people. And when I see young people, I see me. I see my children. I see nothing but greatness. And I’ve been doing this work for over 25 years. And when I say over 25 years, over 25 years.

Pastor, on Sundays because I’m a talker, I can talk, talk, talk. But this work right here, it’s about doing the work. And doing this work in these streets, as our brother Anthony mentioned, I’m with these two, like six days a week. I’ll say that we can be more in Baltimore City and there’s so much greatness in our city. We have to see beyond what we see. And I was a teen parent. I was a teen parent. And I thank God that I have an attorney. I have a school teacher. I have an entrepreneur. I did lose one of my sons to gun violence. It’ll be eight years on August the 15th, but God, but God, but God, but God. So before that happened, I was doing the work. And after it happened, it slowed me down a little. But now I just work extra harder.

I’m out there doing whatever I can to let another mother know that we’re going to do what we can to save life. We’re going to educate our young people. We’re going to make them see different and see that you can be more in Baltimore City. Some of the other things that I have done, have a used car dealership in Glen Burnie.

Speaker 6:

Come on, hustle.

Speaker 4:

Yes, yes, yes. I’ll say this, you guys. So sometimes when I get this mic in my hand, I’m like, look, let me just be quiet because I’m a little all over the place. But my most important gift, you guys, is just truly loving on our young people and loving Baltimore City. And when I say I love Baltimore City, my children say, Ma, you have so many children. What’s going on? I say, yes, the entire Baltimore City youth, they belongs to me. They belongs to me. So if y’all have any problems with the good, just, hey, let me find Pastor Ebony. So I’m not going to talk too much. I’m going to pass this mic on. But yes, you guys, just always remember this, that this city is so powerful. We’ve been through so much, but the strength, when I say the strength that this city have, the strength.

Baltimore City. And listen, five years from now, every other city that experienced some of the things, the heartache, the pain that we did, they’re going to say, wait a minute, we want to be like Baltimore City. Everybody came together on one accord because guess what? And community is unity. But once we come together, we’re going to be that change that guess what the world need to see. Not just other city that the world needs to see. So you guys, I’m going to pass this on to. He said, don’t pass the mic. I’m passing the mic. Okay. Listen, listen. I said I’m going to pass. I’m going to be quiet. Okay. I’m not passing the mic. Go for it.

Speaker 7:

Hey, good afternoon. My name is Delmont Player. I’m a lot of things. So I’m We Are Us. I’m ICAN. I’m LEC, which is Lived Experience Committee under Carolyn Shrugs. I’m AVP, Alternative to Violence Program. Absolutely. But in a nutshell, I’m the youth that you see out here. So quick story, I went to prison when I was 17 years old. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t write. I became one of Maryland’s most violent and disruptive prisoners. I was sent out of state. I did Fed Time. I’ve been in and out of Supermax. I’ve been beat by the police, rives broke and everything. I was probably one of the worst prisoners in Maryland State history. And I don’t say that. I say that humbly because I want you to understand the pits that I climbed out of. But at one point, something clicked, something changed, because the more you know, the better you have to do.

I’m a Muslim. I’m an FOY, so I’m a husband, I’m a brother. But what I often like to say is that for me, the work really began to resonate for me when the gang culture really ushered into the prison system. I didn’t come in under the gang culture. When I came in, it was man everybody for every man for themselves. But at some point, the gang culture began to usher into the system. And I’ll never forget, I came into the day room one day. And I’m not saying to say this is like when the change started because for a couple years I was already fighting with who I was becoming and who the world had been telling me I was, who the system had been telling me I was, who the court systems told me I was, who the streets told me I was. But I came in the day room.

It was the older guy. They were one of our pioneers from back in the day. And when you get old in the system, it tend to chip away at you. So he wasn’t as active, as agile as he used to be. And I came to the day room and he said, back then they used to call me by my last name. He said, “Lord Player, they won’t let me get on the phone.” And I was like, “What you mean?” He said, “Man, they saying because they was clicked up. This click had this phone, this click.” So what I did, I walked around the day room. I went to everybody on the phone because I get it in. And I said, “I’m at the U. I’m out of you.” So they clips begin to end. Yeah, I’m stealing. So I would hang the phone upside. That means ain’t nobody on it, but don’t touch it.

Let the phones hang. So at some point, about three, maybe four phones was hanging. Somebody came to the day room and said, “Man, I’m trying to get on the phone. Who on the phone? I’m still at the microwave cooking.” Somebody say, “Lord, player.” So he come over to the phone. “He said, Lord, player. “He turned and me say,” Player, “he said,” Player, you on the phone? What phone you getting? “I said,” I’m getting on all of them. “I said,” Yeah, I’m getting on all of them. And I’m with all the dumb, whatever. We can do whatever. “And like I said, God had a plan. Allah had a plan for me because really I suppose died behind those walls. But I noticed that the young brothers from various different organizations was willing to follow me in my ignorance and in my stupidity. And I realized at that time that I’d had about 17 years and nothing had changed.

All the work I continuously put in, it never stopped the next kid or next man from rising to think he can take the throne. So it never really stops. So the next day, what I did was I called a group of little young brothers in the yard and I grabbed a book called Mine is the Master by James Allen. It’s a compilation of all the books he ever wrote. He wrote a lot of people know him mostly for as a man thank you. And I just would read little parables out of that book to them, and then we would just build on it. And from there, it just trickled in my teachers from Moss number six, all that. And it continued to trickle. And then I started hearing about what different organizations was doing in the streets, Peace Movement, We Our Us, Baltimore Brothers, Uncle T Channel for Change.

So what I did is I got all the good men that was in the institution that I was in, and we went to all the various organizations, BGF, Blood, Crip, Murder Inc. DMI, whatever. And we brought them onto a board in a commission. This is how I met Carolyn Shruggs. We brought them onto a board under a program that we ran called GRIP. We would’ve overseas and GRIP was gang response intervention program. And what we did was every time a beef happened, we went on the compound and brought all the gang leaders into a room to squash it. And then there was meetings that took place in the chat when the Nation of Islam chat where I would stand between two knife slingers essentially and tell them that, man, your guys can’t move and they guys can’t over. That’s what I talk about, putting our lives on the line.

So I was mediating conflict behind a wall that spills out into the community. One of my biggest supporters to this day is the men and women that I left behind the prison walls. I still mediate conflict so it don’t spill out here into society. So that’s who I am in a nutshell. And that’s my portion.

Speaker 3:

And again, for me, it’s important for people to hear those stories and hear that context. You know what I’m saying? Because it’s important, I think, to normalize the fact that this work is happening and what it takes. And what I hope people get from these responses is that this is work. Each of the people on the stage, they’re the ones that got to do it, the work that they’re doing. It takes a certain kind of person, pedigree, perspective to do it. Pastor Ebony, you talked about the importance to you of young people and really loving on young people. Could you talk about what are some of the misconceptions that people have when it comes to youth, particularly as it relates to gun violence? What are some of the things that for you, you think it’s important for this audience to know about young people and gun violence in Baltimore City?

Speaker 4:

One thing, we have to stop judging young people from what area they’re from. We have to stop judging them because of their family members. A lot of our young people are judged and truly you don’t even know them. We have to learn how to understand that none of our young people are born murderers. None of them are born criminals. Some type of trauma happened in their life. A lot of our young people are on survival mode. But if you get a chance just to know them, not the costume that they have on, because guess what? I’m going home. I’m 10 years old and I’m going to a house where my mom is out there getting high. I got to take care of a seven-year-old and a five-year-old. I don’t know where my father at. So instead of us judging, how about we just have a conversation with them?

See what they need. How can I help you? Because a lot of times these young people just need some love. They need some support. But as long as we look at them, they coming outside, that little boy bed, that little girl, look at her. But you don’t know their story. So we have to help them rewrite their story. And I’m going to say this real quick. I received my honorary doctorate degree. And at first I was sitting up there like, wait a minute, me? My son went to school all these years. And my son, he said, Ma, let me explain something to you. When I was up there, sitting up there studying at night, you was at a hospital where a child was shot. He said, when I was sitting up there worrying about a test, you was up there praying because guess what? Some little girl or somebody, something just happened to him.

He said, For 25 years, I’ll watch you work hard. And when I said work hard, work hard. He said, when I was sitting up there saying, I’m going to pass this test. He said, look, the test that I thought that I was going to pass, you was up there making things happen, relocating families, relocating young men that got caught up in mess. He said, so you deserve it. So I say on today, you guys, I didn’t. I was sitting up there like, wait a minute. Do I really deserve this? I do. I do. I’ve done over 300 funerals in Baltimore City, but God, but God. So I was able to help that family or help them in the midst of their pain. So I say this back to your question, I’m a little all over the place, so y’all mind me. Okay? All right, y’all got to get a Sunday morning message.

But no, no, no, no. So let me get real back. One thing, just please, please stop judging our young people from where they live. Stop it. When you get to know these young people, you’ll say, My God. Some of these young people have been through some things that in my 50 years I haven’t experienced, but God. And when I say but God, but God, I have a young man, and I’ll say this, he lost his mother and his father. He was 15 years old. He got himself in some trouble. His grandmother said, “What did you do to my grandson?” I said, “I listened to him because a lot of times we got to get to the root of the problem in order to fix a problem.” She said, “Wait a minute. I sent him to this therapist. I sent him everywhere.” I said, “He needs somebody to experience some things.” I said, “See, I’ve been through some things.

Amen. So I can listen. I can relate to him. Okay?” I said, “So instead of us you guys judging our young people, give them a chance.” And when I say give them a chance, just give them a chance. Just listen to him. When you see them young men on the corner, don’t walk past them. Say, “How you doing?” When I see young men, guess what I don’t say? I don’t have to say, “Pull your pants up.” Oh, that’s past Ebony right there. They’re going to pull their pants up because it’s about the relationship. And I’ll say this, when you’re doing this work, I fear nobody but God. I’m not afraid to go to East Baltimore, West Baltimore. And I grew up in Charli Hill. Love Cherry Hill. Amen. When I say love Char Hill, love Cherry Hill. So you guys, just one thing. Just always that young person want.

They want to know that, hey, somebody care about me. Somebody love me. How many want to feel loved? How many want to feel loved? That’s it right there. And that’s All they want. They just looking for someone to love them. And I’ll say this, I love on our young people too. I love the hell out of them. That’s it. There we go.

Speaker 5:

Davon, can I add something to that? You

Speaker 4:

Answer while I’m passing the mic. Okay, let me stop passing the mic.

Speaker 5:

Can I add something to that on the young one of you?

Yes, sir. We took a group of young people to Dr. Rashim’s facility about two weeks ago, about 25 of our young people in the Baltimore Brothers Program to help Dr. Rashim with another project specifically towards youth that I hope she’ll share some more information about. But she started, when we brought them in the room, she started them off with a question that I’m going to ask you. She asked the young people that we brought to her, “What percentage do you think of young people in Baltimore City are involved in crime and violence?” And we heard all kinds of numbers, didn’t we, Doc? One said like 90%. One was like 99%. All kinds of numbers. But the actual facts, the truth is less than 5%.

But there’s a narrative that’s prevailing, that’s pervasive, that young people are not just inherently criminal, but pervasively involved in crime and violence. There’s just not no truth in it at all. And what troubles me the most about the narrative is not just the projection of the narrative, is that some people will allow themselves to be used as vehicles to portray the narrative. I’m talking about people in positions of leadership, authority, and power who make comments about young people that are just not rooted in facts, who take isolated incidents involving young people and allow themselves, their office, their position to portray narratives as if all young people in Baltimore City are doing this. I just wanted to add that to that answer.

Speaker 3:

I appreciate that. No, it’s good. So Erica, one of the things that I think in this kind of Western civilization, Eurocentric cultural environment, oftentimes spirituality gets marginalized. People tend to marginalize it. And a lot of what you talked about in the film and even what you’ve talked about a little bit on this panel so far, the importance of spirituality. And again, that’s another one of those things that for some people can feel abstract. Can you speak to the spiritual impact that the work has had and why that’s such an important aspect of the work?

Speaker 6:

Okay. So I’m going to try to describe it in a simple way, like how I would describe it to children. I used to be a preschool teacher and an elementary school teacher, so I think. Okay. All right. And what you’re talking about is what I call colonizer reindeer games. Y’all like that? Free to use it. Trademark archabrish boy. Okay. Where like, yes. Okay. So we are all more unseen than we are seen. And this is not about religion or who you call God or any of that. It is just a scientific fact. Human beings, what you are as a being, you are more unseen stuff than you are seen stuff. If we remove all of the space out of your human body, your physical mass would fit on the tip of a pen. And I mean, not a writing pen, I mean like a needle pen.

So there’s this physical aspect of there’s more to us than what we can actually see and touch, which means there’s much more going on with us.

And so if you ever wonder if that’s true, if there’s way more of you that’s unseen, your thoughts are an unseen realm. You’re right now having a gazillion thoughts that can never be physically spoken, heard, manifested. But they are a part of how you feel right now. They are a part of how you’re experiencing this. We’ve all been saying the same words to everybody in this room, but everybody in this room have not heard us say the same things because of the unseen part of you that is so vast and that influences the experience you are having as a human being. And so what we do with that unseen part of us that whispers quiet nudges to us about what we could do, what we should do, what we shouldn’t do, make this right, make that left, don’t answer that email. Ignore that person. Call your cousin and apologize.

Y’all know the shit y’all be ignoring.

There’s so much about who we are that when we just manifest a little bit of it, it changes things. And here’s the very elementary example that I used some years ago when the Baltimore Ceasefire Now, the peace movement started that it just occurred to me recently we’re seeing now. So in 2017, people were being killed every 19 hours in Baltimore. And Baltimore had more murder than it had ever seen in its history. And people were saying there’s nothing we can do about it. So murder is this vibration. So I’ve just got finished talking to you about how much you are vibration. So there’s this vibration about murder that makes you feel like you as one person, there’s nothing you can do about that. But there’s this unseen part of you that says, “But I want to do something. I feel like if I was just more kind to people because you don’t know what people are going through.

I feel like if I just shared that post that I saw that was positive so I could add to positive algorithms and the interwebs that are also vibration.” And so I compared it to an ocean because that’s what people would say. “Oh, y’all just spitting in the ocean. This little bit of stuff y’all doing, it’s not going to work. Y’all just spitting in the ocean. “So I was like,” They right. I’m just spitting in the ocean. “But if the ocean is red and the unseen parts of me are nudging me to go take a little dropper full of blue ink and just start dropping it in that ocean, somebody’s going to say,” She crazy. What is she over there doing? “Just like they told Harriet Tubman.

It’s crazy. It’s dangerous. The tide going to come in and take you away. People going to come and try to take your dropper away from you like I can’t go find another dropper and find some more blue ink. You know what I mean? Okay. And while people saying that, somebody is going to say, but that little part where she at is starting to turn purple, it looked like. Right? And somebody else is going to say, I always wanted to put some blue ink in the ocean and they going to come and put their little blue ink. And more and more people are going, they’re putting their little drops in the ocean. And before you know it, the whole ocean is turning purple like it started doing in 2023 when the murder rate was 20% less. And people was like, wait a minute. Something is happening.

And we was like, I’ve been over here at the ocean. Before y’all could see it start to change, I’ve been following my spirit. I’ve been following the calls on my heart. I’ve been healing the things inside me that need to be healed that I know are standing in the way and blocking more of my power, more of my authority, more of my confidence in whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing in this world. And I’m over here working on me while y’all calling me crazy and my blue drops are blessed. And they call more people who say, uh-oh, well, I want to be a blue dropper too. And now that the ocean is purple and looking more blue, people that’s been talking trash about Baltimore want the credit. People that just want to lock everybody up in Baltimore want you to think it’s their policies that’s changing things.

And so the spiritual aspect by science, by universal law, when you are focused on something with strong emotion, you have no choice but to manifest into your physical experience, that thing. That is just how it works. That’s how creation works. And so we have been focused on Baltimore’s joy with strong emotion. We’ve been focused on Baltimore’s love, Baltimore’s value, Baltimore’s gangster with strong emotion. There was no choice but for us to start experiencing in our physical realm, all of the things that we know God created us to be.

Speaker 3:

So Brother Delmont and Brother Anthony, this next question is for the two of you. Both of you mentioned both on this panel and in the movie, the importance of doing work behind the walls and its influence on the work that’s happening in the streets of Baltimore. Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of, and walk through some of the mechanics of the work that happens behind the walls and how that translates out into the streets in terms of the work to reduce violence?

Speaker 7:

I knew he was going to do that.

Speaker 2:

Fight, fight, fight, fight.

Speaker 7:

So growing up in the juvenile justice system, I did Skid Straight. I did Big Brother. I did Choice Program. I did Big Brother. So I did all the youth programs, but none of them worked. The reason why they didn’t work because I didn’t sit in front of men that I resonated with. So the people they would sit me in front of was guys who was nothing like me, had experienced nothing like I experienced, who didn’t have brothers that was in and out of prison, cousins that was in and out of prison, mothers and fathers who were strung out on drugs. Everybody, guys that they hung around with 10, 15 years they sent you. So that’s the one thing that I think make us so impactful with the young men. But to be more specific is without saying names, I’ll give you a scenario of an entire family.

So a father gets locked up when me and my guys basically growing up. His father goes to jail for shooting somebody a couple blocks over. Both of them got sons. So before we even encounter each other, our families is already telling us that we don’t get along. We don’t deal with them. We don’t really know what the whole situation is about. We just inherit a beef. So now we grow up and we condition that we just don’t like these guys. So any little thing triggers the beef. Now a kid goes to jail. A father is already in jail. He goes to jail for somebody that’s involved in his family. So now he got to what we call home field advantage because the father’s already been on the scene 15, 20 years in the prison system and he considered a soldier. So now a young man has to walk into a prison system at 16, 17 years old and contend against grown men who are hardened criminals, who have been serving time for 15, 16 years, who have all kind of connects through the prison system.

So now he has to rise up and rise to the occasion. So situation like this, so now he get in, he has no uncles. He has no big cousins on the yard. So in response to that, since you did that behind the walls, and that’s my homeboy and we out here, we going to address it out here. So since you did that and we can’t get you and you got the prison system and he can’t do nothing to you, we’re going to touch your peoples out here in the street. So we going to send you a message from out here. Every time something happened, we going to hit one of yours out here. So stepping in between it, it don’t really seem like much. But the ripple effect of a lot of people in a lot of those murders, a lot of that stuff come from behind the prison walls.

Orders, hits, because somebody get touched on a yard and they feel like they can’t do nothing. So I’m going to send somebody out there to do something to your mother. There are tapes and phone recordings where they have men on the phone because somebody took somebody off for some drugs behind the wall and say, “Man, go to that house and do something, beat his mother up.” Because since he won’t act like he ain’t playing, people get on the phone, they call people parents and tell them, “If you don’t pay that money, we going to do X, Y, and Z to him.” And so how do they children respond to that? So mediating conflict behind the wall, it has a profound effect. And not just mediating conflict from behind the wall, but mediating conflict from this side. When I was speaking at the situation what happened with one of our elders and I was just saying people so quick to, like Pastor Ebony said, throw the youth away.

And the brain science is real that the brain doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25. That is a true thing. It’s not that. No. Am I saying that I didn’t know that I was doing right from wrong? Hell no. I definitely knew that.That’s why I tried to put on black to try to disguise it. But what I’m saying is you did not know the magnitude of the prophetic effect it was going to have and the ripple effect on yourself, on your family. So when something like that happened with a youth out here, that man got family on the inside. So now we got to be on the phones mediating conflict because if those young men get caught and go behind those walls, they got to stand on business. So it’s somebody back there that want to address that. If just for no reason, just because he got on the phone and heard his mother say, “Yeah, they out here doing that.” He say, “Yeah, when he come back, I’m going to knock his head off just for GP.” So yeah, it’s very important that we are mediating conflict on both sides of the fence because I’m telling you, the ripple effect that it has when somebody is stabbed behind those prison walls or somebody is shot out here on the streets, whether they’re part of organization or whatever, it spins behind those walls and vice versa.

It spills out into the streets.

Speaker 3:

And Brother Anthony, let me add to the question because I think the other thing that I’ve heard you address that I think is important for this audience to hear is WeRS has the Stop the Beef hotline. No law enforcement involvement in that process. Can you talk about the importance of that? Because I think there’s some people who can’t fathom why it’s important in that particular context for law enforcement to not be involved.

Speaker 5:

Absolutely. I’ll say this, right? There’s so much that we do on the Stop the Beef side of this work that you’re just never going to hear about. You’re never going to read about. You’re never going to see on Instagram, Facebook, that part of the work. Because it involves a level of confidentiality where if the individuals involved don’t trust us, not only do you not stop the beef, but you potentially put yourself in harm’s way, as he articulated in the documentary. So all of the people, all of the parties involved have some sort of connection to the criminal legal system. So traditionally, that’s just not going to work with law enforcement in the room. Not only is it not going to work with law enforcement in the room, but we’re never even going to get them to the mediation. If they believe in the slightest way we have any connection to law enforcement, that we cooperate with law enforcement in any way, they’re never even going to be in that room.

That’s just not going to happen. That’s the reality of it. So that’s not to say that law enforcement doesn’t have a role to play in solving crime and violence in the community. That’s separate from mediating conflict, completely separate from resolving beefs and disputes, especially where blood has already been spilled.

So involving law enforcement from that perspective makes no sense at all for us. And you’re never going to hear about that. You’re never going to see two people that called their hotline, that called one of the mediators and said, “Bro, they shot my brother. I’m going to burn half of East Baltimore to the ground.” You’re never going to hear that. And you’re never going to see our response to it. You’re going to see our public response to mass shooting events. You’re going to see that. You’re not going to see what we do behind the scene in terms of who we calling, who we talking to, what we talking to them about. Because that confidentiality has to be there and that level of trust has to be there between us and them. So that’s the reason for the no police involvement. But for this audience particularly also, according to the Department of Justice statistics, over 650,000 people are released from prison throughout America every year.

650,000. I want that number to sink in. These are the number of people that are coming home from prison every year, according to the federal government. In that same report, they said that here in the state of Maryland, almost 10,000 people are in this revolving door of going into prison, coming home from prison every year, right here in the state of Maryland. All of them are coming home to a community near you.

So it only makes sense that we put some effort into rehabilitating the 2.2 million people that we have locked up behind these prison walls. We incarcerate more people in this country than any nation on the planet. There are some states that incarcerate more people than any other civilized nation on the planet. But as a society, we give zero thought. Zero though to the fact that these two million people, the majority of them at some point are coming home. And if there is nothing done to help repair them, then it leads, it produces a cycle of crime and violence that continues. So we got to get to this tendency, the orientation and the mind to return to criminal behavior and conduct. And that don’t stop when they’re released. It actually starts when you send them there. We have to be involved in that. So that’s the part I’ll add to the incarceration piece.

Can I say

Speaker 8:

One thing?

Speaker 3:

So I’ll let y’all say two quick things. After they say what they’re about to say, we’re going to do Q&A and we’ll pass a microphone around. So if you have questions, you can raise your hand. We’ll bring a microphone to you. Go ahead. I

Speaker 4:

Just want to say one thing. When it comes to the Stop the Beef team, in order to stop a beef, you have to have a relationship. And when I say have a relationship, have a relationship. And I deal a lot with young people, you guys. They have to trust you. And when I say trust you, trust the fact that I know that they care about me, they want the best for me. So it’s all about the relationships. So if we are us have a situation, they can reach out to other organizations that’s trustworthy. And one thing I thank God for the organizations that we all work for, we don’t have a foot in and a foot out. Got to be real about this thing. It’s no halfway thing. Either you’re going to be real or you’re going to be fake. And when you are in that position, these young men and young ladies, because there’s a lot of young ladies now that’s carrying guns, you have to be able to put your life on the line.

There’s many a times that our lives just there. Not knowing if we’re going back home, but God. But one thing, relationship, keep that. You have to have a good relationship. And I’m going to be quiet, okay? There we go.

Speaker 6:

About the reentry part, just how important it is to. Just listening to Delmont talk, it’s like, oh, he’s somebody that society would’ve been like, oh, throw him away. You one of the most dangerous and we can’t control you and the choice program ain’t even work. And they’re saying like, okay, throw him away and look at what we have. And so all of the research shows that what happens in the first 48 hours when somebody comes home from prison determines where they’re going to be three and six months later. And so if they come home and they have not resolved conflicts, if they have not rebuilt relationships with the people who’ve been raising their children, if they have not really gotten clear about what does getting a job look like when I come home, I know I’m going to go live with my aunt, but really what’s going to happen when I go there?

If they have not had hard conversations with people who they believe have harmed them. And so when we do reentry mediation and people can two years before they come home, we go into the prison. Whoever they said they wanted to talk to comes in. It took a lot to just build a relationship enough with the Department of Corrections to get them to let us be in rooms with the person who’s incarcerated and who they want to mediate with and no COs can listen and no COs are in the room.That was five good years of Lord Charcotian banging her head against brick walls to be like, no. Because nobody is more institutionalized than people who work within those systems. So all of those people kept saying to us, oh, if y’all come into prison and work with them, they going to be tricking y’all into sending them money and sending them drugs.

And I’m like, boo, it’s just y’all just bringing the drugs in here. I don’t know what y’all talking about.

But when people are coming home, if they have not built strong relationships, if they have not rebuilt trust, if they have not resolved conflict, if we don’t understand that there is no such thing as an offender who has not first been a victim of a lot of things, sometimes it’s a mediation between the son who one of the things he went to jail for is he kept stealing from his mother while he was selling and using drugs. And him and mom are now in mediation before he comes home. So you would go in thinking, oh, he’s the offender, she’s the victim. And we go, okay, what do you all want to talk about? And the first thing out of his mouth to his mother is, how come you always put men before me? And that’s where we’re starting the conversation. And so whatever it is that can be.

And getting into prison is very hard work. It’s as difficult as getting into schools. So just the comparison is crazy. But to get in and be able for people to really have real conversations where there’s no CO presence, there’s no police presence, there’s nobody that works in the prison. There’s just the grassroots volunteer mediators and the people who are having the conflict and need to work it out and make plans about what does a smooth transition home really look like? What is success? What is healing? All of that stuff, what does it really look like? The research shows that people who have that opportunity are in that first two hour session, 8% less likely to reengage with the criminal justice system at all. They can have as many mediations in prison as they want before they come home. With every additional session, it increases by another 10% that they’ll be less likely to reengage with the system.

And all that is happening is they’re building a stronger relationship with the support systems or whatever it is coming home is going to look like. They’re building a stronger foundation to actually, when they come home in that first 48 hours, it’s going to determine a much healthier place they’ll be three and six months later.

Speaker 3:

All right. So what I’ll do is if you have a question, I’ll ask you to raise your hand and a microphone will come right to you. You’ll see a young man in the red vest coming to you with the microphone.

Speaker 8:

Thank you. And just so much respect to all of you for giving hope to Baltimore and our communities. It’s humble to be in your presence today. And I wanted one shout out to Tawanda Jones who’s been doing work in the community to get accountability amongst the police and to reduce the amount of police brutality and violence in our communities that also leads to the violence, community violence. They’re interlinked. And so somewhat in that vein, and I think some of you were kind of touching on this, the fact that our state’s attorney is trying to take out safe streets through the Inspector General’s office, both the state’s attorney’s office and the police trying to grab credit for the things that we all know. I’ve been saying this for a long time, that the only reason we’ve had the reduction in crime is because of folks like you guys doing the work, people who really understand the community and are been a part of it.

But at the same time, I heard you say it takes everybody and everyone has a role, et cetera. But how do you move in those spaces where the police, law enforcement and the state’s attorney’s office are involved? You can’t extract them from everything. We could do it from conflict mediation, et cetera. So the question is, how do you guys move in those spaces to maintain enough of a relationship, but also not to be trapped in it as well?

Speaker 5:

Absolutely. Yeah. Good question. Absolutely a good question. It’s common sense that law enforcement is part of the village. It has its role, its responsibility, its assignment. And that’s why I started with the quote from Eddie Conway that said, “Do your little part.” That’s their part that they have to do. And we hope that they would do that part. We’re not advocating that we don’t want law enforcement to do their job. But what we are saying is that in the work that we do, just specifically in terms of the conflict mediation, that doesn’t work with law enforcement there. I would hope that the state’s attorney is committed to doing his job Right? Because if your idea is that it is acceptable to kill men, women, and children, if your idea is that it is okay, it is cool to harm the elderly in the community, then prison is a mercy for that individual.

But that’s not our job to do, but we will hope that the people whose job it is to do that will deal with that as they should. And they have every right to claim whatever credit that they feel they deserve for doing that. But we are clear in terms of the work that we do. In terms of reducing homicides in non-fatal shootings, we know what we have contributed to because we know what we do on a day-to-day basis throughout every area of the city. So I want to be clear that everybody has a role to play. Everybody has a part to play. There’s no part of the village that gets to sit on the sideline in this and say, “Nah, I’m going to sit this one out.” So we hope that BPD is doing their job and improving that doing they job. Anybody that will say that the Baltimore City Police Department in 2026 is even remotely close to the Baltimore City Police Department from 2015 is just, you’ve been missing.

I don’t know where you’ve been at. Completely different institution, but that’s not our job to talk about. I mean, we don’t talk about it. We let them talk about it. Do y’all job talking about it and we’re going to do what we do over here. We interact. Of course, we interact in the work that we do. We’ve been to plenty community engagement walks with law enforcement. They come, they show up and we politely tell them, look here, we got this.

We’ve been doing this pretty good on our own. Thank you for showing up. They had all of the community meetings, events. We’re in the same space, the same room. So we’re not ducking or not working with each other in a collaborative aspect of doing the work, but we talking specifically about the conflict mediation part. There’s no police involvement in that from our perspective.

Speaker 6:

So the way that I have navigated in all of my work throughout the 30 or however many years with law enforcement specifically and city agencies, state’s attorney, all of that is we just explain to them why it behooves them to do their part in supporting what it is we’re doing. So Patricia Jessame, she was state’s attorney way back in the day. And we did research that showed if people use mediation with us, it reduces the court’s load, right? Because people can make agreements in mediation to drop the charges because they’ve actually resolved whatever the conflict was. And so now the state’s attorney, all they got to do is honor that the people wanted to drop their charges.

And so that made Patricia Jestami set back in the late ’90s a contract every year to fund a position for one of our case workers so that we receive stuff from the state’s attorney when people have conflict. And so when and Ivan Bates comes along, who. When and Ivan Bates comes along, who when we were both on Governor Westmore’s public safety transition team, him and I had very different ideas about what should happen. His office signs a contract with the community mediation center every year to send us money for that position. And I’m not sure he knows it. And I’m glad that he doesn’t know it because from what I’ve experienced, I think that if he knew it, something weird would happen where maybe suddenly we would not get that money.

But in building those relationships and saying, it behooves you. You live in Baltimore too, or you have to work in Baltimore too. And so this work is helping to make your job easier. If we are doing police complaint mediations where a community member who had a problem with the police officer gets to sit down and have an honest conversation with that officer who’s in that community, y’all are saying you need police community relationships to be better so that the murder rate can come down and so that policing can be better. Don’t you want to be seen and saying you support community being able to have these hard, confidential conversations? You know what I mean? And so if you are and honoring individual officers humanity. So Erica Bridgeford is an abolitionist from that standpoint. I think the police department need. I just get rid of the whole thing, do something else.

That’s not where we are in human history right now. I honor and understand that. So I work within while visioning the world that I want, I work within the world that I have. And so from that standpoint, I can honor individual officers as human beings when they show up directly in front of me. And so if you are respecting and honoring what I do, if I show up because somebody got killed on this block and here I am doing a sacred space ritual and I look up and two police cars have blocked off the block because I’m crazy and they got killed in the street. So I’m kissing the ground right in the middle of the street where they were. And the police see that. And without a conversation, they just block off the street so that nobody interferes with the sacred work that’s being done.

I’m going to go over there and hug them and thank them. Thank you for being a human person happened to be wearing a. And you used your authority in that moment to benefit the healing of this community. And so when we treat each other with humanity in the moments that we can and in the work that I do, I’m helping to, when there are those disputes between police and community, I’m a bridge that can help them work on understanding one another as well. While in my personal life, I might be totally against policing, period. You know what I mean? But when I got my mediator hat on, I’m a trusted bridge because in that bridge role, if I hold up one side, this is the bridge and I hold up the side that I agree with, everybody falls into the boundary. So the ethics of our work is very important, whatever your ethics are in it.

And when institutions and agencies and policymakers see that you stand in the ethics of the work that you do without attacking and demonizing them while holding them accountable when it’s necessary, if your humanity shows up, somebody’s humanity is going to show up in that and it’s going to make it go how it’s supposed to go.

Speaker 5:

David, I also want to add this to that. And a lot of times what we get caught up into, we get caught up into the politics of law enforcement, the offices, deceits in terms of the. Because it’s a whole different reality on the ground as opposed to the people who are sitting in the seats running the offices and the administration. It’s a totally different reality. On the ground, BPD has phenomenal community engagement officers that we interact with on a daily basis. I mean, we know them, we got their numbers on speed dial. They have our numbers. So we interact with them daily on the ground. I mean, the real people. And a lot of times that gets lost in the translation of the politics that you see in newspapers and on news shows. And like the chief of school, we are in the schools all day.

We’re in all of Baltimore City public schools engaging young people. So I mean, the chief of Baltimore School Police, Jeff Short is one of us. He’s with We Are Us. So his staff, his team, they do the same kind of work we do from a community perspective, not from a law enforcement perspective. So I mean, just wanted to separate the politics from the community engagement and the people that do the work on a daily basis. They love Baltimore just like we do. And the people with the boots on the ground are doing the work from a community engagement perspective, not necessarily from a law enforcement perspective.

Speaker 7:

Yeah. I was just going to add, when I was growing up, it used to be a thing called officer friendly.

So what we do, we don’t dislike the police. And that’s never to be misunderstood. We love good police. We love good police work. You know what I’m saying? Because if we have a situation with a stop the beef where we need to relocate somebody, we call good police. When we have a situation when a brother need to turn himself in to mediate a conflict because people is in the streets hunting him, we call good police. But again, like Anthony said, you’re not going to really hear about that. You’re never going to hear about us meeting an officer or a couple officers in a house in West Baltimore for a brother to turn himself in. You going to see them on TV walking them into the building like they went and caught him. But we respect good policing, but we have a job to do. I always think about Bill Belichick.

If you ever had been fortunate enough to go to their arena, it’s no signs or nowhere on the wall. Just one thing when you walk in that building and say, do your job. So that’s what we do. We do our job. And then we expect good policemen to do their job when it’s their turn. But when we out and we mediating, we trying to stop it before we even get there. We trying to stop somebody before they pull a trigger to have to engage with the police. We trying to alleviate all that. We trying to cut that off before we even get to that point. Because when you get to the point of no return, then you get into, like he said, a lot of unnecessary politics. So yeah, we work closely with a lot. There’s a lot of, like you said, speed down everything else.

So I definitely want to think that we not, and I often say this when I’m speaking about Stop the Beef because I’m one of the mediators, that the reason why we do no police involvement, because we come from a community and a culture where you’ve seen men from the nation of Islam had to stand in between police and the community doing the Freddie Gray ride. Because our people in our communities have a distrust and a distaste for law enforcement because things have happened that went uncovered, beaten alleys, drugs planning on them. So the last person they want to call is the police. The last person they want to talk to or see is the police. So now you’re starting to see when, because of work like that, you seeing officers sometime may come out and it goes. So now they starting to get to like, oh, when the officer, well, oh yeah, that’s officer such and such.

When I grew up, we knew the officer’s name. High them bright eyes. High them what’s the name? We got out of there because we knew them. They knew our parents. But now they trying to put people in the community to police a community that they don’t know. So when you try to police a people that you don’t know, it’s always going to be conflict. So they got to be boots on the ground also back in the community so you can have an officer so everybody knows. So we come in. You can walk in your community and stop something that I can’t because it’s your community. But if I walk into them little brothers and I say, man, they see me coming. And I go to one of the brothers. And this is real quick. I was just in Hershey Park the other day, literally with some other student because I’m a student support staff member.

Ran into a couple of my little Baltimore brothers. They out there and I jumped up on them. Yeah. Sent a picture to Captain Andrew. And when I was walking off, the grandmother didn’t know who I was, but moms did. So when I was walking off, I heard her say, “Who was that?” She said, “Well, that’s one of the brothers. They everywhere.” And he and Hershey parked acting crazy. I’m just popping up on a whole nother gig. So yeah, you know what I’m saying? But you got to know your people’s communication and relationships matters no matter what you’re doing in this line of work in the community.

Speaker 3:

So after Pastor Ebony makes a remark, we actually have time for one more audience question. Yeah. So Pastor Ebony, you go ahead and then we’ll address what’s happening in the back. Go

Speaker 4:

Ahead. I just want to say one thing. As you mentioned, back in from like 2003 to 2010, police department. And as far as experience, it was hard. Certain things that I witnessed in Baltimore City. And at that time I was a youth pastor. 2018, so I grew up in Cherry Hill. And I’ll say this real quick. My son was murdered August the 15th of 2018. And I would always pray, do the prayer walks for Safe Street and Cherry Hill. Never worked for them. Self-employed. Did 20 something years with Marriott General Manager. However, when my son was murdered and I made it to the scene, I threw my wallet up. So at that time, Safe Street workers, they were trying to find my wallet. The two detective that came in my office at my dealership two days later was like, “Hey, your coworkers, they got rid of all the witnesses.” So I’m saying, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah, one of the officers told me you work for Safe Street, so unfortunately we don’t have anything for you.” And I’m sitting up there.

I’m hurting. Oh my God. And I’m sitting up there saying, wait a minute. First of all, I never was on that payroll. What I do, I volunteer. Bust my butt every day. Hard work dealing with these young people out there. But because they assumed or some of the officers was not doing their job, did not like me. They told these two detective, oh yeah, she worked with Safe Streets. They got rid of all of the witness. So maybe they’re going to figure it out. Maybe they’re going to go and try to hurt them. And I asked that officer, the detective, I said, “Sir, are you serious?” I said, “You just told me that you can’t do anything about my son murder.” He wasn’t in the streets or anything that because someone assumed that I worked with Safe Streets and because they don’t like these guys, they’re not going to do anything about my son murder.

Three weeks later, but I tell you about God.

One of the detective, he called me, he apologized. He was like, “I want to tell you that I’m sorry.” And I was so hurt. I told him, I said, “Get up out my office.” I said, “Leave.” I said, “Leave.” I went down to Southern District and I asked them, the lead detective at the lead office at that time, I said, “Yes, I fight for these children, but wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong is wrong. Right is right. That’s in my book. I don’t care who you are.” And I said, “Because you assume, not knowing who I am, not knowing I work hard.” I’m the general manager at that time, I think at the Fairfield at BWI. I said, “You assume because I’m out here in the community working, that I work with this particular group. So you’re telling these detective not to investigate my son murder. Till this day, the young man has not been arrested.” So when I say that, it’s hard sometime, and I thank God for Colonel Russell because yes, me as a pastor, because of certain things that I witnessed in Baltimore City with the police department, with my own eyes or what they done to young people, it’s hard.

It’s hard. So I’m learning. I would say this year, 2026, I see more officers that genuinely care now in doing their job. My thing is, do your job. Don’t beat them up. That was my thing. Lock them up if they’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to beat them up in my face. You’re not going to plant guns on them. You’re not going to do things like that. So when you say as far as relationship and trust in the officers, I would say today I do. I was a chaplain as well for five years for Baltimore City Police Department. And they had to learn me and I had to learn them. But that’s one thing that I tell you guys. If you don’t know someone, don’t judge them. Get to know who that person is. And this other detective now, he’ll reach out, say, “You know what?

I’m truly, truly sorry. I know it been a long time. I’ve retired, but I’m going to do whatever I can to help you.” So say this, we all go by off of what we experience, what we experience. A lot of these children go off of what they experience. A lot of young men and young ladies that I dealt with in Baltimore City, I had people calling me, “Hey, can you take this gun?” And I’m saying, “A gun?” Well, Sarge said, “If I don’t get a gun, they’re going to plant this gun on me.” So our children experience so much. So then we wonder why they don’t trust the police. That’s the reason why. That’s the reason why. Our young black men have been through so much, but God, you guys, but God. So listen, I’m a pastor, but just to answer your question, I know I’m going to be quiet.

I know I keep saying I’m a pastor, but just to answer your question, it’s all about relationship with the good ones. And I’ll say the good ones. It’s a lot of good ones out here that get up, put that uniform on, that genuinely care. And they are the ones that we have relationships with, that we trust. So that’s it. Yeah. Had to get that off of me.

Speaker 3:

All right. We have time for one more question from the back.

Speaker 9:

First of all, I’d like to say thank you to each and every one of you for the work that you do in our communities. I just left Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, The Lifers Group. Listen to all the things that you just talked about. Listen to the women tell me about the things that you just said, the reentry, the lack of it, the lack of cooperation from the staff, all that. It’s a story that you all know, so I’m not going to repeat it. A couple of weeks ago, me and a couple other ladies did what we called a quarrying call. It was a call to every organization in the city of Baltimore that we knew that was operating and helping our young people, our seniors, whatever community involvement you had. You had an organization we called you out and guess what? See that group up there?

They all were there. They all were there. On the back of my t-shirt, it has a number of groups that were there. And what all we called to say was this. Our young people need us. We are the solution to Baltimore’s problem. You all just said it. You were the solution to lowering those murder rates. We, all of us in here are the solution to what’s Baltimore is going on in Baltimore, not within our young people, with our seniors not feeling comfortable to walk to the store. Our organizations can offer that assistance. All we’re saying is that we can get this done in our city. Let’s continue to have these talks. Let’s continue to have these gatherings. Let’s continue to show up. First day at school was coming up. We got six young men who attacked a 74 year old man a couple of weeks ago at a 71.

You all probably seen it on the news. Guess what? They have not been apprehended, but guess what? It’s going to be groups like We Are Us, Del Mon’s group, pastor’s group. It’s going to be groups like them who go, somebody’s sister.

One of those six men have a mother, a sister, an uncle, a neighbor who knows who they are. Call one of these groups, please. Tell them, let them walk your son. Let them walk your son. Let them talk to your son. Let him do media. Let him do whatever. But try to get them before they kill somebody else. We don’t want them to have a murder charge. They just got an assault charge right now. Let’s get those young people, but also let our young people know accountability is there. It has to be done. But you got the support of a whole community. So if you need to talk to someone to get out of a gang or you’re in a situation where you’ve been bullied into something you don’t want to do, we are us. I mean, I can’t even name the many groups. This lady right here,

You all talk about re-entry. That’s Monica Cooper. Yes, it is. Okay, that’s Monica Cooper. She does the reentry programs. She has an organization called Maryland Justice Project. We would not have a pre-release center proposed now. It hasn’t been built yet because the women in this state of Maryland, they didn’t feel we deserved a pre-release center until Monica got on top of them. Now we are getting a pre-release center so that the women come home can get all the services that you say we needed. Yeah. So there are other people. There’s Mr. Linda Moore in this organization with the Second Good Coalition, who I’m a member of. There’s Delmar. All of you all are members of the Grived Experience Committee. Formerly incarcerated people in this city are doing some great things, you all. We are doing some great things. And all I’m saying to you all is support those organizations that are helping.

Tell your neighbors, tell their children. If they got a little board that they know is doing something wrong, call Muhammad. Tell them, say, “Hey, go. Come walk with me so I can introduce you to little Johnny. Come walk with me so I can. Pastor Ebony, can you come? I want you to talk to Mary Jane or Alicia or whatever her name is. We can do this. Come on now. We can do this.” And that’s what I’m saying. We. We. The we is us. Come on. The we are we. We can do this. Thank you.

All we need. We are we. We are the we. Come on, don’t forget that.

Speaker 5:

Davon, can I add one point to this right here? Yes sir. She mentioned it. And

When Ms. Gwen called me, right? I mean, I had some reservations when she called me. She wouldn’t let me off the phone till she got a confirmation. But I had some reservations and I have to share the reservations because we have to be careful. Just because we are good intention don’t mean that everybody else has good intentions. And there are some people who are deliberately trying to use isolated incidents involving young people to paint a big, broad picture and cut funds. So we have to be careful that we don’t allow ourselves to be used to promote that narrative. That was my reservation. We were there. We showed up at the walk because Ms. Gwen made the call. You can’t not respond, right? But at the same time in my mind is that the enemies of Baltimore, the enemies of young people in Baltimore who are not good intentioned are going to use this.

They’re going to use six young black men and paint the picture that this is all young black men in Baltimore. And I have a problem with that. So we just have to be careful that in our messaging, we are on the same page. That we are not promoting the narrative that this is all black youth in Baltimore City. And I’ll leave it at that.

Speaker 3:

Appreciate that. Appreciate that. So I’m going to just say something quickly. And in fact, Brother Anthony kind of teed up what I wanted to say, which is that all the work that has been talked about in the film and on this panel, this work is under attack. And folks that are familiar with LBS, Sinclair Broadcasting, David Smith, who owns the Baltimore Sun, Fox 45, ABC seven. These are folks for whom are carrying out a political agenda that benefits the law enforcement establishment, Maryland State’s Attorney’s Association, FOP, the Association of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs. These are folks that are tied into a media company and a media empire that is putting out propaganda for the purpose of taking away the resources that funded a lot of the work that you see on screen. So that’s one of the things that I wanted to make sure to communicate because in order to protect the work, we have to fight against the enemies of our community that are trying to take the resources away to do the work.

And one of the things that I’ll quickly add is that one of the things that LBS will be working on in the 2027 Maryland General Assembly is to have legislation passed that will bar the state of Maryland from doing business with Sinclair and any of the things that David Smith owns. So that’s something we’ll be working on in 2027.

Speaker 6:

Ever.

Speaker 3:

And for us, that’s our role in the ecosystem in terms of violence prevention. Our role is to protect the work. And so that’s one of the things I wanted to make sure to share. There will be another screening at the Parkway Theater on August 29th on a Saturday. Please get your tickets. Tell all your friends it’s going to sell out. So get it sooner than later. The other thing that I want to announce is that Rashim and I have been having conversations about, and I hope you don’t mind me sharing this. One of the things that I often have said to her about this documentary is that part of the beauty of it is that it gives humanity to folks that typically their humanity has to be qualified. You know what I’m saying? And because it’s an independent project, that she was able to really give voice to that in a way that folks that are operating within institutional constraints, you often have to think about what are white folks going to think?

What are the institutions going to think? And none of that appears in the documentary. And I think that the evidence of that is that the Department of Corrections is in talks and want to make this available to those that are behind the walls.

So I think it speaks to the importance of these narratives about the power of them and the importance of people actually understanding the benefit of this work and also understanding the importance of protecting the work. So again, please make sure, tell all your friends, August 29th is the next screening. When you go out and it costs money to do it, so please, if there’s QR codes out on the front desk that’ll allow you to be able to contribute, to make contributions. This project, it is independent. There’ve been a handful of folks that have invested, but not nearly at the level that you would get from films of this quality. So it’s extremely important that you all continue to contribute, to promote the work, to provide resources, and also do the surveys. Dr. Rashim is a social scientist, so she likes reading those surveys. She actually does read them.

We’d be sitting together, she’d be reading through the surveys. So it’s really important. So if you click the QR code to be able to fill out the survey, to give good feedback, it really helps the project move forward. Give the panel another round of applause.

All right. Safe travels on the rest of your Saturday afternoon. You all take care. Thank

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this district rather than your host Mansa Musa. Today we are joined by Mopreme Shakur, the son of the late great political prison with Tulu Shakur and the older stepbrother of the legendary rapper Tupac Shakur. Mopreme has recently published a memoir titled This Thug Life: A Poet Narrative Spanning the Rise of the Black Liberation Movement, The Birth of Hip-Hop in New York, and its expansion to the West Coast. Mopreme, thank you for joining

Mopreme Shakur:

Us. What’s happened, Kevin?

Mansa Musa:

Appreciate you though. I know they got you on Hustle and Bustle, and this is a good thing. What compelled you to write this particular memoir?

Mopreme Shakur:

Well, I am Mopreme Shakur, Thug Life Outlaw, Immortal. I am the son of Dr. Matou Shakur, stepson of Afeni Shakur, brother of Tupac Shakur, nephew of Asada Shakur. That’s my fam, as well as my sister Setua. A lot of people are familiar with the struggles and the triumphs of our family and the movement. A lot of sacrifices made, but a lot of comments is made too. And that’s often overlooked because it’s hard to ignore the struggle. My father was a political prisoner, served 37 years in federal prison. We fought hard to bring him home, but we were able to finally bring him home, but he was ill with cancer, and he passed away in 2023.

Mansa Musa:

Now you say Motulu Shakur ancestor served an astronomical amount of time, a political prisoner. But we just hold Shakur. When you say Shakul, that claim in and of itself is political in and of itself. Panther 21, organizing New York chapter, heavily organizing around goals, the aspirations, and the vision of the Black Panther Party. So let’s talk about the process of bringing this book to life. When did you first begin writing it one? Did you speak to other family members and close friends to piece together the memoir, the memories rather, or were you just drawing strictly on your own experience in growing up?

Mopreme Shakur:

I didn’t ask too many people much first because it’s my story. It ain’t their story, it’s my story. And a lot of times a lot of other people weren’t even there. But the process began after we lost pot and had me reflecting on a lot of things you did. And along with the loss of my brother, I was thinking about our accomplishments. I was locked up for a skid bid. I was doing something stupid, sitting there thinking about myself. And I also though about the rest of the family, the accomplishments we all have made, sacrifices. We all have made border movement, border family.

And so that’s when the process started, got my first 80 pages, and then life be life ain’t. Stop, start, stop, start. Eventually got my co-writer, Talia Shakur, she and I finally got a poser together because we didn’t want to self-publish. We felt like the story was important and it needed to have a farther reach. And so I wanted a book deal. So you got to have certain things in order to get that book deal. So that’s what we did. And as time went on, it became more urgent for me to get this done because I was becoming one of the last ones left Between family and crew, family and crew. It’s been painful, a lot of sacrifices. We just had the homegoing ceremony for Auntie Astata up in Harlem a few weeks ago. Pops past 2023. Been 10 years since The Lost of Fainting. Akti Falani, Baba Balao, Baba Saku.

And it’s like once they’re gone, you can’t ask them no questions no more. And I was like, oh, I started panicking on the music side too. Shaq G just passed away. Young Noble just passed away. Along with Pac, Fatal, Big Psych. Come on, man. Yeah. Come

Mansa Musa:

On, man. And you know what? And as you unpacking that, how important, and this just came about this space right here, how important is it for you to be able to control that narrative about your legacy? It is.

Mopreme Shakur:

Because

Mansa Musa:

You just outlined, okay, we hear pop. We hear a lot of things associated with the Shakur clan. We hear a lot of things associated with the movement. But then when you get in a space where you hear somebody say something that you know is misinformation, or if you not in a position to refute it, then it takes on life. So how is it important? Why do you think it’s important for you to be able to refute for safe? Because you give auticity to the information, whether a person agree with it or disagree with it, whether they like it or don’t like it, it’s coming out the baby’s mouth. It ain’t coming secondhand.

Mopreme Shakur:

Once you become a public figure, anybody could write about you. And that’s what a lot of people don’t know. Pac and I are public figures, of course, because of entertainment game, but our actual relatives are public figures because they end up in the damn news. And you got to preserve your own stories. You know what I mean? Because as Black and brown people disenfranchised poor people, what we are is rich and experience. Maybe poor and finance is what we are rich in life and life experience and pain. There’s a value to that. You got to turn pain to profit. Turn your pain to profit. And we’ve been enduring the pain and while other people here make the profit on it. You dig. So I’m out there in LA, I’m in Hollywood and all that, so I’ve learned the game. And it’s the power of the parent.

We had to get this down because I felt like my story is important because it’s at the crossroads of Black history and Black music history. Okay.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Mopreme Shakur:

Black history and Black music history. We touch on both sides. And we’re disappearing. So we as my generation, the Obafamis, the Sunni Alis, our family, our connected family and the struggle and the revolution, we have the kids of it because it’s our elders that did a whole bunch of the work and sacrifice. So oh, the best we could do is preserve it and tell the story to our people because these stories are important. Members of our family and other brothers and sisters in a struggle are heroes, folk heroes, icons. But if no one knows the stories, they won’t see it that way.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And this mark is the 60th year anniversary of the Black Panther Party and they dub most of the children of party members club. Panther

Mopreme Shakur:

Clubs.

Mansa Musa:

Panther club. So as a Panther club, and actually witnessed the struggle and see firsthand the repression that was being inflicted, seeing firsthand the torment your father went through because of his political view, seeing the fact that your aunt was forced in the exile for no reason of political views. Talk about what does the legacy mean to you? The party, your family’s legacy, but more important, how do you feel that the party made a contribution to social justice? If you can speak on that.

Mopreme Shakur:

The party made a significant impact to social justice. My father, the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, Lincoln Detox, Detoxification Clinic – A Lagun. And the Bronx. That work that they did was established patients’ rights as a human right. For that incident up in the Bronx is the reason why this country has patients’ rights to this day. You know what I’m saying? But no one will know that story unless we tell it because we’ve already been suppressed to a great degree as it is. So they want to suppress our stories. As we see what’s going on in this administration right here, you know what I’m saying? They’re messing with Harriet Tubman. Jack, what the hell Harry Tubman did to you? Why y’all leave Jackie Robinson look? You know what I’m saying? I’m like, whoa. So it is very important and significant that we try to do our best we can to preserve our stories because we help make this motherfucker too.

I don’t know. Can I curse on almost Man, you can

Mansa Musa:

Do what you do.

Mopreme Shakur:

Oh, shit. Okay. All right. I ain’t want to be rude. You know what I’m saying?

Mansa Musa:

No, no. Like I told you before, we don’t give you a voice. We turn the volume up on your voice. However you want to express your voice, we turn the volume up. Let’s talk about, because you made mention of this, and this is something I think that you can unpack as much as you want.Because you made an observation that you’re dealing with the struggle and the music. And so you dealing with two things issue. And most people, when they think of Shakur, they think of Tupac. They think of you. But now we at a crossroad where what role do this music play, hip-hop music play in raising people’s consciousness, elevating people’s perspective about struggle. But more importantly, how do you see the landscape, man?

Mopreme Shakur:

We truly cared about the people. In the midst of the entertainment was a vehicle to be able to reach the people. But people know Pac fans know he really cared about the people. Keep your head up. Brenda’s Got a Baby. Pop a song. Dear Mama. We’re addressing issues in our communities. You know what I mean? And people be feeling, they tell me all the time. They tell me all the time, man, thank you for making this song. Thank you for making that song. And because we were trying to talk about something. Us being popular in the general market helped because we were able to reach with more and more people. Being a movie star helped. We were able to reach more and more people with some of the messages that we were trying to deliver. Thug life, you know what I’m saying? That was our shit.

That was our contribution because it was actually, a lot of people got the message, a lot of people didn’t. My pops helped us by creating a thug code so it wasn’t just some ignorant shit. The hate you gave little infants fucks everyone. Because if you don’t take care of them babies, they will go into the monsters you fear today. That

Mansa Musa:

Was the acronym.

Mopreme Shakur:

The hate you gave little infants, fuck everyone. All these jackets they’d be wanting to put on us, we taking them and flipping them. We was taking them and flipping Pac’s second album stripping for my nigga. People have an issue with the word nigga. We flipped it, put an A on it. Never ignorant getting goals accomplished. Yeah,

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, yeah. You

Mopreme Shakur:

Did?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah,

Mopreme Shakur:

Man.

Mansa Musa:

Jon, you don’t hear that though, right? No, you don’t. Keep on that. And it makes sense though. And when people say. And the reason why I’m asking this is why we got the opportunity for somebody to myth bust. You know what I’m saying? About your family and the myth bust about who y’all are and what y’all thinking. Because when you come out like Latulu Shaku is a giant and an ancestor and we praise him for his contribution. We honor his work. And we know that he. Ella Baker say, “We who believe in freedom must not rest.” They not rest. They not resting in power. They’re not resting in peace. They not

Mopreme Shakur:

Resting,

Mansa Musa:

Period. Exactly.

Mopreme Shakur:

So

Mansa Musa:

That’s why it’s

Mopreme Shakur:

Important to you. Pac,

Mansa Musa:

Why you acting like this? Why are you so angry?

Mopreme Shakur:

Because we are not at rest. As long as our people still struggling, the struggle continues.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, exactly. You know what I

Mopreme Shakur:

Mean?

Mansa Musa:

The

Mopreme Shakur:

Struggle continues.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about the underground railroad and third. Okay, the artistic foundation clearly influenced your musical career.

Mopreme Shakur:

We came from community organizers. You know what I’m saying? And we were trying to present our version for our generation. We started with the underground railroad because Pac was already with Digital Underground. And it made sense. Our crew be the underground railroad. We come from the underground, and for so many reasons it made sense for our ideology, it made sense. And then that morphed into 50 niggas. One good nigga, 50 representing the states, one good nigga in every state. We could accomplish anything

Mansa Musa:

And

Mopreme Shakur:

Stick together. Yeah, right there.

Mansa Musa:

You

Mopreme Shakur:

Did. That’s what Pac had too. We was real about it. And that morphed into Thug Life.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. You know

Mopreme Shakur:

What I mean? So

Mansa Musa:

It really had a political undertone.

Mopreme Shakur:

Exactly. That’s why we pulled my father in with it. He was a part. He made Thug Cole, which is we were getting some help from a sister Erica Ford up in New York. We had brothers behind the wall, comrades behind the wall pushing it, trying to explain it. But some of the people got the message and some of the people did. But then you

Mansa Musa:

Had like, well dude, you got opposition because you got the state. Exactly. You got the government. The last thing the government want is somebody that has that kind of influence to be able to speak truth to power and be able to galvanize people, galvanize people around. Because everybody was into hip hop. So this is why you have, just my belief, this is why you have the push on corporate America to create an image of gangster rap. But the more important part of the image, the more important part of the image is that it’s the image.

Mopreme Shakur:

It’s that whoever’s a leader. Whoever’s a leader in whatever kind of way, because they did it to Martin. They did it to Malcolm. They weren’t rappers. You know what I’m saying? Whoever’s a leader. Oh, they did it to Fred. They were trying to take out all our leaders using COINTELPRO. CONTELPRO, you know what I’m saying? They was doing that. They didn’t necessarily get rid of those methods as time went on. They just refined them. They’re

Mansa Musa:

Fine. Yeah, I agree.

Mopreme Shakur:

Dr. Robin DG Kelly, a historian, told me that, “Man, your father is one of the top five civil rights leaders in the country. Top five. Put him in the top five.” And that important, they wanted stifled. They wanted stifled. They didn’t want him to have the impact, so they locked him up. We were pleased. Actually, oddly enough, we were pleased when he got captured because we was hearing that he was saying he wasn’t going to be taken alive. So when he was captured, at least he was alive.

Mansa Musa:

And

Mopreme Shakur:

We could communicate through them years at Lompoc, that’s where he helped us put the thug code together. You

Mansa Musa:

Write about specific songs you and Tupac performed at concerts, but never officially released. Can you tell us about that and how your music resonated with incarcerated people?

Mopreme Shakur:

One of them that did get out is Papa Song. We got to do Papa Song because that was really about Matul. It was all a lack of a father in the household. So that’s what that was about. But there was many others that were supposed to be on the Thug Life album. Thug Life Project was a project that Pac recorded, spent the most time on almost three years recording Thug Life album. But they wouldn’t let certain songs through. They thought it was too hard at the time. They was killing crooked cops, you know what I mean? And so it almost didn’t come out. I had to tamper down the album in order for it to even come out.

Mansa Musa:

And I guess that’s the price. If you ain’t independent, that’s the price you have. If you trying to get your information out and be conversated. And

Mopreme Shakur:

It was a time where censorship was a big thing because they were doing it to live cool. They were doing it to ice tea. They were doing it to things face, facing them, doing it to us.

Mansa Musa:

Engage the public.

Mopreme Shakur:

They didn’t want that reality because we was calling it reality rap. They call it gangst rap. We call it reality rap. We the niggas that lived around that shit for real. We know somebody that happened to if it didnt happen to you. So the truth hurts. But give me one more, Musa. It’s getting hot out here, baby. No,

Mansa Musa:

This is the last one right here. What you want to tell our audience about your project, about the book, and how they can become more involved with your work.

Mopreme Shakur:

Well, thank you for that one. I’m here in lovely DC at the lovely Vice Royal Hotel. I hope you dig it. I think you will. It also has photos in it. So never before seen pics of me, my brother, my father, the family, like 24 pics in it. I try not to cheat the people. It’s that Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, thisthuglife.com, audiobook, ebook. I’m grinding, man. I’m South Side Jamaica Queens. All the way to the west side. There

Mansa Musa:

You have it. We got Mo Pre.

Mopreme Shakur:

Best Mo you’ll ever know. Best

Mansa Musa:

Mo you’ll ever know out here in the hat, son. They’ve been stomping the ground, trying to get the word out on his book. We ask that you really look at this interview because as Mo Pree put it out there. We’re in a struggle for our life and it’s only through us telling our story. He made this quote. Might not have a lot of money, but we got a lot of story. We got a lot of experience. And here go an example of someone that’s taking that experience and using it for the goodness, the betterment of mankind and humans by educating people on the struggle. Thanks, Mopree. Appreciate you, big bro. You

Mopreme Shakur:

Too, man. Power to the people. All power. Free all political

Mansa Musa:

Free.