Don't forget there is a run-off!

Blair and Thomas discuss the June 16th run-off election, "bad ideas", and more!

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, happy Pride Month. Sharks get a week, but apparently lions get a whole month. Who knew? I'm Thomas Jenkins. This is the People's Voice Podcast. I'm here in the studio with Blair. Blair, go off, Queen.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

First of all, we didn't talk about every single runoff race that's happening the last time we did a video. So I wanted to touch a little bit on two races that we didn't mention. One of them being Lieutenant Governor race. So we have John Wall running against Wes Allen. For those of you that don't know these two men, now is the time to go look at their interviews with us. Oh wait, only one of them has done an interview with us.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Oh yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

And it's John Wall. John Wall is very accessible, he's very approachable, he is very experienced, he's, you know, relatively young. He's energetic. He's really got a cool background. He's like a butterfly farmer, and he has all of this experience with helping run the Republican Party at the state level. And he's endorsed by Trump, if that matters to you. But for me, when I'm looking at a candidate and deciding who I'm going to vote for, I care about how did they treat me, did they answer my messages and calls? Did they respond to me? Did they sit down with me? And did they earn my vote? And let me tell you, John Wall has earned my vote. Wes Allen, who I've seen speak several times now, has never once interacted with me, didn't even come up towards the table and introduced himself to us. I don't really know him.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

He was an angry little man when I saw him speak. I've only saw him I've only seen him speak one time, right, at that think tank.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yes. It was you know, things have become contentious in that race, so there's some anger there, but it was just giving like stern.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

It wasn't righteous anger, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

It was like he was like a Catholic nun, but like a male and gonna like pull out a ruler and hit some people. I wasn't sure what was happening. But the point is he's our current Secretary of State, so like I'm not you know, I want no smoke, but like I just really like John Wall. So nothing against him except for the fact that I don't know him, and whenever he's been in the same room with us, he hasn't approached or been like, you know, friendly. So that's just my two cents of the matter. And speaking of that, we totally forgot to talk about one of the very most important races ever going on right now, and that's Joe Freeman versus Francis Hulk Jones at Health District 95. So I've been in the same room with Francis Hulk Jones literally 60 to 70 times since I've lived here. Six, seven, about six, seven times since I've lived here in Baldwin County. She's everywhere I go, she's there. It's not like I've never interacted with her, but despite that, being in the same room and being in the same groups and being at the same meetings not once. Not once. Has she walked up and said anything to us? She's never cared to approach us. And I'm sure she thinks what she thinks. There's some people in office that think I'm not dealing with anybody that has criticisms or that has thoughts that isn't like, you know, I don't I don't know what they think. In my mind, that's what they think. Because why would you not approach every single voter at a function? That if I was in office or running for office, that's what I would do. Approach every single person. I don't care if they like me or not, I'm still gonna be nice. I'm still gonna see what their concerns are because it still matters. They're still your constituents. She's literally my house rep and has never interacted with me, even though we've had a gazillion opportunities to do so. And anyways.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Well, when I've heard her speak, I don't know, the vibes just off. If you disagree, argue in the comments below.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

The vibes off is a nice way to put it because everything that comes out of her mouth is simply untrue.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Plus, I don't want freaking gambling. Argue in the comments below.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So along with uh oh man, okay. So there's some attack ads going against Joe Freeman right now. Basically, that are calling him a wife beater, that are saying he went bankrupt and all this other stuff. Number one, I don't care if somebody went bankrupt, okay? Especially in like 2008, during the Obama years of like the Great Recession where everybody lost their houses and went bankrupt. Everybody I know pretty much has filed bankruptcy, especially in that era of time. So that doesn't like make me oh no, I don't think like I don't think anything about it. That's his personality.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Thanks, Obama.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah. Going on, that, um, as well as divorces and stuff. It's such bad taste to bring that stuff up. And I know Joe Freeman, I know he's not his kids, he does a lot for his kids. There's no way he's a deadbeat dad or whatever. Same like they were saying about Mike Van.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Like this stuff is still less divorces than Larry King.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

He is not any of the things that they're trying to make that out to be. But the messed up thing about it all is that Frances shared it. She shared this ad and said, I had nothing to do with this ad. The American Conservative Fund put it out, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

But let me just go ahead and share this.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

But let me share it with everybody. And then at the end she was like, I didn't do this, but I don't feel bad for him. Like it was the audacity and the caucusity of her to just put that all out there in her hoity-toiny white woman ways and just throw it out there to the world and say that. I don't know. Like it was, I've never seen somebody do something like that. That's crazy. And let's not forget about what she did to Fort Morgan, how she straight up lied to all their faces. I'll never forget, and neither will everybody on that island. So Frances, I'm sorry that uh this election has become what it has. It's definitely one of the most heated ones. I can't believe we didn't touch on it. But the things she's saying about Joe and the things the American Conservative Fund is saying about Joe is just not true. It's like lies, and it makes me angry. It makes me feel bad for his family because I've been there and done that. I know what it's like to be attacked for stupid things that aren't real.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah, it's gonna be a no for me on the hawkster.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

So beside those two races, we wanted to also just talk about the show in general.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

By all means.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

So I don't know if you guys know this, but we do this show out of our home studio. We invite people in, and number one, if you're a guest who wants to come in, like we pretty much welcome everybody with open arms, even people that, you know, at first would be like, hmm, I'm not sure if I want to go there. Like, we're not gonna, you know, I don't know what you think. We're welcoming you into our space and we're going to be respectful of you, especially because you took your time out to come here. We don't attack people on the show. We offer questions and we offer criticisms and we do what we're doing, which is have a conversation, but we're not here to attack people on the show. And we do this all for free in our own space that we've invested so much time and money into making this a thing. Yeah. A lot. So if you have ideas for our show, if you think we need to do something differently, if you don't like something that we have going on, if you think you want to split us up, you want him to do his thing, you want me to do my thing, well, no, thank you for your ideas. We don't want ideas. This is what we do together, this is our thing that we're building, and we're not really trying to implement random people's ideas.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

However, and that's not at one any particular person. They they just come in left and right, hey, why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? How about we just do this thing that we like? Because, like I said to one person, I'm not me without her. And so I don't want to do anything like on my own. Like Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

And also I don't want to get a different co-host or do anything else. That's the whole point of this, is because we get to do it together and because we kind of play off of each other. And because I'm comfortable with him, I'm not gonna be comfortable with somebody I've only met like two times in my life. I'm just not going to be able to do it, and it's not what we want to do. So if you support us with what we're doing, the two of us, with our whole media platform, which by the way, we do a lot more than just a podcast, okay? Going into our background slightly, so we have a media company we're working on right now photo, video, event coverage, music. He's the music side of it. But I'll let you talk a little bit about your background.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

What about it? Which part? I've got a law enforcement background and a music background. The music background is way more extensive. Went to college for it, dropped out of college for it because I started making a living at it before I got a degree, and I was like, why am I paying when I'm getting paid, basically? Uh and basically the reason that I'm not in law enforcement anymore, as some uh people like to bring up, you know, why did you quit? Well, I don't feel like touching dead bodies and running toward gunfire for $9.27. That's why I quit. It wasn't anything of merit. It was literally a pay issue and just not my thing. And uh I mean, I enjoyed doing it, don't get me wrong. I mean, I did it for a whole year for like I said, $9.27 an hour after taxes, because that was what God called me to do, and I am a crit well, I take that back. I am a follower of Christ, and I listen to God when He speaks, and that was what I was led to do for that year of my life. And when I reached a full year, the Lord told me to do other things, and I got back into music and came back over here and started doing other things. And lo and behold, I've met Blair, and now we've started our media company and we're doing other things.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

So talk a little bit about your expertise when it comes to equipment and gear and filming and camera and sound and all that, because that is really he does all that side of the show. He helps with the cameras, with the gear, with selecting what gear we use, with setting it all up, like all of that technical kind of expertise when it comes to equipment and sound.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah, and video my video and my music career kind of intersect. I've been a so-called content creator for over 20 years now. I started putting out videos on YouTube of myself playing violin 20 years ago, and then about 10 years ago, uh I had a basically a mental hang up where I got horrible anxiety when I drove and would get palpitations and my limbs wouldn't go numb. I became unable to drive myself to gigs, and so I did actually didn't work, or I would have to have someone come pick me up and take me to a gig for several years. And during that time, I actually sold my car to get my first big boy camera, even though I've had uh cameras like the little mini disc or mini cassette video cameras and stuff like that, way back in the early 2000s. But 10 years ago, I started getting really serious about it. Like I said, sold my car, got a digital film camera, and started studying the ins and outs of working, editing, uh coloring my finished work, uh learning how to expose the camera, how to frame all of the technical details and parlaying that into live streaming and other technical aspects until I built this studio that you see around us piece by piece. It for a long time it was just me with my cell phone, and then I like I said, I got that big boy camera and added another camera, and we added another camera and started putting our resources together to build out what you see here today. It's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

So, my background, you know, when I first went to college, like junior college, before everybody knows I went to law school, my background is in law, but before that, I was a theater major. My AA is in theater, and I specialized in technical theater, so I did set design and I did costumes and makeup and wigs and all that stuff. That was what I loved, theater type things. And I did a little bit of like community theater where I sang Broadway style stuff and just liked to work on stage. Not necessarily in front of it, but I liked to be backstage a lot doing the sets pretty much. I liked framing things the same way I liked the idea of bringing a show to life in a live space. So I went to law school. I well, I went to undergrad and I dual majored in political science pre-law, and I wanted to go to law school because I wanted to get into politics. This was always like the path was to do something political in nature because I was always very political. It was an ROTC, I was really patriotic, I was really driven to like stand up for my values that I believed in and what I thought was right. So I go to law school and I graduate law school at 23 years old with my JD, and I was very young, and I felt like I was immature and I wasn't really able to properly handle. I mean, I could. I did some DUI cases, I did juvenile defense, and I was kind of depressed doing it, and I just felt like this isn't the path for me. It also varied, didn't pay like anything. So I went back to grad school and I went, you know, I have four degrees. Um studied abroad in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, got my mediation cert from over there, and then I came and did a master's degree in entertainment business from Full Sale University in Winter Park, Florida, which is one of the best universities for doing things like this in the entertainment industry. If you want to do cinematography, if you want to learn about film, if you want to learn about music, production, working on stage. I worked on the WWF wrestling show that was filmed there a little bit. I worked on live stage produ stage production with comedians that would come through the town. I would, you know, shoot live artists. By that I mean with a camera. I would take pictures of live artists when they would come and do their performances. So I have been able to meet and have pictures with always like kind of a running joke. I got a picture with them because I was always like backstage or side stage or helping with their runners, with their like legal stuff and helping get their waivers set up and whatever they need backstage, their water bottles, whatever. Like I was always love to do that stuff, and still to this day I love to do that stuff. So we kind of both have a background in things that lend us to the space of what we're doing now, which is basically media and entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

And I want to circle back. I didn't just do a year in law enforcement. That was just my last run after a 17-year break. I've actually got almost four years of law enforcement experience. Uh at the end of 2004, I joined the Pikune Police Department and worked for their jail for a few months before I was earned my way to the street. Worked the street for a while and then decided to go back to college. While I was in college, I also got a job at Lamar County Jail again working corrections. And then after that, like I said, I took about a 17-year hiatus from law enforcement. Then when I was in Louisiana for a little over a year back in 22, yeah, 2022, end of 21, I went through a full year of patrol, went through the academy, actually graduated top of my academy class, and uh got a lot more experience in there. And and that's where it kind of ended up.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

So along with the law enforcement and the law background, I don't actively practice law yet in the state of Alabama, but I will be taking the bar exam in July, which is like a month from now. So I will, you know, presumably be active with the Alabama bar after that. And I still teach law. I teach undergrad law at Pennsylvania State, and I have always been a student of the law and someone who holds the law to the utmost ability. And people see that I don't know, whatever people think about us. I passed the ethics portion of the bar exam with almost a perfect score. Like ethics are my thing. Constitutional law is my thing. If something is constitutional or not, is what I'm very passionate about, is what I teach to the undergraduate kids, and it's what going forward, if I do something in the legal space, it's going to be probably under that con law, like local Sydney ordinance, helping draft things like that. That's what I really am good at and see myself doing. But I don't see myself going to, you know, be a public defender and working long hours and having huge bundles of cases for people caught up in the system because I've done that before and I did not enjoy that. I don't feel like I was making a dent or being as helpful as I could have been with my role in this career or whatever world it is. What we do now, I feel like is really meaningful. People come up to us, you know, at events that we don't know, we've never met before, and they always tell us you're doing a good thing. Thanks for putting the information out there. Thanks for sitting down with these people. When we started this, nobody was really doing it. Now everybody wants to do it. Everybody wants a podcast, everybody wants to come in and like talk to candidates and do things, but it's more than just talking to candidates, it's talking to the change makers and the leaders and the people in this space who don't typically have their thoughts and whatever they're doing, you know, on a platform. Like we had Megan Fowler in here. She's not a candidate, but I think she should be. I think she was fantastic, and I think that it's great that she's passionate about something to that level where she's making such a huge impact, being featured in the New York Times, you know, getting coverage all over. That's what this is about. Highlighting those people and watching them rise because they deserve that. And we want to be a part of helping everyone get to the space and elevate to where they need to be.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

And we want to keep going with that.

unknown 16:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

We're not just Johnny Cum Lately's that just covered the municipal election, this election, then we're just gonna fall off the face of the earth. We're keeping going.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Right. And this isn't just about politics here in Alabama, this is politics all over. Eventually, you know, there are dream guests that I want to have on the show. And I've already had one with Barry Moore, even though it was a Zoom. I would love to have Barry Moore here in person. But, you know, I want to have really big political figures come in here, and I want to be sort of like the Theo Vaughns of our area and, you know, have some comedy, have some levity to it, but also really talk about issues maybe in, you know, a way that other people wouldn't necessarily talk about it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, thanks to y'all and the candidates. We actually got to do a live on-stage podcast even in our first year, and that was awesome. Well, we loved doing that. We'd love to do more things like that. We'd love to uh moderate some of these events that we see these political groups hosting if they would like to have us.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yes, we would be good moderators. We've been good moderators, and we could continue to do that. And we try to ask questions that are not the same old questions. Uh we try to come up with things that are unique and that allow the candidates to sort of extrapolate their own thoughts and opinions on things without giving like the cookie cutter answers. You know, we're willing to ask hard questions and be like tough on them, but we don't want to scare people away from coming in here, of course. But at a forum or something, we'd be happy to do that. So just let us know. Hit us up, we'll we'll jump in. And if you want to support us, please we welcome support in the in the means of the financial world. We have a PayPal account, we have an uh donation link, we will take your donations happily and appreciate them every single cent. But we don't necessarily want ideas if we would like the money. So if you would like to give money, we would really love that.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Money over ideas.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Not a penny for your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

So yeah, that's uh that's what I got. That's all I wanted to say. I just wanted you to know a little bit more about us. If you've been watching with us from the beginning, you probably knew a lot of that. If you're and thank you for that. Yes. If you're new though, that's a little bit about our backgrounds. We're not just random people that do this with no experience whatsoever. Like we've been in this space, we've been doing it a long time.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Right, we're rapidly approaching a hundred episodes. We're only a little over twenty episodes away from reaching the big one hundred.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

That's all I got.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

All right, y'all have a bluebell country day. We'll see you next time.