Authentically Detroit
Authentically Detroit is the leading podcast in the city for candid conversations, exchanging progressive ideas, and centering resident perspectives on current events.
Hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Orlando P. Bailey.
Produced by Sarah Johnson and Engineered by Griffin Hutchings.
Check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @AuthenticallyDetroit!
Authentically Detroit
Black Detroit Democracy Podcast: Ballots, Power, and Black Detroit
The Authentically Detroit Podcast Network in collaboration with Detroit One Million presents: The Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Sam Robinson!
Together, Donna and Sam illuminate the complexities of Detroit’s unique political landscape and give residents a resource for navigating civic engagement and election season.
In this episode, they honor Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, expose deceptive voter ID petition tactics, and map a local plan to protect democracy through civic education, youth leadership, and independent media. From federal overreach to neighborhood organizing, they connect history, narrative, and action in Detroit.
For more episodes of the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, click here.
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SPEAKER_01:Detroit 1 Million is a journalism project started by Sam Robinson that centers a generation of Michiganders growing up in a state without a city with 1 million people. Support the only independent reporter covering the 2025 Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people. Good journalism costs. Visit Detroit1Million.com to support black independent reporting. Have you ever dreamed of being on the airwaves? Well, the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network is here to make those dreams come true. Formerly known as the Deep Network and located inside the Sodemeyer, the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network are for studio space and production staff to help get your idea off of the ground. Just visit authentically det.com and send a request through the contact page.
SPEAKER_02:The City Charter is our Constitution, which defines our rights and the way government should work. I'm Donna Gibbons Davidson, President and CEO of the East Side Community Network.
SPEAKER_06:And I'm Sam Robinson, founder of Detroit One Million.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for listening in and supporting this expanded effort to build another platform of authentic voices for real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. The purpose of this podcast is to encourage Detroit citizens to stay vigilant in the fight for justice and equality with a special call to action for Black Detroit. We seek to build awareness of our history as a gateway to freedom, a beacon for justice, and a laboratory of liberation. Welcome back to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast.
SPEAKER_06:How are we doing?
SPEAKER_02:Oh well.
SPEAKER_06:We're back from a brief hiatus. Yeah, we are. Donna went on vacation. How was that?
SPEAKER_02:I did. It was amazing. I went on my first cruise ever. Oh wow. And wow, I just could not imagine what it was going to be like. Um, we did stops in Jamaica, and you know, that was just so enriching. Um, the connecting to the culture and the people and you know, this feeling of diaspora. And then um the second really exciting place we went was in Mexico, in Tulume, Mexico, to the Mayan Ruins. And um, wow, it was just a really beautiful place, wonderful people. So um I got a lot of rest and came home and you know had to get my head back in the game for a minute.
SPEAKER_06:Mayan Ruins is crazy. That is something like, you know, you got your pictures that you can show me. I want to see I do. Yeah, I do have pictures. I will send it to the group chat.
SPEAKER_02:The thing, I will, the thing that really got me about the Mayan Ruins was first of all, we are um so much of what we learn is Eurocentric, right? So we learn about the pyramids, but then um from a European standpoint that tries to omit Africa from this African nation in Egypt. Um, and so the brilliance of other people is sometimes obscured. But clearly these um these structures were built by people. I mean, so many people have heard of Stonehenge. Stonehenge ain't got nothing on this, okay? The other thing is that the Mexican government has done such a beautiful job of maintaining and creating this visitor space. It is absolutely beautifully maintained. Um, they said things like, well, you know, before you come here, you have to make sure that you're in good physical condition and you don't have any joint disease. And I've got arthritis in my right knee, and I was like, maybe not. But then we had to meet where the people were convenient to go on the cruise, and I looked around. I was like, Yeah, I'm as good as some of these folks. I can do it. Um, but when we got there, it was really not a bad walk. It was very comfortable, it was very beautiful. There's palm trees in the middle of ruins. It was just a wonderful um and very hot experience.
SPEAKER_06:Well, that sounds lovely.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. I was getting harassed by ballot petitioners while you were gone. But maybe maybe that's a good segue into what I really want to focus in on.
SPEAKER_02:Well, before before we do that, I just want to take a moment of um to stand in recognition of the late and great Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Whose career in politics was um, you know, cut short because of scandals involving her son. Um Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is one of the first people that I met in politics where I just it um completely admired the way she carried herself, the way that she was able to command a room, and um just the dignity that with which she engaged in political discourse. Um and like I said, I I believe her her um political career was shortened from circumstances outside of her control, but it's important they remember the amazing woman that was Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.
SPEAKER_06:She was the second black woman to ever serve in the US House after she was elected in 1996. She was um uh the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus from 2007 to 2009. Um a lot of folks on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook last night um after the news came out uh earlier yesterday afternoon that she had passed away sending their condolences to um the Kilpatrick family.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, they were really she was really a pioneer in so many ways. And you know, look, she always wore her natural hair, and that's just such a significant thing for black women that she stood loud and proud nationally. I don't mean loud, like obnoxious, but she was very outspoken in her strength and her beliefs and her people, and representing us on a national stage always felt very good. So um we do honor her, we do appreciate the contribution she made to our community as a whole, to the nation, and also to black women who needed at that time role models to look up to.
SPEAKER_06:Well, my condolences to her family. And um, well, you know, when people pass away, it's always uh it's always difficult, but also, you know, I I appreciate the celebration of folks who in other contexts might not be celebrated, right? Because of her son. I'm reading this political story from 2008 talking about how family ties dog Kilpatrick's re-election. She has become increasingly targeted as the mother and steadfast defender of scandal plague Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kwame gave an interview with Zeke of New Era. Did you see that?
SPEAKER_02:I heard about it.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, he was uh defending himself and um you know saying things that I'm not sure are true.
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm not I'm not going to revisit that. I lived through him Kwame as mayor, and I know what I believe about that, but I also know that I'm a mother. And Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick was a brilliant politician and also a mother. And I will never fault a mother for continuing to love, support, and believing in her child. That is what mothers can and should do. Um, we can't put the burden of an a grown person's mistakes on the mother. So we can honor the mother and recognize also that she suffered a great deal of grief when her son was in prison. That I can't think of anything worse to happen to any mother than that. And so my compassion has always been there. Whatever my political disagreements were with Kwame Kilpatrick, it never extended to her the mother. You know, I think that Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick carried herself in a wonderful way. Remember, the children have mothers and fathers, right? Um, and sometimes fathers can be very influential. Um, he certainly had a very, very strong-minded, influential father who I believe played roles that were unhelpful to his son. Um, and I don't want to spend this time talking about Kwame or even his self-defense or anything like that, but I do want to honor his mother.
SPEAKER_06:Sure. Earlier this week, well, this was last earlier last week now. You guys might have seen I had posted on Twitter this man that was soliciting a petition for a initiative to require voter identification and require proof of citizenship for voter registration. Um he came up to me saying that this was going to make it easier for people who have already registered to vote. That was the line that he said, and I told him, I said, Who told you that? And he said, The woman that's paying me, this woman named Dawn. And I go, I I don't think Don is telling you the truth. And he goes, I don't think you're telling me the truth. And couldn't, you know, you'll see in the video if you look up. I was nearly attacked by this man. Um I I made a police report on him, he threatened my life. The police called me back today saying it's not gonna be a problem anymore. And I just it it's it's so I mean it's just you know, late stage capitalism. The idea that these ballot firms that are soliciting uh GOP-backed Republican uh initiative to make it harder. I mean, that that is the goal. It might not be the stated goal, but it is by some Republicans that will tell me, yes. In fact, it should be harder to vote. It shouldn't be easier to vote. That's what that's what the sentiment behind these initiatives is, is to make it harder for the public to vote. They have to make put up more barriers because they believe. And I mean, we we've we know the times in which we have voter fraud, right? In the University of Michigan, where there was one student, uh Chinese uh foreign exchange student who voted. Um, you know, of course, you know, felony charges out against him. I don't know the status of that case.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_06:But um, you know, what when fraud happens, it's usually you know caught. Um, Hamtramck had some voter fraud issues.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but you know, they're not really talking about voter fraud. They say it's voter fraud, and that's the way they phrase it. But the reality is that it's rooted in a belief about who is a legitimate American, who represents America. And you hear some of these same folks talking about real Americans, red-blooded Americans, whatever it is, um, certainly not red-skinned Americans, whatever it is that they decide has defined real Americans. And when they feel as though the voices and the power of so-called, you know, quotation marks, real Americans are being threatened by these people who are coming in here and taking our resources like original Americans, Native Americans, or like the people they kidnapped, or the people they bring in here to produce cheap labor, right? When they feel as though those rights are being threatened by what they consider to be imposter Americans, ethnic Americans, then there's this desire to crack down so that real Americans, white Americans, can have the outsized influence in politics. We have to understand this is not new. Um, prior to all of these conversations about voter fraud, you had poll taxes, you had, you know, grandfather clauses, and sheer violence keeping people away from the polls. Even the way that people have been admitted into American citizenship. Um, this nation was built on the grounds that were occupied by people who were indigenous to this land. And they did not become American citizens capable of voting until the 20th century. Okay. They were here and not able to vote. You have um immigration law that determines how many people from which places can come into America. But about 10 or 15 years ago, there was all of this talk about the fact that American society was growing with so many black and brown people that pretty soon white people would be a minority, an ethnic minority in the United States. And since then, there's been an effort that has been reinstated or just grown on steroids to return real Americans to their place of power. You might also look at what's happening in national universities at Harvard, at Columbia, and all at U of M, at these institutions for higher education or higher learning. One of the things that's happening is you have so many Chinese students and so many African students and Cambodian students, people from all over the world taking up spaces in these universities that used to be bastions of privilege for white males. And if you're just going to base it on test scores and grades and extracurricular activities, a lot of immigrant populations work very hard to outcompete Americans in those spaces. And so now there is a crackdown on the H1 visas and people even being occupying this space. Um, and it has to do with white supremacy, I believe. And so the crackdown on voter fraud is really a crackdown on multiracial democracy and a desire to elevate one group over the other. Um, and it's really interesting because the way that you can prove you're a citizen is either with a passport or an original copy of your birth certificate. And we know who has passports. It's not poor folks of any race, right? It's not black folks, it's certainly not going to be any other underprivileged group. And so that gives you the opportunity to disqualify people because they don't have a passport or an original copy of their birth certificate. And the interesting thing with that, too, is that if your driver's license which does not qualify you as a citizen, if your driver's license name does not match the name on your birth certificate, then you're expected to also produce evidence that you legally changed your name. Now you already have to do all of that to get a driver's license, but then to have to do it once again in order to document that you're a citizen, adds another procedural barrier.
SPEAKER_06:And think about how all of this came to head. Donald Trump, who before running for president in 2016 had accused American elections of being fraudulent with no evidence, did it in 2020. And he did it in 2020 in such a way that, you know, to me, based on my reporting, about half the Republicans that I talked to, a good 50%, you know, truthfully, honestly believe that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. We know that he was not. Joe Biden won. But but but but look at And now that I mean this is the the floodgates of like, oh, you know, we need to stop fraud, and what are they doing?
SPEAKER_02:This yeah, but I mean, you know, you have to look at what they mean. In 2020, Trump would have won Michigan without Detroit. Yeah. He would have won, he would have won Pennsylvania without Philadelphia, he would have won Georgia without Atlanta, he would have won Arizona without whatever that county is. Is it Maricopa County?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, and remember the videos that he would that he would post on Twitter that just completely misrepresented. I mean, it's kind of funny, all these ballot petition uh canvassers are misrepresenting their thing. You know, Trump on Twitter would misrepresent what a uh election worker in at at TCF at the time was doing and say, look at this white van that came in, they're uh stuffing ballots, you know, they're they're creating ballots out of thin air. Something that he actually asked uh, I believe the Attorney General of Georgia, the state of Georgia is the reason why he had the Fulton County charges. Yeah, but he actually asked to come up with votes.
SPEAKER_02:And and yeah, he did because in his mind, he's gotta offset the votes by black and brown people.
SPEAKER_06:Because they're not legitimate to him.
SPEAKER_02:They're not legitimate because and and this is not new. This has been electioneering that goes back, you know, decades, if not centuries. Um in 1925 or thereabouts, when judge um, oh my goodness, what's his name? Um the judge who the anyway, there's a judge in in Detroit. Um Franklin Murp Frank Murphy. When Frank Murphy won the Recorders Court judgeship, you have people accusing Detroiters of voter fraud, then black Detroiters, they said that they you were using pool halls as their addresses, and there's widespread voter fraud. Whenever there's an election result that goes against the grain of um of white supremacy, you're gonna have this. With Barack Obama, they couldn't say that because he won substantial numbers of votes. So what they said is he's not really American. So they questioned his right to lead America by saying he's not American and really digging into the foreign sound of his name and also his father's ethnicity. Um, but it's really interesting to me that you have a president doing that in 2025 who is married to Melania, who is not the first person he married, who was not an U.S. citizen born in the United States, but the second person he married who was not born in the United States. It's clear the problem is not immigrants, it's black and brown immigrants that constitute a threat. And the same people who cannot stand foreign accents when it comes to a Mexican person, love to hear Melania speak.
SPEAKER_06:And if you don't believe Donna, just look at Elon Musk's Twitter over the last three months. I mean, it has gone from just complete, I mean, he's he's he's platforming white supremacy and Nazi accounts on his own account, talking about look at the look at this group of black kids that are getting in a fight, or look at this video where this uh black man is beating on this white woman.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, they're they're just where is Elon Musk from? He is from South Africa, and South African, white South Africans, um, Afrikaners are the only immigrants that this administration is intent on bringing here because apartheid to them is still uh the uh you know the proper governmental structure. And the people who are protesting that, who feel victimized by the ending of apartheid, are the ones they want to embrace. So I think that we don't need to make a mistake about it. And so I want to go back to your conversation though about the um the canvaser.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because you got into a um documented, you know, conflict with a canvaser. And I didn't know about that when I got into an undocumented um conflict with a canvaser. I didn't really do anything, and he certainly didn't threaten me. In fact, he started running away from me everywhere I stood. It was kind of fun. Um, I would see him as go approach him as he was talking to people, and he'd go running away with his little clipboard because he knew I was going to confront him with the truth. Um, I was bothered by him, really bothered, because this is a young black man, well dressed, looking like everybody's nephew, favorite nephew. And the credibility of his presence was being, you know, used to get people to sign. There's a senior citizen I know as I was walking out of Rivertown Market. I was telling her about it, and she said, Oh, yeah, I just signed it. And I said, Do you do, you do know what that means, right? And she said, you know, I just didn't want to read all of that. And that's not the way he explained it to me. Um, and as much as I was frustrated with her for not reading all of that, you have to think about, you know, the vision of senior citizens as people's eyes decline and the tiny print that these um the ballot initiative stuff is written on. Um, I was so outraged. I had to really calm down. Um, and I thought, what can we do? I think part of what I'd like to do is create flyers to pass out to people is those campuses are there so that as they approach them, we have other information.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But we've got to counter it because what they're trying to do is make it more difficult for people to vote. And they're using the language of justice to do that.
SPEAKER_06:They did it uh in 2022 during Secure My Vote. They would say they would go into black barbershops and say, you know, this is gonna make it easier for you to vote, it's gonna make it easier for black Michigan residents to vote. They would do that with Let My Kids Learn, the voucher program. They would completely misrepresent. And I said this on Twitter. I said, you know, um, this sort of deception has been a long practice of these ballot firms, um, especially when circulating Republican-backed proposals in majority Democratic places like Flint, Saginaw, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids. I mean, I've seen it in all those communities where I will approach a ballot canvaser and they will completely lie to the point where they are they're inversing what they're doing, right? I mean, they're saying this is gonna make it easier to vote when in fact it would make it harder to vote.
SPEAKER_02:This is not new for them, okay? Um they use the language of school reform to dismantle public schools. They use the language of welfare reform to create lifetime limits. When when people on the right want to undermine our rights, they always justify it using the language of reform.
SPEAKER_06:How terrible. This this was from 2022, a circulator that was doing Let My Kids Learn, which was a voucher program, right? It would have sent public funds to private schools, told me that they're gathering signatures to help special needs kids. It was so ridiculous that Jocelyn Benson quote tweeted my tweet in 2022, something that she would never do today. But um I I just, you know, there are state legislators like Jeremy Moss, Mallard Camaro that have um introduced legislation to combat this exact um deceptive practice that these ballot firms deploy.
SPEAKER_02:And it's it's you know the first thing you can do is you can stop for paid um canvassers. Some states have banned paid canvassers that's been discussed in the state of Michigan. I'm canvassing for two things I deeply care about. One of them is um invest in my kids, and the other one is money out of politics. I'm not doing it because I'm paid. I'm doing it because I'm passionate. When if you really want people to come into Detroit, if you have young, black, and other um disadvantaged people coming into the city because they passionately believe in these causes, even if I disagree, that's a whole lot different than knowing that they're being bankrolled to come in here and getting$5 a signature to mislead our people. There are rules around canvassing that they're violating. You're supposed to either read what's on the initiative or allow people to read it. You're not supposed to just paraphrase inaccurately what's there and ask people to sign. Um, so I think we could monitor that more effectively as well.
SPEAKER_06:I think we could. There are three voter ID ballot initiatives. Are you aware of that? There's the require voter identification and require proof of citizenship. There is the pro uh there is the citizenship requirement for voting. Um and there's another one.
SPEAKER_02:They're all very similar. I didn't look at that.
SPEAKER_06:Republicans couldn't come to an agreement over one uh language set of uh you know one position summary. So they had to do several. Um I see your this is ballotpedia that I'm looking at right now. This is um fair, this is how they described the Invest My Kids. The title is Fair Share Surcharge on Annual Taxable Income Initiative.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_06:To require a fair share surcharge on annual taxable income of more than one million dollars for joint returns, five hundred thousand dollars for single returns at a rate of five percent, using the money to be spent on funding local public school districts. There is the ranked choice voting amendment, not to be confused with the voter ID amendment, and there is minimum wage for tipped workers. Um and so you know, you're you guys are gonna see these ballot canvassers at Meyer, at Kroger, at uh outside of the Dollar Tree CVS, um downtown at the Riverwalk, um uh you know, outside of events, downtown in Capitol Park, I've seen them. Um in Paradise Valley, like outside of Fixins restaurant, I've seen them. Yeah, I mean I I've seen them, you know, at Eastern Market. Obviously, you guys know that they're there every weekend at Eastern Market.
SPEAKER_02:Are you seeing people from the um the you know, ranked choice voting for investing my kids, for money out of politics there as well?
SPEAKER_06:So I I actually um we had one of my buddies, uh shout out to local 514, he's a concrete mason, signed up, uh registered to vote. And for the first time, he's a 30-year-old guy, never registered to vote. So we got him registered to vote, and then his first political action ever, his first uh opportunity to was to sign um money out of politics. And they did that. There was two canvassers that were volunteers um that showed up outside of two birds on Sunday, it was like two Sundays ago. We were eating um the egg hunt food truck. Shout out to the egg hunt food truck. I love the oxtail burritos, yeah. Oh, they're so good. You didn't go out there and they're um where are they? I think 11 to 3 p.m. every Sunday outside of Two Birds on Kirchhoffal.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, it's so good. All right, yeah, black-owned food truck.
SPEAKER_02:They do a really great job in in the oxtail.
SPEAKER_06:Oxtail breakfast burritos.
SPEAKER_02:Um that that kind of gave that one away.
SPEAKER_06:Um but it you know, very, very good food. Um, we we talked to those folks there. I told them that um, you know, unfortunately I can't sign the petition, but um here are several people that are willing to sign it, and they did.
SPEAKER_02:You can't sign the petition because you're a journalist.
SPEAKER_06:It is a you are putting your name on a public record, a public document. If I were to do that, then I would no longer be able to cover uh the effort. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think people understand some of those journalistic rules. Um I want to talk about a little bit more, but we've got Kenneth Russell here today. And it's always a treat to talk to Kenneth. Kenneth, what's up?
SPEAKER_05:Horrible. Oh no. I say that because it's what is it, day five of the government still being shut down?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, yeah, it'll be more than five days, probably again. It'll be 10 days and 20 days and then 30 days.
SPEAKER_02:Well, hopefully figure that out. I you know, I think that the question is going to be one of politics. What what what's horrible about that in your view?
SPEAKER_05:Well, they act like a bunch of kids the majority of the time. So it's like, what are y'all doing? Y'all supposed to be like our leaders and our organizers of the country, and y'all are finding like five-year-olds for power.
SPEAKER_02:Is that what you think is happening?
SPEAKER_05:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Because like Because I I think that the executive branch is snatching power away from just about everything, and Democrats are losing power, or people who are not part of MAC are losing power in so many ways. I see so many violations of the law by the president, whether it is um interfering with free speech, coming after colleges and universities, newspapers, um, TV stations and radio stations where he's suing and threatening to shut people down. I see him being able to deport people and without any kind of due process. And I see him being able to um um profile people based on how they look in those types of things. I think there were some children in Chicago who were arrested.
SPEAKER_05:They actually took the funding for schools in Chicago.
SPEAKER_02:They took the funding for schools in Chicago. They have shut down funding for a lot of programs that used to exist. Um they are replacing qualified people with highly unqualified white men. And so what I see is an administration that is overreaching in terms of its power and the democratic minority in the House and Senate trying to hold on to some very basic things even while they're losing those things. I think if it's school children fighting, then the outcome. Are, oh, well, you know, you stop fighting and everybody eats. But if the Republicans have their way and they cut out Medicaid supports, then what's going to happen is that people's health insurance is going to be so unaffordable that we'll have more uninsured people. And I'm so afraid of budgets passing and the executive power going unchecked. Now, what the president is saying is I'm just going to fire everybody and cause pain to democratic cities and democratic employees. We're going to fire all of them. It just doesn't, it feels like something that's a lot more dangerous than school children right now.
SPEAKER_05:And it's like you're you're pushing things beyond your abilities. Like the um governor of Chic um of Illinois had even tried to um get the 24th Amendment um called on him because he's going against his abilities, and the other two branches are not.
SPEAKER_02:He's going against what we believe his abilities should be, right? So you have three branches of government. You have the presidency, the executive, you have the legislative, which is Congress, and then you have the judicial, which is courts. The judicial is supposed to interpret the law based on the Constitution to decide, is this legal? And you have the Supreme Court saying, you know what, it's okay if the president just voids legislative power. If the president fires people who should not be fired because he doesn't get to appoint them, if the president zeroes out budgets that were allocated by Congress, it's scary to me because I'm a political science major and I'm a policy person to see this amount of overreach. I wonder how far is too far. Now he's saying he's going to occupy cities with the military, and he's planning on sending the military to Portland, Oregon, and Chicago. And a lot of people fear they'll come to Detroit. And will anybody be able to stand up for our rights? Do our rights really exist like they used to?
SPEAKER_06:Will Hakeem and Chuck be able to do it? That's your answer, I guess.
SPEAKER_05:I think that He's actually threatened like um Governor Whitmer of saying Yeah, he's threatening.
SPEAKER_06:JD Vance has, yeah. Yeah, JD Vance, by the way.
SPEAKER_05:JD Vance has actually threatened to send the um what was it called? The National Guard to the National Guard here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and there's a big, you know, there's a lot of people who want to see that happen. And it's so bad now that when crimes happen, people think, oh, wait, what if this crime gets a lot of attention and that causes Trump to send people there? Meanwhile, you have a South Carolinian judge whose house burns to the ground. They say it's not arson. Right. Her house burns to the ground after she opposes Trump.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I was just about to say that next. I saw that last night.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And it's it's so, you know, I think for me, my hope is that the Republican Party sees the limits of its power and understands that we cannot end health insurance subsidies. He only wants to do it because Obama put it in place. And then look what's happening with farms, right? Do you know what's happening with farms, Kenneth? Farms? Uh-huh. So all of these tariffs have taken place, and we're going to economic war with the world. And China used to be the biggest purchaser of American-produced soybeans. They're no longer purchasing soybeans produced by American farmers. They're purchasing those soybeans from Canada and other places around the world. They're being displaced. So farmers are literally at the brink of bankruptcy. And now what Trump is saying is he's going to pour$10 billion into saving Americans farm American farms. But that can only last for so long. Farmers actually have to earn income because how much subsidy can we continue to bring them? So no, I think that it is terrible that we have the kind of government right now where there's a group of people who are determined to impose their will on everybody else.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, and it's very scary when you're doing it with these um, you know, ICE agents who are not military nor law enforcement trained. The training to become an ICE agent has been expedited. It's now easier than ever to become uh an ICE person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um, you know, it it's in their they carry out their actions wearing masks with no idea that it's a very important thing.
SPEAKER_06:That is very odd. You know, that's not a thing that happens in, you know. I mean, it is very easy to just be like, oh my gosh, like this, we are watching authoritarianism in the United States in a very real and just, you know, I can't say it in any other way as a neutral, objective person that is reporting what occurs, right? I mean, there is no factual basis for sending military into any US city. No, there is no strategy that involves National Guard nor military troops that could be effective in to any degree in fighting crime in urban places. It's it's just ridiculous. It's actually insulting that they would even just why not why not just say we want to terrorize our cities? Why not just say that? Because I think that would be more I mean, obviously, probably in the behind the closed doors, that's there, you know. But I mean, you know what the the the something nobody thinks that this is to fight crime.
SPEAKER_02:People no, they don't think. This is this is, I mean, you know, everything that he says is so um dishonest. Okay, he says, listen, there's a surge of crime, but he said it during the elections, you know, there's a surge of these Haitian people coming in, destroying communities, no evidence, and these gangs of people. Um, that kind of rhetoric is used to justify violence. And it's always been used to justify violence. Remember back in the day when a black man could be killed because he was accused of doing something with no evidence, no court hearing. Um, that's how you control populations. That's how you end up in fascistic situations. There's always the dehumanization, the accusations without any basis for truth. And quite frankly, people don't care. If remember there was the um the mass killing by a trans person, I think, leaving Georgia, and they cared about that. But then you turn around and you have the person who did what they did in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and they found out, wait a minute, this guy is a former Marine, and all of a sudden there's no effort to crack down on Marines. Um, some crimes matter and some crimes don't matter because they're being politicized. And in all of that, it's not good for us. So, my way of dealing with it for my mental health is to focus on local issues, which are outside of my control as well, but I think I can have influence over those.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So local elections, local power building, getting us ready for what may happen. Because I, my husband, Kevin, is just one of these optimists who believes this is this will not last forever. This is going to come to an end sooner than later. And if and when it does, then we're going to have to be prepared to help rebuild everything that has been torn apart. What can we do on a local level? So today is the first day for the Black Detroit Democracy Class series. And I'm really excited about that. Um, we printed out a booklet I created, and that's going to be distributed to everybody. We had over 60 people enrolled, register for the first class. Awesome. Um, I've got guest speakers who are amazing. I'm really excited about Jamine Jordan coming in on October 29th to talk about the creation of Black Detroit, how we became a black city. There's nobody who could do it better than Jamine. I'm really excited about having Orlando come on November 12th to discuss um how narrative to how to shift narratives and also the power of narrative in a political moment because that goes back to these narratives around gang violence in cities, justifies bringing the police in. Can we create new narratives around what's happening? Narratives around school failure justify school takeovers. And if you don't have any kind of power or influence over the narrative about your community, then that narrative can be manipulated in ways that we've seen over the years. So that's my way of dealing with it is coping with this. Let's get hyper-local. I live in Detroit. I don't live in the United States as a whole. You know, I live in this very specific place. And in this place, we are in the middle of an election right now. A really, really significant election in so many ways. Um, are you tuned into the local elections at all?
SPEAKER_05:For Detroit?
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:I haven't checked up with it since the last time we interviewed somebody.
SPEAKER_02:All right. So what I will say to you, Kenneth, and everybody who's listening is all politics start locally. Any kind of change you ever want to see in the United States, always start it somewhere in somebody's community, people organizing for that and building outwards. Um, I believe what, among many other things, the administration wants us to do right now is to feel powerless. They want us to feel frustrated and feel like there's nothing we can do. Because if you can immobilize people with feelings of powerlessness, then you can take them over. And so my question is where does our power lie? You know, you've got power right inside of the Southeastern High School. How are you using your power at school?
SPEAKER_05:Well, I try and get everyone's opinions on things and to try and shape the school into a better place, and even going to administration after I talked to some of the students and giving them suggestions on what we can do to better the school and the activities. Like um, for our homecomings, we we sell our homecomings right when school starts. And I'm and I told them, like, hey, why don't we try and get the kids' opinions on our homecomings throughout the school year? And then over the summer and our level up expos, we start pushing tickets out and get the space ready um like months ahead of time. And then also with the um with the freshmen, the freshmen have been the majority of the problem in our school this year. So we were talking about trying to bring our six-hour lunch back because they took they took six-hour lunch because there's too many lunch periods, but it's too many kids populated into one um lunchroom, and kids are not able to eat enough because most kids don't eat at home. So that means that like seconds and stuff is needed. And then drama being calm being all what was it, build it up from freshmen starting beef with the upperclassmen or upperclassmen starting beef with the freshmen, and we want to be able to separate that and bring better, what's the word?
SPEAKER_02:I can't think of the word, but listen, I'm really proud of you for the leadership role that you're playing. I have a question. Are any of the leadership roles you're playing in school influenced by what you're learning through um Caitlin and Dean? Majority of them. Can you talk about that?
SPEAKER_05:Well, like learning how to communicate with others is it's always been a hard thing for me. If you well, you've known me since I f first came here. When I first came here to up to now, I didn't used to talk like that nor was around nobody. Especially when I first started podcasts, I just used to say like one, maybe two words. Yes, you're so quiet. And then after that, I just didn't say nothing else for the rest of the podcast. And then now I'm up here speaking more and voicing out my energy towards things. And it's like, wow.
SPEAKER_02:When did you when did you discover that you're brilliant? Um, I don't know. Have you discovered that yet? It's so amazing to me because you're such a brilliant young man. And I think, you know, helping people understand their gifts is so important to the work that we do, right? It makes me so excited to see people one day wake up when, wait, do I have something to say? And I have some people want to listen. And, you know, that's another thing we can change, is helping a new generation of people who bring what God gave them, which is you know, absolute brilliance, to the bear. A lot of times, young black men learn from a very young age they're not good at stuff. You're not this, you're not that, you're not this, you're not that. And by the time you get to your age, you have more consciousness of what you're not than what you are. And I hope that you are discovering what you are, is um really just amazing to me. That's a good way to put that.
SPEAKER_06:I was always I was never good at math, and so that's the reason why I do what I do now. I'm not either. Well, that's what they told me that. I was like, you know, oh, you're not good at math.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, I still push myself and try and at least get at least somewhere between a D or a C in my math class. You need to be at least. But you know what?
SPEAKER_02:If you knew, if you knew that you were capable of giving a you give it that extra mile. The reality is that I'm not good at math is not a you thing or you thing. It is an American thing. American people do not believe we're good at math, and black American people really don't think we're good at math, right? And so uh you in other cultures, you're not good at math, you just learn it.
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_02:You know, you're not good at reading, you just learn it. But in the United States, only certain people can do math, and therefore only certain people push through to learn it. Um, I used to, in another world, do um education. I was um ran a charter school company and I did I studied education, um, leadership and at Wayne State and um read a lot about this. And when I learned about the whole concept of efficacy, self-efficacy is the driver of this, right? You don't believe you're good at math, and therefore you work through it just enough to get a C or a D, but you don't keep pushing because you don't expect to succeed because you're not good at math. When you think you're good at something, you keep at it, you have a higher level of frustration, tolerance, you don't give up when things get hard. And so I'll say to you, you are capable of being good at math. You just have to practice it more like anything else. You weren't good at public speaking a couple of years ago either, right? And now look at you, you weren't good at a lot of things that you have done. And so if you don't choose to pursue math, that's a choice. But don't not pursue it because you're not good at that. I have one final thing to say about that. My sister, my oldest sister, Linda, was not good at math or science, right? She graduated from high school and she just knew she wasn't good at math or science. Um, she studied performing arts at Castec because she was not good at math or science. And sometime in her 20s, she decided she wanted to become a nurse. And she became a nurse despite not being good at math or science. And she found out, you know what, I can be good at both. I've seen people grow into those capacities. Um, there is nothing that you can't do, you just have to decide how hard you want to do work to get there. So that's my little preaching thing. And you know, even after high school, you can change. We can continue growing and learning all through our lives, but we live in a world that diminishes our value from the time that we before we're born. When we were born into a world that puts us at a deficit, when people see you, they don't say, Oh, look at this brilliant young man. They say, Oh, look at this kid. And then when your brilliance is treated as exceptional rather than normal, that's why we have gifted classes for the smart ones and slow classes for the other ones, but we're all gifted because that's how we're that's how we're made. And so, yeah. I and it I'm really happy to see you lift up. You're not we're not all gifted the same, right? We all have different gifts, but we are all gifted. I believe that, don't you, Sam?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I do. I you know, I was discouraged from even trying to to learn it because it was just you know a pain for the teachers that had to talk slower and be like, I thought I explained this.
SPEAKER_02:Are you not listening to me when I'm but most teachers are also afraid of math? Did you know that?
SPEAKER_06:You know, I yeah, I I had a math teacher that was a basketball coach, and so not a lot of math, a lot of basketball.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. A lot of teachers, they've done surveys of teachers, and teachers, elementary school teachers have math anxiety. Math anxiety is cultural.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, I have that as well. I have math anxiety. I am literally and then I mean math will come into my like life right now. Even um, like I have like Excel spreadsheet anxiety. Like, no, like I'm not gonna open your Excel spreadsheet and put data into it. I don't know how to do that. Like, I don't know how to do VLOOKUP and I never will. Yeah, and I just I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and I I love Excel so much when I learn how to do some things with it. Listen, I I worked at Vanguard Community Development Corporation. We had a teen center there, the Spot Teen Center. And one summer I was hanging out with young people and they were playing spades every day. Now I've been playing spades since I was 14 years old and I consider myself to be a spades expert. I did not win a single hand. How did I not win a single hand against all these young people who aren't good at math? You know why? Because they were counting cards and they were able to classify, count, and play, outplay me. Yet if you talk to them, they're not good at math. People can, you know, sit up here and calculate, you know, football odds or basketball odds without thinking because you're not conscious of the fact that that's math. The other thing is the extent to which you're using math and you don't even understand you're using math in your world. So um I reject the narrative that you're not good at math. I accept the possibility that you have not been taught well.
SPEAKER_05:It's that I've always been in the self-contained class since I have autism. So I have an IEP. So that so from my entirety of my elementary to like late middle school years, they always taught me like at least fifth grade level to maybe a little bit of sixth grade, sixth grade level math. And especially during the pandemic, and then when I got to um high school, I was bad at algebra, but I'm good at geometry and finance. And then also I'm in an IT class, I do coding, and I know the hardware is in the computer. So, and the thing about it, with hardware computers, you have to know math.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_05:So when they're like, oh, this takes if one terabyte is this, how many gigs would you have this how have? I'm like, oh, I'll say I'm just I'm just saying something out the window. 20 megabytes, gigabytes, and like good job. Because I have to compress terabytes into gigabytes.
SPEAKER_02:And that's my point. My point is that now it's interesting that you state that you have autism because autism has been in the news a lot. A lot.
SPEAKER_06:They say the people with autism are the best at math.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's one of the stereotypes. I mean, there's such a wide variety of people who have been diagnosed with autism, but I think there's a lot of discrimination against people with autism. Do you have you found that to be true?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, like in class, even though I speak well and I present myself well, when they find out that I have autism and I have extra time on my assignments or a second attempt on my quiz, they be like, he don't need it, he's too smart for that. No, no, no. I'm like, well, in these classes, I have to bust my tail all my life to get to this point. And then y'all talking about I don't need it, but y'all the main ones who come to me asking me for help on your word.
SPEAKER_02:Right. But I think that that because of that, I think people look at people with autism sometimes as people who have less intelligence.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that's not you, you're just you process information differently, right? Is that what would distinguish you from other people without autism?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, because like when when whenever you have like a guest speaker or just any kind of speaker, I sit there, I either open up my computer, my phone, I'll take a note, a pen, and paper out, and I take notes. And like, why you take notes on everything? Because I'm like, you don't know what they're gonna access, and then you don't know if this information is gonna be given towards you again later on down the line. So it's good to take notes on everything because you don't know what life is gonna throw at you.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's that's true. I think that's true for many people, right? Taking notes and documenting, that's a certainly a great learning strategy. Um, we can talk about that too. But before we talk about learning strategies, I really want to get to how do you process information differently from in your understanding? How does autism impact uh impact your ability to learn?
SPEAKER_05:Depending on what it is, like science, math, and no, not math, science, ELA in social studies and IT. If I were to, if you were to sit me down in front of any of those, for example, I will sit there, the information that you give me, I'm gonna output it either in the way that a professional does it, or in an advanced manner. Like in my history class, my my social studies teacher has said that I am on the college level when it comes down to my history. And I'm even on the Detroit Historical Society. So it's like depending on what it is, I can proceed the information to a higher degree. Now, going back to math, that is seeing all these numbers, shapes, um letters, letters don't get me started on the code.
SPEAKER_06:I know, but I don't know algebra you neither, man.
SPEAKER_05:So when I sit there and I look at it, I freeze. Yeah. But then you get in the same way, we comes down to geometry. But with geometry, you're pointing and you're rotating. So when I got to that, it's like, well, this is easy. But at the same time, it's yeah, difficult.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think people don't understand it. I think, and I think all of the um the attention that Robert Kennedy has brought to it, you know, we're not gonna do this, Tylenol causes autism and stuff like that. I have an uncle, had an uncle who I believe now was autistic, but nobody got diagnosed with autism when I was young. But when you reflect back on how he was, it's like, I wonder if he was autistic, especially because I have cousins who have sons who are very similar in some ways to him. Um people act like it's new and it's not. It's not, it's been around. It's been around, it's been documented since the early 20th century, um, even the term. Um, but you know, sometimes it's only certain types of people who get, you know, get diagnosed with it. Do you believe your autism is a disability?
SPEAKER_05:Um I see it as a I see it as a stepping stone, and I see it as a wall. Because like depending on what it is, like I can't use my hands. Like my hands are one of my weakest things. I can't I can't even tie my shoe. And I'm about to be 17 in like a month, and I can't tie my shoe. And sometimes when I speak, I slander, and when I start talking too fast, and then I have to regather myself. But at the same time, I don't let me not knowing how to tie my shoes get the best of me. I can still do this and that without having to tie my shoes. That's right. And um, me with my speech, I practice because I do voice acting. So when I'm in my room and I do my voice acting, which is so cool, by the way.
SPEAKER_06:That's really good. That's sick.
SPEAKER_05:I practice my um my speeches. I'll do monologues and then I'll do my own version of the monologue. So I can practice on thinking about information coming to my head on the spot and outputting it in a proper manner.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So um when it comes to politics, you have concerns at the federal level about what's happening with the shutdown, right? What are your concerns locally?
SPEAKER_05:Locally, I'm concerned about our health care and not even just our health care, our food and our neighborhoods, because without the federal funding, our states and cities won't have the money to fix, to buy to buy our food and our products to help sustain for our cities and towns, and then on top of it, for like the stuff around us, like buildings, rare um buildings, crossroads, streets. Because without any of that, then it's gonna cause casualties in the community, and then people not being able to eat, that's gonna have a lot of more deaths because what are you doing? We don't have food to feed our people.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_05:We can't. What you gonna think? We think we're gonna eat each other because we're not cannibals.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, I have uh other thoughts on that. You know, our ancestors used to grow food, right? So to a certain extent, are we overly dependent on food that we don't control? I wonder about that. And are there ways for us to? I know that we can't grow enough food to close some of the gaps, but I think that we can grow more food and be more self-sufficient.
SPEAKER_05:And I and that's another thing. A good handful of people don't know how to grow crops, and especially with black descent and other um minorities, we should know how to we lost our skills, right? I have a whole crop garden. Me, me, my, me and my family, we have a whole crop garden outside on the side of our house. We have onions, corns, we have an apple tree in the front of our house. How many how many days a week do you eat food that you've grown? Um, it's still new. So we haven't we we haven't got that much. We got like like little pinches, like these strawberries. So you're getting there. Yeah, like we had these strawberries. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_06:They're good. Yeah, yeah, some cherry tomatoes growing out there. Yeah, those grow real abundant. I got some in my back in my apartment, like just some cherry tomatoes. And my roommate who's vegan, shout out to Colin Jackson, Michigan Radio's finest reporter in Lansing. Um, you know, he'll just pull out a full bowl of these really sweet cherry tomatoes that we just grew in our backyard with like one inch of soil. Like it's concrete, it's like this much soil, and then concrete. And we're just like, how are these tomatoes growing up onto our porch and everything? They're just going out there. So yeah, I I I want to learn more about exactly what you maybe I should come out and see it.
SPEAKER_05:And then the thing about it, I'm actually trying to advocate because I'm I'm affiliated affiliated with 424 as well and the Hans Foundation and Macalav. So I'm trying to incorporate some um what was it called? Ultraculture, so we could teach so we could teach youth how to plant and stuff, because if we learn how to plant now, and if we were to go through a purge or the entirety of the nation goes black, we don't have to worry about relying on how to learn to grow our foods, how to hunt, and we can just know how to do this off the spot.
SPEAKER_06:Haven't had a blackout in a while, Donna. You you could you were around for a Detroit blackout. What year was that?
SPEAKER_02:Oh my goodness, was it 2002? Something like that.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it was early 2000s. It's early 2000s. You've heard the stories? Yeah, my mom and my older sister were my mom was actually um my mom was was actually around the time right before she found out that she was pregnant with me. Um what year were you born? Oh, wait. Okay. She oh my god. She her and my her and my sister were on my grandmother's block and they were watching wrestling. And as soon as I think it was um John Cena and the rock fighting, as soon as John Cena hit him, everything went dark. Oh wow. And everybody were outside in tents and stuff, having their having their whole fridge hooked up to their car so their fridge can blow cold air out. And I'm like, dang. And it was hot.
SPEAKER_02:No. Yeah. Well, listen, it was actually August 14th, 2003. I was at work um on East Grand Boulevard, and I lived at that time in Lather Village, and you know, I had a cell phone, but people also had corded phones. Phones were out, everything was out. I went home. I had a minivan at that time with a television in it. So we sat in the minivan and watched, you know, watched videos because you know, the we didn't have like y'all ain't had YouTube. Well, I mean, you know, that was long before YouTube or even, you know, I mean, um, the broadband did not reach people's cars in the same way. I don't remember broadband being much of a thing. So yeah, that was a a time for me. It was a learning thing. We couldn't understand how it happened, and so then the car ran out of gas, and we were trying to figure out to cook. But the most amazing thing about the blackout was the community found that it was dependent on each other and people came out in communities and took care of each other. It was a very communal period of time. Um, all the kids in the neighborhood were coming, you know, they were all sitting in the minivan with us watching this. I think I just had the kids in there, they weren't, you know, not me. Um, we found ways to cook and feed each other. Um, it was kind of an ideal time frame in that sense because we have to remember what we can do.
SPEAKER_05:And did you hear about the dude who made plastic into few oil?
SPEAKER_06:I don't know about that dude. I mean I don't know about oil. I see him. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Plastic comes from oil, so understand it is a petroleum based product. Um I see that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:I saw his I saw his eye. I think he's grifting. Yeah, it's I don't I don't think it's worth celebrating him.
SPEAKER_05:It's not worth celebrating.
SPEAKER_06:I think it's cool though. I mean, yeah, but I just I don't know. I think he's grifting. I saw that on on the Instagram uh aggregation pages.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean the the reality is I believe it can happen simply because of for various reasons, but not with not new technology misrepresenting what he's doing. Yes, I haven't I haven't I have not seen that technology.
SPEAKER_06:Shout out to him though.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, you know, listen, everybody's good for social. It's it's it's his hook, right? It is, and that's his thing. And um, yeah, well so listen, Sam, I I want to talk to you about something I saw in your socials. Yeah, you said that you realized that not everybody loves you or something like that, that you have these characters.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I just you know, I won't even I'll leave it there. The people that hate me, you're listening to me right now. What are you doing? You know, I I just I don't know. Uh I was wondering how you feel about that. Oh well, in my professional career, white women have been a big roadblock because they feel like they're the true victims because they have to interact with white men versus me interacting with white women and men who discriminate against me. So I think that's just an ongoing battle, I guess. And I have respect for so many white women that have opened doors for me and that have been there for me. I mean, I could literally list them out, but I won't because it's not relevant here. But it's not I just, you know, I I think that my confidence in myself and the way that I per se portray myself, which is, you know, not taking myself too seriously. I think there is a level of um sort of conf not confusion or frustration, but and I, you know, I just I haven't gotten the level of pushback from the black elder establishment that you know probably looks at my tattoos on my hands and the way I'm dressed and is like, what the hell, Sam? They don't push back on me in the same way that white women in their 40s do because they're threatened because they're mediocre and they're not good, and they recognize that I'm more talented than them, and the exact thing that what they do.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I I went to Mercy High School, um, which is a majority white school in Farmington Hills. And um let's just say I have personal experience in some of this. Okay. I was just like my favorite time was when they accused me of cheating on the um at the ACT and reported me to the school counselor because I got higher score than they did. Oh, you told me that. Yeah. I mean, you know, and I and I realized, and then when I got to um college at U of M, there was this one young lady who worked at, I worked at a bar, Rick's Cafe. Um, and this lady worked with me, hated me. And so um she went to our professor, Dr. Chaffers, and she said, Oh, I can't stand down. And she tries to be so smart. She tries to be so smart. And so he said, How do you try to be smart? Either you are or you aren't.
SPEAKER_05:And I deal with that kind of thing, like this among my my own peers from other black people.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's different, is different, and I want to talk about the difference, right? In one instance, there is jealousy sometimes, and I let me talk about the jealousy. Again, most black kids have learned from the time they're young that they're not smart, and that's emotionally devastating to people to be told you know, most of the time when parents go to parent teacher conferences, all they hear about is complaints about how this child needs to work on this and this and this and that. And you adopt this negative self-identity, and then you see somebody else being treated differently or succeeding where you can't, and there's a natural sense of resentment and jealousy that can come into play because of your own self-worth. That's very different than the entitlement that I'm better than you, that is bred into people from the time they're born, and then having to confront the fact that they're not really better than you. That is Megan Kelly saying Barack Obama is not intelligent, or what does she say that um Kamala Harris is the most unintelligent person she's met? It's factually inaccurate, it's ridiculous, but it's um very hard for people to deal with this sense of entitlement, this sense of superiority being dampened by these other people. And I would say with you, Sam, you're dealing with two issues. One, you're not white. Well, three issues possibly, and then I'm gonna throw them out, try them out, right? One, you're not white, two, you're young.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, I think that's a big part of it.
SPEAKER_02:And three, your mother is white.
SPEAKER_06:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And you have adopted an identity as a black man, and that can be very threatening to people who feel as though you should identify with them. Why would you identify with these people instead of me when you can be one of ours that we mistreat, Colin Cap, you know what I'm saying? So I think that you're dealing with a number of evils here. Um, would you you agree with that?
SPEAKER_06:Oh, I would. And I, you know, I I see the evils face head on, you know. These evils work at the Detroit News and Free Press. I'll I'll take the Detroit News a little bit out of it because the tweet is actually related to two individuals that are employees of the Detroit Free Press that are peering in on a conversation that I'm having privately about the fact that I never see them at the community events and forums that I've been going to over the last six months covering the Detroit municipal elections. The Detroit Free Press and News do not resource themselves in the same way that they do to cover Lansing. That is a fact. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. Period. That's all that's all I have to say. I'm not uh you know, taking a uh right wing anti-journalist, you know, I I'm certainly not uh, you know, an independent journalist that is uh flirting with right wing crazies and um um uh disagreed, you know, uh denigrating newsrooms. I am not um you know, talking down on on individual journalists. Um I wish the stories that Malachi Barrett and I were on the front pages of the Detroit News and Free Press because you have Detroit in the masthead in the name of your organization. But you cover Matt Hall and Trump and Governor Whitmer and Winnie Brinks to a level that you do not care about Mary Sheffield and Solomon Kinlock. That's just true. I mean, uh anybody that wants to challenge me in an actual debate on that, I have the receipts to prove it. They don't publish things about local politics anymore. They just simply do not.
SPEAKER_02:I'll I'll challenge you.
SPEAKER_06:They they do. And I will they do. I will shout out to Louis Aguilar and Dana Ofana, who do a terrific job of covering the city. But I don't see them there at all the events that I go to. I just don't.
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah. Uh okay. Let me let me just uh bring a little age into it, right?
SPEAKER_06:Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:When I was young, the Detroit Free Press was staffed with so many more people. You had so many people to do so many things, and you Detroit Free Press was a locally owned newspaper. Over time, you started seeing these media conglomerates purchasing local newspapers all over, and now you have a board over a board over a board, and you don't necessarily have the editorial freedom that a Sam um Robinson has, or even Malachi Barrett, who works for an independent nonprofit news organization. So two things one is media independence, and three is the sheer number of things that you have to cover and the fact that you just don't have the beat reporters that you used to have. I have a lot of friends who used to be journalists who are not in journalism anymore because journalism is a shrunken industry and it's harder to keep newspapers alive.
SPEAKER_06:And it's the scarcity mindset that is is causing the reactions that I I received at last year. It's a scarcity mindset. People are afraid because they view Sam Robinson as being way more popular and relevant than them, and they're like, what the hell? Why is this guy that just says whatever? That's how they feel.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I I think it's also if you are criticizing them.
SPEAKER_06:I am I'm being critical of them, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think that people if you're openly critical of people.
SPEAKER_06:Not people. I am openly critical of organizations headed by commercial real estate companies and a company called NextGen Media or whatever the hell the company that owns the Detroit News is. The Detroit News, I will say, Louis Aguilar, um, I mean, you have Mel Elric LeBlanc.
SPEAKER_02:Does cover City Home most of the time? I think he does a terrible job. But I hear what you're saying. I think that I think that the coverage of black politicians by local media is racist as hell. It is. And I'd rather have a lot of people.
SPEAKER_06:I'm ready to get on after a year of covering it myself, of of every day, right? Going to all of the events that are that are available.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I read I read an article the other day. This is not coming from me, this is coming from the readers, this is coming from the public. I I read I read an article the other day. That I'm a part of. I read an article the other day that said, I think it's the Detroit News said that because of these darn concert tickets that both mayoral candidates, Mary Sheffield and um K Solomon Kenlock, had shades of Kwame Kilpatrick and it infuriated me because the person who's most similar to Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit politics is Mike Duggan. They come out of the same political family in the McNamare administration, and you know, there's a whole political group around that. So to put that burden on two people running for office because of concert tickets and to demand and and accusing them of influence peddling is a bridge way too far for me. It infuriated me.
SPEAKER_06:Well, I just thought it was racist. And I know again, like I tell Louis Aguilar, like, I love you, dude. Like, I tell Dan Onfana, like, you do an amazing job. I tell ML Elric, like, hey, you know, we have a difference of opinion, but if I see him on the trail, he's a reporter, so I'm like supporting him. I support all the reporters, like, even the reporters that I fundamentally disagree with, I still support their work. Period. Stop. Yeah. So when they compare uh Renata Miller and Willie Burton, because Renata had a domestic violence and is homophobic, and Willie got evicted. Lewis, you have to push back on Richard Burr, the city editor at the Detroit News, who when I ask Richard, what the hell is going on? Why don't why don't you guys have the same level of care with the city that you do in Lansing? And he's like, Well, that's just how it is. Ariel Crass used to cover the city of Detroit for cranes. They got rid of her and they all entire Detroit news market. We're like, okay, well, I guess we can just stop covering the city of Detroit.
SPEAKER_02:It's the same clicks. I don't think it there's a scarcity mindset in journalism as much as there is a journalism having to defend itself against all kinds of things. Right now, if you look at there's a free speech issue in America, right? There's certain things you're allowed to say and certain things you're not allowed to say, and there's certain things that traditional media staff are not allowed to say, which is why we need independent sources. And I look at you, quite honestly, as guerrilla media because you're just out there doing your own thing and we need that, and we're blessed by that. But not everybody has your freedom, Sam. And sometimes a little bit of recognition that some people have to pay their bills and they don't have your freedom. And so when you say things like that, if they could maybe they'd be in Lansing and they're stuck here in Detroit because of things that we are not always aware of. So I would just say, in that instance, I'm at the point of like it's too important.
SPEAKER_06:I'm at that point.
SPEAKER_02:It's it's important, and I agree, and I support the need for what you do, but I also know how hard it is for people working in failing institutions to sometimes come out because they can't really say the institution is failing, right? So what they do is they defend themselves and you become somebody who they feel like they have to defend themselves to. And that's not necessarily something that you have to do because we say it.
SPEAKER_06:I love the Detroit Free Press in the news. I love all of the bridge, Detroit. I love Outlier, I love WDT. Shout out to Ryan Patrick Hooper, who have been doing it.
SPEAKER_02:But you can do things that other people can't.
SPEAKER_06:You have been liberated from I also live in the city of Detroit where you know when I ask Gary Miles, hey Gary, I see that in your endorsement uh for Detroit City Council, in which you endorsed Karen Witsett, you put Joe Tate instead of James Tate. Gary, does anyone on your editorial board, made up of Nolan Finlay and Caitlin Buss, do they live in the city of Detroit? Gary tells me. Well, I actually don't know because you're talking about the Detroit News. I'm talking about the Detroit News now, yes.
SPEAKER_02:Endorse Karen Witsett.
SPEAKER_06:They endorsed Karen Witsett. Yes, they did. Um they actually endorsed Gabby over Tyrone, which I thought was interesting. I don't know what Gabby said to them in their endorsement screening. But um it's probably Nolan just hates Tyrone because he's a longtime Democrat. Um I I just felt like, you know, if you don't have anybody that lives in the community, why are you making endorsements for a community? I that's just so bad.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not disagreeing with that. Although, you know, the free press does have people who live in Detroit. They do, yes.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, they didn't endorse Karen Witsett. I will say I like Karen. I will say I just, you know, I I She just doesn't believe that Charlie Kirk is racist this week.
SPEAKER_02:She pointed that out.
SPEAKER_06:I know. This week has been a tough week for, you know, I think her and the uh people that are supporting her, like perhaps Bobby Lawrence or Scott Benson. I haven't heard from any of those individuals when I first started covering D7 really closely. I did. You know, take it easy on Karen. You understand, Sam, you've been in Lansing, you know how it goes. You know, Karen voted with Republicans on a proposal that, you know, of course, it she knows it wasn't going to pass. We all know as people that understand that the Senate is controlled by Democrats and the governor's office is controlled by the buttons.
SPEAKER_02:Why do you even well you didn't need to vote for that? Well, but but why did you show up to vote for that? Why did you pay$36 for doggy daycare to vote for that?
SPEAKER_06:She says that that was in order to get stuff with her name on it. And it all goes to Sylvia Santana. Nothing that comes out of that because she knows that the Senate is controlled by Winnie Brinks. Winnie Brinks isn't gonna let it go through with Karen Witsett's name on the earmark.
SPEAKER_02:The reality is that Karen Whitsett has ties to Republicans in the state of Michigan, and she's had those ties, and she's in she's the idea. I called Donald Trump and asked him to save, thank you, Karen. That saved things because this either she's enormously unintelligent or she's lying. There's no way she thinks she's gonna pick up the phone and call Donald Trump and influence policy if she's has any level of intelligence, because that's not how Donald Trump operates.
SPEAKER_06:Anyone who reads news sees is not if I get a no, it's not gonna be from the House speaker, it's going to be from the president.
SPEAKER_02:And so I, you know, I don't know. Yeah, but well, I mean, you don't know. I don't know, you believe she has that influence over the president. Do you believe she can call the president up and get the president?
SPEAKER_06:You think you you we can get on the hold of Trump? He's gonna give us some money for Detroit. No.
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm saying, do you believe Karen Whitsett can pick up the phone? I don't think anyone could pick it up.
SPEAKER_06:I don't think Mike Duggan could pick up the phone and say, hey, Trump, we need money. No, I don't think anyone could do that.
SPEAKER_02:Or it's a sign of uh unintelligence. And since you don't think she's unintelligent, you don't want me to say this because that's your friend and I understand that, and you have been at more than fair to her. But all I'm trying to say is she knows it's not going to work or she's not smart. And either one means she should not sit on city council because either she's being dishonest or she is just not capable of doing the job.
SPEAKER_06:Going back to my point, I just think it's completely irresponsible for a Detroit news with your city name in the masthead of your organization of your newspaper to not employ anyone that lives in the city to make endorsements on behalf of the residents. It's insulting.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it is. And it should be called out. And you should call it out.
SPEAKER_06:Right, and I and I reject anyone who tries to say it in my way.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. But calling that calling that out and attacking individual people are two separate things. I have never done that. Okay.
SPEAKER_06:All right. I have literally never done that. I have attacked Gannett. Okay. I don't believe that anyone should work for a commercial real estate company pretending to do journalism. I think they should all quit and create their own organization.
unknown:Huh.
SPEAKER_06:It's only as easy. It's easy. Easier said than done. Maybe they should all get laid off.
SPEAKER_02:You know, that's the reason why. I'm gonna I'm gonna close this out because we have to go. But I'm gonna close this out by saying this. That's the reason why I'm doing the Black Detroit Democracy series. And step one of the series is education. That's going to run through December 17th. And then starting in the new year, we're gonna have fellowships. And the goal of our fellowships is to equip people who are interested and passionate about political organizing to go out there and do their own organizing. Give you$1,500 to$2,500 for a project grant and also give you a fellowship stipend so that you can be out in the community doing the work because it's not gonna be people who have jobs to lose, people who have to worry about mortgages. It's gonna be people who feel like they have the freedom to act on their conscience, and that's not gonna be organizations, that's gonna be young people. You guys make the change.
SPEAKER_06:I want to shout out before I do, the great journalist that you can read at the Detroit News and Free Press, including Andrew Sahoury, Violet. She's really great. Beth LeBlanc has done tremendous reporting on Detroit um elections.
SPEAKER_02:I'm going to call out my friend Nancy Caffer because Nancy Kaffer has been a um real has has encouraged other people to contribute to the journalistic stories of our city, including myself. And she lives in the city of Detroit and has is raising a child in the city of Detroit. So we know that this is a person who's part of our community.
SPEAKER_06:Shout out to James Hill, who guides a lot of the uh coverage um in terms of Detroit kids, and that was a very community-driven effort to tell the stories of people in neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_02:And and one last thing if we don't have those people in those newsrooms, yeah. If we don't have people in those newsrooms, those newsrooms are gonna hire somebody else.
SPEAKER_06:They will.
SPEAKER_02:And the people they hire may or may not love us at all. And so I do want to acknowledge it's a hard job. Somebody's gotta do it. I could never work for corporate America. I tried and it didn't work for me. But for those who do, hats off to you. Do a good job and keep trying your hardest. And we need independent journalists like you, Sam, so that we can hold people accountable, keep them honest, and give them some competition.
SPEAKER_06:We, you know, we do. It's not, and again, like I'm not ever trying to go after anybody. You guys have my number. Uh it is 989-488-0008.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I'm gonna yes, call call them up and let them know. Let me know. And I they won't.
SPEAKER_06:They don't want to talk to me, they just want to complain in their little corners because they know that they're mediocre.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, thank you so much for listening to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. Be sure to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast and our platforms, and of course, support Black Independent Reporting on Detroit1Million.com because good journalism costs. And if you're interested and available, I'm teaching a class Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. at East Side Community Network at 4401 Connor. The class is free. We provide food, we provide uh materials for you to learn and continue growing so that you too can be an agent of change. Have a good day.
