Plowshares and Power with Gary Anderson and Cándido Tirado

In this episode, Donna and Sam welcomed director and the founder of Plowshares Theatre Gary Anderson plus playwright Cándido Tirado to discuss the world premiere of “Roberto Clemente: A Diamond Within,” an original play written by Tirado.

“Roberto Clemente: A Diamond Within” dramatizes the life of baseball great Roberto Clemente, one of the few Latin athletes who recognized his African ancestry. From his origins in Puerto Rico to his lengthy professional career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente advocated for the civil rights of Black and Latino individuals both in and outside of baseball.

They also took some time to discuss data centers and their potential impact on the community following Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s controversial appearance at OpenAI’s data center groundbreaking in Saline and a proposed data center on Detroit’s east side.

To stay up to date on all things Authentically Detroit, click here. 

THIS WEEK IN THE MICHIGAN CHRONICLE:

WOMEN ARE DYING AT MICHIGAN’S ONLY FEMALE PRISON, AND LAWMAKERS ARE DEMANDING CHANGES 

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Up next, Authentically Detroit welcomes director and the founder of Plowshares Theater Gary Anderson plus playwright Condito Terado. We're also talking about something that's been on everybody's mind lately. That's data centers. And of course, what we're reading from the Michigan Chronicle this week on more women dying inside Michigan's only female prison, what lawmakers are saying, demanding changes. Keep it locked. Authentically Detroit starts after these messages.

SPEAKER_05 0:29

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SPEAKER_04 1:28

Welcome back to another episode of Authentically Detroit. We're broadcasting live from the Stadamyret East Side Community Network. I'm Sam Robinson. And I'm Donna Givens Davidson. Thank you for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people here in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. Today, we're joined by director and the founder of Plowshares Theater, Gary Anderson, plus playwright Condito Torado, Plowshares Theater Company, which is Detroit's only professional African-American theater proudly announced the world premiere of Roberto Clemente, A Diamond Within, an original play by acclaimed playwright Candido Torado earlier this year. Their production is directed by Plowshare founder Gary Anderson. Their production, a key part of the company's commitment to diverse storytelling, runs from June 5 through June 28 at the Marlene Bowl Theater at the Bowl family YMCA. Roberto Clemente, a Diamond Within, dramatizes the life of baseball great Roberto Clemente, one of the few Latin athletes who recognized his African ancestry, uh Pittsburgh Pirates. I always had a baseball card from Roberto Clemente growing up, so he was one of my favorite uh yeah ball players as a young kid. From his origins in Puerto Rico to his lengthy professional career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente advocated for the civil rights of black and Latino individuals, both in and outside of baseball. His life's motto was anytime you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth. Gary and Candida, welcome to Authentically Detroit. How are you guys doing today?

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Doing fine. And thanks for joining us. Oh, absolutely. We love it.

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 3:19

So the time I just want to say the theme is so timely. The idea of advocating for both Black and Latin Americans. There's been so much of an effort to create division between two oppressed communities that we don't always see the love in each other and don't always take care of each other. So I think that in so many ways, at a time such as this, I think we started talking about that before we began the show. This is a time to come together and say, you know, one love. There's only either you love each other, either you fight injustice, or you side with the oppressor. And the greatest threat to mega oppression is a multi-racial, multicultural um, you know, coming together. Yeah, coalition. Coalition, yeah, thank you. That's the word I was trying to come up with. Um, coalition, yeah. So this is a really timely player. I can't wait to hear more about it.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

Sure. Yeah. So what um is the inspiration in telling Roberto Clemente's story? Um someone who I think people who are younger than me are learning less about than people my age did when I was the same age as the same people growing up now.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

Yeah. Um well the this is a product of a play development initiative I started in 22 called Black Theater Latin Roots. If you look at all the stories that are being developed by black theaters, by black writers, they're usually talking about African Americans in the south of the U.S. or the north of US. And that only comprises about, you know, a small fraction of the Africans that are exhibited throughout the rest of the world. And the majority of Africans that were that were kidnapped out of the continent and brought to the New World were deposited in the Caribbean, Central, and South America. That's like that's somewhere between 10 and a half to 12 million individuals. Um their stories are black stories too. And so I thought it was important for us to begin looking at how we could cultivate them. And that's one of the reasons why we commissioned um Candido to write the play about um Roberto Clemente.

SPEAKER_06 5:26

So this was commissioned by you. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yep, I raised the dollars to help support him so he could write the play, and then we were committed to doing the world premiere of it.

SPEAKER_06 5:36

All right. So Candido, tell us about your background.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Um I was born in Puerto Rico. I came here to New York when I was 11. Um I got lost along the way because you know the language issue, and and then I ended up in Shaw University, North Carolina. So I was there for like two years, I believe. Um like I was telling you earlier, I always had a connection to the black community. However, when I left Puerto Rico, they told me not to uh become friendly with the black community. Why was that what was the rationale? Oh, you know, they think that the black people were bad. You know, they were criminals and, you know, the stereotypes. However, I'm looking outside my window and I seen a Puerto Rican guy playing basketball with black guys, and they're getting along. So I was immediately drawn to the black community. Um when I was a uh about 14, my mother met married a black man. Um we were more in a black area of the Bronx, and you know, we started dating into the black community, and that's you know, late 60s, early 70s. So that's when all the political um stuff was going on in in New York and the world. So those uh ideas that or ideals that the black community had at the time, those political ideas became my ideas. And um and I was telling the actors uh yesterday that I became a writer the day Martin Luther King died or was murdered, because for the first time I went to a room and I wrote an essay about him. I was in, I believe I was in sixth grade. It just came out of me and I was so moved by him. So then uh I gave it to a teacher and they spread it all over the school and they read it. So there's a scene in the play about that. Not about me, but about Martin Luther King uh being murdered, and it just hit me that that was the reason I started writing. I have forgotten.

SPEAKER_06 8:02

So what was your and when you were in sixth grade, what what did you take away from the murder?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Um for me was uh the question that a lot of people ask, why do good people die? So that was my approach. Why this man who had done so many great things and was fighting for all of us, um why was his life taken out? I'm in sixth grade, so I don't know the whole scope of the politics and the stuff that was going on with the government and his whole life and the trajectory. I just knew what I would see on the TV, what we talked about in the in the school about King. And we had a lot of liberals in in the school, so you know, he was talked about a lot.

SPEAKER_06 8:46

Yeah. Well, that's a pretty profound moment. I think if you look back at our histories, a lot of us have these pivotal moments where we figure out what we think about the world. And certainly that was one for many people. Um, you know, just seeing somebody who you admired, somebody who seemed to just love other people um be killed because of things that don't make any sense in the way we've been raised to see the world. Um it's interesting too when I look back because I thought when I was a kid that everybody loved Martin Luther King. Certainly that all black people loved Martin Luther King. And then I read about Thurgood Marshall referring to him as a rabble rouser. And I read the letter from the Birmingham jail and how, you know, he has to actually defend why he's doing when he's doing it. Right. And it just brings me back to today because, you know, in retrospect, everybody looks great, you know, after they achieve great things. But when we have young people protesting today, what are they called? They're minimized and called rabble rousers, and there's people who prefer, you know, a certain level of peace than, you know, at least the perception of peace, even if peace means oppression, peaceful oppression, as opposed to really fighting back. Um, many years later, we're still in those same battles in our community and certainly outside of our community, where um there's people who are um our age, we're all a little bit different around the age, but you know, close enough, who really look down on young people today who protest. They don't do it like we did it, like you know, we invented and somehow we, you know, perfected protest in the 60s when we fixed racism.

SPEAKER_03 10:29

Um, we actually addressed that in in Roberto Clemente. I mean, there are several things that Clemente takes on as a cause to try to address in regards to civil rights in baseball. And one of one of the subjects that comes up is um when Kirk Flood decides to go for free agency, which in itself is a radical action in within baseball. I mean, people when when today, when you think about baseball and how many players had these multimillion dollar contracts and you know they're very, very wealthy, that wasn't always the case for players. Um many of them didn't have a a job in the offseason and had to figure out something else to generate income. Um and in in the case of black and Latin players, they weren't always paid as much as they were deserved they deserved. They weren't able to get the endorsements. I mean, that was Roberto's challenge. He was in Pittsburgh, which didn't have a large Latin community, and he was vilified by the press, and uh which in turn turned him against some some fans were turned against him. And that those were things he had to deal with.

SPEAKER_06 11:45

Shut up and play ball, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:47

Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. In fact, you paraphrase one of the lines in the play. Okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 11:53

Well, you hear it so often, right? Um, we want your brawn, but not your brains. Right, right. We will even pretend like you don't have brains.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

In 2012, uh, with the the Miami Heat and Trayvon Martin, it was stick to sports, was the line.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Right, right. LeBron James shut up and dribble. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_06 12:08

I mean, there's so many ways that we characterize it. And it all has to do with, again, this construct of a black man as a beast or burden, you know, somebody who can do things but not think. And so we don't want you to be a thinking human being. I mean, look at Kaepernick, right? Absolutely. And who played who paid the ultimate price for an opinion and got blackballed because we don't want other people expressing their opinions, especially when we pay them all this money. Right. And then this mindset, you should be grateful that you have this job or that you're able to make a millionaire, a billionaire. You should be grateful for your ability to make all this money for the white man who claims you as his owner, um, claims to be your owner. I mean, there's the craziness in all of that.

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Interesting. You know, you mentioned Kurt Flood. I I read um books about sports history all the time, and his story is one that is frequently told, to my understanding, he uh uh rejected a trade, which sort of opened the door for what we understand as modern-day free agency. How much of um what what people going to see the play, how much of what's inside um the the script is like historical, uh taking from from you know what actually happened, everything.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's um I interpret certain things because it's a play. Yeah. So it's based on true events, and then I have to dramatize, so I have to create scenarios or take a scenario and then give the dialogue that I never heard, and it's not written. Right. So one thing that um I woke up to as I was writing the play that this is a historical play from the 50s to 1972. The most violent era, I believe, that we experience in so to some degree. Killing of leaders, um uh domestic and foreign, um you know, the police brutality, the organizations that came about from the Black Panthers to the young lords, um, people fighting back. And my wife and I always talk about it. What did these groups want? They wanted the garbage to get picked up, right, the kids to be fed, and to have an education. That's it. That's the revolution.

SPEAKER_06 14:36

Well, I mean, they wanted a place to live.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, and housing and healthcare.

SPEAKER_06 14:41

It it amazes me because you know, I have this theory about the violence of my childhood, right? That period of time. Because we were sending people, first of all, we were sending people to Vietnam. Secondly, we were watching it on television, which is crazy to me. Like the Vietnam War was televised. It said the revolution will not be televised, but Vietnam was. And then thirdly, people were really trained to kill. In many other wars, people didn't have to kill. You went to war, you were on the front lines, but you didn't necessarily have to kill. But in there was this training very specifically to get people over the inhibition to kill. And you're going there, you're killing people, you're seeing death up close, you're seeing all kinds of horrible things, and then you're coming home and you're bringing that with you. And everything you've been trained to do in Vietnam is part of who you are now. That plus heroin, right? Because so many people became addicted. And I think we don't always attribute some of the violence to the, you know, encourage the violence that was encouraged. And before you had Vietnam, you had the Korean War. My parents were um in the Korean War. They met in the Air Force, you know, um during the Korean War. Um we lived World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, so much warfare, so much hands-on battle, and a population that's become sort of um anesthetized to violence that plays out in our streets.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Yeah. You know, this country was born out of violence. That's right. And it continued the violence, and it hasn't stopped. We attack countries that because they elect the a democratic president and they don't like him. And then, you know, so uh our whole culture is violent.

SPEAKER_06 16:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

And denying people of their rights is violent.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

And then how long do you have to protest? You know, you know how hard it's to protest? In Puerto Rico, they got a governor out. They had to for months people had to march in those hot suns. They trying to get the governor out now that selling the country out. They're marching again. And you know, the thing that gets me, I don't know, um, it's like, well, when you protest, you're doing it under the rules of the oppressor. You know, tell you where to go, the police, you step out of line, they hit you, they arrest you. So how much can you get out of protest?

SPEAKER_04 17:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

You know, when um we saw it on TV when black people being beaten and for having trying to eat breakfast, we saw that violence, and then uh people were repulsed by it. Um but we couldn't be violent. So the state could be violent against you just for stepping out of line, you know, of marching. So it's very little you could um accomplish, I think, by protest.

SPEAKER_04 17:45

Yeah, I I when you're describing this makes me think of when I was a reporter, I was an intern at MLive during 2020, Black Lives Matter, Social Justice Movement, George Floyd, and Brianna Taylor, and COVID happening all at once. I was arrested. Um Proud Boys. Remember the Proud Boys? They came to Kalamazoo and did a whole thing with like a teen takeover, but with Proud Boys. Um and they they escaped, they got all out. They took their license plates off once they beat a bunch of people up around downtown Kalamazoo, around this park. And then the the police department, the Kalamazoo public safety, instead of arresting the Proud Boys, they arrested seven residents, including myself. Of course. The police chief has to apologize. A week later, she resigns. FOIA, we find out that she was fired actually. Late leaves her job that she just got at the Grand Rapids Police Department after that. Um what was accomplished? You know, and I think a lot of people we had the army in Kalamazoo, and I remember people saying what exact describing exactly if the parameters of our protest are set by exactly what it is we're protesting, what freedom do we really have?

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Well, I would I would present a different point of view because I don't think all protest is wasteful.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

No, I not yeah, not my suggestion.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

In the in the play, we have a moment where Roberto um is confronted with the fact that when they when the team goes down south, yeah, in certain parts of the south, blacks aren't welcomed in the restaurants when they're going to get. So here you here you have full-grown adult males who have just played a game, want to go get some a hot meal, and the black and Latin players can't get off the bus. They have to wait till the white players finish their meal, pay for it, and then bring them back cold sandwiches, which was a tradition throughout Major League Baseball. This is not just one thing that happened to the Pittsburgh Pirates. This happened throughout Major League Baseball. And he inspires them to go on a hunger strike. That means that, yes, if they have a double header the next day, they haven't eaten, which means it's going to impair their ability to perform well, which is going to get the attention of the front office because they want to win games and want to move forward. Well, these are the things that but the act of protesting, of the not of refusing to accept substandard and and indignified um way of being fed, like wait like animals waiting to be fed.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

And how did Roberto Clemente convince his white teammates to join him on that?

SPEAKER_03 20:34

He didn't convince the white ones, he convinced the black and Latin ones. Okay, see. Well, you know good good idea. Part of how he did that is he threatened to fight. Yeah. He said you had to fight me first. Again, these things are based in history. This actually happened.

SPEAKER_06 20:48

I think it's important that we look at um resistance as more than protest, though. I agree. Because resistance is protest, but it's so many other things. When we think of Panthers, we think of long guns, we don't think of schools, we don't think of feeding programs, we don't think of the way we help reshape the way people see themselves. I'm not sure exactly what Malcolm X accomplished, other than changing the way people saw themselves. Same thing with Marcus Garvey. I mean, people didn't sell on and built their own communities, but when you have people come together and say, wait a minute, we're better than this. We're so much uh you the fruit may not be freedom given by the people who oppress you, but the freedom inside of your community to dream bigger, to want more, to organize more, and actually to come together in solidarity is so understated. And, you know, because that you can't just everything we do can't be about changing white people.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Absolutely. All of it has to be. We don't have to change them, we have to change themselves.

SPEAKER_06 21:47

Yes, we have to change ourselves and they have to change themselves. We decide we can accept, we decide who we're going to be to each other, and we decide we're gonna be the right things to each other. Um, our ancestors have achieved. So many great things all across the diaspora when we've come together. And I'm hoping that even in this small way, like I'm going to go on a hunger strike. This is us doing something together. And it's us deciding we're not going to accept these cold sandwiches. We're not going to sit on this bus and allow ourselves to be demeaned, even if that means we go hungry. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

And the other part is there was um a receptive voice in the other side who grew up in a more liberal state. And and he uh he understood. A lot of the other teams did not have that. So you need allies. That's right. You know, without allies, you can't get in. Now, what Malcolm X I think achieved, at least for me, because he's one of my you know uh uh what's it called uh best leaders um of freeing your mind. So I think we have to free our minds before we could try it at something because it's easy to get discouraged if you you know if you go into a protest or you you know it's a long, it's a long journey to accomplish anything. And but if you have a free mind, then it's not a long journey.

SPEAKER_06 23:18

I think that's James Ball, when I am not your negro, right? Yes that is just like you know, so powerful to have somebody say that. Yes um when Paul Lawrence Dunbar and the Harlem uh Renaissance was taking place and they were writing poetry and really demanding their place in the world and saying, I am somebody, you know. I mean Jesse Jackson said that before he said it, people said it differently. There's a beauty in that, and there's a certain type of beauty in having somebody who's Afro-Latino be the person to make bring that message because it's saying, We are, and how do you come together? Are there other um athletes who are like him?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Oh, oh yeah. Um you're talking Latino, um Orlando Cepeda, who was also Puerto Rican. Um I think the the Latino at that time, not as much today because they're making so much money, but at that time, the Latinos held together. And um for the Martin Luther King, um, when they stopped baseball for three days, when they protested um against the owners who wanted to keep playing, um, he called Lando Cepeda for the San Luis Cardinals. And then he got together with Bob Gibson and Kirk Flood and Lou Brock, who were playing for St. Louis, and they were able to organize each team, and then they they began to extend that.

SPEAKER_04 24:42

Such a fascinating history. My generation's version of that history is is LeBron and Barack Obama during the bubble, during the NBA bubble, right? The uh sort of opposite of that, which is Obama calling LeBron to say, no, no, no, no, no, there's too much money at stake. You guys need to keep playing the games instead of protesting. There are a number of NBA players that didn't want to play that season. Right, right. Um, I want to know. I mean, I I grew up watching baseball. I played baseball my longest sport that I played. Uh, Michael, you got your 06 uh American League Champions sweater on. I have not seen more than just the highlight clips. Like, tell me about Roberto Clemente as a player. Like, I grew up as Miguel Cataro was the greatest right-handed hitter I've ever seen, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:29

Talk about Roberto Clemente as a player. He was known as the great one, right? And the the Baseball Hall of Fame changed their rules to allow him in after his death. Right. Talk about how good of a player he was.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

He batted, uh he won four batting championships. In in the decade of the 1960s, he had more his than anyone else. Um he won 12 golden gloves. Um, he got an MVP, he was uh won two World Series one, he was the MVP of the World Series.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

He was as as good on defense as he was on offense.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yeah, and that's yeah, yeah. Then on defense, he had the most assist ever. So I don't think anybody up to today has reached his assist level or throwing runners out. He his triples is still the record for baseball. No one has said more triples. So he was clutch. And so you have his humanity that he took care of his players, and the fact that he used to go to hospitals and talk to kids who were, you know, very ill. Um and he did that on the download, you know, nobody knew he was doing that. Um he gave money to people. And uh well, as a baseball player, he was great. Not only great, he was he had style. Yeah. You know, which of course the writers thought he was uh they took him a hot dog. But he just had style. And he was um um hungry and he ran fast and he always hustled, but he also had a bad back. He got three three vertebras out of place in his um when he was coming to for his rookie year. So he had to play with pain his whole career. So imagine if he didn't have that injury. And sometimes he couldn't play, so the manager didn't understand that. The writers were one one writer wrote an article about him where he well Roberto Clemente showed all his injuries in Sports Illustrated, which was the biggest sports magazine at the time. And he was so hurt, so he he used to confront the writers all the time. So that was uh another part of his character.

SPEAKER_04 27:47

Yeah, he me he was cool. That was what people that I've understood uh would say about him in baseball. They could use a few more cool players today. There's a f there's a number of them out there today, but uh it is interesting. I I I really just uh the the fact that professional athletes talking about what's happening outside of their orbits, right? With Norman that is happening such less and less these days. Baseball seems to have just been completely hijacked by the corporate conservative forces, does it not? I mean, I'm saying this is a casual, I'm not watching.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

I guess it's part of the the byproduct of the what's at stake financially, and that in many cases people think, well, if I speak out, I might not get this amount of money, I might not get this kind of appeal, there might my fans might abandon me, there's all these things. And I think that that's that we think too much about the consequences and not of personal impact as opposed to what it would mean if we were fighting for causes that mattered, that could make a difference in the world. And that was the way that Clemente, because he was connected to King and Clemente was Puerto Rican.

SPEAKER_06 29:04

Yeah, and most baseball players today are Dominican.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:08

And the um the Dominican community is much less connected to the civil rights community than the Puerto Rican. I mean, Puerto Ricans and black Americans don't always get along or don't always understand each other, but there's just a lot more connection there, I think, than with Dominicans. That's one thing.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

We also we're also citizens, so Dominicans gotta go through the immigration process and yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:34

It's just a different, it's it's there's a difference. And um, and I think when I look at professional sports right now, you have these kids and they're like young, and their coaches are these white men. And then they go to college and their coaches are these white men, and they shape their values and they help shape their politics, and sometimes even at the expense of these athletes who are taught that, you know, coaching is so powerful. Coaching can, you know, they're not just trying to get you to play the game. They're trying to, you know, socialize you. And we have to look at the socialization of athletes inside of a lot of the systems that exist right now. Um LeBron James was living with his high school basketball coach when he was in high school.

SPEAKER_04 30:19

Yes, he was. Right? I mean, before, I mean, LeBron was, you know, to my understanding, domicidally challenged growing up as a kid with his mother. He was. And and so he had this coach who, you know, and think about where it was too, in Northeast Ohio, where you know it's a conservative place.

SPEAKER_06 30:38

Yeah. And so, you know, I think that Greater Cleveland suburbs. You know, I think you have to really just think about how the people who have the power to shape the thinking of these young people and how they want them to think a certain kind of way. I was listening to somebody talking about a college coach, and he's like, he got me into Republican politics.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Right.

SPEAKER_06 30:57

You know, explained that to me. And, you know, I mean, people have the right to be Republican, but for somebody who is so dependent on a coach, so dependent on these systems that pay them and give them an opportunity, um, you can have this thinking that I'm one of you now, or I want to be more like you and these other people.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

Again, that's one of the things that that Condito has written into the play. I mean, Clemente, we see his mentors. We hear his mentors tell him how he needs to behave and how he needs to protect himself in the world outside of Puerto Rico in the professional world. Those are thoughts that he retains as he grows and matures. In fact, we hear him echo some of that advice later on in the play. Yeah. Because that's important.

SPEAKER_06 31:57

I really look forward to seeing this play. Oh, thank you. I have to say, I cannot wait to go. Um, it's going to be, it's at not going to be. You had your opening last week.

SPEAKER_03 32:07

Actually, we had an actor who had who had um an aneurysm about a couple of weeks before. And so we had he had to pull out, so we had to cancel the first week. So this weekend, the 12th, 13th, 14th is the opening weekend for the show.

SPEAKER_06 32:22

Oh, okay. Well, I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope he's okay.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

He he is resting. He's resting, but we had to replace him.

SPEAKER_06 32:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

I like to say, have you heard of Carlos Delgado?

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Carlos Delgado is a black Puerto Rican who would not come out for the uh national anthem because the United States was bombing Viaques in Puerto Rico. Yeah, right? And he has Hall of Fame numbers. He gets like 5%. And he has better numbers than half the guys in the Hall of Fame. Yeah. And almost 500 home runs. I think he's like fourth in RBIs in the history of RBI, you know, of the game. And 473 home runs alone. I mean, and Clutch, you know, great player, but just because he protested um the bombing of Puerto Rico with it killed people, it poisoned the war, the cancer in Biequez. Everyone got cancer. Where was this? Um this he played Vieques was recently liberated about 15 years ago, I believe. You know, um so but he was part, you know, Rosy Perez went in protest. A lot a lot of Puerto Ricans used to go to protest.

SPEAKER_04 33:42

Believe it was 04 that's right.

SPEAKER_06 33:43

I I feel so ignorant about those issues. Um, it doesn't get spoken about a lot in our press, I don't think.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

No, not often. Not often. And that's actually one of the powers of theater is that we bring these stories up. Yeah and you and you can hear them echo in our current events as well. So we want to the the idea behind this play and the other plays we want to develop in this in Black Theater Light Roots is to continue to raise this up so we can build some solidarity between these communities and we can affect change.

SPEAKER_06 34:14

Well, I've only been to Puerto Rico once. I was there for a conference. And um, so I was there at the conference the first couple of days, and last day we were going to explore the island, and then the power went out in the entire island, right? And so then I had an opportunity to learn about the issues of power and lighting and the fact that it is owned by a US whatever corporation and that Puerto Ricans don't have the power to decide. Wait a minute, throw these folks out. So when I saw Bat Bunny's halftime show, I thought, okay, wait a minute, I saw these people on these electric lines and I had that firsthand experience. If not for that, I wouldn't even be able to understand how to interpret some of what's happening. I have a friend who's Puerto Rican who talks about no, we don't want to be the 51st state. We want liberation. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

That's me. Okay. That's me. Um, you know, who are we gonna be? Luciana? I mean, are we gonna be poorer than the most poor state? You know, that's what's gonna happen. And right now, Puerto Rico is for sale, so um the beaches belong to the people, but now they selling this government is selling uh beaches, beach uh fronts to corporations against the law. So um we only have 3,000 Puerto Ricans in the island now. There's 5,000, I mean three million, and we have five million out of the island. So and and very few doctors. Um the roads we have to pay, the taxes are enormous. Um the electricity is one of the highest and if you compare it to the states. And we it goes out almost every every other day. You know, and you have to pay for it when it's out. Sometimes out for a week, you still have to pay for it.

SPEAKER_06 36:03

Sounds like Detroit, but that's why the story is.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

We also it's like Detroit because we don't the government can don't run the country. There's a board, a fiscal board who does. And they get paid like $500,000.

SPEAKER_06 36:16

Well, I mean, our board doesn't necessarily get paid cash in the same way, but you know, I think if you're out for a week, you get something like $35 and you still have to pay your bill. You know, I mean, of course you have to pay for usage, but I'm just saying that um I think a lot of us have that concern, and it's where sometimes cities like Detroit resemble places like Puerto Rico in that we are not given the same level of protections as other cities, the things that are happening here, and it's like what this happened somewhere else, probably not. I mean no, this is great conversations. Um, Gary, it's so good to see you.

SPEAKER_03 36:52

It's great seeing you too, though.

SPEAKER_06 36:53

And to see what you're doing and um still making things happen, as I share with you before, but I have to just share it now on the air. I went to see my first August Wilson play when you produced a piano lesson. You were at Mary Grove, right? And it was mind-blowing to me. Growing up, my parents didn't take me to plays. I don't know why. And so that was my exposure. And I was like, I mean, I went to a couple, but you know, not on a regular basis. I'd never seen August Wilson before, and it was life-changing, really, to see somebody be able to depict um people in a humorous, real, vivid way. And I look forward to seeing what you do. I think it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Um, enjoying the process. The actors are are amazing. We have um the guy playing Puerto Clemente, his name is Elvis Nolasco, and he's in Godfather of Harlem, he's in uh American something. He's done movies.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Um American Horse. Or is it American Crime Story?

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Yeah, he was in that. Yeah, yeah. Um he's uh uh Mr. Crockett, I think, which is a horror film. He plays the lead.

SPEAKER_04 38:04

You know, it's a good name for Showbiz Elvis is to have his own. Yeah, he's a great.

SPEAKER_06 38:10

I love him. Look at him up. This is like one of my favorite people on the Godfather of Harlem. Oh my goodness, he's in there.

SPEAKER_04 38:16

Yeah, he's playing Roberto.

SPEAKER_06 38:18

Okay, let me just say, I love his character. He is one of the most colorful people in Godfather of Hell.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

You're gonna love him in this show. He is phenomenal. He's a nice person. He'll he'll hug you immediately.

SPEAKER_04 38:30

We are so glad that you guys are able to join us. Stick around. Uh, we're gonna take a little break, and when we come back, we're gonna read off some of our uh top headlines of this week. Keep it locked, Authentically Detroit. We'll be right back. Great. Welcome back. This is Authentically Detroit. We want to talk about a story that hasn't been perhaps an A1 front page on the front of the free press of the news. Um, but you can read all about it on uh EMU's public uh radio station. You can read all about it on Metro Times. Stephen Eveling has done a great job reporting on this, um, as well as uh Beth LeBlanc at the Detroit News, she she has also um done a good job. Talk to some lawmakers over the the past week about the Huron Valley Women's Correctional Facility in Ypsilani. Another woman passed away there. Uh the lawmakers are saying that the state's department director at MDOC, that's the Michigan Department of Corrections, which oversees that Huron Valley Women's Prison. It's the only women's prison in the state of Michigan. Uh some folks, and this is a bipartisan group, is a uh 30 lawmakers, signed a letter calling for the resignation of Heidi Washington, who has not indicated she has any plans to step down. Heidi Washington is the longest tenured agency head um under Governor Whitmer's administration. And this story really represents another uh critical, you know, major fault line between Democrats who supported Governor Whitmer through both of her you know election cycles. Certainly didn't hear any of any of this in 22 or 18. Um folks are are really upset with with Governor Whitmer right now. Rashida Talib um on Instagram asked, you know, how how many deaths is it gonna take until we get clear answers. Uh the state says they're they're doing investigations, um, autopsy and toxicology reports. The person that died over the weekend, uh, 36-year-old Ashley Hoth, um, she reported that she was sick, transported to the hospital. The state says that Hoth was conscious at the time that she was taken away in an ambulance. And uh Jenny Rayle, she is MDLC's spokesperson because you know the the last spokesperson was um you know resigned in disgrace or was terminated over sexual harassment claims. Um she she told media during the early hours, and this is a Saturday, an officer noticed that Miss Hoth was feeling unwell. The officer prompted promptly escorted her to the healthcare area of the facility for assessment and care, where it was determined by medical staff to transfer her to the hospital by ambulance. Now, Hoth is the third person to die at the women's prison this past month. 28-year-old woman, Kara Howard, uh, died at the facility last month, days before her scheduled release. Uh, I was looking at her her um profile on the MDOC, and her birthday is, I believe, June 18th. So she you know, she would have celebrated her 29th birthday, her family is gonna celebrate her 29th birthday later this month without her. And then a 57-year-old Rebecca Facler. The details around her death are completely unknown. Michigan State Police say the results of an autopsy and toxicology report could reveal more. Uh and then there are more deaths. I think there are five in total since last year that have received public scrutiny. You know, who is responsible for keeping inmates safe? If you're under state control, I would imagine that the top the very top responsibility is to keep those people that are in your care safe and the state has failed to do it.

SPEAKER_06 43:09

I would imagine that. But you have to imagine that prisons are plantations. And when you are incarcerated, you lose your citizenship rights to a large degree. And the warden of that prison is like the plantation owner, they have complete power over your body. They and prisoners get very little say and very little protection historically. And this is well known. I I have a couple of this hits me on a very personal level. So first I'm gonna talk about the bad stuff. And that is, and I know she's a good person, um, but my cousin, Dr. Carmen McIntyre, is the chief medical officer for the Michigan Department of Corrections. She doesn't have control over what's happening in those prisons. But she is a CMO. She's a professor at Wayne State, and Wayne State has a Contract that she is placed in those that system. And so I would imagine that that's a very difficult place to be. I also want to shout out my sister, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stafford, because on April 2nd, she had a ruling, issued a 38-page report, March 12th, rather, in response to lawsuit filed by prisoners at the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility, who alleged damp and human conditions there along with poor ventilation. And there's a grievance process, but she said, in recommending to U.S. District Judge Stephen Murray that the suit should be allowed to proceed, and said the department's management of the grievance process improperly blocks inmates suffering from pervasive prison problems from gaining access to the courts. This court should not sanction MDOC's machinations, Stafford wrote.

SPEAKER_04 44:58

I think it was Paul Egan that reported that for the case.

SPEAKER_06 45:00

Yes. And so I have on the one hand a cousin, and on the other hand, a little sister, who are both somehow connected to this, and it's the intersection of everything. And so here I am on Authentically Detroit talking about it. Um it's time people started looking at what happens to women who are incarcerated. It's well past time. We have to look at why women get incarcerated in the first place. What percentage of women who get incarcerated are subject to violence prior to getting incarcerated? What percentage of women who are incarcerated are incarcerated because they fought back against abusive spouses or they held somebody accountable for abusing their children. Um women get thrown away in ways that men don't in our society. Get housed in a prison, and so the fact that the worst prison in terms of health is a women's prison.

SPEAKER_04 45:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:52

Just say something to you about how much women are devalued in our society.

SPEAKER_04 45:57

And if if you want evidence, just look at reports from Paul Egan and Steve Neveling, who have done a fantastic job of connecting with inmates inside the prison who say, you know, there's dangerous situations by fighting, mold exposure. Uh there's one woman, a black woman, Crystal Clark, whose family and her advocates have been calling for her release. They say that, you know, despite uh requests for assistance from you know by medical staff, that she's received a lack of medical care and that her concerns have have gone largely ignored. Uh there's a Lavonia state rep, her name is Lo uh Lori Putsky. At a February committee hearing, Potsky shared slides and images detailing the health impacts on Crystal Clark uh inside this jail. And you know, it's it's disgusting. I mean, it it it really the idea that people are being housed, paid for by our, you know, tax dollars in subpar sort of you know what advocates say w our inhumane conditions. You know, certainly um I don't think anybody's expectation of a prison is uh you know nice like our studio here. However, um I don't think anybody is calling for people in prison to be tortured. Well and I think that's what it amounts to. It doesn't matter, it's like torture.

SPEAKER_06 47:29

Look at Tina Talbot. She was sentenced to 20 months in prison, 20 months and 15 years in prison in 2018, pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter for the 2018 shooting death of her husband in her Waterford home. She shot her husband in self-defense after a days-long severe beating that resulted in collapsed lungs, ruptured organs, and broken bones. And after he ruptured her organs, broke her bones, and collapsed her lungs, she shot and killed him. And she was told she should have just tried to get away. And anybody who's ever been abused knows that you can't ever get away from an abuser. Because even if you get away now, they'll come back and do it again. Now, you look at the castle defense, a man can kill a black man for standing on his porch because he's a little scared. But a woman cannot protect herself from a man who is causing her extensive bodily harm. This woman then goes into this correctional facility where she's subject to rape, abuse, and exposure to all kinds of toxins where nobody's gonna protect her. And that just speaks to the lack of protection for women in our society, and it makes my heart hurt as a survivor of abuse, as a woman who has known people who have been in prison for defending themselves and their children. This is wrong, and somebody's gotta step up and defend these women. We've got to stop letting wardens be treated like kings and queens, where they are now actually denying access to records, saying, Well, we're being sued. Therefore, we don't have to give you any, we don't have to respond to her for your complaint. And that's being contested as well. So we have Debbie Dingle speaking out, we have Rashida Jalie speaking out, but we really need to have a big conversation about do women's lives really matter in our society.

SPEAKER_04 49:21

The governor uh has directed MDOC to conduct a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation, Bobby Letty told me this morning. Uh, this process, the governor's Bobby Letty is the governor's spokesperson. Uh this process will include a careful assessment by an independent medical examiner. When this process is complete, we will release the results of the investigation. Families deserve to have the answers they need during the grieving process.

SPEAKER_06 49:46

This again, you know, and in the meantime, the same woman who allowed these conditions to happen doesn't get even put on paid suspension. She's allowed to decide. Well, I'm not going to resign. Why do you get to the right to decide? Like, you shouldn't even have the right to resign. You should be fired for a cause.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

Well, MDOC rejects um the claims from advocates and inmates. They say that Washington has implemented um skilled trades and vocational village that helps people.

SPEAKER_06 50:20

Who appoints the staff of MDOC?

SPEAKER_04 50:23

That would be the governor.

SPEAKER_06 50:24

Okay. So my point stands, and we're gonna say some other things. And by all means, you know, I love Sister Girl and everything like that. You have a black, I mean a white woman in charge of this prison system. That's not Detroit. We're not talking about Detroit yet. But we have this white woman in charge of Detroit. You've got a white woman who's in charge of the Attorney General's office, the Secretary of State, and the governor's mansion. And yet women have no recourse inside of a prison that is run by another woman. And it speaks to representation another white woman. Another white woman. And some of these women who are dying are white women.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

You know who said this?

SPEAKER_03 51:02

The first one to die was a white woman, Rebecca.

SPEAKER_04 51:04

Yes. Yes. Uh there's a white man that was um stabbed um last November or or October or December, I believe. That was another story that received public scrutiny. Um, you know who said that line in succession like that? You know, these Democrats are for diversity and equity and inclusion, but look at the leadership. Governor's office, white woman, Secretary of State. You know who said that? Of course. John James.

SPEAKER_06 51:30

I mean John James. John James' answer is let's bring Donald Trump in to ruin everything. No, John James. The challenge is that John James will not critique Donald Trump. And as long as you can't critique Donald Trump, no critique of anybody else matters to me because Donald Trump would take all of this and make it worse. You know, quite honestly, his judges would make it worse. This man has no credibility to me at all. You're black when it comes time to criticize Democrats, but you're not black when it comes time to criticize a president who is trying to disenfranchise black people in the city of Detroit, in other black cities in this nation.

SPEAKER_04 52:09

John James is a candidate for governor. Um we saw last week, interestingly, Jocelyn Benson believes she will be, she said it out loud, the Democratic nominee for governor to take on either John James, Perry Johnson, Eric Nesbitt, Ralph Rebant. There's I think a few others. However, it would be um to John James's advantage to continue talking about this issue of data centers, which Jocelyn Benson's husband profited from, which we see now last week when Gretchen Whitmer welcomed the CEO of Oracle and uh the founder and CEO of Sam Altman. Are Democrats missing the moment here? It seems like there's a broad bipartisan coalition against data centers that is a political football. It seems as if the Republican Party in Michigan's governor's race could perhaps have the advantage if John James comes out more forcefully. Sure.

SPEAKER_06 53:14

Here you have a person who is beholden to a person who's roll back every environmental protection we put in place in the past 50 years, and he's against data centers. And you look at who is over a lot of these data programs, and these are all donors to Trump. So if you believe that this person who cannot even say things like Biden won the election in 2020, is going to somehow stand against data centers, but what you see is Republicans' cherry-picking issues that create division. These are the same people who criticize Biden for signing the crime bill, even as Trump was trying to have black children assassinated in New York City, um, you know, the Central Park five. I mean, this is the hypocrisy and the game playing is ridiculous. We're talking about military which refuses to honor even people like Colin Powell under President Trump, and John James has nothing to say to any of that. I'm not interested in his argument. Are Democrats missing the moment? Yes. But they're not losing it to Republicans. What they're losing is a generation of young people who are looking for people who are going to fight back. And I don't believe all Democrats are the same. I believe there's people running for office like Abdul El Sayed, like um Donovan McKinney, and others who are really fighting those issues, and you put them all in one boat, and it allows you to say something different. But the difference between Democrats and Republicans is Democrats will criticize leaders when they think they're wrong.

SPEAKER_04 54:46

I saw it uh this past week with a lot of Governor Whitmer supporters, you know, saying, Look, Republicans, we can support our leader without blindly following them. Uh the governor told the Oracle CEO I saw on social media today in a sort of leaked audio clip, um, you know, we're we're used to everyone telling us no and and doing it anyway, is what she said jokingly to the Oracle CEO in reference to the pushback by the Celine Township uh board and all the residents of Celine and seemingly the entire state. I mean, this is like a uh a broad coalition that I can say my observations. You know, there's not a lot of pro data center people out there. Um people say that we need them because we keep using our cloud um, you know, subscriptions to iCloud. You gotta get a terabyte now to keep all your stuff.

SPEAKER_06 55:38

There's not a whole lot of people in favor of burning coal ether. And yet we're still doing it under this president. I think he's investing you know tens of millions of dollars into coal plants. The reality is that the problem with democracy right now is that the electorate wants one thing and the people who are for office are doing different kinds of things, okay? But the other thing is you have to look at the court system. You have to look at the Supreme Court. When Saline Township said they were said no, Oracle said we'll sue. What is the likelihood that any suit will prevail when you have a Supreme Court that has given the president a blank check and the president does not believe in environmental protection? We have to really look deeper into these issues and not get caught up in the surface stuff. It's terrible that you have Democrats who are siding with Republicans in not protecting our state. And I could have long conversations about that because part of what we do at ECN, at Eastide Community Network, is we engage in protest or we try to defend environmental protections. You know, there is a um ballot initiative that should make it onto the November ballot, um, Money Out of Politics, Mop Up Michigan, that is sponsored um by many organizations, but um really centered with um voters not politicians. And full disclosure, I sit on the board of voters, not politicians.

SPEAKER_04 56:56

Mop up Michigan is saying, let's take money out of what these um monopolies, what is it, the utilities, corporate utilities, healthcare companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield.

SPEAKER_06 57:10

But when the state gives a utility a monopoly, that means that you cannot go, you can't decide, I don't know why DTE, I'll take this other thing. You have to um publicly regulated monopolies, I think that's the term for it. If you have a publicly regulated monopoly, they should not be able to contribute to political campaigns because you have the Michigan Public Service Commission, which most politicians, I think 70% of people in Lancy have been funded by DTE or Consumers Energy. Democrat and Republican. So you can point fingers at Democrats and say, look, Democrats are doing it too. What you can't do is find Republicans who are not also doing it. And so it ends up being this debate that's false.

SPEAKER_04 57:50

There are there are Republicans that are in favor of um Michigan's for money out of politics and Sean McBreatree, their uh leader, will like to point that out.

SPEAKER_06 58:00

But if you if you look at if you look at the people in Lansing and how they're voting when they get there, not the people who are running for office, but the people in Lansing and how they voted. Who is our um the the the Speaker of the House Hall?

unknown 58:16

Matt Hall.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Matt Hall.

SPEAKER_06 58:16

Matt Hall, where does he stand? Not in favor of any damn good things, right? And this is how the Republicans speak. Matt Hall is trying to take away property taxes in the state of Michigan and demanding to do that and the kinds of things that will give anybody any real access to power and money. So I look at voting records, I look at what people do when they're in office, I look at when people stand against things, I look at the judges they appoint, and what I'm saying is bipartisanship is lip surface. One of the unless it's carried out. Because when you have this election, in in in right now, there's all this talk about election interference. What most of us are really scared about is election interference in November. And whether or not we can get a state board to actually um approve the elections this time. I don't know if you remember how hard it was in 2020 to get the Wayne County, first of all, to certify the elections and then get the state to certify the elections. So I have very little tolerance for people saying I'm on the other side. Show me by standing up to these people who are doing this to us.

SPEAKER_04 59:27

In fairness to Governor Whitmer, I just had a 90-minute conversation with one of our spokespeople yesterday. You know, what the governor says that Michigan could be a model for responsible data centers. Um, you know, they point to the environmental regulations, the union jobs, they point to um um you know uh the construction jobs that are going to provide living wages for that area, the the increases to the tax base for the uh township, the Oracle and OpenAI are are um increasing. They're they're I think sort of just giving more money than um what is expected to fire um and and police insulating.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:14

Governor Whitmer, there was a Michigan Public Service Commission and there was a outspoken person on the Michigan Public Service Commission who lost their commission seat and was replaced by somebody from Joe Tate's office who was in bed with DTE. And the person lost their seat, went to work for the state environment, Great Lakes, and Energy Department. Okay? Eagle has approved all but about four air quality permits requested. Hundreds are approved for deny. So Eagle does not have a track record of protecting environmental health. I'm not trying to be unfair or fair. I'm just the facts are not fair or unfair, they're just facts. The reality is this governor does not have a great record of environmental justice, and neither do the Republicans. And if we're gonna see environmental justice, our politics have to change in the state of Michigan. But they don't change by going from a Democrat to John James or any of those people, because again, you know, our organization was expecting to get some federal funding for environmental justice. All the funding was rolled back. You can't even say environmental justice and get funded by the federal government right now. You have to frame it differently so it's not threatening. How many people had community change grants from the EPA and all of that money was recalled that was supposed to support environmental protections in our state? And then the Clean Air Act is being, you know, um dissolved, the enforcement of all these things is being eliminated. We're in trouble. And the trouble doesn't get fixed by voting for somebody who refuses to say no to this president who's caused these things through his vocal support of things.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:58

You can read more about John James on Michigan Chronicle. Uh a couple weeks back, I wrote a piece comparing um him and Garland and how both of them could make Michigan political history this year. Michigan, of course, has never had a black governor in the history in the United States. There have only ever been three black governors. Uh Winsome Sears lost to Abigail Spangler, the Virginia contest last year. Um I think she would have been the fourth. Uh Wes Moore is the one current black governor. Uh Garland's family history, a little bit similar. I mean, he he grew up in a suburb similar to John James. The interesting thing from the perspective of somebody writing for the Michigan Chronicle is John James's father's history, right? John James's father's still sitting on the board of the Charles H. Wright Museum. Probably you could do more journalism on that uh on the Charles H. Wright Museum right now. We won't do that because my husband works there. Right. And um But uh no, it is worth mentioning. I mean, I when I see Karen Witsett and and Scott sitting with the um the CEO or the the leader or the director of it during that whole you know instance where she voted against the funding for it. However, John James is a guy that has you know decried wokeness while also saying America is a nation built by swollen hands on stolen lands. Yes. John James is a guy who will talk about we how we need to end DEI while also celebrating the life of Reverend Jesse Jackson, while his supporters on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere are all what? What what you know uh he sits at an intersection and and a lot of people tell me that are close to him, they say Trump has affected his personality and and style of politics if not for Donald Trump, John James would be such a more moderate force.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:48

People that's sure that's what he says. You know, I remember when um some of us are old enough to remember when Clarence Thomas was seeking the Supreme Court, see, and when he talked about high-tech lynching and he talked all about that kind of stuff, and you didn't have a more conservative anti-black voice on the Supreme Court than Clarence Thomas. When you have black people who are willing to sell their own people out for political gain, they cannot be trusted with power. I don't care. I do care. I love to see black people achieve things, but right now I think we have to be more focused on what you're trying to achieve than the fact that you achieved. Right? And I don't want to I want to see somebody who's running on the kinds of things that will do well for the black community, not somebody who's running on black skin and white policies and MAGA policies, not even white policies. We're dealing with mass deportation right now. We're dealing with human rights abuses that have been inconceivable to me, where you're taking people, kidnapping them, and sending them to a country they're not from. Right now, they're trying to take away the citizenship for about 17 people. They're trying birthright citizenship is up in the Supreme Court. We have a president who said he does not want Detroiters' votes to count. And you want me to believe that I would support anybody who would support him because he's a black man? That's what Republicans are very good at, is they put a black man in charge and they say, hey, listen, black man, say these things to give cover to my hatred. And I refuse to see it that way.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:24

It's gonna be interesting this fall if John James is the Republican that gets across. Uh the primary um Jocelyn Benson, of course, has a number, you know, we just talked about the data centers. Um she uh faces a racial discrimination lawsuit. I'm really interested to see if if John James could use the issue of race as a wedge, um, if he is going to explicitly seek black voters, specifically in Detroit, now that Duggan is out. Again, John is not liked by the MAGA Republican. No, but I guess I'm getting into inside baseball. So John isn't endorsed by Trump.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:07

He's not endorsed by Trump because Trump does not want him to leave the legislature. Trump does not want him to leave. He's been endorsed by Trump in the past.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

But when you when you go to Lansing and you ask sort of the politicals of Lansing who are in the Republican operative field, he's not a lot of people. There are people that think of him as a rhino or think of him as not conservative enough. That's what I guess what I'm getting at.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:29

I guess what I'm getting at is does he believe that Biden won the election in 2020? And does he believe that Detroit should have been subject to what we were subject to where people are in Scobo Hall trying to disqualify our votes, where there were lawsuits after lawsuits after lawsuits and lies told about our voting records?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:45

So I could answer that. When I was a reporter, we I mean we I had to ask his offices. So Trump, I mean, I think the initial the reasons why Trump isn't supporting John James is because he did not forcefully enough in 2020 push back. Hold on. He did he he didn't. He he he said for three days that investigation should happen, and then he accepted the results of his own election loss as well as President Biden's election.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:10

So if you asked him if he believes the 2020, because I saw him.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:12

He won't say it, but he won't say that Trump won.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:15

But okay, my vote is a very good thing. We're getting into the insides of Republican politics. I guess what I'm saying is this.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:21

It matters for Republican voters.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:22

Well it matters for Democrat voters. It matters to me that he can't say I did. That that that my vote mattered. He can't say that that Democrats won. Well he did.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:31

He said that Biden won. I don't think it's gonna be something that he answers if you ask him in 2026 because for Republicans. I mean, I I cover Republicans. I I have to talk to Republicans every week. And so it is an issue that uh still, I mean, is I did you vote for or do you believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election or not?

SPEAKER_06 1:07:53

Which is a little bit insane, is it not? It's it's what is insane to me is a black man is running talking about swollen hands and cannot understand the fact that a president tried to do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:02

He said that in 2020 context.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:03

That that people were trying to qu disqualify black votes. Or he can't say very strongly, because to me, look at what Trump has done. Look what he's done. He is suing University of Michigan, Harvard, I I teach at Columbia, suing Columbia for DEI, and definitely trying to un to unlearn black history. He is attacking blackness. And if you are kind of not sure you're not gonna come out forcefully against him, then we are not friends. And I can't trust you. We need a mayor, a governor, who will fight when the president is trying to take stuff away from us, and not somebody who is trying to toe the line, don't want to say too much because maybe I might lose some black voters who will vote for me. So I think anything less than yes, Detroit's votes counted in 2020. I'm a Detroiter and I voted. And if this man doesn't think my vote should count, or he's not willing to say that forcefully, we can't be friends.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:06

Right. Yeah, that's not something that I would expect him or his campaign to acknowledge. But if he were to be the uh Republican nominee, um he would be the second black person to receive the party's nomination. You guys remember Bill Lucas?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:20

And I could only imagine um Bill Lucas, I think it was one of the biggest landslides in the history of the state, Jim Blanchard beat him. Um do you guys have any, I mean, any any recollection of uh Bill Lucas switching because he was the county executive. He was what were the pressures that brought him? Did he just want to be governor and he was mad at the Democratic Party wouldn't let him be the nominee?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:44

Well, you also have to think about what what the Republican Party was at that time. They really didn't have somebody substantial to th to run against them. There were in Southeast Michigan specifically. In Southeast Michigan specifically, which is where the power was. Yeah. Um and they were looking to try to look differently than the national party here. You know, they were it was in the tradition of trying to put a moderate Republican in place, like we had Bill Milliken prior to that. We had the tradition of George Romney, who had been more liberal-minded than his son is, even you know, way more than his son. Yes, exactly. So we had that kind of Republican Party here. Um and they were looking for a way of making making a very bold statement. But much like with um the National Party when they st when Marco Rubio ran, he kind he kind of found out exactly who the Republican um constituents were and who who who was gonna back back their uh can their nominees.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:45

I think I think I think John James very well will win in Michigan. I think it's probable.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:50

He'll win the Republican nomination.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:53

He's got Perry Johnson commercials as his opponent.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:55

I don't I don't I think he's he's he's polling her for her head. I don't think he's gonna win because I think at a time such as this, um people are really concerned about what they would get with a Republican who has at times courted and identified with Trump. I don't care. Look, I don't know him. I don't care about his background, I don't care about any what do you stand for?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:18

I'm trying to get to know him actually. So if you're listening to John James campaign, please do an interview with him. I would love to hear what you have to say.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:24

And and by all means, I will not listen to that. I don't want to know what he thinks. Like I don't want to know how these people think. I, you know, I come from a long tradition of people who fight for people. And and the fight is really clear here. Sometimes it's not. You know, even when Snyder was running the first time as governor, he's one tough nerd. You didn't have Trump as president. What we have as president right now is downright scary to me.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:50

No, the the lines are drawn very starkly, and you need to know where you stand at this moment in this at this time, and who who you can be allied with. But you're absolutely right. It's it's not something that you can fudge. You have to feel very confident the people standing with you, behind you, in front of you are people that you can depend upon.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:10

Right. Because there are people who want to really destroy our community. Always have. You have this $1.8 billion fund that the president was trying to force down our necks and still might try to do it to pay people who tried to steal an election after he discounted things. Those people, January 6th was such a scary day to me. I'm so fortunate to be Mary Cap because he kept me calm. He was like, No, don't worry about that, baby. I'm like, I'm worried. And he kept me calm. Very happy to um to have a person in my life who would keep me that calm because it was a very scary day. I was like, we're in trouble. And everybody was scared. It was completely against everything I believe in. And you know what they were citing? They were referring to 1876 and the election where there was a compromise, and the compromise robbed black Americans of all of the gains during Reconstruction. They were trying to get a post-Reconstruction enacted at that time.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:19

It's very imaginative. Uh, you know, so much creativity and just we can do anything comes from that side, and on the other side, you hear, well, we can't do that.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:28

Well, it's not because it's what because whiteness is always, I don't know if it's imaginative, whiteness has always had the kind of power that they can get away with stuff. Black men, if black people did in January 6th, white people, those white people did, black people would not be alive to go to court.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:41

Right. They would have been dead.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:43

They would have been dead, their family members would have been dead, and everybody who knew them would have been arrested and stayed in prison. Nobody would freed them. So I think that the reality is that you have this. You have a Supreme Court which is now allowing taking of black districts. All the black power. Remember um, what's what's that guy's name? Um, I like him from um the New York Times, Charles Blow. Yes. Remember, he read that book, The Devil You Know, let's go back and take retake the South. Yes. And I I want to interview Charles Blow and say, what do you think now, Charles?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:14

He's not the only one who's had that idea. August Wilson wanted us to go and take four states um out of the South and make that a black land. Yeah. A black institution.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:22

Oh no, the Republicans are reimagining that now with the end of the Voting Rights Act, and they're gonna change it all up to be a Republican South.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:30

Well, that was the Republic of New Africa. That was a movement that started in Detroit, the Republic of New Africa, right? Um, um, the guy who was the mayor of um Chakwe Lumumba was the mayor of Jackson, um, Mississippi, and then he died soon after, and his son took over. Um, they used to call him Drake. Um Chakwe Lumumba, that was the Republic of New Africa. That was the Henry brothers and others that came from Detroit. What Charles Blow believed is that black people are gaining political power and it's time for us to go home so we can have real political power. And he wrote this book and published it like two or three years ago, believing after 2020 that we had demonstrated the strength. And, you know, time has time time is ugly. And now you have to look back and say, wait a minute, every game we made, they ensured they took them away.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:18

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:19

And not to attack Charles, I like Charles, right? He writes really well, but there was this hopefulness in the South that we're making progress.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:29

And I've never bought into that. Me neither. I have been. I I thank God every day for the fact that my family left Florence, Alabama. I'm quite satisfied not being born in Alabama.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:44

Yeah, me too. So, you know, I think it's gonna be interesting. And I'm not a journalist. You're a journalist, and you have to listen to all of that stuff. That's why I can never be a journalist. I love, I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:53

I'd be making state guy, I'd be given like I don't have I don't have a political home. I don't even have informed opinions. I had well, I do, but I don't like to share them because I've learned in my life on the only not even 30 years that I've lived, is that uh facts far outweigh the power of an opinion.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:10

Well, but but facts are shaped by somebody. And how we see our facts, like you know, you can take the exact same fact.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:18

I don't have alternative facts. I could just I obtain them.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:21

But there are people who sell alternative facts.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:23

There's people who will it's very it's a profitable industry right now, is the the fact business. And there are some there are some facts that are hidden. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:32

And and they are hidden for a reason.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:33

That's right. If I uh would interview uh John James, I would ask him if he if you know what's so swollen and stolen about American lands. Um it sounds kind of woke to me, John, decrying about woke.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:45

It's I mean, it's the kind of thing, it's it's um, it's what's the term? Pandering. It's literally pandering to black male voters by throwing them this without throwing them a policy that'll fix it. And that pandering makes me so angry. You saw a lot of it during um Trump's last election. Um, look, these rappers like me, everything like that. And we make it about this identity thing that doesn't really matter to me. I am really in love with young people who are really fighting for justice and have really clear ideas about what justice looks like. I put my faith in young voters and the working families party, in young people who are, you know, clear about what they want to see in the world. I think a lot of us got asleep at the wheel and we got comfortable. We made enough money, we didn't have to deal with racism face to face, and we're waking up, we didn't always raise our children to understand the fight in front of them, and we're waking up to this horror show. And I think you said earlier that we have no choice but to come together more so now.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:45

I think a John James, I think Mike Duggan would have had a better chance five years ago than he does today. And I think John James would have had a better chance five years ago than he is today.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:56

Yeah, I think pre-Trump, all of them would have had a better, better chance. We're gonna take a break. When we come back, we're gonna do our weekly shout-outs. Keep it locked. You're listening to Authentically Detroit. Welcome back. You are listening to Authentically Detroit. If you guys have any topics that you want discussed on our show, please do hit us up on our socials at Authentically Detroit on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Or you can visit our website, authentically-detroit.com. All right, it is time for our weekly shout outs. I want to shout out all the people who message me every day sort of crazily. Um, I'm talking about the staffers of the candidates that are running the local legislative races, the uh governor's race, um, the US Senate race. I know that you guys think that you're annoying me and bothering me, text me at 6 30 in the morning and 11 30 at night, but I actually get a real big kick out of it. Um, and I I love hearing where you guys are going in Detroit or around the state, uh, those of you who are not from here. Um get into the neighborhoods, guys. Go outside of the three and a half square mile downtown radius and really see what it's like. Um if you need help doing that, let me know. Uh, but I just I want to thank all you guys. I I keep having these long conversations with spokespeople in Flax. And uh it's a thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it. So I just want to give a big thank you to all of my staffers. I'm talking about you all, uh Garland, Anthony Forlini, John James, got a new spokesperson, Jocelyn Benson, and and Haley and Mallory and Abdul and um all of the local legislative races. Uh, you guys have been great so far. The minute that you start becoming bad, you will see it on my Twitter account. So watch out for that.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:16

All right. I'm gonna say, shout out um Desiree Cooper. Yeah, she's a former journalist from the city of Detroit, wrote for the Detroit Free Press. She um wrote a book, Know Thy Mother, and she recently published a book called Black Summers Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors that really focuses on my childhood in Detroit. Um, so I'm really excited. Um, some of the people I love are contributing writers. There's a whole lot, and it's sitting on my porch right now. Oh wow. And so I cannot wait to get home and read Black Summers. I ordered it last week, and um, she's a brilliant writer, and it's so important for us to capture the beauty of our community um in a city that sometimes gets flattened by negative negativity. Um, she talks about the Bablo boat. Um, she actually worked with some journalists to do a um documentary on Bablo, and I was um one of the featured in the documentary for about 25 seconds. So if you watch it really closely and slow down, there's me. Um, but it's it's a great story. I can't wait to hear from her.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:18

Yes, Desiree is also she's a Peel of Surprise nominated uh journalist. She spent 30 years covering this area. Um and so I would love, love to get to meet her and talk to her more about her uh book. It is something that I saw sitting at Source, like they were promoting it as the new book of the week. So go pick it up. It's in local bookstores near you.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:41

And we have to get we have to get Desiree on Authenticated Detroit. Oh, yeah. She's actually been here. Um, she worked with us on a project um to um honor a woman named Sarah Ray, who was um the founder of Action House. And Sarah Ray, I can't remember if that was her new name or second name, but she was the person who desegregated the Bablo boats in 1945, 10 years before Rosa Parks refused to get up off the bus seat. Um Sarah Ray was on a Bablo boat, um, going to Bablo and refusing to get up. And um it went before the Supreme Court and she won. And then she ended up moving to the East Side and opening up a community center called Action House, where she supported mothers and babies and was part of our East Side community. And so I knew um Des Ray when our children were babies and they were in preschool together and they're not babies anymore, but um I've always just had a lot of love for her, her brilliance, her passion, and her connection, even though she doesn't live in Detroit anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:42

Well, shout out to them. We want to thank you guys for listening to our show, Authentically Detroit, where we are doing our best to build a platform of authentic voices for real people in the city of Detroit. Please like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast and all the other podcasts as part of the Authentically Detroit Network. Thank you guys for listening.