Nice neighborhood when i came back it was ravaged by crack and you know drugs and it’s in the middle of the hood and um yeah i was at the university um with these high level skills that i got from you know michigan department of transportation while i worked there so i um
Put those two things together my work background and my um you know you know growing up in a hood together and started doing environmental justice work uh environmental justice and transportation and um so you know i’ve been doing that for since since um 2000 and that’s how long i’ve been at morgan
So i’ve been working for about 40 years wow all right expert on the line and will tell us more about you your family um how you love living in detroit tell us everything i want to know all right some organizing i feel like i just need to know will more
And i wanna wait it’s interesting because i think that um in some ways even though it was maybe 10 or 15 years later um my story also uh parallels glenn in the sense that um i often think about the fact that if i wasn’t from detroit i’d probably be off somewhere making a
Whole bunch of money but it was something about growing up in detroit something about having the family that you have having to seeing the people that you see knowing that you know knowing the things that you know that at least for me it uh i wanted to do something about
What i eventually learned was an injustice and what i eventually saw was an injustice in this place that i’m from you know what i’m saying in this place you know growing up uh post crack you know what i’m saying um when i was a kid you know what i’m saying and seeing
You know sin in many ways the social destination you know i kind of it became a lifelong thing to figure out how to get to the root of this and how to you know make my contribution uh both of my parents are southerners you know they didn’t move to detroit
Into the 70s my mom’s from georgia my dad’s from mississippi uh both of them have lived a portion of their life under segregation you know what i’m saying and so in our house uh having a black consciousness being aware that there were historical injustices you know that even continued to the present day
Was very much something i grew up with even though i was born in michigan you know i have a son who’s eight years old um i’m a orisha priest of shango and a hip-hop artist and as you mentioned uh pledged 24 years ago an alpha file for fraternity
Almost this exact day the anniversary is coming up in just a couple days oh wow well happy anniversary and i’ll post that on your facebook if you put it up thank you my father is alpha okay well he just passed away but he’s alpha okay so i thought i’d add that in there
All right and glenn i’m sorry um condolences to you and your family on the passing of your own father um and yeah it was a it was it was a tough time to i mean it’s always tough to die but i guess but this was particularly rough because um
You know you couldn’t bury him for we had to postpone the funeral for like three times and he passed away march the 7th and we buried him april the 13th wow so but you know we’re and it was streamed and it was a nice dignified event so
But i’ll also add um i have two children um my son is a he just graduated from morgan state university or the industrial engineering degree he’s 33 so he’s probably closer to youth guys a’s than i am i have a daughter who’s um lives you know graduated from michigan state
By the way okay and she’s um uh she’s she’s in san diego up in the mountains running the girl scouts camp i was a girl scout trade leader yeah i come from i come from a family of florists so my my dad had a law degree but my grandparents had worked with florists
And so after my father retired he went into the florist business so we were the oldest african-american florist in baltimore for many many years we started the business was started in 1930. so that sort of adds a little bit more you know dimension to you know how i got to be where i
Am so so yeah um could you explain more about you know what brought you to the environmental and climate justice movement like why did you focus on transportation and will i have yeah i worked as a i was a transportation uh travel demand forecaster for the state of michigan
But when i came back home to baltimore you know i couldn’t understand how it had declined the way it had and i was troubled by that i knew you know my family knew a lot of politicians so i felt you know i said how could these people
Who we know allowed this to happen so that was like an eye opener for me and that the politicians were you know people who were you know governed by different constraints then i realized as an idealistic um you know young man growing up so because i had the
You know in the travel demand forecasting skills they gave me some credibility instant credibility you know in um you know with with certain agencies uh regional planning baltimore city transportation but they come you know there are too many african-americans who do travel to man forecasting
So um so that gave me a leg up and then i was looking for some funds to do my research and i ran into some folks at epa who said i needed a group i needed a posse i needed people to work with on the ground so i was you know able
Because i’m from east baltimore i was able to get and i worked at morgan i could gather you know researchers and community activists together as a group and that seemed to have you know worked out pretty good so we we have community groups we have folks from john hopkins
Um center for neighborhood technology in um chicago you know i was a member of the transportation research board environmental justice and transportation committee so i had some you know um you know some folks there that i worked with and we were all able to band together and get some money and
Develop this environmental justice toolkit so that’s how i got there okay all right and well um could you talk more on your experience in the environmental climate justice movement like how did you like get involved i hear that question a lot from organizers or just people
In the field like how did you plan to do environmental justice work were you impacted by an ej issue or is just something that you start to be passionate about oh you’re muted okay are we good now yeah all right um i was uh in graduate school on my way to a phd
Around 1999 2000 2001 and a friend of mine introduced me to the work of uh grace lee boggs uh and the work that she had done in detroit um talking about uh the future from rebuilding community and the need to rebuild community and rebuild the bonds that hold community together and
From there that kind of brought me into i guess you could say grassroots activism in detroit and as somebody that’s had health conditions since i was about 12 years old um i just was able to connect the dots uh between environment and health and seeing i guess you could say so much sickness
In the community so much illness um connecting those dots to um what does it mean to have a strong and healthy community um and so i saw that environmental was really a central point and i i use a different i don’t use the strict definition of environment
Where people talk about like only the air or only the water you know when we do environmental justice we say what’s your environment right we want to bring justice to our entire environment um which can include the transportation it could include the food it can include the schools it can include
What might be called urban planning all of those type of things you know um and so that was kind of how we we got into it and one of the real turning points that helped me add something new to that was hurricane katrina and uh hurricane katrina the more i
Remember spike lee made that video but even before that you know you had the uh i think it was called the superdome you had seeing people stranded you had uh how people were being treated at gunpoint just trying to uh you know find security for their self and their family
But then once people started breaking down the science of it then you could see that this the social inequities of how africans how black folks are treated here meets with the science of those storms got stronger and stronger because the natural environment had been worn away from all the pollution and all the
Development and everything those storms weren’t supposed to even you know be that strong 10 20 30 40 years before that you know the development and all these things wore away the natural barriers wore away the natural resources so the science was on one side the societal neglect is on another side
And that’s really his home for detroit because we see we see societal neglect all around us right and so uh that just made me like wow this this climate is deep man because when when the stuff hits the fan you know it’s our people that get caught up in the suffering
You know and the climate is you know what i’m saying that’s one specific example but it’s a huge example and so katrina helped me to tie in the environmental with the social with the climate all together thank you so much for um letting us know about the intersectionality of
All these different issues and i know we’re going to talk a little bit more um later on about covet and environmental justice and how it’s you know connected um so glenn i wanted to ask you with transportation being one of the contributors to climate change and economic injustices
For people who live in urban communities who do not have access to dependable transportation by the way what has been some limitations or obstacles you have seen with trying to get community members elected officials um government officials to focus more on clean and equitable transportation
Well i’m gonna try to uh answer that by i want to piggybacking on what will said a little bit okay um environmental justice okay um you know is really about low-income minority communities not being taken advantage of by federal agencies who spend money okay like building
I think in detroit you know where they ran the highways through you know african-american neighborhoods or the 696 up there 75 96 94. right so so so the environmental justice movement came out of that type of activity at the federal government level okay in baltimore um
And so well and you know there was a transit depot and this transit depot was located next to a um an alley that will it was that was adjoined by um low-income housing it was residential housing but was folks with low income and so when back in the day when they
Would they were running bustles on diesel they would back the buses up and have the tailpipes facing the alleys and when diesel they would just have to run the bus all night long because it would take too long to start up in the cold weather
And so what it amounted to was that it caused respiratory illness okay for people who are in close proximity usually there’s like a plume you know an energy or a pollution plume it spews out the tailpipe and then it goes for about 300 feet so that’s when uh you know when we grew
Up we didn’t even know that that was an issue and then we got a little bit of education and became you know aware of what’s going on so um so so so the other part of that coin is that bus facilities okay are often located in close proximity to low-income
Communities and they cause physical respiratory um you know disease also low-income minorities all live closer or in close proximity to highways where you have a lot of train you know a lot of a lot of traffic and they’re within 300 feet so you’re walking around breathing dirty
Air and you don’t even know it okay now the kicker is that um in terms of covad 19 um areas that are low income areas that are in close proximity to um you know to air pollution are often those folks are often at risk at greater risk for having respiratory disease um
Obesity asthma you know a whole bunch of other stuff but those are the key ones okay and it’s been and research has recently come out showing that if you have a weakened immune system because you have respiratory illness obesity obesity okay asthma that you’re more likely to be
Um attacked by the uh by the virus okay so so here we are again you know from katrina to covad and before and after and nothing has changed as a matter of fact the kovac shows us that we’re more vulnerable than you know it really shows the fractures okay
You know structural racism associated with you know living in america so that um no that that’s fine but i i i’m gonna bring will in the conversation about covid you know of course is prevalent in black communities as you have stated uh like detroit right we had like
We were like number three when i think we moved up to number seven um so how can we let people know that cobia 19 is also an ej issue what are your thoughts about that well i think that um kovid 19 for those people that are care about ej it’s the ej issue
It’s a black issue it’s an african issue it’s a public issue it’s a democracy issue it’s all sorts of different types of issues you know what i’m saying it’s a it’s all sorts of different types of issues um but it’s an environmental justice issue um related in the same way
I’ll put it this way my perspective which i’m getting deeper and deeper into because i’ve been getting more and more active in the disability justice movement and environmental justice is a health issue right you know environmental justice when we talk about the effects of these environmental injustices we
Point out the cancer the asthma the kidney failures the organ failures the sicknesses and so disability justice one is looking for explicitly supporting the leadership of people that are living those health experiences and living and lifting up their uh what most people would think of as a negative
But they have certain experiences i say we have certain experiences you know that are very valuable and we see that with covid in terms of people are afraid to get sick and there are people i’ve i facilitate these groups of disability justice groups and some of the people said i’ve been living like
This for years you know maybe they have uh immunodeficiencies some people have certain types of allergic reactions and haven’t been eaten out and going to restaurants for a couple of years and so the uh within our community is kind of reframing i would say reframing the health
Challenges i took it all the way back to slavery you know what i’m saying like if you imagine during slavery you know as people were getting brutalized beaten we had to have a lot of knowledge on how to heal each other we had to have a lot of knowledge on how
To take care of each other you know what i’m saying we would have been just white we couldn’t have we couldn’t have gone to work and did the things that we did you know what i’m saying if we didn’t know how to take care of each other how to heal each other
How to help somebody who’s you know 10 get up to 30 and get up to 50 by the morning time you know all of these things and so i think that covet is a call for us to dig deep you know we have these we have this healing in our community
And it’s time for us to dig deep and bring that forward we know how to save each other’s lives you know what i’m saying we know how to take care of each other and this is what we need to figure out how to do um and with social we have to figure out
What it means in this day and age but i think it’s time for us to claim that um tupac i love tupac he’s great but i think he said one of the most harmful things to ever get into our consciousness he said i gotta get mine you got to get yours
You know what i’m saying and that mentality of you know you figure it out you figure it out whether you live or die you know what i’m saying whatever happens to you you just figure it out um you know we gotta we gotta turn back the clock on that
You know what i’m saying we gotta uh we gotta we can celebrate yeah i’m gonna get mine and you get yours but that’s a relationship you know i’m turning my back or you know i’ma watch you suffer or what have you but how do you how do
We help each other get ours if you’re doing your thing and i’m doing my thing like how can i help you advance or move your thing forward if i can help you right if i’m focusing on my theme focusing on your thing how do you i hope you move your thing forward so
You can get yours like how can we support you to move forward what do you think about that and we want to flip it what he said to have people think about it in a different way we need power we need money we need organization in order to do that
I mean i was thinking i work at morgan state university if you go to our website you’ll see some of the um covad um you know videos that we just have recently produced okay and um you know about wearing the mask but if you ride around baltimore
Today and i’ve been told the same for detroit that you’ll see a lot of black folks are not wearing masks and are not practicing social distancing you know and i don’t know why but that’s a big problem because we can’t always blame someone else for stuff that we can do ourselves
So um you know it’s really a nice noble idea that we should work together and i’m and i’m for that i mean i did the toolkit because i thought it was a vehicle to help you know low-income minorities um empower themselves when dealing with you know agencies that were trying to
You know disregard them as individuals and as a community yeah black people or certain segments of the african-american community to uh to read the memo okay is i find that very challenging and i think to your question my niece about how i think that this is where healing comes into the
Conversation um you know we’ve been trained in many cases um we can go into different comedians and the jokes that they have about black folks and n-words and all these different things we’ve been trained to you know when we see each other um what’s my man nifty hustle had this
Great quote he used to be a a gang banger you know and he talks about um as a gang banger he was wearing this color and he would be going after the people in another color and the you know if you weren’t dressed in the gang gear
He would they leave you alone but one day he realized he’s like i’m literally going after my reflection you know what i’m saying they’re just wearing another color but i’m going after literally my reflection the people that walk like me talk like me that’s who i’m going after you know
And so i think that that’s um it bring i bring it back to healing because i think that healing is central to where i’m coming from and a lot of what we’re talking about is health you know and we’re it may not be thousands of people it may
Start in smaller groups that are activated towards healing but we have to in addition to the conversation about money and resources we have to have the conversation about healing you know so that we can move in a positive direction with each other i totally agree and um um to go back to moving
Our members of our organizations that we’re a part of or to you know help them get involved to see that environmental climate justice is a health issue it’s an education issue it’s our legacy right um because we have legacy of doing environmental justice work but it wasn’t coined the term so
Why why do you feel that people are just reluctant to do ej work is it because the perception of the white thing say the polar bears tree huggers that type of thing because to go back to glenn’s profession he works in transportation our kids ride those school buses right our people ride those
Transportation buses that emits harmful things into the air and we’re you know we’re on those buses and we’re going to have respiratory issues right and then we have this big pandemic that’s a underlying respiratory issue so and it’s impacting our communities the most so it’s like how do we can have these
Conversations at the same time healing organizing and educating people who are impacted our people who are impacted by ej climate justice issues um it’s a challenge my first i think we have to have we have to continue having conversations like this okay and we need to figure out ways to expand these
Conversations so we get to a wider audience um but i don’t think i have a problem in convincing you or will okay that we ought to be having this conversation you know we gotta get to pookie and you know and booty green and mr dibs you know we gotta get those guys
Because those are the ones who especially in this covads situation you know they could be dead in in three weeks or they’re just they could be weakened and when the second wave come and could take them out okay it could affect me it could affect you if you’re walking
You know close so how do we you know you can’t you know so so we have to um you know we can’t even get that mask you know i was on a meeting today um on a zoom meeting today with the regional planning council and they were all trying to figure out
How to get how to get the um care care money how to take their care money to purchase masks and um pp was it ppps three piece um you know the protective uh equipment uh they’re trying to figure out how to get funding for that and um and they were actually having
Difficulties in doing it because the governor in maryland you know didn’t want to have a moratorium on um evictions so there’s going to be evictions soon as they run out of that you know stimulus check soon when that’s gone and they don’t pass another seamless package
The people who are going to get evicted are going to be people who living in you know low income housing or public assistance housing and that’s primarily african-americans so so i don’t know how you you know how you reach out okay without having you know resources in order to do that
So so my answer is you know we have to have more meetings like this we have to build partnerships with business you know government nonprofits community people you know partnerships that are effective at getting you know resources but as will said before you can do that you probably have to have some spiritual
Healing yeah well do you have any thoughts on that yeah i have the uh flip side of the coin um to this response and i definitely want to um shout you out baba glenn for your approach in terms of looking at where you came from and then bringing your skills
Back to your community and to your approach marnice in terms of how do we address the black greek organizations how do we address the college educated i want to give a shout out to one of my sisters her name is piper carter and we talk about to put it bluntly
The need to face classism in our communities and many times people get certain types of education and they view not only as a way to leave their community but then many times people start to be you know honest start believing some of the same stereotypes that in years past white people would
Have been saying about our people you know what i’m saying or blaming them like oh you know we saw this in detroit we have a big issue with water shutoffs you know and when you get that class difference then people who are who don’t see themselves as working class or don’t see
Themselves as poor start to say things like why are you buying gym shoes instead of paying your water bill or why are you buying cable instead of paying your water bill or saying these different uh stereotypes and rationalizations and piper carter uses hip-hop and culture to reach college-educated and middle-class people
But engage them and show them that there’s a connection with their life and black people generally and working class people and poor people and i think that you know when glenn is saying we need money there are black people with money all over the spectrum but the class differences are so distinct
That we’re not able to pull together and be you know on the same team for environmental justice or on the same team for climate justice so we got to go to a bank or we got to go to a corporation or we got to go you know to somewhere else right what
That was one thing my grandmother lamented like i said she was from georgia and one of the things that she said was she just lamented about integration you know the fact that when she was coming up there was a multi-class black community and people they had to
Live in the same neighborhood but they because of that you got to see and rub elbows and there was this sense of we’re all in it together and she saw in her lifetime as soon as integration happened and they opened the gate and said you get to move wherever you want to move
You know it was not only people moved but then their interests you know they started to have interests over here and they started to look down at the interests over here and they started to identify over here and they started to not identify over here and she really lamented that she
Was like i don’t know what to do we don’t have a black community anymore you know and that really stuck with me and so i think that the resources are there but what do we you know what i’m saying like how do we mobilize that um for environmental justice how do we
Mobilize that for the well-being of our community is something that’s always been on my mind and i that’s why i like this show and i like this approach that you’re having because that’s what you’re trying to do is to reconnect you know say okay you’ve been to college you’re part of these organizations
We’re going to draw these links you know what i’m saying with the movement we’re going to draw these links with the struggle so i salute i love that thank you so much well you know so are um my triumph or charity hicks um yes eastern michigan pine delta um she uh i say
When i when i first seen her i was like oh my gosh that’s my sword and i was just a baby like i want to do this i want to be like her and i’m like she if she can do it i say we all
Do it she she’s in she went to school she went to college you know that’s the best because quote unquote the black bourgeois right if you go to college you get a degree um you get a job the middle class upper middle class that’s the class that you know black greek letter
Organizations are part of so it’s like why would we not lift up people who need help the most just because we so called made it right um and i just look at her like she’s doing what we all need to be doing in a community and so are you glenn and
So are you will and i i want to go to the chat real quick because i got a couple questions all right all right yeah we gotta learn how to give back that’s the key give back shout out to people and for tuning in to martinique’s live talk show
I want to say hi to katrina cousins in baltimore we got someone from florida all right see michael mcpherson um wallace fam selling jones okay see meredith and ashley ashley’s my sister if i don’t shout her out she’s gonna get me um so the question is faith taylor should confirm it’s ppe
How do how can we make the partnerships equitable well we have to define what the partnership is first okay but i’m assuming how do we when we get into these partnerships how do we ensure that we’re not being used by one or more of the partners
And um and that’s a little bit tricky because if we try to define a partner if we go look for partners with money you know the guy brings the money in or the lady brings the money and they’re going to think that they run the show
Where they have a great deal of leverage so we have to bring in something that’s equally valued as a leverage okay in order to make sure that or to ensure that you know we don’t get taken advantage of we have to be on the boards we have to be in positions where they
Actually are listening to us okay speak and listening to our values and not just using us because we have black skin or you know people of color so i have a further question glenn about that so we won’t be used because of our black skin and we don’t get used to
You know be that quota or check the box for organizations that’s right how do we hold them accountable i was on a training today and a lot of why environmental climate justice organizers were on the call and they were talking about funding and how quite frankly why would we give
Or let our space for funding go to other communities black brown ej organizations like our our development department is going to like laugh at the organizers for you know say hey you need to be granted these ej organizations right so i’m just curious to know like
Okay you want to use our brown face to do some of this work how do we hold them accountable since they’re in the funding spaces i think it goes back to your point that you made earlier you know we you know we get our degrees or uh we succeed in sports or
Entertainment but we’re in this certain class okay and then we’re sort of you know trying to figure out how do we from our particular approach you know how do we reach down and help people okay so i can use my friends and my connections who all happen to be white
Okay who may or may not do anything what we need to be able to do is to reach out to you know the folks in our community who look like us who have money and resources and who are interested in the um campaigns that we are trying to promote
So i don’t know that we’ve done that we do that certainly on you know a one-to-one basis and we do that when we have batillions and you know certain social events you know in our class society but we don’t reach down enough okay i’m not saying that we don’t at all but i
Don’t think we do it enough you know when we get the um the michael jordans of the world to pitch in and to you know become you know become a force you know in its own right i don’t think we do enough of that we’re always looking for others to help us so
Going within our black community celebrities even leverage the professions our own uh members of our fraternities and sororities all right yeah we yeah we have to build and it’s going to be difficult you know you know how it is working with your family you know but we have to um you know
Maybe through music i don’t know i’m not sure what the answer is but i think we’re not doing enough of it okay well what are your thoughts well i think two things which are they’re kind of two they’re kind of the same thing um one i think that coming from our communities
We have to stop making it seem like they’re doing us a favor like when it comes to the environmentalism like a lot of these organizations they got money but they don’t know what they’re doing they at what problems have they solved like ask like you know say what accomplishments have they made
What if they have millions of dollars what has their millions of dollars accomplished and i think that when you look at our communities and you look at you know the thinkers and the way that our communities are looking at you know economics and society and all these problems um
You know like people are lost right now you know and i think that a lot of the white people in a lot of the institutions without money can’t admit that because that’s kind of scary for them to admit that their their things aren’t really working and they’re just kind of spinning their wheels
And so i think that one is not just a charity case like we’re not saying support us for charity or support us to be nice we’re saying we have in many cases we have better ideas coming out of our communities that are more deeper in the reality
You know i work with white college students and you don’t know how many literally talk about coming to detroit they understand america much better you know what i’m saying like they’re like wow i was lied to my whole life and now there’s some truth that i see
From being here you know what i’m saying and so it’s not so part of the accountability is like uh glenn is saying with that leverage it’s like yo we have strategies to offer we have a deep perspective that’s gonna in many cases work deeper you know what i’m saying and you know
Just like this covet thing you know like yeah everybody’s scared of kovit but it’s like our community is filling it deeper right and if there were to be a real national response our community should be at the forefront of that because we would kind of see how people are falling through the cracks
And come up with a solution you said i’m saying that can respond to that and very concretely for those who are working with majority white organizations you may have heard of it or you may not but there’s this thing called the james principle j e m e z and many times
Uh black organizations or people of color organizations they use that as a very concrete tool to uh work with majority white organizations and if they can come to agreement on the principles then they can say okay we agreed with this are you in line with this or are you not
Aligned with this and if they can’t agree with it then that kind of gives shows you who you’re working for and then you have another decision to make you know if if you’re working with people that don’t want to agree on the principles then you have to come back and figure
Out okay what does that mean you know what i’m saying what does that mean if they don’t want to if they don’t want to agree with us on our principles right and so don’t repeat that yeah j-e-m-e-z it’s it sounds like james but it’s pronounced hermes
And it was very similar that people were um i think it was in the 90s you know people were really wrestling with these questions that we’re talking about now um you know these majority white environmental organizations just had millions of dollars and we’re making money sometimes off of our community
And so they came up with these principles and now people have been using them it doesn’t always work perfectly but like you said my niece is that you know if we can if we can agree to it then we can talk about how you oh no you didn’t live up to this
Thing you agreed to you know then we have something to talk about right you know a lot a lot of times when money comes into an african-american community a low-income african-american community results say for housing and economic development it results in gentrification right yeah so a lot of folks will say
Well i don’t want to be gentrified i don’t want my neighborhood gentrified yeah but so what happens if i say i don’t want my neighborhood to be gentrified the money um you know goes away because of that resistance and nothing ever happens positive in my neighborhood so to me that’s a
That’s the dilemma that we face because you know if a white person come a white organization comes into our neighborhood is gentrification but if a black organization comes in and does the same thing then is it economic development or is it something different it’s still classes in my opinion
So i don’t know how to um you know so so you so you have these programs that you know affordable housing um you know better transportation transit or unit development that are all designed to uh filter in um you know some kind of you know mitigation so that low-income
People can benefit from it without being you know forced out but i think so that we need to um focus on those types of programs and work a lot harder to make sure that we have a voice in how they get implemented if they’re all going to be implemented at all
Right so i would like to make sure that we leave our audience members with some type of action items um before we leave because there’s no point in having a talk show if we don’t are doing something it’s like we’re just talking just to talk you know so could you guys um
Provide um our audience members some extra steps on how to advocate for equitable transportation how to get into the environment with justice movement um how to organize just some basic things that people who are not pookie and ray ray them as you mentioned um how can they get involved with the
Movement how can black greek letter organizations go ahead and start taking charge and use our 100 million members to start taking on these issues as a collective can you guys give us some action steps i mean um well there are organizations out there we can get involved in that are
You know multi-racial groups like the environmental justice list serve i think you wouldn’t know about that my name is right the environmental justice list serve i’ve never heard of that well that’s where a lot of the okay you know community exists um the robber bullets of the world and
You know i’m one there um you know um a lot of old timers are there you know i can send you a link or if you just google you know ej list serve l-i-s-t s-e-r-v you know you’ll see it and you can um ask to get one
That’s one way of keeping up with what’s going on in that community okay and it’s also a way of influencing what goes on in that community so i think that’s a good way to not only get information establish new contacts okay um you know i also think that having leadership forms
And figuring out ways that we can reach the 100 million or just a good you know chunk of it you know would go a long way but but i do think that you know that we’re going to be okay i mean it’s a good chance we’re going to
Survive we’re going to be healthy you know we’re going to live nice old ages to you know retire okay but there’s an underclass in our community that may not and that’s the class that we all have come from we have roots in it you know you know william you talked
About your grandparents coming from georgia you know mines came from the eastern shore and plantations in pennsylvania yeah there were comes there was plantations in pennsylvania and um you know somehow they figured out how to um you know make a living and to give their children a better life and
Um you know so we have to still you know we have to cultivate or continue to cultivate that and not that and not let that get lost such that we’re saying well that’s their problem and not my problem i made it you know so we have to we have a lot of
Work to do um we’re still there yeah we’re still here yeah so go ahead william that’s that was by um i don’t want yeah i think i definitely hope that groups college chapters or graduate chapters want to get more involved and i would say wherever you’re at it might take a few months
But first learn and see what the particular issues what the particular problems are there and there probably are people that are working on them in your particular area you know what i’m saying and so don’t just rush in and you know try to go go go but you know it take
Take some time you know people who’ve been to college know how to do a little bit of research you know what i’m saying and find out who these voices are um some of the things you could do people would love like for i know our organization we’ve worked with some people would love
Fundraisers you know what i’m saying like if if your chapter wanted to do a fundraiser for whatever that local organization is they would love it you know what i’m saying that you you want to do a step show fundraiser you want to do a suit and time fundraiser
What however you do it a banquet or auction you know do it your way in conjunction with them um i’m sure that they would love it you know and so that’s one thing um even like putting some informational materials like how can you use your email blasts or things like that
To give information that’s coming from these people that are involved in your local areas um and there’s two things that i’m involved i’ll just kind of say the names real quick because i’ve alluded to one of them in detroit there’s a big issue with water shutoffs right now
And um if people look up the detroit people’s water board you know especially with this virus you know everybody’s talking about washing your hands you know what i’m saying but thousands of people have had their water shutoffs in their home and the people’s water board has been working for
Years to restore water in people’s homes and can always use more support and then i’m working on this uh program called wild beyond climate justice um and the website is just wild beyond climate justice which is really uh taking a look at what are the shortcomings of our current climate model
And how can we create new models for the future and that’s going to be at the end of may um may i think the dates are may 31st through june 4th totally online totally webinar um so those are the two specific things people’s water board and wild beyond climate justice just to
Shout out those specific initiatives thank you so much well okay so before we go i would like to um thank will and glenn for coming on to the marnie’s live talk show and hopefully you all will come back on um so we can have a deeper conversation
I want to give a shout out to munchies calling island it’s a family colony island if you’re in the waterfront pontiac area um they are doing delivery with a minimal purchase of ten dollars um with 2015 delivery charge so it’s on 254 eight elizabeth lake road in waterfront michigan and then if
You’re looking to get your picture taken please reach out to sakara jackson she is doing photo sessions starting june 2020 um six feet away she can take your picture and so no limit on poses choices um cap and gown so please reach out to sahara jackson i like to make sure i’m lifting
Up black businesses all right and so next week tuning into the marnie’s live talk show we will have the essence of mommy hood conversation with some mothers auntie mothers grandmothers military mothers single mothers about motherhood and so i would like to say happy mother’s day to all moms and who are
Mothers who play those roles um it’s coming up this weekend happy mother’s day to my mother she’s pictured right there lois lee youngblood jackson i love you dearly and i hope you see this because i told you i was going to give you a shout out
And if you want to continue to be action oriented please call jackie johnson the district attorney um of glenn county um for the murder of mr arbore so you can see this information is also posted on the marnie slide talk show and to be quite honest i’m tired of
Having hashtags so we have to do something about this we have so many issues going on at the same time they’re all intersectional and we as a black community have to really start taking charge so please call miss jackie johnson so we can put these murderers behind bars
So i want to say thank you so much for watching the martinis live talk show please don’t forget to subscribe to marnice on the marnie’s live talk show on facebook on twitter on youtube and instagram and so before we leave i’m going to play a video
Um by mr william copeland and mr william copeland can you please tell us about the video and i’m going to play this is take the house back right take the house back um man i was so struck um by the work of the housing as a human rights coalition in detroit helping to
Move families and mothers into abandoned houses galvanizing neighborhood support so that the neighborhood who didn’t want too many abandoned houses in their neighborhood will support these families being moved in and then we saw similar tactics being used in oakland california with the single mothers moving and
Taking over houses there we have so many abandoned houses and so many people that don’t have homes and it’s time to put those two together and make solutions so that people can uh stay safe and warm all right so thank you so much will for that um
Not to say support um the work that will is doing and also reach out to glenn if you want to do more advocacy work around transportation equity because that is a part of the green new deal and transportation is the main emitter of climate change our kids are on school
Buses we ride the buses so please reach out to me and i’m more than welcome will share their information made this video and thanks so much for tuning in to the merny slide talk show the moral imperative that relates to whether or not people have a right to live inside of a house
Take the house is take the house Let’s roll the dice this game is deep take abandon lots make them garden plots then guard them plots cause the block is hot a lot then watch for cops when we get together we’re hard to stop take the house back that we know Must always outweigh the needs of the few we got the mamas papas attorneys rockers kids and the fosters vets and doctors black flag activists crimson nomads granny’s big old families oh man if we can’t fix a problem this way this way everybody even come grab me plate man my
Granny and my uncle and my aunt used to share a crib where you live is no embarrassment there you is she got a house when she wrote that check and he got a house went to port and they kept they spot when the folks protest my man got his spot for a buck
And a lease when the bank’s foreclosure game ain’t over i came to the office they marched like soldiers like what’s wrong baby girl bring your dog back grab your gym shoes you bike bring it all back no trouble baby brother grab your ball back get your comic books come on grab all [Applause] Chances of living right going down that was nice you
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