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Well, everyone, we join you with heavy hearts today, as I know so many of you have.
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We re into the 11th day after the loss of a dear brother, and the whole world saw it, witnessed it.
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They witnessed the murder.
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It s undeniable what happened.
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And the beauty, the only beauty that I can find is that people of all colors, of all races, of all religions, of all backgrounds, all over the world have rallied forth to not let this time pass and to make sure that we create not only some healing here,
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but some real change.
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And often I talk to people about change and, you know, change is automatic, actually.
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You don t have to work on change.
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Change is going to occur.
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Our bodies are going to change.
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The world s going to change.
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Our environment s going to change.
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Our families are going to change.
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Everything s going to change as time goes by.
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Change is automatic, but progress is not.
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And so this is a conversation today to see if we can t create some progress.
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And I m so privileged.
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I was feeling so much pain for our brothers and sisters and thinking, what can I do?
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I m just one voice, a white man.
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But I m fortunate to have some beautiful friends that are great leaders.
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And they happen to be African-American as well, but they re just great leaders.
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They re conscious leaders.
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They re people who are passionate and focused on true justice, but also are heartfelt in their approach.
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And then I decided, what if I reach out to a dozen or so of these people, and some I didn t personally know, see if we can get them to join.
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I thought maybe three or four would join, and we have an embarrassment of riches.
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We have 10 extraordinary leaders here, and I want to introduce them to you.
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And then our format will be, after I ve introduced briefly who they are, we re going to go one at a time for about
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three, four, five minutes and have them just share with us.
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And I don t want to just say I ve already said it off camera, I just want to thank all of you.
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I m honored to be in presence and so grateful that you re willing to share your experience, but our hope is to have them share their experience of what this is all about, what they want all of us to know, maybe not have these experiences to not only know, but to appreciate.
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And most importantly, it s called, what can we do to make real progress?
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What can we do to make lasting change that truly matters and change the quality of life and ends this nightmare that s been going on for more than decades, for centuries plus, for African Americans and for others of different races and different colors and different creeds and different backgrounds and different religions?
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It s really about not pointing fingers here.
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It s really about what can we do to bring back unity and love and compassion and connection to one another.
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And what can we do to move forward?
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So it s going to be a journey.
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We don t know where this is going to go.
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It s not a trip.
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A trip is predictable.
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But we ve got some amazing souls, and I want to introduce them now so you know who will be joining us here.
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But our focus is going to be sharing their experience, understanding what maybe some of us intellectually understand, hopefully emotionally understand, because that s when we re changed, and then talk about some of the solutions that are there.
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So let me introduce the panel for starters.
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And again, thank you for joining us, for coming in here.
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The first panelist is Terrence Floyd, the brother of this experience.
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I don t even know how to describe what he s been through with his brother, George.
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And the last moment here, he s going through the wake right now and the emotion of putting his brother in the grave has overwhelmed him.
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So he s not going to join us now.
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We ll hopefully follow up with him.
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But what we also have here is Benjamin Crump, who s obviously extremely famous for his ability to
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represent families like Michael Brown, like Trayvon Martin, and he s dedicated his entire life to holding powerful people accountable for taking advantage of those with less power.
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And Benjamin, it s a privilege to have you.
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Thank you for joining us.
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And we have Laura King, who is a friend of mine, I ve known for a few years.
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She s the founding executive director of the Rodney King Foundation.
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Laura, great to see you.
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She s also Rodney King s daughter.
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So again, you have people here that aren t talking intellectually about this experience.
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It s affected them at the deepest part of their core.
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or one of the things that I love most about you is the amount of time and energy and effort you put to make your life about positive race relations in spite of what you ve been through and achieving social justice.
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So thank you for joining us.
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Great to see you.
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Next, we have Martin Luther King III.
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Martin and I have been friends.
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I know Martin for about 10, 12 years.
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He came to Fiji for a date with Destiny one time.
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And I said, well, that s a very powerful name.
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And I realized he was the eldest son of Greta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr.
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You, brother, are, you know, you re not just a global human rights activist, but you re really the ambassador of your father s legacy of nonviolent social change.
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And we re really excited to hear what your thoughts are today.
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So thank you for being here, Martin.
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Thank you, John.
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And then we have Sabrina Fulton, who experienced what no human should have to go through, much less any mom, the loss of her 17-year-old son, Trayvon Martin.
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And she also, rather than just living in pain, she s really committed her life to transforming her tragedy into some form of social change that really matters.
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She s going to give us the unique experience as a mom
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of what this means and what she s been able to do to help others.
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And so I m really excited to hear from you, Sabrina.
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Thank you for joining us.
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Next, we have Doc Rivers.
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Doc, most of you, I m sure, know NBA All-Star Coach of the Year, was coach of the Boston Celtics when they won in 2008, and now heads one of the most amazing teams in the league, the Los Angeles Clippers, which hopefully you ll have your season finished and be able to do.
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But we ve got some bigger issues to deal with here today.
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And so I want to thank you, Doc.
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And Doc has a unique experience because his dad was a police officer for 30 years in the Chicago Police Department.
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So Doc, really, really appreciate you joining us.
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Thank you.
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Then we have a dear friend, Amanda.
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I have so much respect for Bishop T.D.
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Jakes.
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He s a global humanitarian.
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He s the founder and bishop of the Potter s House.
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His church is non-denominational.
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It s multicultural.
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It s, you know, it s based in Dallas, Texas, but a man s reach is worldwide, and he s a force of nature.
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Great to have you, Bishop.
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Thank you.
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Next, we have a really unique soul and I got to, I guess I met him at the Clinton inauguration.
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I met him backstage, he s a musician there, but I didn t know his story.
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And Daryl Davis is an R&B and a blues musician.
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He s an activist, he s an author, he s an actor, he s a band leader.
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But his story is incredible and it s, to me, it s one of the most inspiring for all of us to see that change can happen because we ll have him share the story, but
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He began with a chance encounter with a white man who probably would never have connected with him because of his music.
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And we ll have him share the story in a bit.
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He eventually became friends with this man.
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He was a Klansman.
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And he, through his ability to get through human to human, soul to soul, spirit to spirit, got this man to give up being a Klansman and even give him his robes.
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And that started him on a 30-year journey, where now he s helped over 200 Klansmen, a lot of leaders there, leave the Klan just by his ability to reach out and connect and use his heart and his soul and his intelligence.
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Daryl, we love and respect you.
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Thank you for joining us.
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Thank you.
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And then we have Scott Shepard.
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And Scott is a friend who Darryl had the ability to get through to.
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He s a former Grand Dragon, national leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
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They eventually became friends.
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And now he s an anti-racism activist.
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So for people who think that people can t change, especially people that are so conditioned, I mean, you think that a Klansman can become an anti-racism activist?
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And these two have become dear friends.
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Scott, I really want to thank you for your courage,
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willingness to change and for your joining us here today as well.
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Thank you, sir.
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I m very, very pleased to be here and be a part of this program and
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You re speaking to Daryl Davis.
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Daryl Davis is my brother.
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I love him.
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That s so beautiful.
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You guys are hope for all of us to say the least.
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And then we have another dear friend, Dr. Michael Beckwith, who s founder of Agape International Spiritual Center.
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Good to see you, brother.
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And, you know, Michael is just, he s nothing but love.
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He s just such a source of love.
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And Agape has outreach programs here on our line because all the work we do for the homeless and for
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incarcerated individuals.
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I know he cares about the planet, but his center has got people of every religion, every color, every background, background there in LA, and just such a force for good.
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Great to have you, Michael.
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Thank you, Tony.
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Good to see you.
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And then Reverend Jesse Jackson will be joining us later.
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He had an issue.
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He couldn t join us at the time, so we ll introduce him afterwards.
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He sends his love to all of you.
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I wish he could participate in the group part of it, but he ll be here to share his insights as well.
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And we re also, if we have time, we have a
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An officer that has joined us.
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There s a 10 year veteran of the Santa Monica station.
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He s a friend of Laura King and I want you to understand a little bit about his history because we get the chance to see His perspective.
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And I think when you look at him, you know, we all have giant bullshit meters, you can feel what s real and what s bullshit.
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And I think you ll see this man s got a great heart and he has a unique history.
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Many people think he s active as a racist because he s a police officer and he actually is married to an African American woman and has, you know, interracial children.
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So hopefully we ll be able to catch a little bit from him as well.
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So it s a full docket.
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I want to thank you all one more time for the patience to be here together.
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And I want to, since Terrence can t join us,
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us.
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I want to come back here.
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We re talking offline initially with Benjamin.
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Is it okay, Ben, if I call on you to share what the family s experience has been and the message they want shared?
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Would that be appropriate?
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Certainly, Tony.
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Thank you so much for having me, and thank you all for your prayers for the family of George Floyd.
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As I was telling Bishop Jakes earlier, they re getting ready to have a wake.
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And that was always difficult things when you, it sets in that this really is real, that you re going to put them in the ground.
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And you want to believe, as I m saying, Sabrina Fulton knows all too well that it s just a nightmare.
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You re going to wake up and it s not real.
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But the tragedy of the killing of George Floyd is real.
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in a different kind of way because we have all saw the documentary of his death literally narrated by him.
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And I mean, he, for not one minute, not two minutes, not three minutes, not four minutes, not five minutes, not six minutes, not seven minutes, not eight minutes, but almost nine minutes, he is starving for air.
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He is begging.
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He s saying, I can t breathe.
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I can t breathe, and the police officer has his knee on his neck.
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He is so desperate.
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He literally, at one point, calls out for his mama.
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And it s just astonishing when you think about that, because in our most desperate times, I think most people still think, who is my first protector in life?
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It is your mother.
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And I remember Reverend Al asked me about his mother.
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And when I told him his mother was deceased, it shocked him because he was saying that he s calling out for her.
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And I think that was absolutely utter desperation, knowing that you are losing consciousness.
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You can tell that it s ending for you.
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And literally at the end of the video, as painful as it is to watch,
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And here, you hear him say at the end, I m gone now.
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And it s just unbelievable, because Martin, they don t offer him any humanity.
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I mean, these are the police officers who will be trained to deal with de-escalation.
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They re supposed to be trained to deal with conflict,
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They re supposed to be trained as first responders to save a life.
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But yet, they re the ones escalating it, and it s the lay people who are on the street that we hear on the video saying, you re killing him.
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Take your knee off his neck.
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And so it s hard to even think about it.
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And I always count the minutes out because I want it to be dramatic for people to understand how they tortured him.
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I mean, this was torture.
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And that s why I think you have the riots erupt in the cities all across America, because we have saw far too often that when
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white police kill black people, normally nothing happens to them.
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And we sweep it under the rug and we create a hashtag and the families are left broken hearted with no answers.
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This is different, we believe, Tony, because we saw that video.
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And I ll say these two remaining things in my opening remarks.
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the fact that we had an autopsy performed on the family s behalf that contradicted the autopsy that was performed by the county s medical examiner.
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And Dr. Michael Biden, a noted forensic pathologist and a very sharp sister named Dr. Alicia Wilson, who s the head of pathology and forensic sciences for the University of Michigan concluded
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these two things.
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Number one, the main cause of death medically was mechanical asphyxiation.
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And they said that was because of the knee on his neck.
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And we see how he was, I mean, just crushing his knee into his neck as he s turning his head, trying to get breath, obstructing his ability to take in air.
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And then the two knees on the back by another officer
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that was compressing down on his lungs that would not allow his lungs to contract so they can take in and dispense air and it interrupted the blood flow to his brain.
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And so those were the medical causes of death.
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The legal cause was homicide.
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And that is important, as we know, in the criminal prosecution, because we have to establish that his death was not natural, because that s the only way you can charge somebody with homicide.
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And in this instance, it contradicts what the County Medical Examiner said, because they are trying to suggest, very similar to Eric Gardner, Tony, who said,
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Reverse in Staten Island, New York, that there was some underlying unknown health condition.
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that caused his death, and they tried to say that he had congenital heart failure, which is asinine because George Floyd was walking just fine, he was talking just fine, he was breathing just fine, until these police officers put him face down with handcuffs and literally suffocated him by the force of his knee and the knees to the back.
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And so what really needed to happen
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was they needed to give him a breath.
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He needed a breath, and he would have lived.
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And so I m asking everybody, along with George s family, let s take a breath.
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Let s take a breath for peace.
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Let s take a breath for justice.
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And let s take a breath to try to heal our country, but most importantly,
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Let s take a breath for George Floyd because those police officers did not give him that breath.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, my brother.
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I can only imagine the pain, because I know you know the family directly.
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And I know Terrence was going to join us here, and hopefully we will touch him in a few days.
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I can only imagine the pain he s going through.
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And as you said, the shock is that you d actually go to bury your brother.
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Tell us what the family, what Terrence, want us to know.
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Tell us what they want us to know.
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First of all,
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About George, what would they want us to know also about the kind of man he was, who he is?
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And then secondly, what would they want people that are protesting and people out there to know about violence versus nonviolence?
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Because I know he s spoken up about that.
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I d love to hear your perspective on those two items if you d share them with us.
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And again, thank you for being here.
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George Floyd has a big extended family, which is the experience of many African American families in America.
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His mother was the matriarch of his family.
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He has six brothers and sisters.
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And he has five children and one three-year-old granddaughter.
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And so he was beloved.
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They described him as a gentle giant.
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They said he would light up a room.
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He just had that personality.
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that people love George.
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George loved people and people just loved George, no matter what the situation was, who the person was, whether you were, you know, a very successful person or whether you were a person down on your luck on the street.
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They said George would treat you all the same and he would always try to say a kind word or two.
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And so that s who George was then.
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It is hard for his family if you get a chance to see the memorial service in Minneapolis, when his brothers Philonise and Rodney and his nephew Brandon, who was like a son to him.
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because they all grew up in the same household, what they had to say about how their family only had each other.
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They didn t have much, but they had each other.
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Now George, who was one of the older siblings, was just a role model for everybody.
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He was an all-star athlete in both basketball as well as football.
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He went to college on scholarship on his athletic abilities.
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And the fact that he
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was constantly trying to do better.
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Like everybody, he wasn t perfect, but he was always striving to try to improve himself.
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And so this video of his horrific death leaves his family, Tony, wanting justice, first and foremost.
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they want justice and other than Trayvon Martin and I know my
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Dear, dear friend, I consider her a family member, Sabrina Fulton, Trayvon s mother, on the conversation.
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But I cannot remember a time since Trayvon where you had these many people galvanized saying, we seek justice because we know what happened to this individual was unjustifiable.
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and the people need to be held accountable.
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And the fact that this is an opportunity that goes beyond George Floyd and getting justice, but it s a chance for all of us to be able to achieve justice as a society.
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What do I mean when I say that?
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Unfortunately, and we re speaking truth to power.
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I m civil rights lawyer, I ve represented
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Dozens and dozens of families of black and brown people who have been killed by the people who are supposed to protect and serve them.
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And what we have encountered in America, and this is just a reality, that there seems to be two justice systems in America, one for black America and one for white America, where the goal should be equal justice for the United States of America.
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We haven t gotten there yet after 401 years since African-Americans first arrived on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia.
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So therefore, hopefully, with George Floyd beyond holding these four officers accountable for his murder, because that was murder, George Floyd and many of the social justice reformers
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I hope to overcome the enemies of equality to get true systematic reform in the way that we won t have these two justice systems in America and we can go back to what I always like to talk about and that is Thurgood Marshall, my personal hero, saying that we all have to look at
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with the Constitution and what it means.
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And he said the basis of the Constitution was simply this, that a black baby born to a black mother, the most impoverished black mother, the most inarticulate black mother, the most uneducated black mother, has the same exact rights as a white baby born to a white mother.
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the most educated white mother, the most articulate white mother, the most affluent white mother, just by virtue.
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of that baby drawing his first breath as an American.
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Now, just as Martin said, I know that s not the case, Tony, but he said, I challenge anybody to say that s not worth fighting for.
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I challenge anybody to say that s not what makes America great.
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I challenge anybody to say that s not what makes America the great beacon of hope and justice for all the world to marvel.
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So in conclusion, when we fight for the Trayvon Martins of the world,
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And most importantly, when we fight for the unknown George Floyd and the unknown Trayvon Martin, what we really are doing is helping America live up to its creed of being that great beacon of hope and justice for all the world to marvel.
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But most importantly,
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Reverend Beckwith and Martin, what we re doing is helping America to be America for all Americans.
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And that is the goal for all of our children.
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We want a better America for them to have because some of us don t get a chance at the American dream.
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so well said from the heart, from the soul.
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My only prayer and hope is I m hearing people that have never spoken up before in this situation.
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I m hoping that we finally, as I said, hit that tipping point, that threshold where it s not enough is enough for everybody inside.
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And I think we re seeing that not only here, but we re seeing it even brothers and sisters around the world joining in on this issue.
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you re right it s this is what America really is in its soul and spirit it needs to live up to what its standards are for all human beings and no matter color race background religion or anything else tell us um but as I started to say I see huge companies now that would never enter the you know fray and talk about things like this uh Mark Benioff of Salesforce is always doing things like good friend of mine but I m seeing people that have never spoken up companies that have never gone there and that
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When we start to get corporations, individuals of every walk of life, I think that s where we ve got the opening.
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So I know the family has expressed they want, you know, justice, but they want peace and and they want to see peaceful change.
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What can you tell us about their message around peace and what can you tell to those that maybe are
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taking advantage of the environment, because we have people out there expressing their heartfelt concern and focusing the energy of the world on this issue by their rightful protests.
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And then we have some people that are going out of their rage, and some people, it appears, from other places coming in and destroying the very community that we re trying to support.
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So what s their message coming from the family, from Terrence and the family, that we want people to hear as far as that s concerned as well?
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Yes, Tony, and I m sure as Laura King
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could probably express when her father said, can we all get along?
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When his family talks about George, they talk about the videos he put out on social media at the Ferguson with Michael Brown when it was burning, at the Baltimore, at the Freddie Gray
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was having riots after Stephon Clark very recently in Sacramento, California.
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And he put out messages praying for peace.
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I mean, he was a very spiritual person and people talk about how he would pray for peace.
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And so
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George Floyd s family would say, let s follow the example of George.
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We want you to protest.
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He was a big LeBron James fan because not so much what LeBron did on the court always, but how he used his voice as an activist to say, I have this influence.
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I want to use it to try to do good beyond just a basketball court.
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And so George Floyd talked about that.
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You protest, but you do it peacefully.
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And so we should follow the example of George.
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And again, I say, let s take a breath.
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Let s just take a breath to try to heal our country.
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Take a breath.
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to try to get peace.
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Let s take a breath to try to get justice.
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But most importantly, let s take a breath for George, because he needed that breath.
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And I think right now, America needs a breath too, because none of us can breathe after watching that video.
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and stacking on the Eric Garners of the world, the Michael Browns, the Breonna Taylor people coming in and shooting in her own bed.
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I mean, it s total insanity.
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Thank you for your voice.
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I know you re gonna have to leave and perhaps join us later on, but thank you very much, Benjamin.
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I really appreciate you sharing the family s point of view and the call for peace, but at the same time, the absolute call for justice and not willing to settle for anything less.
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Tony, thank you for saying Breonna Taylor s name.
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Today is her birthday.
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Oh, my God.
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She s 17 years old.
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And so thank you so much for not letting her name get lost in this conversation.
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Thank you for all those that you ve defended and put your life on the line for and for your courage, brother.
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You re a truly amazing man, and we all have enormous respect for you as a man, as a lawyer, and as a soul.
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Laura, I d like to come to you next if we may.
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Laura King, again, Executive Director of the Rodney King Foundation, the daughter of Rodney King, not somebody who has an intellectual view of this, you know, the riots in 1992 were after the unbelievable
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Savage beating that your father was taken by the police.
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I think it was Will Smith said it s not racism that s happening more often It s just being videotaped, you know, and that was probably the beginning of that process as painful as it was It s brought us perhaps to this point.
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That was 28 years ago So I really love to know what your perspective is on where things on and also how have you kept your compassion and
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After witnessing this going on and on and on for 28 years, you know, you re incredibly compassionate.
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It s one of the things I love about you.
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You re not about making everybody wrong.
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You re trying to bring people together.
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So I d love to hear your point of view of what s your perspective on where we are right now and where we need to go.
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And, you know, what would your father want out of this as well?
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Because it was already said early, you know, famous phrase, he said, can t we all get along?
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You know, I m just, you know, I m curious what conversations you think need to happen across
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platforms of religion and race and people to try to make a real change happen.
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So would you please share with us your perspective?
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I d love to take the credit, but I got to give it to the Lord.
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I really do.
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Because oftentimes I want to
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operate out of my ego.
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I want to operate out of my hurt, my pain.
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But it s God s love for me that he forgives me every day, and I fall short every day.
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So with that being said, I try to operate out of that same love.
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And it s hard.
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It s extremely hard, especially when you re hurting.
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especially when your dad never recovers the same from that night.
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My dad never recovered.
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He was never, although he lived, he died.
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A big part of him died that night and we never got him back 100% mentally, emotionally, physically.
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We went through so much.
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He went through so much.
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So it s like, for me, a big part of me wants to have hate, wants to have, I mean, you know, of course I experienced everything, but on a flip note, the common goal is for us to,
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Have a just system because we don t us as a community.
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We we don t Although we live in america and it s supposed to be just it s not just and it s like, um an unexplainable feeling when the police are around for me even for me i ve never been in the jail i ve never been arrested, but I have a reaction that I can t explain um, and it s kind of embarrassing when you with other people because it s like uh, it s a natural reaction that no one should have to go through and it s like um
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That alone is sick to me, let alone, a lot of people don t know, but my dad was awarded with an amazing job that he was celebrating that night, a construction company.
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And so when he noticed the police were behind him, he ran for the same reason everybody else runs, and I m not justifying running, and I don t agree with what my father did.
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However, he knew that his life was in jeopardy because he s witnessed,
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The same thing we all keep witnessing that most likely he was gonna die that night.
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So he ran he ran into a Well-lit area and as much as he could and then he stopped and the part that bothers me the most is
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The part that bothers me the most is I wanna dislike cops.
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I wanna, however, I am blessed to have about four solid friends that are police officers.
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One of my grandfathers was a Los Angeles sheriff and he s a great man.
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So I can t say all cops are bad, but I do have a,
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I have a hardening in my heart.
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I ll be completely honest with you.
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I have a hardening in my heart because they are of higher authority.
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And there s no way that people s lives should be taken for the color of their skin or who they are.
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And you haven t even gotten the chance to get to know these people.
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Like that, for me, that s sick.
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And I m scatterbrained because I feel every emotion possible right now.
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So it s just unfortunate.
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It s unfortunate that my dad had to run for his life as well as everybody else.
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when things get put to the light, that all these things of who they are or who the media or people think that they are get pulled to the forefront, not the fact that they are actually human, not the fact that they re actually beaten or killed or chased down.
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Some of these people don t even have a criminal record, but a lot of them are children.
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It s just sad.
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It s sad that this girl has to witness this.
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It s not like something she can escape.
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This is something that, you know, a lot of us here will have to live with this forever because it s something that s on the internet.
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It s something that we can t escape from.
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We can be in a middle of a conversation.
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And we have to hold it together.
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We have to be composed because it s like other people are not aware of who you are, who you re related to.
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That s, to me, that s really sick.
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That s really sick.
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But however, you know, we do serve a God that does serve justice.
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whether it s now, then, or whatever the case may be, that s the only thing that I have to hold on to, and I ll be completely honest.
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That and the snippet of the goodness of the world of the cops that I do know that are going out into the communities when they don t have a uniform on, that are getting to know the communities, that are giving insight, that are, I would say give pointers on not to die, but there s no, I can t, no one can give you pointers on how to live through a transaction with police or anybody else that is
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Racist or doesn t like who you are.
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There s no way to prepare anybody for that because Nine times out of ten justice is not served which is unfortunate and I made the statement before and I m and I m standing by that please forgive me for this but Michael Vick got more time for killing dogs than people got for taking african-american men s life and to me, that s sick
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That s really sick.
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And I love animals.
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Don t get me wrong, but I m just saying to me, that s unfair and that s very unjust.
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So I think we need.
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hold each other accountable, have uncomfortable conversations, have, you know, police relations, go out in the community, get to know these people because everybody s not the same.
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Just like every nationality is not the same.
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You can t judge African-American men.
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And then people wonder why they have a chip on their shoulder.
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As an African-American woman, I got to witness what my dad had to go through.
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Every day he walked out the door.
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And it s like, you know, you re on high alert, you re tense, you have an anxiety, and you re expected to have a smile.
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And it s like, that s a hard way to live as a Black man.
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That s hard.
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For me, that s hard.
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But again, my dad was a very spiritual person, and he loved God, and he loved
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Coming together people.
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He had all races of friends.
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He had skinhead skinhead friends.
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He had surfer friends um, he was an advocate swimmer a lot of people don t know that and it s like for me, I just have a lot of um, It s a lot of holes that are in the system that is not fair for african-american for human life So it s like if we could and then he posed the question and a lot of people say it was a statement Can we get along it was actually a question
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And he was asking America, can we get along?
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Can we stop making it hard?
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You know what I mean?
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Because it s like, everybody s upset about the looting.
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Everybody s upset about the violence.
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And again, I don t agree with that.
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But I understand what it s like to come from a hurting place and to be unheard.
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So it s like, what else do you do?
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especially us of spiritual beings.
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We re crying out for help to God, but at the same time, we re human too.
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So I just ask people to look at people as human beings.
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They don t even look at us as, I don t even know how to explain it.
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I m just in disbelief.
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It s sad that we have to keep watching the same thing.
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And it s like, I feel like personally, they re trying to make us, us as a community, they re trying to make us normalize this.
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And that s not fair.
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That s not fair.
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No one should- That can t be tolerated.
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First of all, thank you for- I think it should be a sense of urgency.
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Thank you for your grace under pressure.
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I, you know, first of all, I appreciate your total honesty in every way.
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How could your heart not be hardened by those experiences.
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And yet I see you as you say it even open heart more And you, you said one of the key ingredients here, which is we have to have an experience of each other as opposed to the generalizations that have been made that dehumanize us
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And your experience with these police officers, as well as just your spiritual base, obviously is what has kept you through this and found a way to find balance in the middle of insanity.
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I m curious, would you, you mentioned the police officers, I think that s when we go to Daryl Davis a little bit later, he s going to share how he turned around Ku Klux Klan men.
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It just sounds impossible.
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But it was really, as he ll describe, the ability to build a relationship where you start to relate to someone as a human being instead of all the, you know, the human brain distorts, deletes and generalizes.
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We do that to make decisions more quickly.
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So we were cognitive misers.
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And so then you get conditioning and people aren t born racist.
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You know, they re brought up in a certain way, and they start to get conditioned and reinforced.
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But all conditioned behavior can be deconditioned and changed.
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And it s time for that as a society, as you well know.
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Absolutely.
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What can you tell us about Officer Gomez, for example, and what s unique about him that s touched your heart?
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Because we were talking back and forth.
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You said, you know, that he s really touched your heart, and you hate seeing what he s going through.
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There are people that are judging him as a white man, as a police officer, instantly as a racist.
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Sure.
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And I ve met him before.
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I was good friends.
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I m still good friends with his wife, who s happened to be an African-American female.
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When I was in school, when I was in college, I took a black history course.
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And he was one of the students, like me, as well as his wife.
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And I ve always admired him because he was very, his demeanor was very mild mannered, you know, really cool guy, really cool guy.
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I would have never thought he would become a police officer.
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Not in a million years.
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I was still friends with his wife.
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And later on down the line, they became married, had kids.
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And then he became a police officer, which was shocking to me.
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But then again, as time went on, it just made me have an understanding, again, from a human aspect.
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And I know him personally.
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So that s what helped me have a little bit of faith, because I m like, I know what he does when he doesn t have the uniform on.
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And he has interracial kids, you know?
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So it s unfortunate.
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And from the outside looking in, he just looks like, of course, he s not black.
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So it s like he gets crap.
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I just think it s sad that his kids have to, you know, it s like it s flipped.
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Like he knows what it s like to be black.
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be black.
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I don t mean to reference that, but you have to understand it.
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So he s at work and the looters are on him, you know, and it s just like his daughter, his son is asking my friend every night, like, is our dad going to get killed?
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Is he going to make it home?
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To me, that s sad because I know who he is at the core, but America doesn t.
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And we shouldn t be here because it s like, that s not his fault.
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That s the higher authority.
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And it s like, I feel like they just do minimum and then they send them out there to just fend for their self.
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And it s like,
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Well, what about the guys that are not killing?
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What about the guys that are good in uniform?
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So it s really unfortunate.
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You know what I mean?
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It s just unfortunate.
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But he s a great guy.
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I know it was hard for him to join us because I know that he s going through so much as well.
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So I just commend him for coming today.
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I know it was tough for him and his family.
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And he s working 12 and 14-hour shifts around the clock trying to protect us all, right?
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Yes.
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I really appreciate you sharing that because we all judge people.
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We all make judgments.
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It s the way the human brain functions, but we have to fight that.
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That might be how we re conditioned.
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That might be the survival brain.
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We re tribal.
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We ve been tribal about politics.
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We ve been tribal about religion.
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We re tribal about color and race.
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But we re more than tribal.
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We re humane.
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We re human.
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We have a spirit and soul that goes beyond that two-million-year-old brain that s always looking for what to fight or flight or freeze.
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And it s up to us to raise that consciousness.
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And you re extremely humble, Laura, because I know how hard you work to help in this area.
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You make it sound like you re barely managing it when you re doing amazing work.
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I really want to thank you.
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And I m excited to hear the full message with everyone.
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Let s roll the video, if we may, please.
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Good morning, how you doing?
4
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My name is AJ Gomez, and I want to say thank you for allowing me the opportunity to answer some of these questions that I ve been asked.
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Sorry I couldn t do it in the desired timeframe or have this open dialogue and discussion live.
4
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Why did I want to be a police officer?
4
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What drove me to be a police officer in the first place?
4
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What is my why?
4
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And to be honest, that has changed over the years.
4
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I ve been a police officer for 11 years.
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But what really made me want to be a police officer when I first started 11 years ago was the impact that police officers and law enforcement had on me as a child growing up.
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But up until now, what the badge and the shield mean to me today is doing the right thing right, being ethical, being professional, being there for the people that we serve.
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I am a public servant.
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There s no other way to say it, but I m a public servant.
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I m here to serve the public.
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the city that I work for.
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And when they need me, I go, you know, um, if there s a time of crisis and they need me, I go, I don t run.
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SPEAKER_03
Um, and I m not going to say, you know, that every law enforcement officer is a bad cop because we re not bad people.
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Um, but there are, there are bad police officers, uh, that make the wrong decision.
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Um, but it s,
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It s other police officers  jobs, like myself, who do the right thing right every day they go to work, to intervene and to step in and to remember the ethics that we were taught in the academy.
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And if we don t intervene and we don t step in to make that decision or to stop anything from escalating, then we fail as a police officer as well, just as much as whatever they re doing.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you know,
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Laura King is a good friend of our family.
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She s a good close friend with my wife.
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And I met Laura back in 2002 when we went to school together and we took an African-American history class, all three of us, my wife, Laura, and myself.
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But yeah, you know, it is very, very, very ironic, you know, when people try and pull the race card on me, not knowing anything about me.
4
SPEAKER_03
You know, you break it down and, you know,
4
SPEAKER_03
What is racism, right?
4
SPEAKER_03
You just break the word down at its core.
4
SPEAKER_03
And it s, you know, one person s belief that their race or ethnicity is superior over another.
4
SPEAKER_03
So when somebody, within a few seconds of coming into contact with me, labels me as a racist,
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SPEAKER_03
You know, it does hurt because they don t know anything about me, but you got to have thick skin in this profession no matter what.
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SPEAKER_03
You got to dust that.
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SPEAKER_03
You got to brush it off, dust it off.
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SPEAKER_03
You can t take it personal.
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SPEAKER_03
You know, my closest and best friend here on the department is black, and more than half of my career we spent working together in a car.
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So, you know, whenever we would contact somebody that would jump straight to the
4
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You know, I m a racist because I m white skinned.
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And, you know, my partner, the black officers and Uncle Tom, as they would call him right now, are a sellout.
4
SPEAKER_03
We ve had this discussion plenty of times, him and I in the car, you know, our take and our perspective on things.
4
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And bottom line, you ve got to have thick skin.
4
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You ve got to just bounce it off.
4
SPEAKER_03
More often times than not, when somebody does pull that with me, my rebuttal is, you don t know anything about me, man.
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SPEAKER_03
You don t know the fact that my wife is black, that my kids are black, my best friend is black.
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So I do break it down for them a little bit real quickly, but I don t get into it.
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SPEAKER_03
I don t make it an argument.
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SPEAKER_03
You gotta be the same every time, you gotta be 100 every time.
4
SPEAKER_03
And that s it, come with the same approach, the same style, and just be who you are.
4
SPEAKER_03
Because in the end, if you re gonna see that person multiple times, because they re in your city, or they live in your city, then they re gonna know that officer s cool.
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SPEAKER_03
At the end of the day, bottom line, they re gonna vouch for you.
4
SPEAKER_03
Your street credibility will go up amongst your community.
4
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People of color, they re gonna remember you, they re gonna respect you because of the way that you dealt with them, the way that you dealt with their family members, the way that you dealt with their friends.
4
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There s people that might have had a negative contact with a police officer 12, 15 years ago, before I was a police officer.
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And then they come and they make contact with me.
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I need to make sure that it s a positive one and do my job and let them know that it s not like how it was before.
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Everything s gonna be all right and we re in this together.
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He was quite courageous, and I thank you for introducing us to him.
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Let s step into Martin Luther King III.
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Martin, it s great to see you again after all these years in Fiji, a little date with destiny.
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And I can only imagine what you re going through seeing this.
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I mean, your father talked about his dream, what, you know, over half a century ago.
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Tell us if you would, you know, you devoted your life to nonviolent
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change and you re seeing these, you know, riots also occurring and a lot of people are using your father s name and saying, you know, that they re using quotes of his a little bit out of context from what I understand anyway, but I d like to hear from you.
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Where do you see we are and how are we doing on your father s dream and what has to change from your perspective?
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I d love to hear.
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Thank you, Tony, for convening.
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these distinguished ladies and gentlemen from around our nation.
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We are honored to have just an opportunity to share.
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Yesterday, my wife, Andrea, and my daughter, 12-year-old daughter, Yolanda, journeyed to Minneapolis, not just to share condolences to the Floyd family, but to lift them up with love and light
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as the thousands and maybe millions who watched the service yesterday.
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And certainly, perhaps the most propelling moments beyond the amazing presentation of Attorney Crump and the phenomenal remarks of Reverend Sharpton was the eight minute and 40 second period that we all stood up
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and silently, emotionally were thinking about this heinous and beyond imaginable crime that a human being who was supposed to protect and serve would put his knee on the neck of an African-American man, George Floyd.
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And to see George Floyd constantly asking for help
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is more than horrific and more than any of us should have to bear.
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That moment perhaps has galvanized the attention of the nation and the world like no other.
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Victor Hugo used to say that wherever there is darkness, crimes will occur.
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But the guilty one is not merely he who commits the crime, but those who create the darkness.
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And what I feel that means is that something my father said, it won t be what those who are adversaries do, but it will be the silence of our friends that is most disappointing.
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This opportunity, people are no longer being silent.
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52 years ago, black men had signs in Memphis when shortly before dad was killed saying, I am a man.
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All they were asking was treat us with dignity and respect and like human beings.
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52 years later, black people and white people
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Latino and Hispanic people and others are standing with signs that say Black Lives Matter.
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Again, requesting dignity and respect and treating people like human beings.
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This police officer tragically lost his humanity and the other three that were with him.
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We know that we are a much better nation than the behavior we re exhibiting.
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And I really believe that one of the things my father stated, yes, we ve seen a lot of violence during this period, or some violence, I should say.
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Overwhelmingly, we ve seen nonviolent demonstrators.
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Yes, that s true.
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Dad said that violence is the language of the unheard, which means that he never condoned violence.
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But he understood, as I think many do around the nation and the world,
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the conditions that have caused this.
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But yes, we can and will be better.
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This is an opportune moment for the United States of America, because not only are the eyes of people all over the world on us, they are with us.
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I don t remember a time when the world was protesting for an individual and really collectively for black people s injustice.
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Because injustice anywhere, as Dad said, is a threat to justice everywhere.
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Now, soon we will have to discuss the notion, where do we go from here?
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Dad s last book was titled, Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community?
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We are obviously in the midst of chaos, but humankind has to go to community.
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Well, we can t do that
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unless we are treating our fellow human beings in a humane and just and dignified way.
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Institutionally, we have to address racism.
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Dad and mom
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talked about triple evils of poverty, racism, dad said militarism, I sort of changed it to violence.
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Poverty, racism, and violence must be eradicated from our society.
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This nation and the world can do that if we choose.
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When ability meets will, there s almost nothing that we cannot do.
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We have to ensure
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that ability meets will.
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And this condition has created that level of consciousness, I believe, like none before it.
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I see women and men and families and children coming together in a constructive way.
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But I think the institutions have to change.
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I m glad to hear, Tony, you say that businesses are coming to the table because I honestly have not seen this happen before.
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Business has to do a much better job because if business joins with community and with elected leaders and everyone, we will see a different America tomorrow.
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when business says enough is enough and we re not going to take it anymore.
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That doesn t mean that people will have to resort to violence, but there s a constructive way, there s a humane, there s a dignified way that we can go through this process and change this system once and for all.
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But the system has to be changed at its core.
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Diversity, sensitivity, human relations training is needed from kindergarten through college.
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That would create on its own a different human being, maybe a different police officer.
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Yes, we have to do serious screenings.
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because police officers come from different places.
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This is not universal.
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There are many, many good women and men who are police officers who protect and serve every day.
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But there s also that element of those who exhibit extreme behavior that create many of these problems.
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And so
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We are at a place where we have got to change.
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And we ve got to change now.
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Dad used to say now is the time.
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It actually has been long before now.
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But now is really the time that people want to see some responsible action quickly.
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I spoke to a couple of congresspersons yesterday and a congressperson this morning.
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And there s legislation that s being proposed to address racism for once and for all.
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I hope
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that those who don t agree will agree that there should be a cabinet position, just as I think there should be a cabinet position to adjust poverty.
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There s no way in the world that the United States of America, with all the resources we have, with a terrible economy right this moment, cannot address poverty, cannot address racism, sexism, homophobia, all of those issues.
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We are better than this.
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All we have to do is take those steps that need to be taken.
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I m getting chills hearing you speak.
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Your father speaks through you, and you have your own unique soul to add to it.
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But I know he and your mom would have to be so proud of you as a man and as a soul as you continuing this.
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What are the things they re talking about legislating that you think can make the difference, and what can we do to support that?
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So I think that some of the initiatives
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The chokehold in Minnesota is not obviously barred.
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It can be used.
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When I first saw George Floyd, I automatically, before I saw the tape, I went to Eric Garner in New York just a couple of years ago.
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And we saw a policeman use a chokehold on him and was not, was prosecuted, but not convicted.
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So I immediately went there and said, what is wrong with our society that this continues to happen?
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Well, we can bar their ways.
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I mean, I remember when we used to apprehend suspects without even doing harm to them.
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So we have the capacity to do that.
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But our officers are trained to shoot and to shoot to kill.
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And that has to change, I believe.
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I think that community policing is certainly one of the issues, but some of this has to become legislation at the national level.
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Dad and his team and others adopted and worked to help create public policy.
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That s why we had a Civil Rights Act in 64, a Voting Rights Act in 65, Fair Housing Legislation in 68.
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So there needs to be policy, new policy presented.
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And as I said, Congress is presenting that policy.
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that directly addresses police misconduct and brutality.
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And I think the way we help is we need to be inundating our congresspersons, our senators, our president with emails, with text, and even the new tic-tac or tick-tock, whatever the videos are the kids are using now.
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Every modality on the planet.
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We need to use, that s what we can do.
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You don t even have to leave your home to use that, to send it to our congressmen, our senators, our mayors, even our judges.
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Everyone needs to hear that we can, these are steps that we can take and we want you to take them.
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When the public hears and acts, as I said, ability and will creates action that we perhaps have never seen in our lives thus far.
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Once again, I think this, this is the moment we ve got so much momentum with so many people from all races, all backgrounds, all religions that see the insanity of this maybe for the first time because it s so in their face, but also it s I think it s the stacking effect that all African Americans have felt and experienced.
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But not everybody else has witnessed it directly.
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So it s, it s invisible to them.
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And the stacking that you see with a, you know, Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, you know, Eric Garner, you know, Taylor, Arbery, Floyd, I mean, the names go on and on and on.
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And they ve, they ve also gone on, you know, no matter who we ve had in charge, you know, I d love to believe was just political change can make it happen.
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But I think many people are looking for leaders to do something.
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And we re those leaders.
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you know, politicians, you know, go, they check the air and see what the sentiment is.
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That s not a leader.
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All of you are leaders.
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You put yourself on the line.
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You do what s right, whether or not it s popular.
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And I thank you, Martin, for being a source of that component.
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And maybe this is the time, you know, if you look at, I went through and made a list of just the last 10 years.
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And I looked back and said, let s go through the last four presidents.
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And
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You know, there s two of those administrations were Democrats, two Republicans, and we ve seen this continue to happen no matter who s in charge.
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So I really believe it s up to
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us.
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We are better than this and we ve got to take this momentum and not let it die.
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What do we do so this doesn t die, so it doesn t die down after the protests are done?
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What do we do to make sure this momentum does not stop and once and for all we finally produce lasting change?
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So I don t see this stopping, first of all.
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People are going to continue to demonstrate because people want action.
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Obviously, people want it immediately.
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This is going to take a little bit of time.
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But if there s responsible action, I thought it was a great step that the first officer was arrested.
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I think it s an even greater step that all officers have been arrested.
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But convictions, a trial and conviction is going to take a while.
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It s not going to happen shortly, but it will happen.
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in a reasonable amount of time.
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But I think the things that we have to do right now are organize, mobilize, plan, strategize, register, and vote.
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This morning, we have an election in Georgia, and other places are having their primaries.
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And I went to vote, and actually, because I
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because of the time.
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I stood in line three hours.
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I m going to have to go back.
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Actual election day is Tuesday, but I wanted to early vote.
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I have never seen so many people in line early voting.
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That means people are engaged and doing their civic responsibility.
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That s not all we have to do, but we need a change in leadership.
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And there are many candidates who are offering themselves for public office who are going to help us lead this way so that that light becomes even brighter, illuminates in a very positive way.
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But I think this is the most, we ve talked about elections being important.
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This is one of, if not the most important election in our lifetime, because we need, even at the commanding chief level, the president, we need a leadership
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brings people together.
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And yes, law and order has to be abided by somehow, but you got to bring people together.
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You can t divide people.
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That is not going to work.
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That remedy is old.
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It is antiquated.
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It is doomed for failure.
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So I guess my point is, I don t see an ending yet.
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I see too many people around the world that are saying, America, how are you going to deal with this moment?
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This is the time we must act, and we will act.
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And we will not just get justice for George Floyd, but we will get justice for all Black people and all human beings, ultimately.
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That s who we are as a nation.
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You re right.
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And we can t settle for less than who we are and what we re made for, souls and spirits as Americans.
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Thank you.
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So now we re going to go to Suprena Fulton, again, Trayvon Martin s mom.
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She lost her 17-year-old son.
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And instead of just living with the pain, she s dedicated her life to creating social change.
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Again, a person has every right to live in rage.
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I m sure she s got to have some of that.
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But she wrote a life about her son s life and what an enduring life would be if you re resting in power.
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And I just want to hear from you.
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The part, it s all heartbreaking.
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George Floyd, the part that was already mentioned when he s calling out for his mama, at the end, they re going to take me, they re going to kill me, mama.
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I don t think anybody s got a soul that couldn t have their heart be crushed by that.
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But for you, it s even more direct because you ve directly experienced that.
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So what s your perspective as a mom?
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about what s going on here and what s happened to George Floyd, what happened to your son, and please tell us what your experience has been and what gives you hope, if anything, to create change, because I know you re dedicated to that.
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I want to say thanks for having me and thanks for allowing me to lend my voice.
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When I watched the video of George Floyd
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and he called out for his mother, it hit me differently from probably the average person.
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The average mom who listened to that definitely cuts like a knife.
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I mean, it just tugs at the strings of your heart just to hear somebody to call out for their mother because
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you know, when you get in a jam or you feel like you re slipping away and he probably felt like he was, his life was slipping away and he probably knew that he was gonna die, you either call Jesus or you call your mother.
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And so one of the things that I heard Reverend Sharpton say yesterday at the memorial for George, which, you know, tugged at my heartstrings again, Reverend Sharpton said that,
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George probably saw his mom and she reached out her hand to him.
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And I was like, oh my God, that is so deep, you know, to know that you re about to die and know that your mother passed away before you.
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And just for you to just yell out to your mom, like it hits differently when you re a mom and you hear somebody that s dying at the hands of somebody else.
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It hurts.
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It hurts.
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It hurts.
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I can only imagine.
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There s no words for it, but tell us if you would, from the perspective of your life.
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I know you hear when these things happen, you hear constantly that it s just a few bad apples.
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And there s, I m sure, some truth in that.
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It s not the majority of officers.
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There s 800,000 officers.
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There s 18,000 police stations here in the United States.
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And many of them and the vast majority of them are committed to make a difference.
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But the challenge that people don t understand is like the metaphor I try to give them as if, you know, if you had an airport where 100 landings happen every day and 98 make it and two don t, no one s going to talk about the great landings on the 98th.
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They re going to only remember the ones that don t because that s what penetrates us.
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So, you know, I know that there s so many different perspectives.
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I understand your father, if I understand correctly, what s worked as a police officer in Miami.
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Is that right?
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Yes, he s a retired police officer for the city of Miami.
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So when people were saying, oh, she doesn t like officers, she doesn t like guns, I grew up with a police officer in my house and he had guns.
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And I never feared police officers and I still don t.
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But just because the person number one who shot and killed my son wasn t a police officer, he was a wannabe police officer.
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But the bottom line is, I m not afraid of police officers.
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You know, a lot of times we feel like if we just comply, that we ll be able to make it home safely.
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Well, some of these people have been compliant and they still don t make it home safely.
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And so that s some of the things that we need to focus on.
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the times where they don t make it home safely, because you can have your hands up, you can obey commands, and you can do everything to comply with whatever the police officer is saying, and you still maybe get, you still maybe be shot and killed.
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And, and, you know, you, you were thrust obviously into the spotlight because of your son s brutal death.
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What, I know you ve been a great voice for Black Lives Matter.
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What is the real mission of the movement articulated for those that don t understand?
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Because some people think it s a violent movement and obviously it s not, that s not its essence, but I know you work to try to work on, you know, gun controls.
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And I know you ve worked with Black Lives Matter.
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Please share with us what the mission is and what really is trying to be communicated to people of all races.
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I think people need to just stay focused on the bigger picture.
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And I think had it not been the videotape and George Floyd s tragic death, we wouldn t see so much of the uprise because people tend to think that what did he do to cause
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This to happen to him.
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Well, we say we saw in the video that it was nothing that he did he complied.
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He was handcuffed.
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We didn t see a struggle.
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We didn t see, you know, him resistant arrest.
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We didn t see all of those things because they never happened.
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People always try to justify somebody s death and even in my son s case.
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They try to justify the death.
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And like when I think about this and I see this and if you have a heart beating in your body and you actually watched a police officer put a knee on somebody s neck until they could no longer breathe.
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you have to feel something.
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You have to feel something within you that say, this is wrong.
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And I keep telling people, this is not about black and white.
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It s not all the time about black and white, but we got to just focus on what s right and what s wrong.
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And that was wrong to see that.
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It was so disrespectful to see a knee on someone s neck.
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And then I tell people who,
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try to challenge me about certain things.
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I tell those people, well, what if it was your husband?
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What if it was your brother?
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What if it was your son?
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Think about, put your family member, your loved one in George Floyd s place.
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How would you feel?
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And people kind of get it.
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then.
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But I m glad there was a video there so we can see.
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And people actually saw what African Americans have been experiencing for years.
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People thought we were just complaining about something that really did not happen and something that was not still occurring in this United States.
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And it was.
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It s absolutely happening.
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It s absolutely happening where you have people of color being shot and killed and nobody is being held accountable.
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And it doesn t necessarily have to be a police officer, as in the case of Ahmaud Arbery.
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Those were not police officers.
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Those were vigilantes in the community.
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And they decided that he did some break-ins and I m going to chase him and I m going to get my shotgun and I m going to shoot him.
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They decided that.
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And we have to stop that because people don t look at us for some reason as if we re human beings.
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Why do we have to humanize George Floyd?
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He s already a human.
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Why do we have to say, okay, well, tell us, tell us about George.
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Well, I don t have to tell you that he was a good son and he was a good father and he was a good, he still had no business being
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Nobody s knee should have been on his head, regardless, even if he was a criminal.
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If he was a criminal, then arrest him and take him to jail.
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Why kill him?
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That is not the place to decide if the person is innocent or guilty.
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Their job as police officers is to make the arrest.
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He wasn t resisting arrest.
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Why was he killed?
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Because of hatred.
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because of racism, because of racial profiling, and all of those things.
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And that s just the ugly truth of this country.
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And now a lot of people in the United States are forced to address these issues because there was a video, because they saw with their own two eyes what they really didn t want to believe.
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What we keep complaining about, what we keep bringing to the forefront
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Other people want to ignore as if it didn t occur because it didn t happen to me.
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It didn t happen to my family.
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It didn t happen in my community.
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Therefore, it didn t happen.
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Well, the ugly truth came out with George Floyd.
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People were able to see what African Americans have been experiencing for years.
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I talked to so many people of, you know, white people and
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Very often, they just don t understand because they don t have an experience.
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I always tell people, a belief is a poor substitute for an experience.
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You know, you can believe something about China, you go to China, you believe something about a person of a different race or religion or background, but then you have the experience of them.
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I mean, again, Scott Shepard and Daryl Davis are a perfect example of that.
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that they got to know each other as humans.
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You know, what do you see as the solution?
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And you know, what I try to say to my friends and people who don t have an experience, you know, friends of all colors, races, backgrounds, countries, I traveled 100 countries, you know, doing my work.
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So I see people in every culture.
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But what they don t understand is the experience of literally when that police officer is behind them, a person being deathly afraid that they could die or that their son or their daughter can t.
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So what do you want
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White America to understand and appreciate that they ve never appreciated before that this moment maybe gives them an opportunity to do so that their hearts are called to so their souls are called to.
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And so we put an end to this.
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I think what s happening now is African Americans usually talk to other African Americans and
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We are talking to each other.
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We re preaching to the choir.
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We already know what we have to experience.
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We already know what our sons and daughters have to experience.
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But now it s other people that are able to see what we have been experiencing.
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And I think through that video, it kind of changed mindsets.
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And that s something that s very necessary that we have to do.
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We got to change mindsets.
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We got to open up people s mind.
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And we can t just talk amongst ourselves about what we re experiencing.
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We have to talk to other people about what we re experiencing.
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People are never going to...
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They re never gonna feel what we feel as African-Americans, but you certainly can be compassionate.
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You can certainly support us based on what you saw.
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And so I know it s not gonna change the world.
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I know it s not gonna miraculously change somebody s life and, oh, I m changed forever.
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But at least we see progress with them standing together with us, with us joining forces
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You know, people really didn t believe what was going on here in the United States.
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I visited Switzerland.
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I visited Africa.
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I visited... People don t really understand.
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They don t understand.
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They re like, really?
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Is that happening here?
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Yes, it s absolutely happening here.
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But a lot of people didn t believe it because they didn t see it.
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With that video, they were able to see it.
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They were able to see that this was a police officer who is supposed to protect and serve is taking lives.
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He took a life.
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There was a loss of life.
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And one of the things that I want to work on right now, I m running for Miami-Dade County Commissioner.
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And one of the things that I want to work on as a commissioner, I want people to join me because when George Floyd was on the ground,
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deceased.
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I can guarantee you during that autopsy, they did a drug and alcohol testing on him, and they even did the COVID-19 virus testing on here, and they also did a background check.
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But what about the police officer with the gun?
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Did they do a background check on him?
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They pulled up his record after the fact, because so many people were questioning his background or his record as a police officer.
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Did he receive a drug and alcohol test?
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No, there has to be a law.
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Whenever there s a loss of life, people are too comfortable with shooting black and brown people.
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They re so comfortable.
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They go home and get in their beds.
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Look what happened in Brunswick, Georgia with Ahmaud Arbery.
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Those three guys, after he was dead on the ground, they went home and got in their beds.
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Nothing happened to them for months until we started protesting, until we started speaking out.
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until we started making comments and causing a few problems.
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Okay, now they re arrested.
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Then the same thing happened with Breonna Taylor, who was shot in her own home.
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They arrested the boyfriend.
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Like, how could that happen?
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It s insanity.
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They arrested the officers.
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But guess what?
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The officers took their smoking guns and went home and got in their beds.
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Again, with
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George Floyd, that police officer, when he finished and George was dead, they went home and got in their beds.
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How can that happen when there s a loss of life?
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I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if Trayvon had shot the person who killed him, Trayvon would have been arrested right there on the scene.
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Right there.
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If Ahmaud Arbery had shot the person who shot him, he would have went to jail on the scene.
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If George would have shot the police officer who put his knee on his neck, George would have went to jail day one right there on the scene.
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So why is it different standards and different policies on a universal level for African-American people and people of color?
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There s no excuse for it.
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And the only thing I can hope and the reason we re having this conversation is, you know, when problems are so big, the human mind gets overwhelmed and we try to just kind of disassociate from it.
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When you hear about war in Bosnia and people killing each other massively, people just disassociate.
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But if you can follow the story of one family, one person, one individual, one child, it can penetrate people.
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It doesn t matter what your color is.
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And I think that s fortunately what s coming out of the situation so far.
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And we have, you know, about 50 million people that are following us here on our social media, and they re all people that care.
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And so, you know, we re going to spread this and we re going to talk more about these solutions here as well.
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But I really thank you for your passionate voice.
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And count on me.
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You can reach out to me afterwards.
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I ll reach out to you about supporting you and your move here in the political environment here, because God knows we need voices like yours and hearts and souls like yours.
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They don t understand intellectually, but in your soul, your gut, your pain has driven you to still find a way to contribute rather than give up.
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And I honor and respect you for that so much, Sabrina.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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We re going to go now to Doc Rivers.
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Doc, again, most of you know, I m sure would know Doc is the head coach of Los Angeles Clippers and he s been an all star athlete himself in the
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80s you and I are contemporaries in age I think are you 58 is that right yeah I just turned 60 so we we ve lived through some of the same era so I d love doc I mean you have a unique perspective because you know athletes black athletes in this country are cherished and honored and then they take off their uniform and they go in places and they can be treated like
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Shit.
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That s the nicest word and come from it.
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I m sorry, but it is.
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It s just absurd.
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I d love it if you d share with us.
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And also, I know your father, I mentioned earlier, was a 30 year veteran from the Chicago Police Department.
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So yeah, you have both sides of it.
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And so I d love to hear.
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First of all,
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You know, you ve been in Europe, by the way, I have tremendous respect for you.
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You have so much emotion.
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I ve seen you communicate and you move people because you re moved.
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You touch people because you re touched.
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Tell us if you would, you know, as a voice for civil rights and as a man that, you know, deals with people and players all the time, professionals, how are they taking this and what s your perspective on where we are and what needs to happen and what s, what do you see happening to these beautiful souls, these athletes that one minute are honored, another moment they re treated horrifically.
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Well, it s a lesson Tony for all of us, you know, especially in the athletic world.
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I tell our guys all the time.
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We live in in a fake world.
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We live in an unreal world when we have our uniforms on and then when we take them off.
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if we re not dressed right or they don t recognize you, then we go back to being black, to be honest.
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And so they do see both sides of it, Tony.
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And this whole thing for me as a coach of 15 black men has been another teacher.
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I m humbled, number one, to be on this panel.
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We have a mother of a slain son, a brother of a slain brother, and a son of a slain father.
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And we keep hearing, you know, from what I hear from my athletes a lot.
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is, you know, I m tired of this.
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Enough is enough.
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You know, Martin talked about the time is now.
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And when you think about his dad talked about the time is now, you know, my dad was a police officer.
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My dad was the coach of the Little League team in the neighborhood.
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He was a coach of the basketball team and a football team.
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And when he drove around the streets, everyone said, hi, Mr. Rivers.
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Hi, Sergeant Rivers.
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They knew he was.
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He was part of the community.
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And that helped.
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But like, you know, I keep hearing about this conversation that we should be having.
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And as a black man, we ve been having this conversation.
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We ve been having this conversation for so long.
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And what we need is action.
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We need to change habits.
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For me, we need education.
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You know, I asked my players, and I ve asked a lot of people, a lot of white business owners, would they work for their business for free?
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for five years.
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And they all said, well, of course not.
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I said, what about 10 years?
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Where all the money went to the guy who owned the business?
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And they say, of course not.
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I said, what about 50 years?
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And they said, of course not.
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I wouldn t do that.
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Would you make your kids then work for that same company where the owner got all the profits?
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And you say, of course not.
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Well, that s slavery.
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That s 260 years of that.
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And on top of that 260 years, when they were finally free, then you had segregation and Jim Crow.
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How far do you have to be behind?
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You know, we re working in the deficit in so many ways.
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I think the worst thing about slavery, other than all the money that we raise, the generational wealth that blacks have raised, for whites, it s more the education.
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Like we have not been able to educate.
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for 200 years, 250 years.
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It was illegal for us to educate.
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And so I share these stories with my players and I share these stories with others so we can educate.
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50 years ago, if you went to the South or even the North and you opened a history book, there was nothing about slavery in the history books.
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We are slaves in the country that we were slaves in.
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And so it is embarrassing to talk about it, but we have to talk about it.
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We have to educate.
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We have to humanize ourselves.
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Like, we are dehumanized in so many ways.
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You see the white cop in Dallas that mistakenly walked into an apartment building and didn t say it was her place and killed a man, and you saw the judge come off the bench.
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and hug him, hug her, and you saw people give her all this love, and that s great.
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Like, I feel compassion for everybody.
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But when a black boy goes to jail for, you know, a little bit of weed, and he s in there for 10 years, they don t tell his story.
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They don t say that this kid grew up in poverty.
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you know, unequal education, and he was hopeless and joined the game because he saw no other hope.
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And to me, like, we have to do more than have a conversation.
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We need that.
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But we have to take action and we have to change habits, but we have to educate.
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And education is so important, not just for whites, but for blacks as well.
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We have to educate ourselves.
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And I m not talking about school education.
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I m talking about education on how we got here.
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Because that s where you ll start having compassion.
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But this is not a black thing.
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This is a human thing.
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And so we have to have humanity.
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I find it interesting, and I think Martin said it, that this is the first time that he ever saw that not only in this country, but all around the world, they re protesting.
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It s the same thing we did, but we ve become in some way South Africa.
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It s the same thing everyone did to get Nelson Mandela out of jail and the equal rights in South Africa.
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Think about that.
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Now we re doing that, and people around the world is doing it to us, which tells us we have a lot of work to do.
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But this is good.
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Protests are good.
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We focus, Tony, and I m going to end with this, way too much on the protesters.
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And we got to keep our focus on the acts and why the protests are happening.
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I think we focus too much
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Like, I agree.
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Like, I don t like crime.
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I don t like any violence, you know?
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But let s not get lost why it s happening.
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We have to keep our focus there.
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My dad always said one thing.
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My dad was a good cop.
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And he always said, you know one thing that a good cop hates is a bad cop.
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And the bad apple thing, that s true.
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But I think what we all are fighting for, we understand in society there are bad apples.
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But when bad apples happen, they have to be persecuted.
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And I think over anything else, that s what this fight is about right now.
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If you focus on George Floyd and all these other things, most of the time, most of the time, they go free.
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So if there s no consequences for your act,
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you get emboldened and you do it more.
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So we have to persecute people who are doing wrong.
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Because if we do wrong, we feel like it comes at us twofold.
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We just need that same treatment for anyone that does something.
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And where does that education begin and what s the form of that education that has a lasting impact on the psyche, the spirit, the heart, and the mind of an individual?
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Because, you know, people aren t born this way, right?
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You see little kids, doesn t matter what color your skin is.
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I mean, we all share 99.9% of the same exact DNA.
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I mean, it s absurd.
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We all started with dark skin and if you study history, we migrated to these northern areas where you needed lighter skin to get the vitamin D. You needed darker skin in Africa.
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We re all made of the same stuff.
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Yeah.
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So how do we, where does that education begin, Doc, and what s the form of that education that can, you know, have that impact that s lasting?
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Well, we have to teach it, Tony.
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We have to teach it through our schools, obviously, for adults.
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You know, I don t know how many times over the last week I ve been asked, how do I educate myself?
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What should I need to do?
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And you go read.
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You go find.
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You go research.
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But for kids, we just have to educate them.
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Because you re right.
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Racism is not an inborn act.
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It s taught, right?
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And sometimes it s not even taught
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It just happens because you re in a house of someone who doesn t know, you know, a black person or doesn t know the history of this country.
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I really believe, like, if we teach more, we ll do more.
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And we ll understand.
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The other thing is voting.
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And someone, I think Martin brought up voting.
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But we have to teach everyone, when you hear voting, what do you think?
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You think immediately the presidency.
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Like, that s obviously
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Vital, really important, right?
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but it s also the DA, the mayor, the sheriffs in town.
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We got to get involved in this.
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And I do think this is a call right now to do it, but we have to do this much longer than a protest.
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You know, we, everybody on this panel, um, have seen protests in their lives, uh, and we ve seen little change.
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All right.
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You know, so we have to get involved and we have to stay involved.
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I think that s the key.
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What would your father say about this situation?
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What would his be advice if he s here today?
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How would he coach you coach and in turn coach America for a moment?
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Well, my dad always said one thing, there ll be no victims in the river s house.
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He always said, but you are going to get victimized.
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And when that happens, you have to keep pushing, but you can t stop because then they win.
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He said that all the time.
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And so my dad would be angry right now, just like we all are.
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My dad would preach to me about education because he was a very educated man.
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He was the first man in my entire family.
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to have a couple years of college.
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At that age, that was unusual.
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But that s what he would be preaching right now.
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And then he would be preaching justice, like, hey, it s not a cop, it s someone killed one human being.
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killed another human being, that human being has to have justice done to him.
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And it takes us so long to do it.
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It s amazing.
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And whoever said it is so right.
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The first thing we talk, listen, you can break a crime and not die.
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Like you can cash a check, even a bad check, and you should not die from it.
9
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You know, so it feels like every time we do something, they tell our story, but they don t tell the cop s story.
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It came out so late, about 13 times he s been written up.
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So that s what my dad would be saying.
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My dad, you know, unfortunately died before Barack Obama became president, but he used to tell me every day, you can be, boy, you can be anything in the world but president.
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Now we know we can be that too, but we have to do it through voting, and that s what my dad would say.
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Thank you, Doc, from the soul and your coaches, Coach, Coach in America.
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Thank you very much for your heartfelt peace.
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And it s great to honor your father and all that he brought to you, because I also think that s where it all begins.
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It doesn t just begin in schools.
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It begins with fathers and mothers to step up and tell the truth about the diversity of life, the beauty of life.
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I mean, if you want to know what the universe or God loves, you go to the forest and what do you see?
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Everything is different.
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Every twig, every tree, every branch, you know, and that s the beauty.
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but somehow along the way with tribalism and mentality the mind gets in the way and people are suspicious of what they don t understand and they don t have an experience of and I apologize to all of you from my heart and soul for all that you ve gone through and your families have gone through and my hope is this conversation can spread other conversations to action you know and it s just not a conversation now hopefully people will be moving like I said we got about 50 million people out there will be watching this and that
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That s a momentum, just another step.
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We have to keep stacking every step.
9
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So thank you, Doc.
9
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Bishop T.D.
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Jakes, you re a force of nature, brother.
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I love you dearly.
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I love what your life is about.
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Many people probably don t know that you ve not only coached and counseled so many people through funerals and through this kind of pain, but also that you ve also experienced it in your own family.
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If I remember correctly, it was your grandfather
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that was murdered while your grandmother was pregnant.
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I remember, right?
9
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That s right.
9
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That s right.
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That s exactly right.
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Give us your perspective on where we are, how we got here and where we got to go.
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What has to be done?
9
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You know, it s funny.
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You should mention my grandfather.
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I was in here thinking about him.
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My grandfather.
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June 9th.
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He was he passed and you were born on June 9th.
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Is that right?
9
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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They murdered him on June 9th and I was born several years later on the day that he was murdered.
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And that s not unique.
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I mean, almost every black person in America has a story like that.
9
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Runaways that we never found again.
9
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Part of our family fleeing in the middle of the night.
9
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Not sure where our cousins are.
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Don t know what our last name really is.
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Our last names are a derivative of whoever owned us.
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And we re living in a contemporary society where they say all of that is long ago.
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We should forget it.
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Well, I don t even have a name.
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because Jakes is German and clearly I m not German.
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So every time I call my own name, I m reminded of the fact that slavery has forever marked me.
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So you deal with 401 years of what I characterize as molestation.
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And I call it molestation because molestation is when someone in power takes advantage of someone without power.
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And that s what we re talking about today.
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Whether you re talking about the way the police act out on the street, or whether you re talking about the DAs, or whether you re talking about false autopsy reports, we re talking about how we handle power.
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I d like to divide racism from injustice, because they re often used interchangeably, but they re really not the same thing.
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Racism is a condition of the heart.
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It deals with how you feel about me.
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Injustice is an action.
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It s how you act toward me.
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Now, there are no legislations that can legislate how you feel about another person.
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If it were, we could legislate marriages back together.
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We could legislate all types of healing all over the world.
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There s not going to be any legislation made that eradicates all types of biases and racism.
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What that is going to take is the love of God in our hearts and the experience of interacting with people on a personal basis to subvert the way that we have been programmed to think about people based on superficial realities.
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That s the thing about racism.
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So that s important.
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And that really needs to be done.
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And we really need to work on that.
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What brings us all around this table and what makes us all have so much fraternity around this table is injustice.
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And we have it on every level.
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It was unjust that Sabrina Fulton would have her child snatched out of the world.
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It was unjust that Martin Luther King III grew up without Martin Luther King Jr.
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It was unjust.
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Over and over we could go, George Frazier, on and on and on.
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All of these are examples of injustices.
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When we talk about white privilege, a lot of white people get offended, but let s go back and understand that the Constitution describes us as being three-fifths human.
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So we have always had to fight for humanity.
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We re still trying to make up that last two fifths.
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And that inequity of how we are seen and how we often see ourselves, not just how you see us, but how we often see ourselves has left a deep scar on us like a child that s been molested.
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And similarly to that molestation, one of the things that gives me great gratification about what I see on the streets now with blacks and whites and browns marching together is that up until this point, we have not been believed.
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And anybody who works with molested people understands that worse than the molestation itself, or equally as bad, is the difficulty often the victims have in being believed by the other parent or by the school or by anybody.
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For the last 200 or some years, every time we would try to tell you what was going on, we were not believed.
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We were given names like race baiters.
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We were given
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like haters and you don t love your country because you bowed a knee and I m so insulted that you could bend your knee and then this police officer bends his knee and I put up a picture of him bending his knee and Colin Kaepernick bending his knee and I want to know which one is worse.
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If you can be that enraged, that enraged about somebody who did a peaceful demonstration, just trying to tell you, hey, we re over here being molested on the street.
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It s not that.
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It s not that.
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Now, let s be clear, Tony.
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We are not saying that all of our people are right or good, don t make mistakes, and don t need to be arrested.
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That s not true at all.
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We all know that that s not true.
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What we are saying is we are people too and we should not be tried and executed on the sidewalk.
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This notion of trying and executing us on the sidewalk and going away and having coffee and donuts, it makes you so disgusted and so angry.
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And how do I convince my children of that other two-fifths of humanity that has been compromised in the country that we love?
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When every day they wake up to illustrations that my parents thought were gone with Dr. King.
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And here we are again, singing the same songs, even in the same key that Dr. King sung them in when I was a little boy.
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watching on a screen that look like a bifocal lens.
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The reality today is that we have to grapple with this.
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And it is not just we have to change the way we vote.
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We have to change.
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We need the support of CEOs to stop funding candidates who do not have a serious Black agenda to bring up equality and righteousness and justice.
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Do not fund them just because you get a tax advantage.
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We need CEOs who will create job opportunities for returning citizens because our criminal justice system is rigged.
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And once it has been rigged, we come out to a rigged system where we can t get an apartment, we can t get a place to stay, and we can t get a job.
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And we have no training and we ve been locked up for years and sometimes executed by the criminal justice system, not just on the street, but in the electric chair in the gas chamber fatal lethal injection and oops I got it wrong doesn t get us back.
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We need people to recognize that turning us over to a system that denies us that other two fifths of humanity and equality is like turning us over to the slave masters that we were running from in the first place.
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This is real for me.
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I grew up going to colored bathrooms and drinking from colored water fountains and watching my father go to the back door of restaurants to get something to eat.
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And if it had not been for Martin Luther King s father, my father would still be at the back door of restaurants trying to get something for his kids to eat that he had to eat in the car.
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My great grandmother was a slave.
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She died when I was 10 years old with a brand on her back.
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Our history is not so long ago.
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It was just yesterday.
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And the ramifications of the kind of abuse that has been infused upon us against our will has left a lot of terrible side effects on us as individuals, of which whites can be inconsiderate and quite judgmental, even though you were implicit.
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and participatory, like the three police officers who stood alongside and watched what happened to George Lloyd.
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If you stand alongside and continue to watch what is happening to us and don t do anything about it, you are just as complicit as the people who did it.
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And I think it s important to say something here because I often hear, and I have a lot of white friends.
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I have a lot of white members of my church.
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I have a lot of white police officers that I pastor.
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I have white people in my family.
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I have no problem with being white.
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I have a problem with being ignorant.
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And I think to give yourself a pass to say, I could never know what it is like to be a black man and I could never know what it s like to come from your background and have your set of experiences is absolutely true, but it does not give you an excuse.
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Men deliver babies for women who are pregnant without being women.
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We fight every day against child abuse without having been abused.
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We speak up against everything else.
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You don t have to be a dog to put a football player in jail for abusing a dog.
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We cannot give ourselves these sociological passes about this level of pain.
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And the other thing that I want to say, because I have so much to say, I m just going to just throw it up at you.
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Please, please.
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The other thing I want to say, this notion that I keep hearing in the press
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that 99.9% police officers are good.
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Where did you get that stat from?
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Where did you get that stat from?
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Where did you get that stat from?
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You must realize that the people that are talking to you on this panel today haven t said nothing educational to each other.
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This is our reality.
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So we are not having an eye-opening experience.
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We have just finally been believed because the reality is the police service that you get in your community is not the same police service that most blacks get in their community.
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It s not the same experience.
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There is a reason that there is a fear when blue lights start flashing, whereas you see comfort when they drive by your house, you feel like, oh, thank God I m protected.
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We think, oh God, I might be hunted.
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And it goes all the way back to the police being a part of bringing back the slaves to the masters or standing by while we were hung or raped or castrated.
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It goes back to the 60s.
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It was the police holding the dogs and the water hoses.
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And here we are in 2020, it s the police with their knee on our neck.
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This is not new.
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It shouldn t take us 200 and some years to learn this lesson.
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But when you write the books you read, you come up with skewed truth.
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There s all kinds of books out there that are written by people who have suffered these kinds of travesties.
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You have to realize the reason that black people are excited right now is that we are like children who were being molested by daddy and now mama believes us.
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And you can t imagine how my eyes filled with tears to see young and old white men and women standing out there with us to admit that our lives matter.
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I felt like a little child and mama finally believed I was telling the truth.
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You have not had to have the conversations with your children I ve had to have with mine.
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My son called me in the middle of the night, and I m not, I don t live in the ghetto, and I m not broke, and I don t have some of the crisis trauma.
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We re never safe.
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I don t care what sociological, economic level of life or intellectualism you may have.
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We still, when the rubber hits the road, we re in the same situation.
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My son calls me at midnight and says, Daddy, I m in trouble.
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My heart leaps in my throat.
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I said, what s wrong?
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He said, I had a wreck.
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The ambulance is there, the police are there, and it looks real bad that I think the car is totaled.
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And I said, are you okay?
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He said, yes, sir, I think I m okay.
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I m just shaking, but I m okay.
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I said, keep me on the phone.
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Keep me on the phone, on the speakerphone so I can hear.
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Now, the reason I said that is I was more scared of the police than I was of the car wreck.
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I was scared to death.
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I said, don t say anything crazy.
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Don t do anything wrong.
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Don t get frustrated and leave.
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Keep your hands where they can see them.
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I m talking in his ear, talking him through the process, and I have to give it up to the police officer.
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He was gracious.
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He was professional.
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He was everything I had hoped for.
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But I want you to know that my heart always has to contemplate
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that this might be the night that one of those other, whatever percentage it is, police officer has my child and I m on the phone with Lawyer Crump.
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That is the reality of being black, whether you re Christian, whether you re non-Christian, whether you re wealthy, whether you re a good person with no blemish on your record, and the moment something happens,
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like the way we used to do women when they reported rape.
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The first tactic of the lawyer was to discredit her by bringing up her past.
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The moment something happens to us, the first thing they do is look for any kind of dirt that says this person is flawed.
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They smoked reefer, they drank, they had a beer, whatever it is, but none of that adds up to the right to kill me.
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So when right now we have a bill in Congress that we are fighting to get passed against lynching, why would we have to fight to get both sides to agree that lynching is wrong?
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Now, years ago, I was told that when you speak truth to power, that s what we were supposed to do.
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And we thought power was elected officials.
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And to a degree, it is.
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But the real power is the people who fund the elected officials.
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And so if I were to speak truth to power today, I don t have to go to Washington.
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I have to go to those CEOs and companies who are funding the campaigns of people who make it legal to kill me.
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And if you want to do something really good, thank God you donated some money to the NAACP or the Urban League or NAN or somebody, or you gave something to our foundation that s really good.
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If you want to do something better than that, stop funding the campaigns of people who think it s okay to kill me.
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Hold them accountable.
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While I am trying to get our people to vote, we need voices like yours to get your people to hold those people accountable to a higher standard that stops the pain of a pregnant woman being shot with rubber bullets in her belly in the middle of a demonstration.
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Of a peaceful demonstration in Washington, D.C.
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being abruptly
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stopped and gassed.
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for a photo opportunity.
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And just because it s your party, doesn t mean you don t need to correct it.
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And just because, and if you really study the criminal justice, I work, I have the Texas Offenders Reentry Initiative, which is part of a TD Jakes Foundation.
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And I also work with STEM programs.
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So I m really up to speed on this.
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If you really go back and study historically, the war on crime was really code for war on us.
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Both Democrats and Republicans have participated in it.
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The district attorneys, when they really get ready to run for office, the code is, I m going to be tough on crime.
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That s how you get elected.
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So there is a relationship between the DA and the prosecutors and the police.
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And the reason our community doesn t trust you is because the police reports over George Floyd changed when the pictures came out.
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The reports that changed over Armaud when the pictures came out.
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If it were not but for a camera, we would not be believed today.
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And so you can start by believing the victim rather than explaining to me what my experience is as a black person.
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To validate my witness might give me my two fifths humanity back that causes me to be not better than you, not on top of you, just equal.
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That s all we want.
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We just want to be treated fairly.
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Just fair, not exceptionally, not exempted.
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We just want, when you arrest us, we want you to treat us the same way you did that boy that killed those people in that church and took him over to get a burger before you took him to jail.
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George Lloyd did not get a burger.
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He got a knee.
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And we re hurt.
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You want to be honest?
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We re very hurt.
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I can speak for myself.
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There were days I woke up with tears running down my face for hours.
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It s disgusting.
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It s disgusting that my grandfather died for nothing.
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that they shot Dr. King in the head, and I see little progress.
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It s disgusting to have to look Sabrina in the face and know that she went through a pain that a mother will never forget, and to watch mother after mother after mother after mother go through that again.
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while people who could join us as fellow human beings said, I don t understand.
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It s just not on my radar.
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I didn t get it that way.
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I didn t hear it that way.
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We need to listen to all types of news, not just the news that reinforces what we believe.
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We need to watch other kind of movies.
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We need to read each other s books.
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We need to be the family God created us to be.
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There is no way, I ll say this and shut up, there is no way in God s green earth
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that I could see Tony Robbins on the side of the road and put my knee in his neck, or let anybody else do that, and me not fight them to the death, as white as you are, and as black as I am, I would go down to the floor fighting for you.
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As I would for you, brother, as you know in your soul, as I would for you.
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And, you know, Romans talks about mourn with those who mourn.
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And we all mourn this experience because it s our brothers and sisters.
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It isn t black or white, but the experience of just that color difference living in this country passed a shift.
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That s why we re having this conversation.
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And please don t you ever dare shut up.
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Such a passionate, eloquent, and powerful voice.
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I have nothing to add to it.
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My only question for you is, you know I ve supported with you on the STEM side and the education side, and you re doing so many different pieces.
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Give us what you would like your white brothers and sisters and people of all races, what do you want them to do in this special moment right now?
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The first, they have to feel.
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Their heart has to shift.
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And I don t know how we can watch and hear all of you without that occurring.
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or watch George Floyd s experience without that occurring.
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We re at that tipping point, I hope.
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But what do you want them to do?
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Give me the core of what you want them to do besides what they feel.
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I want them to get a hold of the electoral process and stop empowering people to kill us.
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As I said before, I want them to do that.
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I want them to go out of their way to create a path out of the criminal justice system for a second chance for nonviolent offenders.
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I want them to do that.
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We have taken almost 40,000 people have gone through Texas Offenders Reentry Initiative just covering the state of Texas alone.
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Our rate of recidivism is lower than any other in the country.
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There are many others out there who are doing the same thing.
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Get involved, come out of your silos, come out of your country club for a minute, or I ll meet you at the country club, or you can come to mine, and let s have a real honest heart-to-heart conversation about how we can move this country forward.
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I want them to close the digital gap because 80% of the jobs coming in the future over the next 10 years, or maybe five now, because of COVID-19 expediting the influence of technology, I want them to close the digital gap so that there are more jobs.
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Because you know what, Tony?
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I ve never been mugged by anybody who had to go to work in the morning.
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and creating job opportunities for oppressed people solves a lot of problems in the community.
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Emptying out the jails that we have built for big business from nonviolent crimes sends our fathers back home to raise their sons.
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It s not that we smoke more weed than you did, we bought it from you.
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It s just that you had better lawyers, you knew who to call, you knew what to do.
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When white kids or white people, I m not sure you can handle this, but when white people have a drug problem, it s considered a sickness.
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and you it s considered a sickness oh the opioid addiction it s a sickness oh my god we ve got to pass money and legislation for a sickness when black people get on drugs we re criminals when your kids get on drugs they re patients fix this we love our kids like you love your kids
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Our women want our men to come out of jail.
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Our little boys need their fathers back.
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Just because your father smoked dope at 17 or 18 doesn t mean he ought to still be locked up at 40.
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In some of our states, the judge can get high, and we still haven t got the guys out of jail who went into jail for doing the same thing that we re now legalizing.
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I m asking you to think.
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I m asking you to think about me and I am promising you that I will think about you and we need to think about each other before our enemies outside of this country think about what a great opportunity it is to destroy this country.
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While we are in such upheaval because of a pandemic, because of an economic crisis, and because of sociological chaos, we are more vulnerable to outside attack than we ve ever been before.
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We cannot afford to be blind any longer.
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We need to think right now.
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And the name of the project that you re working with on in the prisons to get people out that have all they have to do if anybody wants to help me all they have to do is give to the TV J foundation.
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When you get to the foundation up under that banner it s a Texas offenders reentry initiative.
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and esteem program that we re offering to kids at early ages to kind of get them qualified to that.
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But there are other programs out there, too.
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There are a myriad of programs of people who are doing great work.
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Educate yourself, compare, see where there s a line.
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And it s not just about money.
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Create job opportunities.
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Allow our kids to go and work with you during the summer so that they can experience everything, everything where the floor was level and the rules were clear.
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Black people excelled at it.
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Basketball, the floor was level and the rules were clear, we did good.
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Football, the floor was level and the rules were clear, we did good.
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Everywhere the floor is level and the rules are clear, we do good.
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Give us a chance.
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Our little kids became everything they were exposed to.
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So they can do hip-hop.
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They can do music.
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They can do recording.
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They can play basketball.
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They can play football.
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They can run.
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And now they re starting to golf because if we can see it, we can be it.
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And they can preach.
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But we have not seen Goldman and Sachs, and we have not seen inside Exxon Mobil Oil.
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We have not seen inside of Xerox.
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We ve not seen inside of Microsoft.
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And until we can see it, we can t be it.
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We want the floor level and the rules clear, and we will jump hoop on you right then.
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You want the man.
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There s Doc in the back right there.
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Obviously, it s not just about economics.
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My feet, my tongue, and my wallet move in the same direction, and I ve already supported you before, but I didn t know about the project you re doing around the prison system.
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And I m going to donate matching funds of a quarter million dollars.
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You re going to get the quarter million anyway, regardless of what they do.
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But anybody who s watching, I ll double your impact.
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We ll double the dollar s effect towards this foundation.
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I know it s not the only one, but I know the great work you re doing to provide new futures by the education around STEM.
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But I didn t know about what you re doing now in the prison system.
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And to me, that s one of the single most important places where we have to put the balance back.
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So thank you.
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Let me just thank you from my heart.
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We have been holding the programs together, but we don t get
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not even a tenth of the support that other entities get, but we have been holding it together with nails in spite of the fact that we have received presidential awards from President Obama s and even out of the Trump administration.
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Thank you for your help with that and God help anybody else who will help us and all the other programs that our community is holding together.
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One final thing, if you re
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CEO friends could adopt a small black business of any kind.
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Give them some money, but give them some experience.
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Help them with accounting.
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Help them to understand how to handle money because we were the first people to come over here with a sign up that said, we ll work for food.
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That s slavery.
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So that means we work, we got food.
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And then when we got free, we got money, but we don t know what to do with money.
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We need financial literacy so that we see money as more than an expendable item
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to spend.
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You re talking about billions of dollars worth of capital that need to be invested.
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Give us a little training.
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Adopt a small business.
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It won t take much from you.
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You d be surprised how little we can live off of.
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You d be surprised at the businesses that are dying for $10,000 and $50,000 and an accountant.
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and just a class once a month on bookkeeping.
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Adopt one business.
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If every successful white business would adopt at least one business and expose them to marketing and benefits and give them an opportunity to market when you buy marketing, just buy a few extra spots for them.
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You turn it around.
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Economics is a factor in justice because justice can be bought.
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If you got enough money, you can get out.
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Justice plays a factor between a court attorney and a court-appointed attorney and a good attorney.
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Money plays a factor in the judicial process.
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It s not just about black and white.
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It s about green.
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Plays a factor in what school I can go to, what neighborhood I can live in.
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Most of the people who are protecting us, who have hands on, whether we re going through magnometers in the airport, or whether we ve got nurses in the hospital, or whether they re cleaning the hospital rooms, or whether they re police officers, cannot afford to live in the cities they protect.
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And while we re singing songs for these first responders, how about a raise?
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Little things like that, fighting to make sure that the good police officers can afford to live in the city and maybe and break up some of the hell that they go through, firemen and everybody else to serve you, to clean you, to feed you, to bathe your mama.
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to make sure your mama dies properly, to make sure she has her injection when she needs it.
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That s us.
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That s us driving the cabs and the buses and all of the rail systems.
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That s us.
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That s us taking your baggage and your life.
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That s us.
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Just make sure we can go home and have a family.
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Now, a few of us escaped.
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But you can t point at the few and say, look at so-and-so, and look at so-and-so, and look at Oprah Winfrey, and look at T.D.
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Jackson.
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Don t look at me, because I didn t have a record.
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I had never been locked up, by the grace of God.
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I had a little bit more of a level floor.
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It s not just about being black.
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It s about the inequities of the floor.
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We start with health disparities, food deserts, all of these problems.
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I know it s overwhelming.
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We don t want you to fix it for us.
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We want you to fix it with us.
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It s gotta be cheaper to fix our communities than it is to carry your business to Mexico.
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Still got crime, still got drugs, still getting danger, and now you re overseeing shipping.
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It would be cheaper to fix our communities.
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There are opportunity zones.
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If ever America s gonna change for the opportunity zones, for the COVID-19 problem that we re having, for the momentum of the public, now is the moment of change.
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I ll stop.
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Preach, Bishop, preach.
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Preach, brother.
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Well, you gotta have at least one of us.
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I think you found your calling, brother, perhaps.
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Yes.
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I love you so dearly.
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We ll talk afterwards, but we ll put your website on there.
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So that s one of the choices that people can support.
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Again, I ll match them up to a quarter of a million.
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I ll save a quarter of a million regardless.
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But in addition, I ll provide, you can talk afterwards.
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I think, you know, I have 54 companies.
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You know, I started with absolutely nothing as I m sure you know.
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I ve moved up and I ve got them, you know, across a dozen different industries and I teach these tools.
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So I m going to also give you a thousand scholarships from the $10,000 head person of programs I do.
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For the next two years, 500 a year, you pick the people you want and we ll educate them, train them, and give them the leg up they need in that area, brother.
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Thank you.
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That s fabulous.
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Thank you.
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That s worth the Hubble Day.
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All right, we re coming towards the end here, but not last but not least, by any stretch, and thank you guys for your endurance, and thank you to those watching for your endurance, but this demands more than a three-minute soundbite.
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You know, so many of you have been interviewed on the news and at different stages, and you deliver a beautiful message, but, you know, three or four minutes, and we go to a damn commercial.
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Here, we re putting ourselves on the line to get the truth out, and I know those who are watching still, we re just grateful to you.
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Let s talk about solutions that seem impossible.
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It seems from where we are after all these decades since you know Martin Luther King Jr.
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You know, I have a dream speech over 50 years ago and here we re still dealing with it.
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So a lot of people you couldn t couldn t blame somebody African American or anyone else for thinking nothing s going to change this, but our next
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incredible leader and guest, heartfelt guest is Daryl Davis.
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And Daryl, as I already said, is a great musician.
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He s an activist.
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He s an author.
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But Daryl has this unique gift that he has found a way to bridge the gap with people you would think it would be impossible to bridge the gap with.
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And so I really want to come to you now, Daryl.
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First of all, thank you for joining us.
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And would you start out, Daryl, by just telling us the story of how this first happened?
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Because you ve got taken with, is it 200 Klansmen now?
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Is that right?
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That s incredible, Darryl.
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Tell us the first time it happened when you re playing, you know, music.
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Tell us the story, if you would, and tell us what made it possible and then what drove you after that to expand beyond that one relationship, which by itself would be an unbelievable life accomplishment, to what you ve done for the last 30 years, brother.
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Well, I have a degree in music performance and jazz, and I was playing rock and roll and blues and things like that, and then country music had made a resurgence.
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So if you want to work full-time, which I did, I joined a country band.
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And country music and blues music is the exact same music, the same three chords.
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And I joined a country band.
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It was an all-white band.
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I was the only black person in there.
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and consequently, usually the only black person where we would play.
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Well, the band used to play or they had played at a place called the Silver Dollar Lounge in Frederick, Maryland, about an hour and a half outside of Washington, DC, hour and 20 minutes.
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And the Silver Dollar Lounge was an all white lounge, not meaning that blacks could not go in there, but blacks chose not to go in there.
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And that was a good choice because they were not welcome.
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It was an all-white lounge, and usually, you know, when you re not welcome and alcohol is being served, it s not a good combination.
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So they stayed out.
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Well, here I was in the Silver Dollar Lounge, and my first time.
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The band had been there before.
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We came off the bandstand after the first set, take a break, on our way to sit down, and this white gentleman walked across the dance floor and put his arm around my shoulder and said how much he enjoyed the music.
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And I shook his hand, I thanked him.
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And then he pointed at the stage and said, I ve seen this here band before, but I ain t never seen you before.
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Where d you come from?
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And I explained, well, yeah, you probably did see him.
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You know, they told me they played here, but I just joined them.
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I ve only been in the band a couple of months and it s my first time here.
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He says, well, man, I sure like your piano playing.
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This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.
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And I was not offended.
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I was not offended.
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But I was rather surprised that this guy was probably 15, 18 years older than me.
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And he did not know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis s style of playing.
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And I said to him, I said, well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play?
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He says, well, he invented that.
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No, he didn t.
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I said, I know Jerry Lee Lewis.
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He s told me himself.
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He s a friend of mine.
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He s told me himself what he learned how to play.
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He learned from black, blues, and boogie-woogie piano players.
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That s where rock and roll, rockabilly came from.
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Oh, no, no, no.
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Jerry Lee invented that.
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I ain t never seen no black man play like that except for you.
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So I m thinking, OK, well, this guy never saw Little Richard or Fats Domino or something.
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But he was fascinated enough with me, he didn t believe me, but he was fascinated enough that he wanted to buy me a drink.
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Now, I don t drink, but I went back to his table and had a cranberry juice with him.
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He paid the waitress, he took his glass and cheered me, clinked my glass.
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And then he says, you know, this is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man.
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Now I m kind of baffled, like, you know, what s going on here?
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I asked him why, and he didn t answer me at first.
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I asked him again, and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and said, tell him, tell him, tell him.
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I said, tell me, I understand the mystery here.
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He looked at me just as plain as day and said, I m a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
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And I burst out laughing at him, because I did not believe him.
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You thought he was joking.
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I thought he was joking.
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I know a lot about the Klan, a whole lot.
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And they don t operate that way.
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So I think, OK, this guy s just jerking me around.
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He probably figured I was jerking him around about Jerry Lee, so he s going to jerk me around about the Klan.
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So I m laughing, and he goes inside his wallet, flips through, and hands me his Klan membership card.
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I looked at it, and I was shocked.
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I recognized the Ku Klux Klan insignia, a red circle with a white cross and red blood drop in the center.
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You know, this thing is for real.
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So I stopped laughing, right?
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And I gave it back to him.
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And we talked about the Klan and some other things.
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But I m going to skip ahead.
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I had formed a question in my mind.
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in 1968 when I had rocks thrown at me in a Cub Scout parade and I didn t understand why.
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And I formed a question that was, how can you hate me when you don t even know me?
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And I ve been searching for the answer to that question and I could not find it.
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Nobody seemed to be able to give me a satisfactory answer.
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So later on, you know, that guy gave me his phone number and wanted me to call him anytime I was to come to that bar with this band because he wanted to bring his friends, you know, his friends, Klansmen and Klanswomen to see this Black guy play piano like Jerry Lee.
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I m not sure he called me a Black guy to his friends, but he wanted me to call him and let him know when I was playing there.
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So we were there every six weeks.
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You can t even make up a story like this, Darryl.
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This is for real.
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This is incredible.
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And I d call him every six weeks, and he would show up.
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And he d bring Klansmen and Klanswomen.
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They didn t come in their robes and hoods.
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They came in street clothes.
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And they would watch me play, and they would get on the dance floor and dance to our music.
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And on the breaks, I would go to his table.
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and say hello.
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Some of them were curious about me.
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They wanted to meet me and talk to me.
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Others would see me coming and they d get up and scoot off to some other part of the room.
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They want to see me, but not associate with me, which was fine.
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And so this went on to the end of the year, and I quit that band and went back to playing rock and roll and blues.
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But then it dawned on me, Daryl, the answer to your question
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that s been plaguing you since age 10 fell right into your lap.
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Who better to ask that question, how can you hate me when you don t even know me, than to ask somebody who would go so far as to join an organization whose whole premise has been hating people who don t look like them and who don t believe as they believe.
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Get back in contact with that guy and write a book.
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Get him to hook you up.
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with the Grand Dragon and the Imperial Wizard and other people and other clan members.
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Go up north, go down south, go to the Midwest, go to the West, and interview people.
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Get them to hook you up and write this book and ask those people that question.
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Because he was friendly with you, maybe he ll help you out.
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So that s what I did.
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Long story short, I traveled the country and I interviewed a lot of clan members, leaders, imperial wizards, grand dragons, exalted cyclopses, great titans, so forth and so on.
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And I wrote the book, Clandestine Relationships.
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And through the process of sitting down and talking with these people, many of them ended up leaving the clan and giving me their robes and hoods.
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I m gonna tell you right quick about one guy here.
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This guy, he was a grand dragon in the state of Maryland.
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Grand dragon means state leader.
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Imperial wizard means national leader.
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Anybody imperial is on the national level.
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Anybody on the grand level is on the state level.
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This guy, his name was Robert White, Bob White.
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He was the grand dragon from Maryland.
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Yeah.
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And he was a grand dragon from Maryland.
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And anyway, he went to prison.
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He went to prison for four years for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore.
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He got out of prison and continued running the Klan.
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And he went back to prison a few years later for assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun.
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So when he got out, I interviewed him.
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And this man was vehemently
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anti Semitic and very, very racist, you know, the whole problem with with the world where the Jews and the blacks and we kept talking and talking and slowly but surely he began to humanize me.
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And it s hard to hate somebody when you re sitting right there in front of them and they re speaking the same language.
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And they re seeing that you want the same things for your family that they want for their family.
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So long story short, over a period of time, this man left the Klan.
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Now let me tell you something.
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Being a grand dragon, being an imperial wizard, a great legal, whatever, does not bring you any money, unless you re embezzling some of the dues that the members pay.
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You have to have a job.
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This man gave me his robe and hood.
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I have a ton of robes and hoods here.
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I got it out to show it to you, if you can see it.
13
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Oh, wow, that s incredible.
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This is his grand dragon robe.
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Now, his day job,
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you know, his day job.
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Let me just hook this for you here.
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Baltimore City police officer.
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Okay.
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He was not, he was not an undercover cop in the Klan gathering intelligence.
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He was a bonafide Klansman on the Baltimore City.
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A leader of the Klan, not just a Klansman, but a leader.
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Okay.
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And he left the Klan because of me.
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We became good friends.
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We became the best of friends.
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And it starts with dialogue.
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But I got to ask, when you ask them the question, how can you hate me without knowing me, what were their answers?
13
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And then how do you get?
13
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Let me tell you the answers, OK?
13
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I got two answers.
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Because I would ask the question when I first started interviewing the people, all right?
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The answer I would get is, are Black people are criminals?
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Because you can see that there are more blacks in prison than white people.
13
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So we re prone to crime.
13
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Well, that s the half truth.
13
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Yes, there are more blacks in prison than white people, but it s not because we re criminals.
13
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A lot of it is because
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of the inequity in the judicial system, as the Bishop said, also that we cannot afford the attorneys, as the Bishop said.
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So they don t see that.
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One s perspective is one s reality.
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So they see the result, and that fits their narrative.
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Then I m told also that Black people are lazy.
13
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We don t want to work.
13
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We prefer to scam the government welfare system.
13
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And then I m told that Black people are born with a smaller brain.
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than white people.
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So we don t have the capacity of white brain to have the higher IQs.
13
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That s why we score so low on the SATs.
13
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All right, so now listen, when somebody tells you that, and you re sitting there and they re telling you this, is what you re hearing offensive?
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Absolutely, it s offensive.
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Was I offended?
13
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Absolutely not.
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And why was I not offended by that?
13
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Because it did not apply to me.
13
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All right, how could I let this man who just met me five, 10 minutes ago, and all he sees is this, the color of my skin, make that assumption about me?
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Why should I be offended by a lie?
13
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That s the problem.
13
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Most people want to fight when they hear something like that, reach across the table and smack somebody for saying that.
13
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I let him get it all out.
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And then these people, they would reciprocate.
13
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Once you let them get out whatever it is they got to get out, you got to know who you are.
13
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You have that confidence in knowing who you are and not let somebody else define who you are.
13
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You have to have your own self-esteem.
13
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So that way it doesn t bother you.
13
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So once he got it all out, they would reciprocate and allow me to speak.
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I said, look,
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I don t have a criminal record.
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I ve never been on welfare.
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I ve never measured my brain size, but I m sure it s the same size as anybody else s.
14
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And then they, of course, they want to change the subject.
14
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But one of the things that happened, and this was a teaching moment.
14
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It would become a learning moment later.
14
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This was with another imperial wizard.
14
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We were sitting in the room having this conversation and
14
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there, you know, we were just talking, and he had an armed bodyguard with him, which is called a Nighthawk, and in Klan terminology.
14
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This guy was wearing military camouflage, the red circle, white cross, blood drop patch right here, the initials KKK on this side, said Knights of the Ku Klux Klan embroidered on his cap.
14
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So he s standing guard to the guys right across the table from me in this motel room.
14
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And we re just talking, agreeing on some things, disagreeing on others.
14
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In the middle of our conversation, there was a very short, very fast noise, just that quick.
14
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And I jumped up out of my chair, I hit the table, and I just knew.
14
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I just knew that this man had made this noise.
14
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And I felt that my life was threatened.
14
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I felt, because I could not discern what the noise was, it was so short and so quick, my ear could not tell me what it was.
14
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So I perceived it to be evil and ominous.
14
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And I knew that he made it.
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By process of elimination, I didn t make it, so he had to have made it.
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So when you fear for your life, you go into survival mode.
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And there s basically only four things you can do in survival mode.
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Some people just
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They pass out, they faint because the fear is so great, their brain cannot process it and it shuts down and they faint.
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I don t do that.
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Second thing people will do is their muscles will tighten up and they will constrict and they can t move.
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You can be hitting them.
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They won t even be deflecting the blows because they re paralyzed.
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That s called paralysis by fear.
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The third thing people will do is to run away.
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And that is your best option.
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to as quickly as you can separate yourself from the source of your fear and that is the option that I would have chosen had it been available to me because
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You know, I was not armed.
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I didn t want to die.
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The only person that I knew who was armed was the bodyguard.
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I could see his gun.
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I did not know if the leader had a weapon up under his suit and tie or not.
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And so the fourth option is to do a preemptive strike.
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Get them before they get you.
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And I was about ready to fly over that table, grab the Klan leader, grab his Nighthawk,
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slam them down to the ground, and take away the Nighthawk s gun.
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I m that fast, and I m that strong, and I was going to do it.
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But when I hit the table, my eyes were looking right into his eyes.
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I didn t have to say a word.
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I knew he could read my eyes.
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My eyes were speaking so loud, he could hear them.
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My eyes were saying to him, what did you just do?
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And his eyes had fixated on my eyes.
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He didn t say a word, but I could read his eyes.
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His eyes were saying to me, what did you just do?
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And the Nighthawks are looking back and forth at both of us, like, what did either one of y all just do?
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And he has his hand on the butt of his gun.
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He didn t draw it, but he had his hand there.
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Well, my secretary was sitting on top of the dresser next to us because there were no more chairs.
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She realized what happened.
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We had a bucket of ice there with cans of soda in it.
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I d gotten them to offer, you know, the planned person a drink.
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You know, I want to be hospitable if he s gonna sit down and do my interview.
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Well, the ice had started melting and the cans of soda shifted down the ice.
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That was it.
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And when we figured that out, we all began laughing at how ignorant we all had been.
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Now, as I said, this was a teaching moment.
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It wasn t a learning moment, but the lesson taught is this, all because some foreign, underscore, highlight, circle the word foreign, entity, that being the bucket of ice cans of soda, of which we were ignorant,
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entered into our little comfort zone via the noise that it made, we became fearful of one another.
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The lesson taught is this.
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Ignorance breeds fear.
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We fear those things we don t understand.
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If you do not keep that fear in check, that fear will escalate.
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and breed hatred because we hate the things that frighten us.
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If you don t keep that hatred in check, that hatred will escalate and breed destruction.
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We want to destroy the things that we hate.
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Why?
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Because they frighten us.
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But guess what?
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They may have been harmless and we were just ignorant.
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So we saw the whole chain almost unraveled to completion.
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The last component would have been destruction had the Nighthawk drawn his gun and shot somebody, namely me or my secretary.
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or had I pounced across the table and hurt one of them.
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But we did see, we did see that whole chain unravel completely three years ago on August 12, 2017, two hours from where I live in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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at the Unite the Right rally, where there was a lot of ignorance that day, a lot of fear that day, a lot of hatred that day.
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And what did it culminate in?
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It culminated in destruction when a white supremacist got inside his vehicle and tried to murder as many protesters as he could by driving his car full speed into the crowd.
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He succeeded in injuring 20 people and murdering that young lady, Heather Heyer.
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So the how we solve this problem of racism is about, you know, how we solve the problem with the police is a little bit different.
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You solve it from the top down.
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All right.
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The people on the bottom, on the street, they take their cues from the top.
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You ve got to go to management.
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And it has to trickle down.
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But the problem with racism is counterintuitive.
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It s just the opposite.
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Don t start at the top, at the destruction.
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That which is destroyed is not coming back.
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Don t start with the hate or the fear, the next level down.
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Those are just symptoms.
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That s like putting topical cream on bone cancer.
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You got to go down below the surface.
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You start at the bottom and trickle up.
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The bottom is ignorance.
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And as Doc Rivers was saying earlier, education, education, education.
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We can cure ignorance.
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Ignorance is cured through education and exposure.
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And when you cure ignorance, then there s nothing to fear.
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Because you only fear what you don t know.
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So when ignorance is gone, you have knowledge.
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You don t fear knowledge.
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And so if there s no ignorance, there s nothing to fear.
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If there s nothing to fear, there is nothing to hate.
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If there s nothing to hate, there s nothing to destroy.
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So that s what we ve got to focus on, education.
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Let me just talk a little bit about, and I ve done this with countless Klansmen and Klanswomen, and I have a ton of robes and hoods here that I could show you, but I think one is enough.
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Anyway, about police.
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I keep hearing people talk about
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the good cops and bad cops and a few bad apples.
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That few bad apples phrase comes from either the chief of police or the public relations officer, public information officer for the police department.
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That is the biggest lie.
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There are never a few bad apples.
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And I want to say something about that.
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There are three categories of police officers, but generally we only talk about two, all right?
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I will say this, there are more bad apples than good apples.
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Now let me explain that so you understand what I m saying.
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Don t get me wrong, I m not saying all cops are bad, they re not.
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Three categories, good cops, bad cops.
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We all know what a bad cop does.
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A good cop will not do those things, but
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the good cop will turn a blind eye to the bad cop.
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He will not snitch, he will not report on the bad cop because of that blue code of silence, that blue wall of silence.
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So while he may not be participatory in that misconduct, he will not report it, all right?
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The third category, which is the minority, the lesser population of police officers, is the honest cop.
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The honest cop does not do those things, and the honest cop will tell.
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The honest cop will report it.
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You all remember the movie, True Story, Frank Serpico, right?
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Frank Serpico was an honest cop.
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And what happened?
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He got shot by his own people.
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because nobody likes a snitch.
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You didn t like a snitch when you were a little kid and your brother told your mom what you did, right?
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You go in and beat him up or something.
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It s the same thing with the police.
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They don t like a snitch.
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So if you re an honest cop and you report on one of your fellow officers in blue and you have to go on a call and you re involved in a shootout and you get on the radio and call for
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backup.
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That transmission is all over.
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All the cops in the area hear it and they know you re a snitch.
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They either don t respond to your call or they re very slow in arriving and and therefore jeopardizing your safety and possibly your life.
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And that s the repercussion that you get for for being a snitch.
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So therefore a lot a lot of good cops want to tell but they are afraid for their own safety.
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And if you saw if you saw that that that incident on the news this morning where where the cops push that 75 year old man and he fell on the ground and banged his head on the on the sidewalk.
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He s lying there bleeding unconscious.
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and all of these police officers walked by doing nothing.
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One cop bent over to take a look at him and the other cop lifted him up and kept on going.
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That s the wall of silence.
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You don t break the code, all right?
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We need, in police reform, we need a mechanism where the police
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can feel free to report on their fellow officers without the fear of ramification.
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They can do it anonymously or something like that.
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Just like if there s a crime committed and the cops can t solve it, what do they do?
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They ask for the community to help.
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And they put up some kind of tip line where you can call anonymously so you don t get any kind of retaliation against you.
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Right?
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Cops need the same thing for their fellow cops.
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Because when you go to the brass, the administrators, the IAD, Internal Affairs, whatever, and, you know, those are the brass people, and you make a complaint if you re a citizen or even if you are a fellow police, if you re a police officer and you report it to the brass, they are loathe to do anything because they were doing the exact same thing when they were down on the street themselves.
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So why are they going to prosecute you for doing what they did 20 years ago?
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They know how it is.
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You need some kind of outside board or mechanism that can judge that.
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You should not have police judging police.
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You need some kind of outside mechanism.
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Look, when Benjamin Crump
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goes to court and they do that voir dire, where they question the potential jury.
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You know, he wants to make sure that he has an unbiased jury.
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If it s a police case, first thing he asks is, is anybody there a police officer or you have family members who are police officers or whatever?
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If so, you know, out you go, bring in somebody else.
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So there s no bias.
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Why isn t that done when it s a police investigating the police?
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I m not saying that all police investigators are biased.
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No, they re not.
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But there is the potential to be that way.
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Just like, you know, you don t want doctors judging doctors on malpractice suits.
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You want an unbiased panel.
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So we need a mechanism by which police can be judged unbiasedly and other cops can report to the police without fear of retaliation.
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You know, you re an extraordinary man in your belief systems.
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What beliefs came from your father and your mother that you think shaped you into the person who could think this way and break through the way you have?
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Well, you know, I m 62 years old now.
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My father was one of the first black Secret Service agents in this country.
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Harry Anslinger, who ran the Secret Service, hired five Black agents at the same time for the first time, and my father was one of those.
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My dad wanted to be an FBI agent, and J. Edgar Hoover was not hiring any Blacks and no women.
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So my dad went to the Secret Service, and he got hired.
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Later, he joined the Foreign Service, and I became an American Embassy brat.
15
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traveling all over the world, living in different countries.
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But I started traveling overseas at the age of three.
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I lived in Africa 10 years.
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I lived in Europe, all with the American embassy.
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You go to a country for two years, come home, and you get assigned to another country.
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So between traveling with my dad and my mom as a child,
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combined with my travels now as a professional musician playing all over the world, I ve been in 57 different countries on six continents.
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So I ve been exposed to a multitude of colors, ethnicities, religions, et cetera.
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And all of that shaped who I am today.
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And fortunately, it started with me at an early age.
15
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But I just want to say something real quick.
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My favorite quote of all time is by Mark Twain.
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It s called The Travel Quote.
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And Mark Twain said, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
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And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
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Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one s lifetime.
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And that is so true.
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And I think, what is the number?
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I think it s 15% or only 10% of Americans have a passport.
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Yeah.
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10%.
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Is it 10%, Michael?
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10%.
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That s crazy.
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And you know, people- Never going out of the United States at all.
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Let me ask you one more question.
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I would love to go for two hours with you by yourself on this.
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You shared a story about a cyclops, and I think it s really instructive about what he believed about, you know, you have a, in your DNA.
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Oh, yeah.
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You want to hear that one?
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Would you share that with us?
15
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Because I love it.
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It s instructive of how you were able to break through.
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It gave kind of how you broke through his psychology.
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Would you share that briefly?
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Sure.
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I mean, the key to my success in doing this is
15
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You know, even though the headlines will say Black musician converts 50 Klan members, 200 Klan members, or whatever they say, no, I did not convert those people.
15
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I am the impetus for over 200 of white supremacists getting out of those organizations.
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But what I do is I plant a seed, and I nourish that seed, and they end up converting themselves, which is always more powerful than you trying to make somebody do something.
15
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Whereas their idea, it will last a lot longer.
15
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I was in my car, and I had an exalted cyclops riding in my car beside me.
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We re talking.
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We re just driving along.
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And we re in the Washington, D.C.
15
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area.
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And he made the statement, which I ve heard a thousand times, that Black people have a gene within them.
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We re born with this gene that makes us violent.
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And so I said, you know, well, how do you figure that?
15
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He says, well, look, who s doing all the drive-bys and carjackings in Southeast?
15
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He s referring to Southeast Washington, D.C.
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which is predominantly black.
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There s some white people who live there, but it s predominantly black and very high crime written.
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I said, okay, it s black people.
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I said, but you re not considering the demographics.
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That s what lives there.
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I said, who s doing all the crime in Bangor, Maine?
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White people, because that s what lives there.
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I said, you re not considering the demographics.
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He goes, no, no, no, no, that has nothing to do with it.
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You all have that gene.
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And I said, listen, let me tell you something.
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I said, I m as black as anybody you ve ever seen.
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I said, I have never done a drive-by.
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I have never done a carjacking.
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How do you explain that?
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He didn t even think about it for one second.
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He answered me like that.
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He said, your gene is latent, hasn t come out yet.
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I was dumbfounded.
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I was speechless.
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How do you argue with somebody like that?
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He s so far out, you can t even bite into that.
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And so he s sitting there all smug, like, uh-huh, you see, you got nothing to say.
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So I thought about it.
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And I said, well, you know, all white people have a gene within them that makes them a serial killer.
15
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And he says, well, how do you figure?
15
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I said, name me three black serial killers.
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He couldn t do it.
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I said, I m going to give you one.
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I named one for him.
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I said, now, just name me two.
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All I want is two.
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He couldn t do it.
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I said, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, on and on.
15
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I said, son, they re all white.
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You re a serial killer.
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He said, Darryl, I ve never killed anybody.
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I said, your dream is latent, hasn t come out yet.
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He goes, well, that s stupid.
15
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I said, well, duh.
15
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I said, you re right, it is stupid, but it s no more stupid for me to say that about you than what you said about me.
15
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And he got very quiet.
15
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I could see that his mind was spinning.
15
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And he didn t say anything for a minute or so.
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And then he changed the subject.
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But within five months, based on that conversation, he quit the Klan.
15
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And I also have his robe.
15
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In fact, his robe was the first robe that I got.
15
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Now, I know you got to get some more people.
15
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But I just want to say, I want to express my condolences to everybody on here, everybody on here, you know, for the racism and the violence that s been enacted.
15
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on all of you.
15
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It s something that none of us should have to endure.
15
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So please accept my condolences.
15
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And I also want to put out a debt of gratitude, a thanks to all the white people
15
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who joined in with us in these protests.
15
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Because, you know, as Martin Luther King III said, you know, there s always been white people since the Civil Rights Movement began with his father, you know, who marched with us, but never have we seen
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this en masse, this big.
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So now, you know, where they weren t listening to Black voices, they re listening to this collective voice because they see so many people who look like them.
16
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So it s that collective voice that s finally, you know, making them take off the earplugs.
16
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And that George, I mean, so the officer who knelt on George Floyd s neck,
16
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He had a 19 year career and he had 18 complaints.
16
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So 18 people had voices and they didn t listen to one of those voices.
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Maybe if the brass who you complained to had listened to one of those 18 voices, they might have reprimanded or corrected Derek Chauvin s behavior and George Floyd would be alive today.
16
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They didn t listen to one of those 18 voices.
16
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When you become a police officer, you are given a license to take someone s life if you have to.
16
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Right.
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And we all have driver s licenses.
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Can you imagine anybody with a driver s license who s had 18 DW eyes.
16
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Can you imagine a any doctor at a hospital who s had 18 malpractice complaints against him and the hospital still keeps them or the MVA, the motor vehicle administration still keeps a driver with 18 DUI DW eyes.
16
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Why would a police department keep a police officer.
16
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with 18 complaints against him in a 19-year career.
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It s not a question of if he does something more wrong, it s when.
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Thank you, Tony, for having me, buddy.
16
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Thank you for being on your gift to this world, Scott.
16
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I just, excuse me, Daryl, but I want to introduce- Scott s my buddy.
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Scott is my brother.
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Why don t you give the introduction to Scott then, if you would, Scott Shepard.
16
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Okay, Scott Shepard was a Klansman at one time.
16
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He s from Indianola, Mississippi, the home of the White Citizens Council, which is the executive branch of the KKK.
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They re the white collar executives who do all the stuff and then the Klan goes out and does all the night riding and stuff.
16
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That s where it was born.
16
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It s also the home of my good friend, the late great B.B.
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King.
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But Scott Shepard comes from there.
16
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He joined the Klan, and he rose to the rank of Grand Dragon in one Klan group.
16
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Grand Dragon for Mississippi and the state.
16
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And then he joined another Klan group later and rose to the rank of Imperial Wizard, National Klan leader.
16
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He ran for governor.
16
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He oversaw Tennessee and Mississippi and some other states.
16
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He also was the godson of Byron de la Beckwith, the Klansman who murdered Medgar Evers.
16
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Wow.
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So I own Scott Shepard s robe as well.
16
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And Scott Shepard is not only a very good friend of mine,
16
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He is my brother, Scott Shepard.
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Scott, thank you for joining us and thank you for your example.
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And so many people think someone s a racist, they re a racist forever.
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And I think when you think of a Klansman, you think of something, if it s even possible, more extreme than racism.
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It sounds like you were raised in an environment.
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Can you tell us what, you know, like we saw earlier, you re not born a racist.
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What were the conditions that brought you to those beliefs?
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And, you know, I say to everybody, all those watching right now and listening, you know, all of us, forget racism, all of us can probably remember something we used to believe 5, 10, 15 years ago, that today you look back on it, back then you would have fought for that idea, and now back then you re almost embarrassed to believe you believe that stuff.
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I m not talking about racism.
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I m talking about anything.
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We ve all had that.
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It s important for us to remember that human beings can truly change because they, most of the conversations are making moral judgments about somebody and then locking them in time.
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Instead of saying like, well, you ve done Daryl, we disagree, but let me hear what your point of view is and being willing to hear it s all about.
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finding what s wrong, doing a gotcha, and then blaming somebody and making yourself morally better than they are.
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And that s made no progress.
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All it does is keep pushing people apart.
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So Scott, tell us if you would, what brought you to the point of the beliefs you did have and what happened in your actions with Daryl that changed it?
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And again, thank you for your courage and your commitment and your willingness to be here.
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Melissa, share your story.
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Well, I appreciate being here.
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Of course, Darryl Davis is my brother, and I guess I d have to say that if it wasn t for Darryl Davis, I d probably be dead.
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I was, like he said, I was born in Union, Old Mississippi, and I was born in a family that was a very violent, alcoholic family.
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And there was a lot of things that I saw when I was growing up, and still PTSD, and to even a soldier.
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During this time,
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I didn t have any self-esteem, I was embarrassed, I didn t have any self-esteem, I was angry, full of anger, and I was looking for a place to fit in.
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And right there in Indian Oak, Mississippi, was the backyard of the Ku Klux Klan and the white citizens  camp.
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So I went looking for the imperial wizard of that Klan, and then tracking down in Louisiana, Bill Wilkerson,
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and it was his name.
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And they appeared in Chippewa, Mississippi, put their arm around me, met me, and said, oh, we ll take care of you, and you won t have to worry about anything else.
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Things of that nature, and I fell for a fruit line and a sinker.
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But I spent mostly 20 years inside that movement, and the
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The main thing was that, you know, as soon as I joined, I felt an immediate feeling of importance.
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I found what I was looking for at home.
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And of course, it s kind of a complicated case because I was raised by a black family.
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You were raised by a black family?
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I was raised by a black lady.
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Wow.
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So much hate if you were raised by those that took care of you.
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Well, that s,
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The anger, all the anger and the hatred, even the hatred I had for her myself, just over, you know, it took over and... Projected it out.
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Hard to explain.
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And of course, being raised by a black lady, I kind of separated myself from her and her family.
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And then there was Rex Scott Coffins, and she happened to die just a couple of years ago, two days before her 104th birthday.
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And I m very lucky and very fortunate that I was able to make amends with her before she passed away.
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Her entire family was my family.
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Let me just interject something there.
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Scott s grandmother was also raised by Rebecca Scott Hawkins.
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In the South, oftentimes, Black women were nannies to families.
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So Becky was the nanny to Scott s grandmother, his mother, and him.
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And she died at the age of 104 just a couple weeks ago.
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Wow.
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I m so grateful you were able to make amends with her.
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How did she respond to your change of heart and soul and spirit here?
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What was her reaction?
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Well, I separated myself from her and the rest of the family, because like I said, the rest of the family was my family too.
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We spent holidays together, played in the yard together when I was a kid.
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It had been years and years before I d seen, you know, since I d seen him because of my activity, I was embarrassed and things like that.
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And of course, I went to her door.
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I was trying to, you know, I made the decision that really, this really wasn t my way of thinking because I was raised by her and I think she was the little bitty voice in the back of my head that always was agate, you know,
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nagging at me and things like that.
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So I went to her door and knocked on it and not only did she open her door, she opened her arms and hugged me and said, told me she knew I d always come back home.
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It was a very emotional thing.
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Wow.
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Tell us what, so you didn t, you weren t just a member of the KK, you moved up to the state level, to the national level, Imperial Wizard.
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You know, what allowed you to move up?
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And then what, in the conversations with Darryl, how d that come about and how did that change you so radically?
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Well, by the time I was 19, I was Grand Dragon in the state of Tennessee.
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And it really doesn t work that way because you re usually older, people of older age,
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hold that position.
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But I heard about Darryl when I was inside the movement.
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I heard what he was doing, trying to convert, not convert, but help people get out of the movement, white supremacist movement.
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And Darryl, to me, was crackpot.
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but he was a nut and of course I ignored him and of course didn t think much about him you know the rest of the years and then it came that time where I was really ready to get out and I didn t know how I mean I found myself in a situation where I had friends that I grew up with on one side that didn t want to have anything to do with me because I was going to plan
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Then I had the people on the other side of the thing that said, well, Glansman, and they didn t want to have anything to do with me because they knew that I was trying to back out and that I was moving.
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And I just happened to see Darryl Davis on Discovery Channel.
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And when he was on TV, he made a lot of sense to me.
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What did he say that made sense to you initially that grabbed you?
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Well, basically, one of the things he said, you know, of course, what he says is, how can you hate me if you don t love me?
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I turned around and I asked myself that question.
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I didn t have an answer.
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Wow.
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I did not have an answer.
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I still don t have an answer.
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And of course, I don t hate him now.
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I love him.
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Guys are different.
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I look at me grin on Daryl s face giggling right now.
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What, what would you say Scott to someone who s who believes that anyone else you know because it s we re dealing with black white here but if I go to Israel and Palestine and you see people there that are
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You know being treated, you know as subhuman we can go there are people in this country because of coronavirus that Our chinese nationality have nothing to do with it that people attack What would you say to somebody who s locked into racism?
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To get them to start to open that door or what would you say to any of us that may know someone?
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I knew I grew up with a
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One of my grandfathers, I loved and adored, but we would have the most unbelievable intense arguments.
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He was a little boy because he was injured so much in his life by, quote, Jewish people and by, you know, he used the N word, African Americans.
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I couldn t believe it because I knew him as such a good man and he d become this monster.
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And one of my greatest frustrations as a child was like, how can he think this way?
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How could I get through to him?
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What s the way to get through to someone who s that conditioned or stuck?
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What would you say if you were trying to help somebody yourself in that situation?
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What would you say to them or what would you get them to experience to begin to create that opening?
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Let me say this, I contacted Darryl and Darryl returned my phone call and we exchanged calls and became friends and I ve learned a lot from him and I hope he s learned something too.
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But I ve learned a lot from Darryl and the main thing is conversation.
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Conversation is what really is the key to this whole situation.
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And that s what I would ask him.
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I said, let s have a conversation.
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Sit down, let s talk.
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And of course, that s one of the things that brought Darryl and I together.
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I didn t even know he was a musician.
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And here I was in Indianola, Mississippi, on the BB King, and Darryl was a musician.
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And that gave us a common subject to work from, and it s grown into a brotherhood.
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It s the music that s the language of the soul.
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The heart goes across all colors, all backgrounds.
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Music does a lot.
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Music does a lot.
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People would be really surprised what it does.
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Of course, he mentioned B.B.
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King.
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I will say that B.B.
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King did more for racial relations in Mississippi Delta than he knows.
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I was honored to appear with Daryl in Atlanta, Georgia at the Martin Luther King Center.
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uh in January or two both years and uh I was very honored and emotionally so I was able to apologize to Denise King for the things that I had done and and said about her father.
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I said a lot of awful things.
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I d like to apologize to Mr. Martin Luther King III there.
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I d like to apologize to everyone on the panel.
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Because I m grateful, very grateful that I m not the same person I am today that I was then.
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It s been a good, God bless.
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Scott, thank you for that.
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And even though I ve not done those things, I still apologize to all of you men and women for all that you ve gone through on behalf of anyone that s ever harmed you or harmed those you love.
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This has been a beautiful experience that s the beginning, not the end of action.
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That s what this is all about.
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Scott, thank you for your actions.
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You know, it s great to think differently, have a change of heart, but you ve acted on it and you ve done good in your beginning.
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Continue to do good.
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So thank you for that.
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Last but not least, Dr. Michael Beckwith, who, by the way, look at this gorgeous man.
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What you ve done with Agape and what you ve done with your life to serve people is truly extraordinary.
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You re a unifier.
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That s one of the reasons why I wanted you here in this slot here was not making you last.
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I know what your heart is and your soul is about.
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So tell us, where do you see we are?
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What has helped you to bring people together from all religions, all races, all backgrounds?
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What s your secret?
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What s the secret sauce there?
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And tell us what you see in this current situation and what maybe makes you optimistic where we need to go.
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Yeah, thank you.
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First of all, Tony for even for having this can be convening this gathering.
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I have not been agitated for time not one second, listening to every single speaker everyone had something to say from a very powerful lens and I appreciate it.
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You know, I started Agape 34 years ago, and Agape, I derived that from the word, from the speech from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who talked about the highest form of the love, the love of God operating in the human heart.
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I had an organization called Agape Transformationals.
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which was a combination of agape love and transformational was from Malcolm X, because he had transformed his life in the eye.
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So agape emerged from that.
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I met Dr. King as a small boy at Holman s Methodist Church when I was about 10 years old, shook his hand, and I said to my mom, he has such soft hands.
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And she said, baby, he does a different kind of work.
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And so I ve been influenced.
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And Dr. Martin Luther King III, we re very good friends.
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I work with him and his family.
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But just in summary of what everyone has said, if you re Black, you have gone through the fire of racism and bigotry and walking into a room and being the other.
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when I attended Morehouse College, and I went there because that was Dr. King s alma mater.
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My first week there, I went out to Greenbrier to go roller skating, and my friends and I were skating around, and when we finished taking off our skates, the police officer came up to us and said to us, do you niggers want to be buried inside or outside?
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And I went from California, you know, and we asked him to repeat himself and he said it again.
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We ran out of the skating ring, ran across the street that hide in this construction and pickup trucks began to fill the parking lot with shotguns in the back talking on walkie talkies looking for us.
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The person who was driving us had gone to get some gas.
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And so when he pulled into the parking lot, we ran and dived into the window and started driving back to Atlanta.
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And they followed us and we got closer to Atlanta.
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They backed off.
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That was my first couple of weeks in Atlanta, Georgia in the 70s.
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Wow.
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At Morehouse, we rented a hotel, having a party.
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Police came, threw us up against the wall, arrested us for criminal trespassing and told us we did not have the right to be in that neighborhood.
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So, I could go that kind of experience education, when I was in junior high school, my teacher.
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We had to do an autobiography, a future autobiography.
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And so I wrote in my future autobiography that when I grow up, I m going to go to USC.
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I m going to study this and that and the other.
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And anyway, she graded me down and said my dreams were too big for a person like me, that I could not think of myself of going to USC.
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I had to think of something more realistic.
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Oh my God.
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And I was in junior high school.
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So I went home and told my mother, I showed her the paper.
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She marched up to the school, obviously.
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And she, you know, uh, talked to the principal and talked to the, uh, to the teacher.
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It was an interesting time for me in high school.
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I can remember being pulled over.
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I used to go on the track team.
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So I would jog around my neighborhood.
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The police would stop me on a pretty regular basis.
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Where are you running to?
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I have my track uniform on.
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I m jogging.
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So my mother taught us.
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that when the police pull you over or harass you or stop you, get the badge number.
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We have to go down to the Rimpole Police Station, file a complaint.
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And we would get in trouble if she heard that we had been harassed and didn t do this.
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Because she said, we have to create a file on these racist police officers.
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And that was a part of our training.
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She taught us how to get home safe, how to make our hands visible, how to speak.
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And at the same time, remember the badge number,
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Create in your mind the badge number, try to get the name, and then go report it.
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So I think everybody in this room, everybody in this zoom room, who s of African American descent have had similar experiences, I could go on and on and on about my own.
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But when we go to the insidious nature of racism, and a lot of people have already talked about this, you go back to 1619, when the first forced immigrants who were forced into slavery hit the United States, which wasn t even the United States at that particular time.
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In order to rationalize the inhumane treatment, they had to create a narrative that Black people, Africans, were not human.
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Bishop said three fourths in the Constitution, we weren t human beings.
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So that particular narrative became insidiously within the culture.
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So even though slavery was abolished, the narrative wasn t abolished.
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Public lynching was abolished.
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The narrative wasn t abolished.
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Jim Crow became abolished.
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The narrative wasn t abolished.
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You have police brutality.
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You have a legal system in which justice is supposed to be blind, but we all know that justice peaks.
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He lifts up the blindfold.
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And if you re a person of color,
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or even a poor person, you re going to have a different set of justice than you were if you were a rich white man.
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And so with a mass incarceration, the criminal justice system meeting out different forms of justice, people are just suffering from fatigue.
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When you see when you know the protests are also an element of anger and rage, but also just fatigue of the years of the insidious racism and bigotry, you know, it is said that if an app and that by time an African American boy seven years old.
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He has a psychological immune system, antibodies, to racism.
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He knows when he walks in a room, he s looked upon differently.
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He can feel it.
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It s a special sense.
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And so it s a fatigue that we carry over the years.
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Now, I agree with Doc Rivers  dad.
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You know, we re not here to be victims.
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We may be victimized, but we re not embracing victimhood.
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And so we learn to love and appreciate ourselves, to know who we are, answer by our real names, develop a great sense of who we are.
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Now, what I m heartened by is this particular protest does carry not only
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Every race in the streets, we have our white brothers and sisters, our Asian brothers and sisters who, you know, suffered from, you know, the camps back in the day, Japanese internment camps, every Latino brothers and sisters, black brothers and sisters, gay brothers and sisters, you know, everybody has their own level of oppression, but we re all in the streets together.
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And this is unprecedented, because finally as individuals have mentioned that people are beginning to hear that people of color have not been making this up has not been an exaggeration.
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It s not been, we re just being victimized, you know, or feeling that we re being a victim or making excuses for things that we re growing through.
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This is real stuff happening.
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So finally, other people besides African Americans, because someone already said this, that our conversation with each other, you know, we know the conversation.
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We can just nod at each other.
18
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We can just say, yeah, we know already.
18
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you know, but individuals outside of that, our white brothers and sisters are now hearing and saying, wow, this is systemic.
18
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This is endemic.
18
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This has been going on a long time.
18
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Something must change because black people are not going to deconstruct racism.
18
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It s going to be white people and black people and all of us together that deconstructs it.
18
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It begins to change the narrative that each individual is a unique expression of infinite potential that regardless of the color of the skin the sexual orientation the gender, you know, we all know that all these truths to be self evident, but as our brother who was.
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transformed and transformed himself from being a Ku Klux Klan member to now being an individual who loves humanity, black people and everyone, you know, the narrative must change.
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And as Doc said, that s education.
18
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And so, so there s different levels of this.
18
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You know, there s one, the rage,
18
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and the passion that led to the protest that s necessary to push the needle.
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Without that, you re not going to see those four officers being arrested.
18
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You re not going to see, perhaps, Ahmaud Arbery, those white supremacists, being brought to some level of justice.
18
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We don t know what that level of justice is going to be yet, but at least they were arrested.
18
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We re not going to see this kind of movement.
18
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So you need that.
18
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And then after that, you need vision, then you need strategy,
18
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and then you need implementation.
18
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So the passion and the protest and the anger, eventually we have to begin to articulate a vision of what s possible.
18
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What does a kind and just global society look like?
18
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What does a justice system look like in which justice is really blind?
18
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You know, I sometimes joke about the fact that perhaps when people go to court, we can have a way in which the jury doesn t even know what ethnicity they are.
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Are they poor?
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Are they black?
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Are they Asian?
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Are they Mexican?
18
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You know, and of course that s, you know, probably absurd, but at some point we have to provide a way by which the justice system is even for everyone.
18
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We re going to have to develop strategy around policing,
18
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And as our brother indicated this gentleman, not he s not a gentleman, but this individual had 18 infractions, nothing happened.
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And so, not only policing hiring training, you know, psychological evaluations.
18
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You know, are these individuals that we re hiring as police officers, are they kind?
18
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Are they compassionate?
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Do they want to do good?
18
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What is their psychological profile?
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What kind of training are we giving?
18
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You can t give a two week sensitivity training when individuals are going to be dealing with the community for long periods of time.
18
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That s ridiculous.
18
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They only have a high school diploma.
18
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Nothing wrong with the high school diploma.
18
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You know, but an individual that s only had a high school diploma and has very limited training and has a training in how to use a gun and very little training on how to be a human being, how to deescalate, you know, it s absurd for them to even be a police officer.
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So we re talking, one, the systemic racism that comes from a narrative.
18
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that is systemic within society.
18
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Now, the other thing that s heartening about everybody, everybody has to have skin in the game.
18
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It s not just black people.
18
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Everybody has to have skin in the game because now the conversation, people are having uncomfortable conversations about white privilege.
18
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And other people, certain people are saying, well, what is that?
18
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There has to be an education around that.
18
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Last year, there was a young boy here at Agape who, white guy, he was 15 years old.
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Took his father s car in the middle of the night.
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Father and mother didn t know about it.
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Picked up his friends.
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They had two white kids in the back, one white kid in the front.
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So there s four white guys driving.
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The police pull him over.
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And they ask for his license.
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He doesn t have a license.
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He s 15.
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He looks at the four white kids in the car and says, where are you going?
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He says, oh, we were going to the beach to take pictures.
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And there was some stuff going on.
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And he said, OK, go home.
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Go home right now.
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Now, we all know those were four black kids that had taken the car without a license.
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They would have gone to jail.
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They would have had a record.
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They would have been fingerprinted and taken to jail, and they would have begun the process of actually having an arrest record.
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And so I was talking to his mom about the fact this is your teaching moment to let your son know about what white privilege is, that if his counterpart for a black guy is driving, they would have gone to jail.
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And so this particular woman, who is a spiritual therapist in our community, is developing something called white women talking to white women or white mothers talking to white mothers.
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So they re beginning to have a conversation about white privilege, how to teach their children about what it is.
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So there s a level of sensitivity around what African Americans, Mexicans, some
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Asians go through on a regular basis.
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Now, I ll tell you a story.
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The year before Nelson Mandela was elected president, I was called over to South Africa to lead the vision process in different parts of the country because they had got to the point where they were obviously dismantling apartheid.
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And they wanted to be able to now have a vision of what the country would look like after apartheid.
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So I traveled over there with parts of my choir, about 12 or 13 spiritual practitioners, and I was leading the vision process and talking throughout South Africa.
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So we were in Soweto.
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At the time, the city was deemed the most violent city in the world.
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And our choir was practicing with the Soweto Choir.
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is obviously from agape, it s integrated.
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You know, everybody s in the choir, white, black.
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All of a sudden, the assistant director of the Swayto Choir runs in and says, quick, get all the white people out of here.
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The people are coming to get them.
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My choir started laughing.
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They thought he was joking.
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I said, this man is not joking.
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Get in the bus right now.
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So we hid the white people under the seats in the bus.
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And we had black people sit on the seats, the white people under us.
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So if somebody were to come on the bus, they wouldn t see the white people sitting under us.
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And so we all had blankets on our legs and hiding them.
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And it was a very tense moment.
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And I went to the front of the bus.
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I said, listen, if they come in here,
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I m going to say, these are my white people, they belong to me, you know, and everybody started laughing and we broke the ice.
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We traveled out throughout Soweto, back to the hotel, and the individuals with their guns and shovels and sickles were coming into town looking for the white people.
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We got to the hotel safely.
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And we processed all night.
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This was the first time that these white people, these are progressive white people.
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These are people that go to Agape, people who want the conversation.
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They had no experience of what it felt like to be haunted, to be hated, to be almost on the verge of being killed because of the color of their skin.
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They had no, and they were saying, this is what you guys have gone through.
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This is what your ancestors have gone through.
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This is what your grandparents have gone through.
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And so we were able to process all night.
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And then, of course, that ripples out into the community.
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When people have these dialogues now, there s going to be a dialogue that starts, I guess, I think it s tomorrow night at Agape online where people were having a big dialogue about privilege, a big dialogue about racism, a big dialogue about solutions, a big dialogue.
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It s for the whole community that it s happening.
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And so we say to our white brothers and sisters, don t tap into
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the guilt of perhaps your ancestors owning slaves.
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Tap into your ancestry of the abolitionist who stood up for what s right.
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Tap into that ancestry.
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I m sure you can find an ancestor somewhere that was an abolitionist that said, justice is for all.
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Begin to tap into that frequency and begin to bring forth that dynamic of enough is enough.
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and begin to cultivate what is called compassion.
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Compassion is the highest.
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Compassion is the understanding of the lack of understanding.
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It s walking in another person s shoes.
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And so, you know, there s two conversations.
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There s the conversation I have with black people that say you re not to see yourself as a victim.
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You are to go deep in doing your inner work to heal your scar tissue.
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your wounds, to go deep and to go deep levels of forgiveness, not letting people off the hook, but so that you re not carrying the resentment and the animosity that s going to block your own success in life.
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You know, go deep in that.
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And to the white people, I say the conversation for you is compassion and to have an understanding of what people have gone through.
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So that you re not turning a blind eye,
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You re not, it s not off your radar.
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It s not that it doesn t concern me.
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Everybody has to have skin in the game at this time in human history.
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So, you know, history is in the making right now.
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Are we part of making it or are we bystanders watching it?
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So, I m heartened, you know, there are movements, protests in Syria.
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There s a war going on in Syria, protests in Syria.
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There s protests in Amsterdam, New Zealand.
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France, all around the world, people are rising up and saying this systemic bigotry and racism must come to an end.
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So I think this is a powerful moment, Tony, that the conversation that you re providing for us today is a beginning, but now we have to have a vision.
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We have to be able to articulate what does, on the local level, what does real policing look like?
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What does the justice system look like?
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Hey, what does healthcare look like?
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We have a sick care system, not a healthcare system.
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You know, we have to begin to provide the vision and then strategy to move in that direction and then implementation.
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And as I like to say, everybody can t do everything, but everybody can do something.
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That we have to figure out, you know, what is it that s ours to do?
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Some people, what s theirs to do is to be on the streets right now.
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Some people are quelling the violence.
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Some people are articulating that this must stop.
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Some people might be within the system actually providing what things look like if they re operating ideally.
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and then beginning to put the right people in place politically, the right people in place administratively, that can carry that vision to be implemented.
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But this isn t the time in human history to sit and to bystand and think this is going to go away in a couple of weeks.
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We have to ask ourselves, what is it?
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That s mine to do.
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And this is, you know, obviously there s been so much said, and if I keep going on, I know I ll just repeat what my brothers have already, and sisters have already spoken to, but I m in absolute agreement.
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I m totally in appreciative mode of what you have done here today.
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And we all have our experiences with bigotry and racism.
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And by the way, I did go to U.S.
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But I think I ll just wrap it up there because so much has been said that I have embraced from everyone that you brought together today.
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Well, thank you, Michael.
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I just have one question, short one from you, if you can give me the core of it.
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And I want to ask our last three questions to the group as a whole.
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It s about unity.
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When I try to figure out the solution, I think there s some pragmatic ones when you talk about like barring chokeholds.
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It s pretty freaking obvious.
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You know nothing about martial arts.
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You know how sensitive this area is, how easy even someone without that intent could harm someone, right?
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Much less somebody who s pumped up in testosterone and anger and rage and whatever else is going on inside that mind.
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yes but there s certainly things that we can do and we want to talk about those but what do you think has allowed you to be such a unifier you know I look around this virtual room here and we have people that have experienced so much pain but somehow they didn t let the pain stop them they didn t let rage stop them they converted it into drive to do something good you know from Martin Luther you know King to Daryl to you know every person on this group Laura
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So what do you think has made you a unifier?
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And what, you know, when I try to find the ultimate answer, there s the systemic pieces that have to be done.
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But to me, the ultimate answer is unity.
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The ultimate answer, that s another word for just love.
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When we have love, we treat each other so radically different.
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It doesn t matter how people behaved in the past or experienced their color of skin or any of those things.
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So what has made you a unifier and what can make us unified?
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Well, there s two things.
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One, you re dealing with our deep spiritual nature, that regardless of your religion, when you get to the practices of every religion, you re going to bump into forgiveness,
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and you re going to bump into love.
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We have to begin to cultivate both of that.
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We have to begin to forgive, and forgiveness does not mean condoning an act or letting people off the hook.
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All forgiveness is self-forgiveness, meaning you have to let go of the resentment, the animosity,
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within your own soul so that you have a clear availability to wisdom and guidance and direction.
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And then you have to cultivate a heart as big as the world that you re embracing.
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It was Howard Thurman that said it is impossible to love humanity in general.
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You can only love humanity in particular.
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To say I love humanity doesn t mean anything.
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That s a generalization.
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That s abstract.
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You have to love the person you re with.
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As our brother has been working with individuals who were Ku Klux Klan or, you know, I ve worked with skinheads and that they re now part of my community.
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You have to love the individual in front of you that you may not agree with.
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Maybe in a different political party and maybe
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have a different color of skin, you have to learn, we all have to learn how to love in particular in order to change the fabric of our society.
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And so through my own spiritual awakening, there s a pulse beat of love that I have for the beings.
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I don t care what you look like.
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And so I can remember my mother, I have to call her name Alice Geneva Beckwith,
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who organized pickets.
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And we were a part of Jesse Jackson s crew in the early days.
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And she would go to hear Dr. King and Malcolm X. And my house was like central to planning and strategy as to what store we were gonna boycott this month in order to provide for better jobs for people of color.
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So in that living room at my mother s house, there were Jewish people, there were black people,
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There were Hispanic people, there were gay people, even before people could come out the way they can now.
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And so in my consciousness, I ve always was raised to embrace all people.
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It s not something I had to go learn, but I will say this.
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If there s a level of uncomfortability around people, they need to study, they need to learn.
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Jane Fonda was just on an interview and she s very progressive, but she said for the last three years, she studied, she read all of these books to finally get an understanding of what black people have been going through.
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So she s more sensitive to it.
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And she s not an individual that hasn t been on the forefront of environmental issues, war issues, you know, and so,
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So unity is a good word, union is a good word, but it all has to be steeped in unconditional love, which is, you said this earlier, and I say it a different way.
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I say belief is an operational substitute for knowing, that you can believe all that stuff, but at some point, you have to have an encounter with your soul, and then you begin to see differently.
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you begin to see that we re all made directly from the source of all creation, the presence of God.
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And I don t mean a magical man in the sky.
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I m talking about the presence that s never an absence, the presence of love and beauty and intelligence that birthed us all in the image and likeness so that we can perfectly reflect that love and that beauty.
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And so we re all in search of that kind of encounter through our own deep spiritual practice and inquiry.
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And if we do,
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We ll create a kind and just global society.
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Why?
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Because we will be kind and just individuals.
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And we ll all experience the spiritual love and joy that that brings that you can t have any other way.
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Your father, Martin Luther King Jr.
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Martin, one of my favorite phrase for him is a man or a person who s not found something he s willing to die for isn t fit to live.
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And I think all of us in this room have that common understanding that we have to have something to serve more than ourselves.
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And that s where I think love comes from.
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just an internal experience of getting what you want.
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It s an experience of a life of meaning, and a life of meaning comes when we understand for things to change, we ve got to change.
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For things to get better, we ve got to get better.
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It s not somewhere outside of ourselves.
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Well, thank you, Michael.
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The last two questions I have for points are, I d like for the whole group, and again, thank you.
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We ve gone way over the time.
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But I think these last two are simple but important.
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I want to finish with what can we do?
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We ve talked about it, but I d like to hear of you that want to say these are the specifics.
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Many of them gone.
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We ll walk through that in a second.
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But before that, Black Lives Matter.
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It s bizarre to me that human beings hear Black Lives Matter and they think that s controversial.
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But I understand because when you dig in and ask people what they believe in, you often hear people say, well, wait a second, especially people that aren t African-American, let s like all lives matter.
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And well, yes, all lives matter, obviously, but they don t get what the message is.
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It s not saying Black Lives Matter and nobody else does.
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It s saying we re under attack.
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We ve been attacked for centuries, attacked for decades.
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We need your help.
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And that message somehow gets lost, because especially when people are in intense states of anger, which what else could they have?
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Often what that does, as you said earlier, produces fear and produces anger.
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And we went through this syntax with Daryl a little bit ago.
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So I saw a little poster that I thought, you know, I ve sent it to people that have these conversations that I ll throw up on the screen.
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But I d like each of you to share, you know, what s the problem with all lives matter?
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I think I understand, but I want to hear from your voices.
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What does Black Lives really matter?
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What s the essence of it?
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And throw it up on the screen, this beautiful little girl holding up this poster.
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And what it says here, if you guys can see it, is it says, we said Black Lives Matter.
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Never said only Black Lives Matter.
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We know all lives matter.
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We just need your help.
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With the Black Lives Matter for Black Lives are in danger.
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I mean, in one poster, this little girl, I think,
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just put it so clear because it answers the question a lot of it but I d like you anyone to address this please address this because I want to take away this illusion that some people seem to have that black people are saying we re the ones that matter which is the most absurd thing I could possibly hear but people believe it and I have to remind myself they know not what they do right you know it s like
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You know, based on their upbringing, based on their beliefs, based on their conditioning, they couldn t believe anything else in this moment, but they could believe something new if we can create an opening.
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That s what this set of conversations has been about.
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That s what Daryl s been doing.
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That s what you all have been doing.
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So anyone who d like to address this, I d like to hear your view of, you know,
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Black Lives Matter and what it s really about, so that people that are not within the movement, maybe have a deeper perspective of what its message is.
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I hope this conversation as a whole has already answered it, but I think we should answer it specifically.
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And then I m going to come back to you with the last question, which is what definitive steps
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can we, all those who are listening, take to make a difference?
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And, you know, obviously making your voice heard is a piece of that, but to me, the ones that natural to me is we gotta, we gotta stop chokeholds as a systemic component by anybody with consequences so severe it can t be used unless it s life and death survival.
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You know, we ve got to make sure that there s some penalty for those that don t share or don t stop someone from doing this.
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If someone is saying, I can t breathe, there s got to be
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an instant stop, or there s got to be a penalty stronger.
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Those are my illusions of what needs to be done systemically.
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But I d like to hear what each of you think we need to do systemically and personally.
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What can we do so we leave here taking action?
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Because being inspired is nice.
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But to me, there are two great orators of antiquity, Demophenes and Cicero.
20
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Cicero is done speaking, everybody said what a great speech.
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When Demophanes is done, people said let us march.
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My goal is let us march, not just protest, but march in some form of action that moves this conversation that you ve given three hours of your lives to, so that we can see some progress.
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I know we re not going to be the end all and be all on one conversation, but we can make
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real progress with people that care.
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So first, anyone want to address Black Lives Matter and its real mission and service?
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And then second, let s come to what do we do?
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And we ll wrap up this beautiful conversation.
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I think that when we hear black lives matter if we can, if people can understand it is saying black lives matter to black lives matter.
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Also, it is not saying other lives don t matter.
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It is saying that we ve been under siege for so long, in terms of how we ve been treated by the legal system.
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how we ve been treated by brute force by police departments, how we ve been treated by redlining, mass incarceration, poor health care, poor education based on the neighborhoods we ve been living in.
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Black lives matter also.
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That s what it means.
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Now, Black Lives Matter, in some cases, some legal entities see them as a terrorist group, which is just ridiculous.
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They re not a terrorist group.
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Black Lives Matter is an educational group to push the needle forward that black lives matter also.
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So if individuals can think also,
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then they ll won t be up in arms and have to rush really fast to say all lives matter.
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We know all lives matter, but historically our lives haven t mattered.
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Yes, I get it.
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Would someone else like to share in this area?
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Um, I would probably just piggyback on what he s saying.
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It s not, you know, the thing that I ve realized for myself and what I realized that happens,
20
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When, you know, people have the community speak about their feelings and their thoughts and what they re going through.
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Oftentimes, depending on the tone of voice, it s always taken out of content saying that it s of anger.
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you know, it s coming from a place of anger.
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Yes, it s coming from a place of anger.
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Yes, it s coming from a place of hurt.
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But if you haven t experienced it, of course you re gonna take that offensively.
20
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But as humans, we should look at it as, think about it if it was you and your family.
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So of course you re gonna be angry about it.
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Of course you re gonna be, it s gonna come off however you take it.
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So I think that this movement is looked upon as being like this angry, aggressive, well,
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Some form of it, yes, they are, because as it said before, it s come to a point where we re fed up.
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No one should have to witness their kid going to the store, buying something simple, and this is a great kid, and then they never see that kid again.
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Who wouldn t feel every emotion possible?
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So yes, sometimes it is anger.
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Yes, sometimes it is pain.
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Yes, it is.
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But at the end of the day, everybody is saying the same thing.
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This is a basic statement.
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I don t understand how it s always taken out of content to be this negative movement.
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It s like, it is what it is.
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Black lives matter.
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I mean, there s no
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other simpler way to say it, but Black Lives Matter.
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I m sure if it was said another way, it d be taken out of content that way.
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It s like nothing us as a community say is ever what it is.
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It s always taken to somebody else s personal perspective and like amplified something negative.
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That s not fair.
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It is what it is.
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Black Lives Matter.
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That s it.
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I don t know how else simpler to say it.
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Perfect.
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Perfect.
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Let s finish with what actions that Shelby you ve mentioned some already.
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But what, what do you hope will come out of this conversation.
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Someone is watching this conversation.
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And by the way, hopefully, those that are brown skin, those that are part of the LGBT community, those that experienced any form
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of racism or any form of oppression, understand this conversation was for them as well.
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But this one is about the African-American experience primarily here because of what s happening right now.
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But we re really just talking about humanity here.
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But what are the actions that we could take or someone at home should take and you d want them to take so that this three hours actually led to something?
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I mean, education and compassion certainly is a first step because it changes relationships.
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You ve all experienced that.
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Daryl s demonstrated that.
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But what will you give us one or two things you d like to see happen that you think could either change the systemic problems or that just an individual can be part of the solution as we wrap up here.
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Okay, I ll say
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Two things.
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One, our country can only become one of two things.
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It can become, number one, that which we sit back and let it become, or it can become, number two, that which we stand up and make it become.
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So we have to ask ourselves the question, do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes, or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see?
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And something that we have to remember is this.
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When two enemies are talking, they re not fighting.
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They re talking.
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Even if they get loud, they re still talking.
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It s when the conversation ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence.
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So keep the conversation going.
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That s beautiful.
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Thank you.
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You certainly demonstrated that.
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Bishop, would you like to?
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Yeah, I want to jump in just a little bit.
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I had an experience
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Years ago, our church was integrated, but years ago, it wasn t to the degree that it is now, and it s hopefully not now to the degree that it s going to be.
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But an older white lady came to our church and she came down to the altar and said, I listen to you on television, I always enjoy your ministry, she said, but I was so afraid to come to your church, she said, because I wasn t sure that white people could come here.
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And that exploded in my head and it led me to a deeper understanding that some things that we categorize as racism are really fear.
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Yes.
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I think it s important that we don t give people a blueprint how to be out of their comfort zone.
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For African-Americans, it has been easy because we ve had no choice but to have not only IQ, but intellectual quotients, but we also had to have emotional quotients.
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And above all things, we had to have adaptability quotient because in order to survive as a minority, I can t get a GED without understanding white culture, but you could get a PhD and not understand my culture.
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Wow, so true.
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You have not had to assimilate.
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You ve not had to be listening to a different kind of music or be in a different atmosphere or wear clothes that were not natural organic to who you are.
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I have always had to watch what you do and emulate it in order to be accepted in your environment.
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So my AQ is quite high.
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And so my advice to people who are really interested in becoming more adaptable, because that s really what it s requiring that you come out of the safety of your silo, your tribe, and your bubble, and integrate, which is frightening.
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It s really frightening, especially when you re not used to it.
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This is my advice to you.
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Find things that we have in common to connect with.
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Yes.
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There are always distinctives and the media focuses on our distinctives because divisions drive up ratings.
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Instead of allowing the media to shape your perception of me, find things that are common to us and start your relationship like that.
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Because if healing and love and all the things we re talking about are going to occur, they re going to occur amongst friends.
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The amazing presentation that Dr. Davis delivered and his friend who came from the KKK is that friendship became the bridge that they crossed.
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to connect.
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And I don t think people always know how to befriend somebody whose background is different, but there s always something common.
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This is old school, and I m going to date myself with this, but we were taught in school that in order to work with fractions or multiply them or divide them, you had to reduce them to their lowest common denominator.
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I don t think they do that anymore, but that s the way they taught us back then.
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Do you remember that?
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When you re trying to connect with somebody of which you have so many distinctives and differences, reduce it down to your lowest common denominator.
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You love your kids, I love my kids.
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You like to eat, I like to eat.
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You like music, I like music.
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Let s start with what we like.
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And if we can connect over what we like, then gradually we can discuss things that we think that we don t like.
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And I want to encourage everybody to lose the fear of getting outside of the orbit of what is comfortable to you and to start a conversation by looking for things that are common to men.
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And from that, we can begin to develop a narrative that embraces distinctives that are often not even legitimate, but have been taught to us in public relations.
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They teach us whoever goes first in telling their story, that s the perception you walk away with.
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So it depends on what news channel you watch, what Black Lives Matter means to you.
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It often has a lot to do with who said it to you first and what context they taught it to you.
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So break away from your first teacher and your first experience and rethink that that black lives do matter and white lives do matter and young lives do matter and old lives do matter and let s let s name it each time that is threatened.
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rather than to throw it all into the soup and act like all lives are being threatened simultaneously.
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Two years from now, we might be talking about all lives matter because people may be seeking to destroy us on the basis of age.
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It s whoever is up under attack at that moment.
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And right now, amongst other people groups, black lives are largely under attack.
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And so that s where our focus is today.
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I love you talking about bridging and finding with that common basic common denominator because that s what I attempt to do myself and I think it s the greatest compliment in the world that we find the depth of love for our children, for our family, for society, for our desire to do something meaningful with our lives that isn t
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inside of every one of us.
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Every one of us needs to feel like we re important, that our life is meaningful, like we re loved, and that we can love, and that we can have some certainty that we can have more, you know, pleasure than pain in our life, more comfort at least than pain, because pain is going to come for all of us.
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The one common denominator is extreme stress.
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We re all going to experience
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those extreme moments and all of you just because of the color of your skin have had those experiences and then life gives them to us in many other ways.
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We re all going to lose a loved one.
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We re all going to be in a place where maybe our house burns down and we lose our job or the government changes the rules and suddenly you know your business is gone.
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We re all going to face those things.
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Horrific challenges that are there but what makes us human, I believe,
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is our capacity to be resilient through all that and to grow spiritually so that our compassion, our heart and soul grows and we connect and unify more.
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And in that, we feel the love and joy.
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I mean, separation is suffering.
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And we have been separated as a brother and sisterhood for so long.
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And it s constructed, it s cultural construction.
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It has nothing to do with our DNA.
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It has nothing to do with our humanity.
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It s how we ve been educated and how we ve been pushed.
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You know, Quincy Jones is a dear friend of mine and the greatest company ever gave me calls me my wife s age I little.
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ghetto brother and sister, and he says, you know, Tony goes, your DNA.
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And I said, what s that?
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He goes, damn near African.
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That s the greatest gift that I could hear.
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But it s like, we have so much more in common than we do have apart.
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But people have to be willing, as you said, Bishop, is to step out of that comfort.
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And when you get out of that comfort, you discover that life is much more comfortable than you think it is, because all this shit is in our head.
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It s not in our head what s being done to people of color, but what s in our head is those differences and those judgments.
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And so I can t thank all of you enough.
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Martin, I want to give you the last word, if I may, of anything you want to share in terms of action moving forward.
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Any final words?
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I want to maybe perhaps encourage an assignment.
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Many people
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believe they know who Martin Luther King Jr.
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was and what his vision was for our nation and world.
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And I believe that everyone has to determine what is the vision that you want for your family or yourself for our nation and world.
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But to truly understand my dad, then you need to read the book that I started off talking about, Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community, where he talks about the world house, the world in which we must engage and live in because it gives us
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pragmatic and practical ways to create this world and really the beloved community.
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If we had the essence of that,
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Dr. Beckwith, Bishop Jakes, and so many other leaders preach about this love, this universal love that we as a nation and as a world must engage in and can.
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It is demonstrated every day.
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We are seeing some of that love exhibited by people bowing down.
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We saw that at the very beginning of the film where it showed
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some apologizing for how blacks have been treated.
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But it s even bigger than that.
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It s even bigger than that because, you see, humankind has a capacity that other animal forms don t have.
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All we got to do is to tune into that internal part of who we are.
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because we ve been made in the image of, but we are incredible human.
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I mean, think about when there s a tornado, a tsunami, a hurricane.
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people, Americans, roll up their sleeves and they come to give.
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They give the best.
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They don t ask you what color you are.
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They don t ask you what your sexual orientation is.
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They don t want to know anything.
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They just want to help you get out of that condition.
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We are a phenomenal and amazing society.
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We got to find a way to constantly bring that good out of us.
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And it all revolves, I would say, around love.
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So yes, we must pray for change.
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We must work for change.
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We must be the change.
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And yet, if love is not yet won, the battle is not yet over.
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I agree, my brothers.
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I cannot thank you all enough.
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I know I ve said this so many times, but I love you all.
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I love your souls.
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You know, people say love.
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Love is a word that s overused in some ways.
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You love your dog.
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You love your friend.
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You love society.
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You love whatever, but I love your souls.
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I thank you for being so vulnerable.
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Thank you for your truth.
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Thank you for sharing your pain and your vision.
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Thank you for sharing your love.
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And my heartfelt prayer is, you know, it s going to take more than this, but this will open some minds and hearts and souls and move some people to action.
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We are in a moment in history in which a change can be made, and you ve all spent your lives to get to that point, and you ve all suffered immensely.
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But again, you know, out of suffering, some great, some good must come.
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And out of your suffering, I promise you I ll do everything in my power to get this out to as many people as well as be, you know, a heartfelt example of that myself.
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I want to thank each of you, and most of you in here are actually friends of mine.
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Daryl, I consider you now a new friend as well.
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You too.
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Thank you.
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I ll do anything in my power, and you re all welcome to call upon me if there s anything I can do to support your community, your family, or anybody.
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Count me in your corner.
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As you said, Bishop Jakes, I m in your corner always.
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I think you know that.
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Laura, you re such a look at this bright light you are and all the stuff you ve been through all that s come out of this in the end still is love and I know that people are going to leave with that feeling that unity.
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So, you know, my whole goal was in life.
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I think leadership is about seeing this as it is.
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but not worse than it is.
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And all of you have managed to do that somehow, in spite of all the crap you ve been through and pain you ve been through.
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And I just honor you for that, because most people make it worse than it is, so they don t have to try and be disappointed.
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And then, without a vision, people perish, right?
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You ve got to see it better than it is.
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Otherwise, we can t make it that way.
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And all of you have put that out.
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And then it s our job to make it the way we see it.
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And I think that s what this conversation has been all about.
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So God bless you all.
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Thank you.
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Count on me in your corner if I can help in any way.
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I just want to say I don t want to presume to speak for this group, particularly this group is extremely articulate and intelligent as they are.
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But I think it would be remiss of us not to personally thank you as being a catalyst that brought us all together to have the kinds of conversations that would feed the nation.
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You have to be
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a very broad and bright and progressive person to have the capacity of love to throw your arms out in the middle of such turbulent times and bring us together.
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And I don t want you to be the one who thanks us without knowing how deeply and how sincerely we thank you for being just who you are.
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Indeed, yeah.
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I was going to say the same thing, Bishop.
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As I saw the video that you put out, Tony, and your emotions were very, very raw, very sincere, very heartfelt.
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And what you were feeling during this time, it really moved me.
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I think the last couple of weeks, I ve probably cried more in the last two weeks than I ve cried in a couple of years.
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And to feel you resonate with the pain that all of us are going through really touched me at a very deep level.
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So along with the bishop and everyone else, I also want to thank you for being the place through which this galvanized into this conversation that will be moved to more love and more action.
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Thank you.
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Absolutely.
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Love you.
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Love you all.
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Thank you.
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It s my honor.
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You re all humans of such incredible goodness, and I know it ll inspire people to find the goodness that s already alive inside them and maybe wake it up even a bit more.
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God bless you all.
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I look forward to seeing you sometime soon.
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God bless you.
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Thank you.
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Take care.
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Thank you.
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Stay strong, everybody.
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Stay strong.
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Stay strong.
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God bless.
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The Tony Robbins Podcast is directed by Tony Robbins and produced by the Tony Robbins team.
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Copyright Robbins Research International.