- 2 days ago
Enough Is Enough Panel Part 1 with Don Lemon, Kendall Johnson, Tamika Mallory and Master P.
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00:00Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon from CNN, and I'm so happy that I'm here and that you could be here
00:09for this Essence Festival, this unusual Essence Festival. And the panel that we're doing now is
00:14called Enough is Enough, and it's taking action in the fight for our future. This is part one
00:19of this panel. And just to give you an idea of what it's about, it's an interactive conversation
00:24about what role that we play as individuals in strengthening our community infrastructures to
00:29better mobilize and move ourselves forward during this time of crisis, when the government drops
00:34the ball, as well as what it really looks like to pull together and rely on each other. As you know,
00:39we have a leadership vacuum in this country. So I think it's incumbent upon all of us to step into
00:44that role in whatever way we can as leaders. So let me introduce some of the people who are on
00:50the panel here right now. First up, there you see them all right there. First of all, I want to
00:55introduce Kendall Johnson, the Executive Director at the Census. And we all know we need to take part
01:00in our census. It's very important that we are included and that we are accounted for.
01:04And then we have Ms. Tamika Mallory, who is the founder of Until Freedom Organization,
01:11Compromise of Organizers, Lawyers, Artists, and Survivors of Injustice, leading organizer of
01:17Women's March in 2017 and Women's March in 2019. Fantastic work. Thank you so much. And then of
01:24course, we have the man in the sunglasses with all the hit records behind him. And that's Pastor P,
01:30the founder of Team Hope NOLA, organization benefiting at risk youth in NOLA, a respected
01:35business mogul, of course, successful insinor and beloved entertainer. We're so happy to have all of
01:40you here. And this is an important discussion, as I said. And as you know, there's a leadership
01:44vacuum in this country. And so the question is, as we are in this moment now at the intersection of
01:52we've got the election coming up, we have protests on the street, we're dealing with a pandemic and so
01:57on and so forth. Tamika, I'm going to start with you. Do you think that what we're experiencing now,
02:02does it feel like a paradigm shift to you? Are things going to change?
02:05I mean, I think change is inevitable, Don. And, you know, certainly we're not going to remain
02:13as we are. I think at this point, the entire world is saying that there has to be some movement
02:20in terms of what we've seen happening to people of color and to black people, particularly in this
02:29nation. However, I'm not always that hopeful. You know, I want to be. But I also understand that
02:35we're up against a real serious challenge in terms of the leadership in this country.
02:40We still have a president who's in office and every second that Donald Trump is in position
02:46is dangerous for all people, even for those people who support him, who don't understand
02:53what he is doing to this nation and how he is creating a divide between people and the rhetoric
02:59and tone in which he's operating in is extremely dangerous. I mean, when I listened to him speak
03:05most recently in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the dog whistles there, Don, and I saw you talking about it on your
03:11nightly show, it was dangerous. I mean, it was almost like he's a little bit bolder in the ways in which
03:18he's going about, you know, speaking about Colin Kaepernick and you know that he's talking about people
03:24of color. And it's very dangerous. And we still have not been able to get him out, right? Like,
03:29so we still got to make it to November and vote this guy out of office. And until that happens,
03:36I'm really nervous about what could happen in this country. The fact that he's been president for
03:42the time that he's been in office, there's 120,000 people dead because of his incompetence,
03:48not to mention all the other crises, the children separated at the border.
03:52So we've got some serious issues here. And I think until we get him out of office,
03:57I'm a little nervous about what may, what may be to come.
04:00So listen, I have a, yeah, well, I want to talk about the importance of communities
04:05to use their energy to organize and why that is so important now. But my question is when I see all
04:11of these, especially young people, all different ethnicities out there, Tamika, who are, who are
04:16protesting and who are in the street, is someone organizing them to vote? Is someone out there
04:21preaching, you've got to vote because you're saying you want to, you want to get this president
04:26and this administration out of the white house. Who's out there doing that? That's a really
04:29important question.
04:31Well, I think you got to look at Latasha Brown from black voters matter. You have to look at
04:37a number of organizations, the NAACP youth and college division, even until freedom. There are many
04:44organizations that are out there doing the work. And I'm sure that over the next few weeks, I mean,
04:48I'm, I'm hearing from a lot of folks that people are ramping up with these calls to get people
04:53registered and to get people to turn out at the polls. But I think what is really, really important
04:58is, and we're going to see what happens in Kentucky. And we'll know whether or not young people and
05:05people in general did what they need to do to address voter suppression. Cause we see that happening
05:12across the nation. There's some challenges that we're up against, but I do think that a lot of
05:18folks are beginning to understand the local connection and how local elections matter in
05:24terms of dealing with some of these issues. When you look at the Brianna Taylor law, that was a local
05:29city council decision. And so I think we're beginning to educate folks on how they have to be,
05:35have to be at least engaged locally. And then hopefully they will also turn out nationally and
05:41vote out Donald Trump from my perspective. Okay. So then folks have to be accountable,
05:47but Kendall, they also have to be accounted for. And I'm talking specifically about the census,
05:54because people may get the census information in the mail and they may see that you have to go
05:58online and then they just, it doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter to me. Does it matter as much
06:04as voting? Should it be put in the same level or scale as voting? Why is it important?
06:10It absolutely matters. I mean, think about this. The census is about money and power.
06:15The results determine how over $600 billion are allocated across the country, across the
06:22communities every year for the next 10 years. On top of that, census data is used to help redraw
06:29state congressional lines and state legislative lines. So it ties directly to voting. You know,
06:37if you, if you do not identify, if you don't fill out the census, if you don't self-identify,
06:42then you're leaving those that are drawing those lines to draw the lines they want to draw them the
06:48way they want to draw them, not based upon the actual population that's there. And we talk about
06:53not having enough services, emergency services, education, transportation, all of that, that,
07:01those, those funds for those, those services are based upon census data. And like it or not,
07:07data is, everything is allocated by race. That's why the census asks you what race you are. It asks you
07:13if you are of Hispanic origin. It doesn't ask a lot of questions. You can actually do the census
07:19probably at about five or 10 minutes. It's a very quick thing to do. It only asks you about five
07:24questions. I mean, 10 questions. And all of that information is, it stays for 10 years. Unlike
07:31voting, you can change that up every two to four years, depending upon the cycle that you're in.
07:35But census statistics stay for 10 years. So if you aren't counted now, don't complain about,
07:42if you don't participate now, you can't complain about what's happening in five years, because guess
07:46what, we don't do another census until 2030. Yeah. So Master P, I want to bring you in,
07:51because as you know, African Americans have been unjustly targeted by police for decades.
07:57Through entertainment, through music, through hip hop and, and rap, artists have been talking about
08:03this, taking this issue on for years, for decades, really. And now it's coming to the fore. Where do
08:10you see artists, what role do artists, especially in your business, in hip hop, in the record business,
08:17what role do you see them? Where do you see them in this movement that's happening now?
08:22I definitely see us as a culture growing, but we also have to look at that this movement is led by
08:29ownership and education. I feel like if we don't educate this generation, we're going to lose this
08:36battle. This is a war and we're not prepared because if you look at every war, it's funded.
08:42We don't have those funds. We look at when Martin Luther King and, and, and all our ancestors back
08:47in the days when they was going through this, they was prepared. They had buses, they had people,
08:52uh, getting people out of jail. They had money. They was raising money. Like right now we are,
08:59we are protesting and we don't realize at the end of the day, what do we want out of this? And I always
09:06say that we have to have a plan of action because right now, if nothing changed, then we're not,
09:12we got to talk about voting. We're not putting in African-American judges into these places.
09:18We're not putting the right people into that. We believe in that, that are going to fight for us
09:24and fight for our rights. So we can make a difference. And also we're not owning none of
09:28these blocks that we've grown up on. We learned through protest and how to burn them down. But my
09:33thing is I'm saying, stop burning them down. We got to buy them back. And so we're not educating
09:38our people to go get these small business loans. Everybody talking about what's available, what the
09:43government have available. Our people just know we don't have any money. How do you get it? You get it
09:48through education. I tell people all the time, it's not about money. It's about wisdom. You have the
09:52wisdom and the knowledge, then we can educate the next generation. We need to be preparing
09:57the next generation through hip hop, like on education, financial literacy. You know, why,
10:03why come we don't own none of these products? How come we don't own none of these communities?
10:07And if we don't stop that, we're going to be in trouble.
10:11It's interesting. Do you, do you think it's important for, you talk about ownership and stuff
10:20that, which I think is very important. That's also generational wealth. But I thought, I thought
10:24what you said about the judges was maybe the most important thing that people don't realize
10:28when, uh, when we're going to the voting booth, that elections have consequences. You're not just
10:34voting for the president of the United States. You're not just voting for a senator or a congressman.
10:41Yeah. You're voting for someone who is going to be a judge. If you have to go to court, someone who's
10:46an appellate judge or, um, uh, or a district judge or whatever it is, who's going to be making life
10:52and death decisions for you, whether it's abortion or women's rights and on and on and on. Um, so I
10:58think what you say is very important. Do you think the people who are out there or the people who
11:02let's, let's put it this way, the people who are not motivated to vote in 2016 and beyond, do you
11:07think they understand those consequences?
11:09I think they don't because we only realize that we're sending more people of color to prison instead
11:17of sending them to college. And that's the reason because we don't have, yes, because of the judges,
11:24because you look at it, not only the judges, but the jurors too. Cause when you see a person of like
11:29us go into one of these courtrooms, it's not people that look like us in that's going against us. So they
11:35don't understand. They have no compassion for us. You have no compassion that this kid could probably
11:39turn his life around and do something with his life. You just send them to prison. I have a brother
11:44right now. He's not a, none of us are perfect people. My brother's incarcerated Corey Miller right
11:49now because his name, who, who he is, he grew up in a place to where it was during election time
11:55and you're electing judges that don't look like us that said, this is how we're going to get
12:00into these polls and when, because we're going to take these guys off the street and look at hip hop.
12:05Everybody in hip hop is not bad. Me and my son, Romeo come a long way, but if you look at it,
12:11we don't glorify that. We've never seen nobody talk about Master P and Romeo, father and son. We're
12:18the first father and son of hip hop. The great things that we've been doing and giving back to the
12:22community over 25 years, that is not something glorified. But when my brother went to prison, that was on
12:27every channel. I don't care whether CNN, whoever, that was on the front page of everything. But
12:33one thing I learned from Johnny Cockburn, he said, Pete, you have to be the best person that you could
12:37be. You can't be judged by your family, your friends and none of that. And so I put my trust and faith in
12:43God. I just want to ask you, this may be part of your answer. Do we know what we're fighting for out
12:50there? Master P said, you know, we shouldn't be, people shouldn't be burning down communities. They
12:55should be building them up. They're not sure if the people are out there and know what they're
12:59fighting for. How do you get that across? Because the moment you're explaining, the moment you have
13:03something that's longer than build that wall or make America great or whatever, you're losing,
13:09right? So young people, is there something that young people can do or say or that young people
13:18should know what they're fighting for? Do you get what I'm saying?
13:21You know, yeah, no, I totally understand. And I don't know if I agree that they don't know what
13:25they want. I think they're very clear. They don't want to die. They don't want to continue to be shot
13:30down and killed and choked and beat. And they don't want to live under the constant oppression.
13:35And I'll just tell you this quick story. And hopefully this helps. You know, I was watching King
13:41in the Wilderness. And in this, this is a documentary about Dr. King in the last days of his life.
13:47And there's this moment when he's marching and he's also Stokely Carmichael is marching with him.
13:53And, you know, they're headed in the same direction. The reporter asked Dr. King, what's the, how, you
13:59know, what's the direction? How are we going to get there? What are we going to do? Dr. King responds,
14:04nonviolence, you know, traditional, got to do it the right way, stay focused, which was very good.
14:10His statement was, was great. But then he turns to Stokely, the reporter turns to Stokely Carmichael
14:16and says, so, you know, what's the direction? And Stokely Carmichael says, we got to burn this
14:21whole damn thing down. And guess what? They were both walking in the same direction. I think you
14:27need the Stokely Carmichael's, the Dr. King's, the Dorothy Heights, the, you know, all those in the
14:34movement working at the same time, because I'll tell you that unfortunately, and we want to help our
14:40young people and encourage them not to vandalize their communities and to understand that we don't
14:45have to get to that point, which by the way, I'm not convinced that, that, that our young people
14:51are, should be the ones to have to claim all of the vandalism that's happening because we have seen
14:56detractors in our movement for many, many years. And, you know, people who are infiltrators. However,
15:02we want to encourage them not to do those things. But I tell you one thing, when they started burning
15:07things down, people started wearing their kinter cloth, trying to figure out how they could pass
15:13some laws to calm this country down. And so I think the issue, as I said to you before, Don,
15:19is if you hold the police officers accountable, and you do what would make people feel like there's a
15:25real attempt to respect us. I think people will, in fact, you know, because I think protesting is
15:32perpetual for us, right? Like, we're always going to be in a state of having to push this nation.
15:36But I do think that people will be more focused on other ways to go about organizing and getting
15:43things done. If we see that there is some form of justice in place.
15:47I think that's a great, hold on, Master P, I think that's a great, we don't want to die. That is a
15:53great, or stop killing us, or what have you. But I think that I agree with you, people, that's why
15:59people are out there for that, and other things. And we also just, we want to be treated equally.
16:06We want equal rights, right? But go on, Master P, I'm going to go around. Kendall, I'm sorry that we
16:11didn't get to include you as much, but I will. I just want to get a final thought from you,
16:15Master P, and then Kendall next. So go ahead and say what you're going to say, and then let me get
16:19your final thoughts. So, Don, what I really think, because I was one of those kids, and I
16:25have been through police brutality, so I know. And the sad thing about it, it wasn't a white officer,
16:32it was a black officer. And you know where we grew up at, you know, it was a white officer that
16:36told the guy to stop. But my thing is with us, when I say we got to know what we want,
16:41I think our people are doing great. We have to stay committed. This can't just go on for
16:47a couple weeks. And I think that the commitment is there, but the numbers are getting fewer now.
16:53And so that's what I'm saying. When we walk in there, when we walk in there with large numbers,
16:57we got to know what we want. We got to know what we're talking about. Now the numbers are
17:00getting smaller. I go from city to city now and see, it's 10 people on the corner now. It's not
17:06thousands like it used to be when we was making noise. And also, when you look at it,
17:11what I say about the educational part, you know how they're going to do it. Okay, once it's over,
17:16let's figure out, let's keep it moving. And you know, when I say about burning down,
17:20you know what I've seen, because I grew up in private, all my people now, they done burnt down
17:25a lot of things in their communities. They don't have nowhere to eat at, nowhere to go shopping at,
17:29to get their groceries. And so that's what I'm saying, have a plan of action. And so as us being
17:35leaders, and we done been through this, we're going to have to program them to okay,
17:40every action get a reaction. If one of us burn something down, we're going to prison. But we're
17:46not just the ones who's doing this. And so you guys got to realize this, it's white people burning
17:51stuff down. And they're probably doing it before us because it is good. The unity that we have blacks
17:56and whites coming together is beautiful. I've never seen that like this before. But in Atlanta,
18:02this was like a white lady that burned down windows. And we're probably the ones that
18:07looked at as we've done it. And so some of us are thinking saying, okay, I want to figure out how to
18:13buy this block now. Because if you have more people look like us that own stuff in the community,
18:18we're going to control that. And so don't want people to think like, like owners, like right now,
18:24when you've got 14.5% unemployment going on right now, we got to start thinking like owners, the few
18:31that's out there, we got to say, Oh, no, I mean, just, I made a whole thing about
18:37Oh, Uncle Ben, right. And ancient mom, which been doing this for 130 years, we thought that people
18:45like us owned it. My grandparents had me going to the store thinking that we own these things. We can't
18:52look at economic empowerment in our communities without owning product, we create athletes and
18:58entertainers. But product last a long time product outweighs talent, we need more people owning
19:05product, we need to support us that own product. And I tell people all the time, start small and build.
19:12Because if you just start small, like this is a great time, they're taking a product off the shelves,
19:16giving us an opportunity to put our product on the shelf. I got I got a product called Uncle Pete,
19:21which is, I'm a real person. People know me. I've been around a long time. How come we can't make
19:27rice? How come we can't make pancakes? How come we can't make packaged foods for grocery stores? Why
19:33do we only have to rap, play basketball, and be in the entertainment world? Because those are the
19:40people who are making the real money. If you look at it, even in corporate America, if you look at the
19:45Fortune 500 companies, it's only three of us that are CEOs. I ain't even talking about owners. That's
19:52less than half of 1%. Why is that? Because we're not programming our kids with economics and saying,
20:02okay, we need to be leaders, entrepreneurs, bosses, instead of just working.
20:07Well, to build generational wealth is really what we need to do as a people. And I need to get that
20:14Don Lemonade started right now. Get a can and a bottle.
20:17I got the Uncle Pete rice. Look at him. I got the pancakes. I ain't mad at you.
20:25You see the rice right here. If we could go buy Uncle Ben, and we've been doing that for 130 years,
20:31why not buy it from us when we're going to put money back in the community?
20:36That's right. All right. I heard that. I need some of those sneakers. I need some kicks.
20:40I need all of that pancake mix and the rice to go with my gumbo. Kendall, I need to get you in. And
20:48again, I'm sorry with the technical difficulties. Your voice is very important. It needs to be heard
20:52in the census. I'm glad we got that in. Give us your final thoughts on all of this. As someone who
20:58knows accountability, who knows how the census works, and this country works, give us your assessment
21:05on where we go from here, what we need to do. Well, the first thing we need to do is we need to
21:10go ahead and complete the census. Approximately 51.3% of the Black African American population has
21:16responded to the census. Ideally, we want that to be 100%. If over $675 billion are allocated each
21:24year based on race, and 50% of the population of the Black African American population has not been
21:29counted, imagine how that's going to affect our communities, our access to healthcare, our access
21:35transportation, our access to other emergency services, Pell grants, child care, all of that is
21:44determined by census figures. So our ancestors bled, sweat, and died for our rights to do things like
21:53vote and to respond to the census. At one point, we were only counted as, you know, three-fifths of a
21:58person. So we are full people. This is you. This is for you. The census is for you. It's yours. It's not
22:04something somebody is doing to you. It is something you are doing for yourself. You stand up, be counted,
22:11complete the form, show you're here so that you and the community can get what you deserve and get your
22:17care share. Well, thank you. We're going to end this part of this discussion and panel on this.
22:24It was fantastic speaking with you guys. Thank you, Kendall. You're right. Healthcare and everything
22:31beyond matters, especially when it comes to how we're counted when it comes to the census.
22:37Tamika, thank you for your activism and for speaking out and for everything that you do. We
22:42really appreciate you. Of course, don't stop. Keep calm or keep angry and carry on. And Master P,
22:50listen, you're a legend and you're a role model and we're so happy about everything that you do and
22:55what we learned from you just in this segment. I'm ready to get my products out there and build
23:00some generational wealth. That's the only way we're going to win. The only way we're going to win,
23:05because we could talk all day, but if we don't own that, we don't have no power.
23:10Yeah. Thank you. Very well said. Master P, Tamika and Kendall. Thank you so much.
23:16Master P, Tamika and Kendall. Thank you so much.
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