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00:00Hello, I'm Van Jones.
00:23I want to welcome you to this aspect of the Essence Dear Black Men Annual Summit.
00:30This is a very, very special segment.
00:33We're going to be talking about protecting our children.
00:36There's nothing more important than our children, nothing more precious than our children, especially
00:41to black men.
00:42And our children are under assault physically, emotionally, spiritually.
00:48So we have two brothers that we're going to be hearing from who are experts in how we
00:53protect and defend our children, both spiritually and physically and psychologically.
00:58I'm so proud to welcome the Reverend Dr. Jamal Bryant, our spiritual warrior with few peers,
01:06if any peers, and also our security expert, Avery Mitchell.
01:11Both of these brothers have longer resumes than I can read to you in terms of their commitment
01:16to excellence in protection and support of black people.
01:20I want to start off with a broad question.
01:24These images, over and over and over again, that our children are exposed to, of just being,
01:31seeing black people, black human beings, I don't say black bodies, I say black human beings,
01:35being beaten, being tasered, being disrespected, even being killed.
01:40What do you think the impact of that is on young people and how do we protect our young people
01:47in that kind of assaultive environment?
01:50I read a critical book by Dr. George Jewelry called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome that talks
01:58about how you inherit a level of trauma and stress and psychological scars from your ancestors and pass it on.
02:07I really didn't even realize the impact of all that was taking place until I started marching
02:14with the protesters here in Atlanta, where I've been for the last 16 months, and we were marching
02:21for George Floyd, and in the middle of the march, I started chanting the name of Freddie Gray.
02:29Because I'm from Baltimore, I began to relive what it is that I endured some five years ago.
02:35Transferring that now onto my children, I am worried that they're going to be so overwhelmed
02:43with hashtags and demonstrations that they're not being able to see any victories.
02:50No victories considering the killer of Trayvon Martin is free, the killer of Mike Brown is free,
02:56the killer of Tamir Rice is free, the killer of Freddie Gray is free, the killer of Ahmaud is still
03:03waiting in the balance. And so I shudder to think what will be their thought in their process of
03:10moving forward for their movement. And so I'm anxious, and yet I'm excited because they want
03:16to be a part of it. They've got so much zeal and energy and light, and I don't want to see that burned out.
03:22Yeah. Avery, you know, as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about self-defense
03:32at a physical level, talk to us about, you know, again, this emotional pain and trauma,
03:39and how you as somebody who's a trained warrior would think through this, and how you want our
03:44children to think through and feel through and get through what they're experiencing right now.
03:48You know, Van, as the Reverend just said, and one of the things, not only from a personal
03:54security standpoint, but me teaching martial arts and combatives and so forth, and it ties in about
04:00the trauma and everything else. The desensitizing process is when you see violence over and over and
04:08over again, the brain is going to react two ways. Number one, it's going to turn off to it,
04:14and it's going to say that's normal. So seeing someone killed, someone murdered, someone with a
04:19knee on their neck at a certain point, you turn it off because the brain does it from a self-protection
04:25standpoint. The other side of that, the second point is you will emotionally become attached to it.
04:33You will become angered by it, and that's where you hear cultures and people say never again.
04:39So there's two sides to it. You're going to see it so much to where you turn it off, and then life
04:46doesn't matter, or you're going to be so angered by it that you want to react in another way.
04:53So when I teach people, I talk about a concept called stamping, and it's episodic memory. When you
04:59see something over and over again, your brain stamps it in your memory. And it's like the Reverend just said
05:04about victories. When you see constant loss, constant loss, constant loss, constant death,
05:09constant violence, you stamp it in your memory. It kind of kills hope in a way. And it creates a
05:18mindset of even why are we doing this? So when I teach personal security and even combatives,
05:25the first thing I got to do is it starts with the mental and a psychological of getting where the
05:31person's at. And then the physical comes in and I teach it. But I got to tell you, for my own
05:36children and my nieces and my nephews, constantly watching violence and death over and over again,
05:44it stamps in your memory.
05:48You know, how do you, obviously, Reverend, you have to spend a lot of time with our young people.
05:54How do you talk to them about this? And how can parents talk to our kids about this in a way that
05:58let them know what's going on, but doesn't harm them?
06:02It is to know that you're in the fight, that you're not a bystander. I read a meme that D.L.
06:08Hughley, a radio personality, put up a couple of weeks ago. He said the greatest sacrifice of
06:15grandparents was to go fight in a war. The greatest responsibility of our generation under COVID-19
06:22is to sit on the couch. And our young people have refused to do it, but they have taken their
06:27frustration and they're doing something with it. As a consequence, streets are being renamed.
06:33There's a global response from London to Belgium to Paris, all because they are mobilizing and
06:41operating in lockstep. When everybody is missing, nobody would know the name of George Floyd if it
06:47wasn't for an 11th grader who was going to the corner store. And so they are demonstrating activism
06:53in new nuances that the previous generation had never seen, that their greatest weapon
07:01is their cell phone. And so everybody has a part to play. That the whole landscape of the
07:07presidential election, nobody's not going to get elected if they don't speak to this issue.
07:12Our grandparents had to fight for fair housing and sitting where they wanted in a bus and the
07:18integrating a lunch counter and being able to try and close in a department store. This generation's
07:23key proponent moving from protest to policy is national police reform. No other generation
07:30even spoke the words of defunding police. And so that is a radical statement all by itself. So when my
07:39twin eighth grade girls made up in their minds that they were going to go to this march,
07:44and if their parents weren't going to take them, they were going to catch a ride with classmates,
07:50it let me know that a new generation is taking the baton and running forward.
07:57You know, I'm sheltering in place and I've got some background noise, but Avery, talk to us about
08:02what you want parents to know about self-defense for children.
08:06The first premise of self-defense van is situational awareness. Like whether you're going to a protest,
08:14whether you're out trying to avoid crime or anything, and interaction with law enforcement,
08:20you've got to be aware of situational awareness. And situational awareness is really about
08:25three things. It's about knowing your environment,
08:30being aware of your environment, and then the perception of how you're going to deal with that
08:38environment. So I've gone to protests and marches with people in my family and friends just to make
08:44sure everyone was safe from a security standpoint. The tactics that we apply to things are so important.
08:51As a parent, before I'm a security expert and a self-defense instructor is, you've got to explain what
08:58they're seeing and what they're viewing. And you've got to explain to them that it's an information base,
09:03it's a knowledge base, and they can use it for education purposes. But in some ways, you've got to
09:10remove van the emotion from the conversation. Because emotion is energy in motion, but energy can be positive
09:18and negative. So you've got to figure out what channel of energy you're applying to the conversation.
09:24Because children are full of emotion, they're full of passion, they're full of love for truth and right
09:29and justice. And a lot of adults, in my opinion, unfortunately, are telling children, go out.
09:37Just go for it. Don't record, save someone. There are tactics van to approaching law enforcement.
09:45There are tactics to approaching organized movements. And you can't take raw emotion from a child
09:53and just turn it loose. So as adults, let's educate them.
09:56What are those tactics?
09:58Those tactics are understanding the law, understanding what self-defense is,
10:05understanding what resisting arrest is, understanding legally what you can and you can't do.
10:11So you don't have your emotion channel you into doing something that gives a person who may have a bias,
10:20who may have a prejudice, but because he has a badge, knows how to utilize the law to his advantage.
10:27I'm curious about how you think about Dr. King, Brother Avery. How do you think about the nonviolent
10:32piece of this? You're a self-defense person. Talk to us about Dr. King.
10:36Self-defense is a word that a lot of people use, Van. But actually, when I teach people,
10:42I call it self-protection. So I have tremendous respect and admiration for Dr. King as one of the
10:49greatest men our country ever produced. I believe nonviolence is fine until I'm presented with a
10:55situation when violence has to be done. So I believe in talking through things. I believe in resolving things.
11:03I believe in voting. I believe in all kinds of things to bring peace. But obviously what we've seen
11:11in the last month, and actually just for years and years and years, Van, is that
11:17when we're pulled over, when we're stopped, when we're approached on the street,
11:21violence is what's being presented to us. And sometimes self-protection, is the word I use, is necessary.
11:29I want to come back to that. How do you think about this concept, Reverend? We are probably the most
11:40nonviolent people. Almost no people suggested that this much violence would respond with so much
11:47peaceful protest. And some people say it's not working. Help me understand, you know, as we're
11:54talking to young people about Dr. King, we're talking to young people about the situation that we're in,
11:58I see Dr. King over your shoulder. I see Mandela over your shoulder. How do we help our young
12:04people understand the role of nonviolence and also the role of self-protection?
12:10This has been the conversation over the last three weeks about King and Malcolm X. I came to
12:17Morehouse College in 1989, where Morehouse didn't have a website. There wasn't any Facebook. I'd never
12:24seen the campus. I went to Morehouse for one reason. That's what Dr. King went. And over the last three
12:31weeks, I've been bombarded with this dialogue. We're enough with Malcolm, with Martin. Let's
12:37embrace Malcolm. I've raised two things that I'll bring here, is that the effectiveness of his
12:44nonviolent protest is undeniable. From the Housing Act, the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act. I told
12:54them from 1965 to 2020, I cannot find one example of where rioting advanced the cause. I can't find one
13:05example where it is that looting helped us elevate or amplify our demands. I said, until you can give me
13:13that, let's go on the course that shows us positive, purposeful, and productive. The other argument,
13:20Van, I don't think that we should have to choose. I don't think that it's either or. I think that in
13:26this time, we need a hybrid of it. Is that what our dear brother Avery has argued of self-protection. I've
13:34been really entertaining in my mind over the last few days. Should I take the deacons of my church for
13:42gun training and reinvigorate the deacons of defense? Is that while it is that I believe in nonviolence,
13:51I should have myself surrounded by some people who understand what it means to protect the church and
13:57to protect the community. Because while we're dealing with police reform, community engagement
14:03is going to be the linchpin of it. And I think that the Black Panther Party in large measure
14:08gave us the blueprint of what I think the Black church ought to be doing. Educating our community,
14:15showing the way to learn from our elders, doing community upkeep, taking out all of the
14:21drugs. I think that the Black Panthers gave the model of what the Black church should have been
14:25doing. And so some of that I am really studying and reevaluating of what is needed and necessary
14:32as we move forward. Avery, how does that sound to you?
14:38I mean, that sounds great. Listen, we are our brother's keeper. We are the uncles. We are the dads
14:44in that village raising those children. And we are supposed to be the people that
14:51check crime in our neighborhood, check wrongdoing in our neighborhood, teach our children the right
14:57way. The hybrid that the Reverend is talking about is correct. I'm a very peaceful person,
15:02but then I'm very comfortable with violence. And I perfected doing it and teaching it to people.
15:09So hopefully you never have to ever use it. But when you have to use it, it's not a time to learn it.
15:18You must know it. So I teach personal protection to individuals, whether I'm hired for executive
15:24protection, corporate protection, celebrity protection, or I'm just teaching rape prevention
15:29courses, church security, whatever. The idea is that you have the right to protect yourself.
15:36And if you're in a right situation, and I'll take it a little bit spiritual, Dan, when you're in right,
15:42you should have no problem using self-protection to correct a wrong that's being presented to you.
15:50And when a wrong is being presented, excessive force, uh, throwing me down on the ground,
15:56forcing my arms behind my back. Like one of the biggest things that law enforcement uses is this
16:02resisting arrest thing. From a combative self-protection martial arts standpoint,
16:07when you grab a person's arm or wristband, they immediately tense up. They try to pull away.
16:14That is resisting arrest. Because the stiffening, the pulling is the process. Now this goes back to
16:21something that Reverend said earlier about post-traumatic stress. You could say, oh, a child
16:26is fearful about being grabbed. I could take it even deeper and take it to slavery and a slave catcher.
16:33And why we react so violently to being grabbed and held.
16:39Wow.
16:41So, so, so this presents, I think that the ultimate dilemma.
16:45Uh, we have tended to have the talk with our kids where we tell them, uh, be polite, be
16:52peaceful, uh, say yes or no, ma'am. Uh, you know, keep your hands in plain sight, et cetera.
16:58Uh, some people are now saying, well, listen, uh, uh, you know, brother George Floyd, I mean,
17:03he wasn't resisting at all and he was just lynched in broad daylight. Um, and people, you know,
17:08Shaka Singor wrote an article saying, uh, he's not going to tell his kids, uh, to, uh, he's
17:14going to tell his kids to resist. That strikes me as, is somewhat dangerous. Um, we're in a catch 22.
17:20Um, how do you think about it, Reverend? You have a lot of young people looking at you.
17:24Um, is it talk now outdated? Do we not, not tell our kids to, uh, go along with law enforcement and
17:30go above and beyond the call of duty to show them that we're peaceful or is that still good
17:34counsel in most situations? I think that is good counsel. But again, I think that we've got to use
17:40the weapon of our cell phone. The reality is, uh, and Avery, I think would agree with me on it,
17:47that if it weren't captured on the phone, none of us would even be discussing George Floyd.
17:53Uh, and so that one of our self-defense mechanisms is how do we protect ourselves through technology?
17:59Uh, the whole narrative would have been shifted if, uh, brother Floyd had resisted. Uh, I don't know
18:06where it is that we would be, uh, at this ticket of watch. And so I think that we've got to do
18:11some astute training. The Bible gives us the insight. Our people die from a lack of knowledge.
18:17Uh, I want, uh, brother Avery, who I'm just meeting today. I want him to come talk to my whole church,
18:23young and old, because just what he said on the natural physiological response is new to me. I'm,
18:30I'm zero days old, uh, on that knowledge. And so I think that it is so important that we use the whole
18:37community, uh, to be able to minister to us and especially, uh, Van, and I'm sure you're much more
18:43astute than I am on what are the implications of this piece of legislation that has just been
18:50offered and how it comes back to us. Camden, New Jersey in 2017 dismantled their whole police
18:56department, uh, brought in the national guard for six months and did a complete overhaul on their,
19:02uh, policing and community engagement and crime in Camden, uh, which for our viewers is the back door
19:09of Newark went down by 73%, uh, because they did policing differently. Uh, so I'm excited
19:17about the untapped potential about what this represents.
19:21Well, I'm, I'm hopeful about this legislation. We'll see how that goes. Um, uh, brother Avery,
19:26I'll give you the last word, uh, give us the name of your organization and how people can contact you.
19:31And also any other books, resources, uh, uh, you know, point of view so that people can educate
19:39ourselves in this new reality. Absolutely. Um, my Instagram is I am Avery Mitchell. Once again,
19:47I am Avery Mitchell. Uh, they can email me very easy. Avery Mitchell at gmail.com. Um, the combative
19:56system that I teach is called urban survival sciences and find it the Reverend brought up New Jersey.
20:01A lot of the things I do and teach, whether I've been through the training academies and
20:05the anti-terrorism training and everything else, the reality is van in a river. Most of the things
20:10that I do and teach come from growing up in inner city, Newark, New Jersey, growing up in that
20:14environment, growing up in Newark and seeing things. And those things that I carry from Newark have
20:19allowed me to travel to 45 countries around the world, keeping people safe, because I took those things.
20:25You can see violence early. You can see things happen. But you know, one of the things the
20:31Reverend talks about, like, I had a lot of hope. I had a grandmother who was a good Christian woman
20:35who had faith. Then I saw my first shooting at seven years old. Talk about being desensitized,
20:41right in front of me, right in front of me, seven years old. So my view of how I deal with violence was
20:47shaped from that. But I had a grandmother who always taught me about peace, always taught me
20:53about love, always taught me about forgiveness. But that stamping that I talk about, that episodic
20:59memory, it did shape me that there are times when you have to deal with violence. And just one point
21:05made earlier, band, by people saying, I'm not going to tell my children to show their hands. I'm going
21:09to tell them to resist. Once again, we're talking about a plan with no tactics and no action. And we're
21:19using emotion. But it's negative energy in motion, instead of positive. Because respectfully,
21:28we as a people are forgiving people, we are not trained to be animalistic. But you're running into
21:35some people who do this every day. And they're prepared for it. So I would prefer that young children
21:43put their hands up, be respectful, record at all times necessary. And then we have to go into another
21:51time personally, man, about with situational awareness, you have to know when something's
21:57going left. So if someone pulls me over and asks my ID, I get it. Very respectfully. I wait. But
22:05like growing up in Newark, when you know something's going south, or something doesn't feel right,
22:11self protection has to kick in. But without training, man, we're sending our children out to the streets
22:19to it's very hard to take youth in their emotion, because it can be used against them. So I just want
22:29more adults to be more responsible, that yes, children should be angry, they should be upset. But we have
22:36a responsibility to give them the right tactics. Well, I think that's a good note to close on.
22:43I think we've got very good counsel, very good advice from two giants in our community. We have to
22:51protect our children politically, spiritually, emotionally, and in every other way. And I'm very,
22:57very proud that Essence is creating room and creating space for us as brothers to have these
23:02kind of conversations. We look forward to more to come. Stay with this conference,
23:06stay with this summit. Many, many more conversations to be had. Thank you very much.
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