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00:00Good evening. Good evening, everyone. I am Bakari Sellers, and this is a call to action. I know
00:26that this has been a relatively tumultuous week for us all, a tiring week, a week where
00:32we can quote Lou Hamer and say that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. But
00:38this is a discussion about Black men, creating community and sustainable action toward words
00:44that mean so much, words like quality and justice. Today we have a great, great panel
00:52of special guests. I have one of my good friends from Swansea, South Carolina. He is the
00:56senior advisor to the DNC and contributor for BuzzFeed News. You also see him looking extremely
01:03dapper on CBS News, none other than Antoine Seawright. Our next guest is my Morehouse brother.
01:12You got it, brother. My next guest is my Morehouse brother, associate professor of history and
01:18American studies in Kyoto, Japan. Just worldwide, always. Morehouse is always worldwide. I'll
01:24give it up for Mr. Fernand Wilkins. And last but not least, we all stand on the shoulders
01:34of great heroes who come before. And the co-founder of Essence magazine and chairman and publisher
01:41emeritus of Essence Communications. I know it's one of the largest Black-owned companies in
01:46the United States. We stand on his shoulders. And the three of us would not be here if it wasn't for
01:51the work of great men like Ed Lewis. And so I want to welcome you to the panel as well, Mr. Lewis.
01:58So we're going to hop right in. We have an action, questions that we want to get through. And we know
02:06that many of the discussions that we have are not necessarily, especially during this political season,
02:11the board or senator around Black men. But this is a space where we're going to talk about those issues.
02:17So this is a question to all of you all. We'll actually start off with chairman emeritus Ed Lewis
02:24first. But in your opinion, what are the top three issues Black men are facing in America? Which of
02:31these issues impacts you the most? I think as we're looking at what's going on with us, education
02:40continues to be top of the mind. Job opportunities with regard to making sure that there are opportunities
02:48for us to be able to work. And finally, with regard to our health needs. Black men in particular
02:56have not been as diligent about their health needs. And I really do think that
03:01we have to pay more attention to, particularly in this environment of COVID-19, we need to pay
03:06even more attention to our health needs to make sure that we take care of ourselves,
03:10take care of our family, and take care of our community.
03:15Antoine?
03:18You know, Bakari, depending on who you ask that question, I think the answer becomes subjective
03:23versus objective. At the end of the day, the issues I think that African-American men face in this
03:28country today are the same issues that my sharecropping grandfathers face during their day. If I had to
03:35prioritize them from the perspective of the gospel according to Antoine Seawright, it would definitely
03:40be having a seat at the table and not being on the menu. Because you can name the issue, healthcare,
03:48infrastructure, education, the environment, all those things mean not one single thing. If we do not
03:54have a seat at the table, the discussion table, and the decision-making table to help shape what
04:00they look like. And so that's the way I see it. If you want to lay out issue by issue, I would just
04:06frame them all up as quality of life issues. I don't know a Black man in America who does not want a
04:13better quality of life than his parents and grandparents, but also wants a better quality of
04:18life that he may have for his children and grandchildren. And so I would just frame it all
04:22together as quality of life issues that dominate the top of the charts for African-American men
04:28of today. Professor Wilkins, in your expertise traveling the world, what do you see as the top
04:35three to five issues? I think I want to just sort of concur with everyone's points prior. I think
04:42that yes, education, of course, sits at the top. Questions of access to opportunity and capital for
04:48entrepreneurship and things of that nature. But I also think that what we can see, particularly among,
04:56you know, when we think about questions of quality of life, we think about this particular moment,
05:02which is about sort of standing up to injustice. And so for African-American men,
05:07having that opportunity and being able to be inserted into this conversation, as we can see,
05:15with all this activism that's happening at this particular moment, that itself is very,
05:19very critical. We can talk about this. We can talk about, you know, questions of the cultural state.
05:27All those things are critical. But again, it's about having opportunity and having opportunity to
05:36have the quality of life that our peers have in other communities.
05:39Let me ask you a question, Professor Wilkins. Along those lines, we're in a moment now in which
05:47protest has become quite visible, quite necessary, quite essential, in my opinion. I'm a child of the
05:52movement. My father was a member of that little small fledgling civil rights organization called SNCC,
05:58getting paid $8 a week for the work they did. But what's your opinion on the protests we see in the
06:04streets, balancing that with the fact we're in the middle of a pandemic? Do you see it as being
06:08successful? How do you see it playing out? What are the what are the positives that we see in protest,
06:13in this new protest movement? Or should we be gearing and shifting our energy towards something else?
06:18I'm actually elated at the protests and the ways in which young people are out in the streets today.
06:28I think that the velocity and the speed in which people are out organizing and speaking truth to
06:37power and raising larger questions just to lead to brutality. But how do we think about or rethink
06:44the police in relationship to other kinds of quality of life issues? So questions around the economic
06:52inequality that exists in our communities? These are these are questions that of course direct impact
06:58how we think about policing. We think about questions of health care. Again, we're in the middle of a
07:03pandemic. I actually happen to be, you know, a 50 year old father who has been kind of stuck in the
07:10United States and unable to get back to Japan because of this pandemic. And I've also been cautious about
07:15my involvement in the streets because of the fact that we are living in a serious time in terms of
07:23COVID-19. But I think that the questions that young people are raising at this particular time
07:30are particularly salient. And as a young person who is also the parent of movement activists who are
07:36involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, I can say that this generation of young people
07:42are raising the bar in terms of how recent the world we want to see.
07:51Ed Lewis, I got to ask you, you know, you covered this when you had the, I remember hearing the stories
07:59about how Belafonte would help bail out individuals who were protesting when they would get arrested.
08:04And you had the activism of the luau cinders and the Jim Browns. You had James Brown who kept
08:11Boston or Cambridge, Massachusetts from burning down after the assassination of Dr. King. So you saw
08:17this intersection of culture and protest. Tell me how you think these protests are going, especially
08:23with all the new black voices we hear from both the entertainment sector meeting and to merging into
08:29this new protest movement.
08:31With all the things that's happened to us as black people, I am hopeful in feeling quite good
08:39by seeing so many multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multicultural people come together on behalf of
08:46black people. I'm celebrating my 80th year at this stage, and I've seen it all. I can remember,
08:53for example, too, in 1997, a young man by the name of Abner Louima in New York City, a policeman stuck a stick
09:01up his rectum. And I could not believe that another human being would do that to someone else.
09:06I came together with Reverend Sharpton and others. We protested, and we're still talking about police
09:11brutality. But what we're seeing today in terms of the massive, massive people just in the streets
09:22all over the world, I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. And so I'm just pleased to see that
09:27it's going on.
09:29Antoine, I know that you have a message that you want to get out about the protest and keeping that energy,
09:35but how do you feel about protest? And tell us how we get from these summer months through the time
09:41when you say the ballgame really starts, which is November.
09:44Well, you know, Bakari, protesting is in our DNA as people of color, particularly African Americans.
09:52The American experiment has been shaped by our getting in the way, holding things up, as John Lewis would
10:00say causing good trouble and necessary trouble. And so the American experiment has been shaped by all
10:06that. So I applaud people who want to get in the way, who want to stand up and stand out and who want
10:13to elevate the conversation because things are going wrong. I think what we have to do is to be able to
10:19block and tackle in this moment, block out this narrative that there's some sort of problem with
10:25protesting and calling out the injustices that we know exist, but also move to tackling the issues
10:32that really, really matter. Protesting is one thing. Progressive movement from a legislative standpoint
10:39and showing up at the ballot box is the next step. You know that old song, Bakari, because we heard
10:45it growing up. It takes two to make the thing go right. And so, yes, we must protest. Yes, we must call
10:50these things out. Yes, we must march, but we'd also should organize and strategize. It's what my family
10:56did growing up, as I learned so much from. It's what I read about when it comes to my family, organizing,
11:03using the church, particularly at AME Church, as a vehicle to plan out our strategy and how we move
11:09forward, taking that energy from the protest, from the organizing, from the galvanizing, and moving that to
11:15making long-term systemic change so generations of people will not have the same sets of experiences
11:22as previous generations. That's my whole battle cry. I think the one thing we have to do in this moment
11:28is realize that there will be ebbs and flows about all of these things, right? That's what politics is
11:33all about. It's a game of ebbs and flows, but we have to make sure we take the flow and float our way on
11:39to the ballot box in November because you cannot govern if you do not win. We can yell, scream, protest,
11:45we can write down plans, but if we do not win in November up and down the ballot,
11:50it will be just a living document on the internet, or it would just be photos and videos to say,
11:56yes, we went to the streets. Let me ask you one question, Antoine. While I have you, I know that
12:02one of the things we hear often, and I want to frame the question the right way, is about reforming our
12:08police, defunding the police. And I want people to know that the slogan doesn't mean that we all of a
12:14sudden we'll have no police from your town 911, but instead it means going line by line and making
12:21sure that we demilitarize and deconstruct bloated police budgets and put them into things like
12:26mental health programs, after school programs, what my good friend Uncle Marion Barry did when
12:32he was the mayor of DC and had summer work programs, created a whole new black middle class. Tell me what
12:37you think about that strategy of defunding the police in that narrative. Do you think it
12:43can be effective? Why or why not? Well, first of all, I will remind people,
12:49Mr. Sellers, that when Republicans want to defund essential things that matter to us, education,
12:56entitlement programs, environmental funding, you name it, they just call it a tax cut,
13:03or they call it trimming the fat or less government. So this idea that we will allow them to distract us
13:10from the big picture, I think is so unfortunate. At the end of the day, when I hear the word defund
13:16the police, it may not mean what the other side may try to define us as, as we do not want to fund
13:22programs. Joe Biden said it best a long time ago, show me your budget, I'll show you what you value.
13:28We have to start analyzing line by line some of the programmatic things that exist within
13:33police departments and law enforcement agencies around the country and figure out what's working
13:38and what's not. I like to use the word demilitarize versus defund the police, but I don't want to play
13:44words with friends or get into the name game either. We also believe, at least I personally do, that we
13:50have to make more serious investments in the right programs when it comes to law enforcement, i.e.
13:56community policing, i.e. giving law enforcement agencies the ability to hire from the community
14:01in which they serve because we know relationships matter when it comes to how we are handled or not
14:07handled when we are stopped for whatever reason. So I think that making the right investments in law
14:13enforcement and that means perhaps rearranging the deck will go a longer way versus buying into this
14:20idea that we just do not want to fund police departments because we need the police. They keep us
14:25safe for the most part. Most of them do their job, but there are examples in which we just saw by way
14:32of a camera a few days ago where the job was not done the right way and as a result it caused unrest
14:39and we're in this moment because of it. And I'm agreeing with Antoine that we do need the police.
14:45We do need to make sure that our communities are policed in a manner that's going to be held
14:50accountable. And it's not about making sure that drugs and robberies and killings are not handled
15:00properly by the police. We need to hold them accountable. And if that's something, Professor
15:04Wilkins, as we reimagine what police would look like, that's the conversation that we're having
15:11right now, is it not? Absolutely. I think that that's the question. I mean, what has been so
15:18wonderful about this moment is always a learning moment. I consider myself a lifetime learner.
15:25And at particular moments like this, we have to, you know, although people might believe that we need
15:31police, we have to ask ourselves why, right? And the question of why is directly connected to a lot of
15:39the issues that we see at play? For example, oftentimes police are essentially employed to be
15:46like social workers and they're not, right? We have questions around, you know, education. We have
15:51police in schools and we see in Minnesota and other places that they have broken off ties with the local
15:57police department. We have police that deal with questions around mental health and most police officers,
16:04almost all are not mental health, don't have mental health expertise. So I think that when we, what
16:10this moment is, why this moment is so important is that it's helping us to reimagine policing. Because
16:16up until about 1850, we didn't even have formal police departments, as we know. Most, most disputes,
16:22particularly in the United States, were head sheriff or a constable. It was not rooted in a particular
16:27department. But we saw when it came to questions around slave catching and slave patrols, as well as issues
16:33around workers and working class struggle in the late 1880s and 1890s, police became a formal part
16:42of local government. And so I think that when we think about that and we think about the history
16:47of African Americans in relationship to policing from 1935 on down, we can find example after example in
16:55which poor policing has been the sort of fire behind major rebellions among African Americans,
17:06from Cincinnati to Watts, all the way down to Los Angeles into the current moment.
17:15Let me say one thing to you. In yoga, there are two terms that I think about every time I practice,
17:20being intentional and making adjustments. I think when it comes to reforming and making structural change
17:29when it comes to law enforcement agencies as a whole, but also the criminal justice system,
17:35I think we have to be very intentional about the adjustments we make, because whatever we do today
17:41is going to impact a lot of people tomorrow. And it's one thing to be in the moment and make decisions
17:48about what makes sense today. But if we have our shot at hitting the ball, we have to make certain
17:54that we not a home run slam out of the park because we may not be in the position to make the necessary
18:01intentional adjustments we need for generations to come. And that's my loudest prayer and cry about
18:08the moment we're in. Let's be intentional about the adjustments we need to make.
18:12Yeah, I'm not I'm not too too fond of the of the baseball and yoga analogies merging in one answer.
18:21Ed, one of the questions I wanted to ask you is what role do you think Black owned corporations
18:33should play during this moment of protest? Black owned businesses, people who have
18:38uh some semblance of wealth and some standing in our communities. What should be our level of
18:44expectation for these individuals in terms of being active, speaking out or raising their voices?
18:49We need to make sure that these corporations are making money so that they can participate and do
18:54well in the issues that are that are with our community. And only then can we come together, work
19:01together, support each other, help each other to make a difference in terms of hiring and making sure
19:08that we increase wealth within our community.
19:12Um brother Wilkins uh one of the questions I have for you is uh as an international professor
19:20um what are your students what are the conversations your students having about uh human rights in relation to
19:29the way uh the America treats Black folk? What what is our global standing in the world and throughout
19:36this moment I know you're kind of bunkered down in California right now, but what is what is the
19:40global stature of this country currently and how are people looking at us as we're going through our
19:45own human rights struggle seeing that Black folk are struggling just as we have been for 401 years?
19:51Well first of all I think that what has happened over the last 10 days we've seen a tremendous
19:56level of global solidarity from Europe to Africa uh South America and so forth particularly also in
20:04Japan and other parts of Asia. Um I teach at Doshishi University in Kyoto, Japan uh and I live in what
20:10is called the Kansai region of Japan. In the Kansai region there was a recent protest uh organized about
20:172,000 to 2,500 people came out uh for a Black Lives Matter uh solidarity protest mainly organized by
20:26obviously local Japanese but also many in the African-American ex-patriot community. Um so in
20:32that sense I mean in terms of my students what I'm finding is they're really essentially trying to learn
20:38many of them are you know in their early 20s uh they are they've come of age um in the 21st century
20:45they have uh witnessed when they were you know 10 and 12 and 13 years old in 2012 and 14 they saw
20:52Craven Martin and Ferguson and so some of these things are familiar to them but of course they're
20:58getting this information as it sort of um as it sort of evolves. Um what I try to do and and
21:06consistently is try to uh paint a different picture of the United States for my students who oftentimes have
21:12a a very mainstream understanding of the United States in terms of how it projects itself to the
21:18larger world. Um which is you know uh you know a place of a fair democratic practice uh a place that
21:26essentially polices most of the world particularly around questions around nuclear uh you know armaments
21:32and so forth which is obviously a huge issue um in Japan and in the region that I live. So I think that
21:39in terms of you know they they they're just trying to figure out like every day like what's going on. I
21:44teach a course where I have my students talk about current events and they um actually um are constantly
21:51questioning me about what's happening and I'm trying to give them first-hand um analysis um to the best of
21:58my ability but um you know they they they are they're they they are quite concerned and and and appalled
22:04by what they've seen uh over the last uh 10 days. All three of you guys we probably have about four or five
22:12minutes left but all three of you guys let let's let's kind of wrap up where we began which is
22:18how do we go about empowering other black men how do we meet them where they are and get them engaged
22:24in this process. I know that a lot of people are focused on bringing in allies to our movement but
22:31about how do we re-engage black men for who for so long uh whether by a particular party or by the media
22:39or whomever have simply been ignored. So how do we bring black men back into the fold? I'll start
22:44with you Ed and then go to go to Antoine. We need to engage all our social organizations
22:51that we have to use them to organize. We need to make sure that we're involved with our churches
22:58and get them involved in making sure that we practice when people do go to church equal distancing
23:04and wearing our masks. We just need to uh have an appreciation for for to understand it does not
23:12matter whether we went to Yale or Harvard or how much money we make uh how we are being judged we're
23:20being judged solely by the by our uh the color of our skin and because of that we need to come together
23:27and be uh aware of of our surroundings and making sure also that we vote on march on November 3rd.
23:36That's the only way that we're going to make a difference. Brother C-Wright?
23:40Okay you know I think we have to first acknowledge the fact that America has lumps in our carpet
23:47because issues that matter to black men have been swept under the rug for far too long and as a result
23:52we have generations of black men tripping over those issues that have been swept up under
23:57America's carpet. I think we have to acknowledge that we also have to remind our fellow brethren
24:02that life uh just like politics is a game of addition and multiplication not subtraction or division
24:08and so when we get to a space it's so important that we invite others to join us in that space.
24:15The third thing is we have to meet people where they are uh this idea of business as usual when it
24:21comes to outreach to African-American men uh can no longer be we have to do unusual business
24:27if that means meeting them at the hole in the wall we have to show up if that means the space table
24:32the fraternity meeting uh after church uh if that means a happy hour if that means that waffle house
24:39walmart wherever black men are wherever they decide to congregate we have to meet them where they are
24:45find out what's important to them instead of showing up telling them what we think is important
24:50and figure out a way to repackage or recalibrate uh and turn that that energy that we need to transfer
24:58from there to the next step which would be as as we just heard showing up to the ballot box we have to
25:04make this stuff so simple and plain to where we meet people where they are and it will by itself
25:09challenge people to be where they need to be black men will be the most consequential voting block
25:16in this oh so important election if we fail to engage them the the right way then we will fail
25:24generations of people in this country and i don't want that on my conscience when after november of 2020.
25:33professor wilkins we um you know we we've laid out the importance thereof of engaging black men uh who
25:40who some some scholars and antoine have written uh you notice how i did dissected it some scholars
25:48and that black men would be a swing vote so now i have a scholar here tell me what we
25:55do to engage them in the process and bring us home yeah i think that i mean just the sort of i mean
26:04both of my colleagues here have have raised excellent points i think that we yeah we have to meet them
26:09where they are and we have to be good listeners i think that um you know i'm a i'm a huge fan of
26:15podcasts and um and and and i've been you know sort of over the last several months and so i've i've
26:22listened to so many uh wonderful podcasts by african-american men uh who are trying to grapple with
26:29issues that affect us both internally and externally and i think that um you know you have someone like
26:35you know someone is take someone like a charlamagne the god who's raising questions around black mental
26:40health um i think that this is a a critical issue that we have to sort of think think about or
26:46seriously zero in on and hold kind of collective conversations around these things it can be via
26:52social media it can be in person it can be in a range of places uh we have to raise questions around
26:58how do we deal with all of those young brothers who are you know having the opportunity to to get out of
27:04prison um and deal with the the realities of what host prison life looks like in terms of job
27:11opportunities and questions around uh education uh and voting so i think that listening right i think
27:19that we need to spend a good deal of time gathering and hearing the experiences and perspectives of young
27:27black men because oftentimes they aren't heard and they are marginalized and we don't know
27:32or don't hear very few we hear very few black men's voices uh uh in in public space so i think that's
27:40that's one place to begin fellas i'm gonna just say that uh go ahead you always get to say whatever
27:48you want to say it's your platform i can remember when i was a trustee of tuskegee university and at a
27:56a board meeting i was talking to one of the older trustees he was 85 years old he was six feet eight
28:03um and i was asking him what is it about us as black people um that enabled us to overcome all the
28:12obstacles lynching separations uh killings that we've had to deal with and we're still here
28:19and he looked down upon me he said young man the best explanation that i can give you for us still
28:26being here is that we just refuse to die we just refuse to die and we need to keep on keep hope alive
28:34and move on i'm not going to say much after that brothers 2020 is on us let's keep hope alive
28:41um let's keep moving forward uh me ed antoine professor wilkins we can't be free we're all are
28:51free and so keep that in mind as we go towards november thank you for your time thank you for
28:56joining us for this amazing conversation thank you for this platform and everybody please engage
29:02your neighbors as we build partnerships build allies build coalitions to go out and create a better
29:08in america thank you thank you so much
29:30you
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