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