Calls media.

Okay, so here's the thing.

The following podcast you were about to listen to was recorded while there was a good amount of information that has not been revealed or that we don't actually know.

This podcast you about to hear, and the attempt to explain a position or an emotional state is not, which I'm sure is obvious to you necessarily.

Where I stand, I'm not giving us any particular advice.

I think it's grossly immature to police someone's emotions, especially around something as visceral as a public execution.

However, the said person who got publicly executed said we should bring back public executions, which therein lies the issue.

So this is not about telling you how to feel about the death of a deeply racist man.

That's not about that.

It's also not about humanizing a person who went out of his way to dehumanize people like me and my queer and trans brothers and sisters.

This ain't about that.

I'm also not going to run up any receipts about this man, because his receipts are so self evident.

There are so many things.

Somebody, somebody with that many greatest hits of horrible things to say you don't need to lie about them.

So it's not so.

Much i'm telling you you feeling bad for not feeling no remorse.

I'm also not telling you that if you feel remorse, that you need to turn in your black cart.

That's not what I'm trying to say right now.

The following podcast is about the nuance, is about what about both.

So I'm speaking to the people that might feel conflicted.

I'm speaking to.

People who may feel that they had some sort of warm feelings towards Charlie Kirk, which I'm pretty sure are not my core audience, because, my lord, I just I don't see any redeemable sentences that have come out this man's mouth.

This is about a visceral human emotion and about empathy, an empathy that this man apparently was against.

So that's what we're about to experience.

And since we've been recorded this, and I feel like only other people who experience being in a marginal group understand this.

A sense of relief that the little boy that they found that assassinated this man was lily white, like I mean, was a.

Just man as white.

I'm talking raisins in potato salad, white hight that shot that boy Mormon white like I was like, that's a white boy, you know.

So the things that I'm going to talk about in the complications and feeling conflicted about this might be a person that you might relate to and my love, but also you have to reckon with the fact that that man is deeply wrong.

That's what you're about to experience.

You feel me.

It's just about the complications of emotions.

And what I'm trying to say is there's not a one to one, but just I understand being conflicted.

But here's my encouragement.

You gotta deal with it.

My baby ain't never heard nobody.

Actually, yeah, yeah, my baby ain't never heard nobody is a colloquial distilling down of the quote from like Grandma and them at the Little Gangster's funeral.

It's the cry of a mother who has, you know, lost their baby to the streets.

The quote I'm pulling from specifically is from the I mean it's really old, like I was a child during like a really young child.

We're all in the same gang, don't you know.

We got to putts to get that.

There was a time in the in the eighties late eighties when hip hop decided that crack was stupid and that people needed to not do that, and a song called self Destruction where it's just like the idea that like, how.

Could you old school.

Rappers were, you know, understanding what like you know, cocaine and crack was doing in our streets and was trying to like teach the younglings to not do it, you know.

And obviously that is not.

The stance hip hopposite now, but there's always has been a tone of that within hip hop music.

But it's a reflection of the complication of what it's like to.

Grow up in some of are not so are not so safe environments.

And I really think it is moments like this that, man, it is hard to say but that the experiences of our inner cities separate from I'm saying, I'm trying to build a very specific metaphor here or comparison can help process for America.

Right now, My baby ain't never heard nobody.

This is the inner city counseling session for dealing with the amount of death we saw.

Last week politics, y'all.

So last week was eventful.

A another school shooting, some Iberian ae babies in Colorado was happening, and while that was happening, there was another breaking news of another school shooting.

Only this school shooting was the shooting of right wing influencer activists Charlie Kirk.

Our culture is conflicted, to say the least, and there are a lot of I don't know.

I'm recording this in the past for you, so I don't know what has happened since I know that the things could have possibly gotten far worse in terms of what's going on in our zygeisten in our communities.

As of this point, I don't I have no awareness of who might have been the perpetrator.

I expressed on Friday my fears that it might have been.

If it is somebody black, or Muslim or trans that means that there's somewhat of an or an immigrant, or anyone that's not a white man, there will be a target on said group's head.

That's what I'm concerned about, because that's kind of how it always goes.

Because of the shooter was just a white boyd he was either liberal or deranged.

You know, there was a trove of Trump memorabilia and passion towards the right in the possession of the young man that tried to assassinate Donald Trump, And then we notice, how don't nobody talk about that no more?

Because sometimes it'd be one of your own, you know.

But he's dead now, so it doesn't matter.

I'm not I'm saying that to be very sarcastic here, but I do think that there is a couple things we can take away from this.

This episode is more about raw motions.

This episode ain't about policies, per se.

It's a political show, but you know, raw motions sometimes turn into political violence.

Right.

My brother got fired from MSNBC for saying, you know, hateful thoughts create hateful speech, would create a hateful actions, you know, which some would feel is you know, victim blaming.

But I want to step back here and talk about the metaphor.

First, I can personally attest in my own life of leaning over the casket of my own loved ones, my own cousins, one of my uncles per se.

Yeah, not per se.

He's absolutely one of my uncles.

But the per se is like, we actually didn't get to see the funeral he was buried.

We had a small service with me and my dad and with a couple family.

Members, but my uncle was.

I mean, he was just not a stand up guy.

It just it is what it is.

I loved him, He's blood, but he.

Wasn't a stand up guy.

I think living in sort of an era where the type of like sort of street level violence happens.

Now as I say this, I'm saying this as somebody who people have experienced far worse than me.

People have gone through more than I have, you know, and a lot of times, you know, when we do stuff like this, like you don't mean this to disrespect the legacy of people actually outside, people who actually experience this gang violence.

I'm talking about being closely related to it.

And this is our experience where Mom, Grandma, you're leaning over the casket with a knowledge that you deeply love this person.

When you deeply love a person, there's this inner conflict of feeling like there is still the consequences of their actions.

No one ever truly asked to be shot unless they ask to be shot, No one ever does that.

This is not what I'm saying.

But what I am saying is there are things that we used to tell little young shooters, right, little y ens, if you will, like, hey man, you know you you you talk real tough for somebody that that ain't bulletproof.

You know, you keep talking that that gang.

It's all fun and games when you when you, you know, taking over a one of the corners, doing your little burnout sessions.

You know what I'm saying, like flying your flag?

You feel me like, you know, you stay down right, Like somebody ask you where you're from, you you tell them where you're from.

You know what I'm saying, like, this is what you signed up for.

You signed up for a very particular life that always has consequences.

So when we say, hey, litt hummy, like.

Someone's gonna take you serious, right, someone You're gonna talk like that, You're gonna be waving that flag, somebody's gonna gonna test your metal.

We say that out of not not because you want your loved one to shut up, per se.

It's out of an act of mercy.

It's a desire to say the recklessness of your actions.

You are old enough to make your own decisions.

Sometimes they not odd enough to make your decisions, but you have signed up to join into something where someone is going to take you at your word, and oftentimes that means you're going to lose your life.

And in our experience, I'm welling up because I'm thinking about my own family.

You have to hold both of those things to be true.

You don't believe anyone deserves to die.

A victim is still a victim.

The bullet that went through for me went through my family member's body on one of the scenarios.

Another scenario is just choosing the life that this family member chose, although he later on got out of it, had wrecked his biology so bad that the level of stress, the choices he's made, the fear he lived under even after he was out that life.

You know, the bruised relationships, you know, the complicated relationships he's had with his own children.

You know, my who are like my second cousins, who they at the end of the day, that's they daddy.

You know what I'm saying.

The choices he's made in and out of jail, whatever the case the case may be, this person is still my cousin.

I am deeply still feeling the rawness of this is years ago.

I'm still feeling the rawness of that loss, you know, and looking at my auntie and my particular auntie you know who is his mother, who, like I mean to this day, has issues with her sisters, you know over this particular cousin, that feeling of you wanting to protect their legacy because while also knowing you understand what I'm saying that Like, I don't know these people personally, but I know that my cousin family members have ruined the lives of many people.

I know this for a fact.

Because of the way that he lived his life.

Now why he lived his life that way is a totally different conversation.

That's not the metaphor I'm looking for.

He might have been a true he might have actually believed that this was the best choice for his family given the circumstances that he grew up in.

That might have been his position.

I can't speak to that, and that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the repast.

I'm talking about the funeral.

I'm talking about us mourning the loss of our level.

It'd be so twisted in the hood.

Sometimes, man, it'd be like it'd be dudes in the back know exactly who killed this person?

You know what I'm saying, you know?

Or sometimes it'd be as crazy as like, look, sometimes it's the streets, like niggas die every day, and then thinking sometimes dudes be in the block, in the in the in the funeral, be the shooter, and that person is there just to make sure.

That person really dead, because they're.

Double checking because that person in that grave may have killed Dahomie.

It's complicated, but the instinct of the family is to say, my baby ain't never heard nobody but granny, yes he has.

Now.

What is not being said is therefore he should have died.

That's not what's being said.

What is being said is you have to live with both.

You have to live with the reality that while I'm mourning the loss of my family member, I am not celebrating his life.

I have very fond memories of the three cousins that I'm thinking of.

I have very fond memories of them, of them being very loving to me.

What I'm scary, I ain't.

Gonna hold you like he just yeah, just that type of voice, and like, you know, just you know, some people like I'm actually like that too.

Some people just loud, Like you know, I feel like, in relation to my family, I'm not that loud, but some people just their room, their voice just pierces the sound in the room.

So he was that, you know what I'm saying of one of these, I mean, like these people like they why love you know, hip hop.

I remember, like, you know, sitting on a porch with him while they was talking today homies and just kind of being like a little nervous because I knew that, like because I'm a lot younger than my cousins, but like I knew that, like the some of the dudes he was talking to outside on the porch while I was just you know, playing my littlehigh wheels.

It was like some some scary dudes, you know.

But one particular cousin just had like just his smile, like he just had like the greatest, greatest smile.

Him and my sister were very close.

They like, uh because of like like I said, like I mean, there's a lot of like personal stuff, but like because but I'm getting where because my since my family since like I said, like I'm at the end at the end of the tail end of the cousins, Like there's only there's three at the end that like I am in the group age group of and then there's like a middle group that are like five to six years older than me, and then there's another group that like ten years older than you know what I'm saying.

So my parents kind of had me kind of late.

Uh, but my sister was in that middle group.

So she was the baby for all of my oldest cousins and the ones that were in that the upper edges of that of that oldest cousin group, like a handful of them.

Like God in the life, there's a there's another cousin who completely reformed his life, who.

Went away.

Our family says he was on vacation for a while.

When I went on vacation, you know what I'm saying, we saw when he was locked up.

Who is a one of the most gentle, loving, sweet kind men that I like, I actually admire.

You know, I actually don't know the goon version of him.

I don't know that version.

You know again, I'm so much younger than him, but I don't know that version.

Version I know is just this is like, is my big cousin.

He's just so gentle, you know what I mean, Like so kind.

He you know, he did what he had to do.

He got out, he moved away, started a new life, He raised his families, working man, you know what I'm saying, Like like he did what he had to do.

But even he knows there was, like you know, consequences for his choices.

But he's what you hope.

He is what you hope.

He made his choices, he served his time.

Yeah he's gonna have to live with that, but he's truly a different man.

That's what you hope.

You feel me so, but when you're looking, but when you at the repast is a very black phrase.

Eating your fried chicken because for some reason that's what we always do.

You order and it's not even like you ain't make it at home, like you order.

That fried chicken.

You feel me like I feel like I could see a plate.

Somebody took a picture of a plate of food, and it's also food.

I could tell you if it's if it's black stuff.

I can tell you if it's Christmas, Thanksgiving or repass because I don't know, just the plate looks different right anyway, These sort of conflictions are things that if you grew up like.

We grew up, that we live with, and we have been living with.

A reality that we've had to face is that sometimes dangerous people are deeply loved by somebody else and are both victims and perpetrators.

This is a reality.

Now we could fast forward this to the extreme and just say, hey, look if you was alive when Hitler got shot.

You know, some of y'all apparently would be trying to like say, I didn't like his ideas, but you know, a man didn't need to die.

We're not talking about Hitler.

Charlie Kirk can't hit Okay, Charlie Kirk is an influencer.

Like let's influencer, you know what I'm saying.

Like he had me actual political power, he had sway you feel me so like, but he wasn't.

He ain't the president, you know.

So I do not want to add hyperbole to this.

I also don't want to sort of readjudicate.

His moves, you know, his choices to really.

Rage bad and you know, in my opinion, borrow a lot of Christian language to say very Unchristian things.

And I mean, like I said on Friday, look, Pat Robinson, James Dobson, there's a lot of men who say they Christians who have done irreputable harm to our world.

I just I don't need to readjudicate that, but I do want to say there are very relatable feelings that can happen that if you if I could metaphorically say we had an inner city board of elders that looked over the entirety of the country, we would be able to share these experiences with you.

I first understand the rest and piss because of the suffering that this man's choices has made, but not so much the choices that he's made, but also the followers for which were convinced that empathy was weakness.

But now you need empathy, you know.

So now we're the monsters, you know what I'm saying, The people that are in the rest and piss thing that are just like, look, I got no pasis for races, no whatsoever.

This man was making.

This man was making gen x maga, you know, miss me.

Altogether.

There's that feeling.

There's also the other feeling of people that like, look, man, he was doing what he believed to be correct.

He had a.

Mandate from God to defend the unborn and to move our country back from you know, the moral destruction and decay that the right wing or the conservative world believes were in.

He was one of the young soldiers.

There's that, okay, But I think I'm more talking to those that feel conflicted and have never had to feel this type of confliction to where there's a part of your soul that knows that it's something wrong with us that this keeps happening in our nation.

That's mourning the realities that gun violence is so normal that we didn't even have time to process the babies that is so used to experiencing rage bait, you know, provocateers that there's you can have a twelve million dollar industry from yelling at stage Asian slurs.

I could say, nigga, you know what I'm saying, but I'm not finna say that the one for the Asians to see one, you know what I'm saying, Like there's just too many receipts, you know what I'm saying.

And those who again.

Who are people of faith that are like, well, he but he was a believer and he was fighting for you know, there are religious freedom.

You are going to have to square the.

Blatant racism and the stance that empathy was not is a weakness?

Like is that a modern term that that's not a attribute of Christ.

You're gonna have to square that and then be empathetic.

You feel me, Like, that's for us who exist in the nuance, who are mourning the reality that like, listen, this is fascism.

We're here.

This is what I've been trying to This is what I mean, gestures wildly to all the cool zoned.

This is it.

This is it.

You know what I'm saying.

For those of us who love history and our people of color, we remember our assassinations of our leaders.

We remember Malcolm X, we remember Martin Luther King.

We also remember what they stood for.

It's quite different for the dignity of do you understand what I'm saying?

So, but we also know Martin Luther King was a conflicted individual who coped with the ladies.

We have to live with that, you know, but who desire to live in a world where the ideas that Charlie Kirk and his movement were pushing forward are not accepted.

That we don't think that.

If you see a black pilot, you just wonder if they're qualified.

The questioning Michelle Obama, who didn't hold office no lesson you know, Justice Kanji Brown, that she only got there because affirmative action, which for him means she wasn't qualified.

Because you know, I don't need to adjudicate the things.

But what I'm saying is, and like you we have been so mentioned he was a father and a husband.

Don't need to card out the obvious rebuttals of that, you know, don't need to do that.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Y'all know the rebuttals of that, you know.

But what I am talking about is the reality that like we have been living in this dissonance for a very long time, when a very dangerous man whom you might love deeply has their life taken a person for which you you might agree wholeheartedly with, and don't understand why somebody else doesn't.

And even when that other person shows you the receipts you like Grandma at the funeral, my baby ain't never hurt nobody.

And I want you to I want you to say, or I want you to understand that.

Again, I don't believe anybody, especially in this in there, No one should have to have seen that.

I'm still even thinking about them college students, the people there, that they're gonna have to live with that site.

That was gruesome, Yo, gruesome, And it sucks because these are the same kids.

Oh they've been going they school's being shot up, their whole life.

I just.

I'm saying all this to say, even if this is a fuck around and find out situation, my heart breaks for you because I actually don't want you to find out like this.

I would have preferred, metaphorically speaking, that mister Kirk follows the trajectory metaphorically of my cousin who realizes that the damaging power of his words and makes a change.

I would rather see that.

I would rather see a country that does not rage bait for content, but really does dialogue with people.

And if you are having a dialogue that you would have, they would be you know, good spirited discussions of good faith, right, I mean where you don't move the goalposts, where you do accept like, hey, maybe that was too far.

Maybe I'm you know, skewing these facts.

You feel me not just trying to dunk on each other.

We don't, don't.

I don't want to live in a world like that.

I don't want to live in a world or Charlie Kirk's is are pushed forward.

But I also don't want to live in a world where you're shot in public.

I don't want to live in a world like that.

It's sad.

I also don't want to live in a world where our president chooses which one of these people he gonna mourn because he showed ain't fly no flags.

Have for the Minnesota senators, you know the Department of Health and Human Services in Atlanta, somebody unloaded five hundred rounds over there.

You hear about that story, I know, or the idea of saying that if anybody says anything wrong about him that happens to be an immigrant, you might lose your visa.

That's that's that's fascist.

Don't nobody talk about my baby.

I get it, though, is what I'm trying to say.

I get the instinct I want to no, no, no, no, y'all keep my baby's name out your mouth.

I understand that.

Here's the thing about your baby, though, So I guess what I'm trying to say is we have all had to learn how to hold two conflicting ideas in the same place.

This is what it means to be a person of color in America.

You hold very opposite things in the same place at the same time.

If you don't want to lose your humanity, you just have to do that.

And doing that in this scenario is saying, I mean personally saying you can miss me with the he was a Christian thing.

I mean, like I said, I cite to you, James Dobson.

You know the.

Hurt, the deep damage that that man's teaching has done.

Also coupled with the way for which he may have helped a lot of people.

I understand that can't can't can't can't, can't broad brush it.

Just like I said, this cousin, Some of these cousins I'm looking over over I have very fond memories of.

But I also know he heard a lot of people.

He really did.

I don't mean I don't love him.

I don't.

Nobody's quoting Samuel L.

Jackson here, at least I'm not quoting Samuel.

Lot of people quoting Samuel.

Yes, they deserve to die, and I hope they burning hell.

But what I'm not gonna do is be like Samuel L.

Jackson holding Leonardo DiCaprio in Django.

That's what I'm not gonna do.

Okay, And I think maybe you're the one that's a little insensitive if you can't understand why the elective group of trans, queer, black, Latino, Asian and everybody else that ain't a middle class white man but don't have him feelings.

You know.

So while I'm not gonna hold that man like Samuel L.

Jackson did, I'm also not gonna go piss on his grave because that's not who I am.

Remember the I talked about when we talked about the birthright citizenship thing, when we said that the Constitution is not about who you are, it's about who I am.

For me, that's the G Code.

Now, the G code is short for Gangster code, and I am not a gangster.

But I understand the code and I do live by very a code for myself and for me that's against the code.

My code of conduct is around understanding and peace building.

But yeah, I don't think because you did, I'm gonna speak highly of you.

That don't absolve you, you feel me.

But just because I don't speak highly of you don't mean I think you deserve to die.

It's two conflicting ideas that are actually in pretty good harmony.

More and with those who mourn and you know, celebrate, with those who celebrate.

I leave you with this For my believers.

When I say believers, I mean like the few Christians that still rock with me.

You know, the beatitudes, Jesus says, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

He was not a merciful man.

He just wasn't, dude.

It says, maybe that's why he's not being shown mercy.

Now, I don't know, I might be mangling that verse right, but this year episode is me attempting to be merciful.

My baby ain't never hurt nobody.

Yes he did, and I'm still sorry for your loss.

You want to go pick you up something to drink cold politics, y'all?

All right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod.

You better listen to these credits.

I need you to finish this thing so I can get to download numbers.

Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen.

This was recorded in East Lost Boyle Heights by your boy Propaganda.

Tap in with me at prop hip hop dot com.

If you're in the Coldbrew coffee we got terraform Coldbrew.

You can go there dot com and use promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee.

This was mixed, edited, and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski killing the Beast Softly.

Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com.

I'm a speller for you because I know M A T T O S O W s ki dot com Matthowsowski dot com.

He got more music and.

Stuff like that on there, so gonna check out The Heat.

Politics is a member of cool Zone Media, Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network.

Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and overly Mattowsowski.

Still killing the beats softly, so listen.

Don't let nobody lie to you.

If you understand urban living, you understand politics.

These people is not smarter than you.

We'll see y'all next week.