Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
with Carmela Monk Crawford,
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I was trying to have her unwrap
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some of the history
of Message Magazine.
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And, of course, its
history has a lot of the history
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of the United States,
at least in the modern era.
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And that's not over, is it?
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No. No, it's not.
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Even since the...
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Or at the time
of the last election
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and ongoing was things
like black lives matter.
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Yes.
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We were having to
fight the same wars
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for civil rights in my view.
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Yes, right.
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So Message must be
doing very, very well, right?
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Oh, what a time it is.
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What a time.
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I was telling someone
just last year, I said,
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as an African-American woman,
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I am stressed with
the amount of topics
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and the things
that are happening
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on a day-to-day basis.
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The things that are
happening, the rollbacks,
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the voter suppression,
the charges of voter fraud,
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the idea of
harassment and sexual assault,
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the idea of so
many different things,
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the health disparities,
access to health care,
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lack of access to health care,
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our right issues
where community policies,
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such as what's
happened in Flint,
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affect people's health...
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Right, absolutely.
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Which is such an egregious case,
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where people are sick.
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And I was looking...
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I think I told
you a few weeks ago.
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We were in a seminar...
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Not a seminar but
it was a workshop,
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they were
discussing some research,
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and they were
looking at a map of Chicago,
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overlay of Chicago.
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And you've heard
so much in the news
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about how Chicago
is the murder capital,
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which is not true,
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and you've heard so
much about the violence,
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but you know, they do have,
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you know, some different issues,
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and a cycle of police
to citizen interactions
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that end up
badly to say the least
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and a cycle of
higher incarceration rates
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and mass confinement
rates for people of color.
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And we are looking at the
map and the map of Chicago
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is almost like a,
I would say, a boot,
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more like a stocking shape map,
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and the map
talks about violence,
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so that's one thing.
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The demographics
you're talking about, yeah.
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Yes, demographics, and
you're looking at violence,
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then you're
looking at foreclosures,
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then you're
looking at jobless rates,
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then after all of those things
that seem to put the folks
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in this area at a disadvantage,
you look at the same people
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are exposed to lead to the tune
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of 75 to 100% of the
people have lead exposure
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and lead poisoning.
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How are people supposed to grow?
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How are people
supposed to prosper?
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How are they supposed to move on
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when you have those
kinds of things happening?
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And that's what
happened in Flint.
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It's a multi-faceted threat...
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A multi-faceted...
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To people's security
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and even knowledge
of the world as it is.
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But the reason why I say
that though is when you tell...
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You're open by
talking about Message
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and where we consistently are...
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The battle is not over, is it?
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The battle is not only
over but the consistent thread
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is the impact
on people of color,
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in particular African-Americans.
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And so we do have
a great multitude.
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There's no question.
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Clearly, it's a little broader,
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minorities and
particularly ethnic minorities,
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but minorities
for other reasons,
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the way I would put it,
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the underclass
in America is larger
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than people will imagine
and the underclass in America
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is as badly off
as any underclass
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in the Western world.
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Interesting you say that.
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And the system doesn't
care to deal with them.
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Right now, we are at
a time in our country
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where we're seeing the people,
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the incomes runaway
for that highest end,
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and people who
are on the lower end
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are just blossoming.
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So I was reading a
statistic, you know, of course,
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you have the measure
of the poverty level,
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the poverty index,
but there's another index
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that doesn't just address income
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and what people bring in,
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but it also looks at
the income as you match it
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against your
need for your housing,
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need for your
clothing, need for everything,
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just to live, and they say,
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at least 43% of the people
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are dealing with
that kind of income
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or money strain.
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It's a very,
very interesting time.
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And so like you said,
it's not just African-American.
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No.
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But you know they
were the singular group
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that was systematically
kept down, mistreated,
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and then after the civil war
and reconstruction were picked
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on more than others
and they're emblematic
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and central to
what's going on this.
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You can't dismiss
this single group,
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but it's not just them.
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And the U.S. has
not an enviable record
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in dealing with
minorities generally.
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Some minorities have moved on
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and up like the Irish.
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And I wouldn't consider
them an Irish, they're not of...
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But they were not just ethnic,
they were religious minority.
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Mm-hmm.
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So when they came,
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they stood out
with their accent,
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their religion and overall
in the Protestant country
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that
Catholicism caused problems.
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And, you know, I don't know
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if you know the
history of the Irish.
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At one stage, there was
a riot in New York City.
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It was around
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close to the
civil war as I remember.
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Fifty thousand people
rampaged through the streets
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for about three
days, killing any Irishmen
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they could lay their hands on.
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Horrible stuff. Right.
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And for different
reasons, different minorities
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have popped up
and gathered the ire.
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We were talking
before the program
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about the Chinese.
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Right.
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Again, horrible mistreatment,
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not, I think,
because they look different
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but that was an
easy way to pick on them,
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but they were seen
as taking away jobs
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and threatening the way of life
for other people and violence
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and then legal
restrictions followed
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that you can't
defend in the modern era.
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No, you can't
defend it at any point.
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We've got a
little bit of time left.
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But you mentioned Chicago.
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Let's talk about Chicago,
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and I know I've
got a few years on you.
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I remember very well 1968
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and the Democratic
National Convention
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and the rioting in Chicago.
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And lately, a
few times I've seen
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on documentary
footage recounting of that.
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It's quite shocking,
even at this point in time,
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to see the police
just, gratuitously,
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hundreds of police
beating young people,
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some of them lying
insensible on the streets,
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others with
their heads wide open
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and blood everywhere,
dragging them like dead meat
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into the paddy wagons.
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I mean, Chicago has
had an interesting history,
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and at that period,
it was run like a mafia,
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May Daley and his machine,
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it was really temerity
whole writ large in my view.
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Right.
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So, you know, Chicago is
not out of the woods yet,
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but it's come a
long way from that era,
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from the Al Capone,
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and the prohibition era,
and the crime, and so on.
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So the minorities
there have suffered,
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but I think they are suffering
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because it's been a
very dysfunctional city
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for a very long time.
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I think minorities,
particularly African-American,
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suffer because
there is a long history
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that has not been dealt with,
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structurally as
well as interpersonally.
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And, you know, like I said...
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Like what happened, you
probably don't know either,
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but I call it the
burden of history.
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How do you get over it?
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But it's real, it's huge.
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It is real, and
until we deal with that...
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You know, I have the
privilege of being here with you
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the week after
the Starbucks chairman
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closed 8,000 Starbucks
shops across the United States.
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The week after Roseanne
Barr writes an extremely
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inflammatory and
insensitive racial remark.
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African-Americans have
borne the brunt of this
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and African-Americans
have been leading the cause.
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And why am I saying that?
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Not to hold up what
our experience has been,
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but what is relevant to me,
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especially in the
context talking with you,
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I believe that the experience
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that African-Americans
have gone through
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and continue to go through,
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it puts that experience
as the canary in the mine.
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So when we see
people being beaten,
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when we see a
lack of police rights,
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when we see that
the police are stopping
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and frisking and asking,
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you know, just
stopping because they want to,
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and when we see people
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being disproportionately
confined in jail
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and incarcerated and
all that sort of thing,
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we are seeing that continuum
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of rights that we all hold dear,
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especially church
folks, where we believe
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in our freedom of speech,
in our freedom to worship,
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but the freedoms have
been burning on this end
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for so long and which is...
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I watched some footage
of the Democratic Convention
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the other day
and Walter Cronkite
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long dead now, but he
was an icon, you know...
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Yes, he was.
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Walter Cronkite
concept something it was true.
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And here in the aftermath of it,
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he was sitting at the convention
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and he looked at
the camera and he says,
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"We are living
in a police state."
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He says, "There's no
other way to describe it."
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Right.
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Now nowadays, if you
say that, you get shot down
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but we've already been there.
00:10:06.67\00:10:08.34
And this is not the
worst country in the world
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by any means but
it has, periodically,
00:10:10.64\00:10:13.07
had aspects of police state.
00:10:13.11\00:10:14.64
Right.
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And when you see...
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And some people
feel it more than others.
00:10:17.41\00:10:18.91
Right.
00:10:18.95\00:10:20.28
And I've dealt with,
I've told you privately.
00:10:20.32\00:10:22.35
In one of my previous jobs,
00:10:22.38\00:10:24.02
I dealt a lot
with the police force,
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I did videos with
them in many case.
00:10:25.89\00:10:27.22
Right, right.
00:10:27.26\00:10:28.59
They were kind to me,
but I know that they treat
00:10:28.62\00:10:30.36
certain areas of certain cities
sort of like a plantation.
00:10:30.39\00:10:35.40
It's open season for them.
00:10:35.43\00:10:38.03
For some people, yeah.
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And in their
defense, there's huge problems
00:10:39.67\00:10:43.14
that how would
they deal with it,
00:10:43.17\00:10:44.77
but when you add to it this view
00:10:44.81\00:10:46.64
that sort of a class of people
00:10:46.68\00:10:48.14
that they don't have to
worry about, it's very sad.
00:10:48.18\00:10:51.61
And I think we need to
00:10:51.65\00:10:54.98
have a public
discussion about this
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and make sure
that it's addressed.
00:10:57.32\00:10:58.99
And in my closing
and I want to have
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a few comments from you.
00:11:01.06\00:11:02.72
But it's worth remembering,
00:11:02.76\00:11:04.43
since this is a religious
liberty program at root,
00:11:04.46\00:11:07.20
that really, the
basis of our religiously,
00:11:07.23\00:11:09.80
practical religious
liberties day-to-day,
00:11:09.83\00:11:12.00
in the workplace particularly,
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comes from the
civil rights movement.
00:11:13.40\00:11:15.00
Oh, yes.
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The constitution
is a little vague,
00:11:16.40\00:11:18.14
but the civil rights
legislation guarantees lack of,
00:11:18.17\00:11:22.18
you know, prejudice against
you because of your religion,
00:11:22.21\00:11:24.58
your ethnicity,
your gender, and so on.
00:11:24.61\00:11:26.55
Right, right. And you
make such a good point.
00:11:26.58\00:11:29.18
What I would like to see
us to continue to explore ways
00:11:29.22\00:11:33.66
that we can be very active
00:11:33.69\00:11:37.66
in the struggle,
00:11:37.69\00:11:40.33
ways in which we can
educate our children,
00:11:40.36\00:11:42.93
educate our schools, the
principals and the teachers
00:11:42.96\00:11:46.60
in our schools to
discuss what we need to do
00:11:46.63\00:11:49.90
regarding preventing
problems from happening
00:11:49.94\00:11:54.01
and protecting our
children as they grow up.
00:11:54.04\00:11:55.38
And all of these rights
00:11:55.41\00:11:56.75
are interconnected, aren't they?
00:11:56.78\00:11:58.11
They are interconnected.
00:11:58.15\00:11:59.48
And so if we treat one
group badly in one area,
00:11:59.51\00:12:01.12
likely, religious
liberty will suffer.
00:12:01.15\00:12:02.98
Oh, yes.
00:12:03.02\00:12:04.35
I believe the freedom
of speech is a major issue,
00:12:04.39\00:12:07.46
I believe your practice,
00:12:07.49\00:12:09.12
your ability to protest
as you need to is an issue.
00:12:09.16\00:12:13.43
The ability to
articulate these things,
00:12:13.46\00:12:16.67
this is where we are right now.
00:12:16.70\00:12:18.03
And I believe that
what I'm trying to do is
00:12:18.07\00:12:21.10
make sure that my children
know how to comport themselves,
00:12:21.14\00:12:25.31
but they also know
what their rights are
00:12:25.34\00:12:26.91
and they also
realize that you have to do
00:12:26.94\00:12:28.74
what you have to
do to stand firm.
00:12:28.78\00:12:30.85
As editor of Liberty Magazine,
it's very gratifying for me
00:12:34.88\00:12:38.05
to have as my
guest on this program,
00:12:38.09\00:12:41.12
the editor of Message Magazine,
00:12:41.16\00:12:42.89
another
Seventh-day Adventist magazine.
00:12:42.92\00:12:46.39
And it's worth
remembering and me reminding you
00:12:46.43\00:12:49.80
that our movement,
00:12:49.83\00:12:51.67
a movement of
expectation of the soon
00:12:51.70\00:12:54.14
and almost immediate
return of Jesus Christ
00:12:54.17\00:12:57.51
was carried forward
00:12:57.54\00:12:58.91
on the efforts of publications
00:12:58.94\00:13:03.58
and the output of editors.
00:13:03.61\00:13:06.21
And today,
editors are important.
00:13:06.25\00:13:10.42
Twitter and all the rest,
yes, that's the social wave,
00:13:10.45\00:13:14.32
but it's the
people that are generating
00:13:14.36\00:13:16.29
the thoughts and
interpreting them
00:13:16.32\00:13:18.13
to the larger audience
00:13:18.16\00:13:19.49
that continue to
make a difference.
00:13:19.53\00:13:21.26
Message?
00:13:21.30\00:13:22.63
Yes, there's a message to give.
00:13:22.66\00:13:24.00
Liberty?
00:13:24.03\00:13:25.37
There is still
liberation call for,
00:13:25.40\00:13:27.10
as Jesus said in
Nazareth, freedom for all.
00:13:27.14\00:13:32.44
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:13:32.47\00:13:36.38